PROVIDING INFORMATION NOT FOUND IN THE CONTROLLED MEDIA,
MONITORING THE AGE OF DARKNESS, IGNORANCE, GREED AND STUPIDITY,
& THE ZIONIST WAR FOR GLOBAL DOMINANCE.
SETTING STRAIGHT THE RECORDS OF HISTORY
KALI YUGA REPORT 110614
1 - Jonathan Azaziah : Operation Phantasmagoria II : Gaza and Al-Quds, Linked In Blood
2 - Will the Gaza Flotilla be Safe from Israel’s Murderous Threats ?
3 - Gilad Atzmon : For The Sake Of Jewish Sensitivities
4 - Remote Control Killing Like Sport - Stephen Lendman
5 - Tell Me Again, Who Made The Desert Bloom ?
6 - Mainstream Media Is Establishment Tool - Allen L Roland
7 - Psychological War Against Nuclear Program Intensifies - Asif Haroon Raja
8 - Control Credit Control the World - Tom Valentine
9 - Nuremberg : The Crime That Will Not Die – Part II - Ernst Zundel
Madness at the Break of Dawn ; keep on keeping on - Dog Poet Transmitting .......
10 - CIA Requires Secrecy To Conceal Its Own Crimes - Sherwood Rosss
11 - The Laws Against Non-Jews : "Chapter 5" of Jewish History, Jewish Religion : The Weight of Three Thousand Years - Professor Israel Shahak
12 - The Sacred Nature of Six Million in the Judaic Religion, Why Six Million Holocaust Victims Cannot be Questioned - Michael Fishwick
13 - National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society skewered in new book by leading cancer expert - Neev M. Arnell
14 - Police arrest 5 more activists for feeding homeless PEOPLE - Mark Schlueb,
15 - Is Chabad a Racist Criminal Terrorist Jewish Cult ? - Brian Davis
All articles are reproduced in accordance with Section 107 of title 17 of the Copyright Law of the United States relating to fair-use and are for the purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. The material presented underneath does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the editor. Then : everybody should do research of his own and check for deception or some 'agenda'. As always it is : 'Caveat Lector'!
Thanks to : Debbie Menon (http://mycatbirdseat.com/,http://www.intifada-palestine.com), Alex James, Vatic Project (http://vaticproject.blogspot.com) , "Information Clearing House'', Antiwar.com , DAILY CENSORED, VETERANS TODAY, REDRESS INFORMATION & ANALYSIS, PAK ALERT PRESS, INTIFADA PALESTINA, Global Research, Electronic Intifada, Sabbah Report, RADIO ISLAM, Tina Delgreco, Peter Sault, Dick Eastman, ET AL.
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1 - Jonathan Azaziah : Operation Phantasmagoria II :
Gaza and Al-Quds, Linked In Blood
Posted on May 26, 2011
“To smile when confronted with the most severe oppression, is an act of Resistance rooted in unparalleled beauty.” ~ Jonathan Azaziah
Beneath the “mask of Zion,” there is nothing but darkness, evil and crimes against humanity.
by Jonathan Azaziah
Prelude: In Part I, the hasbara behind the March 11th murders on the illegal Zionist settlement of Itamar was thoroughly debunked, absolving Palestinians of all wrongdoing and presenting evidence for Israeli orchestration of the slaying of the Fogel family as well as displaying in detail that Zionism benefitted greatly from the crime. Operation Phantasmagoria now moves to the holy city of al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the besieged ghetto-prison of Gaza, in a convergence of false flags, white phosphorus and innocent blood…
Shadow War Phase II : Bombing In Al-Quds
On March 23rd, a “bomb” rocked a crowded bus stop in Zionist-occupied al-Quds, killing a 60-year old woman and wounding over 30 others; the first of its kind in over 6 years. Though no Palestinian Resistance group claimed responsibility for the attack, the delusional, antagonistic and deeply misleading Zionist media immediately blamed Palestinians. Hundreds of (ultra-racist) ultra-Orthodox Zionist extremists marched on ethnically cleansed land in al-Quds and chanted, “death to the Arabs!” and demanded “retribution,” though, again, there was no evidence that “Arabs” had anything to do with what had taken place (1).
War criminal Netanyahu called for a response of aggression after the false flag in al-Quds.
This fundamentally racist and deep-rooted flaw within Israeli society provided picture-perfect groundwork for Tel Aviv to initiate an assault in subsequence. Talmudically-derived Zionist bloodlust: the buoy that has kept Israel afloat, functioning as a “state” for 63 years. Following this pattern of bloodlust to the letter, mass murdering war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu went on the record to state that the Zionist entity would respond “aggressively, responsibly and wisely to preserve the quiet and security that has prevailed here over the past two years,” and also, “we are very determined to strike at the terrorist elements and deny them the means of attacking our citizens (2).”
Israel is one of the most militarized and security-laden “states” on planet earth, with cameras located even in confiscated religious sites in occupied al-Quds (3). With that said, its expertly-trained and intel-obsessed police in Jerusalem didn’t have a single “terror” alert in the city or any other nearby city for that matter on the day in question (4). Not only did this bomb go off at the very entrance of occupied al-Quds, one of the holy city’s busiest sections, it went off near several government ministries (5), which are perpetually swarming with agents and operatives of Mossad, Shin Bet, IOF and Aman. As was the case with the Itamar killings, it is not only of the loftiest implausibility that Palestinians planted this bomb in al-Quds; it is impossible and quite firm in its blatant impossibility. The Jerusalem bus stop bombing was a Mossad false flag (6), engineered as a key progression in the “Phantasmagoria” project.
Zionist security officials fleetingly attempted to convince the world that the device that shook al-Quds was homemade and weighed a minuscule four pounds (7), but it was nothing of the sort and their pathetic hasbara-ridden narrative crumbled rather quickly. Firstly, the device was remote-controlled (8), solidifying beyond a shadow of a doubt that the device was produced by Israeli intelligence; it is the bonafide signature of Zionism. Mossad and Aman have used remote-controlled explosive devices, most notably IEDs and car bombs, to utterly devastate Iraq and transform it into what it is now: an occupied wasteland. It has become an occupied wasteland largely due to the car bomb warfare inflicted upon it by the Zionist entity (9).
One of the Zionist entity’s favorite weapons: the suitcase bomb.
Secondly, as confirmed by Israeli police and multiple eyewitnesses, the explosive device was delivered in a suitcase (10), another signature that leads straight to Zionism. Israeli intelligence assets have used the suitcase bomb in London during the Hindawi Affair, in Kenya during the operation at the Kikambala Hotel, in multiple operations led by long-hidden Zionist agent Abu Nidal, in peak-level paramilitary ventures and assassinations across the Middle East, in the infamous Lockerbie bombing which has been repeatedly invoked by the Zionist media throughout its coverage on the criminal war now being waged against Libya (11), in Houston during a failed false flag operation at an oil refinery and in the 1993 Bombay terror attacks that have been exposed as a Mossad-RAW operation (12). The suitcase bomb is the very representation of Mossad’s motto, “by way of deception, thou shalt wage war.” It is efficient in its bloodshed, easily deliverable, easily concealed and it is undetectable to those unfamiliar with Mossad’s methods.
The stage had been set. Making good on his promise to “respond aggressively,” Benjamin Netanyahu sent his warplanes, fully paid for by the United States, the Zionist entity’s favorite lapdog, into the besieged Gaza Strip just hours after Mossad’s remote-controlled suitcase bomb detonated in occupied al-Quds. Multiple airstrikes were launched (13), once again bringing terror to 800,000 starving Palestinian children that call Gaza their home. Meanwhile, the Zionist security authorities in Jerusalem claim that they are “hunting down” the perpetrators of the “terror” attack (14). Well. It is certain that they will be “hunting” forever, since they will never look in the offices of the Israeli prime minister, or the offices of the directors of Shin Bet, Aman and Mossad.
March 2011 was a bloody month for besieged Gaza; 16 Palestinians were
murdered by Israel.
Besieged Gaza : The March Massacre
Mossad’s false flag in occupied al-Quds was designed to once again generate international sympathy for the Zionist entity which is incessantly (and despicably) barking in its media organizations to portray itself as a victim, and to give credence to any future attack it may launch in illegally besieged Gaza. Multiple world leaders, or, more appropriately titled, stooges of the Israeli apartheid state, condemned the attack, but it was darling of the Zionist Lobby Hillary Clinton that spoke in the most thunderous manner, “Terrorism and the targeting of civilians are never justified. And Israel, like all nations, of course, has to respond when this occurs. The United States is committed to Israel’s security and we strongly condemn this violence and extend our deepest sympathies to all those affected (15).” As usual, Tel Aviv’s terrorism against innocent Palestinians is conveniently left out of the equation.
The usurping entity would like the public to believe that its recent attacks on illegally besieged Gaza began on March 23rd, when the suitcase bomb detonated in occupied al-Quds. This however, like all other scenarios regarding Palestine that are presented in the Zionist-owned mainstream media, is a fallacy; an atrocious fallacy.
The aggression against Gaza, which has been routine since the genocide of Operation Cast Lead, actually began 21 days prior on March 2nd when the Israeli Navy engaged in one of its favorite hobbies, shooting at Palestinian fishing boats. This criminality was followed by IOF tanks and bulldozers invading the southern Strip to demolish farmlands and fire live ammunition on Palestinian families (16). Two days later, Tel Aviv sent its warplanes into the Strip in the early morning hours and targeted a car in An-Nusseirat Refugee Camp, spreading terror amongst men, women and children, but once again no injuries or deaths were reported (17).
Zionist warplanes ; function: dropping bombs on Palestinian children.
Two more days passed, and Israel’s terror began anew as Zionist F-16s assaulted the Strip, conducting multiple airstrikes in several Gaza City neighborhoods and Central Gaza. Homes, warehouses, schools and mosques were damaged in the assault, but no Palestinians were hurt or murdered (18). The new attacks came in response to Hamas’ protest of the Zionist entity closing al-Muntar (Karni) Crossing, the main commercial crossing between Gaza and what is now known as “Israel.” The closing of al-Muntar adds another layer to the already inhumane and crippling siege afflicting the people of the Strip (19). Zionism was upset that its additional collective punishment was resisted and not submissively accepted.
The following day, the laundry list of Israeli war crimes against the besieged Strip literally got a little longer as the Zionist entity announced its near completion of the first phase of the illegal electric fence it is building on the Egypt-Gaza border (20). The newest barbed wire monstrosity tightens Israel’s iron grip even more on the suffering Palestinian population of Gaza, and is, by itself, a war crime and a crime against humanity. Tensions were rising exponentially in the Strip as Palestinian truckers started staging mass demonstrations on March 9th against the closure of al-Muntar Crossing and demanding its immediate opening. They were also demanding a response from the Hamas government to the latest Israeli attack on whatever was left of their livelihood (21).
Kidnaped by Mossad : Dirar Abu Sisi, father of 6 and senior engineer in Gaza.
On March 10th, it was revealed that the Zionist regime had abducted 42-year old Dirar Abu Sisi, a Palestinian father of six from besieged Gaza, while he was in the Ukraine inquiring about citizenship in late February (22). Shin Bet, notorious for torturing and fabricating evidence against those who resist Israel’s militarism, tyranny and occupation, has filed an indictment against Abu Sisi, labeling him the “rocket godfather” of Hamas (23).
This, as expected, is a gross lie of monumental proportions and a malicious slander against the 42-year old husband and father, who isn’t a member of Hamas in any way, shape or form. And, also as expected, it is now known that Dirar Abu Sisi has been mercilessly tortured by Shin Bet and he remains imprisoned, in solitary confinement, consistently (and pointlessly) interrogated by agents of Shin Bet and Mossad (24). The real reason behind Abu Sisi’s kidnaping, imprisonment and torture is his job. He’s the senior official at Gaza’s lone power plant and has brilliantly uncovered a way to engineer a switch in the fuel sources of the plant in defiance of the criminal Zionist siege (25). Abu Sisi’s wife Veronica stated clearly that Mossad kidnaped her husband to sabotage his plans and to cripple the plant, therefore crippling the Palestinian people (26). Not even abroad are Palestinians safe from the deadly reach of Zionist intelligence.
March 16th was a day drenched in blood. The Zionist entity began its aggression early in the morning by air, assassinating two fighters from al-Qassam Brigades, 25-year old Ghassan Fathi Abu Omar and 23-year old Adnan Yousef Eshtewy and wounding two others (27). The aggression continued throughout the afternoon with incessant firing from gunboats on Gaza’s fisherman, as several fishing boats were hit and one Palestinian was wounded (28). Palestinians in eastern Gaza City couldn’t even sleep as the bombardment continued in the evening with IOF tanks shelling a cemetery (29).
An uneasy calm prevailed in the Strip for 3 days, minus the everyday buzzing of Zionist drones, and the aggression came to life again as the illegitimate Israeli state heavily bombed and shelled Gaza on Saturday, March 19th. 5 Palestinians were wounded, including a 3-year old child, when Israeli tank shells struck eastern Gaza City. Missiles from Zionist warplanes struck homes, mosques and tank shells blasted Gaza International Airport. Finally, the Resistance fired homemade shells, that cannot be aimed, that more often than not land in empty desert lands or abandoned areas, and often do not explode, into ethnically cleansed Palestine in retaliation against Israel’s terror raining down upon Gaza’s citizens (30). No Israelis were hurt or killed, and no “residence” incurred any damage.
Imad and Qasem; murdered by Israeli tanks.
Zionist missiles continued to be fired from F-16s and Zionist shells IOF tanks continued to scorch the Strip into Saturday evening, and around 9:30 pm local time in occupied Palestine, Israeli tanks pounded a civilian neighborhood in Johr al-Deek and murdered two Palestinian children. 14-year old Imad Farajullah and 16-year old Qasem Abu Eteiwi died on impact (31). But the Zionist entity’s March Massacre didn’t stop here.
On March 22nd, as a group of Palestinian children were playing soccer (32), the Israeli army tank blasted five artillery shells into the home of Fayiq al-Hilo, and slaughtered four innocent civilians, the youngest of which being 11-year old Muhammad al-Hilo. Ten Palestinians were wounded in the assault, many of them with wounds so serious they needed amputations to save their lives. 19 Palestinians were wounded for the day by multiple IAF airstrikes and non-stop IOF shelling, including 7 children and 2 women (33). Drones entered the frame and fired a plethora of missiles into Gaza City, wounding a fighter from al-Qassam Brigades and the IAF continued its brutal raids, assassinating four Qassam fighters and leaving another brave soul in an intensive care unit. Tuesday’s body count was 9 Palestinians, including 3 children (34). The Zionist entity never ceases to push its cowardice to new peaks; add soccer to Zionism’s list of “existential threats.”
As IOF continued to brutally shell Gaza, Livni demanded more; a Cast Lead- type escalation.
The escalation continued two days later as Zionism targeted a fighter from the Salah ad-Din Brigades and narrowly missed, destroying several buildings in the process. Additional Zionist air raids wounded two more Palestinian civilians in the Beit Lahia district of northern Gaza. The Resistance responded by launching 3 homemade shells at the illegal Karmiya settlement (35). As the casualties continued to rise, and the bodies of Palestinian innocents continued to stack up, what does the “liberal” Zionist war criminal Tzipi Livni do? She calls for more shedding of innocent blood by suggesting that Israel should initiate a second round of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli ethnic cleansing operation that wiped 1,440 Palestinians off of the map, including 431 children (36). This, more so than anything else, fully exemplifies how bloodthirsty Zionism is.
Before the chapter of the March Massacre came to a close however, Zionism destroyed al-Sattar Factory, which produces various sodas for the besieged Gaza citizenry (37), assassinated two fighters from al-Quds Brigades, Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, in Jabalia, just hours after all of the Resistance factions in Gaza stated (for the umpteenth time) that they will commit to a ceasefire if the Zionist entity stops its mass murder (38), and one day after the family of 11-year old wrestling fan Muhammad al-Hilo mourned their fallen child (39), barbaric Israeli air raids shook the Strip, assassinating another al-Quds fighter and critically wounded another as they made their way to morning prayers (40). Morning prayers have long been on the Zionist list of “existential threats,” as evidenced by the infamous martyring of Hamas founder and Resistance giant Sheikh Ahmed Yassin when IAF launched a missile at him as he was leaving a Gaza City Mosque in his wheelchair after Fajr (41). Ultimately, March saw 16 Palestinians, including children and the elderly, meet their demise at the hands of Israeli occupiers (42).
Zionism’s bombardment of Gaza didn’t end in April; it worsened.
Besieged Gaza: April Atrocities
Still reeling from the brutality inflicted across the Strip in March, the Palestinians of besieged Gaza did not receive a break, did not receive any rest, did not receive any mercy from the Zionist entity in April. Gaza was pounded by the illegitimate Israeli state’s warplanes on April 2nd in a joint operation coordinated by the Zionist military and Shin Bet. Three Palestinians from al-Qassam Brigades were assassinated in the strikes, their bodies badly mutilated due to the sheer force of the blast (43). The 3-day uneasy calm was unhinged when Zionist occupiers gunned down an unarmed Palestinian man in the dreaded “buffer zone,” a strip of land imposed on the Palestinians of Gaza by Israel which the entity uses to shoot Palestinians at will. The Zionist buffer zone has rendered 30% of Gaza’s agricultural land useless (44).
The following day, only hours after hundreds of Palestinian children gathered on al-Saraya Street in the middle of Gaza City to plead with the “international community” for protection against Israel’s aggression (45), the Strip was hammered again. 4 Palestinians were wounded in multiple Zionist air raids, including 2 women, one of whom was pregnant. Homes were destroyed and a plastics factory that provides work to many Palestinians was damaged in the assault (46).
Palestinian children in occupied Gaza asking the world to heed their call for help.
The calls of Gaza’s children fell on dear ears however, as the international community of cowards and hypocrites watched Tel Aviv bomb on. Not even 24 hours after the “heroic” Israeli army targeted a pregnant woman, F-16s ripped through the southern Strip, spreading terror through residential areas and leaving one Palestinian wounded (47). More than a month of murder and mayhem, and the Palestinians of besieged Gaza still had not been hit by Israel’s worst; still had not been hit by Israel’s most brutal; Israel’s most animalistic. What was about to follow would be the most drastic Zionist escalation in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead.
As April 7th swallowed April 6th, dawn passed and the morning rolled forward, the Resistance of Gaza, led by Hamas, responded to the Zionist entity’s assassinations of its fighters and brutalization of its citizenry with multiple mortar shells against an illegal Israeli settlement. The Resistance reported that two illegal Israeli settlers were wounded when one of its shells had struck a bus on a road that is frequented by Zionist occupation forces (48).
Israel’s media however, notoriously known for manufacturing malevolent hasbara and outright lies to justify illegal Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people and those who stand with them (49), stated that a 16-year old boy was critically wounded and hospitalized by the Hamas response, additionally adding that the boy was “hysterical” and that the target hit was a school bus, not just a commuter bus. Israeli Defense Minister (and war criminal) Ehud Barak thunderously called for Tel Aviv to carry out a “swift retaliation.”
What is most odd about this particular piece of hasbara is that the Zionist papers reported that the bus was “nearly empty,” and what is even more odd, is that it didn’t quote anyone in the military to substantiate this information like it normally does, instead choosing to ambiguously cite “Israeli sources (50).” Is there any evidence that a 16-year old boy was “critically wounded” by fire from the Gaza Resistance? No, and even if the story has some truth to it, the supremacist (and overall, ridiculous) undertone invalidates its seriousness. The reason for manufacturing this morsel of hasbara? To drop more bombs on the Strip.
Israel unloaded several white phosphorus bombs
on Gaza in April.
Ehud Barak’s orders of “swift retaliation” were carried out mercilessly by the IOF war machine in a sustained campaign of bombardment. Over the course of 24 hours, from April 8th at noon to April 9th at noon, 14 Palestinians were slaughtered and dozens of others, mostly women, children and elderly, were badly wounded by Zionist tank shells and air strikes that rocked the Gaza Strip to its very core (51). Paramedics and ambulances were deliberately targeted by IOF (52), a Zionist shell wrecked a water tank in eastern Gaza City, forcing municipality officials to shut down the water pumps to prevent residents from drinking contamination (53), and the Zionist entity once again unleashed internationally banned chemical weapons on Gaza (54), including the dreaded white phosphorus (55).
The usurping regime’s brutality continued despite the Resistance unequivocally calling for a ceasefire, again (56), and by the time the killing was over, 19 Palestinians had been martyred, including women, elderly and children, and more than 60 were wounded (57). IOF’s assault was as tragic as it was barbarous. 21-year old Nidal Qdeih, who was murdered alongside her 45-year old mother Najah when a Zionist missile struck their home in al-Faraheen, was preparing for her wedding the following week (58). This is Zionism’s foundational essence: destruction of lives, destruction of families, destruction of love, compassion and humanity; spreading fear wherever it finds an opening.
The Zionist entity would launch mock air raids over the Strip just a few days after the massacre (59), to humiliate Hamas and the other Resistance factions and to remind Gaza’s population that another stream of devastation could happen at any moment. The everyday violations of Gaza’s dignity would succeed the mock raids, with Israeli forces firing on fishermen, shooting at homes and destroying agricultural land (60), solidifying that Palestinian life in the largest open air prison on earth had returned from “in hell” to the status quo of besieged.
The Hamas-Fatah “unity” deal is a sham.
Conclusion : The Crippling of Hamas
On April 27th, 2011, an event took place that took all analysts from the side of the oppressed and the side of the oppressor, solidarity activists and average observers by surprise; gargantuan surprise. Hamas, the Islamic Resistance of Gaza, had agreed to a “reconciliation” deal with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), a collaborationist entity thoroughly dominated by Fatah. The basis of this deal was a new “unity” government (61). Right as the shock began to wear off and the abyssal skepticism of the deal even coming to fruition started to set in, another gargantuan surprise emerged: the Resistance and the collaborators actually signed the deal (62). Though many questions about this deal were immediately asked, there was only one question that had any meaning, any significance: would this new “unity” government collaborate with Tel Aviv as the PA has for years and years now (63)?
Saeb Erekat: collaborator extraordinaire and vile traitor to Palestine.
Israeli occupation forces issued an answer to the question soon enough, with a senior official calling the unity deal “fiction.” The official would also state that, “the security officers I have spoken to over the past week have said that it changes nothing for them. It is business as usual for the Palestinian Authority’s security forces (64).” Saeb Erekat, the PA’s chief “negotiator” for the peace process sham, confirmed the Israeli official’s observations, commenting in no uncertain terms, “Security coordination with the Israelis and defining the meaning of security coordination, in accordance with the agreements, they will continue (65).” The Zionist entity is officially at war with Hamas, and vice versa, so how can Hamas partake in the everyday affairs of a government that, by aforementioned PA and IOF admission, it is at war with?
A future piece in this series will deal with this issue as well as the fraudulence of the “reconciliation” deal in rigorous detail. At the moment though, another question, in relation to this piece, is much more pressing and relevant. What would cause Hamas, a Resistance organization by design, definition and action, to bow down to the dominion of the entity it refused to ever recognize and sign a deal with its armed wing of collaborators and traitors? The PA has blocked Israeli releases of Palestinian prisoners, formed backstage committees to block real unity at every angle, murdered Palestinian innocents and boasted about it to its American paymasters and accepted billions of dollars from the Zionist-occupied regimes in the US and EU (66), how can Hamas “unify” with these thugs?
It is the opinion of this writer that Hamas did not do so on its own free volition, but that it did so after being broken down by the Zionist entity. It is the only explanation for such a lapse in dignity and principle from an organization that swept the 2006 elections in the besieged Gaza Strip because their commitment to resisting Israeli occupation was genuine (67). Led by Zionist war criminal Elliot Abrams, the Bush administration attempted to stage a coup d’etat by funding what was essentially a Palestinian mercenary faction led by PA official Muhammad Dahlan. The plan was to wipe out the Islamic Resistance once and for all and re-install Fatah as the controlling faction in the Strip. However, the plan failed miserably, and with Hamas’ survival, it gained greater respect in the eyes of the people, despite the bloody 5-day civil war that ensued (68).
But with the ever-tightening all-out siege imposed on the 1.5 million residents of Gaza bearing down on its proverbial neck, Hamas seemed to weaken a little more everyday, despite public showings of strength and solidarity. Israel’s genocidal Operation Cast Lead was the penultimate shot before the knockout, and every one of the 1,440 Palestinians murdered undoubtedly haunted the Hamas leadership on a daily basis. Their sacrifices, the 431 children in particular, undoubtedly continue to do so. Hence why Resistance leader Khaled Mish’al attempted to “legitimize” Hamas’ ambitions and positions in the eyes of the pathetic “international community” after Cast Lead (69).
Simultaneously, it continued with its Resistance, but despite its best efforts to repel Zionism’s aggression, Hamas has been unable to end its people’s suffering, unable to end the siege, unable to defeat the occupation. And with the PA pushing towards a September date for the UN to recognize a Palestinian state (70), which is really nothing more than a carved-up Zionist-controlled Palestinian bantustan, it is seemingly clear that Tel Aviv gambled by trying to back Hamas into a corner and the gamble paid off.
Victim of Israel’s aggression against Gaza in April.
The nonstop and murderous Israeli aggression against Gaza that began in early March and didn’t end until mid-April was the knockout blow. The Zionist regime used its false flag attack in occupied al-Quds to link the two Palestinian ghettos in blood and prepare them for the international legitimacy of Israel’s apartheid and occupation in September. This is the essence of Operation Phantasmagoria; putting a “mask of Zion” on oppression, dispossession, humiliation and murder to make it look like hope and progress. Like all Resistance movements, Hamas must make a decision that will not only determine its own fate, but the fate of the people it is resisting for. It must choose between resisting until liberation or succumbing to the pressure of the oppressor and submitting to subjugation. Unfortunately, this “unity” deal seems to have led Hamas down the road of the latter. For occupied Palestine’s sake, let’s hope, that what seems, is wrong.
~ End Of Part II ~
Operation Phantasmagoria I
Next: The horrific assassination of activist, actor and director Juliano Mer-Khamis and what it means for the future of occupied Palestine….
