Religion and Politics
The historic persecution of Jews by Christians is well-documented, but few people understand the motivation. In this chapter, I will set aside religious beliefs and focus on the ancient conflict between Jews and Christians by first analyzing passages from the Bible and the Talmud, then exploring the historical and political implications. It is not my intention to claim that Christianity is better than Judaism. To the contrary, I will show that many aspects of Christianity have strayed dramatically from the teachings of Jesus through the misguided interpretation of the self-appointed Apostle Paul, a Pharisee. Although Jesus preached to love our enemies, he made it abundantly clear that the Pharisees were in fact his enemies.
The Pharisaic sect of Judaism no longer exists per se, but its teachings have become the mainstay of modern Judaism through Pharisaic teachings documented in the Talmud. In AD 200, the teachings of the Pharisees on Jewish law were incorporated in the Mishna which became the first volume of the Talmud.1 The Talmud—a set of 63 books written by ancient rabbis—contains the legal code which is the basis of Judaism and Jewish law. It was edited centuries after the birth of Jesus and is the textbook used to train rabbis.2
Persecution of Jews
Jews were expelled from virtually every country in Western Europe from 1290 through 1551. During this time the Catholic Church instituted the Inquisition to combat heresy throughout Europe. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV authorized the well-known Spanish Inquisition which resulted in the burning of about 2,000 people at the stake and the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.3 In general, Jews were accused of the following offenses:
- Continual lying and treacherous behavior
- Practicing witchcraft
- Blasphemous ridicule of Jesus
The first offense—continual lying and treacherous behavior—is encouraged through the annual recitation of an ancient Jewish prayer, the Kol Nidre, which frees Jews from fulfilling vows taken throughout the ensuing year. The Kol Nidre is widely known among Jews because it is recited—sung to a melody—on the eve of Yom Kippur. Typically the song is sung as part of the temple’s service and Jews respond by making the following declaration which is written in the Talmud book of Nedarim:
| Every vow which I may make in the future shall be null. |
| He who desires his friend to eat with him, and after urging him, imposes a vow upon him, it is ‘a vow of incitement’ and hence invalid. And he who desires that none of his vows made during the year shall be valid, let him stand at the beginning of the year and declare, "Every vow which I may make in the future shall be null." HIS VOWS ARE THEN INVALID, PROVIDING THAT HE REMEMBERS THIS AT THE TIME OF THE VOW. (Caps in original.) |
The late Benjamin Freedman(Footnote 51) described the Kol Nidre in a speech he delivered in Washington, DC in 1961. The following text is an excerpt from that speech:
Do you know what Jews do on the Day of Atonement, that you think is so sacred to them? I was one of them. This is not hearsay. I'm not here to be a rabble-rouser. I'm here to give you facts. When, on the Day of Atonement, you walk into a synagogue, you stand up for the very first prayer that you recite. It is the only prayer for which you stand. You repeat three times a short prayer called the Kol Nidre. In that prayer, you enter into an agreement with God Almighty that any oath, vow, or pledge that you may make during the next twelve months shall be null and void. The oath shall not be an oath; the vow shall not be a vow; the pledge shall not be a pledge. They shall have no force or effect. And further, the Talmud teaches that whenever you take an oath, vow, or pledge, you are to remember the Kol Nidre prayer that you recited on the Day of Atonement, and you are exempted from fulfilling them. How much can you depend on their loyalty? … |
The second offense—practicing witchcraft—receives tacit endorsement in the Talmud. The following passage clearly states that some forms of sorcery are entirely permitted, while others are exempt from punishment, yet forbidden, and others are punished by death. The following text is from the Talmud book of Sanhedrin:
| Abaye said: The laws of sorcerers are like those of the Sabbath: certain actions are punished by stoning, some are exempt from punishment, yet forbidden, whilst others are entirely permitted. Thus: if one actually performs magic, he is stoned; if he merely creates an illusion, he is exempt, yet it is forbidden; whilst what is entirely permitted? — Such as was performed by R. Hanina and R. Oshaia, who spent every Sabbath eve in studying the Laws of Creation, by means of which they created a third-grown calf and ate it. |
| MISHNAH. ALL WHO ARE STONED ARE [AFTERWARDS] HANGED: THIS IS R. ELIEZER'S VIEW, THE SAGES SAY: ONLY THE BLASPHEMER AND THE IDOLATER ARE HANGED. A MAN IS HANGED WITH HIS FACE TOWARDS THE SPECTATORS, BUT A WOMAN WITH HER FACE TOWARDS THE GALLOWS: THIS IS THE VIEW OF R. ELIEZER. BUT THE SAGES SAY: A MAN IS HANGED, BUT NOT A WOMAN. WHEREUPON R. ELIEZER SAID TO THEM: BUT DID NOT SIMEON B. SHETAH HANG WOMEN AT ASHKELON? THEY RETORTED: [ON THAT OCCASION] HE HANGED EIGHTY WOMEN, NOTWITHSTANDING THAT TWO [MALEFACTORS] MUST NOT BE TRIED ON THE SAME DAY.44 [Footnote] (44) Hence this occurrence cannot be brought forward as a valid precedent, owing to its extraordinary nature. Witchcraft amongst Jewish women prevailed at that time to an alarming extent, and in order to prevent a combined effort on the part of their relations to rescue the culprits, he had to execute all of them at once. He hanged them, then, to prevent such practices and to avoid rescue, but his action is no precedent, and in itself was actually illegal, as the Sages pointed out. |
| (6) According to the view that all the Balaam passages are anti-Christian in tendency, Balaam being used as an alias for Jesus, Phinehas the Robber is thus taken to represent Pontius Pilatus, and the Chronicle of Balaam probably to denote a Gospel (v. Herford op. cit. 72ff.). This view is however disputed by Bacher and others: cf. Ginzberg, Journal of Biblical Literature, XLI, 121. |
A certain min(Footnote 54) said to R. Hanina: Hast thou heard how old Balaam was? — He replied: It is not actually stated, but since it is written, Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days, [it follows that] he was thirty-three or thirty-four years old. He rejoined: Thou hast said correctly; I personally have seen Balaam's Chronicle,(Footnote 55) in which it is stated, ‘Balaam the lame was thirty years old when Phinehas the Robber killed him.’ Mar, the son of Rabina, said to his sons: In the case of all [those mentioned as having no portion in the future world] you should not take [the Biblical passages dealing with them] to expound them [to their discredit], excepting in the case of the wicked Balaam: whatever you find [written] about him, lecture upon it [to his disadvantage]. |
When the Mishna (the first of the 63 books of the Talmud) was compiled in around AD 200, it incorporated the teachings of the Pharisees on Jewish law. This is what the Mishna states about Balaam:
MISHNAH 19. WHOEVER POSSESSES THESE THREE THINGS, HE IS OF THE DISCIPLES OF ABRAHAM, OUR FATHER; AND [WHOEVER POSSESSES] THREE OTHER THINGS, HE IS OF THE DISCIPLES OF BALAAM, THE WICKED. THE DISCIPLES OF ABRAHAM, OUR FATHER, [POSSESS] A GOOD EYE, AN HUMBLE SPIRIT AND A LOWLY SOUL. THE DISCIPLES OF BALAAM, THE WICKED, [POSSESS] AN EVIL EYE, A HAUGHTY SPIRIT AND AN OVER-AMBITIOUS SOUL. WHAT IS [THE DIFFERENCE] BETWEEN THE DISCIPLES OF ABRAHAM, OUR FATHER, AND THE DISCIPLES OF BALAAM, THE WICKED. THE DISCIPLES OF ABRAHAM, OUR FATHER, ENJOY [THEIR SHARE] IN THIS WORLD, AND INHERIT THE WORLD TO COME, AS IT IS SAID: THAT I MAY CAUSE THOSE THAT LOVE ME TO INHERIT SUBSTANCE AND THAT I MAY FILL THEIR TREASURIES, BUT THE DISCIPLES OF BALAAM, THE WICKED, INHERIT GEHINNOM, AND DESCEND INTO THE NETHERMOST PIT, AS IT IS SAID: BUT THOU, O GOD, WILT BRING THEM DOWN TO THE NETHERMOST PIT; MEN OF BLOOD AND DECEIT SHALL NOT LIVE OUT HALF THEIR DAYS; BUT AS FOR ME, I WILL TRUST IN THEE. |
An additional offense—blood libel (the ritualistic sacrifice of children)—is obviously the most controversial, but it appears to have a historical basis. On November 16, 1491, five men were executed at Avila for the ritualistic murder of a four-year-old Christian boy (later known as the "Holy Child of La Guardia"). Two of the men were Jews, the other three were "conversos"—Sephardic Jews who converted to Christianity. The boy’s heart was reportedly cut out and used with two stolen consecrated hosts in a ritual of black magic against the Christians.
For centuries the case was tainted because the five executed men had been tortured prior to confessing. But in 1931, historian William Thomas Walsh offered persuasive evidence in his book, Isabella of Spain, that the charge of blood libel was in fact true. Walsh found the testimony of a Jew who stated that he witnessed the crime, and had not been subjected to torture. Although the Spanish Inquisition was already underway, it was ritualistic murder of the young boy that resulted in expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. It was the last straw.
Before the executions, two independent judicial panels had reviewed and confirmed the Inquisition’s findings.4 On November 24, 1805, the murdered boy was canonized as St. Christopher on the authority of Pope Pius VII.
Jesus Warned Against Pharisaic Rule
The Talmud teaches Rabbis to oppose and discredit the teachings of Jesus because he criticized the Pharisees. As previously stated, Pharisaic law is reflected in the Talmud, particularly in the book of Mishna—the original book of the Talmud.
