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HaRav Ovadia Yosef’s Great-Granddaughter: “I Saw My Life Flash Before My Eyes”

Channel 13 News screenshot

Tamar Ben-Chaim, the great-granddaughter of HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef, z’tl, was the young woman who was attacked by a drunk US secret service agent last week.

Tamar, a resident of Jerusalem, spoke to Channel 13 News about the disturbing incident. She was walking in the Nachlaot neighborhood after midnight, on the way home from visiting a friend.

As she was walking, she looked up for a minute and saw two armed men walking toward her. One of them suddenly punched her hard in the face.

“He grabbed me hard, and hit me and slapped me, took out my earring and earphones and threw everything on the ground. I saw my life flash before my eyes – I thought he was going to kill me. I was screaming ‘Help!’ but there was no one around.”

“His friend was the one who released me [from the man’s grip].”

Tamar called the police and filed a complaint. The suspect, who was revealed to be a US secret service agent who had traveled to Israel ahead of US President Joe Biden’s visit, was detained for several hours and interrogated.

The police transferred him to the US consulate and from there he was put on the first plane back to the US. He was suspended from his post, pending further investigation into his case.

“I feel like I’ve been done an injustice,” Tamar said. “He didn’t apologize. He caused me severe emotional harm. I’ve been in bed, my body aches. I couldn’t even tell anyone what happened because it’s been too hard to talk about. It will take me time to recover.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)



14 Responses

  1. Boruch H’ that she’s okay. Girls shouldn’t be out so late at night by themselves. You see how dangerous it was, nobody even heard her yelling. I hope she’ll recover from this quickly. She looks like such a sweet girl. I hope her parents sue the American government.

  2. If this US secret service agent has diplomatic immunity, then Israel needs to severe all diplomatic ties with USA and recall its ambassador from the USA & expel “American ambassador to Israel” until such time as USA strips this agent of diplomatic immunity & sends him back to Israel to spend rest of his life in Israel Prison, and if he didn’t have diplomatic immunity, it is disgraceful shocking beyond belief that Israel released this guy who must spend entire rest of his life in prison without any possibility of parole ever.

  3. You couldn’t make this up. Some intoxicated secret service agent assigned to protect POTUS decides to hit up on the great granddaughter of one of the most revered rabbonim of the post-war era. For those who would attribute this “coincidence” to hashgacha paratis, could you provide some shita as to what/how/why these two individuals had such an encounter/?

  4. Good to know that we have such honorable people working in our secret service. We really need to ensure that the children in our chadorim get a substantially equivalent education to this fellow.

  5. Is there a way this thug can be arrested and face charges. I at least hoped he is fired from the Secret Service. He belongs in prison.

  6. Seems to me like there is something missing from this story. Sure, there have been instances of Secret Service agents misbehaving in the past, but that usually involved some sexual component, not just a random punch in the face to an innocent young woman.

    And @147, that is probably the single worst suggestion I have ever seen on this website.

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