Memorandum on the New 10-Year $38 billion U.S. Aid Package to Israel

Starting in 2019, the U.S. will give Israel $38 billion over the next 10 years – $3.8 billion per year, which is $10.41 million per day.

This is in line with previous years. Last year the U.S. gave Israel $3.7 billion – about $10.14 per day. In other words, the new aid package amounts to an increase of around $27 million per year.

Israel has long received more U.S. money than any other country. Some earlier disbursements were even larger when considered in today’s dollars. This aid to Israel amounts to more than half of all direct military aid the United States provides worldwide.

The new agreement will slowly phase out a unique Israeli privilege: Israel’s exception to the requirement that all U.S. military aid be used on American goods and services (40% of military aid to Israel is currently exempted). This special exemption is supposed to end by the seventh year.

It is expected that Israel and Israeli companies will work to get around this potential loss of revenue in a number of ways:

• forming “partnerships” with American companies;
• increasing the practice of requiring that some of the systems Israel purchases from American companies include Israeli-made components;
• increasing the amount of material and other goods in general that the U.S. purchases from Israel, already far from negligible.

Under the agreement Israel promises not to ask for additional money; however, this promise includes loopholes:

1. Israel may ask for more money if there is a “war.” (Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza – during which its forces killed over 2,200 Gazans, over a third of them women and children, and Palestinian resistance fighters killed 67 Israelis – was frequently called a “war.”)
2. The great many Congressional representatives who are personally pro-Israel or who wish to curry favor with pro-Israel donors and media may independently vote additional money to Israel. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has already indicated that he intends to do just this.

Aid to Israel is technically illegal, violating U.S. regulations prohibiting U.S. aid to non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. There is currently a lawsuit pending in Washington DC challenging the disbursement of this aid.

The American public is not in favor of this aid to Israel. A recent survey showed that almost two-thirds of American voters feel that the U.S. gives Israel too much money. 

Numerous surveys over the years found that approximately two-thirds to three-quarters don’t wish the U.S. to take sides on Israel-Palestine.

The agreement is in the form of a “memorandum of understanding.” It is not a treaty and is not legally binding. American voters have the right to demand that the MoU be abandoned and that the aid end.

White House Fact Sheet

State Department Briefing

The East German Stasi Secret Police and Zersetzung

For previous articles about the East German Stasi and Zersetzung please see here and here. See here for more about the technology they use when they find you, and here for the techniques they use.

East German Opposition and Activism

The Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit) was the East German secret police, and that country had the highest proportion of informants and secret police in history: 1 in 60 people were involved by 1989.

The Stasi and Zersetzung

After the East German popular uprising of June 1953 (suppressed by Soviet troops) the government gave the Stasi the task of systematic surveillance and prevention of unrest in the population. Initially, this took the form of brutal physical repression: imprisonment and physical abuse (including torture) by police and secret police.

But this changed during the 1970s when the GDR became more interested in gaining a positive international image, and the repression of activists became more subtle. The Stasi redefined the military term Zersetzung (attrition or corrosion) to name their harassment tactics: the aim was to disrupt the working of groups and the lives of individuals to such a degree that their activism became ineffective, or more preferably, ceased altogether.

The aim of the Zersetzung was to ‘switch off’ the group by rendering it ineffective, with an interim goal of hindering any positive media or public exposure. The usual ways to switch groups off were to: create conflict between members – particularly useful subjects for sowing discord were those of a philosophical or political nature, money,and personal (sexual) relations; hinder and sabotage activities by one or more infiltrators, who would agree to do tasks, but not get round to doing them, lose materials and equipment, repeatedly request changes and further edits of materials to slow down production, attempt to divert the group into more harmless activities etc; isolate the groups from other activists, eg by spreading rumors regarding unacceptable behavior and political views etc.

The choice of tactics was based on psychological profiling and intelligence about the group members, particularly: who plays what role, who fulfills what kind of task; what are relationships within the group like, who hangs out with whom.

Informants (IM: Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter) were the usual way to gain information on a group and were also used to implement the plans to incapacitate a group and sabotage its activities. In activist circles, the informants were almost never Stasi or police officers but were usually existing members of the groups who had been pressured, persuaded, bribed or blackmailed into helping the Stasi; or a suitable outsider who would try to infiltrate and become trusted by the group.

How did the Stasi persuade people to become informants?

1.) Appeals to patriotism
2.) Bribery, or Cash or material reward
3.) Blackmail
4.) Offers of immunity from threatened prosecution
5.) Making the mission sound like an exciting adventure

As in the case of groups, the Zersetzung of individuals had the aim of ‘switching off’ that person’s efficacy by undermining their confidence and their belief in the value of their activities. The Stasi did not usually care whether an individual was switched off through disillusionment, fear, burn-out or mental illness: all outcomes were acceptable, and people’s mental health and social standing during or after an operation were of no interest to the officers involved.

The Zersetzung of individuals was usually carried out by systematically undermining the target’s quality of life (both socially and in the workplace,) with the intention of simply destroying the target’s confidence. The tactics used took various forms, such as spreading slanderous rumors, causing trouble at work etc.

The first stage of Zersetzung was an evaluation of all state held data and information, eg medical records, school reports, police records, intelligence reports, searches of target’s residence. At this point they were looking for any weak points (social, emotional or physical) that could be used as a way to put pressure on the target, eg extra-marital affairs, criminal records, alcoholism, drug use, differences between the target and their group (eg age, class, clothing styles) that could be used to socially isolate them.

After this, a Zersetzung strategy was drawn up: What was the specific aim? What tactics should be used to exploit the target’s personal situation and character traits? What was the timescale?

The next stage was often to supplement covert surveillance with overt observation in order to communicate to the target that they were of interest to the Stasi and to create a sense of insecurity and paranoia. Tactics included stalking and following with sensitizing tactics, friends or strangers dropping hints or repeating information to you about something you might have done in your house the day before to let you know you are under surveillance, gaslighting, prank phone calls and strange noises on telephone lines.

The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at one's home, break-ins  with nothing being stolen, break-ins with nothing but leaving food or milk out on the counter, (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left…); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing tires); the spreading of rumours as mentioned above; ordering goods in subject’s name etc.

Families were often used as leverage against activists at this stage – either with bribery, material gain or career advancement, or using methods of blackmail (family members were sometimes subject to oppression as a way of putting indirect pressure on the activist), or persuasion (“your daughter will land in deep trouble if she remains involved in that group, can’t you make her see sense? It’s her career at stake…”). Physical harassment often included repeated threats, physical attacks on the street, or abuse and assault could be incited by the rumors that had been spread (eg bullying at work, avoidance by neighbors).

How effective was the Stasi?