Here are a few examples of Jesus’s words of contempt towards the Pharisees from the book of Matthew, Chapter 23 (King James edition):
(26) Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. (27) Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres [burial vaults], which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and all uncleanness. (28) Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (29) Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because ye build tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous. (30) And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. (31) Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. (32) Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. (33) Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (34) Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: (35) That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. (36) Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. (37) O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! (38) Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. |
(15) Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. (16) And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither, carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. (17) Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? (18) But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, ‘Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?’ (19) ‘Show me the tribute money.’ And they brought unto him a penny. (20) And he saith unto them, ‘Whose is this image and superscription?’ (21) They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, ‘Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’ (22) When they had heard of these words, they marvelled, and left him and went their way. |
Balaam: References in Bible and Talmud
As previously stated, the Talmud apparently uses "Balaam" as an alias for Jesus. It is also worth noting that Bible mentions Balaam several times as well, particularly in the Old Testament book of Numbers, Chapters 22 - 24. In fact, there is an interesting story about Balaam in the Bible (Numbers 22:20 - 22:35) that is remarkably similar to a reference of Balaam in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 105a, 105b).
The two passages must have originated from the same source because the sentence structures and word choices in the two sections are too similar to be coincidence; however, two different stories are told. The Biblical reference depicts Balaam as a protector of the Israelites, whereas, the Talmudic reference depicts him as one who commits bestiality.
It makes no sense for the Talmud to view Balaam with contempt, often referring to him as the "wicked Balaam." Such contempt for a man who protected the Israelites further supports the belief that Balaam is in fact a Talmudic alias for Jesus.
In the Biblical reference, Balaam’s donkey spoke to him as he traveled to the city of Moab to meet with its King, Balak. The king had solicited Balaam to put a curse on the Israelites camped ominously on the plains of Moab. While en route to Moab, an angel appeared but only Balaam’s donkey could see it. The donkey stopped, and Balaam struck the animal to get it to continue. After three blows, the Lord spoke to Balaam through the donkey’s mouth. The beast warned Balaam that he should not put a curse on the Jews for King Balak. Balaam took heed of the advice and hence became a protector of the Israelites.
The Talmudic reference to Balaam’s talking donkey makes a vulgar assertion that Balaam committed bestiality with the animal—a sin punishable by death under Talmudic law.
Here is the Biblical reference to the words spoken by Balaam’s donkey:
[30] And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? Was I ever wont to do so unto thee? |
But the ass said to [Balaam], ‘Am I not thine ass?’ — ‘Merely for carrying loads’, [he replied]. ‘Upon which thou hast ridden.’ — ‘That was only by chance.’ ‘Ever since I was thine until this day,’ [she added]. ‘Moreover, I serve thee as a companion by night.’ |
Here is the Talmudic reference in full context where it clearly states that Balaam committed bestiality:
R. Johanan said: Balaam limped on one foot, as it is written, And he walked haltingly. Samson was lame in both feet, as it is written, [Dan shall be a serpent by the way,] an adder in the path that biteth the horse's heels. Balaam was blind in one eye, as it is said, [and the man] whose eye is open . . . He practised enchantment by means of his membrum.(Footnote 56) For here it is written, falling, but having his eyes open; whilst elsewhere is written, And Haman was fallen on the bed whereon Esther was. It was stated, Mar Zutra said: He practised enchantment by means of his membrum. Mar the son of Rabina said: He committed bestiality with his ass. The view that he practised enchantment by means of his membrum is as was stated. The view that he committed bestiality with his ass [is because] here it is written, He bowed, he lay down as a lion and as a great lion; whilst elsewhere it is written, At her feet he bowed, he fell. And knoweth the mind of the most High. Now, seeing that he did not even know the mind of his ass, could he know the mind of the most High! What [is this about] the mind of his ass? — For they [the elders] said to him, ‘Why didst thou not ride upon thy horse?’ He replied. ‘I have put it [to graze] in the dewy pastures. But the ass said to him, ‘Am I not thine ass?’ — ‘Merely for carrying loads’, [he replied]. ‘Upon which thou hast ridden.’ — ‘That was only by chance.’ ‘Ever since I was thine until this day,’ [she added]. ‘Moreover, I serve thee as a companion by night.’ ...... |
- Numbers 22; verses 5, 7-10, 12-14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 25, 27-31, 34-41
- Numbers 23; verses 1-5, 11, 16, 25-30
- Numbers 24; 1-3, 10, 12, 15, 25
- Numbers 31; 8, 16
- Deuteronomy 23; 4, 5
- Joshua 24; 9, 10
- Nehemiah 13:2
- Micah 6:05
- 2 Peter (the Second Epistle of Peter); 2:15 (Chapter 2, Verse 15)
- Jude 1:11
- Revelation 2:14
The Plot to Kill Jesus
As previously stated, Jesus was extremely critical of the Pharisees which obviously upset them a great deal. In addition, he performed miracles which was viewed by the Pharisees as magic—a form of sorcery punishable by death under Jewish law. When the Pharisees learned that Jesus had reportedly raised Lazarus from the dead, the Sanhedrin(Footnote 57) decided to take action. They plotted to kill him.
The high priest of the Sanhedrin at that time was Joseph Caiaphas. He was the man who ordered the death of Jesus, although the deed was officially carried out by Roman Governor Pontius Pilate.(Footnote 58) Caiaphas was the last priest to interrogate Jesus before delivering him to Pilate for a formal inquisition and subsequent crucifixion. Assisting Caiaphas in the interrogation of Jesus was his father-in-law, Ananus, who also had served as the previous high-priest of the Sanhedrin.
According to the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37/38 - 100), Caiaphas was appointed high-priest and official head of the Sanhedrin by Roman Governor Valerius Gratus around AD 18. Caiaphas held that position for about 18 years until he was replaced in AD 36. Governor Gratus was the predecessor of Pontius Pilate.5 Pilate was appointed Governor around AD 26, stayed for ten years, then was ordered back to Rome by Vitellius in AD 36 to appear before the Emperor Tiberius regarding complaints made against him by the Jews; however, Tiberius died before Pilate reached Rome.6 Shortly thereafter (AD 36), Vitellius took over as Governor and immediately removed Caiaphas as high-priest. Caiaphas was replaced by Jonathan, the son of Ananus.7 Ananus was the first member of the Sanhedrin to interrogate Jesus after his arrest by the Sanhedrin guards.8
According to the Gospels, Pilate did not want to kill Jesus and was somewhat intimidated by him. Pilate’s wife, Claudia Procula, begged him to leave Jesus alone because she had a bad dream(Footnote 59)about the "just man."9 But Caiaphas, Ananus and their colleagues at the Sanhedrin had already spread malicious rumors about Jesus to the crowds that surrounded the Governor’s palace. When Pilate asked the crowd what to do with Jesus, they shouted "Crucify him!"10
Pilate tried to calm the crowd because he did not want to kill Jesus. But Caiaphas, Ananus and their colleagues had whipped the crowd into such a frenzy that a riot nearly occurred. At that point, Pilate gave in and ordered Jesus to be crucified. Before issuing the order, he publicly washed his hands before the crowd and said, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person."
They replied, "His blood is on us and on our children."11
Ironically, according to Josephus, Caiaphas and Pilate were both replaced in their respective positions of authority within five years after Jesus was crucified.12
The Bible is quite clear about who bears responsibility for Christ’s execution. It was not Pilate. In fact, several Christian churches have canonized Pilate’s wife, Claudia Procula, and in some instances even Pilate himself, for their defense of Christ against the Jewish priests. In my research, I have found two days, June 25th and October 27th, designated by various Christian churches (Greek Orthodox, Abyssinian, Coptic) to recognize either St. Pilate, or St. [Claudia] Procula, or both.
Josephus—a non-Christian source—described Jesus in his book, Antiquities of the Jews (AD 93), in a manner remarkably similar to the Gospels. The following is an excerpt about Jesus:
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. |
The Apostle Paul, a Pharisee, Distorted Jesus’s Message
I believe the Apostle Paul was a false prophet working for the Pharisees. In fact, he openly boasted of being a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5).13 As previously stated, Jesus was highly critical of the Pharisees. Paul’s mission was apparently to water down the teachings of Jesus; however, it should be remembered that Jesus warned of false prophets in the following passage:
| [15] Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. [16] Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? [17] Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. [18] A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. [19] Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. [20] Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. [21] Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. [22] Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? [23] And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. |
Paul was not given any sort of authority by Jesus or any of his Twelve Apostles to spread the Gospel. This plus the fact that Paul the Apostle was a Pharisee should not be taken lightly. Furthermore, Paul’s view of Jews is somewhat confusing, while Jesus was quite clear and consistent on that topic. Jesus viewed Pharisaic Jews as evil and corrupt. At one point he accused their father of being the devil, to which the Pharisaic Jews responded by casting stones at him,14 but he hid to escape their wrath.15 Throughout the Gospels, there is a constant conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. Paul, however, is inconsistent on this issue. In some of his writings, he addressed Jews in a loving sense, but in others he addressed them in a hateful, scornful way.
For example, Paul wrote poetically of Jews in Galatians:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus. |
| [14] For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: [15] Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: [16] Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. |
| For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; |
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. |
Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God. |
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. |
In the Gospels, the death and resurrection of Jesus was additional proof that he was in fact the son of God. In my view, the words of Jesus alone are powerful and courageous. Whether we choose to believe that he was the son of God is a matter of individual faith. Nevertheless, Jesus was a wise man in his own right. But Paul ignored his powerful teachings and focused almost exclusively on his death and resurrection. Paul took the crucifixion to a completely new level which, in my view, weakened the original message substantially.
The Ancient Kingdom of Khazaria
The notion that Jews are God’s chosen people is not only untrue, but ridiculous. It is a myth that most Jews have an ethnic relationship to Israel. In reality, most Jews have a stronger kinship to the ancient Kingdom of Khazaria than to modern or ancient Palestine/Israel.(Footnote 60) Khazaria was a country in eastern Europe that flourished as an independent state from about 650 to 1016. In about 740, the king of Khazaria issued a decree whereby the national religion became Judaism. Prior to that, the main religion was Shamanism, a type of paganism from which Wicca later evolved. Wicca is a religion of sorts, but is really a euphemism for witchcraft. In fact, Wiccans openly refer to themselves as witches. In addition, Wiccans openly acknowledge Shamanism as a "mother religion."
