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Welcome Information Connoisseurs

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Cereal Murder and the Group Mind

A researcher contacted me today for access to an accurate transcript of the following interview. In making it available to him I decided to post it here as well. (Please keep in mind that this is copyrighted material).

From the year 2000: 
Joan d'Arc Interviews Michael Hoffman for Paranoia magazine

The Scapegoating of Ted Kaczynski 
Cereal Murder and the Group Mind

Joan d'Arc: Michael, in your excellent on-line article entitled "The Scapegoat: Ted Kaczynski, Ritual Murder and the Invocation of Catastrophe," (now available in the book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare) you write that the Unabom case has been "rubber-stamped in newsrooms with the logo of the FBI." As you explain, a very un-American collusion between the media and the FBI from the beginning primed the public for Ted Kaczynski's guilt without due process and trial. Have we been witness again to a 'lone nut' in the making?

Michael Hoffman: Yes, this is the point I make in my essay, "Profiling the FBI's Unabom Charade." It fits the classic profile from Oswald to Arthur Bremer to Tim McVeigh. The tip-off is when you see, at the height of the investigation, that the chief suspect is apprehended and yet there is no search for accomplices. This was true with "Son of Sam" and with Kaczynski. How was the FBI so certain Kaczynski had zero accomplices? Because they had Kaczynski under surveillance for years. They were shepherding him. Unabom is a Federal government operation.

d'Arc: As you state, the nomenclature of the "Unabom-er" was concocted by the FBI. You state that no credible evidence has actually linked Mr. Kaczynski to all or even most of the bombings. In addition, the most well-known sketch of the alleged "Unabom" suspect depicts a hooded man with sunglasses, a mustache and curly red hair. Strangely, the "Unabom Manifesto" alludes to the existence of potential accomplices in the mail bomb attacks for which Kaczynski is now famous. Yet there has been no investigation or follow-up of various leads, nor has there been media curiosity about this possibility. How does this fit into the 'Trial by Media" scenario?

Hoffman: I am a former reporter for the N.Y. bureau of the Associated Press so I know the media. People have this idea that reporters for big outlets are these super-hip, highly educated people. They're not! They are mostly low-grade careerists who eat junk food and have filled their heads with conformist crap since they started college. They are rubber-stamped from a mold. They have little curiosity because real curiosity is dangerous -- just ask the late reporter Don Bolles who got car-bombed by Barry Goldwater's pal Kemper Marley. Bolles was a very curious reporter!

I think the local reporters on the Kaczynski scene in Montana, from the Great Falls, Helena and Missoula papers and TV stations, knew that something intense was happening involving the "Power Brokers" and they backed off. The first question a good reporter would ask of the Feds is, "Why are you so certain Kaczynski acted alone? You haven't even searched for any accomplices even though the 'Unabom Manifesto' mentions other members of the FC club?" There are hundreds of questions. I'd start there.

d'Arc: You point to the fact that nobody other than the Feds were allowed anywhere near Kaczynski's cabin during the search and seizure of property, where the media reported that "truckloads of evidence" were taken from a tiny structure less than 200 square feet. What in your estimation is wrong with this picture?

Hoffman: It's the same picture as in Oklahoma City where the Murrah building was demolished before any real investigation could begin. This destruction of evidence- a felony - is committed by the felons in "our" own government.

d'Arc: Michael, you write that a few days after Ted Kaczynski's apprehension, on April 11, 1996, you got his attention by holding up a cardboard poster at the window of the Helena jail. You indicate that via sign language Kaczynski expressed an interest in a visit from you in jail, and that you entered the jail on that day. Can you describe what you saw in the jail that day. Were you his only visitor and were you able to see Mr. Kaczynski?

Hoffman: It was eerie. The jail was deserted except for a couple of local people visiting some other prisoner. This was the day Kaczynski was the most famous man in America. This was the day Time and Newsweek came out with Kaczynski on the cover. Yet there were no environmentalists at the jail drumming support, singing, chanting so Kaczynski could hear them. No environmentalists trying to visit him. Just me, one lone investigator and that was it. The environmentalists were massaging their computer keyboards at the time. There was wild speculation and gossip flying all over the Internet. But for some reason no one bothered to go to the scene - beyond virtual reality to reality. Except for me, Kaczynski was totally alone. It was spooky, given the fact that he was the most famous man on the planet at the time.

d'Arc: You also state that one of the media/FBI myths about Ted Kaczynski was that he was "a reviled kook who reeked of body odor, dressed abominably and was paranoid." Can you tell us how you have arrived at the belief that this is a contrived story and what you think is behind it?

Hoffman: I went to Lincoln where Kaczynski has lived for years and talked to everyone I could. Some of the locals I spoke with said that when the media came across a person in Lincoln who spoke positively about Ted K., the interview was never broadcast. The townfolk told me that the people who spoke the most negatively were people who hardly knew him. But they're the ones who got the most sound bites on the nightly news.

I got to befriend one lady, a town official, who knew Ted fairly well. He had helped her son with homework and visited her irregularly. She said that when Ted was around his cabin digging in his garden, etc. he was dirty. That's when the Feds grabbed him - in his work clothes. But when Ted went to town he cleaned up, put on decent clothes, was friendly etc. Originally this lady and several others wanted to testify on Ted's behalf at his trial. But then his lawyers practically said he was guilty and Ted did little from his jail cell to counter that impression and this demoralized his friends in Lincoln severely.

d'Arc: You note that Kaczynski, an alleged "publicity-obsessed serial killer," was peculiarly reticent at his sentencing. At this opportune time, with the media spotlight on him, Kaczynski only stated that his opinions had been distorted and he would make a statement later. What did you find strange about this? Do you think Mr. Kaczynski was immediately put on a pharmaceutical such as Prozac, or has had a mind control implant of some sort, and remains under the influence of such?

Hoffman: I really have no idea what he was on. My essay on Unabom was published in Apocalypse Culture II (Feral House) in edited form. They even printed words I never wrote, including that I assert that Kaczynski definitely ingested a "drug soup." I never wrote that. What I actually wrote is that when the judge only asked Kaczynski at his sentencing if he had taken any medication in the "previous 24 hours," that the time frame cited was too narrow and that the effects of long-term use of such drugs as Prozac and Luvox (the drugs of the Columbine killers and Kip Kinkel) take longer than 24 hours to subside, if indeed Kaczynski had been ingesting them. I point out that Kaczynski's behavior during his pre-sentencing incarceration may have been the result of government-imposed medication or even as you suggest, an implant. But I have no evidence to prove that.

d'Arc: You write, "the need to convict Kaczynski and to cover up any connections to other individuals and organizations who may have been associated with him, is a pattern found in several cases involving spectacular crimes, tremendous publicity and the imprinting of the Group Mind." Can you discuss this "pattern" as it also applies to the creation of "lone nuts" like Lee Harvey Oswald, Arthur Bremer, Sirhan Sirhan, Tim McVeigh, David Berkowitz and James Earl Ray?

Hoffman: Like James Earl Ray and Son of Sam David Berkowitz, Kaczynski had no trial. He just copped the usual plea in such cases and was whisked into his living tomb.

d'Arc: You write that in the observance of a ritual working, we should find a pattern of relevant synchronicities in the days following the "Unabom" attacks which would perform as Group Mind imprinting and would have a "message for the masses." You state such messages would affect the Group Mind like a billboard on Broadway. Michael, can you read the Unabom billboard for those of us who are unable to see the writing on the wall?

Hoffman: A lot of people acknowledge that Charles Fort was correct when he said that everything is connected. New Age seminars have been emphasizing the truth of this as well. Yet when it comes to crime, politics and government, it's as though a rationalistic filter is imposed on our perception and we go back to the same old mundane habits of mind as the sleepwalkers around us.

The missing element in studying true crime or occult crime or "cereal" killers is the story aspect. Above all else these are stories, like a bedtime story or a fairy story or a Shakespeare play. I'm not saying they are fiction. I'm saying they are speaking to the eternal verities and themes that are common to powerful literature and to the tales which have imprinted people to such an extent that they are passed down from generation to generation.

A story is a message told with words and other symbols, invoking familiar images from the subconscious, which then generate an internal dialogue between our conscious and subconscious. In a benign sense this is how much useful knowledge is imparted, but in a malignant sense this is how people are programmed. The Cryptocracy doesn't so much seek to program us by tampering with our high school textbooks as by the spinning of tales that are as electric and golden as anything from the realm of King Arthur or the Arabian Nights.