Sources:
(1) Jerusalem Bus Bomb Kills One And Injures 30 by Adrian Blomfield, The Telegraph
(2) Israel Warns Of “Aggressive Response” To Jerusalem Blast by Conal Urquhart and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian
(3) Security Cameras Lead To Shabbat Desecration? by Ari Galahar, Ynet
(4) Woman Killed, Dozens Injured In Jerusalem Bombing by Melanie Lidman and Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Post
(5) Jerusalem’s Fragile Peace Destroyed By Suitcase Bomb by Conal Urquhart and Phoebe Greenwood, The Guardian
(6) Terror Attack In Jerusalem, Counter To Fatah-Hamas Unity by Feroze Mithiborwala, Counter Currents
(7) Mystery Deepens Over Deadly Jerusalem Bus Bomb by Karl Vick and Aaron J. Klein, TIME Magazine
(8) Deadly Jerusalem Bus Bomb Possibly Remote Controlled by Richard Esposito and Lee Ferran, ABC News
(9) Occupied Iraq: New Year, Same Zionism by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion
(10) Deadly Bombing Targets Jerusalem Bus Stop by Wyre Davies, BBC
(11) Libya: The Zionist Dragon And The Drums Of War by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion
(12) 26/11: Mossad Terrorizes Mumbai by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion
(13) Israeli Jets Strike Gaza: 23 March 2011 by Al Jazeera English
(14) Jerusalem Bus Bombing Kills 1, Injures 30 by Anne Barker, Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(15) Bombing In Jerusalem: Press Statement – Hillary Rodham Clinton by US Department of State
(16) Israeli Navy Fires At Palestinian Fishing Boats by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(17) Israeli Air Force Bombards A Car In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(18) Israeli Air Force Carries Out A Series Of Air Strikes In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(19) Palestinian Government In Gaza Protests Closure Of Main Commercial Crossing Into Israel by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(20) Israel Constructs Electric Fence On Egypt Border by Jeany Massad, IMEMC
(21) Gaza Truckers Protest Israel’s Closure Of Commercial Crossing by Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada
(22) UN Official: Israel Kidnaped Palestinian Engineer From Ukraine by Haaretz
(23) Shin Bet Files Indictment Against ‘Rocket Godfather’ by Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Post
(24) Israel, Extraordinary Rendition And The Strange Case Of Dirar Abu Sisi by Richard Silverstein, Truth Out
(25) Gaza Engineer Sent To Solitary by Ma’an News Agency
(26) Dirar Abu Sisi, Palestinian In Ukraine, Allegedly Abducted By Israel by Maria Danilova and Diaa Hadid, The Huffington Post
(27) Two Qassam Martyrs In Israeli Airstrike On Gaza by Al-Qassam Information Office; Two Palestinians Killed As Army Bombards Gaza Village by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(28) Fisherman Wounded By Israeli Navy Fire by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(29) Army Bombards Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(30) Five Palestinians Wounded In Israeli Air Strikes In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC; Israeli Artillery Shelling On Gaza Strip by Al-Qassam Information Office
(31) Killing Children In Gaza Is Israeli War Crime by Al-Qassam Information Office
(32) Israel Kills 8 Gazans In Day Of Strikes by Ma’an News Agency
(33) Resident Wounded As Army Bombards Gaza, 19 Wounded Tuesday by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(34) Nine Palestinians, Including Three Children, Killed By Army Fire In Gaza On Tuesday by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(35) Two Civilians Wounded In New Israeli Air Raids On Gaza by The Palestinian Information Center
(36) IDF: Assassination Of Hamas Leaders Possible by Yoav Zitun, Ynet
(37) Israeli Artillery Shell Blasts Factory In Gaza by The Palestinian Information Center
(38) Two Fighters Assassinated In Gaza, One Resident Injured by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(39) Gaza Family Mourns Boy Killed By Israeli Shell by Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada
(40) A Palestinian Man Killed, Another Badly Injured In Brutal Air Raid On Rafah Area by The Palestinian Information Center
(41) Hamas Founder Killed In Israeli Airstrike by CNN
(42) 16 Palestinians Killed By Israel Last Month by The Palestinian Information Center
(43) Three Fighters Assassinated In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(44) Palestinian Killed In Gaza Buffer Zone by Circarre Parrhesia, IMEMC
(45) Palestinian Children Demand International Protection by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(46) Army Bombards Gaza, Four Palestinians Injured by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(47) Army Bombards Gaza, One Resident Wounded by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(48) Resistance Hit Back, Injures Two Israeli Settlers by Al-Qassam Information Office; “Israeli Army Strikes Gaza After School Bus Hit” – Deconstructed by Associated Press Deconstructed
(49) Israel Hasbara Fails Again: Photos Show Mavi Marmara Passengers Protecting, Aiding Israeli Soldiers by Ali Abunimah
(50) Two Israelis Hurt In A Mortar Attack In Souther Israel by IMEMC
(51) 14 Killed In Gaza, Dozens Injured In Series Of Strikes by Ma’an News Agency
(52) Five Palestinians Killed, 40 Injured By Israeli Missiles In Gaza by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(53) Municipality: Israel Shelled Drinking Water Tank In Gaza City by The Palestinian Information Center
(54) Health Minister: Internationally Banned Weapons Used In Israeli Aggression by The Palestinian Information Center
(55) The IOF Used White Phosphorus In Its Latest Aggression by The Palestinian Information Center
(56) Palestinian Factions In Gaza Declare Ceasefire by Saed Bannoura, IMEMC
(57) Palestinians Say 19 Killed In Weekend Of IDF Strikes On Gaza by Anshel Pfeffer, Jack Khoury, Amos Harel, Barak Ravid and Yanir Yagna, Haaretz
(58) Woman Killed In Gaza Strike Was Anticipating Wedding by Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada
(59) Israeli Warplanes Launch Mock Raids On Gaza by The Palestinian Information Center
(60) IOF Opens Fire At Gaza Border Areas by The Palestinian Information Center
(61) Fatah and Hamas Agree To Historic Palestinian Reconciliation Deal by Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz
(62) Palestinian Rivals Hamas And Fatah Sign Reconciliation Deal by The Guardian
(63) Wikileaks Is Zionist Poison II: Deconstruction Of The Myth by Jonathan Azaziah, Mask of Zion
(64) Is The Fatah-Hamas Deal A Disaster? by Anshel Pfeffer, The Jewish Chronicle
(65) Hamas-Backed “Unity Government” To Cooperate With Israel Army, Erekat Says by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada
(66) Hollow ‘Reconciliation’ In Palestine by Ali Abunimah, Al-Jazeera English
(67) Hamas Sweeps Palestinian Elections, Complicating Peace Efforts In Mideast by Scott Wilson, The Washington Post
(68) The Gaza Bombshell by David Rose, Vanity Fair
(69) Hamas’ Choice: Recognition Or Resistance In The Age Of Obama by Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada
(70) In Israel, Time For Peace Offer May Run Out by Ethan Bronner, The New York Times
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2 - Will the Gaza Flotilla be Safe from Israel’s Murderous Threats ?
Posted: 13 Jun 2011 06:54 PM PDT
by Stuart Littlewood
It was a simple question.
On 27 March I wrote to my Member of Parliament asking: “What is the British Government planning to do, please, to safeguard British subjects (and indeed the other humanitarians) sailing with the flotilla on its peaceful mission to Gaza?”
The Government had been only too happy, I said, to dispatch warships Cumberland and York to help civilians of all nationalities caught up in the Libyan trouble and deliver aid to the Benghazi medical centre.
I attached a press release http://savegaza.eu/eng/index.php?id=547 from one of the flotilla organizers, the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG). It called on all governments representing participating citizens to take concrete steps to protect their safety.
After a long wait I have finally received a response from Alistair Burt, Foreign Office minister for Middle East affairs.
He avoids the question altogether:
“We are clear in our advice against all travel to Gaza and in particular participation in flotillas of this nature, given the events of May last year. We also believe that the delivery of aid is far more effective when co-ordinated with the major international organizations on the ground, such as the UN’s Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.”
That’s all he has to say on the subject:
Burt used to be an officer (not a mere member but an officer) of the Conservative Friends of Israel. In a speech to the Board of Jewish Deputies in London last year, he told his audience he had worked from the age of fifteen for an MP who was a president of the Board and founder of the Conservative Friends of Israel, and how this “had a lasting effect upon me, and on my interests in Parliament”.
Burt said:
“Israel is an important strategic partner and friend for the UK and we share a number of important shared objectives across a broad range of policy areas… And as an honest broker, the UK Government does not believe that economic sanctions or embargoes on Israel [are] the way to engage or to influence it.”
The director of the Conservative Friends of Israel called Burt’s Foreign Office appointment excellent news.
Israel’s naval blockade is illegal and so was Israel’s interception of the Mavi Marmara in international waters last May. The United Nations fact-finding mission set up by the Human Rights Council to investigate violations of international law and humanitarian and human rights law resulting from the Israeli attacks a year ago on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance to Gaza, explains why. In that assault nine people were killed and many others injured http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/15session/A.HRC.15.21_en.PDF .
The Mission’s team, chaired by Karl T. Hudson-Phillips, QC, a retired Judge of the International Criminal Court, reported they were:
“satisfied that the blockade was inflicting disproportionate damage upon the civilian population in the Gaza Strip and that as such the interception could not be justified and therefore has to be considered illegal…
“The Mission considers that one of the principal motives behind the imposition of the blockade was a desire to punish the people of the Gaza Strip for having elected Hamas. The combination of this motive and the effect of the restrictions on the Gaza Strip leave no doubt that Israel’s actions and policies amount to collective punishment as defined by international law… No case can be made for the legality of the interception and the Mission therefore finds that the interception was illegal.”
And that wasn’t all. The naval blockade was implemented in support of the overall closure regime:
“As such it was part of a single disproportionate measure of armed conflict and as such cannot itself be found proportionate. Furthermore, the closure regime is considered by the Mission to constitute collective punishment of the people living in the Gaza Strip and thus to be illegal and contrary to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
The action of the Israel Defense Force in intercepting the Mavi Marmara on the high seas was “clearly unlawful” and could not be justified even under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations [the right of self-defense].
Will the world allow Israeli thugs to maul this latest flotilla? Yes or no?
Perhaps Mr Burt should also re-acquaint himself with Security Council resolution 1860 (2009), which emphasises “the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings” and calls for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment”.
Recent reports tell of the desperate shortage of hospital drugs in Gaza. The lack of 180 essential medical items and 200 disposables brings public health to crisis point. This terrible situation has been going on since I was there in 2007 and was handed an emergency list of medicines and spares for critical equipment like dialysis machines.
Even the World Health Organization, I hear, can’t get necessary medical supplies delivered.
Meanwhile Israeli prime minister Netanyahu has warned that his military will use force against anyone disobeying his navy’s orders and heading for Gaza’s shore. They threaten to also use snipers.
The flotilla will be going about its commendable, lawful business and British nationals will be on board. Burt and his colleagues are duty-bound, legally and morally, to protect them from the criminal assault they have been threatened with.
But Burt, by word and deed, is clearly an “Israel-firster” and influenced by that delinquent foreign power. How can his employment in a Foreign Office role (or indeed any British Government role) be consistent with the principles that underpin standards in public life?
An email to ECESG asking if they had received assurances from any of the governments they approached has gone unanswered. A telephone number on the UK website was answered by a voice that was almost unintelligible and I was referred to someone in Stockholm. That person said he could only speak about the situation with the Swedish government, which had sent a note to the Israelis saying Sweden expected the flotilla not to be attacked. That, it seems, was as far as they were prepared to go to protect the civilians.
I also emailed Britain2Gaza asking for a quick reply. No luck. It is little wonder that the flotilla project never gets the space it deserves in main-stream media.
So what is the situation please? Is it the attitude of most western governments that the humanitarian flotilla can “sink or swim”? If so, why aren’t the organizers being more communicative and mobilizing public outrage?
Or have those governments found the courage to embrace the flotilla’s noble cause?
Stuart Littlewood
Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.
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3 - Gilad Atzmon : For The Sake Of Jewish Sensitivities
Monday, June 13, 2011 at 3:55PM
Gilad Atzmon in Analysis, Cultural Criticism, Ideology, Israel, Jewish Power, Jewishness, Palestine, Zionism, identity
It occurred to me recently that the Palestinian solidarity discourse is spiritually, ideologically and intellectually driven by some very misleading terminology: crucial notions such as Zionism, colonialism and apartheid (heard in every discussion, and present in every text book about the conflict), are either confusing, or even delusional: I believe that they are there to actually block any attempt to grasp the true spirit and ideologies that drive the Jewish State rather than to clarify the situation.
Zionism
Many of us tend to refer to Zionism as the ideological driving force behind Israel.
But make no mistake: Israel is not Zionism, and Zionist ideology and politics have very little at all to do with Israeli politics or practice.
It must be understood that Israel and Zionism are, by now, two distinct categories. While Zionism was defined by its founders as an attempt to ‘transform the Diaspora Jew into an authentic and civilised human being’, Israel can, nowadays, only be seen as the pragmatic product of such an ideology.
It may surprise many of you to hear that these days, Israel is not driven or even particularly inspired by Zionism any longer -it is, instead, engaged in self-maintenance. More so, Israelis are hardly even that familiar with Zionist ideology. For most Israelis Zionism is little more than a dated and archaic concept - it may have historical significance -but it has zero meaning in daily life.
Zionism is, in fact, a Jewish Diaspora discourse. It is there to differentiate between world Jewry that largely supports Israel, and a few sporadic Jewish secular voices who want to maintain their Jewish national identity while opposing the Jewish State.
The Zionist/ anti Zionist debate is, in fact, a debate that takes place within the Jewish Diaspora, and not within Israel itself. It belongs to the realm of Jewish identity politics. It has very little political significance out of that context.
Because Israel and Israelis are actually impervious to Zionism, ‘Anti Zionist’ activity and ideology have very little impact at all on Israel and Israelis.[1] Israelis are only concerned with direct actions against their Jewish State, and for them, sanctions are a matter that concern and worry them a great deal. Israelis though, are hardly concerned at all with seeking solutions to the so called ‘Jewish Question.’ From an Israeli perspective the Jewish state is the ultimate solution for the ‘Jewish Question.’ I guess that from a realistic and pragmatic perspective, one may have to agree, Israel didn’t really solve the ‘Jewish Question’ it just moved it to a new place.
Why do we then, continue to make this crude mistake, and always refer to Israeli crimes as a Zionist symptom? Why don’t we refer directly and openly to the ‘Jewish State’, because at the end of the day, this is how Israel defines itself.
The answer is simple: it is because we really do not want to offend anyone. We accept that Jews have suffered all through their history and we accept their unique sensitivities. Hence, voluntarily, we self-censor ourselves. We voluntarily give up on our capacity to think freely, coherently, openly and critically.
Colonialism
Zionism is not colonialism either. As much as many activists around us insist that we must regard Zionism as a colonial project, the truth must be stated: colonialism defines itself by having a clear material relationship between a ‘mother state’ and a ‘settler state’. In the case of Zionism however, it is impossible to determine what was, or is, the ‘Jewish mother State’. In fact there is no Jewish mother State and there has never been one. Zionism is not a colonial project and it has never been one. It is indeed true that the Jewish State exhibits some colonial symptoms.[2] But then, some brain cancer patients also exhibit some symptoms of migraine. A proper diagnosis aims at discovering the true cause behind symptoms. To diagnose is to trace a true disease rather than provide a superficial explanation that may be linked to a number of sporadic symptoms.
But it is also clear why so many of us love the colonial paradigm, despite it being flawed: the followers of the colonial paradigm accept that Israelis are not different from the British, French or Dutch; they just happen to celebrate their ‘colonial’ expansionist symptoms ‘100 years after everyone else’. Also the colonial paradigm promises a ‘solution’ at the end of the road -- a post colonial reconciliation is just a matter of time, they stress.
Again, I am sorry to disappoint so many people I really care about, but I have to say it: Zionism is original and unique of its kind, and it has no precedent in history. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit into any materialist model, for the aspiration behind Zionism was, and still is, spiritually driven.
So why do we continue to make this crude mistake, and always refer to Zionism as colonialism? Why don’t we refer to Zionism as what it is; a totally unique Jewish ideological project? Simple, because we do not want to offend some of the very few Jews who are kind enough to support Palestine. We accept their sensitivities, and voluntarily remain quiet about it all. We would do whatever it takes to keep everybody happy. After all, we are a peace movement.
Apartheid
And what about apartheid? Is Israel an apartheid State? In Israel we clearly witness racial separation and legal discrimination. However, I would argue that Israel is not an apartheid system for apartheid was set in place to exploit the indigenous peoples, yet, to keep them living on the land. Israel, on the other hand, is there to destroy the indigenous population - the Israelis would be relieved if they woke up one morning to find out that the Palestinians had simply left the region.
Those who are Naïve enough to buy into the apartheid narrative probably believe that Israel may collapse soon, because this is what history teaches us about apartheid. Again, we like the apartheid model because it makes Israel look (relatively) ‘ordinary’. We do not want to offend anyone, especially the few Jews who support us.
But here is a question that I must address to righteous Jews and fellow Palestinian supporters around the world: do you really believe that the discourse of the struggle against the Jewish State should be shaped by ‘Jewish sensitivities’? Was the fight against Nazism shaped by German sensitivities? Did we take on board the Afrikaners' touchy spots when campaigning against the apartheid? Isn’t the time ripe to call a spade a spade? I do accept the crucial importance of Jews in this movement and I try to work with as many Jews as possible. Yet, I wonder, isn’t it time for Jews to overcome their sensitivities and look into the subject with open eyes? Isn’t the time ripe for all of us to do the same? Shouldn’t we question the supporters of the Jewish State, and ask exactly what Jewishness stands for?
I believe that this is exactly what we have to do-for the sake of a better future in Palestine, we must openly engage in these crucial questions. I also believe that more than anyone else, it is Jews who must confront these questions. I would expect Jewish activists within our movement to lead this move rather than trying to silence it.
[1] Zionism may be a useful term when referring to Jewish lobbying around the world. It may throw light on the activity of Sayanim around the world, and it may explain the inclination of some Brooklyn Jews to make Aliya. It may also explain why some Jewish Leftists join forces with rabid Zionist institutions as soon as someone questions what Jewishness stands for.
[2] It can be reasonably argued that the relationships between Israel West Bank Settlers and the indigenous peoples could be understood in colonial terms.
Article originally appeared on Gilad Atzmon (http://www.gilad.co.uk/).
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4 - Remote Control Killing Like Sport
by Stephen Lendman
Defense contractor giants like Boeing, Lockeed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and others, as well as smaller rivals compete for growing demand for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They include remote control operated killer drones, also called unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs).
It’s America’s newest sport. From distant command centers, far from target sights, sounds, and smells, operators dismissively ignore human carnage showing up as computer screen blips little different from video game images. The difference, of course, is people die, mostly noncombatants. More on that below.
On March 10, 2010, Der Spiegel writer Marc Pitzke headlined, “How Drone Pilots Wage War,” saying:
They “sit in air-conditioned rooms far away from (America’s wars). They guide their weapons with joysticks and monitors. The remote warriors work with a high degree of precision – at a fraction of the cost of a fighter jet,” but just as deadly.
Operators use computer keyboards and five monitors. One says “I’ve got eight missiles and two bombs on two Predators. Weapons ready.”
The main monitor shows a target’s aerial view “from a considerable height….Three, two, one. Impact,” after pushing a red button. “Excellent job,” the man says after a destructive explosion. The entire mission lasted two minutes “against a faceless enemy” attacked by remote control half a world away.
“The whole thing looks like a computer game,” virtual war “that doesn’t require combatants to get their hands dirty” or perhaps souls compromised for mindlessly slaughtering civilians lawlessly – what America’s media never explain or why Washington wages war.
Each drone system includes four aircraft, a ground station, a satellite link, and launch site maintenance crew, keeping UAVs ready to use round-the-clock on a moment’s notice. Like America’s wars, moreover, drone technology is a growth business, Insitu’s Steven Sliwa saying the industry is well positioned like the aeronautical one during WW II – up-up-and-away for big profits.
America’s Drone Command Centers
Two currently operate, the CIA’s at its Langley, VA headquarters, the Pentagon’s at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base, about 35 miles from Las Vegas.
Look-alikes, they’re sterile, insular, secure computer rooms manned by “combat commuters.” By day, they wage war, then drive home for dinner, relaxation, and family time, dismissive of killing for a living like mafia hit men, except they do it daily on a global scale against nameless, faceless targets.
Working in pairs, a pilot sits at one end of a computer station, a sensor operator at the other, controlling visual surveillance, able to zoom in for closer views, capturing images from drone cameras and satellites.
The Pentagon’s team maintains constant radio contact with its Combined Air Operations Center (CAOC) Qatar headquarters and US Kandahar, Afghanistan base where UAVs take off and land.
ACLU National Security Project director Hina Shamsi calls Predator drones “targeted international killings by the state.” On February 8, 2010, she and Law Professor Philip Alston’s London Guardian article headlined, “A killer above the law?” saying:
Sanitized killing on the cheap leaves disturbing issues unanswered, including a program shrouded in secrecy, no accountability, and dubious “no reports” of civilian casualties despite “credible (ones) that hundreds of innocents have died.”
International law, in fact, demands accountability. “When complete secrecy prevails, it is negated. Secrecy also provides incentives to push the margins in problematic ways….Equally discomforting is the ‘PlayStation mentality’ that surrounds drone killings. Young military (recruits, CIA operatives, and private civilian contractor) personnel raised on a diet of video games now kill real people remotely using joysticks.”
Lawless abuses always follow secrecy without accountability, killer drones a perfect example. On July 12, 2009, Greg Grant’s Infowars.com article headlined, “Drones Hardly Even Kill Bad Guys,” saying:
Counterinsurgency advisor David Kilcullen “told lawmakers last week that drone strikes” successfully hit militants 2% of the time. All others are noncombatant civilians. These casualties then “become an extension of war by other means. Tactics that physically defeat elements of the enemy and lose the population lose the war,” besides issues of legality.
In his book “Wired for War,” Peter Singer called drone technology disturbingly “seductive” because it makes combat look “costless.”
Britain’s former Iraq air chief marshal said it was “virtueless war,” requiring no heroics or getting one’s hands dirty.
According to Law Professor Mary Dudziak, “Drones are a technological step that further isolates the American people from military action, undermining political checks on….endless war,” as well as its fallout, including the human cost, and America’s illegal targeted assassination program.
Ramping Up Drone Warfare
In FY 2012, the Air Force plans to double its advanced killer drone fleet, including the RQ-4 Global Hawk class, MQ-9 Reaper, and MQ-1 Predator.
General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers are especially valued, the first hunter-killer UAV designed for long endurance, high surveillance targeting, used by the Air Force, Navy, US Customs and Border Protection, UK Royal Air Force, and Italian Air Force. The CIA prefers smaller, lightweight, less obtrusive drones for killing.
The Pentagon just released its 30-year aircraft procurement plans, projected to be more robotic than ever, budgeted for about $25 billion annually, including doubling its robot fleet by 2021, saying:
“The number of platforms in this category – RQ-4 Global Hawk-class, MQ-9 Reaper, and MQ-1 Predator-class unnammed aircraft systems – will grow from approximately 340 in (FY) 2012 to approximately 650 in FY 2021.”
The Army’s got a Gray Eagle Reaper-like drone. The Marines want a similar one as part of their Group 4 Unmanned Air System program. The Navy’s so-called Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Strike and Surveillance initiative aims to put jet-powered killer drones on carrier decks no later than 2018. Around the same time, the Air Force may start buying jet-powered ones to complement its prop-driven Reaper.
By decade’s end, it hopes to have enough medium and large drones to maintain at least 65 round-the-clock “orbits” compared to now. Combined with other service branches, 100 or more permanently positioned killer drones may launch precision-guided bombs and missiles on targets virtually anywhere.
Moreover, improved sensors like the Air Force’s Gorgon Stare and new foliage-penetrating radars will let new generations of drones do what multiple ones are needed for now.
Given the profit potential, US defense contractors are scrambling for part of a bigger pie, developing new killer drone models, including Boeing’s X-45C, Northrop Grumman’s X-47B and General Atomic’s Avenger. Others will follow to satisfy the Pentagon’s insatiable appetite for remote killing and destruction on a global scale.
If America’s military had a motto, it would be war is good, the more the better. How else can generals get stars?
Remote Control High Altitude Killing
In March 2010, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit:
“demanding that the government disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas. In particular, the lawsuit asks for information on when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, the number and rate of civilian casualties and the other basis information essential for assessing the wisdom and legality of using armed drones to conduct targeted killings.”
At issue is using them against civilians, including US citizens abroad after Obama authorized targeting any suspected of terrorist involvement, with or without proof.
The ACLU sued the Defense, State, and Justice Departments after each provided no requested information “nor have they given any reason for withholding documents. The CIA answered the ACLU’s request by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents.” CIA wasn’t sued because the ACLU appealed its non-response to the Agency Release Panel.
UAVs were first used in Vietnam, mainly as reconnaissance platforms. In the 1980s, radar killer drones called Harpy air defense suppression systems were employed. In the Gulf War, unmanned combat air system (UCAS) and X-45 air vehicles were used.
Others were deployed in Bosnia in 1995 and against Serbia in 1999. America’s new weapon of choice is now commonplace in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and domestically, including for law enforcement – in fact, virtually anywhere for targeted attacks and/or surveillance globally.
At issue is their legality, given their use outside traditional battlefields for extrajudicial assassinations, a practice US and international laws prohibit. Yet reports confirm Obama’s ramped up use with long-term grander schemes – why the ACLU and other human rights groups express concern.
A December 2009 Social Science Research Network Notre Dame Legal Studies Paper titled, “Unlawful Killing with Combat Drones: A Case Study of Pakistan, 2004 – 2009″ said the following:
“First drones launch missiles or drop bombs, the kind of weapons that may only be used lawfully in an armed conflict. Until the spring of 2009, there was no armed conflict (in Pakistan). International law does not recognize the right to kill without warning outside an actual armed conflict. Killing without warning is only tolerated during the hostilities of an armed conflict, and, then, only lawful combatants may lawfully carry” them out.
CIA members “are not lawful combatants and their participation in killing persons – even in an armed conflict – is a crime.” US military forces may be “lawful combatants in Pakistan” only if its government officially requested them. It did not.
