Jerusalem – Knesset Member and Jerusalem mayoral hopeful Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism) testified Monday before the Jerusalem District Court, on behalf of Israel Valas, an Orthodox man convicted of killing his three-month-old son.
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Porush, along with several other prominent figures in the ultra-Orthodox community, was called in as character witnessed for the defense, which is trying to convince the court to order a light sentence.
Valas, who was convicted of manslaughter in July, was arrested in April on 2006 on suspicion of abusing and subsequently killing his infant son. His arrest sparked mass protest by haredi youths, who rioted in the capital’s streets, demanding his release.
The defense denied any wrongdoing on Valas’ part, but according to doctors’ testimony, the baby presented with severe signs cerebral edema, which could only have been caused by someone forcibly shaking him.
“The defendant is a good man, I can’t say a bad word about him,” said Porush, adding that he was “marked for great things” within the ultra-Orthodox community.
Porush told the court that he has been acquainted with Valas and his family for six years, and that Valas was one of the “finest yeshiva boys” he had ever encountered.
Another character witness for the defense was former MK and religious radio personality Israel Eichler. The latter testified he has been helping the family since the young patriarch’s arrest, and warned that should he face prison time, it might “bring about the home’s destruction and bring about a destruction of the Second Temple.”
Other character witnesses included Menachem Porush, MK Porush’s father who was a Knesset member for 35 years, and Rabbi Ben-Zion Gutfarb, who heads Valas’ alma mater – the Matmidim Yeshiva.
who knows
Why doesn’t the evidence matter?
Well, look at the RABBI in Monsey who fooled all by selling treife meat and look at our TEACHERS who molest our kids and our LEADERS/RABBI’S who brush it under carpets. i’m not saying the father did a wrong but who knows, he could be the finest yet. . . . G-D KNOWS THE TRUTH. hopefully he’s innocent and then G-D will surely not let him suffer.
Terrible story ,,Young fathers should get training on how to handle babies ..If a baby cries you cant shake the baby to death, thats what appaerntly happend here. sad sad story
Nothing bad to say about someone convicted of murdering a child. with the guy’s teeth marks in the child’s neck as evidence?
Is it possible for him to exercise some humility and consider that he might not know this fellow as well as he thought he did?
Why do Frum people ALWAYS defend “Frum” monsters? Would they do the same for a freier Yid? Even if they “know” him as well as they say they know this despicable creature? Just because he has the levush & shockels when he davens, does that make him innocent?
Where’s the wife? Poor lady, losing her baby to her husband. Yeah, yeah, innocent till proven guilty, yada yada yada. SOMEBODY murdered this baby & the police don’t just say Oh, Charedi Dad, he’s our guy.
BTW, how old is Dad? 19?? Perhaps these kids are too immature to marry & be fathers & listen to babies cry. That’s what babies do!!
It seems that the judge overrode the evidence & forensic discoveries, on the basis of “a Chareidi is always wrong.”
I heard from a person who was very involved in the incident that when the child stopped breathing, the young father phoned Magen Dovid Adom and was instructed to shake the baby and then him on the back. And then, in the hospital, when he told the doctors what he had done, he was arrested.
Shame on you for writing such a headline!!! All people involved truly believe that he is completely innocent, NOT that they are protecting a frum “killer,” chas v’chalila.
Anybody who believes the judge must be a child abuser himself. I dont believe this young man wanted to kill his baby, I dont know him but he seems like a frum nice young man. Even animals are born with the instinct to proetect their young.
Now to all posters who are always looking for the bad in jews (in all articles not only in this one) are you jewish?? Get a life. haven’t you ever heard of dan zal lkaf zchus??? my first thoughts after reading this article was nebach for him and for his wife my heart goes out for this poor baby. By frum jews you hardly hear those horror child abuse stories, so now these zionists are excited to prove us that YES you also abuse your kids not only us…
Pathethic. Think about the neshama of the baby ans the mother. A murderer is a murderer no matter how holy he thinks he is. HKB will be the judge. Babies dont just die Chas v’ shalom. the medical evidence indicates there was something done – shaking or whatever. the baby was killed –
Mom…what would you say if it was YOUR child/nephew, G-d forbid? He seems like a frum nice young man?