If one wishes to see this in action one studies the Unabom outrages and then what happens during them and immediately after them because that's part of the story! Not just the isolated data itself but the whole fabric of Group Mind consciousness as it is driven by the ritual in the Media-Infotainment universe of the modern world. I point out in my Unabom study that there were some ecological catastrophes seemingly triggered by Unabom. There was also twilight language play by the media itself, including USA Today. Government assets in the media were making vague allusions to the trickster element of the "hunt for Unabom."

So a story was woven and it consisted of a great deal more than the particulars of the Unabom case itself. People who read my study will see what I mean. For this writer the story of Unabom is the story of a scapegoat ritually bound to a blackening (not a greening) of the earth, as part of the trickster process at work. One could cite here the Hellfire Club's spirit of occult jesting. Probably a number of your readers are fans of Dashwood's Hellfire Club. I am not one of them. There is an occult nose-thumbing at the bottom of many of these twilight language cereal murders, such as Jack the Ripper - poking fun at the investigators and the public because so many don't get the black comedy at the heart of it. It's a feeling of superiority magnified exponentially.

d'Arc: You report that Kaczynski's surrender to his captors on April 3, 1996 occurred in the geodetic realm at the following nodal point: The Scapegoat, at Lincoln, Montana, the Scapegoat Wilderness and the Scapegoat Eatery. You describe Ted Kaczynski as a human scapegoat, "an Atlas whose 'shrug' continues to reverberate in the consciousness of the Group Mind of America mystica." Is this part of the meaning of the billboard?

Hoffman: Yes, in the sense that this "Scapegoat" element is there for everyone to see and they do see it. Our subconscious does anyway. But then they dismiss it as being too weird. Most investigators in this field are vastly out-classed by the perpetrators, because the investigators limit themselves only to the prosaic "facts of the case": the murder weapon, the motive, the suspect, etc. Ask them to look at a US Forest Service map of where Kaczynski lived and spot "Scapegoat" staring out at them like a beacon and they'll respond by saying, "You're discrediting your case by this weirdness." Actually they discredit their own investigations by failing to factor in the weirdness -- which the FBI's Behavior-Mod squad has built into it.

d'Arc: You have also asserted that the "Unabom ritual" is a "masonic psychodrama" for the processing of humanity. You further explain that in such occult crime rituals, a synchronistic work of literature usually appears before the crimes are perpetrated, which serves as a "virtual script." Can you discuss this virtual script with regard to the Unabom psychodrama?

Hoffman: Yes, it's my contention that these are occult rituals and that like the Rosicrucian Manifestos of the early 17th century they are accompanied by anonymous statements of intent like the original Unabom manifesto, as well as scripts that precede the ritual, just as the book "Black Abductor" preceded the Symbionese Liberation Army Phoenix rite and in Kaczynski's case, it was a story by Joseph Konrad.

d'Arc: You also point out that the Hollywood film, "U.S. Marshals," starring Tommy Lee Jones, debuted in theatres across the country during the days leading up to Ted Kaczynski's arraignment. Can you delineate this film's connection to the Unabom charade?

Hoffman: It's all connected, we just need to hone our holistic vision to the point where we can see the whole cobweb. Look at the movie "The Matrix" in the wake of Columbine. Look at "The Wicker Man" movie in the same time frame as Son of Sam. The themes of the killings are in the movies. The consciousness and secret gnosis of the killers is there too.

The processing is almost all out in the open in this era of the Revelation of the Method. Al Gore's pal Tommy Lee Jones did a movie called "US Marshals" in the aftermath of the capture of Kaczynski. In the movie there's a US Federal agent named Kaczynski (I don't know how they spell it in the screenplay but that is the exact sound of the agent's name in the film. Rent the DVD and you'll see what I mean). Kaczynski, the government agent in the movie, is at the center of an incredible double-cross.

When Chevie Kehoe slaughtered William Mueller and his whole family in Arkansas, he eliminated the last material witness who could have connected Tim McVeigh to the US government and the US government's own pseudo-neo-Nazi terror gang, the "Aryan Republican Army." When Kehoe perpetrated the killings he was wearing an FBI tactical command jumpsuit.

Revelation of the Method concerns mind control in the last stages and at a high level. When you tell someone what you are doing to them - murder, mayhem, kidnap, rape, you name it - and they do nothing to stop you or protect themselves, you have created a doubly enslaved subject.

This is part of the motivation for the occult processing of America through ritual murder etc. The Cryptocracy carries out "cereal" murder crimes attended by archetypal signs and symbols which the dreaming mind of the Group Mind groks at a certain level. Next they confess in the Videodrome that it is the police and the authorities who are behind the crimes. Then they let the whole stew percolate into the psyche of the masses until the next covert sting operation.

This is partly why we have the least revolutionary and most passive population in recent memory. I'm not advertising the invincibility or genius of the Cryptocracy. They are succeeding by default and by dint of their great gambler's instincts. It's a huge risk to reveal to people what you've done to them. Somebody who can decode this for the masses can short circuit it and turn it against the Cryptocracy.

They guard against this by seeding all kinds of X-files style "noise" into the ranks of conspiracy students - all intended to mislead and to muddy the waters so that one clear voice of discernment, one vision for decoding the story, can't be seen or heard amid the competing din. That's what has happened thus far, but I believe that it is inevitable that my work is going to gain more currency. Give me two hours with any group of average intelligence and I'll have them reading twilight language and decoding occult rituals for the rest of their lives.

When that happens the Cryptocrats become transparent and they're in quite a spot of trouble if you ask me, because all they have is this Oz game -- of the man behind the curtain. It's a huge con. I am synchronizing people with reality and there's power in that because reality is truth.

"What is truth?" asked Pontius Pilate. Truth is what the universe operates on. It's what fuels the sun and makes the galaxies spiral. It can be known and it can be surfed, and it can help and heal us all because it's the motive force of what brought us here in the first place.

The Cryptocracy can be diminished and shifted out of the way with this power of truth. But to use this power people have to love truth. Most conspiracy researchers these days don't love truth. They love novelty. They love to contemplate a million fantasy scenarios and theories rather like an enchanting flower garden. The Cryptocracy has got those people right where it wants them. For such people my ideas will be merely the latest strange novelty. I will fascinate them for as long as it takes for someone else to come along and hypothesize about Martian vampires infiltrating Microsoft.

But my work is not a hypothesis and I'm not seeking to entertain or divert. My work is for those who can bear the full glare of reality; whose heart and mind and soul have been sufficiently cleansed that when certain truths are articulated these truths "speak" to that person in a profound way. Such truth is discarded for the next novelty only at the peril of the person who received this gift sinking back - perhaps irretrievably - into the chaos and confusion which is the hallmark of one of the many virus memes seeded by the Cryptocracy during the final stage of the alchemical "Must Be" - the Making Manifest of all that is Hidden.

Copyright ©2000 by Paranoia magazine and Michael Hoffman 

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Monday, May 11, 2009

For the Record: Nuremberg standards don't apply to US

Torture Memos Will Not Result in Prosecutions

George W. Bush Justice Department torture facilitators John Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury will not face prosecution or jail time for permitting torture by the CIA. Mr. Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Mr. Bybee is  a federal appeals court judge in Nevada. The trio wrote secret memorandums authorizing brutal torture of suspects.

See New York Times, front page of the print edition, May 6, 2009, from which the headline above is taken. (The online version of the article by David Johnston and Scott Shane has eliminated the headline "Torture Memos Will Not Result in Prosecutions," and substituted for it a more cosmetic headline, "Interrogation Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Charges". You will have to have a hard copy of the print edition to note the disparity and once hard copies are eliminated in a paperless future world, no one will be able to document the cheat).

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For the Record: Israeli Nazis Used Poison Gas in Gaza

United Nations Rebukes Israel for Gaza Attacks

NY Times | P. A13 |May 6, 2009

A United Nations report released Tuesday (May 5) condemned Israel for attacking United Nations schools and other facilities during its military campaign in Gaza in January. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said a United Nations investigation found conclusively that Israeli weaponry, some containing white phosphorus, was “the undisputed cause” of attacks on several schools, a health clinic and the organization’s Gaza headquarters.