Further, beyond targeted individuals, collateral killing is commonplace. “Drones have rarely, if ever, killed just the intended target. By October 2009, the ratio has been up to” 50 civilians for each militant. As a result, drone use violates “the war-fighting principles of distinction, necessity, proportionality and humanity.”
Nonetheless, violations continue daily in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now Libya, having escalated dramatically in recent years. Along with bombers and helicopter gunships, their use in Afghanistan (and North Waziristan, Pakistan) is so pervasive that anyone in the open or near targeted sites risks death – civilians, including vulnerable women and children for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
On March 13, 2010, Der Spiegel headlined, “Drones Are Lynchpin of Obama’s War on Terror,” calling them his weapon of choice. “But the political, military and moral consequences are incalculable.”
One report said in the past two years the Air Force Research Laboratory embarked on a program to “build the ultimate assassination robot (described as) a tiny, armed drone for the US special forces to employ in terminating ‘high-value targets’ ” that most often are noncombatants.
On April 4, 2010, New York Times writers Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah headlined, “Drones Batter Qaeda and Allies Within (North Waziristan) Pakistan,” referring to a “stepped-up campaign….over the past three months (casting) a pall of fear over an area (by) fly(ing) overhead sometimes four at a time, emitting a beelike hum virtually 24 hours a day, observing and tracking targets, then unleashing missiles on their quarry….”
The ferocity of strikes, in fact, got one Pakistani to say, “It seems they really want to kill everyone….,” civilians, of course, most vulnerable. Almost daily, noncombatant casualties are reported, sparking public anger and protests, including over America’s regional presence.
In late April, Obama authorized a major Libyan war escalation, ordering the use of killer drones. At an April 21 press conference, Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright announced the deployment of Predator UAVs, saying:
“What they will bring that is unique to the conflict is their ability to get down lower, therefore to be able to get better visibility on….targets now that they have started to dig themselves into defensive positions.”
Also announced was that surveillance drones have flown throughout the conflict. Now Hellfire missile firing ones are being used, supplementing daily terror bombings and low-flying Apache helicopter gunship killing machines hitting anything on the ground that moves.
A recent CBS News poll shows 60% of Americans against the Libyan war, only 30% saying military involvement in North Africa is justified. It represents a sharp drop from March when 70% supported intervention.
World outrage is also growing, including from the Pan Afrikanist Steering Committee of Namibia against The United Nations Resolution 1973 (PSCNAUNR), calling NATO’s Libya war “a desecration of the Afrikan homeland by a set of Europeans.”
Saying it’s an “appalling atrocity,” Western supported “mercenaries” are being used “to kill, maim, destroy local infrastructures, and attack Afrikans….living in fear of their lives within Libya.”
NATO, “under the guise of the UN, deliberately started its bombardment under a hidden agenda for Regime Change” in violation of international law. “It is now crystal clear that the motive behind Resolution 1973 was of a sinister nature, (effectively) representing a Declaration of War” against a nonbelligerent state.
June 12 on the Progressive Radio News Hour, Cynthia McKinney reported from Tripoli, saying hospitals, schools, residential houses, and other non-military sites have been bombed, causing numerous civilian casualties. NATO and America’s media duplicitously deny it.
However, other independent sources confirm strikes on commercial airports, seaports, power generating facilities, and other sites unrelated to military necessity, terrorizing, killing, and injuring Libyan civilians by intensified attacks.
A Final Comment
As president, Obama intensified US belligerence in multiple theaters, defying international and constitutional law. He may, in fact, have a new target in mind, what a June 10 White House press release suggests, saying:
“The United States strongly condemns the Syrian government’s outrageous use of violence…particularly in the northwestern region. There must be an immediate end to the brutality and violence. We regret the loss of life and extend our condolences to all those who have suffered.”
The double standard gross hypocrisy requires no comment, especially in light of the Washington, Israel, Saudi, and Lebanon’s March 14 Alliance project to destabilize Assad’s government, including by inciting and supporting armed militants for regime change.
So far, Russia and China have blocked a proposed Security Council resolution condemning Syrian violence, fearing passage perhaps means more war. It’s America’s favored strategy against regimes it doesn’t control.
Notably, three rogues senators (John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham) openly support regime change, saying in a joint statement:
“By following the path of (Gaddafi) and deploying military forces to crush peaceful demonstrations, al-Assad and those loyal to him have lost the legitimacy to remain in power in Syria. We urge President Obama to state unequivocally (that it’s) time for (him) to go,” stopping short of calling for war they may join with others in demanding it.
Despite waging multiple imperial wars, Obama, in fact, may oblige them, heading America perilously closer to all out general war, especially to distract growing millions from their economic misery at home.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
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5 - Tell Me Again, Who Made The Desert Bloom ?
In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate authorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine, in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.
One of the subjects investigated in the Survey of Palestine is land use; specifically, which crops were Palestine's leading agricultural products at the end of the British Mandate, and whose farms were producing them.
So, according to the Survey of Palestine, who really made the barley fields of Beersheba bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 210,000 tons of grain.
About 193,400 tons of that grain were cultivated on Palestinian farms; about 16,600 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
Who made the melon patches of Jaffa bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 143,000 tons of melons.
About 136,000 tons of those melons were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 7,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
Who made the tobacco fields of Safad bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 1,683 tons of tobacco, on 28,169 dunams of land. Virtually all the land under tobacco cultivation was Palestinian.
Who made the vineyards of Hebron bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 40-50,000 tons of grapes, and between 3-4 million litres of wine. About 86% of the land that produced these products was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.
See a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine here.
Who made the olive groves of Tulkarm bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 79,000 tons of olives.
About 78,000 tons of those olives were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 1,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here and here.
Who made the banana groves of Tiberias bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 8,000 tons of bananas.
About 60% of the land that produced these bananas was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.
See the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
Who made the vegetable fields of the coastal plain bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 245,000 tons of vegetables.
About 189,000 tons of those vegetables were cultivated by Palestinian farmers; about 56,000 tons were cultivated by Jewish farmers.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
So, on the eve of the partition resolution, in which the United Nations proposed to allocate 55 percent of the land to Jewish Palestine (including those parts that produced most of Palestine's leading crops, with the sole exception of the olive crop), and 45% to Arab Palestine, Palestinian Arabs were producing:
92% of Palestine’s grain
86% of its grapes
99% of its olives
77 % of its vegetables
95% of its melons
more than 99% of its tobacco
and 60% of its bananas.
Palestine's agricultural produce at that time had an annual value of approximately 21.8 million pounds sterling; 17.1 million of which was produced by Arab cultivation, and 4.7 million by Jewish cultivation. (See the exact numbers here).
So, who made the desert bloom? The Palestinians made the desert bloom.
Photos: All the (removed) photographs of Palestinian farmers cultivating their crops in Palestine under the British Mandate are from Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History Of The Palestinians 1876 - 1948, by Walid Khalidi.
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6 - Mainstream Media Is Establishment Tool
by Allen L Roland
There is a reason I do not have a television set and seldom read the Mainstream Media. The reason is I’m a truth seeker and truth teller and I, and million of Americans, now realize that we cannot find the truth in the establishment controlled mainstream media ~ and that President Obama answers to Wall Street and the mainstream establishment.
Here’s a perfect example: a short synopsis of 5 WikiLeaks 2011 world wide news revelations that the American mainstream media is virtually ignoring, courtesy of AlterNet’s Rania Khalek; “5 WikiLeaks Hits of 2011 That Are Turning the World on Its Head — And That the Media Are Ignoring“:
“Amnesty International recently drew a link between the protests in the Arab world and the release by WikiLeaks of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic documents. In fact, the United Nations recently declared Internet access a basic human right in a report that cites WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring as driving factors.
In April of this year, WikiLeaks released the Guantanamo Files, which included classified documents on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees. These files paint a stunning picture of an oppressive detention system riddled with incoherence and cruelty at every stage. Authorities heavily used unreliable evidence obtained from a small number of detainees under torture to justify due-process free detentions. They continued to maintain this testimony was reliable even after admitting that the prisoners who provided it had been mistreated. Despite President Obama’s promise to close it, the shameful, legal black hole that is Guantanamo is still open for business: 172 detainees remain imprisoned at Guantanamo, about 50 of who are being subjected to indefinite detention.
Allies are among the leading funders of international terrorism. Following the secret raid on Osama bin Laden’s alledged compound, WikiLeaks released the Pakistan Papers, a batch of previously secret State Department cables specifically dealing with the US relationship with Pakistan. The cables were published in Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest and most widely-read English-language newspaper. The most disturbing, though not surprising, reports show that the Saudis, our supposed allies, are among the leading funders of international terrorism. It appears Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been financing jihadist groups in Pakistan for years.
World leaders are practically lighting a fire under the Arctic. As Secretary of State Hilary Clinton met with the Arctic Council last month to discuss oil exploration, WikiLeaks, with impeccable timing, published a new trove of cables highlighting a race to carve up the Arctic for resource exploitation. Nations battling to poison the arctic with oil drilling include Canada, the US, Russia, Norway, Denmark, and perhaps even China, which all have competing claims to the Arctic. Clearly, banking on the melting of the polar ice caps has taken priority over halting or even reversing the catastrophic effects of climate change.
Washington would let Haitians starve to protect US corporate interests. The Nation has teamed up with the Haitian weekly newspaper Haiti Liberté, to analyze some 2,000 Haiti-related diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks. The cables will be featured in a series of Nation articles posted each Wednesday for several weeks. In a clear symbol of who it serves, the US State Department stepped in to exert pressure on Haiti’s president, who duly carved out a $3 a day minimum wage for textile companies. But, according to the Nation’s expose, that was still too much: “Still the US Embassy wasn’t pleased. A deputy chief of mission, David E. Lindwall, said the $5 per day minimum “did not take economic reality into account” but was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.” To understand the barbarity of this behavior, consider that a Haitian family of three (two kids) needed $12.50 a day in 2008 to make ends meet.” Read Fulll Article >>>
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, we have Bagram prison ( which is bigger than Guantanamo ) where some 1,700 detainees are being held with no charges, no trial, no way to prove their innocence despite a Marine Corps general’s 2009 report saying many should be released.
Thus far, the report, issued May 10 by New York and Washington, D.C. based non-profit organization Human Rights First (HRF), has been ignored by almost all the mainstream print and broadcast news media.
And then we have Libya where The Pentagon and its NATO partners are engaged in one of the most obvious and intensive propaganda ploys in their military operations since the days leading up to the “Coalition of the Willing” attack on Iraq.
As Wayne Madsen reports on June 8th;
“ There has been no mention by the Western media, in their zeal to promote the Pentagon and NATO line, that some Libyan rebels acceded to the government’s offer of an amnesty if the rebels gave up their weapons. After rebels handed over their weapons in Misrata and in the western mountains, NATO increased its bombings of the two regions…Neither is there mention of the disposal of the bodies of the victims of rebel violence: the mass burning of bodies of victims to erase any trace of crimes against humanity committed by the U.S.- and NATO-backed rebel forces…As we have seen in Libya, and before, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank,Darfur, Rwanda, Somalia, and Yemen~modern-day corporate journalists are mere stenographers for their corporate masters who, in turn, control the puppet strings for the marionettes in Washington, Brussels, London, Paris, Rome and Berlin.” Red Full Article
Meanwhile, The financial cost of the U.S. campaign in Libya is set to exceed $750 million, according to a leaked Department of Defense Memo.
The ‘eyes-only’ DoD dossier said the U.S. had already spent $664 million in Libya by mid-May – a running cost of $60 million a month since the bombing began in March. At the current rate of spending, the U.S. will have to shell out at least an extra $274 million till the end of the current 90 day no fly zone extension period – bringing total expenditure to a minimum of $938 million.
And why is all of this information available to the world and American public, if they choose to read it?
Because, as Glenn Greenwald ( Salon ) writes:
“ The reason ~ the only reason ~ we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts. Virtually the entirety of the Post article — like most significant revelations over the last 12 months,especially in the Middle East and North Africa~ are based exclusively on WikiLeaks disclosures.”
The only antidote for the shameless propaganda and hypocrisy of the Mainstream Press is transparency and the truth ~ which the Obama administration and the establishment continually avoid ~ because Americans don’t demand it or perhaps don’t want to hear it. .
As such, the only Presidential candidate who is a veteran and opposes not only our illegal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as our now illegal participation in regime change in Libya is Ron Paul. The mainstream press is scared to death of a Ron Paul presidency which is why they ignore him ~ but the American public is increasingly responding to his anti-establishment message. True conservatives, Independents and even progressives, who are no longer drinking the Obama Kool-Aid ~ such as myself and Justin Raimondo ~ see Ron Paul in a far different light during these turbulent times when truth and transparency are at a premium.
Here’s Raimondo’s take on Ron Paul on June 9th:
“As libertarianism becomes more visible, politically, and gains ground in the GOP, the enemies of freedom are poised – on both the right and the left – for the attack. Libertarians have never had to deal with this problem before, in the main because their movement was considered marginal, if it was considered at all. Today, however, the situation is quite different: a wave of “anti-government” (i.e. pro-freedom) sentiment is sweeping the country, and the realization that libertarians were the original tea-partiers – coupled with the electoral success of that populist upsurge – has the Establishment in a panic. What we’re seeing is a two-pronged, left-right attack on libertarians, with the initial forays in the foreign policy realm.
The main thrust of the attack is naturally directed at the leader of the libertarian movement, the man who has done the most to make libertarianism a significant political force in the modern world, and that man is Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). Ron has single-handedly raised the profile of the movement way beyond what anyone imagined only a few years ago. A lot of this has to do with Ron’s prescient warnings about the state of the economy, and the bursting of the real estate bubble, which have given him the kind of authority he never enjoyed in all the years spent crying in the wilderness. However, Ron’s prescience isn’t limited to economics: unlike most conservatives, Ron was clear from the very beginning that our foreign policy of global intervention would blow back in our faces some day, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks confirmed his view in a way that was not, at first, readily apparent.
Yet Ron kept making this point, even in the wake of the war hysteria that followed the attacks, and ten years anon – as a war-weary and dead broke America staggers and seems about to fall – his views are seen as prophetic rather than marginal….” See complete article ~
The mainstream media is on the verge of irrelevance for the truth has revealed that it is mainly a tool of the establishment. The more we seek the truth, the more this discrepancy will become obvious ~ as well as those who misuse it. Wikileaks, as such, is providing tough independent media for those who actively seek truth and transparency ~ establishment and main stream media be damned.
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About the Author: Allen L Roland is a Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist. He is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web site at AllenRoland.com. He also guest hosts a Truthtalk, a national radio show that airs monthly. He is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations via email atallen@allenroland.com.
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7 - Psychological War Against Nuclear Program Intensifies
by Asif Haroon Raja
Our suspicions about ill-designs of USA and its strategic allies Israel and India concerning Pakistan’s nuclear program are now turning into reality. President Ahmadinejad’s recent statement that USA has evil designs against our nuclear program has further heightened our anxieties. Psychological war on our nuclear program was ignited by US government and Jewish controlled think tanks and media sometime in 2004 and became more and more vicious with each passing year. Pakistan’s nuclear program was made to look unsafe after overplaying threat of terrorism, which was also inflamed by USA and its allies by occupying Afghanistan and then pushing terrorism into Pakistan.
While launching of military operations by the Army in Waziristan at the behest of USA led to emergence of Pakistani Taliban, two drone attacks in Bajaur Agency in 2006 instilled hatred against the Army particularly when October strike on a seminary killing 80 students was wrongly owned by the Army. Brutal military action against inmates of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafza in July 2007 triggered recruitment of young Taliban. It also ignited spate of suicide bombings in cities. Thereon, it became easy for the senior members of TTP to motivate young boys aged 12-16 years to become suicide bombers.
Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) established in December 2007 under deceased Baitullah Mehsud, which has its tentacles in all seven tribal agencies as well as in settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Swat, Malakand, South Punjab, Pashtun belt of Balochistan and its long arm can reach any part of Pakistan is of chief concern for Pakistan but of no concern to USA. Several foreign agencies are providing massive funds, weapons, equipment, explosives, training facilities, guidance and manpower reinforcements from Afghan soil to TTP since they desire this force to possibly defeat or as a minimum contain bulk of Army.
But for foreign support in huge quantities, it would not have been possible for the TTP to rebound after its backbone had been broken in the two decisive battles of Bajaur and South Waziristan in 2009. Footprints of foreign hands were clearly seen in all the regions that were recaptured from the militants. In the Bajaur battle which raged from August 2008 till February 2009, large number of Tajik and Uzbek fighters supplemented Mullah Faqir Muhammad force. Even now Afghans are involved in Bajaur, Mohmand and Dir.
Once the main bases of militants were dismantled and its leaders sought refuge in Afghanistan, the conspirators then shifted terrorism to major cities. This was made possible after the induction of Blackwater in 2008. Several security companies like Dyncorps cropped up in capital cities. Dozens of militant groups affiliated with TTP and al-Qaeda and linked with Blackwater are wreaking havoc in cities.
While the people have not come out of the shock of two attacks in May, the foreign and local media is adding to their apprehensions by floating rumor balloons of despondency and trying to undermine the capabilities of armed forces. An impression is being created that the military is incapable of safeguarding our vital interests. Great majority in Pakistan distrusts USA and suspect that it will again strike Pakistan to denuclearize it. They are not convinced with John Kerry assurances that the US is not interested in Pak nukes particularly after NATO Secretary General’s statement that it is the collective responsibility of international community to secure nuclear assets of Pakistan.
Despite multi-layered system of security evolved by Pakistan which is second to none, doubts are still being aired by vested interests that Pakistan’s nuclear program is unsafe and needs to be secured before they fall into wrong hands. Although our leaders are claiming that no harm can befall upon our strategic assets, in my humble view the threat is of different nature about which our policy makers have given no thought. Their eyes are fixed on local terrorists about whom the US is repeatedly ringing alarm bells.
The biggest threat is not from US or Indo-Israeli direct assault, or from local terrorists who are anti-American, but from foreign backed terrorists trained to undertake special operations, like the ones against GHQ and Mehran Base. Another possible dangerous threat is from pro-American elements or sympathizers of foreign sponsored terrorists working inside nuclear setups who may be bribed to steal fissile material and fuses and pass them on to wrong people. One must not forget that CIA had been able to buy the loyalties of several scientists working in a nuclear plant in 1990s. Brig Imtiaz working in ISI had busted the band on the payroll of CIA, after he accidentally found out from a girl ditched by one of the scientists belonging to this group.
I am certain that the heavy CIA network established in Pakistan since 2010 must be continuing with its efforts to cultivate scientists, officials and security guards employed in sensitive organizations. The theme of nukes falling in hands of religious extremists was purposely floated to provide smoke screen to its own covert actions. USA, Israel and India are the actual thieves bent upon stealing or destroying our nukes. Varieties of contingencies have been prepared to destroy, steal or overpower the arsenal. The noose has been sufficiently tightened and the thieves have prowled closer to the intended sites and believably have stealthily encircled them.
After performing the gory act, irrespective of marginal success or complete failure, red alert will be sounded and the whole blame put on al-Qaeda/affiliated groups. The UN and the world will be ready to accept US contention since the latter has already poisoned the minds of world power centers. Our rulers too would promptly blame local militant groups. The UN will then come into action and will seek immediate closure of our nuclear program and demand transfer of all the nukes along with fissile material to safer location outside Pakistan.
With regard to the last option of destruction by drones and bombers, or physical occupation by US Special Forces, complete homework has been done. The only thing left is to decide the date and time. In my reckoning, this reckless option may coincide with final phase of withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. God forbid, if our adversaries succeed in their evil designs, that will be day of mourning for Pakistan and a day of rejoicing for USA, western world, Israel and India.
Pakistan Army managed to get out of the deathtrap laid by its adversaries in Swat and South Waziristan. USA has now prepared another deadly deathtrap in North Waziristan and is once again trying to lure in Pak Army with a hope that this time it will get trapped. It is only when major portion of our combat divisions get embroiled in the war in northwest that India will make its Cold Start doctrine operational on the weakened eastern front. 5/2 and 5/22 incidents have already helped our adversaries in creating despondency, in discrediting armed forces and intelligence agencies and in spoiling civil-armed forces relations. Economically, Pakistan has become dependent upon IMF and US aid. Politically it is polarized and dysfunctional. Socially the society stands divided. Pakistan has been brought to this abysmal situation under an orchestrated program to make it helpless. Unfortunately our media stalwarts, PML-N, Asma Jahangir and even higher courts instead of defeating foreign propaganda are providing strength to foreign agenda against armed forces.
Since 2007, the US is trying to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor. While I pray that our security forces are able to thwart hostile attempts made on our nuclear arsenal and delivery means and are able to safeguard the frontiers against foreign aggression under such insalubrious environments, what I am worried is that we have still not identified our foes and snakes in the grass and taken preventive measures. Unless we guard against the designs of our foes pretending to be friends and Mir Jaffars, we will not be able to confront the worst threat which is looming over Pakistan’s horizons.
The writer is a retired Brig and a defence analyst. Email: asifharoon7751@yahoo.com
Brig Asif Haroon Raja an Member Board of Advisors Opinion Maker is Staff College and Armed Forces WarCoursequalified, holds MSc war studies degree; a second generation officer, he fought epic battle of Hilli in northwest East Bengal during 1971 war, in which Maj M. Akram received Nishan-e-Haider posthumously.
He served as Directing Staff Command & Staff College, Defence Attaché Egypt and Sudan and Dean of Corps of Military Attaches in Cairo. He commanded the heaviest brigade in Kashmir. He is multi-lingual and speaks English, Pashto and Punjabi fluently.
He is author of books titled ‘Battle of Hilli’, ‘1948, 1965 & 1971 Kashmir Battles and Freedom Struggle’, ‘Muhammad bin Qasim to Gen Musharraf’, Roots of 1971 Tragedy’; has written number of motivational pamphlets. Draft of his next book ‘Tangled Knot of Kashmir’ is ready.
He is a defence analyst and columnist and writes articles on security, defence and political matters for numerous international/national publications.
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8 - Control Credit Control the World0Share
by Tom Valentine
Just because I chose to honor my late friend Galen Winsor by relating his Nuclear Energy causes in my initial columns on Veterans Today, does not mean I am ignorant about the biggest problems we face today. And what are those major problems?
In a word “Zionism”.
Nothing else, save Satan himself, can lay claim to the woes of today’s anxiety-ridden world more than the issue of Zionism.
Anyone who reads man’s history with a reasonable lens can determine what in the hell has gone on and is still snowballing down the hills of history, virtually unchecked.
The goals of evil were, indeed, checked about 2000 years ago, but unfortunately, God only set the table for righteousness, He did not take control of the propaganda and behavior; especially not in the area of the all-important money games.
Muslims are trained by repetition to begin every thought and action with the phrase “God is Great!” Indeed He is, but mortals can be fools, and we seem to never tire of proving “what fools these mortals be!”
I say the huge problems facing otherwise intelligent and moral humans began in modern times with my ancestors—the British Empire—I wont get much argument about that from most knowledgeable people. After all, the establishment of today’s “shitty little country” Israel was essentially their doing, and the establishment of the world’s dominant fascist state was perfected by them. Don’t you believe that the British empire died; it is bigger and stronger than ever; now headquartered in New York, Washington, DC (designed by fanatical Masons) London and Jerusalem.
Have you ever read the description of “The City of London” by one E. C. Knuth? You can Google it, like everything else (because they no longer need to keep things under wraps—“they” have won.)
Wikipedia offers a fascinating history of this world financial headquarters, but the “people’s encyclopedia” after the turn of 19th century does not cover the period around 1810 when Nathan Rothschild, married his way into the City’s inner circle, and took over the game for his clever and greedy family.
In a nutshell, you can read about the banking house of Rothschild in numerous books, but the easiest read came from my colleague at the old Spotlight newspaper, Michael Collins Piper. Of course establishment sources will not recommend Piper, putting it mildly.
The Rothschild banking name entwined itself with “The Crown” (name for the “city” fascists after turn of 19th century, so they cant get the credit for making the American revolution into a farce. The Masons deserve that dubious honor. Many of you will need to do a lot of reading to catch up.
I had the same fraudulent schooling, so I know; and don’t think “the good old days” were free of bunk. My public schooling wasn’t much better going back to 1930s, 40s. Over decades of struggle against the sea of bullshit, I feel lucky to have come out with my “anti” bent.
Students of the bowl of crap we call history will point out that everything shitty goes back to hubris known as the Talmud, from whence Zionism sprang. Happy reading and learning—the Internet has provided many breakthrough sites of valid information— and some easy-to-spot false flags (thanks Gordon Duff.)
My book list and favorite site list will be forthcoming.
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9 - Nuremberg : The Crime That Will Not Die – Part II
<<< Go Back & Read Part I
By Ernst Zundel
The Nuremberg Court was not selected from, or composed of, judges of the neutral Swiss, or the neutral Swedes, or some more distant African, Asian or Latin American countries. American civilian judges to a large extent made up the core of the Allied judges – not military career officers, who might have had some understanding and compassion for what the military leaders and the civilian government under extreme war-time conditions lived through.
They could have undoubtedly had a greater appreciation of why some of the wartime measures were undertaken by Germany in the desperate days of the war. The “liberal country club”-experienced set of small town American judges could not.
Furthermore, the Allied victors blatantly carried on their war against the Germans by other means long after the shooting had stopped – not by bombs and bullets but this time by falsely “diagnosing” psychologists or, worse, by giving torturers a free hand: cynical and brutal investigators who could, and frequently did, mistreat, beat, whip, starve, suffocate, and mutilate their prisoners into giving confessions and statements which were as cruelly extracted as were the confessions from witches during the disgusting witchcraft trials of the Dark Ages.
The injustice of the Nuremberg Trials was testified to not only by Harlan Fiske Stone, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, but also by Iowa Supreme Court Justice Charles F. Wennerstrum, a man of the Midwest, who sat on one of the tribunals trying lesser alleged Nazi war criminals after the war.
Wennerstrum pointed out in a celebrated and controversial interview given to a reporter of the Chicago Daily Tribune that frequently the interrogators and some of the prosecutors were Jews who had fled Nazi Germany and came back in Allied uniforms to torment and seek revenge on the National Socialists who had wanted to expel the Jews from European living space because they considered them harmful to the war effort and to Western European civilization.