Benjamin Freedman described the Khazars in a speech he delivered in Washington, DC in 1961. The following is an excerpt from that speech:
What are the facts about the Jews? (I call them Jews to you, because they are known as Jews. I don't call them Jews myself. I refer to them as so-called Jews, because I know what they are.) The eastern European Jews, who form 92 per cent of the world's population of those people who call themselves Jews, were originally Khazars. They were a warlike tribe who lived deep in the heart of Asia. And they were so warlike that even the Asiatics drove them out of Asia into eastern Europe. They set up a large Khazar kingdom of 800,000 square miles. At the time, Russia did not exist, nor did many other European countries. The Khazar kingdom was the biggest country in all Europe -- so big and so powerful that when the other monarchs wanted to go to war, the Khazars would lend them 40,000 soldiers. That's how big and powerful they were. They were phallic worshippers,(Footnote 61) which is filthy and I do not want to go into the details of that now. But that was their religion, as it was also the religion of many other pagans and barbarians elsewhere in the world. The Khazar king became so disgusted with the degeneracy of his kingdom that he decided to adopt a so-called monotheistic faith -- either Christianity, Islam, or what is known today as Judaism, which is really Talmudism. By spinning a top, and calling out "eeny, meeny, miney, moe," he picked out so-called Judaism. And that became the state religion. He sent down to the Talmudic schools of Pumbedita and Sura and brought up thousands of rabbis, and opened up synagogues and schools, and his people became what we call Jews. There wasn't one of them who had an ancestor who ever put a toe in the Holy Land. Not only in Old Testament history, but back to the beginning of time. Not one of them! And yet they come to the Christians and ask us to support their armed insurrections in Palestine by saying, "You want to help repatriate God's Chosen People to their Promised Land, their ancestral home, don't you? It's your Christian duty. We gave you one of our boys as your Lord and Savior. You now go to church on Sunday, and you kneel and you worship a Jew, and we're Jews." But they are pagan Khazars who were converted just the same as the Irish were converted. It is as ridiculous to call them "people of the Holy Land," as it would be to call the 54 million Chinese Moslems "Arabs." Mohammed only died in 620 A.D., and since then 54 million Chinese have accepted Islam as their religious belief. Now imagine, in China, 2,000 miles away from Arabia, from Mecca and Mohammed's birthplace. Imagine if the 54 million Chinese decided to call themselves "Arabs." You would say they were lunatics. Anyone who believes that those 54 million Chinese are Arabs must be crazy. All they did was adopt as a religious faith a belief that had its origin in Mecca, in Arabia. The same as the Irish. When the Irish became Christians, nobody dumped them in the ocean and imported to the Holy Land a new crop of inhabitants. They hadn't become a different people. They were the same people, but they had accepted Christianity as a religious faith. These Khazars, these pagans, these Asiatics, these Turko-Finns, were a Mongoloid race who were forced out of Asia into eastern Europe. Because their king took the Talmudic faith, they had no choice in the matter. Just the same as in Spain: If the king was Catholic, everybody had to be a Catholic. If not, you had to get out of Spain. So the Khazars became what we call today Jews. Now imagine how silly it was for the great Christian countries of the world to say, "We're going to use our power and prestige to repatriate God's Chosen People to their ancestral homeland, their Promised Land." Could there be a bigger lie than that? Because they control the newspapers, the magazines, the radio, the television, the book publishing business, and because they have the ministers in the pulpit and the politicians on the soapboxes talking the same language, it is not too surprising that you believe that lie. You'd believe black is white if you heard it often enough. You wouldn't call black black anymore -- you'd start to call black white. And nobody could blame you. That is one of the great lies of history. It is the foundation of all the misery that has befallen the world. |
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (Fraud or Real?)
In the early 20th Century, Czar Nicholas Romanov disseminated The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion which he claimed was a seditious document used by Jews to dominate the world. Consequently, Czar Nicholas began persecuting and expelling Jews from Russia. Some say he merely used the Protocols as a pretext and rationale for anti-Semitism.
In 1921, Philip Graves of The Times (London), explained that the Protocols bore a resemblance to a satire by the French lawyer Maurice Joly on Napoleon III published in 1864 and entitled Dialogue aux Enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ("Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu").16
Regardless of the document’s origin, many of the Protocols bear a striking resemblance to reality. And quite frankly, the general tone of the Protocols is similar to that of the Talmud. To demonstrate my point, I will discuss a few example protocols from the entire suite. The following three specific protocols appear to be part of a working ideology:
- Protocol XII, Control of the Press
- Protocol V, Despotism and Modern Progress (how to control public opinion)
- Protocol VII, Worldwide Wars
… WE CONTROL THE PRESS [4.] NOT A SINGLE ANNOUNCEMENT WILL REACH THE PUBLIC WITHOUT OUR CONTROL. Even now this is already being attained by us inasmuch as all news items are received by a few agencies, in whose offices they are focused from all parts of the world. These agencies will then be already entirely ours and will give publicity only to what we dictate to them. [5.] If already now we have contrived to possess ourselves of the minds of the GOY communities to such an extent the they all come near looking upon the events of the world through the colored glasses of those spectacles we are setting astride their noses; if already now there is not a single State where there exist for us any barriers to admittance into what GOY stupidity calls State secrets: what will our positions be then, when we shall be acknowledged supreme lords of the world in the person of our king of all the world .... [6.] Let us turn again to the FUTURE OF THE PRINTING PRESS. Every one desirous of being a publisher, librarian, or printer, will be obliged to provide himself with the diploma instituted therefore, which, in case of any fault, will be immediately impounded. With such measures THE INSTRUMENT OF THOUGHT WILL BECOME AN EDUCATIVE MEANS ON THE HANDS OF OUR GOVERNMENT, WHICH WILL NO LONGER ALLOW THE MASS OF THE NATION TO BE LED ASTRAY IN BY-WAYS AND FANTASIES ABOUT THE BLESSINGS OF PROGRESS. Is there any one of us who does not know that these phantom blessings are the direct roads to foolish imaginings which give birth to anarchical relations of men among themselves and towards authority, because progress, or rather the idea of progress, has introduced the conception of every kind of emancipation, but has failed to establish its limits .... All the so-called liberals are anarchists, if not in fact, at any rate in thought. Every one of them in hunting after phantoms of freedom, and falling exclusively into license, that is, into the anarchy of protest for the sake of protest .... FREE PRESS DESTROYED [7.] We turn to the periodical press. We shall impose on it, as on all printed matter, stamp taxes per sheet and deposits of caution- money, and books of less than 30 sheets will pay double. We shall reckon them as pamphlets in order, on the one hand, to reduce the number of magazines, which are the worst form of printed poison, and, on the other, in order that this measure may force writers into such lengthy productions that they will be little read, especially as they will be costly. At the same time what we shall publish ourselves to influence mental development in the direction laid down for our profit will be cheap and will be read voraciously. The tax will bring vapid literary ambitions within bounds and the liability to penalties will make literary men dependent upon us. And if there should be any found who are desirous of writing against us, they will not find any person eager to print their productions in print the publisher or printer will have to apply to the authorities for permission to do so. Thus we shall know beforehand of all tricks preparing against us and shall nullify them by getting ahead with explanations on the subject treated of. [8.] Literature and journalism are two of the most important educative forces, and therefore our government will become proprietor of the majority of the journals. This will neutralize the injurious influence of the privately-owned press and will put us in possession of a tremendous influence upon the public mind .... If we give permits for ten journals, we shall ourselves found thirty, and so on in the same proportion. This, however, must in no wise be suspected by the public. For which reason all journals published by us will be of the most opposite, in appearance, tendencies and opinions, thereby creating confidence in us and bringing over to us quite unsuspicious opponents, who will thus fall into our trap and be rendered harmless. [9.] In the front rank will stand organs of an official character. They will always stand guard over our interests, and therefore their influence will be comparatively insignificant. [10.] In the second rank will be the semi-official organs, whose part it will be to attack the tepid and indifferent. [11.] In the third rank we shall set up our own, to all appearance, off position, which, in at least one of its organs, will present what looks like the very antipodes to us. Our real opponents at heart will accept this simulated opposition as their own and will show us their cards. [12.] All our newspapers will be of all possible complexions - aristocratic, republican, revolutionary, even anarchical - for so long, of course, as the constitution exists .... Like the Indian idol "Vishnu" they will have a hundred hands, and every one of them will have a finger on any one of the public opinions as required. When a pulse quickens these hands will lead opinion in the direction of our aims, for an excited patient loses all power of judgment and easily yields to suggestion. Those fools who will think they are repeating the opinion of a newspaper of their own camp will be repeating our opinion or any opinion that seems desirable for us. In the vain belief that they are following the organ of their party they will, in fact, follow the flag which we hang out for them. [13.] In order to direct our newspaper militia in this sense we must take special and minute care in organizing this matter. Under the title of central department of the press we shall institute literary gatherings at which our agents will without attracting attention issue the orders and watchwords of the day. By discussing and controverting, but always superficially, without touching the essence of the matter, our organs will carry on a sham fight fusillade with the official newspapers solely for the purpose of giving occasion for us to express ourselves more fully than could well be done from the outset in official announcements, whenever, of course, that is to our advantage. [14.] THESE ATTACKS UPON US WILL ALSO SERVE ANOTHER PURPOSE, NAMELY, THAT OUR SUBJECTS WILL BE CONVINCED TO THE EXISTENCE OF FULL FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND SO GIVE OUR AGENTS AN OCCASION TO AFFIRM THAT ALL ORGANS WHICH OPPOSE US ARE EMPTY BABBLERS, since they are incapable of finding any substantial objections to our orders. ONLY LIES PRINTED |
And Si Newhouse owns two dozen daily newspapers from Staten Island to Oregon, plus the Sunday supplement Parade; the Conde Nast collection of magazines, including Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Allure, GQ, and Self; the publishing firms of Random House, Knopf, Crown, and Ballantine, among other imprints; and cable franchises with over one million subscribers.
David Sarnoff and William Paley—both Jews—ran NBC and CBS television when President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Walter Lippmann—an ardent Zionist—was an influential newspaper commentators during Kennedy’s Presidency. In 1917, Lippmann served briefly as an assistant to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson sent Lippmann to France to take part in the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles. Martin Agronsky—a Jew—was an influential television news correspondent for NBC when Kennedy was killed. Agronsky used his position to aggressively promote Lyndon Johnson as a qualified successor to the slain president (reference Chapter 1).