(Emphasis supplied)

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Today's Talmud Lesson: Evil Eye in Rabbinic Judaism

A Religion of Superstition

The Evil Eye in Rabbinic Judaism
The rabbis gives dissidents and doubters the evil eye and magically transform them into piles of bones

 The Babylonian Talmud relates three rabbinic killings by cursing people with the evil eye. The first is found in Brachot 58a. A supposedly "blind" rabbi --Rabbi Sheishet-- travels to see a king's procession. A dissident challenged the rabbi as follows: "Whole pitchers go to the river; where do broken vessels go?" 

The reference is as follows: Whole pitchers are able to collect water from the river; broken pitchers are useless in this regard. By the same token, it is useless for a blind man to attend a royal pageant for he is unable to see. 

Rabbi Sheishet proved his ability to see the pageant and to delineate between the king's party and the monarch himself. The Talmud relates this sarcastic dissident's fate. Rabbi Sheishet gave him the evil eye and the mocking dissident became a heap of bones. 

The second account of the rabbinic practice of the evil eye appears in the story of the revered Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, in B.T. Shabbat 33b-34a: After using hate speech against the Romans, an informant recounted the rabbi's words to the officials and Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai was sentenced to death. Forced to conceal himself, he first hid in the house of study. 

When that place was compromised, he lived to a cave with his son, where the pair miraculously lived for years only on water, carob beans and Talmud and Kabbalah study. When the threat from the Romans subsided and Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai was able to come out in the open, he came upon the informant whose testimony had resulted in the Roman death sentence that had forced him into exile. Encountering the informant in a public place, Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai declared: "How is it that he is still alive?" Rabbi Yohai gave this this man the evil eye and the Talmud relates that the informant was instantly reduced to a pile of bones. 

Another account in the Babylonian Talmud, in Bava Batra 75a (also cf. B. Sanhedrin 100a), states that Rabbi Yohanan taught that G-d will one day produce enormous jewels and pearls that will measure 30 cubits by 30 cubits. From these huge precious stones, G-d will cut openings of 10 cubits by 20 cubits and He will place them at the gates of the city of Jerusalem. 

A skeptic laughed at this: "Nowadays we cannot find jewels and pearls that are even the size of an egg or of a small bird; how can stones of such immense proportions ever be found?" 

Time passed and the skeptic was on a ship. There he saw  angels cutting the precious stones as described by Rabbi Yohanan. The skeptic turned to the angels and asked, "For who are you making these?" The angels replied by exactly repeating Rabbi Yohanan's teaching. The skeptic returned to Rabbi Yohanan and exclaimed: "Master, speak! For you are right to speak, since just as you described it, so I have seen it!" 

Rabbi Yohanan was unimpressed by the former doubter's new enthusiasm. The rabbi declared, "You worthless one! Had you not seen it yourself would you have doubted it! You are guilty of mocking the words of the sages." Rabbi Yohanan then cursed the erstwhile skeptic with the evil eye. The skeptic then died and was instantly was transformed into a heap of bones.


Thursday, April 30, 2009

Professor under fire for comparing Israelis to Nazis

"You can criticize Israel; you can criticize the war in Gaza," Foxman said. "But to compare what the Israelis are doing in defense of their citizens to what the Nazis did to the Jews is clearly anti-Semitism." -Abe Foxman, ADL Thought Cop

Professor's comparison of Israelis to Nazis stirs furor

The UC Santa Barbara sociologist, who is Jewish, sent images from the Holocaust and from Israel's Gaza offensive to students in his class. He has drawn denunciation and support.

By Duke Helfand

Controversy has erupted at UC Santa Barbara over a professor's decision to send his students an e-mail in which he compared graphic images of Jews in the Holocaust to pictures of Palestinians caught up in Israel's recent Gaza offensive.

The e-mail by tenured sociology professor William I. Robinson has triggered a campus investigation and drawn accusations of anti-Semitism from two national Jewish groups, even as many students and faculty members have voiced support for him.

The uproar began in January when Robinson sent his message -- titled "parallel images of Nazis and Israelis" -- to the 80 students in his sociology of globalization class.

The e-mail contained more than two dozen photographs of Jewish victims of the Nazis, including those of dead children, juxtaposed with nearly identical images from the Gaza Strip. It also included an article critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and a note from Robinson.

"Gaza is Israel's Warsaw -- a vast concentration camp that confined and blockaded Palestinians," the professor wrote. "We are witness to a slow-motion process of genocide."

Two Jewish students dropped the class, saying they felt intimidated by the professor's message. They contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which advised them to file formal complaints with the university.

In their letters, senior Rebecca Joseph and junior Tova Hausman accused Robinson of violating the campus' faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal, political material unrelated to his course.

"I was shocked," said Joseph, 22. "He overstepped his boundaries as a professor. He has his own freedom of speech, but he doesn't have the freedom to send his students his own opinion that is so strong."

Robinson, 50, who is Jewish, called the accusations and the campus investigation an attack on academic freedom. He said his former students, the Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League had all confused his criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism.

"That's like saying if I condemn the U.S. government for the invasion of Iraq, I'm anti-American," he said. "It's the most absurd, baseless argument."

Robinson said he regularly sends his students voluntary reading material about current events for the global affairs course, and that no one raised questions when he subsequently discussed his e-mail.

"The whole nature of academic freedom is to introduce students to controversial material, to provoke students to think and make students uncomfortable," said Robinson, a UC Santa Barbara professor for nine years.

As the dispute over his e-mail plays out, UC Santa Barbara has become the most recent U.S. university to confront campus unrest over issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In recent years, Jewish and Muslim groups have quarreled repeatedly at UC Irvine about the Holocaust and Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Professors and students at Columbia University have also argued over issues of intimidation and academic freedom amid debates on the Mideast.

In Robinson's case, reaction has been strong -- on both sides. Shortly after hearing from the two students in January, the Wiesenthal Center produced a YouTube video titled "Jewish Students Under Siege from Professor at UC Santa Barbara." The clip shows one of Robinson's former students, her face obscured to protect her identity, reading from his e-mail.

The head of the ADL's Santa Barbara region sent Robinson a letter in February calling on him to repudiate his statements about Israel. Last month, the ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, in a meeting with faculty members at the campus, urged the university to conduct an investigation into Robinson. He was told that an inquiry was already underway.

"You can criticize Israel; you can criticize the war in Gaza," Foxman said. "But to compare what the Israelis are doing in defense of their citizens to what the Nazis did to the Jews is clearly anti-Semitism."

Robinson's supporters say the professor is being maligned for exercising his right to challenge his students to think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Students on campus have formed a group, the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB, which is chronicling the saga on its website. Letters of support also have arrived from academics across the country, including one from California Scholars for Academic Freedom, which says it represents 100 professors at 20 college campuses. The group argues that the allegations have been raised against Robinson to "silence criticism of Israeli policies and practices."

Some UC Santa Barbara faculty members also are speaking up for Robinson. History professor Harold Marcuse, who attended the March meeting with the ADL's Foxman, said the pictures e-mailed by Robinson were "well within the bounds of appropriateness on campus. It's something I could have used in a course."

Marcuse, who is Jewish and teaches about the Holocaust in his world history and German history classes, said he would not have injected his own views into such a message to students, but added: "I don't think Bill Robinson's e-mail is anti-Semitic in any way. I think criticism of Israel is OK."

One UC Santa Barbara official has already looked into the allegations against Robinson, and a faculty committee is being formed to decide whether to forward the case to UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Henry Yang. A university spokesman declined to comment on the case.

Robinson has hired an attorney, and the student committee supporting him has scheduled a May 14 campus forum on the matter. Joseph and Hausman, the students who filed the original complaints, said they plan to attend. So do Hausman's parents from Los Angeles and Rabbi Aron Hier, director of campus outreach for the Wiesenthal Center.

"I just want to bring awareness," said Hausman, 20. "I want people to know that educators shouldn't be sending out something that is so disturbing."

End quote

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Read the record of rabbinic censorship in
Judaism Discovered by Michael Hoffman

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Monday, April 27, 2009

Alchemical Pan process on high

\
Pressing our Panic Button

A New York Times reader, Jim Brown, allegedly took this photograph from 10 Exchange Place in Jersey City, looking toward 77 Hudson Street and the Statue of Liberty

Another view, supposedly of the same aircraft

"A low flight by an Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, caused brief panic in parts of New York City on Monday morning." 

