Yisroel Valis

Yisroel Valis () is an Israeli, 19 years old in 2006 (and thus born in 1986 or 1987). He became notable in the Israeli news in April 2006, when he was arrested by the police for killing his three-month-old son. According to the police, Valis had confessed to biting, beating, pinching and punching the infant, and throwing him against the wall, because he "did not accept him." Apparently, the infant was cholic, and his constant crying through the night disturbed the young father. Furthermore, the infant seems to have had some kind of defect in his neck, which the father did not like. (It is not clear whether the defect in the infant's neck was congenital, or was a result of the infant's having been thrown against the wall.)

Then the Medical Examiners' reports emerged -- neither of two independent reports mentioned any sign of abuse, certainly no bite or pinch marks. Concerning the death itself, both wrote that it was impossible to determine whether the death was deliberate or accidental.

Valis's community, the staunchly anti-Zionist and hostile-to-the-state Edah Haredit, did not believe the police's claim. The community answered the arrest with three days of rioting, and claimed that the Israeli police had fabricated a "Pessah-eve blood libel identical to those concocted by the Europeans against the Jews."

After the week of the Passover holiday, Rabbis Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and Hayim Kanievski inserted themselves into the situation. Their psak, or halachic ruling, issued on April 25, 2006, said that the community should support the family in their effort to prove Valis innocent -- but this was erroneously reported as a declaration that Valis was innocent.

On Monday, May 29, 2006, Valis's attorney said at a hearing at the Jerusalem District Court that his client's confession was coerced and thereby illegal. He was under partial sedation at the hospital, and was then interrogated without benefit of counsel for 15 hours. The family claims that the hospital was attempting to cover its own malpractice -- they failed to perform an X-ray or CT scan for over eight hours after the baby arrived, at which time massive cerebral bleeding was discovered.

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