Jewish political forces control and influence every facet of American media outlets. This includes the electronic news media, newspapers/journals, and the entertainment industry: movies, music, and book publishing industries. Anyone who claims that Protocol XII, Control of the Press, is untrue is simply not paying attention.
The second example—Protocol V, Despotism and Modern—is used to control public opinion regarding controversial topics. The following text is an excerpt from Protocol V:
[9.] We shall assume to ourselves the liberal physiognomy of all parties, of all directions, and we shall give that physiognomy a VOICE IN ORATORS WHO WILL SPEAK SO MUCH THAT THEY WILL EXHAUST THE PATIENCE OF THEIR HEARERS AND PRODUCE AN ABHORRENCE OF ORATORY. [10.] IN ORDER TO PUT PUBLIC OPINION INTO OUR HANDS WE MUST BRING IT INTO A STATE OF BEWILDERMENT BY GIVING EXPRESSION FROM ALL SIDES TO SO MANY CONTRADICTORY OPINIONS AND FOR SUCH LENGTH OF TIME AS WILL SUFFICE TO MAKE THE "GOYIM" LOSE THEIR HEADS IN THE LABYRINTH AND COME TO SEE THAT THE BEST THING IS TO HAVE NO OPINION OF ANY KIND IN MATTERS POLITICAL, which it is not given to the public to understand, because they are understood only by him who guides the public. … |
Other examples of false critics are Robert Groden and Oliver Stone (reference Chapter 7). Both made a concerted effort to direct the public away from Jewish involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Prominent defenders of the Warren Report are Noam Chomsky, Michael Kazin, Maurice Isserman, Gerald Posner, David Belin, and Arlen Spector (reference Introduction for the latter two names). Chomsky in particular confused the public because he is a prominent opinion leader among intellectuals. Protocol V, is not only an effective technique for controlling public opinion on controversial topics, it is probably the most widespread propaganda tool employed today.(Footnote 64)
The third example—Protocol VII, Worldwide Wars—is extremely troubling because it advocates war. A serious observer of the Middle East cannot deny that Israel is one of the most war-mongering nations in history. The following text is an excerpt from Protocol VII:
UNIVERSAL WAR [3.] We must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors should also venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a universal war. [4.] The principal factor of success in the political is the secrecy of its undertakings: the word should not agree with the deeds of the diplomat. [5.] We must compel the governments of the GOYIM to take action in the direction favored by our widely conceived plan, already approaching the desired consummation, by what we shall represent as public opinion, secretly promoted by us through the means of that so-called "Great Power" - THE PRESS, WHICH, WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS THAT MAY BE DISREGARDED, IS ALREADY ENTIRELY IN OUR HANDS. |
Revised History of the Twentieth Century
The formation of the Jewish state in Palestine played a dominant role in world history throughout the Twentieth Century—particularly regarding World War I and II—although Western historians have largely ignored its significance. Over the years, many "alternative" historians have attempted to set the record straight, but their writings have been suppressed or their careers destroyed by Jewish political forces. In general, the new breed of historians take exception to the "official" explanations regarding the following historical events:
- US entry into World War I
- Anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany after World War I
- Hitler’s conflict with Jewish political forces
- The Night of Broken Glass (aka, Kristallnacht and November Pogroms)
- The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
- Details about Hitler’s persecution of Jews
World War I broke out in the summer of 1914. There are few people here my age who remember that. Now that war was waged on one side by Great Britain, France, and Russia; and on the other side by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. Within two years Germany had won that war: not only won it nominally, but won it actually. The German submarines, which were a surprise to the world, had swept all the convoys from the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain stood there without ammunition for her soldiers, with one week's food supply -- and after that, starvation. At that time, the French army had mutinied. They had lost 600,000 of the flower of French youth in the defense of Verdun on the Somme. The Russian army was defecting, they were picking up their toys and going home, they didn't want to play war anymore, they didn't like the Czar. And the Italian army had collapsed. Not a shot had been fired on German soil. Not one enemy soldier had crossed the border into Germany. And yet, Germany was offering England peace terms. They offered England a negotiated peace on what the lawyers call a status quo ante basis. That means: "Let's call the war off, and let everything be as it was before the war started." England, in the summer of 1916 was considering that -- seriously. They had no choice. It was either accepting this negotiated peace that Germany was magnanimously offering them, or going on with the war and being totally defeated. While that was going on, the Zionists in Germany, who represented the Zionists from Eastern Europe, went to the British War Cabinet and -- I am going to be brief because it's a long story, but I have all the documents to prove any statement that I make -- they said: "Look here. You can yet win this war. You don't have to give up. You don't have to accept the negotiated peace offered to you now by Germany. You can win this war if the United States will come in as your ally." The United States was not in the war at that time. We were fresh; we were young; we were rich; we were powerful. They told England: "We will guarantee to bring the United States into the war as your ally, to fight with you on your side, if you will promise us Palestine after you win the war." In other words, they made this deal: "We will get the United States into this war as your ally. The price you must pay is Palestine after you have won the war and defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey." Now England had as much right to promise Palestine to anybody, as the United States would have to promise Japan to Ireland for any reason whatsoever. It's absolutely absurd that Great Britain, that never had any connection or any interest or any right in what is known as Palestine should offer it as coin of the realm to pay the Zionists for bringing the United States into the war. However, they did make that promise, in October of 1916. And shortly after that -- I don't know how many here remember it - - the United States, which was almost totally pro-German, entered the war as Britain's ally. I say that the United States was almost totally pro-German because the newspapers here were controlled by Jews, the bankers were Jews, all the media of mass communications in this country were controlled by Jews; and they, the Jews, were pro-German. They were pro-German because many of them had come from Germany, and also they wanted to see Germany lick the Czar. The Jews didn't like the Czar, and they didn't want Russia to win this war. These German-Jew bankers, like Kuhn Loeb and the other big banking firms in the United States refused to finance France or England to the extent of one dollar. They stood aside and they said: "As long as France and England are tied up with Russia, not one cent!" But they poured money into Germany, they fought beside Germany against Russia, trying to lick the Czarist regime. Now those same Jews, when they saw the possibility of getting Palestine, went to England and they made this deal. At that time, everything changed, like a traffic light that changes from red to green. Where the newspapers had been all pro-German, where they'd been telling the people of the difficulties that Germany was having fighting Great Britain commercially and in other respects, all of a sudden the Germans were no good. They were villains. They were Huns. They were shooting Red Cross nurses. They were cutting off babies' hands. They were no good. Shortly after that, Mr. Wilson declared war on Germany. The Zionists in London had sent cables to the United States, to Justice Brandeis, saying "Go to work on President Wilson. We're getting from England what we want. Now you go to work on President Wilson and get the United States into the war."(Footnote 65) That's how the United States got into the war. We had no more interest in it; we had no more right to be in it than we have to be on the moon tonight instead of in this room. There was absolutely no reason for World War I to be our war. We were railroaded into—if I can be vulgar, we were suckered into— that war merely so that the Zionists of the world could obtain Palestine. That is something that the people of the United States have never been told. They never knew why we went into World War I. After we got into the war, the Zionists went to Great Britain and they said: "Well, we performed our part of the agreement. Let's have something in writing that shows that you are going to keep your bargain and give us Palestine after you win the war." They didn't know whether the war would last another year or another ten years. So they started to work out a receipt. The receipt took the form of a letter, which was worded in very cryptic language so that the world at large wouldn't know what it was all about. And that was called the Balfour Declaration. The Balfour Declaration was merely Great Britain's promise to pay the Zionists what they had agreed upon as a consideration for getting the United States into the war. So this great Balfour Declaration, that you hear so much about, is just as phony as a three dollar bill. I don't think I could make it more emphatic than that. … |
| His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. |
…. The United States got in the war. The United States crushed Germany. You know what happened. When the war ended, and the Germans went to Paris for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 there were 117 Jews there, as a delegation representing the Jews, headed by Bernard Baruch.(Footnote 67) I was there: I ought to know. Now what happened? The Jews at that peace conference, when they were cutting up Germany and parceling out Europe to all these nations who claimed a right to a certain part of European territory, said, "How about Palestine for us?" And they produced, for the first time to the knowledge of the Germans, this Balfour Declaration. So the Germans, for the first time realized, "Oh, so that was the game! That's why the United States came into the war." The Germans for the first time realized that they were defeated, they suffered the terrific reparations that were slapped onto them, because the Zionists wanted Palestine and were determined to get it at any cost. That brings us to another very interesting point. When the Germans realized this, they naturally resented it. Up to that time, the Jews had never been better off in any country in the world than they had been in Germany. You had Mr. Rathenau there, who was maybe 100 times as important in industry and finance as is Bernard Baruch in this country. You had Mr. Balin, who owned the two big steamship lines, the North German Lloyd's and the Hamburg-American Lines. You had Mr. Bleichroder, who was the banker for the Hohenzollern family. You had the Warburgs in Hamburg, who were the big merchant bankers—the biggest in the world. The Jews were doing very well in Germany. No question about that. The Germans felt: "Well, that was quite a sellout." It was a sellout that might be compared to this hypothetical situation: Suppose the United States was at war with the Soviet Union. And we were winning. And we told the Soviet Union: "Well, let's quit. We offer you peace terms. Let's forget the whole thing." And all of a sudden Red China came into the war as an ally of the Soviet Union. And throwing them into the war brought about our defeat. A crushing defeat, with reparations the likes of which man's imagination cannot encompass. Imagine, then, after that defeat, if we found out that it was the Chinese in this country, our Chinese citizens, who all the time we had thought were loyal citizens working with us, were selling us out to the Soviet Union and that it was through them that Red China was brought into the war against us. How would we feel, then, in the United States against Chinese? I don't think that one of them would dare show his face on any street. There wouldn't be enough convenient lampposts to take care of them. Imagine how we would feel. Well, that's how the Germans felt towards these Jews. They'd been so nice to them: from 1905 on, when the first Communist revolution in Russia failed, and the Jews had to scramble out of Russia, they all went to Germany. And Germany gave them refuge. And they were treated very nicely. And here they had sold Germany down the river for no reason at all other than the fact that they wanted Palestine as a so-called "Jewish commonwealth." Now Nahum Sokolow, and all the great leaders and great names that you read about in connection with Zionism today, in 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, and 1923 wrote in all their papers—and the press was filled with their statements—that the feeling against the Jews in Germany is due to the fact that they realized that this great defeat was brought about by Jewish intercession in bringing the United States into the war. The Jews themselves admitted that. It wasn't that the Germans in 1919 discovered that a glass of Jewish blood tasted better than Coca-Cola or Muenschner Beer. There was no religious feeling. There was no sentiment against those people merely on account of their religious belief. It was all political. It was economic. It was anything but religious. Nobody cared in Germany whether a Jew went home and pulled down the shades and said "Shema’ Yisroel" or "Our Father." Nobody cared in Germany any more than they do in the United States. Now this feeling that developed later in Germany was due to one thing: the Germans held the Jews responsible for their crushing defeat. |
A few months prior to the end of World War I, Russian Czar Nicholas Romanov abdicated the throne at the end of the Russian Revolution. In July 1918, the Bolsheviks executed the Czar at Yekaterinburg along with his immediate family.18
By autumn of 1918, German/Prussian Kaiser William II realized Germany would soon be defeated. On November 9, 1918, he fled to Holland because he feared the Bolshevik Communists would take over Germany as they did Russia and he would meet a similar fate as Czar Nicholas and his family. In the interim, the German government was taken over by the Jewish dominated Social Democratic Party. Fearful of being overthrown by more radical communists led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (both Jewish), the Social Democratic Party demobilized the German armies.19 This put Germany in an extremely weak negotiating position with the Allied forces after the initial Armistice agreement on November 11, 1918. The original agreement did not require demobilization of German armies, only that all German armies withdraw to pre-war boundaries.20 A fully armed Germany expected Wilson’s Fourteen Points21 which he had formulated as the basis for a just peace. After the disarmament of its military, Germany got the Versailles Treaty which was extremely harsh. Again, this is what many people call the "stab in the back theory."
