How the Law of Return Has Helped Predators Escape Courtrooms
A CBS News investigation and a Jewish survivors’ watchdog documented more than 60 accused US offenders who fled to Israel since 2014. Bringing them back has, at times, taken more than a decade — or never happened at all.
This is not a claim about who commits these crimes. It is about a specific loophole, slow extradition, and, in one documented case, a cabinet minister who used his office to block a survivor’s day in court. The people who exposed the pattern are a Jewish advocacy group and the survivors themselves.
What this page is about
In 2020, a CBS News investigation reported that many Americans accused of sexually abusing children flee to Israel to escape justice, and that bringing them back can be extremely difficult. The reporting was built on the work of Jewish Community Watch, a US-based abuse-survivors’ watchdog, which said it had identified more than 60 such people who had fled the US for Israel since it began tracking cases in 2014, and that the true figure was likely larger.
The vehicle is Israel’s Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to any Jewish person, combined with extradition proceedings that have run for years. The clearest case is Malka Leifer, a Melbourne school principal who fled to Israel in 2008 and fought extradition for roughly twelve years — a fight in which a sitting Israeli health minister, Yaakov Litzman, later pleaded guilty to using his office to obstruct. This page grades what is documented, and marks clearly where the record stops.
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The escape hatch.
A CBS News investigation and a Jewish survivors' watchdog documented 60+ accused US child-sex offenders who fled to Israel since 2014. The vehicle is the Law of Return; the cost is measured in the years survivors wait for a courtroom.
What is documented, at a glance
| Item | Record |
|---|---|
| Accused US offenders who fled to Israel (since 2014) | 60+ identified by Jewish Community Watch; “likely much larger” (CBS News, 2020) |
| The loophole | Law of Return — automatic Israeli citizenship for any Jewish person |
| Jimmy Julius Karow | Fled 1999; Interpol Red Notice; convicted in Israel (2002, 5 yrs); re-arrested 2019, plea deal (13–15 yrs sought) |
| Baruch Lanner (US rabbi) | ~3 yrs served in NJ; granted Israeli residency 2022; citizenship denied after public outcry |
| Malka Leifer (Melbourne principal) | Fled 2008; ~12-year extradition fight; extradited 2021; convicted 2023 (18 counts); 15 years |
| Yaakov Litzman (Israeli minister) | Pleaded guilty (2022) to breach of trust for obstructing Leifer’s extradition; fine, no jail |
| Tom Alexandrovich (Israeli cyber official) | Arrested in a 2025 US sting; released on bail; allowed to leave for Israel |
Sources: CBS News investigation (2020) and Jewish Community Watch; BBC, The New York Times, and Australian court records (Leifer); Times of Israel and Australian Jewish News (Litzman); Newsweek and Al Jazeera (Alexandrovich).
The record, claim by claim
A CBS News investigation and Jewish Community Watch documented more than 60 accused US child-sex offenders who fled to Israel since 2014.
FACTIn February 2020, CBS News published an investigation reporting that many Americans accused of child sexual abuse flee to Israel, where they are difficult to bring to justice. It was built on the tracking of Jewish Community Watch (JCW), a US-based survivors' advocacy group, whose founder Meyer Seewald and COO Shana Aaronson said the organization had identified more than 60 accused offenders who fled the US for Israel since 2014, and that the real number was likely much larger given its limited resources. JCW said most of its cases originate in Modern Orthodox to ultra-Orthodox communities but that abuse and cover-up occur across the wider community, and Seewald compared the dynamic directly to the cover-ups in the Catholic Church.
The vehicle is the Law of Return: automatic Israeli citizenship for any Jewish person, which extradition proceedings have struggled to overcome.
FACTThe Law of Return grants any Jewish person, defined broadly enough to include anyone with a Jewish grandparent, the right to move to Israel and receive citizenship automatically. JCW says accused offenders have used it to relocate beyond the easy reach of US law enforcement; several, once in Israel, went on to face fresh allegations there. Extradition is possible but slow and contested, and JCW's own account spreads the blame: US Jewish communities that close ranks around the accused, the US government for not always pursuing extraditions, and Israeli police for not prioritizing the search for suspects. Israel Police say they take the cases seriously and coordinate with the Justice Ministry and international partners.
Jimmy Julius Karow fled to Israel in 1999 to escape US sex-assault charges, was convicted of child sex crimes in Israel, and after re-arrest signed a plea deal in the rape of a young Israeli girl.
