Yad l‘Achim Considers Suing Messianic Attorney Calev Myers

[Jewish Israel]

Jewish Israel has confirmed with the offices of Yad l’Achim that they are seriously considering plans to take legal action against evangelical attorney Calev Myers who has published defamatory material against the organization. Attorney Yoram Sheftel has recommended that the counter-missionary organization Yad l’Achim sue Myers for slander.

Calev Myers, an attorney with the prestigious Yehuda Raveh & Co. Law Offices, and the Founder and Chief Counsel of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, has relentlessly pursued Yad l’Achim, counter-missionary activists, Orthodox politicians, and the Torah observant community at large in writings and speeches.

But last July he may have pushed the envelope too far with a JIJ e-newsletter article entitled “Conversions and the Religious Gestapo”

Jewish Israel blogged about the article which accuses Jewish religious rights activists of promoting “an agenda of religious-ethnic cleansing” and employing tactics “eerily similar to methods employed by the KGB and the Gestapo.”

Our Academic Advisor Richard Landes labeled Myer’s newsletter “an appalling piece of hate speech”

Jewish Israel contacted Yad l’Achim’s attorney Yoram Sheftel and was told that he had written a letter to Myers demanding that he publish an apology in a JIJ enewsletter and pay Yad l’Achim 1 million shekels in damages. Sheftel notes that although he has yet to receive a response from Myers, the offending material was very quickly removed from the Jerusalem Institute of Justice site, which is indicative of Myer’s acknowledging the problematic nature of the material and which strengthens Yad l’Achim’s case.

Jewish Israel notes that the offending article, which we have retained as an archived copy continues to be posted at the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) site.

Yad L’Achim director, Rabbi Dov Lifshitz told Jewish Israel that a decision on whether or not to take legal action against Myers would be made next week.

[ellen]

I think Richard Landes was on target when he penned,
“This [the JIJ article] is an appalling piece of hate speech which invokes democratic values, but really reflects a megalomanic paranoia that assumes that one's own motives and efforts are immaculate, and accuses one's opponents as a new version of the worst villains to have walked the face of the earth."

[Patty Abbatoy]

They should sue. I hope they do decide to sue. Their missionary activities are bad enough but using terms like religious gestapo to describe counter-missionary organizations is repulsive.

[Jewish Israel]

Don't know all the details, but we will keep you informed when we get any more news on this

[Jake Jacobs]

wWHAT'S THERE TO CONSIDER? SUE THEM FOR EVERYTHING THEY GOT!