It appears that Germany actually got stabbed in the back twice by two different Jewish groups. Bernard Baruch et al inserted the first dagger by getting America into World War I in exchange for the promise of Palestine by Britain as specified in the Balfour Declaration. Later, Jewish Communists inserted the second dagger by demobilizing Germany’s military before the Armistice agreement was finalized. As a result, Germany got the short end of the stick at Versailles.
The third exception to conventional history—Hitler’s conflict with Jewish political forces—is quite a bit different than Western historians portray. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. On that point, everyone agrees. But thereafter, things get muddy. Freedman summarized Hitler’s problems with Jews as follows:
… After the Communist threat in Germany was quashed, the Jews were still working, trying to get back into their former status, and the Germans fought them in every way they could without hurting a single hair on anyone's head. They fought them the same way that, in this country, the Prohibitionists fought anyone who was interested in liquor. They didn't fight one another with pistols. Well, that's the way they were fighting the Jews in Germany. And at that time, mind you, there were 80 to 90 million Germans, and there were only 460,000 Jews. About one half of one per cent of the population of Germany were Jews. And yet they controlled all the press, and they controlled most of the economy because they had come in with cheap money when the mark was devalued and bought up practically everything. The Jews tried to keep a lid on this fact. They didn't want the world to really understand that they had sold out Germany, and that the Germans resented that. The Germans took appropriate action against the Jews. They, shall I say, discriminated against them wherever they could. They shunned them. The same way that we would shun the Chinese, or the Negroes, or the Catholics, or anyone in this country who had sold us out to an enemy and brought about our defeat. After a while, the Jews of the world called a meeting in Amsterdam. Jews from every country in the world attended this meeting in July 1933. And they said to Germany: "You fire Hitler, and you put every Jew back into his former position, whether he was a Communist or no matter what he was. You can't treat us that way. And we, the Jews of the world, are serving an ultimatum upon you." You can imagine what the Germans told them. So what did the Jews do? In 1933, when Germany refused to surrender to the world conference of Jews in Amsterdam, the conference broke up, and Mr. Samuel Untermyer, who was the head of the American delegation and the president of the whole conference, came to the United States and went from the steamer to the studios of the Columbia Broadcasting System and made a radio broadcast throughout the United States in which he in effect said, "The Jews of the world now declare a Holy War against Germany. We are now engaged in a sacred conflict against the Germans. And we are going to starve them into surrender. We are going to use a world-wide boycott against them. That will destroy them because they are dependent upon their export business." And it is a fact that two thirds of Germany's food supply had to be imported, and it could only be imported with the proceeds of what they exported. So if Germany could not export, two thirds of Germany's population would have to starve. There was just not enough food for more than one third of the population. Now in this declaration, which I have here, and which was printed in the New York Times on August 7, 1933, Mr. Samuel Untermyer boldly stated that "this economic boycott is our means of self-defense. President Roosevelt has advocated its use in the National Recovery Administration," which some of you may remember, where everybody was to be boycotted unless he followed the rules laid down by the New Deal, and which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of that time. Nevertheless, the Jews of the world declared a boycott against Germany, and it was so effective that you couldn't find one thing in any store anywhere in the world with the words "made in Germany" on it. In fact, an executive of the Woolworth Company told me that they had to dump millions of dollars worth of crockery and dishes into the river; that their stores were boycotted if anyone came in and found a dish marked "made in Germany," they were picketed with signs saying "Hitler," "murderer," and so forth, something like these sit-ins that are taking place in the South. At a store belonging to the R. H. Macy chain, which was controlled by a family called Strauss who also happen to be Jews, a woman found stockings there which came from Chemnitz, marked "made in Germany." Well, they were cotton stockings and they may have been there 20 years, since I've been observing women's legs for many years and it's been a long time since I've seen any cotton stockings on them. I saw Macy's boycotted, with hundreds of people walking around with signs saying "murderers," "Hitlerites," and so forth. Now up to that time, not one hair on the head of any Jew had been hurt in Germany. There was no suffering, there was no starvation, there was no murder, there was nothing. Naturally, the Germans said, "Who are these people to declare a boycott against us and throw all our people out of work, and make our industries come to a standstill? Who are they to do that to us?" They naturally resented it. Certainly they painted swastikas on stores owned by Jews. Why should a German go in and give his money to a storekeeper who was part of a boycott that was going to starve Germany into surrendering to the Jews of the world, who were going to dictate who their premier or chancellor was to be? Well, it was ridiculous. … |
… After the advent of Hitlerism, Untermyer became president of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights, to counter Nazi propaganda and lead in the boycott of German goods. Other activity in the Jewish community included serving as vice-president of the American Jewish Congress until 1926 and president of the Palestine Foundation Fund for several years. … |
…. The [international Jewish] boycott [against Germany] continued for some time, but it wasn't until [November 7] 1938, when a young Jew [Herschel Grynszpan] from Poland walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot a German [diplomat, Ernst vom Rath], that the Germans really started to get rough with the Jews in Germany. And you found them then breaking windows and having street fights and so forth. …. |
To all Gauleiter HQs for Immediate Action! Directive No. 174/38. Repeating Telex of November 10, 1938. On express orders from the very highest level arson attacks on Jewish businesses and such are not to occur under any circumstances or conditions whatever...24 |
The Night of Broken Glass remains highly controversial amongst historians. Jewish political forces would have us believe that the Nazis terrorized innocent Jews without cause. Western historians acknowledge that a young Jew did in fact shoot and kill a German diplomat in Paris, but the incident is surprisingly viewed as unrelated.
According to Freedman, The Night of Broken Glass was not an official implementation of "pogroms" against Jews, but rather the culmination of tensions between German Gentiles toward Jews after a five-year Jewish boycott—instigated by Samuel Untermyer—which hurt the German economy badly. In addition, German citizens felt betrayed by Jews over their defeat in World War I. When Herschel Grynszpan murdered German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, that was the last straw. Violent insurrections against Jews followed. Vom Rath’s cold blooded murder by a young Jew had set off anti-Jewish furor that was difficult to contain. Emotions came pouring out—so much so that Hitler told Hess to issue a directive telling Nazi officials not to commit "arson attacks on Jewish businesses….under any circumstances or conditions whatever."
The fifth exception to conventional history—the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941)—has been shown by historians to be a ruse perpetrated by President Roosevelt to get America into the European war against Nazi Germany. Author Robert B. Stinnett(Footnote 69) built a powerful case in his book, Day of Deceit, that Roosevelt had prior knowledge of the attack—which killed 2,400 military persons and wounded 1,100 more—and allowed it to happen, even encouraged it. Given that Roosevelt’s top adviser, Bernard Baruch, was an ardent Zionist, Stinnett’s explanation seems highly plausible.