FACTKarow fled the United States for Israel in 1999 after being accused of sexually assaulting a girl in Oregon, and has carried an Interpol Red Notice ever since. Living under the name Yosef Chaim Karow, he was convicted in Israel on separate sexual-assault charges in 2002 and served five years. In 2017 two sisters accused him of raping and assaulting them as young children between 1999 and 2001; he was caught in 2019 and later signed a plea deal to be convicted of rape, sodomy, and indecent assault of a seven-year-old, with prosecutors seeking 13 to 15 years. He was located through the work of Jewish Community Watch. His case is the whole pattern in one life: flee on the Law of Return, offend again in the new country, and evade arrest for years.
Mordechai Yomtov, a Los Angeles Hebrew teacher who pleaded guilty to molesting students, violated probation and fled to Israel via Mexico on a fraudulent passport.
FACTYomtov, a Hebrew teacher at an Orthodox school in Los Angeles, was arrested in 2001 and pleaded guilty to committing lewd acts with three students aged 8 to 10. After serving time and being released on probation, he violated it by fleeing the country: he obtained a fraudulent passport in Mexico and entered Israel, where CBS News and Jewish Community Watch tracked him down and confronted him on hidden camera. He admitted fleeing the US illegally, with help; he denied a separate former student's allegation but offered a general apology to victims. He is one of the CBS investigation's central examples of how community assistance and the citizenship route combine to move an offender beyond US reach.
Baruch Lanner, a US rabbi who served nearly three years for sexually abusing students, was granted residency in Israel in 2022 — and denied citizenship only after public outcry.
FACTLanner, a prominent American Orthodox rabbi and former school administrator, was convicted in New Jersey of sexually abusing students and served nearly three years in prison. In 2022 he relocated to Israel and was granted residency status, and stood to be considered for citizenship under the Law of Return, which, as JCW's Shana Aaronson warned, could have let him 'walk into any school and apply for a job.' After activist and public opposition, and lobbying by prominent US Orthodox rabbis against it, Israel's top immigration official said he would not be granted citizenship. This case cuts both ways, and the page grades it that way: the vulnerability is real, residency was granted to a convicted child abuser, and so is the system's capacity to respond to pressure, citizenship was refused.
Malka Leifer fled to Israel in 2008, fought extradition for roughly twelve years, and was ultimately extradited, convicted, and sentenced to 15 years.
FACTMalka Leifer, former principal of the Adass Israel School in Melbourne, left for Israel in 2008 as sexual-abuse allegations surfaced. Victoria Police charged her with 70 sex offences involving former students. She resisted extradition for about twelve years, at one point by feigning mental illness; an Israeli court ultimately found she had been impersonating a person with mental illness to avoid extradition. Israel's highest court approved her extradition in December 2020, she was sent to Australia in January 2021, and in April 2023 an Australian jury convicted her of 18 counts of rape and child sexual abuse. In August 2023 she was sentenced to 15 years in custody, with a non-parole period of 11 years and six months.
A sitting Israeli minister, Yaakov Litzman, pleaded guilty to using his office to obstruct Leifer's extradition.
FACTYaakov Litzman, a United Torah Judaism MK and then Israel's deputy health minister, was accused of using his position to interfere in the Leifer case, including by pressuring health-ministry officials over psychiatric assessments used to delay her extradition. In 2022 he signed a plea deal admitting to breach of trust. The sentence was widely criticized as trivial: a fine of roughly 3,000 shekels (about $940) and a suspended sentence, with no jail time. This is the piece of the story that reaches the state itself: not a diffuse 'Israel shields abusers' claim, but an adjudicated case of a government minister criminally obstructing a survivor's extradition.
In 2025, a senior Israeli cyber official, Tom Alexandrovich, was arrested in a US child-predator sting, released on bail, and allowed to leave for Israel.
FACTTom Alexandrovich, a senior official at Israel's National Cyber Directorate, was arrested on August 6, 2025, in Las Vegas as part of a multi-agency undercover operation targeting online child predators that netted several arrests. He was charged with luring a minor by computer, released on $10,000 bail, and left the United States for Israel shortly afterward, prompting questions in the international press about how a foreign official facing such a charge was permitted to depart. This case runs on a different mechanism from the Law of Return, official status and a bail release rather than flight and citizenship, but it belongs to the same accountability question: who gets to leave before facing an American court.
That Israel is a deliberate, systematic safe haven — as opposed to a country with an exploitable loophole and slow enforcement — is not established.