Here is how the article described the rabble that came to post-war Germany to settle private scores, as seen through Justice Wennerstrum’s eyes, after he quit in disgust:
“If I had known seven months ago what I know today,” [Wennerstrum] told friends as he packed to leave for America, “I would never have come here. The initial war crimes trial here was judged and prosecuted by Americans, Russians, British and French with much of the time, effort and expenses devoted to whitewashing the Allies and placing the sole blame for World War II upon Germany.
“What I have said of the nationalist character of the tribunals,” the judge continued, “applies to the prosecution. The high ideals announced as the motives for creating these tribunals has not been evident.
“The prosecution has failed to maintain objectivity aloof from vindictiveness, aloof from personal ambitions for convictions. It has failed to strive to lay down precedents which might help the world to avoid future wars.
“The entire atmosphere here is unwholesome. Linguists were needed. The Americans are notably poor linguists. Lawyers, clerks, interpreters and researchers were employed who became Americans only in recent years, whose backgrounds were embedded in Europe’s hatreds and prejudices. . . (Chicago Daily Tribune, 23 February 1948)
In other words, the Allies supplied the interrogators, most of them Jews – as some of the victims, who had had a lifetime of experience in dealing with Jews and thus recognized them, have stated. Those of us who are German and can speak German can easily discern the ethnicity of some of the accusers by their mere accents and patterns of speech, even in radio broadcasts and news reels.
Most of the “evidence” in the trials was “documentary,” selected by the Allies from the large tonnage of captured records. The document selection was made by the prosecution. The defense had access only to those documents which the prosecution considered material to the case and were made available to the defense. The Allies could choose to release, hide, or destroy any documents which did not fit their post-war strategy or plans at Nuremberg.
Furthermore, the Allies admitted elsewhere that their Propaganda Ministries and Intelligence Services had previously forged Nazi stamps, Nazi passes, Nazi passports, orders, ID cards etc. which fooled the Nazis many times because they were so perfect and over which the Allied propagandists gloat to this day. It does not take a great leap of the imagination to surmise what these same Allied Government agencies, their personnel and forgers of documents could do now with all the captured genuine German document-producing facilities, the captured type writers, rubber stamps and tons of letter heads of all sizes and description and of any National Socialist organization you care to mention.
Even setting aside questionable “documentary” evidence, let’s look at some of the accused’s “testimony” – how it was extracted, and what it really means.
Like vile exclamation marks, at the heart of the Nuremberg Tribunal stand certain words: “Genocide” “Gas chamber” “Six million.” These words, and the embedded moral judgment, were derived largely from the admissions and affidavit of one man, Rudolf Hoess, [not to be confused with Rudolf Hess!] the one-time war-time Kommandant at Auschwitz.
Rudolf Hoess was the Allies’ most important witness. His affidavit and his testimony were quoted extensively both by the prosecution and in the judgment of the IMT at Nuremberg, as well as by the press. It was his testimony which laid the foundation and validated the claim of the “extermination of millions of people by gas at Auschwitz.” Hoess’s “confession” is heavily relied upon by historians like Raul Hilberg and others as a primary documentary source to this day.
It is true that Hoess witnessed at Nuremberg to horrendous “atrocities,” and he also confirmed the “truth” under oath of an affidavit which he agreed to sign for the prosecution. In it, he confessed to having given orders for the gassing of millions of victims.
This affidavit was in English, a language he did not speak or understand, according to family members.
We now know from the book Legions of Death that Rudolf Hoess was beaten almost to death by Jewish members of the British Field Police Force upon capture and badly mistreated thereafter, until he gave this very devastating “testimony” and “affidavit” used by the Allies propagandists ever since.
You be the judge. Here is an excerpt from this book by Rupert Butler, published by Hamlyn Paperbacks, page 235:
At 5 PM on 11 March 1946, Frau Hoess opened her front door to six intelligence specialists in British uniform, most of them tall and menacing and all of them practiced in the more sophisticated techniques of sustained and merciless investigation.
No physical violence was used on the family: it was scarcely necessary. Wife and children were separated and guarded. Clarke’s tone was deliberately low-key and conversational.
He began mildly: “I understand your husband came to see you as recently as last night.”
Frau Hoess merely replied: “I haven’t seen him since he absconded months ago.”
Clarke tried once more, saying gently but with a tone of reproach: “You know that isn’t true.” Then all at once his manner changed and he was shouting: “If you don’t tell us, we’ll turn you over to the Russians and they’ll put you before a firing squad. Your son will go to Siberia.”
It proved more than enough. Eventually, a broken Frau Hoess betrayed the whereabouts of the former Auschwitz Kommandant, the man who now called himself Franz Lang. Suitable intimidation of the son and daughter produced precisely identical information.
Here is how the capture played out. Clarke, one of the participants, recalls it vividly:
[Hoess] was lying on top of a three-tier bunker wearing a new pair of silk pyjamas. We discovered later that he had lost the cyanide pill most of them carried. Not that he would have had much chance to use it because we had rammed a torch [flashlight] into his mouth.
Hoess screamed in terror at the mere sight of the British uniforms.
Clarke yelled: “What is your name?”
With each answer of “Franz Lang”, Clarke’s hand crashed into the face of the prisoner. The fourth time that happened, Hoess broke and admitted who he was. (…)
The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjama ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to Clarke the blows and screams were endless.
Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: “Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse.”
A blanket was thrown over Hoess and he was dragged to Clarke’s car, where the sergeant poured a substantial slug of whiskey down his throat. Then Hoess tried to sleep.
Clarke thrust his service stick under the man’s eyelids and ordered in German: “Keep your pig eyes open, you swine” (…)
The party arrived back at Heide around three in the morning. The snow was swirling still, but the blanket was torn from Hoess and he was made to walk completely nude through the prison yard to his cell. It took three days to get a coherent statement out of him.
This statement, tortured and terrorized out of the man, was the one we are all familiar with – the “proof” for the so-called “gassing of the Jews.”
Historians today are finally admitting that Hoess was a totally unreliable witness – and is it any wonder? He spoke of a concentration camp “Wolzek” which does not even exist. He swore that 2,500,000 people were gassed and burned at Auschwitz and a further half million died of disease, for a total dead of three million.
The Toronto Sun of July 18, 1990 claimed 1.5 million. The Washington Post, on the same date, also mentioned 1.5 million. Quoted from an article by Krzyszlov Leski, we have the following:
Poland has cut its estimate of the number of people killed by the Nazis in the Auschwitz death camp from 4 million to just over 1 million.
The vast majority of the dead are now accepted to have been Jews, despite claims by the former Polish communist government that as many Poles perished in Hitler’s largest concentration camp (…)
The new study could rekindle the controversy over the scale of Hitler’s final solution.
Shevach Weiss, a death camp survivor and Labor Party member of the Israeli Parliament, expressed disbelief at the revised estimates, saying: “It sounds shocking and strange.” (…)
Shmuel Krakowsky, head of research at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial for Jewish victims of the Holocaust, said the new Polish figures were correct.
“The 4 million figure was let slip by Capt. Rudolf Hoess, the death camp’s Nazi commander. Some have bought it, but it was exaggerated.” (. . .)
The Polish authorities said accurate estimates of the number killed could only be made by studying German documents seized by the Soviet Union. But Moscow has refused to return the archives.”
A most convenient excuse!
In 1989, I organized a write-in campaign to persuade the then-Soviet Leader Gorbachev to release the Auschwitz Death Registers captured in 1945 when the Red Army took over the Auschwitz complex. A few months afterwards this actually happened. Gorbachev released these all-important documents to the Red Cross, which showed in minute detail the cause and time of death, their birth, address etc.
The following was found:
74,000 names of people who had died were listed, of which only approximately 30,000 were Jews, along with an almost equal number of Poles and members of other nationalities.
The incredibly shrinking Holocaust!
The “millions” that we have heard about for half a century and that we still hear and read about today all started with the “testimony” beaten out of Hoess on that horrible night in defeated Germany.
Historian Christopher Browning finally had to admit in a recent Vanity Fair article that Hoess was an unreliable witness. Browning stated that
“… Hoess was always a very weak and confused witness. The revisionists use him all the time for this reason, in order to try and discredit the memory of Auschwitz as a whole.” (Holocaust Revisionism Source Book, 1994, p. 1)
Hoess’s testimony was used as the skeleton on which the entire Holocaust myth about mass gassings was constructed. Revisionists have concentrated on Hoess precisely because he is probably the most important source for Holocaust historians’ conclusions and exaggerations about the Holocaust. Raul Hilberg, who wrote the “Bible” of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews, (Holmes & Meier, Revised Edition, 1985) relies on Hoess’s testimony heavily – and Hoess was the primary witness relied upon by the Nuremberg Tribunal in their judgment regarding the “extermination of the Jews,” even though he told the court of having been savagely tortured.
What’s more, Hoess’s treatment by the Allies and the total unreliability of his “evidence” are not unusual. We don’t know how many of the accused at the Nuremberg trials were badly mistreated, since references in the trial transcripts to their mistreatment was expunged from the record. An example is Julius Streicher’s testimony. Streicher was reported in the London Times as having testified that he was tortured, whipped, spat on, and forced to drink from a latrine. (Streicher Opens His Case, The Times, April 27, 1946). His testimony was later expunged from the record of the trial with the active participation of the prosecution, the president of the Tribunal, and even his own defense lawyer.
Other traces of the brutal treatment of the Nuremberg prisoners, however, have survived. One of these witnesses was Gauleiter Sauckel’s reference to threats to his family, which did remain in the transcript. During his testimony in May of 1946, Sauckel testified that he signed a document, even though he did not know what was in that document, after his family of 10 children was threatened with deportation to Russia.
And finally, it must not be forgotten that this is the only judicial proceeding conducted in the name of civilized nations where there was no appeal mechanism to a parallel or higher authority for a review of the proceedings – or any verdicts arrived at by this so-called International Military Tribunal. Their judgments over the leadership of Europe’s most populous state, against whom they had just fought a murderous, near genocidal war, were final and deadly.
Keep all that in mind as you read, watch and listen to all the emotional hype in the mass media on television and radio of these days. And for what? The Jewish leader Nahum Goldman spells it out for you in his astounding book, The Jewish Paradox, Pages 123-125, admitting to the mother of all frauds. In his own words, at the conclusion of the agreement Goldman obtained from Dr. Adenauer, the German vassal state’s first Allied-appointed chancellor:
“… the Germans will have paid out a total of 80 billion (…) Without the German reparations that started coming through during its first ten years as a state, Israel would not have half of its present infrastructure. All the trains in Israel are German, the ships are German, and the same goes for electrical installations and a great deal of Israel’s industry – and that is setting aside the individual pensions paid to survivors. Israel today receives hundreds of millions of dollars in German currency each year. In some years the sums of money received by Israel from Germany has been as much as double or treble the contribution made by collections from international Jewry. Nowadays, there is no longer any opposition to the principle.”
Not anywhere you look!
After the Nuremberg Trials and Proceedings are stripped of the hyperbole and smoke screens which surround them, it can be put quite bluntly:
The Allies fought a war on foreign shores – in part to establish the State of Israel. The Allies lent a willing hand to political ambitions that grew out of the Zionist camp. By means of the Nuremberg Trials, the Allies helped the establishment and financing of Israel.
So as to secure Israel, the Allies and their personnel became accusers, researchers, interrogators, prosecutors, judges and executioners – all in one! The Allies supplied the “experts” who sifted through the German documents, which were all totally in Allied control, highlighting incriminating documents, discarding exonerating evidence. These investigators were told only to “find” incriminating documents against the accused, as I was told by the American scholar Charles Weber, Ph.D., who had been one of these Allied researchers, and who testified at my own trials. These researchers were told to ignore the documents that might have spared the lives of the accused German leaders. When all was said and done, there was not even an appeal.
U.S. Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, speaking of the American Chief Prosecutor, Jackson, finally had this to say, as mentioned in the Viking Press hard cover, cited before, p. 746:
“Jackson is away conducting his high grade lynching party in Nuremberg,” [Stone] remarked. “I don’t mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law.
“This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas.”
Some sanctimonious fraud, indeed! That’s how America and the “free world” have showed their gratitude to the defenders of Europe and Western Civilization: by hanging brave and honest men who tried so valiantly for so long to stop the decadence and the hypocrisy of what we now call, shuddering, the coming “New World Order.”
I bow my head in reverence to those who were judicially murdered at Nuremberg. They were the world’s martyrs, not villains. Not one of them would have been condemned to death in a fair trial – not one! They sacrificed an entire nation, and in the end themselves, to save Western civilization. They were defeated by thugs in robes and gangsters in uniform – and by the conspiracies hatched by shysters from the ghettos of Eastern Europe.
1996 Copyright – Ernst Zundel (Toronto. Written in 1996 and archived by Ingrid Rimland Zundel
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Madness at the Break of Dawn ; keep on keeping on - Dog Poet Transmitting .......
The madness is incredible. I see on the news where in two separate incidents, the police beat up mentally retarded people. One of them was severely retarded. They just went looking for them. They accused them of being terrorists. What can this possibly mean? It defies understanding. It is beyond comprehension in a time that is already bizarre and absurd; “those whom the gods would destroy”. One of them had a toy hammer and the police said it was a terror weapon.
Now we find that the e-coli thing is a government tactic. Which government would that be? Well, it can only be one of them, because the other countries are already controlled by that one. Israel is going after Germany. Wow. You may feel I am making an assumption here. I tend to think there is no other possibility. It’s not the terrorists; they don’t have access to Bubonic Plague. We should be seeing something major coming down the pike any day.
Then there was mention of the president mentioning Hillary Clinton for head of the World Bank. We get notice that Hillary is into this. Then we hear from the State Department that she won’t be getting the appointment. It’s all going bananas. It also appears there are at least two major power operations, in opposition with each other right within the administration.
This Apocalypse thing is incredible! I’ve been in this town for ten years and now everyone is smiling at me. Everyone is helpful. Before this, many looked at me with suspicion and were surly. I can’t get over it. Meanwhile the world is beyond unreal. We are on Looney Tunes planet.
After years of persistent bad luck, my books are all being published by this wonderful woman who put a publishing company together. Someone redid all of my blogs. Another fine lady with the help of a few other people has set up a commercial website for me at www.lesvisible.comand I don’t know what to think. I feel better than I have felt in a long time also. Many moments are filled with the most bizarre serendipity. Things are so strange that I can’t compute. I just have to go through it. It is such a pleasure to be with all of you at this time, even though we are separated by distance. Thank you all for your tremendous support and all that attends it.
I can see the power of the malefactors diminishing by the moment. I can see Israel moving toward deserving trouble and loss. I see Israelis leaving Israel in droves and I have prayed that the location would be increasingly distasteful to them and so it is. It’s as if some force is doing exactly this.
The madness, oh the madness; things like this are routine. Congressman Weiner was sending pictures to a porn actress. When she was asked why she was involved in this she said, “I felt like I was slumming”. Now, that says it all.
I haven’t made a post in a week because I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. You know and I know as much as we need to know about how batshit crazy it all is. I go to write something and I say, “I said that already”. I go to link something and I think, “I linked this same kind of thing already”. You deserve better. You’ve supported me through these years, through my occasional bouts of strange highway. You’ve said so many nice things to me that I don’t see a reason for. You deserve better and I’m going to try to find some way to give you something better. This was supposed to be Origami’s turn and there I could have said something different but here I am at Mirrors. Obviously, I’m confused (grin). I collapsed from exhaustion the other night; just crumpled due to not sleeping for several days and doing hard manual labor. I must have really been tired, because since it happened I am sleeping at 12 hour stretches AND taking naps and I’m starving, even though I’ve been eating.
I mention this for a reason. I think all of us are receiving downloads of new and not seen before, energy and intelligence. Those of us working for positive change in the world and in ourselves are getting things directly related to this. I can’t even begin to list some of the things that have been happening to me, because they are so far out. For those of us working for increased negative change in the world and in ourselves, we also are getting amplification juice to that end. We’re all getting juiced in respect of what we are up to.
In Japan they are burning nuclear waste. Doesn’t that go right into the air? Newt Ging-Grinch; his entire campaign staff quit. Have we EVER seen that happen before? Word had it that Hilarious Clinton was being slotted for the IMF and had Obama’s backing. That would be a slam dunk. Next thing you know she’s not going there. Pelosi is demanding Weiner’s resignation, while her career has been mostly about amping up her husband’s bank account through the powers of her office.
Consider this, when a person is in a serious disconnect with themselves as a large portion of the world’s leadership is, without any pretense of concealing it; which is how it used to go and continuing on as if what had been happening wasn’t a warning but a cheer of encouragement, you may be aware that this seriously mirrors certain states of mental imbalance that eventually lead to a break in one’s mental state. The American leadership is approaching public meltdowns as Weiner’s case shows, along with others mentioned and unmentioned. Look for much more of this same thing and even more outrageous examples. This is truly The Apocalypse. Those who are mad are being pressed out of themselves into demonstration, while the curtains are being raised. Those on the opposite end are feeling the thrill of cohesion entering into their being.
It is as plain as day to me. Everything is so evident that it is stunning. The comical nature of it all- outside of the tragedy resulting from heinous action- is turning the world’s stage into a sitcom. The last gasp of an oppressive government is ridicule. Fear precedes it. As the power to deceive diminishes, the power to create fear diminishes. Following general ridicule comes breakdown.
The housing crises continue. Predictions are being made for another 6% drop in value, which means it will be more than this. The dollar is increasingly more threatened and the stock market is falling. Nothing is or has been done about the criminals in the financial realm, so the previous policies go on unhindered. One of the reasons certain things are against the law is that they upset the balance of the process that operates the system. If you don’t address the conditions with the power of the law they just continue to degenerate; accent on ‘degenerate’.
China and Russia, who are experiencing economic losses and increasing indirect threat, are working sotto voce against American interests, so it is just a matter of time before the whole thing comes down, with America extended around the world in expensive wars that cannot be won, in conditions that must be maintained, in order to justify the original intent that was all manifested by Israel. Nothing is done. This is like having an injury or illness that demands treatment but is not receiving any. What is the guaranteed outcome of this?
Meanwhile, all over the place, Nature is stirring the mix; massive flooding from record snows, wild fires beyond that experienced by certain areas before, animals are exhibiting signs of madness, as domestic dogs form in packs and go on killing sprees, birds attack people and much more than I can put down here is either going on or starting to.
You might say this is all just a logical progression of the way things have come about and that there is no invisible mystery to all of it. To me it is greater and greater confirmation that the cosmos is standing above the orchestra, with a baton in movement. This is good news because it means there is a conscious intent and direction to all of it and implies a dual outcome, based on one of two main mindsets in operation. Those of you who are working for the greater good are going to be experiencing quantum leaps in consciousness and otherwise ...good luck. If you’re not engaged in synchronicity with the movement of the baton then, change or be changed. Transform with some degree of ease or a powerful progression of dis-ease.
You can’t have it both ways and one way is coming through, gathering in the positive expressions that have led up to this arrival and destroying what no longer has a place in the scheme of things. I hope, with having nothing to say that I haven’t said before that I managed to occupy your attention in a way other than redundancy. So many of you have written me about, “where are you”, that this is my way of saying, “here I am”, hoping for inspiration and feeling a great deal of gratitude from such a devoted readership. Aloha in the deeper meaning of the word.
End Transmission .......
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10 - CIA Requires Secrecy To Conceal Its Own Crimes
by Sherwood Ross
If the CIA routinely lies to the American people, maybe that’s because its got so much to lie about, like killing millions of innocent human beings around the world. As far back as December, 1968, the CIA’s own Covert Operations Study Group gave a secret report to president-elect Richard Nixon that conceded, “The impression of many Americans, especially in the intellectual community and among the youth, that the United States is engaging in ‘dirty tricks’ tends to alienate them from their government.” According to Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy of Ashes”(Anchor), the report went on to say, “Our credibility and our effectiveness in this role is necessarily damaged to the extent that it becomes known that we are secretly intervening in what may be (or appear to be) the internal affairs of others.”
President Bill Clinton, who first gave the CIA the green light to launch its illegal “renditions” (kidnappings,) told the nation on the occasion of the Agency’s 50th birthday (1997), “By necessity, the American people will never know the full story of your courage.” (Courage? For 22 agents to grab one Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan, Italy, and ship him abroad to be tortured?) Anyway, presidents who authorize criminal acts by the CIA, as virtually all have done since its founding in 1947, don’t want the truth out, either, lest knowledge of those “dirty tricks” sicken and revolt the American people when they find out what crimes the Agency is perpetrating with their tax dollars. As former CIA agent Philip Agee once put it, “The CIA is the President’s secret army.” This point was underscored at a luncheon by President Gerald Ford himself, which he hosted for New York Times top editors on Jan. 16, 1975. According to Weiner, Ford told them the reputation of every President since Truman could be ruined if the secrets became public. Asked by an editor, like what? Ford replied “like assassinations.”
One reason the Agency seeks to hide its operations is that it sadly is often guilty as charged. For example, take its complicity in the murders of American missionaries in Peru. As Reuters reported Nov. 21, 2008:
“The CIA obstructed inquiries into its role in the shooting down of an aircraft carrying a family of U.S. missionaries in Peru in 2001, the agency’s inspector general(IG) has concluded. The (IG’s) report said a CIA-backed program in Peru targeting drug runners was so poorly run that many suspect aircraft were shot down by Peruvian air force jets without proper checks being made first.” A small plane carrying Veronica Bowers, her husband Jim, their son Cory and infant daughter Charity was shot down by a Peruvian jet on April 20, 2001, after it was tracked by a CIA surveillance plane that suspected it was carrying drugs. Veronica and Charity Bowers were killed, while their pilot, Kevin Donaldson, who crash-landed the bullet-riddled plane into the Amazon River, was badly injured. The IG’s report said that in the aftermath of the 2001 incident the CIA sought to characterize it as a one-time mistake in an otherwise well-run program. “In fact this was not the case. The routine disregard of the required intercept procedures … led to the rapid shooting down of target aircraft without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life,” the report from the Agency’s own IG said. (One might ask why the CIA didn’t wait for the plane to land to interrogate the passengers?)
The kicker in the Reuters account is “The IG said the CIA found ‘sustained and significant’ violations of procedure in its own internal investigation but had denied Congress, the National Security Council and the Justice Department access to its findings.” This raises the question of whether the CIA has become so powerful it can withhold findings even from the Justice Department and Congress? The answer is that it can, has, and likely continues to do so, because it is indeed both powerful and influential. After all, with the exception of President Clinton, who abetted the CIA’s crimes, presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush Jr., and Barrack Obama all have been directly on the CIA payroll as employees at one time or another. Bush Sr., of course, headed the Agency during 1976-77. Bush Jr. worked for a CIA front in Alaska, and President Obama worked for CIA front Business International Corporation after he got out of college.
The CIA’s influence is such that it can successfully forbid other agencies of government to conceal its crimes if they find out about them. Example: “The Drug Enforcement Administration(DEA) knew about and helped cover up the CIA’s involvement in Guatemala’s drug war murders, a former DEA agent said,” the AP reported on July 23, 1996. Although the DEA denied the allegations, Celerino Castillo, who was a special DEA agent assigned to Guatemala, said he and other DEA agents there “were aware of specific murders committed by the Guatemala military with CIA involvement and were ordered to lie to keep the crimes secret.” AP said the Intelligence Oversight Board issued a report stating CIA agents in Guatemala “were credibly alleged” to have ordered, planned or participated in human rights violations such as murder, torture and kidnapping.” (I.e., Castillo’s charges were true.) So it has long since gotten to the point that officials of other U.S. agents cannot report the CIA’s crimes either, as if they were under a Mafia oath of secrecy.
CIA employees themselves are forbidden by secrecy agreements (under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act passed under President Ronald Reagan) to write anything about the Agency without first clearing it with a CIA publications review board. Accordingly, the CIA recently cracked down on a former officer who wrote under the pseudonym “Ishmael Jones.” His “crime” was to publish two years ago “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.” The Associated Press quotes Jones as saying, “CIA censors attack this book because it exposes the CIA as a place to get rich, with billions of taxpayer dollars wasted or stolen in espionage programs that produce nothing.” Denying the truth, however, is a long established CIA practice. John Stockwell, for 13 years a CIA station chief in Angola or a top man in Viet Nam, said in a lecture, “What I ran into…was a corruption in the CIA and the intelligence business…what I found was that the CIA, us, the case officers, were not permitted to report about the corruption in the South Vietnamese army.”
Whether the Agency’s John Stockwell, Ishmael Jones or DEA’s Celerino Castillo, we note that many of the CIA’s critics are former American intelligence officers who have seen too much, men apparently with a conscience and respect for human rights. Stockwell, a former Marine who held high posts in the field for the CIA was in a position to know when he charged that over the years the CIA has killed “millions” of innocents. He says the victims were largely “people of the Third World…that have the misfortune of being born in the Metumba mountains of the Congo, in the jungles of Southeast Asia…in the hills of northern Nicaragua…most of (whom) couldn’t give you an intelligent definition of communism or of capitalism.” Stockwell estimated the CIA has perpetrated “10 to 20 thousand covert actions” between 1961, about the time of its Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco, and 1987.
Stockwell concludes “We are responsible for doing these things on a massive basis to people of the world…we create a CIA, a secret police, we give them a vast budget, and we let them go and run these (covert) programs in our name and we pretend like we don’t know it’s going on…And we’re just as responsible for these 1 to 3 million people we’ve slaughtered and for all the people we’ve tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was of the people that they slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide.”
Is it? The Obama administration apparently has no plans to expose and bring to trial past CIA killers and torturers, much less those who obstructed justice by destroying tapes of their torture or lying to Congress about it. This is the same country—which is now waging war in four or five Middle East nations and has been responsible for the violent and bloody overthrow of dozens of foreign governments—that keeps a quarter of a million pot smokers in prison who have never hurt another human being in their lives. Pardon me if I ask whether my native land has not, in fact, become a lunatic asylum run by the criminally insane? #
Sherwood Ross is director of the Anti-War News Service. He formerly worked for major dailies and wire services. To contribute to his news service or comment, reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com
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11 - The Laws Against Non-Jews
"Chapter 5"
Jewish History, Jewish Religion:
The Weight of Three Thousand Years
by Professor Israel Shahak
About the Author:
Israel Shahak was born on April 28, 1933 in Warsaw, Poland. In 1943-5, the Nazis in the Poniatowo and Bergen–Belsen concentration camps imprisoned Shahak and his parents. The 12–year–old Shahak and his mother immigrated to Palestine after the liberation of the camps in 1945. In the 1960s, while working as Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University, Shahak became one of Israel´s leading voices of dissent. In 1970 he was elected chairman of the Israeli Human and Civil Rights League, and spent the next three decades strongly advocating equality and civil rights. In the 1990s, Shahak emerged as one of the strongest critics of the Oslo ‘peace process’, which he denounced as a fraud and a vehicle for making the Israeli occupation more efficient.