In 1999, the US Senate voted to exonerate Hawaii commanders Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short for lack of preparedness after the Pentagon declared that blame should be "broadly shared."25 Prior to Stinnett’s work, researchers concluded that the US Government did not crack Japanese military codes before December 7, 1941; however, Stinnett provided numerous cables of decryptions to refute that claim. He also proved that a Japanese spy in Hawaii had transmitted information—including a map of the bombing target—beginning on August 21, 1941, and that American intelligence knew about it. In a word, Stinnett proved how Roosevelt allowed the attack to occur. The only part missing from his book, Day of Deceit, is Why. But Benjamin Freedman answered that question long ago when he delivered his speech in Washington, DC in 1961. Not only did he explain World Wars I and II, but he essentially predicted the Six Day War, the Vietnam War, The Persian Gulf War, and the present war with Afghanistan (in 2002). The following text is an excerpt from that speech:
… What do we face now [in 1961]? If we trigger a world war that may develop into a nuclear war, humanity is finished. Why might such a war take place? It will take place as the curtain goes up on Act 3: Act 1 was World War I, Act 2 was World War II, Act 3 is going to be World War III. The Jews of the world, the Zionists and their co-religionists everywhere, are determined that they are going to again use the United States to help them permanently retain Palestine as their foothold for their world government. That is just as true as I am standing here. Not alone have I read it, but many here have also read it, and it is known all over the world. What are we going to do? The life you save may be your son's. Your boys may be on their way to that war tonight; and you don't know it any more than you knew that in 1916 in London the Zionists made a deal with the British War Cabinet to send your sons to war in Europe. Did you know it at that time? Not a person in the United States knew it. You weren't permitted to know it. Who knew it? President Wilson knew it. Colonel House knew it. Other insiders knew it. Did I know it? I had a pretty good idea of what was going on: I was liaison to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., in the 1912 campaign when President Wilson was elected, and there was talk around the office there. I was "confidential man" to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who was chairman of the finance committee, and I was liaison between him and Rollo Wells, the treasurer. So I sat in these meetings with President Wilson at the head of the table, and all the others, and I heard them drum into President Wilson's brain the graduated income tax and what has become the Federal Reserve, and I heard them indoctrinate him with the Zionist movement. Justice Brandeis and President Wilson were just as close as the two fingers on this hand. President Woodrow Wilson was just as incompetent when it came to determining what was going on as a newborn baby. That is how they got us into World War I, while we all slept. They sent our boys over there to be slaughtered. For what? So the Jews can have Palestine as their "commonwealth." They've fooled you so much that you don't know whether you're coming or going. |
The sixth exception to conventional history—details about Hitler’s persecution of Jews—is probably the most important of all. Actually, the politically correct word to use in this discussion is Holocaust. The word was introduced in 1978 in the TV mini-series, The Holocaust, directed by Marvin Chomsky and starred Meryl Streep and James Woods. Before 1978, the term Holocaust was not associated with Nazi Germany and Jews. In 1976, William Stevenson wrote a book, A Man Called Intrepid, which discussed the deaths of six million Jews during World War II a great deal, but Stevenson never used the term Holocaust because that term had not been introduced to the public in 1976.
It is difficult to discuss Hitler and the Holocaust openly because so many opinions are based on raw emotion, not intellect. One of the most controversial topics discussed today among intellectuals is the total number of Jews that died in Nazi Germany. The official number is six million. But there appears to be a double-standard among historians as to how they tallied the number of dead in the Holocaust versus the numbers killed in other atrocities.
It is amazing to me that historians are unable to agree on the number of German and Japanese civilians murdered by the allied forces in the fire-bombing of Dresden or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet virtually all mainstream historians agree with great certainty that six million Jews died in Nazi Germany over a twelve year period (1933-45) under the most clandestine circumstances. Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were there one day, gone the next. Determining the number dead in those three cities should be relatively uncomplicated, but for some reason, historians cannot agree. For a complex atrocity, everyone agrees; for simpler ones, everyone argues. This double-standard should raise red flags regarding the credibility of historians on this most controversial topic. Are historians being pressured to lie about the Holocaust? If so, why?
British historian David Irving has publicly stated his belief that the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust was intentionally inflated for political reasons. According to Irving, if the number of Jewish dead in the Holocaust was only a million, then Hitler was no more of a war criminal than Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, or Stalin. In order to villainize Hitler for political purposes, the number of Jewish dead had to be exaggerated significantly. That is why the number six million is so important.
Endnotes
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Pharisee
- Benjamin Freedman, Facts are Facts, Part II, p. 1. Freedman cited an article by Rabbi Morris N. Kertzer (official spokesman for The American Jewish Committee) as his source. The article was "What is a Jew," Look Magazine, June 17, 1952. "The Talmud consists of 63 books of legal, ethical and historical writings of the ancient rabbis. It was edited centuries after the birth of Jesus. It is a compendium of law and lore. IT IS THE LEGAL CODE WHICH FORMS THE BASIS OF JEWISH RELIGIOUS LAW AND IT IS THE TEXTBOOK USED IN THE TRAINING OF RABBIS:" (emphasis supplied).
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Inquisition
- Holy Child of La Guardia: The complete record of testimony of the trial of one of the accused has been available since it was published in 1887 in the Bulletin of the Royal Academy at Madrid (Vol. XI, pp. 7-160), from the original manuscript.
- Josephus, Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 2, p. 2. (Caiaphas was appointed head of the Sanhedrin by Roman Governor Gratus in around AD 18.)
- Josephus, Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 4, p. 2. (Pilate served for ten years, then returned to Rome in AD 36 to meet with Emperor Tiberius regarding complaints made against him by Jews. Tiberius died before Pilate reached Rome.)
- Josephus, Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 4, p. 3. (Caiaphas was removed as head of the Sanhedrin by Roman Governor Vitellius in AD 36, and replaced by Jonathan, son of Ananus.)
- King James Bible, John, 18:12 - 18:24
- King James Bible, Matthew, 27:19
- King James Bible, Matthew, 27:1 - 27:26
- ibid
- Josephus, Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 4, p. 3. (Caiaphas and Pilate were relieved of the their respective positions of authority in AD 36, about two or the years after Jesus was crucified.)
- Philippians 3:5. The Apostle Paul boasted of being a Pharisee. Speaking of himself, Paul wrote: "Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee;"
- John 8:59, King James Version
- John 8:44, King James Version
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
- Frank L. Britton, Behind Communism (1952), reference Rosa Luxemberg’s Revolution, p 29
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Romanov Dynasty
- Frank L. Britton, Behind Communism (1952), reference Rosa Luxemberg’s Revolution, p 29
- ibid
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Treaty of Versailles
- American Jewish Archive: Excerpt from biographical sketch of Samuel Untermyer. http://www.huc.edu/aja/untermyer.htm
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Kristallnacht
- Rudolf Hess’s memo was obtained from David Irving’s website. Irving stated that the memo was found in the Berlin Document Center: Ordner 240/1. (http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Hess101138a.html)
- Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit, written on book jacket; also corroborated in article by Jerrold Smith entitled Pearl Harbor, and the Role of the Military in Our Society. http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/33rd_Issue/pearl.html
- Encyclopedia Britannica: America First Committee
There’s a dirty little secret about President Kennedy and his father that is widely known but rarely discussed thoroughly. They were pro-Hitler and pro-Nazi. After reading Benjamin Freedman’s version of World Wars I and II (reference Chapter 13) it’s easy to understand why. And quite frankly, their opinions were probably more accurate than most people would care to admit. In his time, Hitler was extremely popular. He was Germany’s new protector after their humiliating defeat in World War I and the ensuing Treaty of Versailles. It could be argued that he was also a colonialist and was merely doing to Britain, France and the Soviet Union what they had been doing to others for years. Consequently, it is quite understandable why a young John Kennedy wrote in his diary in 1945 that "he had in him the stuff of which legends are made."
But Kennedy’s praise of this hated man only makes sense if you take exception to several historical events of the Twentieth Century (reference Chapter 13). It makes sense if you accept that US entry into World War I had more to do with the Balfour Declaration than the sinking of a French passenger ship—SS Sussex—by a German submarine. It makes sense if you accept that anti-Jewish sentiment in Germany after World War I was because the German people learned that Jewish moguls—Samuel Untermyer, Louis Brandeis, and Lionel Rothschild—lured America into the war against Germany in exchange for Palestine. It makes sense if you accept that Hitler’s conflict with Jewish political forces intensified when Samuel Untermyer initiated a worldwide boycott of German goods which lasted five years (1933 - 1938) and badly hurt the German economy. It makes sense if you accept that The Night of Broken Glass was a German backlash after enduring Untermyer’s five-year boycott which culminated with a Jewish student shooting and killing a German diplomat at the German embassy in Paris. It makes sense if you accept that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was encouraged by President Roosevelt to get America into a second war against Germany. It makes sense if you accept that a great deal of hype has been added to Hitler’s persecution of Jews.
If you accept these facts, then it is understandable why, in 1940, Kennedy wrote a book, entitled Why England Slept, which presented a fair-minded analysis of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Nazi Germany. It is also quite understandable why, in 1956, Kennedy—then a US Senator—indirectly criticized the Nuremberg Trials by naming Senator Robert Taft as a courageous profile in the acclaimed book,Profiles in Courage. Kennedy cited Taft for the "courageous act" of criticizing the Nuremberg Trials while they were in progress in 1946.