The militarily organized Stasi simply couldn’t understand how many activist groups functioned without leaders and hierarchies. They often mistook informal hierarchies (caused for example by differences in empowerment levels or dominant behavior patterns) to be real hierarchies – they would target political activists who they thought were leaders or knew information that they didn't want others to know about, and didn’t realise that even if some of these individuals were ‘switched off’, the rest of the group could still manage to function and wouldn’t necessarily fall apart.

The dedication of individuals and groups was also often underestimated – even if an informant successfully sabotaged an individual or a group’s activities, they rarely were completely disheartened, but would try all the harder to achieve their goals.

The tactics of Zersetzung had a significant control function ... if you were engaged in (or merely suspected of) activities that the Stasi didn’t like then repression was a way to punish you.

The human cost of Zersetzung is hard to quantify – many GDR activists are still suffering from burnout, trauma, and chronic mental health issues as a result of being targeted: on a personal level, the Stasi could be frighteningly effective.

2) Gathering and using intelligence

Informants weren’t just used to sabotage group activities and implement Zersetzung plans, but also to gain intelligence on individuals and groups (around 160km worth of Stasi archives survived the end of the GDR). Most intelligence was used to evaluate relationships and activities (which then led to an extension of intelligence gathering to previously untargeted individuals and groups,) and as a basis for planning Zersetzung operations. Obviously, plans for actions and activities were also reported, but these were acted upon only in rare and serious cases – if intelligence were used to disrupt the activities in any obvious way then suspicion would be drawn to the informant.

Intelligence from surveillance and the use of informants was rarely used to actually gain evidence for a prosecution – the Stasi desperately needed the huge amount of information it was processing in order to justify its own existence (along with the salaries and expenses of its officers and staff). If anything, this made the Stasi more dangerous to activists – the Stasi’s dependency on gathering intelligence and mounting operations made the surveillance, Zersetzung, and sabotage more likely to happen, along with the associated human cost.

Informants were regularly found out – mostly because of poor preparation and chance (eg groups who came across evidence that an informant was passing information to the Stasi). But it is significant that most informants were only discovered after 1989 when the Stasi files were opened.

Dealing with Zersetzung

Many people succumbed to pressure from the Stasi and other security forces, often because of mental health difficulties (brought about by the pressure) or through a process that was commonly called ‘inner migration’: giving up political and social beliefs, following the path of least resistance and ceasing oppositional activity.

On the other hand, resistance to Zersetzung was remarkably commonplace, and activists found ways to remain both healthy and active. When East German activists talk today about how they managed to continue their activism, the same points come up again and again, these are summarized below.

Support from friends and other activists was essential – a circle of close friends who shared an understanding of the political and policing situation was probably the most effective way to counter the Stasi.

With such friends, activists could talk openly about fears, suspicions, and needs – they could work out ways to deal with the pressure. They spent time with these friends doing non-activism related activities which helped to build trust in the group. This helped them to know that if things got bad for them, they could both trust their friends and be trusted by them; they would be there if help and support were in need. As a group, they would make plans for possible situations – for example, who would take care of the children in case of arrest or even imprisonment, or who could provide a ‘safe house’ if somebody was being shadowed and needed a break.

On a wider level, the solidarity between groups was an important factor in their survival and freedom to remain active: those groups that had strong relationships with others around the country were generally subject to less repression. In later years, particularly in East Berlin, even when repression happened, widespread solidarity actions and concerted efforts to gain publicity led to quick results (arrested or imprisoned individuals released, the work of the group allowed to resume etc). On the other hand, those groups that weren’t so well networked (usually those in small towns and rural areas where they might be the only active group) were easy pickings for the Stasi – at times whole regions of the country were ‘cleansed’ of grassroots activism.

Groups openly discussed the possibility of surveillance and intervention. The groups would aim to work out what oppression measures they might be subject to (currently and in future,) and think of ways they could deal with them. The hard bit was not to get lost in paranoia (particularly since there was a good chance that the group already had an informant present,) nor to be naïve or ignorant about the possibilities, but to find a middle ground of sensible measures that would, if needed, help, while not bogging the group down in extensive security measures that would just hinder the work of the group.

Part of working out the level of threat from the Stasi, and how to deal with it, was to consider the way the group worked, and how open the group was to newcomers. It is tempting to think that preparing and carrying out actions in the utmost secrecy would be the best defence against an opponent like the Stasi, but of the groups we know about which worked covertly in the GDR, all were subject to brutal Zersetzung measures, while those that worked openly were often subject ‘only’ to surveillance and sabotage by informants, but could nevertheless carry on their activities to a greater or lesser extent.

When open groups were subject to extraordinary repression levels, they were in a good position to mobilize support from other groups and interests. (It’s difficult to draw conclusions though – generally only those from open groups are willing to speak of their experiences, and any covert group that might have survived would be, by definition, hard to find out about.) Working openly also did not preclude the need to work secretly at times, particularly when planning an action or dealing with sensitive issues, and steps would be taken to avoid surveillance.

If a group identified an individual as a possible informant they might have decided not to take any obvious initial action. The immediate reaction would be to assess whether there might be any merit in the suspicions rather than to spread any rumors. The usual way of dealing with the situation would be for a few trusted individuals to discreetly research the suspect. Backgrounds would be checked (are there any family members? Do they exist? Has anyone else from the group spoken to them? What about friendships outside the group? Did the suspect actually work where they said they did? Are they familiar with the town they say they grew up in? etc) This worked well enough for informants who had been provided with a cover story and infiltrated into the group by the Stasi, but couldn’t provide clear results if the informant was a ‘real’ person who had been turned.

By making notes of behavior patterns and movements of a suspect, the group might think they were finding evidence of Stasi involvement. One certain way was to discover reports or connections to handling officers, this would be a clear sign.

Conclusion

It is easy to get lost in analyzing the techniques the Stasi used, and the more you look into it, the more frightening it gets. But it’s worth mentioning that, in our assessment, the grassroots opposition movements made the biggest contribution to the revolution that started in East Germany in autumn 1989 – despite the horrifying levels of repression and surveillance that they had faced for decades. Quite simply, the Stasi failed to predict the events of that year, and once things had started their Zersetzung tactics became ineffective.

Victims of Phosphorus Bombs in Gaza

The same ideology (see here, here, and here,) that is driving people to commit such heinous crimes against humanity as what is seen in the video below, is also driving this.

See here for a previous post on this matter, it should be noted that the United States also used this on the Iraqi people in Fallujah.

Rabbi Says its Okay to Kill Goyim (Non-Jews)

This is not science fiction people. This is not said by some antisemitic KKK or Neo-Nazis. These are Rabbis saying it's okay to kill non-Jews.... including children. See here for more about the bankrupt ideology that is known as Judaism. Reform and liberal Jews are adopting ideas from the New Testament and Christianity, even if they don't know it. Tolerance is not something Judaism is known for, even though some would like you to believe it is. There is a reason why Israel is a segregationist state, and unfortunately, very few people even know about this.  