Glad you’re not married into my family. You’re as stupid as they make ’em.
Then again, maybe you’re not real? Oh, by the way, the Monsey Rabbi who was raping his own daughter…that’s a Zionist plot also?
These people for a erlicha yid they wouldn’t find any zchis
To those who think that the father is innocent:
The father’s teeth marks were in the baby’s neck.
Has anyone been following this case? Are you aware that the baby had bit marks on his neck? Also, the father admitted to police that he killed his baby because he couldnt stand the child’s crying and because he didn’t like the fact that his child had a birth defect in his neck. At the time, all the machers said to wait and see that the evidence will clear the father. Well, in the end it turned out otherwise. Now, what do you have to say?
These people for a erlicha yid they wouldn’t find any zchis
WOW! So many opinions from so many people so uninformed and uneducated!
FWIW, I have no information about this case to judge the father, as obviously many other do not, but some of what has been written here utter nonesense.
Several of the comments can only come from people who have no experience with shaken baby syndrome. (halavai no one should ever have experience with such things.)
None of you know anything more than one side or the other wants you to know.
It seem like the Chochomim here know more about this than the doctor that was hired by Hatzola.
He did extensive tests and then agreed with the prosecution’s contention that the baby was shaken so violently that it was killed. The baby was already blind by the time it arrived in the emergency room, due to the blood that had gone to the retina.
I’ve been following case. Absolutely NO teeth marks were found. wat happened was baby was crying father shook him to be quiet when baby didn’t stop father shook him more and stronger till baby fell out of fathers hand, lost conciouse at which point he seeked medical help. Wat is interesting to me is NO mention of his wife all along, a point to ponder….
as someone who does know the details in this case and knows (as does everyone in the court system as well as in the hospital, since the hospital messed up in the child’s treatment) the father did not kill his child. not by any stretch of the imagination. He is an exemplary husband (hence the cry, poor mother of the child, is misguided as he has always been there for his wife and his baby). Every single person who maligned him, who believe the lies of his murdering the baby, ought to ask him Mechila (and the same for you vosizneias for placing such a title to this article) and should maybe think of getting involved in klal work so that you can learn first-hand injustices in the world.
That poor baby. What a terrible thing to happen. If it’s true, the father should rot in jail until he’s too old to have more kids. If he didn’t kill the child (even through a temper or frustration) he deserves our rachmones. The problem is, even the most sheltered parents know that shaking a baby is dangerous & often fatal. So I would think, not knowing any details of the parents, that this father just couldn’t stand listening to a screaming baby. Who can? B”H most of us just walk away if we feel at breaking point. This father apparently didn’t. So he must pay the price.
I agree with MOM, unless a person has a known mental disorder – he would kill his own child. This is a typical anti-chareidi story.
Why should a yid talk this way against another yid everything needs to be proven just like Malestation HIDE THE SUBJECT maybe another life will be destroyed
All we allways see is when it comes to a subject of a yid arrested everyone gets excited iether extreme to the good or extremly to the bad ITS TIME TO WAKE UP AND MAKE UP OUR MINDS EVERY TREE HAS BAD APPLES NOT EVERYONE IS BAD BUT EIN ISH BUURETS ASHER YAASE TOV V’LOY YECHTE
Now when we are talking about a young father and a baby did anyone ever givhim instructions how to deal with a baby or he was told if the baby cryes shake the baby untill it stops mayby the baby didnt stop so he had to speed up inthe shaking speed
bottom line is dont crtitisise another yid when we dont know the story and we will never know the truth of the story he nebech lost achild lets all be mispalel for him
This is a great tradgedy, however the man was convicted by the court after what I would hope was a fair trial and overwhelming evidence was presented to prove “BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT” that the father was guilty of the heinous crime. While not every Shofait is fond of Charedim, I would surely not be so brazen to think that a Judge would convict a person of a capital crime soley on the basis of his affiliation or his personal dislike of Chareidim. But my more vexing question is one for all this young mans surpporters, Would you leave this man alone for any time with your infant child or grandchild as caretaker? If your answer is to the negative (& please be honset to yourself in this answer) you have no right to comment that this is a mis-carriage of justice. May HKB provide the necessary compassion for this family to find peace. And to #31 No where in any medical texts, parenting guides or first aid manuals does it indicate to shake an infant. An infant’s cerival spine and brain are at a very tender state and not yet stable enough to withstand any shaking vigorus or otherwise, hence parents are instructed to allways hold an infants head, so as not to hyper extend the infants cervical spine since the muscles necessary to stabilize the c-spine are not fully developed.
