Hanoch Milwidsky and Olesya: Investigation of Blackmail Claims, Blocked Testimony, and Political Cover

Bnei Baruch Investigation · Entry point · Part 3 of 4

In 2021, Hanoch Milwidsky filed a lawsuit over the distribution of an intimate image. He withdrew it after the prospect arose of examining the file and hearing witness testimony. TheMarker later reported on that procedural history separately: the photograph was already at issue in 2021, long before the parliamentary blackmail claim.

On September 5, 2022, two months before the Knesset elections, Bnei Baruch hit back with a 2.87 million shekel lawsuit in the Lod District Court against former bodyguard Binyamin Rafaeli (“Boki”). The legal team was led by attorneys Tzvi Gelman, Erez Percy, and Dan Shavel. Two years later, in the fall of 2024, Milwidsky brought the same affair to the parliamentary podium and called the entire story a years-long blackmail.

This article follows the sequence: Olesya’s account and the pre-court briefing, through the disputed affidavits, the witness who was not called, and the LAHAV 433 investigation.

In this article: Olesya’s briefing and the amounts · Olesya’s signed statement · the blackmail version and the photograph · the witness who was not called · LAHAV 433 and blocked testimony

Milwidsky and Bnei Baruch

Milwidsky spoke from inside the case, not as a detached parliamentary observer. He was legal counsel to Bnei Baruch, the movement covered by TheMarker, The Seventh Eye, and Galei Tzahal. Olesya’s earlier testimony, affidavits, later statements — all of it became part of the proceedings.

Leader of the Kabbalah La'Am movement Michael Laitman. Photo: David Becher.

For many years, Milwidsky served as the organization’s legal counsel; publications connected him to legal pressure on critics of the movement and to public defense of its leadership. The Seventh Eye traced his political career from the municipal “Beyachad” list through the 2022 Likud primaries to the Knesset, describing it as part of Kabbalah La'Am members’ entry into politics. His blackmail account therefore also came from a longtime legal representative of the movement.

Early Background and the Logic of Defense

In 2014, before the dispute involving Olesya, an Israeli woman identified as “K.” told Omri Maniv about an attempted sexual assault; Milwidsky denied the allegation. News 12 / Mako cited K.'s polygraph, confirmation from her then-flatmate that she immediately told her about the incident, and Milwidsky’s own polygraph in support of his denial. The episode is background to the later public dispute involving Olesya.

Milwidsky’s broader legal and political role is covered in the separate profile of his work for Bnei Baruch. This article follows Olesya’s testimony, the affidavits, the photograph, the blackmail claim, and the later questioning at LAHAV 433.

In a News 12 investigation, victim “A” (Olesya) later said directly that Milwidsky instructed her before the court hearing on how to deny sexual relations with Laitman. Her version was later recounted in court materials and by The Seventh Eye. In the same defamation lawsuit and in later publications, it was recorded that attorney Tzvi Gelman and Dr. Eli Vinokur, who translated the instructions into Russian, were present at that briefing meeting according to Rafaeli’s affidavit. The same court account says Olesya cried during the briefing, feeling that she was being forced to lie about a rape she attributed to Laitman. According to Rafaeli, the organization had to pay Olesya $20,000 for the false version of events in court; Bnei Baruch, Milwidsky, and Gelman denied those claims.

Haaretz added procedural details from Rafaeli’s motion: Rafaeli himself had given testimony in the investigation against Milwidsky, and in Bnei Baruch’s civil lawsuit he asked to call A. by video link. The same report said A. had two affidavits, one of them signed by Milwidsky, and that one document included a claim about an offer of $50,000 in exchange for not testifying. The amounts in the sources therefore have to be read separately: $20,000 in Rafaeli’s account of the false court version, and $50,000 as a separate item from the published court motion.

Olesya’s signed statement: preparing a false account for court

In court accounts and Rafaeli’s affidavit, the episode appeared as a single “pre-hearing briefing.” Olesya’s signed statement, given before a lawyer, describes a sequence spanning 2018 and 2019. She says that in 2018 a person from the Moscow group contacted her and told her she would have to travel to Israel and protect Laitman in court by lying about their relationship. Money was offered.

According to Olesya’s signed statement, her first trip to Israel in 2018 was a “practice run” for court. Eli Vinokur served as interpreter, while Hanoch Milwidsky coached her on how to deliver the false account at the following year’s hearing. At attorney Tzvi Gelman’s office the next day, she says, Gelman directed her on what to say and how to say it. After those sessions, Olesya received half of the agreed payment.

In the same signed statement, Olesya says that Boris Belotserkovsky met her at the airport and drove her to a hotel as the 2019 hearing approached. The next day, she says, another rehearsal at the attorney’s office lasted several hours; Eli Vinokur again served as interpreter. A woman unexpectedly replaced him on the day of the hearing. Olesya says she was then paid the second half.

This is Olesya’s documented testimony, not a fact established by a court. Bnei Baruch, Milwidsky, and Gelman deny involvement in preparing false testimony.

Three Images - One Face

The collage distributed by Milwidsky’s opponents was the material at issue in his blackmail claim. On the left: beach selfies with identifying features marked. On the right: a WhatsApp message and an intimate image. At the bottom: a photograph of the same person with Prime Minister Netanyahu at an official meeting.