New Algorithm Predicts Your Future Movements Within 65-Foot Accuracy

Take the following article into consideration when you have a brain-computer interface or nanotechnology in your brain or your body like is shown here and what I am talking about with classified technology. These pieces of crap will follow you around everywhere. But, they also have access to your EEG,  your thoughts and your bodies vital signs  --- so, does it really matter? See here for more about teaching computers to predict the future. See here for more about "Big Data" and Artificial Intelligence. See here for more about Fusion Centers and Data Mining.
========================================================================

Popular Science - By Rebecca Boyle  August 13, 2012

Plenty of hay has been made over which apps and cell phones track our movements, but so far it has been difficult to accurately determine where we're going next -- people can be unpredictable, after all, and make dinner plans at random new places on a whim. In that case, what's a prediction algorithm to do? Track all your friends, too, it turns out.

A team of British researchers developed a new algorithm that can predict where you'll be within 24 hours, with 20-meter (about 65-foot) accuracy. This is a major improvement over other attempts to predict future movements, which have been based in cell phones and even in some cars. These systems track your location over time to determine patterns and habits throughout the days and weeks, figuring out likely destinations at certain periods. But what about when the pattern is disrupted?

Mirco Musolesi, Manlio Domenico, and Antonio Lima of the University of Birmingham combined individual tracking data with data from everyone in a subject's phone book. Their algorithm finds correlations between a user's phone and the movements of contacts in that phone's contact list, and can make an educated guess about where a user is going -- even if it's a major deviation from that person's normal routine. Even if you change your typical path by huge margins, the algorithm's error rate is only about 65 feet, less than an average city block.

The algorithm won Nokia's Mobile Data Challenge, but it could have some real-world implications, too. Location-based services could use it to predict where you might eat lunch tomorrow, for instance, and send you coupons for restaurants in the likely vicinity. This could be attractive for businesses that would love to take advantage of your spontaneous activity, along with your humdrum daily routines.

Or in a more ominous scenario, authorities could use location-prediction to predict future crimes and where they might occur, something that's already being done on city-wide scales in places like Santa Cruz, Calif. The main obstacle would be privacy -- but as Slate points out, plenty of location-service users have no problem giving away where they are, at all times. Just look at services like Foursquare, Yelp or even Facebook. People like sharing where they are and where they plan to go -- so it's not a far leap for advertisers, or others, to start following along with those plans.

This is All You Need To Know About What is Happening in Canada and the United States

This tells you everything you need to know about what is happening in Canada and the United States. REMEMBER, Ariel Sharon used to be the Prime Minister of Israel! Canada supports Israel. Some of these people are utter psychopaths. They are applying this mentality in our own countries with Homeland Security and Bill C-51 laws that allow the intelligence agencies to do whatever they want. Read below! Is this something Trudeau would say? Hitler didn't even say things like this. I wonder where the crazy people I am dealing with get their mentality?

“Tell me, do the evil men of this world have a bad time? They hunt and catch whatever they feel like eating. They don’t suffer from indigestion and are not punished by Heaven. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe the world will then at last begin to fear us instead of feeling sorry. Maybe they will start to tremble, to fear our madness instead of admiring our nobility. Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that we are a savage country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we might go wild, that we might start World War Three just like that, or that we might one day go crazy and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East. Personally, I don’t want to be any better than Harry Truman who snuffed out half a million Japanese with two fine bombs.” —Ariel Sharon, 1982

OR THIS:

“We are Judeo-Nazis, and why not? If you're nice, civilized parents, rather than writing books about their love for humanity had instead come to Israel and killed six million Arabs, what would have happened? Sure, two or three nasty pages would have been written in the history books, and we would have been called all sorts of names, but we would be here today as a people of 25 million! What you don’t seem to understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.” —Ariel Sharon, 1982

OR THIS:

“Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves.” - Menaheim Begin, 6th Prime Minister of Israel. speech to the Knesset (24 June 1982), quoted in “Begin and the ‘Beasts” Amnon Kapeliouk, in The New Statesman (25 June 1982);

OR THIS:

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,” “In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew. Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat,” -Rabbi Ovadia Yosef October-18-2010 during his weekly Saturday night sermon on the laws regarding the actions non-Jews are permitted to perform on Shabbat. 

OR THIS: https://exposeintelligence.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-hidden-history-of-zionism-ralph.html

This should begin to wake people up.  Now, when you have the current Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu speaking in front of the United States congress, (no other country has ever done this,) what does that say about the United States and who runs it? See here for more about Netanyahu speaking in front of congress.

Two Videos- More About Jewish Slavery

For previous posts about Jewish involvement in the slave trade see here. See another post with Larry David here.

Israel and Anti-Gentile Traditions

What follows is a fairly honest article from the website My Jewish Learning. In the article he refers to Israel Shahak and his books. To watch videos with interviews and talks with Israel Shakak, go here. Go here to view his books on Amazon. See here for Jewish Fundamentalism, See here for  Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years. 

=============================================================================

Israel Shahak's theory that anti-Gentile traditions have influenced Israeli policy is well known in both Arab and anti-Semitic circles, but Jews have yet to properly confront it.

Despite its title, Israel Shahak’s Jewish History, Jewish Religion(1994) is not your average intro-to-Judaism book. It is more likely to be found in a Muslim day school in Damascus than a Jewish day school in New York, more likely to be cited on a neo-Nazi website, than your local synagogue’s.

Shahak’s book is an overview of Judaism and Zionism, which focuses on Jewish anti-Gentile traditions. Though he recognizes that many of these teachings are no longer authoritative, Shahak believes that they have, nonetheless, had a profound influence on the development of Jewish identity over the centuries. Most importantly, he believes that they have seeped into Zionist ideology and have affected the way Israel interacts with its non-Jewish citizens and neighbors.

Shahak, a Holocaust survivor who died in 2001, was for many years a professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also led the Israeli Civil Rights League from the mid-1970s until 1990. In Israel, he was a controversial figure, but he was revered by the international left as a tireless advocate for human rights.

Are Jewish Lives Worth More?

In Jewish History, Jewish Religion Shahak brings numerous texts and legal rulings to demonstrate Jewish antipathy to non-Jews. He mentions a passage from the Talmud that says that Jesus will be punished in hell by being immersed in boiling excrement. He relates that Jewish tradition teaches pious Jews to burn copies of the New Testament and curse the mothers of the dead when passing non-Jewish cemeteries. Shahak highlights the famous passage from Leviticus commanding Jews to "love thy neighbor as thyself" and mentions that, according to rabbinic interpretation, "thy neighbor" refers only to Jews.

Shahak further suggests that the Jewish tradition values Jewish life more than Gentile life. He cites Maimonides’ assertion that whereas one who murders a Jew is subject to the death penalty, one who murders a non-Jew is not (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 2:11). According to another leading commentator, indirectly causing the death of a non-Jew is no sin at all (Rabbi Yoel Sirkis, Bayit Hadash, commentary on Bet Yosef, Yoreh Deah 158).