It is equally understandable why friends of Israel could not tolerate a Kennedy dynasty in the White House. "Goddamn the Kennedys," Clyde Tolson remarked to J. Edgar Hoover. "First there was Jack, now there’s Bobby, and then Teddy. We’ll have them on our necks until the year 2000." The director reportedly nodded in agreement.1
Fallout From JFK’s Assassination
One outcome of President Kennedy’s assassination was nine years of heavy US military involvement in Vietnam. The effects of the long conflict were harsh for all involved. More than 47,000 Americans were killed in action, nearly 11,000 died of other causes, and more than 303,000 were wounded in the war. Casualty figures for the Vietnamese are far less certain. Estimates of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam’s (ARVN) casualties range from 185,000 to 225,000 killed and 500,000 to 570,000 wounded. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong suffered about 900,000 troops killed and an unknown, but huge, number of wounded. In addition, more than 1,000,000 North and South Vietnamese civilians were killed during the war. Parts of the countryside were scarred by bombs and defoliation, and some cities and towns were heavily damaged. By the war's end much of the population of South Vietnam had become refugees seeking an escape from the fighting. Agriculture, business, and industry had been disrupted. In the United States, Johnson's economic program for a "Great Society" had been largely halted by the economic and military demands of an unpopular war. The cost of the war has been estimated to have totaled about $200 billion. With the communist victory in South Vietnam and communist takeovers in neighboring Cambodia and Laos, the new Vietnam emerged as an important Southeast Asian power.2
A second outcome of President Kennedy’s assassination was a dramatic increase in heroin trafficking in the ensuing years. By 1971, it had reached epidemic proportions. In 1965 there were only 57,000 known heroin addicts in America. By 1969 the number had grown to 315,000. And by late 1971 the estimated total had jumped to 560,000—nearly ten times the amount in 1965. Army medical doctors were convinced, in 1971, that 10 to 15 percent of the GIs in Vietnam were heroin users.3 On June 17, 1971 Nixon declared that heroin addiction was "Public Enemy No. 1,"(Footnote 70) and he targeted Auguste Joseph Ricord for extradition from Paraguay and subsequent prosecution in the US for large-scale heroin smuggling.4
A third outcome of President Kennedy’s assassination was the Six Day War, a watershed event that transformed Israel from a small nation into a colonial empire. Although Israel became a nation in 1948, it expanded dramatically after the Six Day War. Israel took from the Arabs—through military force—the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, the Jordanian territory west of the Jordan River known as the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, on the Israeli-Syrian border.5 In addition to acquiring new land, Israel gained control of an additional 900,000 Arabs who became the discontented subjects of the new Israeli empire. Since 1967, the number of Arabs under Israel’s military control has grown to over 1.75 million.6
Amnesty International has documented Israel’s inhumane treatment of its Palestinian subjects citing arbitrary arrests, torturing detainees, destroying or sealing the homes of Arab suspects and their relatives, confiscating land, destroying crops, and diverting precious water from thirsty Palestinians in the desert to fill the swimming pools and water the lawns of Israeli settlers.7 This conduct is condoned, embraced, and encouraged by the United States through its steadfast financial and military support of Israel. Today, US tax payers spend approximately $3 billion annually to subsidize, support, and arm Israel. Although Israel is a wealthy country by western standards, it receives more American foreign aid money, 28 percent, than any other country.8
Points of Discussion
There as several points that I believe are relevant to the assassination but need further clarification. First of all, I believe I have shown a strong Mafia presence in the assassination; however, there was not a vendetta against President Kennedy because he had "double-crossed" them. The Mafia’s role was purely mercenary. A new source of opium was needed for heroin production and Kennedy’s death allowed American and French-Corsican crime syndicates to utilize Southeast Asia for this purpose once Kennedy was replaced by Johnson who quickly escalated the war. I have further demonstrated that Meyer Lansky was the primary American mobster involved in the assassination, but he was also Jewish which links him to the Jewish conspiracy. Santo Trafficante may have had prior knowledge of the assassination, but only because he was Lansky’s top lieutenant. In addition, Jack Ruby apparently worked directly for Lansky. It is also highly significant that Lansky and other Jewish gangsters were the first of the American Mafia to deal in heroin back in the 1920s. The Sicilians had a code of honor that forbade narcotics trafficking and prostitution (reference Introduction). Given Lansky’s vast experience with narcotics trafficking, it may have been his idea to use heroin as the "glue" to hold the rivaling factions of the conspiracy together. But there is little doubt that the forces behind the coup were much bigger than him.
Second point: Many "left-wing historians" tend to lump Alan Dulles and John Foster Dulles together as symbols of right-wing ideology. Although they were both Cold Warriors, their views about Israel were quite different. Alan was a Zionist but John Foster had little use for Israel. While running the OSS during World War II, Alan Dulles worked extensively with American Jews who later acquired a great deal of stature. Examples include Arthur Goldberg, future Supreme Court Justice, and William Paley, future president of CBS. On the other hand, John Foster Dulles fully supported President Eisenhower’s efforts to contain Israel’s expansion. In Chapter 10 I described how Eisenhower and J. F. Dulles were particularly harsh with Israel when Ben-Gurion conspired with France and Britain to attack Egypt during the Suez Crisis (1956-57). Both John Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower held views about Israel that were identical to those held by President Kennedy and his father. If anything, Dulles and Eisenhower were more open about their disdain for the Jewish state than were the Kennedys.
Third point: President Nixon acquired vast insight about Israel during his vice-presidency with Eisenhower. As I pointed out in Chapter 10, Eisenhower was perhaps the strongest president in the 20th Century regarding Israel. No other president in the last fifty years has forced Israel to behave the way Eisenhower did during the Suez Crisis. Nixon obviously learned a great deal from that episode.
Fourth point: The Suez Crisis of 1956-57 and the Six Day War of 1967 were both Israel’s efforts to seize Arab land by force. In Chapter 10, I pointed out that the primary difference between the two assaults was the outcome. In 1956-57, Israel lost militarily and was humiliated by negative worldwide condemnation. Ten years later, they were successful. In both instances, they attacked Egypt and tried to overthrow President Nasser. He was hated by the Israelis because he was a unifying force among Arab nations, plus he demonstrated time and time again that he could not be bought off by the West. In 1956-57, President Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld were united in their efforts to contain Israel and force it to abide by international law.
Had it not been for Lyndon Johnson—then Senate Majority Leader—the UN would have imposed economic sanctions on Israel in 1957 for not withdrawing its forces from the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gaza Strip in the wake of the failed attack on Egypt. Johnson rallied support for Israel in the Senate, plus he wrote a letter to Secretary of State Dulles on Israel’s behalf. The letter was published in the New York Times on February 20, 1957. A few months later, John Kennedy—then a US Senator—gave a signal to the Eisenhower Administration and Israel that he would not bow to the whims of the Jewish State if elected president. On July 2, 1957, Kennedy delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate condemning France for it’s colonial occupation of Algeria and for waging a brutal war against that nation. Israel did not support independence for Algeria because that meant the rise of another Arab state. Kennedy’s support for Algerian independence was also a message to Israel: Behave!
By 1967, things had changed a great deal over the ten years leading up to the Six Day War. Israel’s most influential adversaries had either died or left public office. Eisenhower had retired years earlier and was in failing health. John Foster Dulles had died of cancer in 1959. Dag Hammarskjöld had been killed in a mysterious plane crash in the Congolese province of Katanga in 1961. President Kennedy of course had been assassinated in Dallas in 1963. And Israel’s old ally, Lyndon Johnson, had become Commander-in-Chief of the United States. In July of 1965, President Johnson had appointed Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg as US ambassador to the UN. Goldberg—a Jew and ardent supporter of Israel—replaced Adlai Stevenson as US delegate to the UN after Stevenson died suddenly of a heart attack on July 14, 1965. The Yemen War had been eroding Arab unity since the conflict began in 1962 (reference Chapter 10). By 1967, Egyptian forces had suffered heavy losses and were weakened after five years of military involvement in the Yemen War. Whether these events were random or planned is anyone’s guess, but they were definitely advantageous to Israel by the time the Six Day War occurred in 1967.
Fifth point: Lyndon Johnson’s damage control in the wake of the Suez Crisis has been erased from the history books. This more than anything else points to collusion among Johnson, Israel, the American news media and book-publishing industry. This more than anything else indicates that Johnson was a point man for Israel in the US Senate. This more than anything else makes Johnson a prime suspect as a co-conspirator in the assassination of President Kennedy. I have read numerous accounts of the Suez Crisis and have never seen anything about Johnson’s letter to Secretary of State Dulles which was printed in the New York Times on February 20, 1957. Ironically, the only place where I read anything about Johnson’s 1957 damage control for Israel—other than in the New York Times itself—was from the pen of Louis Bloomfield in his 1957 book, Egypt, Israel and the Gulf of Aqaba, p. 152. As I pointed out before, Bloomfield was likely the man who masterminded the assassination of the President Kennedy (reference Introduction, and Chapters 3, 4, & 5).
Sixth point: One of the reasons for Nixon’s diplomatic success with China in 1972 was his personal rapport with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai. It has been widely documented that Chou En-lai liked Nixon on a personal level, but few people understand why. If we recall the Opium Wars of the 19th Century (reference Chapter 11), then it becomes quite obvious why Chou En-lai liked Nixon. The Chinese leader realized the Nixon was making a serious effort to stop Western opium smuggling, something that was used as a weapon against the Chinese until the Communists took over in 1949 and banned all narcotics. Nixon’s pursuit of August Ricord demonstrated that he was changing the Anglo-French-American exploitation of Asia through opium and heroin smuggling. In Chapter 11, I pointed out that Chou En-lai reportedly told Nasser, in 1965, that he was going to use opium as a weapon against American soldiers in Vietnam the same way the West has used it against China. Nixon had demonstrated through his actions that he believed the practice of smuggling narcotics was wrong. Apparently this made quite an impression on Chou En-lai.
Seventh point: Many historians have incorrectly labeled Joseph Kennedy Sr as someone who cared only about money. It is certainly true that he acquired a vast fortune, but that alone does not prove that attaining financial success was his primary interest. It is quite obvious that the elder Kennedy believed Zionist expansion was a threat to the United States and he did everything he could to stop it. This would have been an unwise position to take if he only cared about money. Furthermore, he supported British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. And he continued to hold that belief after World War II. I also believe he knowing encouraged his sons to risk their lives in this endeavor. It has been well-documented that he believed President Roosevelt had his eldest son, Joe Jr, killed in a top secret bombing mission in order to prevent him from becoming president. Nevertheless, he still encouraged his younger son, John, to continue the same fight. These were not the actions of a man who was driven purely by money.
Eighth point: Historians should point out that David Ben-Gurion, the so-called "Father of Israel," renounced Zionism before he died. In his later years, Ben-Gurion stated the following: "I’m no longer a Zionist, I’m no longer a Socialist, I don’t belong to Histadrut, I resigned from the Knesset."9 I believe Ben-Gurion was demoralized by President Kennedy’s assassination. He resigned as prime minister on June 16, 1963, six days after Kennedy’s eloquent American University speech which expressed the hope for world peace. It is my suspicion, however, that Nahum Goldmann (president of the World Jewish Congress) issued the order to kill Kennedy immediately after the American University speech. I further suspect that Ben-Gurion was personally moved by Kennedy’s eloquent words and refused to participate in the plot to kill him. That is probably the real reason for his resignation. Ben-Gurion may have had an epiphany of sorts after hearing or reading Kennedy’s speech and was apparently overcome with shame at the thought of plotting to kill such a wise man. Michael Collins Piper suggested in his book, Final Judgment, that Ben-Gurion resigned in order to go underground and set up Kennedy’s assassination. In my view, Piper’s contention that Ben-Gurion was the mastermind is thoroughly refuted by Ben-Gurion’s later rejection of Zionism.