--New York Times website April 27, 2009, 2 pm PDST

Swine flu "pandemic" (not epidemic) out of Mexico and a 9/11 "panic" in New York City, all on the same day.

Coincidence or conspiracy?

**************

White House Apologizes for Air Force Flyover
By A. G. Sulzberger and Matthew L. Wald

An Air Force One lookalike, the backup plane for the one regularly used by the president, flew low over parts of New York and New Jersey on Monday morning, accompanied by two F-16 fighters, so Air Force photographers could take pictures high above the New York harbor.

But the exercise — conducted without any notification to the public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City. By the afternoon, the situation had turned into a political fuse box, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg saying that he was “furious” that he had not been told in advance about the flyover.

At 4:39 p.m. Monday, the White House issued an apology for the flyover. Louis E. Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, who served in the Clinton administration as secretary of the Army, said in a statement:

Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused.

The mission on Monday, officials said, was set up to create an iconic shot of Air Force One, similar to one that was taken in recent years over the Grand Canyon.

When President Obama learned of the episode on Monday afternoon, aides said, he, too, was furious. Senior administration officials conveyed the president’s anger in a meeting with Mr. Caldera on Monday afternoon.

The flyover, which began around 10 a.m., resulted in widespread confusion and a flood of calls to emergency hot lines. Perplexed officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and other authorities were inundated with calls from anxious ferry passengers, office workers and residents.

The mayor said the Police Department and someone in his administration – he did not say who – received an e-mail from the Federal Aviation Administration late on Thursday, informing them that there would be “a fly-by for a photo-op, as they described it.”

However, Mr. Bloomberg said he was not apprised of the flyover until his BlackBerry started buzzing this morning with messages from people asking if he knew what was going on. He characterized it as a breakdown in communication that “will never happen again.”

“First thing is, I’m annoyed – furious is a better word – that I wasn’t told,” he said at a City Hall news conference held to discuss the swine flu cluster in Queens.

In unusually harsh language, the mayor criticized the Defense Department for conducting the exercise and the Federal Aviation Administration for being secretive about it.

Jim Peters, an F.A.A. spokesman, said “the photo op was approved and coordinated with everyone.” Notification was made in advance to the mayor’s office, “including its 911 and 311 operation centers,” the New York City Police Department, the New Jersey State Police, the United States Park Police and other agencies, he said.

The Police Department confirmed that it had been notified about the event but said it had been barred from alerting the public. “The flight of a VC-25 aircraft and F-16 fighters this morning was authorized by the F.A.A. for the vicinity of the Statue of Liberty with directives to local authorities not to disclose information about it but to direct any inquiries to the F.A.A. Air Traffic Security Coordinator,” the Police Department said in a statement.

The mayor criticized the secrecy around the flyover. The e-mail notification “did have the normal language of saying this is sensitive information, should be distributed on a need-to-know basis, that they did not plan to have any publicity about it, which I think is ridiculous and just poor judgment,” Mr. Bloomberg said.

He added: Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo-op right around the site of the World Trade Center catastrophe defies imagination. Poor judgment would be a nice ways to phrase it, but they did. I also think that once they had told us, we should have done a better job. Had I known about it, I would have called them right away and asked them not to. It is the federal government and they can do in the end what they please, but I would have tried to stop it. I don’t know there’s a lot else to say other than they shouldn’t have done it.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Monday afternoon that he was unaware of the flyover. At his daily press briefing, Mr. Gibbs initially referred questions to the F.A.A. and the Air Force. When told that those government offices were referring questions to the White House, Mr. Gibbs said: “I have no information on this other than what I saw.”

Mr. Gibbs, pressed by reporters, said he had seen news reports of the flyover, but declared: “I was working on other things. You might be surprised to know that I don’t know every movement of Air Force One.” Later, he added that he would look into the matter.

The flyover was scheduled for 10 to 10:30 a.m. The plane is designated by the Defense Department as a VC-25 but is recognizable to the public as a Boeing 747. Unaware of the planned exercise, scores of office workers flooded out of buildings, worried about the prospect of terrorism.

“People came pouring out of the buildings, the American Express Building, all the buildings in the financial district by the water,” said Edward Acker, a photographer who was at the building, 3 World Financial Center. “And even the construction guys over by 100 North End Avenue area, they all got out of their buildings. Nobody knew about it. Finally some guy showed up with a little megaphone to tell everyone it was a test, but the people were not happy. The people who were here 9/11 were not happy.”

Mr. Acker added: “New York City police were standing right there and they had no knowledge of it. The evacuations were spontaneous. Guys from the floor came out, and one guy I talked to was just shaking.”

Even the markets dipped shortly after 10 a.m., though it was unclear if the alarm over the planes was a factor. Starting at 10:02 a.m., three main market indexes started dropping precipitously. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 40 points in 10 minutes, starting 10:15 a.m., before it rebounded more than 50 points.

In Jersey City, construction workers were evacuated from a condominium tower under construction at 77 Hudson Street. The workers, who were on the 32nd floor of the construction site, said the plane circled three times past the Goldman Sachs tower, the tallest building in New Jersey. On the second pass, they said, the jet appeared to be only a few dozen feet from the building — close enough to clip the side of the skyscraper. A fighter followed right behind, mirroring its moves. The construction site as were other buildings in downtown Jersey City, including offices in the Exchange Place financial complex.

Carlina Rivera, 25, who works at an educational services company on the 22nd floor of 1 Liberty Plaza, said her co-workers were spooked in part because their offices are so close to the site of the 9/11 attack. “As soon as someone saw how close it got to the buildings, people literally ran out,” she said. “Probably about 80 percent of my office left within two minutes of seeing how close it got to our building.”

Ms. Rivera, who was a high school student in the East Village when the 9/11 attack occurred, added, “I did feel a little bit foolish for staying in the office while everyone left.”

Ms. Rivera said eventually there was a message made over the public announcement system that the plane was an advertisement for a movie — which she said that did not coincide with what they were reading online about the plane taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty. “It was a little confusing. What was the truth?” she said.

Ms. Rivera continued: “Of course, everyone had to take out their cellphones and say, ‘You can come back, it’s O.K.’ Eventually they returned with some sort of comfort food. We feel like we should have at least been warned.”

At 1 Liberty Plaza, according to another person who works in Lower Manhattan, a loudspeaker announcement said at 10:55 a.m., “Planes were observed flying low over Lower Manhattan, but were part of an approved federal action.”

Johnny Villafane, 42, of the Upper West Side, said, “The plane did a 360. There was a vibration. The glass in the skyscrapers was shivering.” He added, “It sounded like the building were cracking, everything started shaking. I thought the plane was coming down.”

Sidney Bordley, a floor director in an office building at 1 Battery Park Place, said, “People were running out of the office, claiming they saw a commercial flight being pursued by F-16’s.” He added, “There was some confusion and a little excitement.”

A group of financial services workers, who were gathered outside the same building but declined to give their names, described their reactions. “I saw the landing gear and I was out of here,” one said. Another said: “There were people in my elevator, sweating and shaking. There were women crying. It was not an experience to be taken lightly.”

Andrew Burke, 49, a T-shirt vendor from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, said: “People panicked and ran into the streets thinking the worst.” He added, “It’s a real shame they couldn’t tell the city what they were going to do.”

Notify NYC, a pilot electronic service intended to quickly provide emergency alerts to New Yorkers who sign up for them, did not prove particularly effective. Text messages and e-mail messages explaining the flyover were sent out at 10:38 a.m., after the exercise was already scheduled to end. “The community was startled, and would have preferred advance warning,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, vice chairwoman of Community Board 1 in Lower Manhattan.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority, which runs the region’s three major airports, said the low-flying planes prompted confusion. “This has nothing to do with any of our airports,” he added.

The Staten Island Advance reported that the Federal Aviation Administration had authorized the flights and that the flights were “pre-planned.” President Obama was not aboard the plane, nor was he in the New York area. He gave a speech at 9 a.m. at the National Academy of Sciences in downtown Washington.

It was not the first time that flyovers had left anxiety in Lower Manhattan. In February 2002, two Air Force F-16 fighters flew low over Manhattan as they made their way back to Atlantic City after a regular patrol. Officials later acknowledged that “the timing and location” of the flyover were “poorly coordinated.”