Shahak gained a wide international audience through his regular “Translations from the Hebrew Press”, which gave the non-Hebrew speaking world a unique glimpse into the extreme and racist rhetoric about Arabs, Palestinians and Jewish supremacy that characterizes much of ‘mainstream’ discourse in Israel. The translations also clarified Israeli strategic thinking and policy goals in a manner that directly contradicted official ‘hasbara‘ (propaganda), which presented Israel as a besieged state struggling only for peace and survival. Shahak´s writings continuously exposed and denounced Israel as an expansionist, chauvinist and racist state bent on the domination of the surrounding Arab peoples, especially the Palestinians. His recent books, including Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies (Pluto Press, 1997), Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (Pluto Press, 1997) and Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (Pluto Press, 1999), provide an invaluable insight into Israeli discourse and policy. Shahak explained, “After 1967, when I ceased being just a scientist and became a political being, my first reason was that after 1967 the Israeli aim was to dominate is the Middle East, which every rational human being knows is impossible. My second reason was that there must be a Palestinian state.” Edward Said observed “As someone who spoke and wrote about Palestine, I could not have done what I did without Shahak's papers and of course his example as a seeker after truth, knowledge, and justice. It is as simple as that, and I therefore owe him a gigantic debt of gratitude.”
Israel Shahak died on July 2, 2001, aged 68, from complications caused by diabetes.
This Chapter:
This is the 5th chapter of "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years", a book first published in 1994 by Pluto Press, London U.K. For full text of this book:
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/jewhis1.htm
Titles of this chapter:
Murder and Genocide
Saving of Life
Desecrating the Sabbath to Save Life
Sexual Offenses
Status (position of authority)
Money and Property
Gentiles in the Land of lsrael
Abuse
Attitudes to Christianity and Islam
Notes
AS EXPLAINED in Chapter 3, the Halakhah, that is the legal system of classical Judaism - as practiced by virtually all Jews from the 9th century to the end of the 18th and as maintained to this very day in the form of Orthodox Judaism - is based primarily on the Babylonian Talmud. However, because of the unwieldy complexity of the legal disputations recorded in the Talmud, more manageable codifications of talmudic laws became necessary and were indeed compiled by successive generations of rabbinical scholars. Some of these have acquired great authority and are in general use. For this reasons we shall refer for the most part to such compilations (and their most reputable commentaries) rather than directly to the Talmud. It is however correct to assume that the compilation referred to reproduces faithfully the meaning of the talmudic text and the additions made by later scholars on the basis of that meaning.
The earliest code of talmudic law which is still of major importance is the Misbneh Tarab written by Moses Maimonides in the late 12th century. The most authoritative code, widely used to date as a handbook, is the Shulhan 'Arukh composed by R. Yosef Karo in the late 16th century as a popular condensation of his own much more voluminous Beys Yosef which was intended for the advanced scholar. The Shulhan 'Arukh is much commented upon; in addition to classical commentaries dating from the 17th century, there is an important 20th century one, Mishnab Berurab. Finally, the Talmudic Encyclopedia - a modern compilation published in Israel from the 1950s and edited by the country's greatest Orthodox rabbinical scholars - is a good compendium of the whole talmudic literature.
Murder and Genocide
ACCORDING TO THE JEWISH religion, the murder of a Jew is a capital offense and one of the three most heinous sins (the other two being idolatry and adultery). Jewish religious courts and secular authorities are commanded to punish, even beyond the limits of the ordinary administration of justice, anyone guilty of murdering a Jew. A Jew who indirectly causes the death of another Jew is, however, only guilty of what talmudic law calls a sin against the 'laws of Heaven', to be punished by God rather than by man.
When the victim is a Gentile, the position is quite different. A Jew who murders a Gentile is guilty only of a sin against the laws of Heaven, not punishable by a court.1 To cause indirectly the death of a Gentile is no sin at all.2
Thus, one of the two most important commentators on the Shulhan Arukh explains that when it comes to a Gentile, 'one must not lift one's hand to harm him, but one may harm him indirectly, for instance by removing a ladder after he had fallen into a crevice .., there is no prohibition here, because it was not done directly:3 He points out, however, that an act leading indirectly to a Gentile's death is forbidden if it may cause the spread of hostility towards Jews.4
A Gentile murderer who happens to be under Jewish jurisdiction must be executed whether the victim was Jewish or not. However, if the victim was Gentile and the murderer converts to Judaism, he is not punished.5
All this has a direct and practical relevance to the realities of the State of Israel. Although the state's criminal laws make no distinction between Jew and Gentile, such distinction is certainly made by Orthodox rabbis, who in guiding their flock follow the Halakhah. Of special importance is the advice they give to religious soldiers.
Since even the minimal interdiction against murdering a Gentile outright applies only to 'Gentiles with whom we [the Jews] are not at war', various rabbinical commentators in the past drew the logical conclusion that in wartime all Gentiles belonging to a hostile population may, or even should be killed.6 Since 1973 this doctrine is being publicly propagated for the guidance of religious Israeli soldiers. The first such official exhortation was included in a booklet published by the Central Region Command of the Israeli Army, whose area includes the West Bank. In this booklet the Command's Chief Chaplain writes:
When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that those civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah they may and even should be killed ... Under no circumstances should an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilized ... In war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.7
The same doctrine is expounded in the following exchange of letters between a young Israeli soldier and his rabbi, published in the yearbook of one of the country's most prestigious religious colleges, Midrashiyyat No'am, where many leaders and activists of the National Religious Party and Gush Emunim have been educated.8
Letter from the soldier Moshe to Rabbi Sbipn 'on Weiser '
With God's help, to His Honor, my dear Rabbi,
'First I would like to ask how you and your family are. I hope all is well. I am, thank God, feeling well. A long time I have not written. Please forgive me. Sometimes I recall the verse "when shall I come and appear before God?'9 I hope, without being certain, that I shall come during one of the leaves. I must do so.
'In one of the discussions in our group, there was a debate about the "purity of weapons" and we discussed whether it is permitted to kill unarmed men - or women and children? Or perhaps we should take revenge on the Arabs? And then everyone answered according to his own understanding. I could not arrive at a clear decision, whether Arabs should be treated like the Amalekites, meaning that one is permitted to murder [sic ] them until their remembrance is blotted out from under heaven,10 or perhaps one should do as in a just war, in which one kills only the soldiers?
'A second problem I have is whether I am permitted to put myself in danger by allowing a woman to stay alive? For there have been cases when women threw hand grenades. Or am I permitted to give water to an Arab who put his hand up? For there may be reason to fear that he only means to deceive me and will kill me, and such things have happened.
'I conclude with a warm greeting to the rabbi and all his family. - Moshe.'
Reply of Shim'on Weiser' to Moshe
'With the help of Heaven. Dear Moshe, Greetings.
'I am starting this letter this evening although I know I cannot finish it this evening, both because I am busy and because I would like to make it a long letter, to answer your questions in full, for which purpose I shall have to copy out some of the sayings of our sages, of blessed memory, and interpret them.11
'The non-Jewish nations have a custom according to which war has its own rules, like those of a game, like the rules of football or basketball. But according to the sayings of our sages, of blessed memory, [ ... ] war for us is not a game but a vital necessity, and only by this standard must we decide how to wage it. On the one hand .... ] we seem to learn that if a Jew murders a Gentile, he is regarded as a murderer and, except for the fact that no court has the right to punish him, the gravity of the deed is like that of any other murder. But we find in the very same authorities in another place [ ... that Rabbi Shim'on used to say: "The best of Gentiles - kill him; the best of snakes dash out its brains."
'It might perhaps be argued that the expression "kill" in the saying of R. Shim'on is only figurative and should not be taken literally but as meaning "oppress" or some similar attitude, and in this way we also avoid a contradiction with the authorities quoted earlier. Or one might argue that this saying, though meant literally, is [merely] his own personal opinion, disputed by other sages [quoted earlier]. But we find the true explanation in the Tosalot.12 There [ .... ] we learn the following comment on the talmudic pronouncement that Gentiles who fall into a well should not be helped out, but neither should they be pushed into the well to be killed, which means that they should neither be saved from death nor killed directly. And the Tosafot write as follows:
"And if it is queried [because] in another place it was said The best of Gentiles - kill him, then the answer is that this [saying] is meant for wartime." [ ... ]
'According to the commentators of the Tosafot, a distinction must be made between wartime and peace, so that although during peace time it is forbidden to kill Gentiles, in a case that occurs in wartime it is a mitzvah [imperative, religious duty] to kill them.[...]
'And this is the difference between a Jew and a Gentile: although the rule "Whoever comes to kill you, kill him first" applies to a Jew, as was said in Tractate Sanhedrin [of the Talmud], page 72a, still it only applies to him if there is [actual] ground to fear that he is coming to kill you. But a Gentile during wartime is usually to be presumed so, except when it is quite clear that he has no evil intent. This is the rule of "purity of weapons" according to the Halakhah - and not the alien conception which is now accepted in the Israeli army and which has been the cause of many [Jewish] casualties. I enclose a newspaper cutting with the speech made last week in the Knesset by Rabbi Kalman Kahana, which shows in a very lifelike - and also painful - way how this "purity of weapons" has caused deaths.
'I conclude here, hoping that you will not find the length of this letter irksome. This subject was being discussed even without your letter, but your letter caused me to write up the whole matter.
'Be in peace, you and all Jews, and [I hope to] see you soon, as you say. Yours - Shim'on.
Reply of Moshe to R. Shim'on Weiser
'To His Honor, my dear Rabbi,
'First I hope that you and your family are in health and are all right.
'I have received your long letter and am grateful for your personal watch over me, for I assume that you write to many, and most of your time is taken up with your studies in your own program.
'Therefore my thanks to you are doubly deep.
'As for the letter itself, I have understood it as follows:
'In wartime I am not merely permitted, but enjoined to kill every Arab man and woman whom I chance upon, if there is reason to fear that they help in the war against us, directly or indirectly. And as far as I am concerned I have to kill them even if that might result in an involvement with the military law. I think that this matter of the purity of weapons should be transmitted to educational institutions, at least the religious ones, so that they should have a position about this subject and so that they will not wander in the broad fields of "logic", especially on this subject; and the rule has to be explained as it should be followed in practice. For, I am sorry to say, I have seen different types of "logic" here even among the religious comrades. I do hope that you shall be active in this, so that our boys will know the line of their ancestors clearly and unambiguously.
'I conclude here, hoping that when the [training] course ends, in about a month, I shall be able to come to the yeshivah [talmudic college]. Greetings - Moshe.'
Of course, this doctrine of the Halakhah on murder clashes, in principle, not only with Israel's criminal law but also - as hinted in the letters just quoted - with official military standing regulations. However, there can be little doubt that in practice this doctrine does exert an influence on the administration of justice, especially by military authorities. The fact is that in all cases where Jews have, in a military or paramilitary context, murdered Arab non-combatants - including cases of mass murder such as that in Kafr Qasim in 1956 - the murderers, if not let off altogether, received extremely light sentences or won far-reaching remissions, reducing their punishment to next to nothing.13
Saving of Life
THIS SUBJECT - the supreme value of human life and the obligation of every human being to do the outmost to save the life of a fellow human - is of obvious importance in itself. It is also of particular interest in a Jewish context, in view of the fact that since the Second World War Jewish opinion has - in some cases justly, in others unjustly - condemned 'the whole world' or at least all Europe for standing by when Jews were being massacred. Let us therefore examine what the Halakhah has to say on this subject.
According to the Halakhah, the duty to save the life of a fellow Jew is paramount.14 It supersedes all other religious obligations and interdictions, excepting only the prohibitions against the three most heinous sins of adultery (including incest), murder and idolatry.
As for Gentiles, the basic talmudic principle is that their lives must not be saved, although it is also forbidden to murder them outright.15 The Talmud itself expresses this in the maxim 'Gentiles are neither to be lifted [out of a well] nor hauled down [into it]'. Maimonides16 explains:
"As for Gentiles with whom we are not at war ... their death must not be caused, but it is forbidden to save them if they are at the point of death; if, for example, one of them is seen falling into the sea, he should not be rescued, for it is written: 'neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy fellow'17 - but [a Gentile] is not thy fellow."
In particular, a Jewish doctor must not treat a Gentile patient. Maimonides - himself an illustrious physician - is quite explicit on this; in another passage18 he repeats the distinction between 'thy fellow' and a Gentile, and concludes: 'and from this learn ye, that it is forbidden to heal a Gentile even for payment...'
However, the refusal of a Jew - particularly a Jewish doctor - to save the life of a Gentile may, if it becomes known, antagonize powerful Gentiles and so put Jews in danger. Where such danger exists, the obligation to avert it supersedes the ban on helping the Gentile. Thus Maimonides continues: ' ... but if you fear him or his hostility, cure him for payment, though you are forbidden to do so without payment.' In fact, Maimonides himself was Saladin's personal physician. His insistence on demanding payment - presumably in order to make sure that the act is not one of human charity but an unavoidable duty - is however not absolute. For in another passage he allows Gentile whose hostility is feared to be treated 'even gratis, if it is unavoidable'.
The whole doctrine - the ban on saving a Gentile's life or healing him, and the suspension of this ban in cases where there is fear of hostility - is repeated (virtually verbatim) by other major authorities, including the 14th century Arba'ah Turirn and Karo's Beyt Yosef and Shulhan 'Arukh.19 Beyt Yosef adds, quoting Maimonides: 'And it is permissible to try out a drug on a heathen, if this serves a purpose'; and this is repeated also by the famous R. Moses Isserles.
The consensus of halakhic authorities is that the term 'Gentiles' in the above doctrine refers to all non-Jews. A lone voice of dissent is that of R. Moses Rivkes, author of a minor commentary on the Shulhan Arukh, who writes.20
Our sages only said this about heathens, who in their day worshipped idols and did not believe in the Jewish Exodus from Egypt or in the creation of the world ex nihilo. But the Gentiles in whose [protective] shade we, the people of Israel, are exiled and among whom we are scattered do believe in the creation of the world ex nihilo and in the Exodus and in several principles of our own religion and they pray to the Creator of heaven and earth ... Not only is there no interdiction against helping them, but we are even obliged to pray for their safety.
This passage, dating from the second half of the 17th century, is a favorite quote of apologetic scholars.21 Actually, it does not go nearly as far as the apologetics pretend, for it advocates removing the ban on saving a Gentile's life, rather than making it mandatory as in the case of a Jew; and even this liberality extends only to Christians and Muslims but not the majority of human beings. Rather, what it does show is that there was a way in which the harsh doctrine of the Halakhah could have been progressively liberalized. But as a matter of fact the majority of later halakhic authorities, far from extending Rivkes' leniency to other human groups, have rejected it altogether.
Desecrating the Sabbath to Save Life
DESECRATING THE SABBATH - that is, doing work that would otherwise be banned on Saturday - becomes a duty when the need to save a Jew's life demands it.
The problem of saving a Gentile's life on the sabbath is not raised in the Talmud as a main issue, since it is in any case forbidden even on a weekday; it does however enter as a complicating factor in two connections.
First, there is a problem where a group of people are in danger, and it is possible (but not certain) that there is at least one Jew among them: should the sabbath be desecrated in order to save them? There is an extensive discussion of such cases. Following earlier authorities, including Maimonides and the Talmud itself, the Shulhan Arukh 22 decides these matters according to the weight of probabilities. For example, suppose nine Gentiles and one Jew live in the same building. One Saturday the building collapses; one of the ten - it is not known which one - is away, but the other nine are trapped under the rubble. Should the rubble be cleared, thus desecrating the sabbath, seeing that the Jew may not be under it (he may have been the one that got away)? The Shulhan 'Arukh says that it should, presumably because the odds that the Jew is under the rubble are high (nine to one). But now suppose that nine have got away and only one - again, it is not known which one - is trapped. Then there is no duty to clear the rubble, presumably because this time there are long odds (nine to one) against the Jew being the person trapped. Similarly: 'If a boat containing some Jews is seen to be in peril upon the sea, it is a duty incumbent upon all to desecrate the sabbath in order to save it.' However, the great R. 'Aqiva Eiger (died 1837) comments that this applies only 'when it is known that there are Jews on board. But ... if nothing at all is known about the identity of those on board, [the sabbath] must not be desecrated, for one acts according to [the weight of probabilities, and] the majority of people in the world are Gentiles.23 Thus, since there are very long odds against any of the passengers being Jewish, they must be allowed to drown.
Secondly, the provision that a Gentile may be saved or cared for in order to avert the danger of hostility is curtailed on the sabbath. A Jew called upon to help a Gentile on a weekday may have to comply because to admit that he is not allowed, in principle, to save the life of a non-Jew would be to invite hostility. But on Saturday the Jew can use sabbath observance as a plausible excuse. A paradigmatic case discussed at length in the Talmud24is that of a Jewish midwife invited to help a Gentile woman in childbirth. The upshot is that the midwife is allowed to help on a weekday 'for fear of hostility', but on the sabbath she must not do so, because she can excuse herself by saying: 'We are allowed to desecrate the sabbath only for our own, who observe the sabbath, but for your people, who do not keep the sabbath, we are not allowed to desecrate it.' Is this explanation a genuine one or merely an excuse? Maimonides clearly thinks that it is just an excuse, which can be used even if the task that the midwife is invited to do does not actually involve any desecration of the sabbath. Presumably, the excuse will work just as well even in this case, because Gentiles are generally in the dark as to precisely which kinds of work are banned for Jews on the sabbath. At any rate, he decrees: 'A Gentile woman must not be helped in childbirth on the sabbath, even for payment; nor must one fear hostility, even when [such help involves] no desecration of the sabbath.' The Shulhan 'Arukh decrees likewise.25
Nevertheless, this sort of excuse could not always be relied upon to do the trick and avert Gentile hostility. Therefore certain important rabbinical authorities had to relax the rules to some extent and allowed Jewish doctors to treat Gentiles on the sabbath even if this involved doing certain types of work normally banned on that day. This partial relaxation applied particularly to rich and powerful Gentile patients, who could not be fobbed off so easily and whose hostility could be dangerous.
Thus, R. Yo'el Sirkis, author of Bayit Hadash and one of the greatest rabbis of his time (Poland, 17th century), decided that 'mayors, petty nobles and aristocrats' should be treated on the sabbath, because of the fear of their hostility which involves 'some danger'. But in other cases, especially when the Gentile can be fobbed off with an evasive excuse, a Jewish doctor would commit 'an unbearable sin' by treating him on the sabbath. Later in the same century, a similar verdict was given in the French city of Metz, whose two parts were connected by a pontoon bridge. Jews are not normally allowed to cross such a bridge on the sabbath, but the rabbi of Metz decided that a Jewish doctor may nevertheless do so 'if he is called to the great governor': since the doctor is known to cross the bridge for the sake of his Jewish patients, the governor's hostility could be aroused if the doctor refused to do so for his sake. Under the authoritarian rule of Louis XIV, it was evidently important to have the goodwill of his intendant; the feelings of lesser Gentiles were of little importance.26
Hokhrnat Shloinoh, a 19th century commentary on the Shulhan 'Arukh, mentions a similarly strict interpretation of the concept 'hostility' in connection with the Karaites, a small heretical Jewish sect. According to this view, their lives must not be saved if that would involve desecration of the sabbath, 'for "hostility" applies only to the heathen, who are many against us, and we are delivered into their hands .. But the Karaites are few and we are not delivered into their hands, [so] the fear of hostility does not apply to them at all.'27 In fact, the absolute ban on desecrating the sabbath in order to save the life of a Karaite is still in force today, as we shall see.
The whole subject is extensively discussed in the responsa of R. Moshe Sofer - better known as 'Ilatam Sofer' - the famous rabbi of Pressburg (Bratislava) who died in 1832. His conclusions are of more than historical interest, since in 1966 one of his responsa was publicly endorsed by the then Chief Rabbi of Israel as 'a basic institution of the Halakhah'.28 The particular question asked of Ratam Sofer concerned the situation in Turkey, where it was decreed during one of the wars that in each township or village there should be midwives on call, ready to hire themselves out to any woman in labor. Some of these midwives were Jewish; should they hire themselves out to help Gentile women on weekdays and on the sabbath?
In his Tesponsum,29 Hatam Sofer first concludes, after careful investigation, that the Gentiles concerned - that is, Ottoman Christians and Muslims - are not only idolators 'who definitely worship other gods and thus should "neither be lifted [out of a well] nor hauled down",' but are likened by him to the Amalekites, so that the talmudic ruling 'it is forbidden to multiply the seed of Amalek' applies to them. In principle, therefore, they should not be helped even on week- days. However, in practice it is 'permitted' to heal Gentiles and help them in labor, if they have doctors and midwives of their own, who could be called instead of the Jewish ones. For if Jewish doctors and midwives refused to attend to Gentiles, the only result would be loss of income to the former - which is of course undesirable. This applies equally on weekdays and on the sabbath, provided no desecration of the sabbath is involved. However, in the latter case the sabbath can serve as an excuse to 'mislead the heathen woman and say that it would involve desecration of the sabbath'.
In connection with cases that do actually involve desecration of the sabbath, Hatam Sofer - like other authorities - makes a distinction between two categories of work banned on the sabbath. First, there is work banned by the Torah, the biblical text (as interpreted by the Talmud); such work may only be performed in very exceptional cases, if failing to do so would cause an extreme danger of hostility towards Jews. Then there are types of work which are only banned by the sages who extended the original law of the Torah; the attitude towards breaking such bans is generally more lenient.
Another response of Hatam Sofer deals with the question whether it is permissible for a Jewish doctor to travel by carriage on the sabbath in order to heal a Gentile. After pointing out that under certain conditions traveling by horse-drawn carriage on the sabbath only violates a ban imposed 'by the sages' rather than by the Torah, he goes on to recall Maimonides' pronouncement that Gentile women in labor must not be helped on the sabbath, even if no desecration of the sabbath is involved, and states that the same principle applies to all medical practice, not just midwifery. But he then voices the fear that if this were put into practice, 'it would arouse undesirable hostility,' for 'the Gentiles would not accept the excuse of sabbath observance,' and 'would say that the blood of an idolator has little worth in our eyes'. Also, perhaps more importantly, Gentile doctors might take revenge on their Jewish patients. Better excuses must be found. He advises a Jewish doctor who is called to treat a Gentile patient out of town on the sabbath to excuse himself by saying that he is required to stay in town in order to look after his other patients, 'for he can use this in order to say, "I cannot move because of the danger to this or that patient, who needs a doctor first, and I may not desert my charge"
With such an excuse there is no fear of danger, for it is a reasonable pretext, commonly given by doctors who are late in arriving because another patient needed them first.' Only 'if it is impossible to give any excuse' is the doctor permitted to travel by carriage on the sabbath in order to treat a Gentile.
In the whole discussion, the main issue is the excuses that should be made, not the actual healing or the welfare of the patient. And throughout it is taken for granted that it is all right to deceive Gentiles rather than treat them, so long as 'hostility' can be averted.30
Of course, in modern times most Jewish doctors are not religious and do not even know of these rules. Moreover, it appears that even many who are religious prefer to their credit - to abide by the Hippocratic oath rather than by the precepts of their fanatic rabbis.32 However, the rabbis' guidance cannot fail to have some influence on some doctors; and there are certainly many who, while not actually following that guidance, choose not to protest against it publicly.
All this is far from being a dead issue. The most up-to-date halakhic position on these matters is contained in a recent concise and authoritative book published in English under the title Jewish Medical Law.33 This book, which bears the imprint of the prestigious Israeli foundation Mossad Harav Kook, is based on the response of R. Eli'ezer Yehuda Waldenberg, Chief Justice of the Rabbinical District Court of Jerusalem. A few passages of this work deserve special mention.
First, 'it is forbidden to desecrate the sabbath ... for a Karaite.'34 This is stated bluntly, absolutely and without any further qualification. Presumably the hostility of this small sect makes no difference, so they should be allowed to die rather than be treated on the sabbath.
As for Gentiles: 'According to the ruling stated in the Talmud and Codes of Jewish Law, it is forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath - whether violating Biblical or rabbinic law - in order to save the life of a dangerously ill gentile patient. It is also forbidden to deliver the baby of a gentile women on the Sabbath.'35
But this is qualified by a dispensation: 'However, today it is permitted to desecrate the Sabbath on behalf of a Gentile by performing actions prohibited by rabbinic law, for by so doing one prevents ill feelings from arising between Jew and Gentile.'36
This does not go very far, because medical treatment very often involves acts banned on the sabbath by the Torah itself, which are not covered by this dispensation. There are, we are told, 'some' halakhic authorities who extend the dispensation to such acts as well - but this is just another way of saying that most halakhic authorities, and the ones that really count, take the opposite view. However, all is not lost. Jewish Medical Law has a truly breathtaking solution to this difficulty.
The solution hangs upon a nice point of talmudic law. A ban imposed by the Torah on performing a given act on the sabbath is presumed to apply only when the primary intention in performing it is the actual outcome of the act. (For example. grinding wheat is presumed to be banned by the Torah only if the purpose is actually to obtain flour.) On the other hand, if the performance of the same act is merely incidental to some other purpose (melakhah seh'eynah tzrikhah legufah) then the act changes its status - it is still forbidden, to be sure, but only by the sages rather than by the Torah itself. Therefore: In order to avoid any transgression of the law, there is a legally acceptable method of rendering treatment on behalf of a gentile patient even when dealing with violation of Biblical Law. It is suggested that at the time that the physician is providing the necessary care, his intentions should not primarily be to cure the patient, but to protect himself and the Jewish people from accusations of religious discrimination and severe retaliation that may endanger him in particular and the Jewish people in general. With this intention, any act on the physician's part becomes an act whose actual outcome is not its primary purpose' ... which is forbidden on Sabbath only by rabbinic law.37
This hypocritical substitute for the Hippocratic oath is also proposed by a recent authoritative Hebrew book.38
Although the facts were mentioned at least twice in the Israeli press,39the Israeli Medical Association has remained silent.