Shahak reiterates the well-known Jewish teaching that the duty to save a life supersedes all other obligations and notes that the rabbis interpreted this to apply to Jews only. According to the Talmud, "Gentiles are neither to be lifted [out of a well] nor hauled down [into it]" (Tractate Avodah Zarah, 26b). Maimonides writes: "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’–but [a Gentile] is not thy fellow" (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murder 4:11).

Indeed, Maimonides is the focus of much of Shahak’s analysis. Shahak believes that the 12th-century philosopher and talmudist was a Gentile-hater and racist. He quotes Maimonides’ statement that, "their [the Turks and the blacks] nature is like the nature of mute animals, and according to my opinion they are not on the level of human beings" (Guide For the Perplexed, Book III, Chapter 51).

Practical Ramifications

Shahak recognizes that many of these traditions are not followed in practice, but he believes that, in general, they have been covered up, instead of confronted. In support of this claim, he refers to another a violent passage from Maimonides that is not translated in the bilingual addition of the Guide published in Jerusalem in 1962. He sees this as a deliberate deception on the part of the editors to soften classical Jewish militancy. His own English translation of the passage, which discusses the command to kill Jewish infidels reads: "It is a duty to exterminate them with one’s own hands. Such as Jesus of Nazareth and his pupils, and Tzadoq and Baitos [the founders of the Sadducees] and their pupils, may the name of the wicked rot."

According to Shahak, Jewish "traditions of contempt" infiltrated Zionism and have affected Israeli policy towards its Arab citizens and the Palestinians. He cites three main areas where he believes this has occurred: residency rights, employment rights, and equality before the law.

As an example, he mentions that 92% of Israel’s land is legally restricted to Jews. While in other countries it would be labeled anti-Semitic if a policy excluded Jews from living on or owning land, in the Israeli context Jews tolerate it. He adds that based on the distinction in classical Judaism between reverence for Jewish cemeteries and not for non-Jewish ones, the state of Israel has destroyed hundreds of Muslim cemeteries, including one in order to build the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv.

Perhaps most disturbingly, Shahak cites a booklet published by the Central Regional Command of the Israeli Army which states that it is permissible, and even encouraged, to kill civilians encountered in war. "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." In a footnote, Shahak mentions that this booklet was withdrawn from circulation on the command of the Chief of Staff, but he nonetheless, believes that even the brief appearance of such a text can only be explained by an accurate assessment of the inequality in Jewish tradition between the lives of Jews and non-Jews.

Jews Have Ignored Shahak’s Work, Others Haven’t

Whatever your opinion of Shahak and his arguments, Jewish History, Jewish Religion should be taken seriously for a number of reasons.

For one, the texts that Shahak cites are real (though Shahak’s sporadic use of footnotes makes it difficult to check all of them). Oftentimes, the interpretation of these texts is debatable and their prominence in Judaism negligible, but nonetheless, they are part of Jewish tradition and, therefore, cannot be ignored. And, indeed, they are not ignored. As alluded to above, Shahak’s work is very popular in both Arab and Muslim circles (Radio Islam contains the full text of Shahak’s work) as well as groups that are often openly anti-Semitic (David Duke and Bradley Smith include Shahak’s book on their websites).

Others use Shahak’s work in their presentation of Judaism, and that fact alone should make it relevant to contemporary Jews.

Shahak was an ardent secularist and anti-Zionist, but he wrote his book as a challenge to Jews to engage the chauvinist, dehumanizing elements of Jewish tradition and to help create a self-critical and sensitive modern Judaism. It’s true that he combed the rabbinic tradition in search of hateful passages, often–though by no means always–misinterpreting them and taking them out of context, but this may be beside the point.

Jewish texts exist that can be–and are–understood to be vehemently xenophobic. These texts must be openly and honestly grappled with, explained, and if necessary, repudiated.

Ari Alexander is the co-founder and co-Executive Director of Children of Abraham, an international organization dedicated to the promotion of dialogue between Jewish and Muslim teenagers around the world. In January 2008, he relocated to Paris, where he co-founded Génération Dialogue, with Ambassador Jacques Huntzinger, in order to build a web platform that creates a space for intercultural dialogue between young people in predominantly immigrant suburbs and their peers in Paris. Ari has spoken at numerous international conferences about Children of Abraham in South Korea, Spain, Senegal, Belgium, Morocco, Tunisia and Qatar. He completed two Master's degrees in the United Kingdom as a Marshall Scholar: an MA in Comparative Ethnic Conflict from the Queen's University of Belfast, and an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford. His research led Ari to spend time living in Jerusalem, Beirut and Damascus. Ari graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in History. He has also served as a counselor and facilitator at Seeds of Peace International Camp and Face to Face/Faith to Faith, in addition to working with Jewish teenagers in United Synagogue Youth and at the Lauder Camp in Hungary.

Jews Face Special Risks, Former Head of Homeland Security Says...

The article below is from 2012 and was in the Jewish Forward, but that's only 4 years ago. (See here and here for articles that are similar and more recent.) The reality is, the Jews do not face any more special risks than any other group of people. They really don't. Their greatest risk comes from people like me exposing how full of crap some of them are. 

See here for the origins of Homeland Security.  See here for the strong connections between Israel, Canada, and the United States. See here for the Canada-Israel “Public Security” Agreement for Counter-Terrorism & Homeland security. See here for how the Canadian government is cracking down on criticism of Israel. See here for how the FBI memo labels patriots, Truth-seekers as potential 'terrorists.' See here for the 72 types of Americans that are considered “potential terrorists” in official government documents.  See here for Israel campaigns against global free speech.

See here for the corruption of the RCMP and how they work with organized crime, see here for a video of the former head of Homeland Security at the ADL "Leadership" Conference. See here for the high technology they are using and here and here for the techniques they are using. See here, here and here for more about data mining and its connections to fusion centers.

Once they find you, they have you under surveillance all of the time, it is called Remote Neural Monitoring. Once you see the connections between organized crime, the media, corporate conglomerates, intelligence agencies, and the police, you'll see what is really happening in our countries.

=============================================================================

By Nathan Gutman- Jewish Forward

Jews face special risks that require vigilance, though there is no “specific, credible threat” against Jewish targets, Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told the Forward during a visit to the newspaper’s New York offices.

In a June 4 meeting with the paper’s editorial staff, Napolitano cited the particular exposure she said Jews face in explanation of a DHS security grant program that mostly benefits Jewish groups.

“Unfortunately there are risks attendant on the Jewish community that are not attendant on all other communities,” she said.

A Forward report found that the program for DHS security grants for not-for-profit organizations was tailored to the Jewish community and that almost three-quarters of its funds went to Jewish institutions.