And in May 2003, a Continental Airlines flight carrying American troops returning from Iraq received permission to fly low around the city, a decision that also rattled nerves.

Jessica Bagdorf, Sewell Chan, Jennifer 8. Lee, Colin Moynihan, Fernanda Santos, Daniel E. Slotnik and Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Yad Vashem's Talmudic Lesson

A Talmudic Lesson: There was only one Holocaust. Nobody else qualifies for this level of cosmic victimhood except the Holy People. --Michael Hoffman

*******

Excerpt: Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum's "position is that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other event."

Yad Vashem fires employee who compared Holocaust to Nakba

By Yoav Stern | Haaretz | April 23, 2009

Yad Vashem has fired an instructor who compared the trauma of Jewish Holocaust survivors with the trauma experienced by the Palestinian people in Israel's War of Independence.

Itamar Shapira, 29, of Jerusalem, was fired before Passover from his job as a docent at the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, after a teacher with a group of yeshiva students from Efrat made a complaint. Shapira had worked at Yad Vashem for three and a half years.

This is the first time that Yad Vashem has fired a guide over political differences, an institution official said Wednesday.

Shapira confirmed, in a telephone conversation with Haaretz, that he had spoken to visitors about the 1948 massacre at Deir Yassin.

He said he did so because the ruins of the Arab village, today a part of Jerusalem's Givat Shaul neighborhood, can be seen as one leaves Yad Vashem.

"Yad Vashem talks about the Holocaust survivors' arrival in Israel and about creating a refuge here for the world's Jews. I said there were people who lived on this land and mentioned that there are other traumas that provide other nations with motivation," Shapira said.

"The Holocaust moved us to establish a Jewish state and the Palestinian nation's trauma is moving it to seek self-determination, identity, land and dignity, just as Zionism sought these things," he said.

A Yad Vashem official said the institution objects to any political use of the Holocaust, especially by a docent working for it.

The institution's position is that the Holocaust cannot be compared to any other event and that every visitor can draw his own political conclusions.

Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg said that after holding a hearing for Shapira, at which he refused to accept his superiors' instructions and change his teaching methods, it was decided to terminate his job as a guide in the institute's school for Holocaust studies.

"Yad Vashem would have acted unprofessionally had Itamar Shapira continued his educational work for the institute," Rosenberg said.

Yad Vashem employs workers and volunteers from the entire political and social spectrum, who know how to separate their personal position from their work, she said.

Shapira said Yad Vashem chooses to examine only some of the events that took place in the War of Indpendence. "It is being hypocritical. I only tried to expose the visitors to the facts, not to political conclusions. If Yad Vashem chooses to ignore the facts, for example the massacre at Deir Yassin, or the Nakba ("The Catastrophe," the Palestinians' term for what happened to them after 1948), it means that it's afraid of something and that its historic approach is flawed," Shapira said.

***

Read Judaism Discovered by Michael Hoffman
A Talmud lesson deemed too hot to handle by Amazon.com

Monday, April 20, 2009

The New Catholic "Shoah" Theology: Newsletter #47

Announcing

Revisionist History Newsletter no. 47 

The New Catholic "Shoah" Theology 
Alibi for the Revolutionary Overthrow of the Gospel of Jesus Christ 

In this special 16-page issue, Michael Hoffman's 18,000 word essay analyzes and deconstructs the Holocaustolatry which has become a dogma and criterion for holding church office.

Contents include: The Gospel according to the Shoah: The Religion of Judaism for Gentiles; the Alchemical Blending of Irreconcilable Opposites; Nostra Aetate: the Underground comes out of the Closet; Paul VI Builds on Nostra Aetate; Refuting the Scripture-twisting Shoah theology of John Paul II and Benedict XVI; Exaltation of Judaic Racial Prestige by Distortion of the Book of Romans; St. Paul: Still Clinging to "Jewish Traditions"?; "Our Elder Brothers in the Faith"; Shoah Newspeak as Hegelian Dialectical Praxis; Bishop Richard Williamson and the Vatican Order to Recant his doubts about Auschwitz Gassings; Auschwitz Replaces Calvary; the Apostate's Creed. Also: A Progress Report on Judaism Discovered - a Book and its Enemies.

"Though I am not a theologian, in the vacuum created by theologians who refuse to take up this subject with Biblical fidelity, I have had to step into the breach, with a view toward crafting a groundwork for an exegesis which begins to demonstrate why Bishop Richard Williamson's principled stand concerning execution gas chambers in Auschwitz, far from being a 'side issue' for the Church, is actually at the very heart of the struggle for the gospel in our time." 
--Michael Hoffman

Revisionist History Newsletter no. 47 The New Catholic "Shoah" Theology. $8.50 (postpaid in the USA. Overseas send $9.50).  
MAIL to: Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 USA

Or order this issue by VISA or Mastercard

Or subscribe to Revisionist History Newsletter and start your subscription with this issue

***

Friday, April 17, 2009

Rabbinic Skull Magic

One piece of the puzzle that is the Bush family's Skull-and-Bones secret society?

"There are two kinds of necromancy: the one where the dead is raised by naming him, the other where he is invoked by means of a skull." 

--The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 65b

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Rare Magic Inscription on Human Skull

The BAS Library | 16 Apr 2009 

Not long ago, the well-known collector Shlomo Moussaieff acquired two earthenware bowls, the open ends of which were adjoined to form a kind of case - inside the case was an ancient human skull. A magic incantation, written in Aramaic, was inscribed on the skull.

BAR readers already know about the more than two thousand magic incantation bowls that have survived from third - seventh-century C.E. Jewish communities in Babylonia. The incantation bowls were made at the same time and in the very communities that produced the most intricate, complex and revered accomplishment of rabbinic Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud. 

Although some have deemed the incantation literature to be inconsistent with the spirit of the Talmud, recent research has shown it to be, rather, complementary and representative of aspects of life reflected within the Talmud.

The Moussaieff incantation skull arrived in two earthenware bowls that form a container. The bowls themselves are not inscribed. It appears that the skull and bowls constituted a single ritual object, with the inscribed skull as the magical focal point.

The fact remains that belief in demons was widespread at this time among Jews as well as other peoples. Incantation bowls are known not only from Jewish communities but from other communities as well. The Jewish versions are written in what is commonly known as Jewish Aramaic.

To combat demons - who cause medical problems as well as other mishaps and ills - people invoked numerous magic rites and formulae. The magic rites could also serve as a love charm. Your desired one would surely fall in love with you if the proper incantation was invoked. The reverse was also true. To bring disaster on your personal enemy, you would invoke a curse text. These often-strange and mystifying incantations were usually inscribed in cramped writing in a spiral on the interior of the bowls.

Not all magic incantation texts were written on bowls. Sometimes they were written on parchment, tin, lead, copper, silver and even gold. Occasionally we find one on even more exotic materials such as eggs. Now from the Moussaieff collection comes one written on a skull.

It appears that only four other skulls with incantation texts have come to light - and a dim light at that. None of them was excavated professionally. All simply surfaced on the antiquities market.

“BY MEANS OF A SKULL.” It is difficult to write on the idiosyncratic surface of a skull; reading a skull inscription can be equally difficult. Like the inscriptions on incantation bowls, the skull text is surrounded by a squiggly line. Although the inscription on the Moussaieff skull is very hard to decipher, one thing is clear: It contains names of people for whom the incantation was made. 

One of the names, Shilta, is derived from an Aramaic word meaning “after-birth.” The skull itself was probably that of a woman. The exact manner in which this skull was used, however, remains a mystery. A contemporaneous source, the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 65b, offers a possible clue: “There are two kinds of necromancy: the one where the dead is raised by naming him, the other where he is invoked by means of a skull.”

And all but the Moussaieff skull have been known since the early 20th century. The great Aramaic scholar James A. Montgomery of the University of Pennsylvania studied one in the university's museum collection, about which he wrote in 1913.4 When he examined it, the entire skull was there and well preserved, although in a shattered state. Montgomery reported two inscriptions on the skull. Unfortunately, the text was not very clear, and he managed only a few comments on the text. Even more unfortunate, the skull does not appear to have been well cared for since Montgomery's time. 

Among the 17 remaining skull pieces I examined in Philadelphia - which were poorly mounted on a precarious wire structure with what appears to be something like epoxy glue - I found only what appears to be part of the shorter inscription. It is painfully clear that there is much less of the object at the present than there was when Montgomery examined it. And what is left of the skull appears to be in poor condition.