Having treated in some detail the supremely important subject of the attitude of the Halakhah to a Gentile's very life, we shall deal much more briefly with other halakhic rules which discriminate against Gentiles. Since the number of such rules is very large, we shall mention only the more important ones.
Sexual Offenses
SEXUAL INTERCOURSE between a married Jewish woman and any man other than her husband is a capital offense for both parties, and one of the three most heinous sins. The status of Gentile women is very different. The Halakhah presumes all Gentiles to be utterly promiscuous and the verse 'whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue [of semen] is like the issue of horses'40 is applied to them. Whether a Gentile woman is married or not makes no difference, since as far as Jews are concerned the very concept of matrimony does not apply to Gentiles ('There is no matrimony for a heathen'). Therefore, the concept of adultery also does not apply to intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman; rather, the Talmud41 equates such intercourse to the sin of bestiality. (For the same reason, Gentiles are generally presumed not to have certain paternity.)
According to the Talmudic Encyclopedia: 42 'He who has carnal knowledge of the wife of a Gentile is not liable to the death penalty, for it is written: "thy fellow's wife"43 rather than the alien's wife; and even the precept that a man "shall cleave unto his wife"44 which is addressed to the Gentiles does not apply to a Jew, just there is no matrimony for a heathen; and although a married Gentile woman is forbidden to the Gentiles, in any case a Jew is exempted.'
This does not imply that sexual intercourse between a Jewish man and a Gentile woman is permitted - quite the contrary. But the main punishment is inflicted on the Gentile woman; she must be executed, even if she was raped by the Jew: 'If a Jew has coitus with a Gentile woman, whether she be a child of three or an adult, whether married or unmarried, and even if he is a minor aged only nine years and one day - because he had willful coitus with her, she must be killed, as is the case with a beast, because through her a Jew got into trouble'45 The Jew, however, must be flogged, and if he is a Kohen (member of the priestly tribe) he must receive double the number of lashes, because he has committed a double offense: a Kohen must not have intercourse with a prostitute, and all Gentile women are presumed to be prostitutes.46
Status
ACCORDING TO THE HALAKHAH, Jews must not (if they can help it) allow a Gentile to be appointed to any position of authority, however small, over Jews. (The two stock examples are commander over ten soldiers in the Jewish army' and 'superintendent of an irrigation ditch'.) Significantly, this particular rule applies also to converts to Judaism and to their descendants (through the female line) for ten generations or 'so long as the descent is known'.
Gentiles are presumed to be congenital liars, and are disqualified from testifying in a rabbinical court. In this respect their position is, in theory, the same as that of Jewish women, slaves and minors; but in practice it is actually worse. A Jewish woman is nowadays admitted as a witness to certain matters of fact, when the rabbinical court 'believes' her; a Gentile - never.
A problem therefore arises when a rabbinical court needs to establish a fact for which there are only Gentile witnesses. An important example of this is in cases concerning widows: by Jewish religious law, a woman can be declared a widow - and hence free to remarry - only if the death of her husband is proven with certainty by means of a witness who saw him die or identified his corpse. However, the rabbinical court will accept the hearsay evidence of a Jew who testifies to having heard the fact in question mentioned by a Gentile eyewitness, provided the court is satisfied that the latter was speaking casually ('goy mesiah left tummd) rather than in reply to a direct question; for a Gentile's direct answer to a Jew's direct question is presumed to be a lie.47 If necessary, a Jew (preferably a rabbi) will actually undertake to chat up the Gentile eyewitness and, without asking a direct question, extract from him a casual statement of the fact at issue.
Money and Property
(1) Gifts. The Talmud bluntly forbids giving a gift to a Gentile. However, classical rabbinical authorities bent this rule because it is customary among businessmen to give gifts to business contacts. It was therefore laid down that a Jew may give a gift to a Gentile acquaintance, since this is regarded not as a true gift but as a sort of investment, for which some return is expected. Gifts to 'unfamiliar Gentiles' remain forbidden. A broadly similar rule applies to almsgiving. Giving alms to a Jewish beggar is an important religious duty. Alms to Gentile beggars are merely permitted for the sake of peace. However there are numerous rabbinical warnings against allowing the Gentile poor to become 'accustomed' to receiving alms from Jews, so that it should be possible to withhold such alms without arousing undue hostility.
(2) Taking of interest. Anti-Gentile discrimination in this matter has become largely theoretical, in view of the dispensation (explained in Chapter 3) which in effect allows interest to be exacted even from a Jewish borrower. However, it is still the case that granting an interest-free loan to a Jew is recommended as an act of charity, but from a Gentile borrower it is mandatory to exact interest. In fact, many - though not all - rabbinical authorities, including Maimonides, consider it mandatory to exact as much usury as possible on a loan to a Gentile.
(3) Lost property. If a Jew finds property whose probable owner is Jewish, the finder is strictly enjoined to make a positive effort to return his find by advertising it publicly. In contrast, the Talmud and all the early rabbinical authorities not only allow a Jewish finder to appropriate an article lost by a Gentile, but actually forbid him or her to return it.48 In more recent times, when laws were passed in most countries making it mandatory to return lost articles, the rabbinical authorities instructed Jews to do what these laws say, as an act of civil obedience to the state - but not as a religious duty, that is without making a positive effort to discover the owner if it is not probable that he is Jewish.
(4) Deception in business. It is a grave sin to practice any kind of deception whatsoever against a Jew. Against a Gentile it is only forbidden to practice direct deception. Indirect deception is allowed, unless it is likely to cause hostility towards Jews or insult to the Jewish religion. The paradigmatic example is mistaken calculation of the price during purchase. If a Jew makes a mistake unfavorable to himself, it is one's religious duty to correct him. If a Gentile is spotted making such a mistake, one need not let him know about it, but say 'I rely on your calculation', so as to forestall his hostility in case he subsequently discovers his own mistake.
(5) Fraud. It is forbidden to defraud a Jew by selling or buying at an unreasonable price. However, 'Fraud does not apply to Gentiles, for it is written: "Do not defraud each man his brother";49 but a Gentile who defrauds a Jew should be compelled to make good the fraud, but should not be punished more severely than a Jew [in a similar case].'50
(6) Theft and robbery. Stealing (without violence) is absolutely forbidden - as the Shulhan 'Arukh so nicely puts it: 'even from a Gentile'. Robbery (with violence) is strictly forbidden if the victim is Jewish. However, robbery of a Gentile by a Jew is not forbidden outright but only under certain circumstances such as 'when the Gentiles are not under our rule', but is permitted 'when they are under our rule'. Rabbinical authorities differ among themselves as to the precise details of the circumstances under which a Jew may rob a Gentile, but the whole debate is concerned only with the relative power of Jews and Gentiles rather than with universal considerations of justice and humanity. This may explain why so very few rabbis have protested against the robbery of Palestinian property in Israel: it was backed by overwhelming Jewish power.
Gentiles in the Land of Israel
IN ADDITION TO THE GENERAL anti-Gentile laws, the Halakhah has special laws against Gentiles who live in the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisra'el) or, in some cases, merely pass through it. These laws are designed to promote Jewish supremacy in that country.
The exact geographical definition of the term 'Land of Israel' is much disputed in the Talmud and the talmudic literature, and the debate has continued in modern times between the various shades of zionist opinion. According to the maximalist view, the Land of Israel includes (in addition to Palestine itself) not only the whole of Sinai, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, but also considerable parts of Turkey.51 The more prevalent 'minimalist' interpretation puts the northern border 'only' about half way through Syria and Lebanon, at the latitude of Homs. This view was supported by Ben Gurion. However, even those who thus exclude parts of Syria-Lebanon agree that certain special discriminatory laws (though less oppressive than in the Land of Israel proper) apply to the Gentiles of those parts, because that territory was included in David's kingdom. In all talmudic interpretations the Land of Israel includes Cyprus.
I shall now list a few of the special laws concerning Gentiles in the Land of Israel. Their connection with actual zionist practice will be quite apparent.
The Halakhah forbids Jews to sell immovable property - fields and houses - in the Land of Israel to Gentiles. In Syria, the sale of houses (but not of fields) is permitted.
Leasing a house in the Land of Israel to a Gentile is permitted under two conditions. First, that the house shall not be used for habitation but for other purposes, such as storage. Second, that three or more adjoining houses shall not be so leased.
These and several other rules are explained as follows: ... 'so that you shall not allow them to camp on the ground, for if they do not possess land, their sojourn there will be temporary.'52 Even temporary Gentile presence may only be tolerated 'when the Jews are in exile, or when the Gentiles are more powerful than the Jews,' but when the Jews are more powerful than the Gentiles we are forbidden to let an idolator among us; even a temporary resident or itinerant trader shall not be allowed to pass through our land unless he accepts the seven Noahide precepts,53 for it is written: 'they shall not dwell in thy land'54 that is, not even temporarily. If he accepts the seven Noahide precepts, he becomes a resident alien (ger toshav) but it is forbidden to grant the status of resident alien except at times when the Jubilee is held [that is, when the Temple stands and sacrifices are offered]. However, during times when Jubilees are not held it is forbidden to accept anyone who is not a full convert to Judaism (ger tzedeq).55
It is therefore clear that - exactly as the leaders and sympathizers of Gush Emunim say - the whole question to how the Palestinians ought to be treated is, according to the Halakhah, simply a question of Jewish power: if Jews have sufficient power, then it is their religious duty to expel the Palestinians.
All these laws are often quoted by Israeli rabbis and their zealous followers. For example, the law forbidding the lease of three adjoining houses to Gentiles was solemnly quoted by a rabbinical conference held in 1979 to discuss the Camp David treaties. The conference also declared that according to the Halakhah even the 'autonomy' that Begin was ready to offer to the Palestinians is too liberal. Such pronouncements - which do in fact state correctly the position of the Halakhah - are rarely contested by the Zionist 'left'.
In addition to laws such as those mentioned so far, which are directed at all Gentiles in the Land of Israel, an even greater evil influence arises from special laws against the ancient Canaanites and other nations who lived in Palestine before its conquest by Joshua, as well as against the Amalekites. All those nations must be utterly exterminated, and the Talmud and talmudic literature reiterate the genocidal biblical exhortations with even greater vehemence. Influential rabbis, who have a considerable following among Israeli army officers, identify the Palestinians (or even all Arabs) with those ancient nations, so that commands like 'thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth'56 acquire a topical meaning. In fact, it is not uncommon for reserve soldiers called up to do a tour of duty in the Gaza Strip to be given an 'educational lecture' in which they are told that the Palestinians of Gaza are 'like the Amalekites'. Biblical verses exhorting to genocide of the Midianite57 were solemnly quoted by an important Israeli rabbi in justification of the Qibbiya massacre,58 and this pronouncement has gained wide circulation in the Israeli army. There are many similar examples of bloodthirsty rabbinical pronouncements against the Palestinians, based on these laws.
Abuse
UNDER THIS HEADING I would like to discuss examples of halakhic laws whose most important effect is not so much to prescribe specific anti-Gentile discrimination as to inculcate an attitude of scorn and hatred towards Gentiles. Accordingly. in this section I shall not confine myself to quoting from the most authoritative halakhic sources (as I have done so far) but include also less fundamental works, which are however widely used in religious instruction.
Let us begin with the text of some common prayers. In one of the first sections of the daily morning payer, every devout Jew blesses God for not making him a Gentile.59 The concluding section of the daily prayer (which is also used in the most solemn part of the service on New Year's day and on Yom Kippur) opens with the statement: 'We must praise the Lord of all ... for not making us like the nations of [all] lands ... for they bow down to vanity and nothingness and pray to a god that does not help.'60 The last clause was censored out of the prayer books. but in eastern Europe it was supplied orally, and has now been restored into many Israeli-printed prayer books. In the most important section of the weekday prayer - the 'eighteen blessings' - there is a special curse, originally directed against Christians, Jewish converts to Christianity and other Jewish heretics: 'And may the apostates'61 have no hope, and all the Christians perish instantly'. This formula dates from the end of the 1st century, when Christianity was still a small persecuted sect. Some time before the 14th century it was softened into: 'And may the apostates have no hope. and all the heretics62 perish instantly', and after additional pressure into: 'And may the informers have no hope, and all the heretics perish instantly'. After the establishment of Israel. the process was reversed, and many newly printed prayer books reverted to the second formula, which was also prescribed by many teachers in religious Israeli schools. After 1967, several congregations close to Gush Emunim have restored the first version (so far only verbally, not in print) and now pray daily that the Christians may perish instantly'. This process of reversion happened in the period when the Catholic Church (under Pope John XXIII) removed from its Good Friday service a prayer which asked the Lord to have mercy on Jews, heretics etc. This prayer was thought by most Jewish leaders to be offensive and even antisemitic.
Apart from the fixed daily prayers, a devout Jew must utter special short blessings on various occasions, both good and bad (for example, while putting on a new piece of clothing. eating a seasonal fruit for the first time that year, seeing powerful lightning, hearing bad news, etc.) Some of these occasional prayers serve to inculcate hatred and scorn for all Gentiles, We have mentioned in Chapter 2 the rule according to which a pious Jew must utter curse when passing near a Gentile cemetery, whereas he must bless God when passing near a Jewish cemetery. A similar rule applies to the living; thus, when seeing a large Jewish population a devout Jew must praise God, while upon seeing a large Gentile population he must utter a curse. Nor are buildings exempt: the Talmud lays down63 that a Jew who passes near an inhabited non-Jewish dwelling must ask God to destroy it, whereas if the building is in ruins he must thank the Lord of Vengeance. (Naturally, the rules are reversed for Jewish houses.) This rule was easy to keep for Jewish peasants who lived in their own villages or for small urban communities living in all-Jewish townships or quarters. Under the conditions of classical Judaism, however, it became impracticable and was therefore confined to churches and places of worship of other religions (except Islam).64 In this connection, the rule was further embroidered by custom: it became customary to spit (usually three times) upon seeing a church or a crucifix, as an embellishment to the obligatory formula of regret.65 Sometimes insulting biblical verses were also added.66
There is also a series of rules forbidding any expression of praise for Gentiles or for their deeds, except where such praise implies an even greater praise of Jews and things Jewish. This rule is still observed by Orthodox Jews. For example. the writer Agnon, when interviewed on the Israeli radio upon his return from Stockholm, where he received the Nobel Prize for literature, praised the Swedish Academy, but hastened to add: 'I am not forgetting that it is forbidden to praise Gentiles, but here there is a special reason for my praise' - that is, that they awarded the prize to a Jew.
Similarly, it is forbidden to join any manifestation of popular Gentile rejoicing, except where failing to join in might cause 'hostility' towards Jews, in which case a 'minimal' show of joy is allowed.
In addition to the rules mentioned so far, there are many others whose effect is to inhibit human friendship between Jew and Gentile. I shall mention two examples: the rule on 'libation wine' and that on preparing food for a Gentile on Jewish holy days.
A religious Jew must not drink any wine in whose preparation a Gentile had any part whatsoever. Wine in an open bottle, even if prepared wholly by Jews, becomes banned if a Gentile so much as touches the bottle or passes a hand over it. The reason given by the rabbis is that all Gentiles are not only idolators but must be presumed to be malicious to boot, so that they are likely to dedicate (by a whisper, gesture or thought) as 'libation' to their idol any wine which a Jew is about to drink. This law applies in full force to all Christians, and in a slightly attenuated form also to Muslims. (An open bottle of wine touched by a Christian must be poured away, but if touched by a Muslim it can be sold or given away, although it may not be drunk by a Jew.) The law applies equally to Gentile atheists (how can one be sure that they are not merely pretending to be atheists?) but not to Jewish atheists.
The laws against doing work on the sabbath apply to a lesser extent on other holy days. In particular, on a holy day which does not happen to fall on a Saturday it is permitted to do any work required for preparing food to be eaten during the holy days or days. Legally, this is defined as preparing a 'soul's food' (okhel nefesh); but 'soul' is interpreted to mean 'Jew', and 'Gentiles and dogs' are explicitly excluded.67 There is, however, a dispensation in favor of powerful Gentiles, whose hostility can be dangerous: it is permitted to cook food on a holy day for a visitor belonging to this category, provided he is not actively encouraged to come and eat.
An important effect of all these laws - quite apart from their application in practice - is in the attitude created by their constant study which, as part of the study of the Halakhah, is regarded by classical Judaism as a supreme religious duty. Thus an Orthodox Jew learns from his earliest youth, as part of his sacred studies, that Gentiles are compared to dogs, that it is a sin to praise them, and so on and so forth. As a matter of fact, in this respect textbooks for beginners have a worse effect than the Talmud and the great talmudic codes. One reason for this is that such elementary texts give more detailed explanations, phrased so as to influence young and uneducated minds. Out of a large number of such texts, I have chosen the one which is currently most popular in Israel and has been reprinted in many cheap editions, heavily subsidized by the Israeli government. It is The Book of Education, written by an anonymous rabbi in early 14th century Spain. It explains the 613 religious obligations (mitzvot) of Judaism in the order in which they are supposed to be found in the Pentateuch according to the talmudic interpretation (discussed in Chapter 3). It owes its lasting influence and popularity to the clear and easy Hebrew style in which it is written.
A central didactic aim of this book is to emphasize the 'correct' meaning of the Bible with respect to such terms as 'fellow', 'friend' or 'man' (which we have referred to in Chapter 3). Thus §219, devoted to the religious obligation arising from the verse 'thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself', is entitled: 'A religious obligation to love Jews', and explains:
To love every Jew strongly means that we should care for a Jew and his money just as one cares for oneself and one's own money, for it is written: 'thou shalt love thy fellow as thyself' and our sages of blessed memory said: 'what is hateful to you do not do to your friend' ... and many other religious obligations follow from this, because one who loves one's friend as oneself will not steal his money, or commit adultery with his wife, or defraud him of his money, or deceive him verbally, or steal his land, or harm him in any way. Also many other religious obligations depend on this, as is known to any reasonable man.
In §322, dealing with the duty to keep a Gentile slave enslaved for ever (whereas a Jewish slave must be set free after seven years), the following explanation is given:
And at the root of this religious obligation [is the fact that] the Jewish people are the best of the human species, created to know their Creator and worship Him, and worthy of having slaves to serve them. And if they will not have slaves of other peoples, they would have to enslave their brothers, who would thus be unable to serve the Lord, blessed be He. Therefore we are commanded to possess those for our service, after they are prepared for this and after idolatory is removed from their speech so that there should not be danger in our houses,68 and this is the intention of the verse 'but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor',69 so that you will not have to enslave your brothers, who are all ready to worship God.
In §545, dealing with the religious obligation to exact interest on money lent to Gentiles, the law is stated as follows: 'That we are commanded to demand interest from Gentiles when we lend money to them, and we must not lend to them without interest,' The explanation is:
And at the root of this religious obligation is that we should not do any act of mercy except to the people who know God and worship Him; and when we refrain from doing merciful deed to the rest of mankind and do so only to the former, we are being tested that the main part of love and mercy to them is because they follow the religion of God, blessed be He. Behold, with this intention our reward [from God] when we withhold mercy from the others is equal to that for doing [merciful deeds] to members of our own people.
Similar distinctions are made in numerous other passages. In explaining the ban against delaying a worker's wage (§238) the author is careful to point out that the sin is less serious if the worker is Gentile. The prohibition against cursing (§239) is entitled 'Not to curse any Jew, whether man or woman. Similarly, the prohibitions against giving misleading advice, hating other people, shaming them or taking revenge on them (§§240, 245, 246, 247) apply only to fellow-Jews.
The ban against following Gentile customs (§262) means that Jews must not only 'remove themselves' from Gentiles, but also 'speak ill of all their behavior, even of their dress'.
It must be emphasized that the explanations quoted above do represent correctly the teaching of the Halakhah. The rabbis and, even worse, the apologetic 'scholars of Judaism' know this very well and for this reason they do not try to argue against such views inside the Jewish community; and of course they never mention them outside it. Instead, they vilify any Jew who raises these matters within earshot of Gentiles, and they issue deceitful denials in which the art of equivocation reaches its summit. For example, they state, using general terms, the importance which Judaism attaches to mercy; but what they forget to point out is that according to the Halakhah 'mercy' means mercy towards Jews.
Anyone who lives in Israel knows how deep and widespread these attitudes of hatred and cruelty to towards all Gentiles are among the majority of Israeli Jews. Normally these attitudes are disguised from the outside world, but since the establishment of the State of Israel, the 1967 war and the rise of Begin, a significant minority of Jews, both in Israel and abroad, have gradually become more open about such matters. In recent years the inhuman precepts according to which servitude is the 'natural' lot of Gentiles have been publicly quoted in Israel, even on TV, by Jewish farmers exploiting Arab labor, particularly child labor. Gush Emunim leaders have quoted religious precepts which enjoin Jews to oppress Gentiles, as a justification of the attempted assassination of Palestinian mayors and as divine authority for their own plan to expel all the Arabs from Palestine.
While many zionists reject these positions politically, their standard counter-arguments are based on considerations of expediency and Jewish self-interest, rather than on universally valid principles of humanism and ethics. For example, they argue that the exploitation and oppression of Palestinians by Israelis tends to corrupt Israeli society, or that the expulsion of the Palestinians is impracticable under present political conditions, or that Israeli acts of terror against the Palestinians tend to isolate Israel internationally. In principle, however, virtually all zionists - and in particular 'left' zionists - share the deep anti-Gentile attitudes which Orthodox Judaism keenly promotes.
Attitudes to Christianity and Islam
IN THE FOREGOING, several examples of the rabbinical attitudes to these two religions were given in passing. But it will be useful to summarize these attitudes here.
Judaism is imbued with a very deep hatred towards Christianity, combined with ignorance about it. This attitude was clearly aggravated by the Christian persecutions of Jews, but is largely independent of them. In fact, it dates from the time when Christianity was still weak and persecuted (not least by Jews), and it was shared by Jews who had never been persecuted by Christians or who were even helped by them. Thus, Maimonides was subjected to Muslim persecutions by the regime of the Almohads and escaped from them first to the crusaders' Kingdom of Jerusalem, but this did not change his views in the least. This deeply negative attitude is based on two main elements.
First, on hatred and malicious slanders against Jesus. The traditional view of Judaism on Jesus must of course be sharply distinguished from the nonsensical controversy between antisemites and Jewish apologists concerning the 'responsibility' for his execution. Most modern scholars of that period admit that due to the lack of original and contemporary accounts, the late composition of the Gospels and the contradictions between them, accurate historical knowledge of the circumstances of Jesus' execution is not available. In any case, the notion of collective and inherited guilt is both wicked and absurd. However, what is at issue here is not the actual facts about Jesus, but the inaccurate and even slanderous reports in the Talmud and post-talmudic literature - which is what Jews believed until the 19th century and many, especially in Israel, still believe. For these reports certainly played an important role in forming the Jewish attitude to Christianity.
According to the Talmud, Jesus was executed by a proper rabbinical court for idolatry, inciting other Jews to idolatry, and contempt of rabbinical authority. All classical Jewish sources which mention his execution are quite happy to take responsibility for it; in the talmudic account the Romans are not even mentioned.
The more popular accounts - which were nevertheless taken quite seriously - such as the notorious Toldot Yesbu are even worse, for in addition to the above crimes they accuse him of witchcraft. The very name 'Jesus' was for Jews a symbol of all that is abominable, and this popular tradition still persists.70 The Gospels are equally detested, and they are not allowed to be quoted (let alone taught) even in modern Israeli Jewish schools.
Secondly, for theological reasons, mostly rooted in ignorance, Christianity as a religion is classed by rabbinical teaching as idolatry. This is based on a crude interpretation of the Christian doctrines on the Trinity and Incarnation. All the Christian emblems and pictorial representations are regarded as 'idols' - even by those Jews who literally worship scrolls, stones or personal belongings of 'Holy Men'.
The attitude of Judaism towards Islam is, in contrast, relatively mild. Although the stock epithet given to Muhammad is 'madman' ('meshugga'), this was not nearly as offensive as it may sound now, and in any case it pales before the abusive terms applied to Jesus. Similarly, the Qur'an - unlike the New Testament - is not condemned to burning. It is not honored in the same way as Islamic law honors the Jewish sacred scrolls, but is treated as an ordinary book. Most rabbinical authorities agree that Islam is not idolatry (although some leaders of Gush Emunim now choose to ignore this). Therefore the Halakhah decrees that Muslims should not be treated by Jews any worse than 'ordinary' Gentiles. But also no better. Again, Maimonides can serve as an illustration. He explicitly states that Islam is not idolatry, and in his philosophical works he quotes, with great respect, many Islamic philosophical authorities. He was, as I have mentioned before, personal physician to Saladin and his family, and by Saladin's order he was appointed Chief over all Egypt's Jews. Yet, the rules he lays down against saving a Gentile's life (except in order to avert danger to Jews) apply equally to Muslims.
Notes
(Click # to go back to referring text)
1 Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, 'Laws on Murderers' 2, 11; Talmudic Encyclopedia, 'Goy'.
2 R. Yo'el Sirkis, Bayit Hadash, commentary on Beyt Josef, 'Yoreh De'ah' 158. The two rules just mentioned apply even if the Gentile victim is ger toshav, that is a 'resident alien' who has undertaken in front of three Jewish witnesses to keep the 'seven Noahide precepts' (seven biblical laws considered by the Talmud to be addressed to Gentiles).
3 R. David Halevi (Poland, 17th century), Turey Zahav" on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Yoreh De'ah' 158.
5 Talmudic Encyclopedia, 'Ger' (= convert to Judaism).
6 For example, R. Shabbtay Kohen (mid 17th century), Siftey Kohen on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Yoreh De'ah, 158: 'But in times of war it was the custom to kill them with one's own hands, for it is said, "The best of Gentiles -- kill him!"' Siftey Kohen and Turey Zahay (see note 3) are the two major classical commentaries on the Shulhan 'Arukh.