“The fact that it ends up going to many Jewish organizations doesn’t in itself bother me,” Napolitano said. She added that she had seen no evidence that the money was misspent, and that she believes the grant program has been successful.

Tension levels within the Jewish community, Napolitano said, hit a peak this past winter, following intensified rhetoric between Israel and Iran, and the indictment of an Iranian American in Texas for his role in an alleged plot by an Iranian official to bomb the Washington embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia. These concerns prompted Napolitano to hold a conference call with 200 Jewish communal leaders last February, in which she discussed the threats and the actions taken to ensure the community’s safety.

During her tenure at DHS, Napolitano added, threats to the Jewish community came from foreign entities, from homegrown extremists and from “hate crime type of activity.”

On another topic, Napolitano said that the DHS has decided to allow Israeli citizens to enter the United States via a special fast-track program despite Israel’s decision not to grant Americans reciprocal consideration, as the United States usually requires.

Israel’s inclusion in the Global Entry program allows frequent visitors to the United States to complete a questionnaire about their backgrounds and thereafter enter the country by simply scanning their passports. Napolitano announced the decision to include Israeli citizens in the program during a May 20 visit to Israel. A reciprocity requirement that has been applied to all other countries seeking to join the program was waived in the case of Israel.

“We have a special friendship with Israel,” Napolitano explained. “President Obama is very committed to that relationship, and we are looking for ways to express that commitment within the portfolio of tasks that the Department of Homeland Security performs.”

At the same time, Napolitano was noncommittal when asked about a push by some members of Congress and the Israeli government to allow Israeli citizens to enter the United States without tourist visas at all, as is currently permitted for citizens of some European countries. The administration, she noted, has not yet expressed its view on this proposal.

During her recent visit to Israel, Napolitano discussed with Israeli officials the issue of securing borders while preserving the rights of refugees entering the country. Israel has been dealing recently with a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment aimed at African migrants seeking refuge in Israel. Napolitano did not, however, provide Israel with advice on the issue and would not comment on the Israeli government’s treatment of the Africans trying to enter the country.

On the issue of screening procedures in airports, however, the DHS secretary did make clear that the United States would not follow Israel’s model. Israel is known for employing screening techniques that profile air travelers based on their origin, ethnicity or faith. Security checks conducted at Ben Gurion International Airport routinely require one-to-one interviews. Napolitano said that the huge difference in scale makes screening via personal interviews impractical in the United States, with its scores of international entry points. “It’s against the law here to profile,” Napolitano added.

“Israel has perfected a system that works very well there,” Napolitano said. “They do a terrific job. But it’s not a system we can just transport 100% to the U.S. It won’t fit.”

Napolitano also pointedly declined to criticize New York City’s controversial program of surveillance of Muslim organizations and individuals with no known or suspected ties to terrorism. She said New York remains a potential terror target and that she was not going to “second-guess” any local police department or the program, which civil liberties groups believe amounts to illegal domestic spying.

War on Arabs, War on Africans

For other videos and articles displaying the racism and ethnocentrism of some Jews and Zionists that is completely covered up by your media, please see here.

Examples of Counter Intelligence Infiltration - This is Still Going on Today on the Left and the Right

For previous articles on Counter Intelligence see here and here. See here for Noam Chomsky talking about COINTELPRO. See here for more about Counter Intelligence 101, and the sabotage of legitimate dissent. See here, here and here for more about Judas goats, or phony websites that are actually counter-intelligence fronts that are similar to this and this. For more on the ADL (Anti-Defamation League,) go here, here, here, and here.

See here for 72 types of Americans that are considered “potential terrorists” in official government documents. See here to learn how an FBI memo labels patriots, truth-seekers as potential 'terrorists.'

============================================================================

What follows are a handful of capsule descriptions of some more notable instances of the COINTELPRO-style tactics of the FBI and its longtime ally, the Anti-Defamation League.

I’ve also thown in an intriguing case of one FBI snitch who also did some work for the CIA—and there are more than a few of those type characters operating today. This list is by no means complete, but these are good examples that demonstrate how insidious The Judas Goats—who are the enemy within... truly are.

JAMES MITCHELL ROSENBERG:

The ADL’s Favorite Jewish “Nazi”

One of the most outspoken and outrageous American “right wing extremists” of the late 1970s and early 1980s was a ubiquitous figure once known as “Jimmy Anderson.” Garbed in Nazi uniforms and Klan regalia, “Anderson” became a familiar figure in racial hotspots in the New York and New Jersey area, popularly known as an official of the Queens, New York chapter of the Christian Defense League. “Anderson” was continually attempting to stir up violence in one form or another and, on one occasion,was calling for the bombing of a New Jersey office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

On Dec. 7, 1981 Anderson was featured in a television documentary broadcast over WCCO TV in Minneapolis, entitled “Armies of the Right.”And, as per usual,“Anderson”was the most provocative of the “right wing extremists” featured, making violent, racist remarks. Quite a character indeed.

However, the truth is that “Anderson” was really a New York Jewish boy named James Mitchell Rosenberg who had spent some time in Israel as a member of the Israeli Defense Forces and who—upon his return from Israel—went to work as an undercover informant for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith.

Ultimately, of course, his “cover” was exposed and the ADL’s “Nazi” was unmasked. Although Rosenberg seems to have faded from the scene, so far as anyone knows, he did cut quite a figure “on the right” during his years as an ADL undercover informant.

But the fact remains that there are—to this day—many Americans who recall “Jimmy Anderson” as a “violent neo-Nazi working to stir up racial turmoil in America.”What they don’t know is that he was a Judas Goat—an Enemy Within—working for the ADL.

MORDECHAI LEVY:

Another of the ADL’s Jewish “Nazis”

But don’t think that Jimmy Rosenberg was the only “nice Jewish boy” posing as a “hater” and causing trouble. In 1979 young Mordechai Levy, an ADL informant who was also a member of the terroristic Jewish Defense League (JDL), adopted the moniker “James Guttman” and applied for a permit to organize a “white power”demonstration in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia that would feature American Nazi and Ku Klux Klan members.

Levy announced that he was a “coordinator” for a neo-Nazi organization and made strenuous efforts to invite Philadelphia and New Jersey branches of the Ku Klux Klan to participate. (In the meantime, the aforementioned ADL informant, Jimmy Rosenberg, just happened to be a key ADL operative inside the New Jersey KKK affiliate!)

To make matters all the more interesting, Mordechai Levy’s pals at the JDL were planning a “counter rally” against the “white power” rally organized by their own man Levy. So while the major media in the Philadelphia area and the Anti-Defamation League were raising a hue and cry about “the rise of Nazism in America,” in news reports about the affair, the whole business was actually the work of two longtime ADL operatives. And to make it even more interesting is the fact that, for years, the ADL had officially and publicly “condemned” the JDL, even as the JDL was effectively functioning as the ADL’s terrorist arm, attacking—even wounding and killing—targets of the ADL’s wrath. But, of course, the ADL was officially “non-violent” and always went to great lengths to denounce the violent activities of its secret operatives.