Montgomery's comments on what he could salvage of the Philadelphia skull text indicate that it referred to "spirits" and "Liliths," in the plural. In this period, high infant and birthing-mother mortality rates were attributed to Lilith demons, who were thought to roam the earth looking for pregnant women and newborn infants to attack. Lilith, of course, emerges later, in the medieval period, as the mythological first wife of Adam who refused to be subservient to him. But the motif of the demoness who roams the earth looking for newborn infants to devour has its roots in much-earlier Mesopotamian traditions and persists throughout history.

In addition to the Philadelphia skull, Montgomery mentioned two other skulls in the Berlin Museum that he was not able to examine. I noticed an additional skull at the Berlin Museum - so there are actually three, not two, specimens there. The texts on two of the three are extremely fragmentary. One fragmentary text, however, records the name of the powerful and sinister demon Yaror, the so-called "demon of dispatch" known from other incantation texts. This skull also contains a drawing of a bound demon, not dissimilar to the figures occasionally found in the incantation bowls. Perhaps this is Yaror himself.

One of the Berlin Museum skulls, however, bears a more extensive text. Parts of 16 lines have survived. The text mentions the son and grandson of Lilith, seven angels and Gabriel. One part of the text that is difficult to interpret mentions someone who "eats and is not filled ... [who] drinks and is not intoxicated ... [and who] is injured and not released [meaning uncertain]." This could refer to an insatiable demon (the grandson of Lilith), or it might be a description of either the client's complaint or a description of what this incantation is meant to inflict on his enemy. The rareness of this type of text and the difficulty of reading it mean that we will have to wait for the appearance of more material to ascertain which of these possibilities is the more likely.

ANGELS AND DEMONS. Like their neighbors, Babylonian Jews invoked magic formulae to combat demons (often associated with illness), impose curses against human foes or charm potential mates. Generally written in Jewish Aramaic, incantations were inscribed on anything from parchment to eggshells, tin, lead, copper, silver and gold. 

More than two thousand magic incantation bowls from the third to seventh centuries C.E. survive. Although it is not entirely clear how they functioned, many bowls share certain features: an inscription that spirals out from the bowl’s interior and, in some cases, a drawing of a figure may represent the intended target. Recent scholarship has suggested that folk religion reflected in these magic rites often complements the more-austere traditions mentioned in the contemporaneous Babylonian Talmud. The bowls pictured here are from the Moussaieff collection.

It is not easy to write on a skull. The texture of the surface, its curves, bumps and holes, requires scribal adjustments that affect the flow of the text and make reading it more difficult. This is certainly true of the recently surfaced example from the Moussaieff collection.

This skull came to Moussaieff inside two bowls that formed a case. The bowls themselves contain no writing. An examination of the bowls gave me the impression that they were an original and integral part of a single magical object of which the skull was the main part. This is, however, speculative.

The inscription on the skull contains many of the features common to magic bowl inscriptions. We know the names of at least some of the people for whom the skull incantation was made. Two of them are common Jewish names: Martha and Shilta. According to one scholar, Shilta is derived from an Aramaic word meaning "after-birth." And the skull is probably that of a woman. Although parts of 11 lines of text have survived, it is difficult to make much sense of what remains. The text is surrounded by a squiggly line, a common element among incantation bowls.

The text, however, is only part of the mystery. Basic questions continue to baffle: Why a skull? I have no certain answer. That so few examples exist, in comparison to the large number of bowls, suggests that the use of skulls for incantation texts was rare. Judaism, of course, has many taboos regarding human remains. Even touching a corpse imparts impurity. Necromancy is forbidden5 (although it was obviously sometimes practiced). Perhaps the skull was used for this text because it was thought that the spirits of the dead, to which skulls are obviously connected, have access to the supernatural realm.

In the end, this skull and its text remain mysterious, unfortunately revealing less than they conceal.

Only five skulls inscribed with Jewish Aramaic magic incantation texts have come to light, none from professional excavations. Like the others before it, this skull, acquired by collector Shlomo Moussaieff, raises more questions than it answers. Its relationship to the more common genre of incantation bowls and its use in a rite of magic seem clear enough. But until more information emerges, basic questions—how this skull was used, for whom, by whom and for what reason—remain unanswered. (End quote)

Photos accompanying this article may be viewed here.

To learn more about rabbinic Babylonian magic read:
JUDAISM DISCOVERED by Michael Hoffman

***

Friday, March 13, 2009

Despite war crimes, the West always supports "Israel"

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following article by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy provides insight into the kind of inevitable, blank-check support Israeli war criminals receive from the "Holocaust" humanism hawkers in Europe and the United States. The "Holocaust" or "Shoah" is the means by which Israeli war crimes are absolved, thereby guaranteeing more atrocities against Palestinian civilians and more occupation and destruction of their infrastructure. The Talmudic moral superiority of Israelis places them beyond the normal penalties and punishments to which Nazi, Serb and Darfur war criminals are subjected. 

As the religion of Orthodox Judaism secretly teaches, Judaics are a special class, possessed of special immunities based on their alleged sacred ethnicity. The recent pontificating against Bishop Richard Williamson - the moral high ground, the posturing, the pompous denunciations in the name of highest human values - can be seen for what it really is: the gaseous discharge of slavish supporters of Ku Klux Judaism, i.e. the unwritten doctrine that upholds the Israeli "right" to kill Palestinians with impunity based on Judaic racial prestige and past victimization of Judaics. The "Holocaust" is a subsidiary of Ku Klux Judaism.

It's more than merely insane, it's downright criminal, even as Max Hastings in the New York Review of Books, and others like him, continue to wring their hands over the "collective guilt" of the ghostly World War II-era Germans. Meanwhile, the guilt, "collective" or otherwise of the Israelis of our time, who are killing people now, is never addressed by war crimes prosecution, papal anathema or international boycott and divestment. The "Holocaust" and its slogan of "Never Again" is not used to halt the ongoing Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians, but rather, the "Holocaust" cult functions as an accessory of that mass murder.

Conformists cannot comprehend how some of us dare to opt out of Holocaustianity, charging us with moral turpitude and inhuman indifference for rejecting its claims to progressive humanism and exalted ethics. We cannot accept it because we know it to be the mask by which Israeli terrorists shed innocent blood and then emerge from the carnage to take their place on the stage of the "Holocaust" memorial, lecturing the German people and Bishop Williamson on "Never Again."

--Michael Hoffman

Has Anyone asked why the Swedes hate us?
By Gideon Levy | Haaretz | March 13, 2009

Was it a coincidence? The day after Israel's Davis Cup tennis match in Sweden, played in a practically empty arena this week, a brief item appeared on the Haaretz Web site: Historians have discovered that Sweden, former tennis superpower, aided the Nazi war machine by extending credit to German industrial plants.

Coincidence or not, neutral in 1941 or not, 68 years later, public opinion in Sweden is definitely not neutral: Thousands demonstrated there against Israel, which was forced to wield its racket like a leper, with no audience in attendance. Did anyone in Israel even ask why it was considered a pariah in Sweden? No one dared question whether the war in the Gaza Strip was worth the price we're paying now, from Ankara to Malmo. It's enough to recall that the Swedes were always against us. The fact that there were times when they were awash in love for Israel was erased from our consciousness.

The world is always against us, period. But the world is not against us - to the contrary: The truth is that there is no other nation toward which the world is so forgiving, even today. Yes, today. Granted, world public opinion is very critical, sometimes in a way that's unique to Israel, but most governments (except Venezuela and Turkey, but including Egypt and Sweden) are far from being in sync with the public opinion in their countries. The official world continues to be sympathetic to Israel, regardless of its actions. The rise of Hamas, the increase in hatred for Islam in the West, the American hegemony - all this helps in strengthening the support, and we know how to make the very most of it.

What's the difference between national tennis player Andy Ram and national tennis player Thomas Johansson? Johansson and his angry fans saw real pictures from Gaza; Ram and his complacent fans never did. Had Ram seen them, maybe he, too, would demonstrate. But he, like most Israelis, was spared this discomfort, thanks to the gung-ho Israeli press. Can we and Ram really criticize those who were horrified by the pictures from the war? Can we reproach those who dare to protest against the people responsible for those scenes? Are we demanding that the world remain silent once again?

