MembersA Saint and a Predator: Interview With Yehuda Meshi-Zahav

Editor’s Note: Yehuda Meshi-Zahav is now hospitalized in critical condition following a suicide attempt. To the best of our knowledge, the interview below, conducted on March 7, was the last journalistic interview he gave. A week earlier, on March 2, Education Minister Yoav Galant visited Meshi-Zahav in his office to tell him that he had been chosen for the 2021 Israel Prize, given on Independence Day. Five days after the interview, on March 11, the daily Haaretz published its investigation about the alleged sex offenses of Meshi-Zahav. According to Haaretz, “From the 1980s he started to use his social status, power, money and even the organization he is heading to assault boys and girls, men and women. The scopes [of his sexual assaults] are unimaginable.” On the next day, March 12, Meshi-Zahav announced that he was waiving the Israel Prize and was retiring from ZAKA, the medical rescue and burial organization he founded.

From March 7 until today, Israel Today has contemplated whether or not this interview...