Labor Snitch Turned CIA Informant:

A Cog in the Scheme to “Get” Lyndon LaRouche

Love him or hate him, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. has been one of the most controversial and widely publicized so-called “fringe” political figures in America. The founder of the National Caucus of Labor Committees and a bevy of other organizations and publications that have been widely circulated in American dissident circles, LaRouche, not surprisingly,emerged as a major target of the ADL due to his overt opposition to many of the intrigues of the Israeli lobby in America.

After a concerted campaign by the ADL—in league with the CIA and the FBI and a host of other agencies and individuals—LaRouche ultimately ended up spending time in prison on what many, including former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, believe were trumped-up “corruption” charges.

In any event, as part of his defense, LaRouche and his attorneys, not to mention his hard-working associates, began investigating the “deep cover” nature of the “Get LaRouche” campaign and found that, indeed, there were many undercover informants acting COINTELPRO-style against LaRouche. 

One instance, in particular, is quite illustrative. For ten years, it seems,one Ronald Fino,the former president of the Buffalo Laborers Union Local 210, had spied on LaRouche while pretending

to support LaRouche’s efforts. 

It turns out that Fino had been working for years as a government informant on his fellow laborers,

ostensibly reporting back organized crime links to the FBI. However, when the CIA needed a man to get close to the LaRouche organization as an informant, they turned to Fino.

Apparently, Fino started out as a government informant going back to the 1960s when as a student at the State University of New York at Buffalo he worked for the CIA spying on the anti-war movement there.

In any case, as LaRouche and his associates have documented time and time again in numerous books and magazine articles, the fine hands of the CIA and the FBI—not to mention the ADL—have played a major part in the campaign against LaRouche as well as many other political dissidents in America. The Fino case is just one example uncovered by LaRouche.

The FBI’s Man Inside the Skinhead Movement

In the late 1980s, one “Rev.” Joe Allen popped up in Southern California and began to ingratiate himself with so-called “white supremacist” and “skinhead” groups that were becoming prominent

there. He said he was a minister with the Church of the Creator and was quick to start spreading around cash and favors among young white racialist political dissidents. However, one white racialist leader, Tom Metzger, of the White Aryan Resistance,was suspicious of Allen from the beginning and spread the word among his compatriots that Allen was one to be watched. 

Nonetheless, Allen continued his efforts to make himself a prominent force in the white racialist movement. According to a report in The Los Angeles Times: Allen rented a three-bedroom Newport Beach apartment just a few paces off the beach. He also settled into office space in a nearby light industrial area, converting it into what he called a “training center,” installing a whirlpool bath, weightlifting equipment and video cameras. 

Flashing rolls of money and gold jewelry, Allen invited local skinheads to work out for free at his training center, which skinheads say he decorated with Nazi paraphernalia and guns. They say Allen offered hospitality—thick steaks and beer for barbeques—as well as money, including $500 used to bail out two or three young white supremacists in Canada.

Meanwhile, although many did heed Metzger’s warnings about Allen, more than a few young people were snared in Allen’s insidious web. But Metzger and his associates continued to investigate Allen

and—just before they were about to go public and formally blow the whistle and expose Allen—the FBI moved in and moved Allen out, admitting that, yes, in fact,Allen was an informant.

A handful of young men were taken in on trumped-up charges of plotting to incite a race war by attacking a black church and plotting to kill Rodney King, the famed “black motorist” whose beating by police officers had sparked a major national outrage, thanks to the efforts by the “mainstream” media to inflame the black community in Los Angeles, causing riots and all manner of public unrest.Although the young men were convicted,having been railroaded by Allen’s intrigues,the case was clearly another instance of a Judas Goat of the first order causing problems and instigating a so-called “conspiracy” that would have never occurred in the first place had he not been on the scene.

GARY THOMAS ROWE: COINTELPRO “Man in the Klan”

Although we often hear about “KKK violence” what is not so well known is that during the stormy years of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, some of the worst perpetrators of violence in the name of the Ku Klux Klan were FBI informers inside the Klan. For a brief overview of one of the most notorious FBI informants in the Klan—Gary Thomas Rowe—let us turn to no less than Howell Raines, famed journalist for The New York Times, who reported in the Times, on July 17, 1978:

Inquiries Link Informer for FBI To Major Klan Terrorism in 1960s 

Renewed investigations into the activities of Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr., the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s chief paid informer in the Ku Klux Klan, have produced a portrait of Mr. Rowe as a man who “loved violence” and who could be linked to most major incidents of Klan terrorism that occurred in Alabama while he was on the bureau’s payroll.

While receiving FBI money, Mr. Rowe, by his own account, was directly involved in racial violence beginning with the assault on the Freedom Riders in Birmingham,Ala., in 1961 and extending to the shooting of Viola G. Liuzzo, a participant in the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965. Federal pay records introduced in a trial at which Mr. Rowe testified 13 years ago showed that the bureau paid him over $12,000 from 1960 to 1965 for undercover activities that are now the subject of a Justice Department inquiry.

He has also said that the FBI gave him $10,000 more to finance his relocation under a new name.
The New York Times report went on at some length describing other outrages to which Rowe either admitted directly or was otherwise suspected of having been involved in. But four years after the Times report, on October 30, 1982, The San Diego Tribune carried an interesting Associated Press report which added further details to the story.

The report stated: Files Show FBI ‘Covered” For Key Klan Informant The Justice Department has revealed that FBI agents covered up the violent activities of Gary Thomas Rowe Jr., its key informant who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama in the early 1960s. In a report made public late yesterday, department investigators said the agents protected Rowe because “he was simply too valuable to abandon.”

Alabama authorities later accused Rowe of murder in the 1965 killing of a civil rights worker [Viola Liuzzo], but a federal appeals court barred him from being brought to trial . The report also said; “When agents learned that Rowe had taken part in Klan beatings, they apparently never reported him to local authorities or terminated him as an informant.”

Rowe himself wrote a book entitled My Undercover Years with the Ku Klux Klan and in 2005 the Yale University Press published Professor Gary May’s book on the Rowe affair entitled: The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo.

DELMAR DENNIS

The John Birch Society’s Beloved Judas Goat in the KKK Delmar Dennis was a Methodist minister in Meridian, Mississippi in the early 1960s who was hailed as a loyal member of the state Ku Klux

Klan. In truth he was an informant for the FBI as part of COINTELPRO, apparently paid some $15,000 over a period of time for his services. At the same time, Dennis was highly active in the John Birch Society, but there was never any evidence (or suggestion) Dennis was informing on

the Birchers as he was on the KKK.