SOME SMOKEThe strongest version of this story, that Israel functions as an intentional refuge shielding abusers as a matter of policy, is not what the record supports, and this page does not assert it. The documented facts describe a loophole (the Law of Return), enforcement that has been slow and under-resourced, and specific failures including one minister's criminal obstruction. But Israel did, in the end, extradite Leifer after its own courts saw through her mental-illness ruse, and it did prosecute and convict Litzman. JCW itself places significant blame on US communities that protect the accused and on US authorities that do not always seek extradition. The honest, gradable claim is a persistent accountability gap that has repeatedly let accused abusers escape prosecution, not a coordinated state policy of asylum for pedophiles.
Where the evidence is strong, and where it stops
- This is not a claim about a people. A list of individuals who share a nationality or a religion proves nothing about that group; every large community produces such a list. The claim here is narrower and evidenced: a specific legal loophole and extradition failures have let accused abusers escape a courtroom. We refuse the aggregate-into-a-slur move wherever it appears, including here.
- The whistleblowers are Jewish. The pattern was documented by Jewish Community Watch, a survivors’ advocacy organization, and by the survivors who came forward. Treating their work as an indictment of Jews would invert its entire purpose, which is to protect Jewish children and hold Jewish institutions accountable.
- Accused is not convicted. Several people in the JCW count are accused, not tried. We name only what is on the record, grade the adjudicated cases (Leifer, Litzman) as FACT, and keep the presumption of innocence for anyone merely alleged.
- Israel is not only the villain of this story. Its courts saw through Leifer’s feigned illness and approved her extradition, and it convicted a minister for obstruction. The failure is real and repeated, but it is an accountability gap, not a proven policy of asylum.
A loophole that outlasts the survivors’ patience
The Leifer survivors waited fifteen years for a verdict, and needed an Israeli minister to be caught obstructing before the extradition finally moved. That is the cost of the gap: not an abstraction, but specific children who grew into adults still waiting for a court date. It sits alongside the other accountability stories this site documents in the Israeli Influence hub and the impunity of the powerful catalogued in the Epstein Class hub. The remedy is not a slur about anyone; it is closing the loophole and speeding the extraditions, which is exactly what the survivors’ advocates have asked for.
Questions worth taking seriously
Is this saying Jewish or Israeli people are more likely to abuse children?
No, and nothing in the record supports that. The story is about a legal loophole (the Law of Return) and extradition failures that let accused offenders escape prosecution. The pattern was exposed by Jewish Community Watch, a Jewish survivors’ advocacy group, and by the survivors themselves.
Did Israel ever actually bring anyone to justice?
Yes. After a roughly twelve-year fight, Israeli courts saw through Malka Leifer’s feigned mental illness and approved her extradition; she was convicted in Australia in 2023 and sentenced to 15 years. Israel also convicted the minister who obstructed the case, Yaakov Litzman, though his sentence was a small fine. The failure is the years it took and the ease of the initial escape.
Where can I see the fuller list of cases?
Jewish Community Watch tracks accused offenders and was the source for the CBS News investigation’s 60-plus figure. We link to CBS’s reporting and JCW’s work rather than reproduce an unverified roster of names, because “accused” is not “convicted” and we grade each case to its record.
If you are named on this page
If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.
This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.
The record
- CBS News — How Jewish American pedophiles hide from justice in Israel (2020 investigation; JCW’s 60+ figure, the Law of Return, the Karow and Yomtov cases)
- Times of Israel / JTA — Many accused Jewish pedophiles in US flee to Israel, report finds
- BBC — Malka Leifer extradited to Australia after Israeli court finds she feigned illness (2021)
- The New York Times — Ex-Principal of Australian Girls School Sentenced to 15 Years for Abuse (2023)
- Times of Israel — Litzman gets minor fine, no jail for shielding alleged pedophile Leifer from justice (2022)
- Australian Jewish News — Litzman plea deal over meddling in Leifer extradition
- Wikipedia — Malka Leifer affair (charge sheet, extradition timeline, sentence, Litzman outcome; with primary citations)
- Times of Israel — the Jimmy Julius Karow case (fled 1999, Interpol notice, 2002 Israeli conviction, 2019 re-arrest and plea deal)
- Times of Israel — Israel grants residency to Rabbi Baruch Lanner; and The Forward/JTA on the citizenship denial after public pressure
- Religion News Service — Israel seen as a ‘safe haven’ for abusers like Baruch Lanner (the loophole, and the public pushback)
- Haaretz — ‘Tip of the iceberg’: How foreign sex offenders find refuge in Israel (2022 investigation)