7 Colonel Rabbi A. Avidan (Zemel), 'Tohar hannesheq le'or hahalakhah' (= 'Purity of weapons in the light of the Halakhah') in Be'iqvot milhemet yom hakkippurim -- pirqey hagut, halakhah umehqar (In the Wake of the Yom Kippur War - Chapters of Meditation, Halakhah and Research), Central Region Command, 1973: quoted in Ha'olam Hazzeh, 5 January 1974; also quoted by David Shaham, 'A chapter of meditation', Hotam, 28 March 1974; and by Amnon Rubinstein, 'Who falsifies the Halakhah?' Ma'ariv", 13 October 1975. Rubinstein reports that the booklet was subsequently withdrawn from circulation by order of the Chief of General Staff, presumably because it encouraged soldiers to disobey his own orders; but he complains that Rabbi Avidan has not been court-martialled, nor has any rabbi -- military or civil -- taken exception to what he had written.
8 R. Shim'on Weiser, 'Purity of weapons -- an exchange of letters' in Niv" Hammidrashiyyah Yearbook of Midrashiyyat No'am, 1974, pp.29-31. The yearbook is in Hebrew, English and French, but the material quoted here is printed in Hebrew only.
9 Psalms, 42:2.
10 'Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven', Deuteronomy, 25:19. Cf. also I Samuel, 15:3: 'Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.'
11 We spare the reader most of these rather convoluted references and quotes from talmudic and rabbinical sources. Such omissions are marked [. . .]. The rabbi's own conclusions are reproduced in full.
12 The Tosafot (literally, Addenda) are a body of scholia to the Talmud, dating from the 1 lth-13th centuries.
13 Persons guilty of such crimes are even allowed to rise to high public positions. An illustration of this is the case of Shmu'el Lahis, who was responsible for the massacre of between 50 and 75 Arab peasants imprisoned in a mosque after their village had been conquered by the Israeli army during the 1948-9 war. Following a pro forma trial, he was granted complete amnesty, thanks to Ben-Gurion's intercession. The man went on to become a respected lawyer and in the late 1970s was appointed Director General of the Jewish Agency (which is, in effect, the executive of the zionist movement). In early 1978 the facts concerning his past were widely discussed in the Israeli press, but no rabbi or rabbinical scholar questioned either the amnesty or his fitness for his new office. His appointment was not revoked.
14 Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Hoshen Mishpat' 426.
15 Tractate 'Avodah Zarah', p. 26b.
16 Maimonides, op. cit., 'Murderer' 4, 11.
17 Leviticus, 19:16. Concerning the rendering 'thy fellow', see note 14 to Chapter 3.
18 Maimonides, op. cit., 'Idolatry' 10, 1-2.
19 In both cases in section 'Yoreh De'ah' 158. The Shulhan 'Arukh repeats the same doctrine in 'Hoshen Mishpat' 425.
20 Moses Rivkes, Be'er Haggolah on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Hoshen Mishpat' 425.
21 Thus Professor Jacob Katz, in his Hebrew book Between Jews and Gentiles as well as in its more apologetic English version Exclusiveness and Tolerance, quotes only this passage verbatim and draws the amazing conclusion that 'regarding the obligation to save life no discrimination should be made between Jew and Christian'. He does not quote any of the authoritative views I have cited above or in the next section.
22 Maimonides, op. cit., 'Sabbath' 2, 20-21; Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Orab Hayyim' 329.
23 R 'Aqiva Eiger, commentary on Shulhan 'Arukh, ibid. He also adds that if a baby is found abandoned in a town inhabited mainly by Gentiles, a rabbi should be consulted as to whether the baby should be saved.
24 Tractate Avodah Zarah, p. 26.
25 Maimonides, op. cit., 'Sabbath' 2, 12; Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Orah Hayyim' 330. The latter text says 'heathen' rather than 'Gentile' but some of the commentators, such as Turey Zahav, stress that this ruling applies 'even to Ishmaelites', that is, to Muslims, 'who are not idolators'. Christians are not mentioned explicitly in this connection, but the ruling must a fortiori apply to them, since -- as we shall see below -- Islam is regarded in a more favorable light than Christianity. See also the responsa of Hatam Sofer quoted below.
26 These two examples, from Poland and France, are reported by Rabbi I.Z. Cahana (afterwards professor of Talmud in the religious Bar-Ilan University, Israel), 'Medicine in the Halachic post-Talmudic Literature', Sinai, vol 27, 1950, p.221. He also reports the following case from 19th century Italy. Until 1848, a special law in the Papal States banned Jewish doctors from treating Gentiles. The Roman Republic established in 1848 abolished this law along with all other discriminatory law against Jews. But in 1849 an expeditionary force sent by France's President Louis Napoleon (afterwards Emperor Napoleon III) defeated the Republic and restored Pope Pius Ix, who in 1850 revived the anti-Jewish laws. The commanders of the French garrison, disgusted with this extreme reaction, ignored the papal law and hired some Jewish doctors to treat their soldiers. The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Moshe Hazan, who was himself a doctor, was asked whether a pupil of his, also a doctor, could take a job in a French military hospital despite the risk of having to desecrate the sabbath. The rabbi replied that if the conditions of employment expressly mention work on the sabbath, he should refuse. But if they do not, he could take the job and employ 'the great cleverness of God-fearing Jews.' For example, he could repeat on Saturday the prescription given on Friday, by simply telling this to the dispenser. R. Cahana's rather frank article, which contains many other examples, is mentioned in the bibliography of a book by the former Chief Rabbi of Britain, R. Immanuel Jakobovits, Jewish Medical Ethics, Bloch, New York, 1962; but in the book itself nothing is said on this matter.
27 Hokhmat Shlomoh on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Orah Hayyim' 330, 2.
28 R. Unterman, Ha'aretz, 4 April 1966. The only qualification he makes -- after having been subjected to continual pressure -- is that in our times any refusal to give medical assistance to a Gentile could cause such hostility as might endanger Jewish lives.
29 Hatam Sofer, Response on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Yoreh De'ah' 131.
30 Op. cit., on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Hoshen Mishpat' 194.
31 R. B. Knobelovitz in The Jewish Review (Journal of the Mizrachi Party in Great Britain), 8 June 1966.
32 R. Yisra'el Me'ir Kagan -- better known as the 'Hafetz Hayyim' -- complains in his Mishnah Berurah, written in Poland in 1907: 'And know ye that most doctors, even the most religious, do not take any heed whatsoever of this law; for they work on the sabbath and do travel several parasangs to treat a heathen, and they grind medicaments with their own hands. And there is no authority for them to do so. For although we may find it permissible, because of the fear of hostility, to violate bans imposed by the sages -- and even this is not clear; yet in bans imposed by the Torah itself it must certainly be forbidden for any Jew to do so, and those who transgress this prohibition violate the sabbath utterly and may God have mercy on them for their sacrilege.' (Commentary on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Orah Hayyim' 330.) The author is generally regarded as the greatest rabbinical authority of his time.
33 Avraham Steinberg MD (ed.), Jewish Medical Law, compiled from Tzitz Eli 'ezer (Responsa of R. Eli'ezer Yehuda Waldenberg), translated by David B. Simons MD, Gefen & Mossad Harav Kook, Jerusalem and California, 1980.
34 Op. cit., p. 39. Ibid., p.41.
35 Ibid., p. 41.
36 The phrase 'between Jew and gentile' is a euphemism. The dispensation is designed to prevent hostility of Gentiles towards Jews, not the other way around.
37 Ibid.,p.412; my emphasis.
38 Dr Falk Schlesinger Institute for Medical Halakhic Research at Sha'arey Tzedeq Hospital, Sefer Asya (The Physician's Book), Reuben Mass, Jerusalem, 1979.
39 By myself in Ha'olam Hazzeh, 30 May 1979 and by Shullamit Aloni, Member of Knesset, in Ha'aretz, 17 June 1980.
40 Ezekiel, 23:20.
41 Tractate Berakhot, p. 78a.
42 Talmudic Encyclopedia, 'Eshet Ish' ('Married Woman').
43 Exodus, 20:17.
44 Genesis, 2:24.
45 Maimonides, op. cit., 'Prohibitions on Sexual Intercourse' 12; 10; Talmudic Encyclopedia, 'Goy'.
46 Maimonides, op. cit., ibid., 12, 1-3. As a matter of fact, every Gentile woman is regarded as N.Sh.G.Z. -- acronym for the Hebrew words niddah, shifhah, goyah, zonah (unpurified from menses, slave, Gentile, prostitute). Upon conversion to Judaism, she ceases indeed to be niddah, shifhah, goyah but is still considered zonah (prostitute) for the rest of her life, simply by virtue of having been born of a Gentile mother. In a special category is a woman 'conceived not in holiness but born in holiness', that is born to a mother who had converted to Judaism while pregnant. In order to make quite sure that there are no mix-ups, the rabbis insist that a married couple who convert to Judaism together must abstain from marital relations for three months.
47 Characteristically, an exception to this generalization is made with respect to Gentiles holding legal office relating to financial transactions: notaries, debt collectors, bailiff and the like. No similar exception is made regarding ordinary decent Gentiles, not even if they are friendly towards Jews.
48 Some very early (1st century BC) rabbis called this law 'barbaric' and actually returned lost property belonging to Gentiles. But the law nevertheless remained.
49 Leviticus, 25:14. This is a literal translation of the Hebrew phrase. The King James Version renders this as 'ye shall not oppress one another'; 'oppress' is imprecise but 'one another' is a correct rendering of the biblical idiom 'each man his brother'. As pointed out in Chapter 3, the Halakhah interprets all such idioms as referring exclusively to one's fellow Jew.
50 Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Hoshen Mishpat' 227.
51 This view is advocated by H. Bar-Droma, Wezeh Gvul Ha'aretz (And This Is the Border of the Land), Jerusalem, 1958. In recent years this book is much used by the Israeli army in indoctrinating its officers.
52 Maimonides, op. cit., 'Idolatry' 10, 3-4.
53 See note 2.
54 Exodus, 23:33.
55 Maimonides, op. cit., 'Idolatry' 10, 6.
56 Deuteronomy, 20:16. See also the verses quoted in note 10.
57 Numbers 31:13-20; note in particular verse 17: 'Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.'
58 R. Sha'ul Yisra'eli, 'Taqrit Qibbiya Le'or Hahalakhah' (The Qibbiya incident in the light of the Halakhah'), in Hattorab Wehammedinah, vol 5, 1953/4.
59 This is followed by a blessing 'for not making me a slave'. Next, a male must add a blessing 'for not making me a woman', and a female 'for making me as He pleased'.
60 In eastern Europe it was until recent times a universal custom among Jews to spit on the floor at this point, as an expression of scorn. This was not however a strict obligation, and today the custom is kept only by the most pious.
61 The Hebrew word is meshummadim, which in rabbinical usage refers to Jews who become 'idolators', that is either pagan or Christians, but not to Jewish converts to Islam.
62 The Hebrew word is minim, whose precise meaning is 'disbelievers in the uniqueness of God'.
63 Tractate Berakhot, p. 58b.
64 According to many rabbinical authorities the original rule still applies in full in the Land of Israel.
65 This custom gave rise to many incidents in the history of European Jewry. One of the most famous, whose consequence is still visible today, occurred in 14th century Prague. King Charles IV of Bohemia (who was also Holy Roman Emperor) had a magnificent crucifix erected in the middle of a stone bridge which he had built and which still exists today. It was then reported to him that the Jews of Prague are in the habit of spitting whenever they pass next to the crucifix. Being a famous protector of the Jews, he did not institute persecution against them, but simply sentenced the Jewish community to pay for the Hebrew word Adonay (Lord) to be inscribed on the crucifix in golden letters. This word is one of the seven holiest names of God, and no mark of disrespect is allowed in front of it. The spitting ceased. Other incidents connected with the same custom were much less amusing.
66 The verses most commonly used for this purpose contain words derived from the Hebrew root shaqetz which means 'abominate, detest', as in Deuteronomy, 7:26: 'thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing.' It seems that the insulting term sheqetz, used to refer to all Gentiles (Chapter 2), originated from this custom.
67 Talmud, Tractate Beytzah, p. 21a, b; Mishnah Berurah on Shulhan 'Arukh, 'Orah Hayyim' 512. Another commentary (Magen Avraham) also excludes Karaites.
68 According to the Halakha, a Gentile slave bought by a Jew should be converted to Judaism, but does not thereby become a proper Jew.
69 Leviticus, 25:46.
70 The Hebrew form of the name Jesus -- Yeshu -- was interpreted as an acronym for the curse may his name and memory be wiped out', which is used as an extreme form of abuse. In fact, anti-zionist Orthodox Jews (such as Neturey Qarta) sometimes refer to Herzl as 'Herzl Jesus' and I have found in religious zionist writings expressions such as 'Nasser Jesus' and more recently 'Arafat Jesus.'
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12 - The Sacred Nature of Six Million in the Judaic Religion
Why Six Million Holocaust Victims Cannot be Questioned
Michael Fishwick
11th February 2009 (Our Lady of Lourdes).
"After the destruction of the Temple (70 AD), the rabbinic exegesis has replaced faith in the Mosaic Messiah with that of the "collective messiah", which is the Jewish people. Christianity can not accept this Jewish sacralization of the Holocaust without the denial of its identity and faith. The only Holocaust is the sacrifice of Christ. To accept another "holocaust" of salvation and 'meta-historical act' next to that of Jesus would be an act of apostasy. Unfortunately, the new Judaic theology of the council, and after the council, has taken hold of progressive Catholics. We hope and pray that it does not pollute Tradition. It is therefore a duty to warn the faithful shepherds."
- Don Curzio Nitoglia, translated from Il Caso Williamson, 28th January, 2009.
Introduction
Some commentary on the statement of Fr. Nitoglia may be instructive in regard to understanding why the figure of 'Six Million Holocaust' victims is sacred to the Jews.
The "unquestionable" number of Six Million Jewish holocaust victims is not based upon documented historic fact, nor even particularly upon demographic estimation, but above all is a mystical number that relates in a fundamental manner to the religious belief system of Judaism.
The New York based Museum of Jewish Heritage, for example, in regard to "the memory of the six million Jews who perished." reveals that: "Zachor, to remember, is a sacred Jewish obligation." (my bold emphasis).
Examples of religious phraseology in regard to Six Million Jewish victims of The Holocaust are plentiful and easily found by use of simple internet searches.
On a purely natural level a Christian can understand that Jews might consider the suffering and death of Jewish victims of the Shoah (catastrophe) to be 'Kiddush Hashem' - 'martyrs'. Further investigation using the Jewish chabad.org Knowledge Base reveals that, for Jews, the concept of 'Kiddush Hashem' has a much deeper meaning in that it is a "sanctification of G-d's Name."
What is not so commonly realised, or understood, by Christians is how the Six Million figure relates integrally to the occult teachings that the Jewish religion is based upon.
Before proceeding further it will be necessary to distinguish between two commonly used words that are often used interchangeably with resulting obfuscation of the subject.
'Shoah' is an anglicized spelling of a Hebrew word that means 'catastrophe' or 'calamity'. That millions of Jewish people suffered horrific calamity involving widespread persecution and many deaths during World War Two is not in dispute.
Holocaust, by contrast, is a word of Greek origin meaning 'burnt whole' and is defined in the dictionary as "a sacrificial offering that is consumed entirely by flames". The anglicised Hebrew word for 'burnt offering' or'burnt sacrifice' is 'Olah' (pronounced 'o-law'). It derives from the Hebrew word for 'elevation'. That the corpses of many thousands of Jews (and others) were burnt in crematoriums in Nazi concentration camps after suffering death from typhus and other disease is not at issue either.
What is disputed is the claim that Six Million Jews were murdered by cyanide gas in purpose built homocidal gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps.
If it is true that Jews, as Jews, collectively suffered genocidal extermination and cremation in concentration camps, then 'holocaust' is indeed a valid historic, as well as Judaic religious, description. If it is not true, then the description of 'holocaust', as well as the "sacred" figure of Six Million, belongs entirely to Jewish religious mythology and must be opposed by Catholics both as a matter of historical truth and religious truth.
The enormous amount of data from divers fields of research that indicates very strongly that homicidal gas chambers did not exist in Nazi concentration camps is not the purpose of this study, and will not be summarised here. Rather, the purpose of the study is to reveal, largely from Jewish sources, that the fabled 'Six Million' is a religious mantra recited by Jews as an integral practise of the Jewish religion.
The Sacred Six Million
The Jewish religion is based upon:
1) 'Written Torah' ('Tanakh') which consists of books of the Old Testament;
2) 'Oral Torah' ('Mishnah') which Jews believe God taught to Moses and was handed down orally through the generations until being compiled in book form in the second century;
3) later rabbinical commentaries on 'Mishnah' called 'Gemara' which were compiled together with 'Mishnah' in the 5th century and became known collectively as 'Talmud';
4) 'Midrashim' which are anecdotal stories expanding upon written or oral 'Torah';
5) and 'Kabbalah' which is the mystical teaching of Judaism, the primary body of which is known as 'Zohar'.
A fundamental constituent of Jewish mystical gnosis is the practice of 'Gematria', a type of numerology that assigns numerical value to the characters of the Hebrew alphabet. It involves the calculation of numerical equivalence and relationship between letters, words and phrases in order to find mystical insights and hidden teaching that Jews believe God planted into 'Torah'. Rabbi Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh explains that: "Since the world was created through God's 'speech', each letter represents a different creative force."
Certain letters, and the corresponding numerical value, are considered in Judaism to have greater mystical power than others because of the frequency with which they are found in 'Torah'. One such value, the expression of which holds a predominant power in the Jewish psyche, is the Hebrew letter 'vav' which has a numerical value of six. As well as its obvious relationship to the six days of creation and the Jewish sabbath Rabbi Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh reveals much of its esoteric connotation in his book The Alef-Beit: Jewish Thought Revealed Through the Hebrew Letters. For example, one learns that: "the consummate structure of six (as in the form of the Magen David [Star of David], the outer area of whose six 'wings' equals, and therefore folds onto, the area of its inner hexagon), reflected by the six orders of the Mishnah, finds its source in the dimensions of the Tablets given to Moses at Sinai. They were cubes measuring six handbreadths in each direction." A cube has six faces, of course.
The superstitious 'power' of 'six' in the Jewish mind can be found, for example, in the fact that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. was purposely designed so that the display floors of photographs and artifacts of the Permanent Exhibition cover a space of 36,000 square feet. In 'Gematria' it is understood that this represents six thousand multiplied by six thousand. At the end of the tour the visitor enters the six thousand square foot Hall of Remembrance, which has six sides symbolising the six-pointed Star of David, and the six 'extermination' camps where 'Six Million' Jews were slaughtered. One can also find there a collection of six thousand children's hand-painted tiles. Yaffa Sonenson, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Commission donated, according to a sympathetic review of the museum penned by Barbara Beckwith for the online St. Anthony Messenger, a collection of six thousand photographs.
We learn from the spirituality section of chabad.org in its "Letters of Light - Vav" that: "Six also represents completion, because something that is surrounded on all six sides—north, south, east, west, above and below—is complete. Similarly we find that when the Jewish people left the land of Egypt, G-d surrounded them with six Clouds of Glory... The number six also signifies the six hundred thousand Jewish men aged 20-60 who left the land of Egypt. It additionally represents the Torah... There are six hundred thousand letters of the Torah, and if one letter of the Torah is missing or broken or cracked, G-d forbid, the entire Torah scroll is declared not kosher—unfit to be read. Similarly, if one Jew strays from the path, or is missing or defiled, the entire Jewish nation is likewise lacking or defiled. We are rendered incomplete... We find another instance of 'six' when the Jewish people were in Egypt and oppressed with backbreaking work. Pharaoh devised many plots against the Jewish people to keep them from multiplying. Yet the Jews continued to propagate at an unbelievable rate. Indeed, the Torah tells us that the Jewish women bore six children at one time... Thus the vav teaches us the monumental effect we have on the world by being connected on high and bringing the Torah down to earth in our thoughts, speech and actions."
Rabbi Ginsburgh reveals that the secret of the word 'truth' resides in the "triangle of six" and, for that reason, the Hebrew letter 'vav' is known as "the letter of truth", its numerical value 'six' being "the power which links together the souls of Israel." The triangle of six instantly reminds one again of the six-pointed Star of David that is composed of triangles. It also brings to mind the fact that a triangle consists of three sides or three points. Three points consisting of six? 666?
Judaism teaches that God created six hundred thousand Jewish souls and these souls, according to the rabbis, correspond to the six hundred thousand letters in the written 'Torah'. In a translated text entitled "600,000 Souls, 600,000 Letters" Rabbi Rabbeinu Yaakov Abuchatzeira reveals that:
"The word 'Israel' can be read as an acronym for 'Yesh Shishim Ribo Otiot LaTorah', meaning: 'There are six hundred thousand letters in the Torah'. Therefore, Israel did not leave Egypt until there were six hundred thousand of them, in order for each soul to be 'supported' by one letter in the Torah, as we have written in a number of places... Since the name 'Israel' alludes to the fact that the number of letters in the Torah corresponds to the number of souls, it follows that when the Jewish People come to count their souls [take a census], the accuser comes and accuses them saying, 'Master of the universe, didn't Israel only reach this size population in order to match the number of letters in the Torah which are hinted at in their name? And now they are negligent in [the Torah]!' This becomes the substance of the accusation. Furthermore, the word 'negef', meaning 'a scourge', has the same numerological value as 'Samael', the Angel of Destruction, short two. ('Negef' equals 133, while 'Samael' equals 131.) The missing two allude to the two Torahs (Oral and Written). When Israel are lax in the two Torahs, two powers are added to those of the forces of evil, and it becomes 'negef', a scourge, and afflicts them, G-d forbid."
Rabbi Zev Reichman, in a partly published online book named Chassidus, confirms the rabbinical teaching of'six hundred thousand souls, six hundred thousand letters'. In footnote, 19, of 'Lesson Six, The Body Can Complement the Soul', the rabbi states plainly that Jewish souls are "pieces of the Divine", part of God Himself.
"The Zohar teaches that God, Torah, and Israel are one. In truth, God clothed himself in the thoughts and words of Torah, and Jewish souls are pieces of the Divine as well; thus Torah, Israel and God are linked in an intrinsic manner. Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev (1740-1810) explained a Scriptural ambiguity with this principle.
'As God commanded Moses, he counted them (the Jews) in the Sinai desert.' (Numbers 1:19) One can ask, it should have written, 'He counted them in the Sinai desert as God commanded Moses?' Behold, God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, and the souls of Jews are the essence of the Torah, for there are 600,000 Jewish souls and 600,000 letters in the Torah scroll. In fact, the name 'Yisrael', Israel, is an acronym for 'Yesh shsishim ribo otiyot latorah', there are 600,000 letters to the Torah. Therefore, Jews are the Torah, for each Jew is a different letter in the Torah. When Moses counted the Jews he was learning Torah. This is why the verse changed its usual formulation to hint 'As God commanded Moses he counted the people,' like the Torah that God commanded Moses was the (experience of) counting of the nation.' (Kedushas Levi parshas Bamidbar s.v. Caasher) ."
Examples of the Kabbalistic religious use of numbers relating to 'vav', "the power that links together the souls of Israel", and especially of 'six hundred thousand' abound virtually everywhere one cares to look and it becomes obvious that 'six' is related in a very special manner to the Jewish concepts of 'kiddush hashem' and'olah', of holocaust. 'Kiddush hashem' ,one will remember, means to the Jew 'martyrdom' and the"sanctification of G-d's Name". One will also remember that the Jewish religion teaches that Jewish souls are themselves "pieces of the Divine". Therefore one begins to understand that in the Jewish religion the concept of'martyrdom' and "sanctification of G-d's Name" is in fact a collective 'sanctification' of the Jewish people, of thesix hundred thousand souls.
The concept of 'olah' is described by Rabbi Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh's teaching, thus: "The Sages reply that the olah is first in the Torah recitation. However, in the order of sacrifice, the chatat precedes the olah. According to Kabbalah and Chassidut, the recitation reflects a drawing down of the Supernal Infinite Light from above to below -- as a person calls to his friend to come to him, or as a small child calls to his father to come and join him. In contrast, the actual sacrifice reflects an act of spiritual elevation from below to above -- the secret of the sacrifice ascends to the secret of the Infinite One."
Thus 'olah', 'holocaust', involves a religious mantra of recitation aimed at "a drawing down of the Supernatural Infinite light from above to below"
As a side note, one may ask, how can it be that only six hundred thousand Jewish souls exist when it is evident that many millions of Jews have existed in time?
The rabbinical explanation appears to be that the 600,000 souls are "root souls" and that all other Jewish souls are "offshoots", intrinsically connected and, perhaps, somehow, generated from them.
Some examples of the sacred connection that exists in the Jewish religion between religious recitation of the mantra of 'Six' ("the power that links together the souls of Israel"), the 600,000 Jewish souls, 'martyrdom - divine sanctification' that draws down "Supernatural Infinite light from above to below" and holocaust, may be instructive. The religious objective of this 'divine' mantra is obviously meant to culminate in the eventual arrival of the long-awaited Jewish 'Messiah':
70 AD: Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus on the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the slaughter of Jews - "We are told that the number of the besieged, old and young, men and women, amounted to 600,000."
135 AD: Roman historian Cassius Dio is told and records that 600,000 Jews are slaughtered when Rome finally crushes the Bar Kokhba rebellion.
18th century: Ukrainian pogrom where "reliable accounts" record that 60,000 Jews were slaughtered by Gaidamak Cossacks according to the Jewish People's Relief Commitee Report of 1921, mentioned in The Slaughter of the Jews in the Ukraine in 1919, by Elias Heifetz.
1880: The New York Times editorial of 27th February states that: "The war, which has for some time raged in Germany between the natives and the Jews, seems rather to increase than diminish in intensity... The charge is made that of the 600,000 Israelites in the empire, hardly any engage in agricultural or mercantile pursuits; but that they control trade, rule the money markets, and are eating up the country with their avarice and usury."
1900: The New York Times of 11th June reports extracts from an address given by Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, founder of the Federation of American Zionists, that "there are 6,000,000 [Six Million] living, bleeding, suffering arguments in favour of Zionism."
1916: The American Jewish Committee publishes a book entitled 'The Jews in the Eastern War Zone' in which it is claimed that eastern Europe is "a kind of prison with six million inmates, guarded by an army of corrupt and brutal jailers."
1917-1920: 60,000 Jews were murdered in pogroms in Poland and Russia according to the Jewish authors of The Jew in the Modern World.