After Dennis was ultimately exposed in 1967 as an FBI “snitch” in the KKK, Dennis nonetheless went on to become a popular speaker on behalf of the John Birch Society which utilized Dennis and his rhetoric to popularize, among some naïve American patriots, the theory that the Ku Klux Klan and its “anti-Semitic” point of view was actually a “communist plot” to stir up racial turmoil in America.

Later, Dr. Edward Fields of The Thunderbolt newspaper, based in Marietta, Georgia,wrote of Dennis and his ties to the John Birch Society and its founder, Robert Welch, who had been an enthusiastic supporter of Dennis. Fields wrote:

This, of course, puts the loyalty of Robert Welch in doubt because his organization seems to have been turned into a refuge for former FBI undercover agents.We must also remember that the organization was named after a CIA agent, John Birch, who was killed while trying to get the

Chinese communists to work with the Nationalists to form a coalition government. Such governments always end up going communist as we [saw] in Czechoslovakia and Laos.

Some time afterward, a “conservative” writer wrote a laudatory book about Dennis entitled Klandestine repeating the claim that the KKK was a Soviet “front.” Perhaps not surprisingly, this book was published by a firm with long-standing ties to “former” CIA officer William F.

Buckley, Jr., who, as we shall see, played a major role in working to destroy grass-roots nationalist movements in America. Despite Dennis’ record as a Judas Goat, he rose in the ranks of the “conservative” American Party and in 1984 and 1988 was its presidential candidate! It

is thus no surprise the American Party is long gone from the scene.

BILL WILKINSON

Klan Leader Exposed as FBI Informant

In 1974, one of the lieutenants inside the Klan, Bill Wilkinson, was suspected of being suspicious and a potential future “trouble” maker. In fact, precisely as was suspected, for the final eight months of his membership in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,Wilkinson was acting as a paid informant for the FBI.

And although some warned people Wilkinson was suspicious and not to be trusted, Wilkinson went on to found his own Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan after splitting with the Klan. And for eight years that followed, Wilkinson managed to dupe many innocent folks in the “Empire” who had no idea that Wilkinson was actually working for the FBI.

This was at a time when the Klan was supposedly attempting to “reform” the KKK movement, so to speak, and “clean up its image” and to counter the media stereotype that KKK members were violent haters. However, once Wilkinson was ensconced as leader of his own (FBI-sponsored) Klan group,Wilkinson worked assiduously to build up a public profile as a KKK leader spouting angry rhetoric and hinting of violence through such slogans as “Guns, Guts, and Bullets,” thereby stirring up increased racial tension. Wilkinson’s antics thus assisted fundraising efforts by the ADL which pointed to Wilkinson as a growing “threat,” when, in fact, he was under the thumb of the ADL’s allies at the FBI.

Writing in The Thunderbolt, Dr.Edward Fields described one thing about Wilkinson’s FBI-sponsored Klan which demonstrates precisely how Wilkinson was also working on behalf of the ADL:

Another interesting item is that the FBI urges all of is informers to do their best to protect Jews by urging patriots not to criticize them. When Bill Wilkinson sought to hire the professional right-wing writer Bill Grimstad, he first insisted that Grimstad promise to stay off the Jewish issue. Grimstad refused and said in that case, he didn’t want the job as editor of Wilkinson’s paper. At the same time, Wilkinson has time and again urged guest speakers at his rallies not to criticize Jews.

So although the FBI tolerated anti-Black rhetoric, anti-Jewish rhetoric was “off limits.” In any event, in 1981 Wilkinson’s role as an FBI informer while “leading” his own KKK was publicly revealed, effectively ending Wilkinson’s career in the “right wing,” but the revelations finally convinced many that there were indeed Judas Goats within the ranks of American political groups, a bitter pill for many to swallow, but a warning that many still seem to have failed to properly heed.

The ADL-FBI Murder of Schoolteacher Kathy
 Ainsworth: COINTELPRO at its Worst

Perhaps the most infamous example of FBI-ADL collaboration in a COINTELPRO operation—one which resulted in the murder of an innocent young woman—is the Kathy Ainsworth affair.

Lest any reader think that this is some sort of “conspiracy theory” cooked up by an "anti-Semitic hate-monger,” we will allow the story to be told by the distinguished, albeit now-defunct, Washington Star newspaper in a story dated February 13,1970, reprinting an Associated Press report describing a report from the even more distinguished Los Angeles Times.

Paper Claims FBI Payoff In Fatal Trap for Klan

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The FBI and Meridian, Miss., police paid two Ku Klux Klan informants $36,500 to set a trap for Klan terrorists in which one person was killed and three wounded, the Los Angeles Times reported today [February 13, 1970]. Meridian’s Jewish community provided funds for the trap at the attempted bombing of a Jewish businessman’s home, the Times reported.The action came after a series of 17 unsolved bombings and burnings in Jewish and Black communities in the Jackson and Meridian areas of Mississippi, the paper stated.The FBI and police declined
official comment.

The newspaper published a new account of circumstances about the incident, in which Klanswoman Kathy Ainsworth, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, was killed on June 30, 1968, in a gun battle with law officers.“Evidence strongly indicates that the Klansmen who made the bombing attempt, Thomas Albert Tarrants III, 21 at the time, and his companion, Mrs. Kathy Ainsworth, 26, a schoolteacher,were lured into the bombing attempt by two other Klansmen who were paid a total of $36,500,” the Times said. “A former FBI agent who acted as an intermediary was paid $2,000.”

“Policemen who sprang the trap say they expected a gun battle and never thought either Klan member would be taken alive,” the Times said.“They had expected two men to attempt the bombing and did not know a woman would be involved until 45 minutes before it was carried out.”
Gunfire at the home of the businessman, Meyer Davidson, killed Mrs.Ainsworth and wounded a policeman, a bystander and Tarrants, who later was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The Times said A. I. Botnick, director of the Anti-Defamation League regional office in New Orleans, acknowledged helping execute the trap. But in a second interview with him, the Times said, Botnik termed his recorded statements of the first interview “incorrect.” The Times said it “has documented the arrangements for the trap through police records and statements by some
of the police officers involved.”

The paper reported that Meridian detective L L. Scarbrough helped it uncover the information, but that he later said only the FBI or his police chief should release the information. The Times quoted its sources of information as saying they would deny telling the names of the two Klan informants
[the Roberts brothers] if the two informants ever sued for libel because their names were made public.

The two informants received $36,500 and “demanded and got written assurance that they would be given immunity from prosecution in several cases of church bombings,” the Times said.

But there was much more to this ugly story. Jack Nelson of The Los Angeles Times reported in his shocking exposé that Detective Scarbrough had told him that the ADL’s man, Botnick, had also told the informants, the Roberts brothers, that he (Botnick) could raise an additional $150,000 more from the Jewish community for what he described as more “assistance” if the Roberts brothers would provide testimony linking another KKK leader, Sam Bowers of Tupelo, Mississippi to the so-called terrorist attacks.