Why do you call him a “killer?”–It was a tragic accident. Do you think Meir Porush would testify on behaf of a murderer?
I don’t think the father intentionally killed his baby, He was just trying to quiet him by violently shaking him. He may not have realized that this is dangerous for an infant. It is not surprising that a young guy like this would not know much about taking care of children as he is a child himself. Perhaps we need to reevaluate the age at which we allow people to get married in our community and make them wait till they are mature enough to handle the responsibility. Perhaps also there needs to be be more support for families who may be feeling overwhelmed by the the obligations of parenthood to the extent that they do something like this. He obviously did not know how to handle the stress or have anyone to help him deal with it and so now the baby is dead. On a certain level the community as a whole shares responsibility for not having mechanisms in place to prevent this kind of thing.
for those who are saying he “shook the baby” to quiet the baby, you got the story the way the media wants you to get it. He actually was laying down with the baby on his chest and “shuckling” back and forth on the bed — which of you hasn’t done that with a baby. The baby slipped off the bed. that is not murder by any stretch of the imagination — it is murder of the father what is being done to him
Once again the tisk tiskers and the oy oyers are out in force asking that we be dan lkaf zchus that the father is innocent even though he confessed and even though his teeth marks were embedded in the neck of the murdered child.
What a sorry abuse of middos. At some point any intelligent person would simply say there is no more room left to be dan lkaf zchus. Porush and his ilk are rallying support for this man because they know he faces long and severe jail time. And that is sad.
But as a community the outcry should be for victims of battery, whether its a man or woman and certainly a defenseless child. I don’t see anyone posting about what system of ours was in place that created an abusive father, then allowed him to have children.
Amazing how many people here are claiming they know the true story. How many versions do we have here?
Where is the mother?
Did the father want to kill his child? The answer is a clear “no”. The tsar and pain that he will suffer for the rest of his life is enough punishment for him already, rachmoness should be the proper reaction to this.
yes, a blow to a head of a child — the child did slip — would mean that there would be internal bleeding and would cause the blindness. the baby did not have to be shaken violently for that to happen — the slip and fall alone could have done that. so, folks, it could be, and probably was, that the father did not shake the child any harder than you rock the child. the fact that the child slipped and fell was more than enough for trauma to be severe
I wonder if they screened for Diabetic Ketoacidosis or Severe Liver Failure as a possible reason for the baby’s death. It could be that the politicians are using this as a way to tell the Chareidim that their opposition to autopsies has gone overboard..
A lot of people are at their wits’ ends with a crying baby and never shake him. And all the people shreing about a false confession should face some facts. Valis confessed to shaking the poor child and also to striking his wife. The autopsy PROVED the shaking. “A good man?” A good man doesn’t kill his child like that — or hit his wife. So what if the he can learn; how did it affect his actions in a crisis?
And be real: Knowing his history, would you want Valis marrying your daughter or sister or any woman you cared about?
In this month’s issue of Discover magazine page 61 there is an article on SBS Shaken Baby Syndrome and the question from some Doctor’s is does this syndrome actually exist and does evidence for it only exist on dubious medical grounds?