Accusers claim the man lied on his internet dating service profile; he claims that his accusers also lied to him about their own details.
A 43-year-old Israel Air Force reserves officer from the north was arrested Sunday on suspicion of impersonating a Jewish pilot, rape and defrauding women.
None of the women who filed police complaints against the man say he violently assaulted them. However, he is to be charged with rape based on the 2008 ruling by Justice Elyakim Rubinstein that a rape conviction should pertain in any situation where a person does not tell the truth about characteristics that are critical to a reasonable woman, and in light of misrepresentation, the woman had sexual relations with him.
The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court yesterday issued a gag order on identifying the man, who is married, a father and from a prominent Bedouin family.
The Tel Aviv fraud squad recently received a complaint from a 59-year-old woman who said she had been victimized by a man claiming to be a pilot. The complainant told police that she knew of at least one other women victimized by the same man. The man was summoned to the police station in Upper Nazareth, at which point he was arrested.
Two more women have now come forward with complaints against the man, whom they said they met through the dating service Love Me. They said he posted his name on his profile as "Daniel Tamir" and said he was an IAF pilot.
A fourth woman has also come forward, but she has not yet been questioned by police.
The women said he claimed he had an accent because he was from Italy. They said they did not suspect anything was amiss in the fact that he posted his picture on the Internet, which military regulations do not allow pilots to do.
The man told police he had had sexual relations with the three women, but he said he never told them he was either Jewish or a pilot.
To prove that he had not lied about his ethnicity, the suspect told the court that as he and one of the women were driving to the Dead Sea via the Jordan Valley, she saw Bedouin along the road and said to him, "look how you [people] live.
The man told the court that one of the complainants had "sent me a text message that I am a charming Bedouin and she doesn't care that I was married and she loves me."
The suspect's attorney, from the Public Defender's Office, Tali Gottlieb, said the complainant had also defrauded the suspect. "She claimed she was 42 years old, and later it emerged that she is 59. When they were together he told her he did not want to have sex with her because she was his mother's age, and her feelings were hurt," Gottlieb said.
Police also suspect the man of stealing a diamond ring from one of the complainants, which he allegedly gave to another women as an engagement ring.
The suspect's attorney said that the reason for the complaint was an obsession with her client that one of the women had developed.
Six months ago, following a plea bargain, the Jerusalem District Court handed down a controversial verdict of rape against Sabbar Kashur, an Arab, for posing as a Jew to seduce a Jewish woman.
According to the verdict, although this wasn't "a classical rape by force," and the sex was consensual, the consent itself was obtained through deception and under false pretenses.
"If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated," the judges wrote.
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