In other words, Botnick was essentially asking the Roberts brothers to lie under oath to provide any form of evidence that could be used to send Bowers to jail. In another instance, Nelson reported that Kenneth Dean, a Mississippi-based civil rights activist, had said that Botnick had also talked of making out a contract to have two Klansmen in a northern state “liquidated,” and promised that he could arrange for this and be assured that there would be no investigation.

One can only imagine the howl of international outrage if it were revealed that someone had arranged to have a Jewish leader such as Botnick “liquidated.”Yet, Botnick was never charged for any of his criminal behavior, although he should have certainly been marched off to be gassed, shot, or hanged,which was conventionally the treatment accorded murderers in the United States.

========================================================================

Thus, as we have seen—in just these few brief examples— there is a very real and very sordid history of infiltration and disruption of American dissident groups by agents of governments, both foreign and domestic, not to mention the unseemly and a frequent alliance between our own FBI and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is, obviously, an agent of a foreign government: Israel.

In any event, in light of the similar role that both the FBI and the ADL (together and individually) have played in infiltrating and disrupting dissident groups, the formal link-up between the FBI and the ADL is particularly disconcerting, since much of the growing emphasis on “combatting terrorism” may lead to a new wave of FBI-ADL orchestrated acts of provocation designed to create public demand for a crackdown on freedom of speech and assembly.

In fact, according to Edward S. Herman of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, writing in his book: The “Terrorism” Industry:The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror:“In the United States, the FBI has long engaged in agents
provocateurs actions, urging violence on penetrated dissident organizations and carrying out direct acts of violence, then attributed to the individuals and organizations under attack.”

While this may come as a shock to the average American, it is a fact not subject to debate. 

Hanukkah Hypocrisy

Most people have no idea what Hanukkah is really about. It is time for you to learn. Put this is in the context of the information here. I am sure you will see some strong correlations. For more about Chabad, see here and here.

Jews Mostly Supported Slavery — Or Kept Silent — During Civil War

By Ken Yellis

Whenever I told someone that I was working on an exhibition called “Passages Through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War,” I typically got two responses. Both reflect the need for the exhibit (now on display at Yeshiva University Museum in New York), which presents the widely forgotten story of the full participation of Jews in the nation’s great existential crisis.

My sister’s reaction was typical: There were Jews in the Civil War? Who knew?

The second most common response was in some ways more interesting: The Jews who fought in the Civil War were against slavery, right? The discomfiting answer: not so much.

As Jewish historian Dale Rosengarten expresses it, quoting a Talmudic precept: “The law of the land is the law of the Jews.” From a modern perspective, it seems anomalous that a people whose history hinged on an epic escape from servitude would not have been deeply troubled by America’s “peculiar institution” — but few were.

Some Jews owned slaves, a few traded them, and the livelihoods of many, North and South, were inextricably bound to the slave system. Most southern Jews defended slavery, and some went further, advocating its expansion.

Notable among these was Judah P. Benjamin, labeled by the abolitionist Ben Wade, who served with Benjamin in the U.S. Senate, as “an Israelite with Egyptian principles.” Even in the North, many sympathized with the South and only a very few were abolitionists. Almost all Jews sought peace above all else. Until the war was at hand, they remained silent on the subject.

For me, that silence is problematic.

As Arnie, in Nathan Englander’s short story “Camp Sundown,” puts it: “The turning away of the head is the same as turning the knife.” Yet the majority of American Jews were mute on the subject, perhaps because they dreaded its tremendous corrosive power. Prior to 1861, there are virtually no instances of rabbinical sermons on slavery, probably due to fear that the controversy would trigger a sectional conflict in which Jewish families would be arrayed on opposite sides. And that is exactly what happened.

Ironically, the silence was breached by an attempt to forestall the conflict. With Lincoln’s election and the gathering momentum of the secession movement, the celebrated New York Rabbi Morris Raphall attempted to make a case for reconciliation by defending slavery on biblical grounds. The speech had the opposite effect, triggering furious rebuttals from Rabbi David Einhorn and biblical scholar Michael Heilprin, among others, and widening the growing divide. Jews had at last engaged in numbers with the great issue of the age.

When the war broke out, Jews did by and large attach themselves to their sections and to the causes of their sections, even at the risk of great suffering, painful separation from loved ones, grievous injury, horrific death, and as foretold, dividing families and pitting brothers against each other.

“Passages Through the Fire” is filled with such stories. What emerges from them is the heartfelt, touching, personal language in which they are told, often by people whose English is newly learned.

Their words reveal the pride, pain, and ardor of these remarkable people, who were willing to put so much on the line. Whether in combat, in other forms of service to the war effort, on the home front or in a host of other roles, their passion is unmistakable. And, of course, the war transformed them, their place in America, and, in ways we are still struggling to understand, America itself.

Although few Jews, like other Americans, opposed slavery at the war’s outset, many came to feel that the suffering of the war needed to be about something important: the end of slavery and the creation of a different America. The experience of Jews in New York City is indicative of this process in some ways. By far America’s largest Jewish community, New York’s Jews were overwhelmingly pro-southern, pro-slavery, and anti-Lincoln in the early years of the war. Increasingly, however, as both the toll of the war and the North’s military victories mounted, feelings began to shift toward “Father Abraham,” his party, the Union and eventually, emancipation. Close to 2,000 Jews from New York State joined the Union forces.

As historian Howard Rock sums up, “The war was a transformative moment for Jews’ understanding of American democracy.” The decision by Jews’ Hospital — later Mt. Sinai — to care for all sick and wounded soldiers and sailors was emblematic of the Jewish community’s expanded civic commitment. By war’s end, a number of Jews became leaders in advancing the cause of civil liberties. “Father Abraham” became a hero to most Jews. The Jewish Cult of Lincoln, which had many Old Testament overtones — Lincoln died on the first night of Passover, for instance, and the first eulogies were delivered from synagogue pulpits — would persist for decades.

The outcome of the nation’s great existential crisis made possible the open and most welcoming society Jews had ever encountered, what one of my cousins (in a not-uncommon Yiddish phrase) called “Golden America.”

The Jews caught up in that crisis were transformed by it and, in turn, helped transform the America that emerged from it. Yet relatively few Jews are aware of this, an amnesia that constitutes a deep loss. The history of the Civil War has long been bitterly contested. Perhaps as with the contest over slavery itself, it would be helpful if more Jews were engaged in it. American Jews have a stake in this history, and their experience over the last 150 years makes a lot more sense if viewed through its lens.

Ken Yellis, principal of Project Development Services, served as guest curator for “Passages through the Fire: Jews and the Civil War.” A historian with four decades in the museum field, Yellis has been involved in over 100 history, science and art exhibitions.