The Seventh Eye’s court account from April 16, 2025, reported that the collage was discussed in the proceeding. Milwidsky claimed the photograph was a fake and a blackmail tool. In the Lod District Court, Rafaeli’s attorney Dudi Parhiya asked whether the image was a frame from a video that, according to the defense version, Milwidsky himself had sent to A. Milwidsky answered, “Nonsense,” denying that version and any connection between the photograph and sexual relations with A.

On September 18, 2024, TheMarker reported that Appelbaum’s side had sought in January 2021 to have the image examined and possibly call the woman who, according to its account, could confirm receiving the photograph from Milwidsky. The proceeding was withdrawn by agreement before either step took place. Milwidsky’s later parliamentary claim of blackmail therefore concerned an image whose authenticity had not been tested in the earlier case.

In the photo, Hanoch sends himself from his phone to Olesya while his wife and children are in the next room.

June 19, 2023. Education Committee

On June 19, 2023, at a meeting of the Knesset Education, Culture, and Sports Committee, MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash-Ta’al) raised the allegations involving Milwidsky; Ynet reported a sharp exchange between them.

TheMarker later reported that although Milwidsky called the episode blackmail, he did not file a police complaint for several years after the image appeared. A check through Knesset security also did not confirm that a complaint had been submitted through that channel.

The Civil Proceeding and Victim “A”

While Milwidsky was speaking in the Knesset, the civil defamation case continued in the Lod District Court. The association was demanding 2.8 million shekels from a former employee. In that proceeding, Bnei Baruch defended its account and opposed hearing from the woman whose statements underpin the criminal allegations.

The court refused to call victim “A.” Milwidsky spoke publicly about blackmail and political persecution. The civil proceeding never heard her testimony. The separate article on the witness who was not called examines that decision.

Olesya. Moscow. Blocked Testimony

“A” described the mechanism of coercion itself on News 12, in words that The Seventh Eye carried in its report on the lawsuit against Rafaeli. In her account, in a room with a bed, Laitman pressed her: “If I am your rabbi, if you love me, you will do this for me.” She also explained why resistance failed: “He controls your mind, your soul, your consciousness, so you cannot refuse him.” A. spoke Russian; her wording is given as relayed by The Seventh Eye.

In July 2025, the central investigative unit LAHAV 433 summoned Hanoch Milwidsky for questioning under warning on suspicion of indecent acts, rape, and inducement of a witness. According to Olesya’s account as presented in publications about the case, Michael Laitman systematically abused her and she was later forced to give false testimony in court in favor of the organization.

In her signed statement, given before a lawyer, Olesya says Laitman used his spiritual authority to coerce her. She says he presented the act as a “higher act” and that after ten years of devotion to him as her teacher, she “could not refuse.” Olesya also says that before one of the later meetings, Laitman’s assistant Yehudith Sabal called to tell her that he wanted to see her again. The primary document is examined in the section on preparation of the false court account.

According to the same published account, Milwidsky drove Olesya to a hotel and sexually assaulted her there as well.

The publications differ on the city: N12 / Mako and Kan wrote about Tel Aviv, while Rafaeli’s motion in Haaretz’s account referred to Petah Tikva. In the same month, Milwidsky’s longtime partner in lawsuits, Tzvi Gelman, and Gordon College vice president Eli Vinokur were also questioned under warning in Lod in this case.

Milwidsky defended himself with a version of “political persecution,” for which, according to court accounts, no evidence was presented. In the trial over the organization’s lawsuit against Rafaeli, he stated that he had been “more or less a driver” for Olesya.

In its July 27, 2025 report, TheMarker cautioned that the investigation against Milwidsky did not claim to reveal the full picture surrounding Kabbalah La'Am and Michael Laitman. Olesya’s case could have tested who prepared the testimony, who translated the instructions, who protected Laitman, and why the allegations concerning the movement’s leader received no comparable investigative scrutiny.

In the summer of 2024, a LAHAV 433 investigative team first sent a delegation to Moscow. The meeting with Olesya took place and was officially recorded. She described what had happened. On July 26, 2025, a video interview with Olesya for News 12 was released, in which she quoted Milwidsky’s phrase in his office: “We are having a professional conversation, and in the middle of it he says: ‘Let’s fuck, everyone does it.’” Earlier, she had stated directly that Milwidsky gets what he wants by frightening victims with violence.

A criminal court never heard Olesya’s testimony. It was never used to assess the suspicions against Milwidsky or examine the allegations against Laitman. A later attempt to call her as a witness in the civil proceeding also failed. The separate procedural dispute ended without the court opening a new stage of testimony for her.

The civil proceeding did not test Olesya’s account. Her statement and the related documents describe the roles of a lawmaker, a lawyer, and members of the movement’s inner circle in preparing her court testimony. The photograph is context. The failure to test her account is the subject of this article.

Milwidsky was reelected to the Knesset. In September 2024, he stood at the microphone and said he was a victim of blackmail.

“K.,” whose account of an attempted assault opens the early background of this case, has a different closing line. In July 2025, when the case moved into open questioning, she wrote about herself publicly in a post quoted by i24NEWS: “I am a heroine, a leader and a winner.”