The demonstrators in Stockholm waved banners against violence and racism. It may be okay to ask why they waved them only against us, as there are some other racist and violent places in the world, but it is not okay to question the right to do so in general. Was there really no violence in Gaza, and is there no racism in Israel? If we were Swedes, wouldn't we protest against the pointless killing and destruction wrought by Israel?

But we needn't get too worked up over the fury of public opinion in Sweden; its right-wing government is much less agitated, like all the other European governments. One need only recall the surreal scene at the height of the brutal assault on Gaza, when the heads of the European Union came to Israel and dined with the prime minister in a show of unilateral support for the side wreaking the killing and destruction. They didn't give a thought to visiting Gaza, and uttered nary a word of criticism against Israel. That is official Europe.

Now, as a new government is about to be formed, there is concern that Israel will pay a price in the international arena for its composition. Not to worry: Everything will be just dandy. The world will accept Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel's No. 1 statesman, Avigdor Lieberman as its No. 1 diplomat and Moshe Ya'alon as its No. 1 soldier. Lieberman's belligerent statements and the Israel Defense Forces' violent actions in the territories under former chief of staff Ya'alon will not present any obstacles. The world will accept them, too.

Furthermore, the growing concern that the new U.S. administration may be about to change the rules of the game vis-a-vis Israel could also prove to be unfounded: Barack Obama's new America has already pledged to clean up after Israel, as usual. The $900 million the administration has pledged to contribute to rebuild Gaza - without a word of criticism about who caused the destruction there, as if it were a natural disaster and not the work of an unrestrained army, particularly in light of America's current economic state - is a bad sign for anyone hoping for change. Israel wrecked Gaza with U.S. weapons, and America and Europe step in to fix things, not for the first time or for the last.

As the saying goes around here, what was is what will be: Israel will continue to destroy, and America will continue to mop up after it, without a word. A bad sign? Yes, for anyone who thinks that change will only come from the outside or, in other words, only from America.

Note how the upcoming Durban II conference on racism is also being thwarted, because of the fear that it will harshly criticize Israel. Does anyone know of any other country that can win such sweeping international backing? But we always complain: The whole world is against us. It's good for shoring up national unity and for squeezing out more and more support in the world.

The bleak prophecies about a change in America's attitude toward Israel are as old as the country itself. Whenever there's a change of administration in the U.S., anxiety spikes. But from president to president, our strength only grows: When George W. Bush was elected, we were told to be wary of the Texan, a friend of the Arabs and of oil. And what did we get? Never was there a president more "sympathetic to Israel," who gave it such a blank check for all its settlements, targeted assassinations and occupation activities. Obama is scary, too: He's already talking with Iran and with the Taliban. Most likely, fears surrounding this will also prove to be overblown, once he gets around to dealing with Israel.

International interest in Israel is completely disproportionate. Last week, every taxi driver in Bursa, Turkey could recite by heart the names of Lieberman, Tzipi Livni, Netanyahu - and also Avi Mizrahi, the major general who had criticized their country. Every little flutter of coalition action in Israel immediately makes headlines; the world does not focus as much attention on the internal politics of any other country. Only Israel. Whether it's good or bad for the Jews, it's hard to put one's finger on the roots of this phenomenon.

For decades now, the world has been buying the Zionist narrative almost in full. The occupation and settlements have been going on for more than 40 years with no serious impediment. Except for some international grumblings and resolutions no one has any serious intention of implementing, Israel continues to belong to the camp of the "good guys"; the Arabs are the "bad guys." The new atmosphere in the West against Islam is reinforcing this trend and Israel is benefiting yet again. Criticism of the media in the West from Israel's supporters is also quite excessive.

A Swedish journalist was recently laid off from her newspaper because she sided with the Palestinian position in the conflict. It's hard to imagine her editors acting the same way if it were a Jewish reporter who had written in support of Israel.

When I was interviewed once by a reporter from the France 1 channel, a commercial channel, at the doorway of a house in Gaza - where the army had killed the only daughter of a paralyzed mother - and I said that it was these sorts of moments that made me feel ashamed to be an Israeli, my words were not broadcast. The reporter phoned me the next day and told me his editors had decided not to include the quote, for fear of viewer response. When I once published an article in the German paper Die Welt, which is part of the publishing group of Axel Springer, where all writers had to sign a pledge that they would never cast doubt on the State of Israel's right to exist, the editor told me: "If this critical article about the occupation had been written by a German journalist, we would not have published it."

Despite mounting criticism of Israel, Europe is still very cautious. With Europe's Holocaust guilt, its anxiety in the face of Islam and its readiness to blindly follow the United States anywhere, Israel still enjoys preferential status in the world. Very preferential.

But perhaps this will not always be the case. Perhaps the worse our actions become, the harsher the criticism will be. Meanwhile, two pointless wars in two years were not enough to achieve this. Maybe the time will indeed come when the world will get fed up with this aggression and violence of ours, which endanger world peace, and will say at long last: No more occupation, no more wars perpetrated by Israel for which the world has to pay. Perhaps when Israel's dream team of Netanyahu-Lieberman-Ya'alon faces the American dream team of Obama-Clinton, conservatives versus liberals, warmongers versus seekers of negotiation - something will happen then.

In the meantime, let us remember: Israel beat Sweden 3-2 in tennis and justice prevailed once again.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Archbishop Theodosius: Pope not welcome in Jerusalem

Archbishop Theodosius of Sebaste

By Israel Shamir | March 9, 2009

“Pope Benedict is not welcome in the Holy Land in the present circumstances", - said Archbishop Theodosius of Sebaste, the highest ranking native Palestinian Christian clergyman in Jerusalem, after it was announced in Israel that the head of the Church of Rome will begin his May pilgrimage to the Holy City with obeisance to the Jewish Holocaust Memorial ‘Yad Vashem’.

- We are not against the Pope’s visit to Yad Vashem, but before expressing solidarity with the Jews, he should show solidarity with the Christians of Palestine. We have our own tragic memories; our Yad Vashem is in Gaza, said the Archbishop, and then added: “let the Pope begin his visit with Gaza first”.

Tall and fortyish, blue-eyed, of commanding presence, the Galilean-born Archbishop is a citizen of Israel, an outspoken critic of Jewish excesses and a most visible supporter of the One Democratic State idea calling for full equality for Jew, Christian and Muslim in the whole, undivided Holy Land. Archbishop Theodosius Atallah Hanna is a man of his own mind: he refused to meet with President Bush, befriended the Muslim Mufti of Jerusalem and defended Pope Benedict when he was attacked for what was considered anti-Muslim talk. Now he expresses the feelings of many Palestinian Christians, this oldest Christian community in the world. While the Church of Rome was established by Christ’s apostle St Peter, the Church of Jerusalem was established by Christ Himself. In many villages and towns of the Holy Land memories of the Saviour’s presence still linger. The majority of Jerusalem Christians belong to the Archbishop’s Orthodox church, while a minority are Catholic.

Regarding the papal visit, the Catholics and the Orthodox are of one mind. Before the Gaza war, Father Manuel Musallam, head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Gaza, said that it is Gaza’s right not to die, and if it dies it will be in the battlefield. The Catholic believers, priests and monks of the Holy Land forwarded the Pope a secret letter calling on him to postpone his visit to some future time. The Vatican read the letter but decided to disregard it. Now, when the blood shed by Jews in Gaza is still warm, Israel will certainly portray this visit as a sign of papal approval.

“If the Pope wants to come to the Holy Land, he should begin the visit by coming to the local Catholic church in Gaza", said Archbishop Theodosius Atallah Hanna. "The church was denied visits by the priests and bishops, and Gazan Christians were unable to worship in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. At first, the Pope should meet with Palestinian Christians, who carry the light of Christ in the darkness of Israeli occupation. Otherwise, this is not a visit to us, but a visit to Israel, an item on the Pope’s agenda vis-à-vis the Jewish organizations. We ask the Pope to speak for the people of Palestine, for Palestinian Christians are part and parcel of Palestine. Palestinian Christians suffer together with their Muslim brothers. Let the Pope advocate our cause”, said he.

Many Palestinian Christians feel that the Vatican has become a plaything of Jewish intrigues. Why does Vatican spend so much effort trying to woo and please the Jews? Is not the Church of Rome still an independent body? Why is the See of St Peter heeds to Jewish veto even regarding church affairs?

The Pope’s visit to the Holocaust Memorial is troubling.