1918: The New York Times of October 18th carries a full page advertisement from the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers to collect one hundred million dollars to "Rebuild Jewry" and states that "6,000,000 Jews Need Help" (Six Million).
1919: The American Hebrew of 31st October carries an article entitled 'The Crucifixion of the Jews Must Stop!'It claims that "Six million men and women are dying" in what it describes as a "threatened holocaust." "The war is over for everyone but the Jew. The knife is still at his throat and an unreasoning and unreasonable century-old lust for Jewish blood opens his veins".
1936: Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, testifies in front of the Peel Commission, on November 25th, that: "It is no exaggeration to say that six million Jews are sentenced to be imprisoned in this part of the world, where they are unwanted, and for whom the countries are divided into those, where they are unwanted, and those, where they are not admitted."
1937: Chaim Weizmann reports to the Zionist Congress of London that "the hopes of Europe's six millionJews are centred on emmigration" according to the document "Holocaust Victims Accuse" published by anti-Zionist Jews.
1943: The New York Times of 2nd March reports, on page 4, Rabbi Joseph Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, stating that "appalling is the fact that those who proclaim the Four Freedoms have so far done very little to even secure the freedom to live for 6,000,000 [Six Million] of their Jewish fellow men by readiness to rescue those who might still escape Nazi torture and butchery."
1946: The Jewish Black Book Committee, a venture between the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and US Jewish organisations publishes The Black Book. It states that "Four million Jews – about two-thirds of the six million who perished in Europe at the hand of the Nazis – were murdered at Oswiecim [Auschwitz] and its subsidiary camps."
1948: Rabbi Menachem Kasher, in the introduction to Kol HaTor in HaTekufah HaGedolah, reports a statistic relating to the year of the establishment of the Zionist State. He states that 1948 was the first year in centuries that there were 600,000 Jews living in 'Eretz Yisrael'.
1948: 600,000 Jews living in Arab countries were forced to flee from surrounding Arab lands to the newly established Israeli State claim the Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles organization and their political director Omri Ceren, in a press release dated 7th July, 2008.
1948: 600,000 Holocaust survivors moved to Israel during the early years of the State, reports Judy Siegel-Itzkovich for the Jewish Weekly News of northern California, in a story entitled Holocaust Survivors; Handle with Care, on 21st March, 2008.
1967: Rabbi Menachem Kasher, in the introduction to Kol HaTor in HaTekufah HaGedolah, reports a statistic relating to the year of the Six Day War. He states that 1967 was the first year in centuries that there were 600,000 Jewish males above the age of 20 living in 'Eretz Yisrael'.
1999: The Independent reveals in a story of 4th March entitled Holocaust Trial Opens in Croatia that The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust states that 600,000 were killed at the Jasenovac concentration camp but that Croatian historians think 35,000 people died.
2000: CBC News in Canada reports on 27th July that "a judge in the United States has approved the settlement offer between Swiss banks and 600,000 survivors of the Holocaust."
2004: Hungary's first Holocaust Museum opens in Budapest on the 60th anniversary of Hungarian Jews being sent to concentration camps. 60,000 names have been inscribed on the inside face of the wall surrounding the museum in order to remember 600,000 Hungarian Jewish victims.
2004: A memorial for the "600,000 Jews who were killed in gas chambers" at the Belzec "death camp" in Poland is solemnly opened on the 3rd June as a joint project of the American Jewish Committee and the Warsaw-based Council for the Protection of the Memory of Combat and Martyrdom.
2005: The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem announces on October 10th the figure of 600,000vistors in the six months since the opening of its new Museum Complex.
2006: A New America Media report of 14th November entitled Israel Encourages Citizens to Return to Homeland, written by Stacey Palevsky, states that "More than 600,000 Israeli's live elsewhere. And Israel wants them back... About 6,000 return each year." The report further reveals that the Israeli Minister of Immigration Absorption, Ze'ev Boim, was visiting as "part of the six-city campaign".
2007: Sidney Zabludoff tells the US House Committee on International Relations: Subcommittee on Europe and Emerging Threats, on 3rd October that "Currently there are approximately 600,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide."
2008: A libel case heard at Jerusalem District Court, initiated by the Claims Conference, reveals that 600,000Holocaust survivors worldwide have received over $50 billion.
2008: German Culture Minister, Bernd Numann, and the chief of the German Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and Future, Martin Salm, present to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial site in Jerusalem a completed list of the 600,000 German Jewish population between 1933 and 1945.
Should any further consideration be necessary to determine the 'sacred' relationship between the Six Hundred Thousand Jewish Souls and The Six Million Holocaust it is only necessary to remember that 'six' is the number of "truth" and represents "completion". It is "the power that links together the souls of Israel" of which there are 600,000. When multiplied by ten we arrive at Six Million.
The number 'ten' in the Jewish religion relates to the 'Sefirot' (enumerations) by which, Jews believe, God manifests Himself in the physical and metaphysical planes. 'Ten' is believed by Jews to be the number of"divine perfection". Therefore, the 600,000 souls of Israel, which are "pieces of the Divine", when multiplied by'divine perfection' come to Six Million.
"The Hebrew word for 'ye shall return', (TaShuVU), seems to be spelled incorrectly. Grammatically it requires another (vav). It ought to read (TaShUVU). Why is it lacking the letter (vav) which stands for six? [TaShuVU] (without the vav) is a prediction to the Jewish people of ultimate return to their national homeland. [TaShuVU] in numbers adds up to 708: (tav)=400, (shin)=300, (vet)=2, (vav)=6. When we write the year, we ignore the millenia. In 1948 on the secular calendar, we witnessed the miracle of Jewish return to Israel. On the Hebrew calendar it was the year 5708. That was the year predicted by the incomplete word (TaShuVU), you shall return. We did return, lacking 6 - an all important 6 million of our people who perished during the holocaust. Yet the fulfillment of the prediction of return in precisely that year implied by the gematria of (TaShuVU) gives us firm hope that the words of the prophets for Final Redemption will come true as well."
- Rabbi Benjamin Blech, The Secret of Hebrew Words, pp 214-215.
(The same Rabbi Blech who, along with rabbis Barry Dov Schwartz and Jack Bemporad, "conferred" a"rabbinical blessing" upon Pope John Paul II, in the Apostolic Palace, on 18th January, 2005).
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13 - National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society skewered in new book by leading cancer expert
by Neev M. Arnell
(NaturalNews) A new book by leading cancer expert, Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, skewers the National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society and blames the organizations for America losing the war against cancer.
In the book, "National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society: Criminal Indifference to Cancer Prevention and Conflicts of Interest," Epstein argues that the NCI and ACS have spent tens of billions of taxpayer and charity dollars focusing on treatment to the exclusion of prevention, which has allowed cancer rates to skyrocket, with the disease now affecting nearly one in two men and more than one in threewomen. Furthermore, the author claims that not only do numerous conflicts of interest exist within the NCI and ACS, but the NCI and ACS are also withholding a mass of information on avoidable causes of cancer.
Epstein, who has served as a consultant for the U.S. Senate Committee on Public Works, is an internationally recognized authority on avoidable causes of cancer, particularly carcinogen exposure through conduits such as food, air, water, household products, cosmetics, prescription drugs or industrial carcinogens in the workplace.
Epstein is professor emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health and chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition. He has published more than 270-peer reviewed articles and 20 books, including the prize-winning 1978 The Politics of Cancer, and has appeared on national media, including NPR, 60 Minutes, Face the Nation, Meet the Press, The McNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Good Morning America and The Today Show. He was a key expert in the banning of hazardous products including DDT, chlordane and aldrin. In his new book, he is now the leading critic of the cancerestablishment for its indifference to prevention of the disease, which, for the ACS, he claims, borders on hostility.
Cancer funding skyrockets along with cancer rates, followed by exaggerated claims of progress
The cancer industry has made a series of misleading claims about the advances in the war against cancer over the past three decades, wrote Epstein.
Some of the false claims, according to Epstein, include the industry's 1984 announcement by the NCI that cancer mortality would be halved by 2000, the 1998 NCI and ACS Report Card announcement of a reversal in the almost twenty-year trend of increasing cancer incidence and death, and the 2003 pledge by NCI Director and former ACS president-elect Andrew von Eschenbach to "eliminate suffering and death from cancer by 2015."
The NCI, ACS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also claimed that "considerable progress has been made in reducing the [number of people with cancer] in the U.S. population" in its 2003 "Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975-2000."
The claim, however, is not consistent with NCI's own data, Epstein said, which shows the overall number of people with cancer and incidence rates actually increased by 18 percent. The data also shows a dramatic increase in nonsmoking-related cancers, according to Epstein, including a 104 percent increase in liver cancer, an 88 percent increase in prostate cancer, a 54 percent increase in thyroid and testicular cancer, a 29 percent increase in breast cancer and a 14 percent increase in brain cancer. Epstein also notes the overall cancer mortality rates have remained unchanged and have increase by 6 percent for blacks.
It seems that the more we spend on cancer, the more cancer we get, Epstein said, because while the number of people with cancer goes up, so does the NCI budget paid for by tax payers and charity. The NCI budget has increased 25-fold, from $220 million to $4.6 billion, between 1971 and 2000.
Prevention is the key
The fixation on "damage control" instead of prevention is the root cause of the booming cancer rates in the face of billions of dollars aimed at elimination of the disease, according to Epstein.
He claims the NCI priorities are all wrong. The opening statement of the NCI's 2001 Cancer Facts report says that "cancer prevention is a major component and current priority -- to reduce suffering and death from cancer." Meanwhile the report claimed that only 12 percent of the NCI's then $3.75 billion budget was allocated to prevention.
Epstein shows that the actual attention to prevention is probably even less, by citing an analysis of a 1992 NCI budget showing that less than 2.5 percent of its then $2 billion budget was spent on prevention.
Epstein further crucifies NCI stating that prevention tactics defined by NCI only covered the value of avoiding smoking and a bad diet, while wholly ignoring the myriad of environmental and occupationalcarcinogens.
NCI & ACS withholding a mass of cancer prevention information
The NCI has failed to inform the public of published scientific information on a wide range of avoidable causes of multiple cancers, Epstein said.
According to Epstein, there are three major categories of avoidable causes including:
1. Environmental contaminants in air, water, soil, the workplace, and food;
2. Carcinogenic ingredients in consumer products, particularly pesticides;
3. Carcinogenic prescription drugs and high-dose diagnostic radiation, particularly pediatric CAT scans.
Epstein wrote, "NCI's silence on cancer prevention is in flagrant violation of the 1971 National Cancer Act's specific charge to disseminate cancer information to the public. This silence is in further violation of the 1988 Amendments to the National Cancer Program, which called for an expanded and intensified research program for the prevention of cancer caused by occupational or environmental exposure to carcinogens."
Epstein blamed this NCI failure to inform Congress and regulatory agencies of avoidable carcinogens for encouraging petrochemical and other industries to continue manufacturing products containing carcinogens and encouraging corporate polluters to continue polluting.
NCI's aversion to publicizing avoidable carcinogens has even gone as far as suppression and denial, Epstein said, quoting the following examples:
"In 1983, the Department of Health and Human Services directed NCI to investigate the risks of thyroid cancer from I-131 radioactive fallout following atom bomb tests in Nevada in the late 1950s and early 1960s."
"NCI released its report in 1997, based on data which had been available for over fourteen years, predicting up to 210,000 thyroid cancers from radioactive fallout. These cancers, whose incidence has almost doubled since 1973, could have been readily prevented had the NCI warned the public in time and advised them to take thyroid medication."
"At a September 1999 hearing by the Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Affairs, former Senator John Glenn (D-OH) charged that the NCI investigation was plagued by lack of public participation and openness. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) charged that NCI's conduct was a travesty."
[Just] as serious is NCI's frank suppression of information. At a 1996 San Francisco Town Hall Meeting on breast cancer, chaired by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), former NCI director Richard Klausner insisted that "low level diagnostic radiation does not demonstrate an increased risk." However, this was contrary to long-term studies on patients with spinal curvature (scoliosis), which showed that such radiation was responsible for 70% excess breast cancer mortality.
ACS has just as abysmal a track record on prevention as NCI, according to Epstein, and it has been and remains the target of periodic attacks by leading scientists and public interest groups.
One attack in a 1994 press release by the Center for Science in the Public Interest stated, "A group of 24 scientists charged that the ACS was doing little to protect the public from cancer-causing chemicals in the environment and workplace. The scientists urged ACS to revamp its policies and to emphasize prevention in its lobbying and educational campaigns."
The scientists criticized ACS for requiring human evidence of carcinogenic effects before implementing regulation, saying that they had an unrealistically high action threshold. The scientists included: Harvard University Nobel Laureates Matthew Meselson and George Wald; former Occupational Safety and Health Director Eula Bingham; and past president of the Public Health Association, Anthony Robbins.
One major instance of ACS ignoring the science, according to Epstein, was in 1993 when they came out in support of the pesticide industry just before the airing of the PBS Frontline special, "In Our Children's Food." ACS released a memorandum in which it trivialized pesticides as a cause of childhood cancers, and reassured the public that pesticide residues were safe, even for infants.
Possibly most shocking is the failure of the NCI and ACS to inform the public of the increasing incidence of childhood cancers, which has escalated to alarming rates, according to Epstein. The Cancer Prevention Coalition's 2003 report said that childhood cancers have increased by 32 percent between 1975 and 2000 and that cancer is one of the leading causes of death in children, second only to accidents.
Even more shocking, the NCI claims that "the causes of childhood cancer are largely unknown." This is diametrically opposed to substantial scientific evidence, according to Epstein, which shows that children are exposed to numerous avoidable carcinogens, including everything from X-rays, prescription drugs, pesticides and contaminants in beauty products to petrochemical and industrial pollutants, radioactive pollutants in the air and drinking water, and pollutants from hazardous waste sites.
In 2000, the industry publication Cancer Letter had a commentary on ACS' behind-the-scenes creation of a legislative committee to gain major control of national cancer policy, according to Epstein. In the commentary, former executive president of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists Dr. John Durant shared his assessment of ACS behavior.
"It has always seemed to me that was an issue of control by the ACS over the cancer agenda," Durant said. "They are protecting their own fundraising capacity [from competition by survivor groups.]"
Conflicts of Interest
But emphasis on treatment looks likely to remain if, as Epstein shows, the ACS and NCI are in bed with those who profit from a treatment focus.
Approximately half of the members of the ACS board are doctors and scientists with close ties to the NCI, Epstein said. Many of the board members and their colleagues obtain funding from both the ACS and NCI, he said. Frank conflicts of interest are evident in many ACS priorities, according to Epstein, including the two major examples of mammography and cancer drugs.
"The ACS has close connections to the mammography industry," Epstein writes. "Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents, and in its every move, the ACS reflects the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films ... In fact, if every woman followed the ACS and NCI mammography guidelines, the annual revenue to health care facilities would be a staggering $5 billion.
ACS promotion continues to lure women of all ages into mammography centers, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. A leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results in a cure "nearly 100 percent of the time."
An ACS communications director responded .... "The ad isn't based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point. Mammography today is a lucrative [and] highly competitive business."
"The ACS exposes premenopausal women to radiation hazards from mammography with little or no evidence of benefits," Epstein said. "The ACS also fails to tell them that their breasts will change so much over time that the 'baseline' images have little or no future relevance."
The cancer drug industry is even more lucrative than mammography with annual sales over $12 billion. The intimate association between ACS and the pharmaceutical industry is illustrated, Epstein said, by the unbridled aggression which ACS directs at its critics.
"ACS maintains a Committee on Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, which periodically reviews unorthodox or alternative therapies," Epstein wrote. "This committee is comprised of volunteer health care professionals, carefully selected proponents of orthodox, expensive, and usually toxic drugs patented by major pharmaceutical companies, and opponents of alternative or unproven therapies that are generally cheap, and minimally toxic."
Periodically, the committee updates its statements on unproven methods, which are then widely disseminated to clinicians, cheerleader science writers, and the public. Once a clinician or oncologist becomes associated with unproven methods, he or she is blackmailed by the cancer establishment. Funding for the accused quack becomes inaccessible, followed by systematic harassment.
"The highly biased ACS witch-hunts against alternative practitioners are in striking contrast to its extravagant and uncritical endorsement of conventional toxic chemotherapy. This despite the absence of any objective evidence of improved survival rates or reduced mortality following chemotherapy for all but some relatively rare cancers."
The cancer industry's favor of pharmaceutical products is evidenced, Epstein said, "by the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved approximately 40 patented drugs for cancer treatment, while it has yet to approve a single nonpatented alternative drug."
According to Epstein, "Dr. Samuel Broder, NCI director from 1989 to 1995, frankly admitted, in a 1998 Washington Post interview, that 'the NCI has become what amounts to a government pharmaceutical company.' Taxpayers have funded R & D and expensive clinical trials for over two-thirds of cancer drugs on the market. These drugs are given, with exclusive rights, to the industry, which sells them at inflated prices."
Epstein calls for change
NCI reform is two decades overdue, Epstein wrote, based in part on "The Stop Cancer Before it Starts Campaign: How to win the Losing War against Cancer," which is a 2003 report sponsored by eight leading cancer prevention experts and endorsed by over one hundred activists and citizen groups.
Numerous NCI reforms were proposed in 1992 at a Cancer Prevention Coalition press conference, a group of 68 leading cancer prevention and public health experts, past directors of federal agencies, and citizen activists across the nation. But prophetically, the press release concluded, "There is no likelihood that such reforms will be implemented without legislative action."
And the ACS has done no better, according to Epstein.
"The verdict is unassailable," Epstein said. "The ACS bears a major decades-long responsibility for losing the winnable war against cancer. Reforming the ACS is, in principle, relatively easy and directly achievable. Boycott the ACS. Instead, give your charitable contributions to public interest and environmental groups involved in cancer prevention. Such a boycott is well overdue and will send the only message this charity can no longer ignore."
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14 - Police arrest 5 more activists for feeding homeless People
By Mark Schlueb, Orlando Sentinel
7:17 p.m. EDT, June 8, 2011
Orlando police arrested five more activists from behind a makeshift buffet table at Lake Eola Park on Wednesday evening, bringing to a dozen the number charged in the past week with violating city restrictions on feeding the homeless.
The members of the group Food Not Bombs were ladling out corn on the cob, rice, beans and watermelon to about 35 people when they were handcuffed. About two dozen activists and homeless people booed and chanted "Food is a right, not a privilege" as they were loaded into a waiting police van.
Related
Pictures: Activists arrested at Lake Eola
Food Not Bombs founder lives his philosophy
Breaking bread and breaking the law — isn't it time both sides talked about feeding the homeless?
They were violating a controversial city ordinance that prohibits sharing food with large groups in a downtown city park more than twice a year. Food Not Bombs has been fighting the ordinance but lost a legal appeal in April, clearing the way for the city to begin enforcement.
The five arrested — Nick Emery, Tommy Frain, Thomas Hellinger, Kyle Trailies and Fischer Williams — ranged in age from 17 to 27.
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The arrests follow four on Monday and three last week. Despite the arrests, Food Not Bombs members say they'll continue their twice-weekly feedings at Orlando's signature park to bring attention to what they consider an unjust law.
The local members are getting support from like-minded activists outside the city, as well. Two of those arrested, Emery and Frain, are members of a Food Not Bombs chapter in Tarpon Springs.
"It's important for people to come out and risk arrest and do whatever it takes," Emery said. "Food is a right."
mschlueb@tribune.com or 407-420-5417.
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15 - Is Chabad a Racist Criminal Terrorist Jewish Cult?
June 11, 2011
(Left. Chabad DC leader Levi Shemtov, with Barry Soetoro)
Chabad believes Jews are God's chosen people and everyone else is trash. In the book "Gatherings and Conversations" the Great Rebbe tells his followers that Jewish people are an extension of God and Gentiles are destined to serve the Jews.
IF THIS IS THEIR BELIEF, IT IS REASONABLE TO EXPECT THEY ARE ACTING TO OBTAIN THIS RESULT
by Brian Davis
(henrymakow.com)
Chabad Lubavitch is a nasty Jewish supremicist cult that serve the Illuminati. Despite only having 200,000 followers, it has intimate ties to nearly every powerful government leader on earth.
Chabad's power derives from two services they provide the Illuminati:
1. They work with Israeli intelligence in criminal and intelligence operations.
2. They promote a supremacist ideology that encourages Zionists to do dirty deeds.
CHABAD IS A HERETICAL CULT
Founded in 18th century Russia, Chabad is a branch of Hasidic Judaism, a form of Orthodox Judaism that promotes Jewish mysticism as the path to enlightenment. Chabad Lubavitchers study the Kabbalah, the satanic creed that erases moral absolutes and believes God is 'subjective'.
Chabad came to prominence under the guidance of 'The Great Rebbe' Menachem Mendel Schneerson. His policies led Chabad through a period of great expansion establishing institutions in 900 cities around the world.
'The Great Rebbe' gave regular talks on the coming of the messiah. Over time, Lubavitchers began to realize that he meant himself. The belief that Schneerson was the Messiah was first openly professed by Rabbi Shavom Dol Wolpo in a 1984 book and quickly gained acceptance.
Absurdly, even though he died in 1994 'The Great Rebbe' is still the official leader of Chabad, like 'Great Leader' Kim Il-Sung is the leader of North Korea.
In Chabad schoolhouses children chant and salute the invisible Rebbe.
RACIAL SUPREMACISTS
Chabad believes Jews are God's chosen people and everyone else is trash. In the book "Gatherings and Conversations" the Great Rebbe tells his followers that Jewish people are an extension of God and Gentiles are destined to serve the Jews.
"Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness."
"A Jew was not created as a means for some [other] purpose; he himself is the purpose, since the substance of all [divine] emanations was created only to serve the Jews."
Rabbi Ginsburgh, a leading Chabad Rabbi, has argued that because Gentiles are genetically inferior to Jews, a Jew should be able to take Gentiles organs if he needs one. He was recorded saying, 'As for the goyim... Zalman's attitude (was): "Gentile souls are of a completely different and inferior order. They are totally evil, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever."
'If every single cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is a part of God. Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA.'
'If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has an infinite value.'
The Jewish Daily Forward reported a talk given by Chabad Rabbi Mani Friedman.
Asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors Friedman responded, 'The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).'
ZIONIST APOLOGISTS
Chabad's extremism makes them perfect apologists for Israeli crimes. A perfect example is Alan Dershowitz, a Chabad member.
Dershowitz is the premier Zionist apologist rolled out in front of the mainstream news cameras across the world to explain that Israeli's are the victims of every massacre they carry out. An unhinged and creepy individual, during a recent speech he gave at Oxford University he took of his glasses and told the students that he has "Zionist eyes" as do all "reasonable people", Dershowitz is one of many Jewish extremists in sheep's clothing who lead mainstream political discourse in the West.
As further evidence that Wikileaks is an intelligence operation, Dershowitz recently joined Julian Assange's legal team.
INFLUENCE
One of the policies of the Chabad is to send Rabbis across the world to set up Chabad houses. This movement, known as shilchus, has given Chabad a global support network.
Lubavitchers mix with the upper echelons of each host country. Their influence in each country varies.
The Canadian government recently gave the cult $800,000 for the building of a Chabad center in Montreal. Relations with Russia are less warm; the Russians recently refused to hand over two major collections of Chabad texts seized by early Soviet governments.
Where is Chabad's influence the greatest? You guessed it- the US.
Rabbi Shemtov is Chabad's Washington representative, and his enormous influence was illustrated when he lobbied successfully for the Great Rebbe to be posthumously awarded the congressional gold medal in 1995, the only religious leader ever to be given the award.
Rabbi Shemtov is an all-pervasive presence in D.C. Sue Fishkoff, author of 'The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch', writes: "It's not enough that Chabad's man in D.C. knows the name and phone number of just about every congressman, senator and foreign ambassador in the nation's capital -- he also knows their legislative assistants, their secretaries and the people who clean their offices."
Shemtov says that the vast network of shelichim inside the US generates his political power. "We have shelichimin forty-seven states and in [at least] 310 districts. ... People sometimes view the world of shelichim as three thousand people, but it's not only three thousand people, it's three thousand interconnected networks. So we can place a call from a constituent to almost any member of Congress."
"Most shelichim have good connections with their senators, congressmen and governors, who represent the most remote places in the United States. For example, when Sarah Palin, a Repulican, burst onto the scene, she had already known about Jewish issues and Chabad specifically from Rabbi Yosef Greenberg in Alaska."
Members of the cast of 'Friends' recorded a piece for a Chabad telethon. Bob Dylan appeared on another.
CRIMINAL AND TERROR ENTERPRISES
Chabad is a criminal organization with ties to Mossad. Chabad houses provides safe houses and storefronts for Israeli intelligence and criminal activity. This includes everything from terrorism to money laundering, drug running to prostitution.
For instance, in March 1989 U.S. law enforcement rounded up a criminal network in Seattle, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Colombia, and Israel that involved a Chabad House that was involved in money laundering and currency violations.
Wayne Madsen writes:
'In Bangkok, Israeli military pilots and drivers who stay at the Chabad House there train Thai Army commandos, divers, and pilots who are fighting a Muslim secessionist movement along the southern border with Malaysia.
'Bangkok police have long suspected Chabad House as a center for the Israeli Mafia, which runs its Ecstasy and Ice trade from Bangkok for all of Southeast and East Asia. The Israeli Mafia also reportedly runs heroin labs in Myanmar, where an Israeli military officer serves in Myanmar's feared military counter-intelligence agency.'
Retaliation against the Chabad mafia can be seen in the Mumbai terrorist attacks when Lashkar-e-Taiba militants took hostage of the Mumbai Chabad house murdered and 9 Jews, including Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg.
Wayne Madsen has reported that mafia overlord Dawood Ibrahim ordered the attacks partly in response to Israeli mafia attempts to take over his Mumbai drug trade.
'[Wayne Madsen Report] has learned from Asian intelligence sources that the Russian-Israeli gangsters operating out of Chabad House tried to take over Mumbai's drug trade with the help of local Jewish mobsters so Ibrahim, while settling scores with India, the CIA, and Britain, decided to have his subcontractor LET terrorists pay a visit to Chabad House and "collect on a debt with high interest."'
Chabad are allowed to exist as a powerful international force because they serve Israel in two ways: working with them in intelligence and criminal activities, and a source of extremist ideology to fuel Zionist crimes.
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