An elderly and sick U.S. citizen has been held hostage for three years by a rabbinical court in Israel. He is being threatened with imprisonment if he tries to leave Israel and return to his home in the U.S., where he needs medical treatment from his long-term doctors. Not only is this elderly man a U.S. citizen, he has absolutely no connection to Israel: He is neither a citizen nor a resident of Israel.
His crime? Having a son, from whom he is estranged and who lives in the U.S., who has refused to give a religious divorce (a get) to his ex-wife who lives in Israel. Although the evidence proves that the hostage father, who is religious, has absolutely no influence over his irreligious son, the rabbinical court, which is not really a court of law by any acceptable standards of justice, is holding the father as a bargaining chip to compel his American son to grant the get. The father is also being sanctioned with an astronomical sum of 5000 shekels per day until his son gives a divorce.