The Museum adjacent to Memorial contains some rude defamation of the late Pope Pius; and the Jews have refused to remove it.

Even worse, the Holocaust is used to justify mass murder in Gaza; coming first to Yad vaShem sends a wrong symbol of accepting Jewish superiority over Christendom.

Moreover, the Holocaust Memorial is a religious symbol, an idol of a new heathen, godless cult.
Its boss Dr Judah Bauer has openly denied God and the Creation, while its previous boss is considered a war criminal and his extradition is being sought.

Tom Segev, a prominent Israeli writer, correctly said that the Holocaust has become "an object of worship." Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League has declared: “The Holocaust is a near successful attempt on the life of God's Chosen children and, thus, on God himself”.

We know of a near-successful attempt on the life of God’s Son, and thus on God Himself, and it took place in Jerusalem, on Calvary. Yad va-Shem is a pretender, a place of idolatry. Abraham refused to pay obeisance to idols -- why can’t the Pope follow his lead?

The forthcoming visit of the Pope was engendered by a ruse: traditionalist Bishop Msgr. Williamson was re-communicated with the Church, and at the same time his interview regarding the Jewish holocaust was aired. The scandal was enormous. If Williamson were to blaspheme Christ and the Church he would be applauded for his free mind; as things are, the Pope was forced to beg forgiveness of his "elder brothers the Jews," and even depart on this Canossa-like trip with its scheduled meetings with Israeli war criminals.

In Palestine, the Pope and the Catholics may learn a thing or two from the Church of Jerusalem. Despite its minority position in the Jewish state, the Orthodox Church is still free and un-subverted. Its theology is shiningly, implacably triumphalist; we believe in Christ and in victory of Orthodoxy as we celebrated it last Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent. Our Church is universal and catholic, for we of Jerusalem and Moscow, Antioch and Constantinople are joined by one communion, though we do not have a single shepherd. We have no elder brothers; we have no Zionists in our midst. We have no special relations with Jews – unless they want to join. We reject heresies, and we do not hesitate to anathematise heretics, including the popes of Rome who went too far in their desire to submit to worldly powers. Our Church does not seek better public relations, she does not change her rules in a vain attempt to attract more worshippers. She venerates icons, but does not bow down to idols.

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Thursday, March 05, 2009

War crime advocate named law professor in Tel Aviv

Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel 
by Jonathan Cook

The Israeli government has moved quickly to quash protests over the appointment of the army's senior adviser on international law to a teaching post at Tel Aviv University. Col Pnina Sharvit-Baruch is thought to have provided legal cover for war crimes during the recent Gaza offensive. Government officials fear that recent media revelations relating to Col Sharvit-Baruch's role in the Gaza operation may assist human rights groups seeking to bring Israeli soldiers to trial abroad. 

A Spanish judge began investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza under the country's "universal jurisdiction" laws this month, and a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is considering a Palestinian group's petition to indict Israeli commanders. Meanwhile, the furore — by highlighting the close ties between the army and Israeli universities — is adding weight to a growing campaign in Europe and the US to impose an academic boycott on Israel, say activists. 

Tel Aviv University's decision to hire Col Sharvit-Baruch to teach international law prompted protests from staff after the local media published details of the military planning for the Gaza offensive. More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the operation, the majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured. 

According to critics quoted by the Haaretz newspaper, Col Sharvit-Baruch and her staff manipulated standard interpretations of international law to expand the scope of army operations to include civilian targets. 

Leading the protest is Haim Ganz, a law professor who has called the colonel's approach to international law "devious jurisprudence that permits mass killing". In a letter to the university, Prof Ganz said he was lodging "a moral protest against a state of affairs where somebody who authorized these actions is teaching the law of war". 

Last week Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, threatened to cut government funding for the law faculty should Col Sharvit-Baruch's appointment not proceed. The university's president, Zvi Galil, phoned the cabinet secretary to reassure the government, saying Prof Ganz's opinions were not shared by most staff. Other academics have rallied in support of Col Sharvit-Baruch, accusing her critics of waging a McCarthyite campaign against her. 

According to the Israeli media, she personally approved the first wave of air strikes in Gaza that targeted a police graduation ceremony, killing at least 40 cadets. Although police forces have civilian status in international law, and are therefore protected from military reprisal, Col Sharvit-Baruch is reported to have revised her opinion of the attack's legality during the many months of planning. 

In addition, she is said to have "relaxed" the rules of engagement, approved widespread house demolitions and the uprooting of farmland, and sanctioned the use of incendiary weapons such as white phosphorus over the densely populated enclave. 

She also offered legal justification for the targeting of buildings in which civilians were known to be located as long as they had been warned first to leave. Schools, mosques and a university were among the many civilian buildings shelled by the Israeli army during the 22-day operation. 

Her decisions have been widely criticized by international human rights organisations as well as by international law experts in Israel. The professor Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, called her interpretation of the rules of war "flexible". Regarding the strike against the police cadets, he said: "If you follow that line, there is not much that differentiates [the cadets] from [Israeli] reservists or even from 16-year-olds who will be drafted [into the Israeli army] in two years." 

Col Sharvit-Baruch's predecessor, Daniel Reisner, noted that her staff had stretched the accepted meanings of international law. The army's operating principle, he added, was: "If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it." 

Orna Ben-Naftali, the dean of law at the College of Management in Rishon Letzion, said the army's conduct in Gaza had made international law "bankrupt". "A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head." 

But despite the protest at Tel Aviv University, most academic staff in Israel supported Col. Sharvit-Baruch's appointment, said Daphna Golan, a program director at the Minerva Center for Human Rights at Hebrew University. "I think even Prof Ganz has been frightened into silence by the backlash." The episode, she said, highlighted the intimate relations between the army and universities in Israel, as well as the dependence of the universities on army funding. She noted that there were many special programs designed to favour army and security personnel by putting them on a fast track to degrees. 

"Most of the professors in the country's Middle East departments — the 'experts on Arabs' who shape the perceptions of the next generation — are recruited from the army or the security services," she added. 

Omar Barghouti, a co-ordinator of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said Col Sharvit-Baruch's employment was a further indication of the "organic ties" between Israeli institutions and the army. "This just adds one more soldier to an already very long list of war criminals roaming around freely in Israeli universities, teaching hate, racism and warmongering, with impunity," he said. 

He noted that calls for an academic boycott were growing in the wake of the Gaza offensive. Al-Quds University, with campuses in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, severed its contacts with Israeli universities last week. It had been the last Palestinian university to maintain such ties. At the same time, a group of US professors announced that they were campaigning for an academic boycott of Israel — the first time such a call has been heard in the US. Mr Barghouti said an "unprecedented" groundswell of popular opinion was behind new campaigns in countries such as Australia, Spain, Sweden, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. Jonathan 

Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book is Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net 

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Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Arrest Olmert, Livni, and Barak for war crimes

Israeli human rights activists: Arrest Olmert, Livni, and Barak for war crimes

By Ofri Ilani
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057351.html

Anonymous self-described Israeli human rights activists have set up an Internet site detailing alleged war crimes committed by senior government officials and Israel Defense Forces officers. No known human rights organization is behind the site, whose founders refuse to give their names.

The site, www.wanted.org.il, includes "arrest orders," complete with pictures and personal details, for Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and his two predecessors, Dan Halutz and Moshe Ya'alon, former air force commander Eliezer Shkedy and others. It also explains how to inform the International Criminal Court in The Hague of when the "suspects" are outside Israel, and hence vulnerable to arrest.

The "arrest order" for Barak, for instance, states: "On December 27, 2008, the suspect ordered an aerial assault on all of Gaza's population centers. The assault included hundreds of sorties by fighter jets that dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on residential areas of Gaza, which led to the deaths of 1,200 people - men, women and children. Some 5,300 people were wounded and hundreds of thousands became refugees. On December 10, 2008, a formal complaint was filed against Ehud Barak to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Holland ... on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity because of the siege of Gaza."

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

More photos of Israeli massacre in Gaza

Remains of a Palestinian child, murdered by Israeli forces, Gaza ghetto, Jan. 5, 2009

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Israeli soldier takes time out from attacking the Gaza ghetto to recite his rabbinic hate literature, Jan. 4, 2009

A ten-year-old Palestinian girl learns of the slaughter of her relatives by Israeli forces. Gaza ghetto, January, 2009.

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