Ninth point: Martin Luther King made a mistake by supporting the Black-Jewish Alliance. This coalition was doomed for a couple of reasons. In the 20th Century, the Ku Klux Klan had more of a vendetta against Jews than blacks. White supremacy had been a big issue for the Klan immediately after the Civil War, but they disbanded in 1869 once their goals were achieved. The Klan was revived again in the early part of the 20th Century primarily to fight Jewish immigration from Czarist Russia. Secondly, Martin Luther King was a Christian and the Talmud is secretly anti-Christian (reference Appendix C).
Fifteen-Year Reign of Terrorist Likud Party
In 1973, Menachem Begin—former terrorist—formed the ultra-right political party by merging his former terrorist organization, Irgun Zvai Leumi, with several other political groups including the Haganah (reference Chapter 8). In 1977, Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel and the Likud Party ruled with an iron fist over Israel for the next fifteen years. During that period, Begin was prime minister for six years and Shamir for seven.(Footnote 71) It was during this period that Israel constantly fought with Lebanon which culminated with the Israeli massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. The Jonathan Pollard spy incident also occurred during that period.
Bush and Clinton Attempted to Make Peace in the Middle East
Presidents George H. W. Bush and William J. Clinton made serious attempts to establish a genuine peace between Israel and the PLO. In October 1991, the Bush Administration initiated the Madrid Conference which was an attempt to enforce UN Resolutions 242 and 338.(Footnote 72) Bush was evidently using his high approval ratings—a direct result of the Persian Gulf War—as leverage to enforce the stated Resolutions. Although Bush was apparently sincere, the chances for an Israeli commitment to peace were slim given that Yitzhak Shamir—harder-liner and former terrorist—was Prime Minister of Israel and head of the ultra-right Likud Party.(Footnote 73) But in June 1992, the Likud Party’s fifteen-year reign ended with the election of Yitzhak Rabin, head of the Labour Party. This was a major shift in Israeli politics. It seemed as though peace might finally prevail between the PLO and Israel.
The negotiations at the Madrid Conference were delayed because of a change in leadership in America. Bush’s popularity plummeted which led to his subsequent defeat in the fall elections of 1992 by Bill Clinton.(Footnote 74) Shortly after Clinton took office in January 1993, Norway intervened as mediator in the peace process. The end result was the Oslo Accords which were announced in the fall. On September 13, 1993 President Clinton hosted a signing ceremony at the White House for the Oslo Accords. The ceremony was attended by all interested parties including Yasser Arafat, until then persona non grata in the United States.10 Per the accords, Israel recognized the PLO and agreed to gradually implement limited self-rule for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.11 The Accords specifically stated that UN Resolutions 242 and 338 would finally be implemented. The future seemed bright, but hopes of peace slowly evaporated as events unfolded.
The driving force behind the Oslo Accords was Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Johan Joergen Holst. The Norwegian statesman initiated eleven secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel from April to August 1993. In fact, he hosted the first several secret meetings at his country home in Smestad, with others at the Borregaard estate mansion east of Oslo and the Oslo Plaza Hotel.12
On January 13, 1994, four months after the signing of the Oslo Accords, Johan Joergen Holst died unexpectedly in Norway of a heart attack at the age of 56.13
On November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, an Israeli of Yemenite origin. (Reference Appendix B for an article—A Mother’s Defense—written by the assassin’s mother, Guela Amir, and published in the March 1997 edition of George Magazine,(Footnote 75) p. 138.)
The Death of Vince Foster
Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. Foster’s body was found in Fort Marcy Park, Fairfax County, Virginia, on July 20, 1993. His death was perhaps one of the most damaging scandals in the administration of President Clinton. Foster died of a gunshot wound, and his death was immediately ruled suicide by the United States Park Police. There is little doubt, however, that Foster was murdered and it is quite obvious that there was a cover-up—two topics I will address shortly. But for now, let us focus on the motive.
Rumors circulated that Foster was spying for Israel, that he was the victim of a Mossad hit squad, the CIA, the Mafia, and so on. No one, however, has connected his death with the Oslo Accords. I believe it is quite possible that Foster attended the secret meetings in Norway, held by the late Johan Joergen Holst, that led to the Oslo Accords. Certainly a representative from the Clinton Administration was present. He was likely working on behalf of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton who later emerged as an advocate for a Palestinian State. I further believe that Foster’s death was probably a signal sent to Hillary by Likud radicals warning her to stay out of Middle Eastern affairs. The message was clear: No Palestinian state. The following facts support this assertion.
First of all, Foster’s death occurred during the time-frame of the secret negotiations. As previously stated, Foster died on July 20, 1993. The secret negotiations between the PLO and Israel occurred from April to August 1993 in Norway.
Secondly, Foster’s death was followed the deaths of Johan Joergen Holst and Yitzak Rabin, both key players in the Oslo Accords. This is highly suspicious. Holst died on January 13, 1994, just six months after Foster. As Rabin began to implement the Oslo Accords, he was shot and killed on November 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, an Israeli of Yemenite origin. His mother, Guela Amir, claims that he was goaded into assassinating Rabin by an agent provocateur working for Israeli Intelligence.
(Reference Appendix B for Guela Amir’s article in George Magazine, March 1997, p. 138.)
Thirdly, Foster and Hillary had a symbiotic relationship. Clinton’s former bodyguard, Arkansas State Trooper Larry Douglass Brown, stated in several interviews that he was aware of a serious and longstanding affair between Foster and Hillary—then partners at the famed Rose law firm—dating back to the mid-1980s. In addition to being one of Clinton’s preferred bodyguards, Brown’s wife-to-be, Becky McCoy, was Chelsea’s nanny.14 According to Brown, Foster and Hillary were clearly in love, but it was an affair of the mind more than anything else. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote in his book, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: "Foster was devoted. He would do anything for her. And she took advantage of that. There was no one else in the world that she could trust more than Vince Foster."15 Roger Morris described the complexities of Foster’s relation with Hillary in his book, Partners in Power:
There would be several sources—including a former US attorney, sometimes aides, a number of lawyers, social friends, and many of the same troopers who testified about the governor’s illicit acts—who described the First Lady’s affair, dating to the mid-1980s, with Rose partner Vince Foster. A relationship evident in the semiprivate kisses and furtive squeezes at parties and dinners described by the security guards, it was also an intimate professional bond between two attorneys who worked together on some of their firm’s most sensitive cases. Along with Webster Hubbell, they staged a veritable coup d’état to wrest control of the Rose firm in 1988. Many thought that the governor was well aware of the affair and ultimately accepted it as one more implicit bargain in their marriage. Clinton continued to treat Vince Foster as the close friend he had been since childhood in Hope, even entrusting him with some of the most crucial secrets of the 1992 campaign. "Bill knew, of course he knew," said a lawyer close to Foster who was familiar with them all. "But what the hell was he supposed to say to anybody about being faithful?" To some, Hillary’s relationship with Vince Foster, a tall, handsome, courtly figure who was widely respected in the Little Rock legal and business community, was an understandable and natural response to her husband’s behavior. Foster was known to treat her with dignity, respect, and abiding love she was missing in her marriage. "He adored her," said a fellow lawyer. Under other circumstances, it might have been one of those relationships that remained private and without any political relevance to the Clinton presidency. What set it apart was that, once in the White House, the Clintons would install the First Lady’s confidant in one of the nation’s most sensitive positions as deputy counsel to the president, where he would handle controversial matters stemming from their Arkansas past as well as highly classified presidential affairs.16 |
Fourthly, Foster kept tabs on President Clinton for Hillary. Ambrose Evans-Prichard wrote that Foster had solicited the services of security executive Jerry Parks, in 1989, to perform discreet surveillance on Clinton—then Governor of Arkansas. When Parks asked why he needed this done, Foster said he needed it for Hillary. She was apparently gauging his vulnerability to charges of philandering if he decided to launch a bid for the presidency.17 Parks was murdered on September 26, 1993—just two months after Foster’s death. A professional assassin shot him several times in Little Rock in front of several astonished witnesses.18 According to his widow, Jane Parks, her husband had carried out sensitive assignments for the Clinton circle for almost a decade, and the person who gave him his instructions was Vince Foster.19
Media Cover Story: Foster Was Depressed
The role of Jewish journalists in covering up important facts about Foster’s death cannot be understated. The following Jewish journalists and authors flooded the printed media with articles supporting the cover story that Foster was depressed, something that is completely unsubstantiated:
- Michael Isikoff – Washington Post reporter who first revealed the existence of a suicide note containing names of psychiatrists; however, the story changed without explanation. Isikoff also wrote that police were turned away from the Foster house, a lie.
- Walter Pincus – Washington Post CIA beat reporter. Pincus acknowledged knowing Foster personally and was the first to write that he had noticed Foster out of sorts emotionally, without actually saying "depressed." This gave the public the clear impression that Foster was depressed.
- Sidney Blumenthal – Wrote a New Yorker article making the case of Foster's depression. The New Yorker was the first national magazine to aggressively claim that Foster suffered from depression. Blumenthal was the first to write that Foster had lost 15 pounds, though he gave no source for that information. In reality, Foster had actually gained weight since arriving in Washington.
- Frank Rich – New York Times columnist who was the first to lay out the psychological theory of excessive perfectionism as cause of suicide.
- David Brock –"Conservative" writer for American Spectator who broke the "troopergate" scandal. Brock later wrote about Foster's "suicide" in his biography about Hillary Clinton.
- Phillip Weiss – Co-wrote an article with Hugh Sprunt for the New York Times Magazine about the "Clinton Haters." Later wrote semi-revealing cover-up articles in the New York Observer.
- Chris Ruddy – Former writer for the New York Post. Although he has never admitted it, Ruddy is almost certainly Jewish. He attended Hebrew University and has been heavily praised by Rabbi Morton Pomerantz. "The Jewish people have survived because we believe in truth and courage and we respect tenacity. David is our hero, not Goliath. [Chris] Ruddy has lived up to that ideal," (Rabbi Morton Pomerantz, from Journalist Who Dealt With Holocaust Survivors Takes on Vincent Foster and Mike Wallace; The Jewish Voice and Opinion, Vol. 9, No. 4, December 1995). Ruddy pretends to be a critic of Clinton White House and the official version of the Foster case, but his criticism is fumbling and half-hearted.20
- Nathan Landow – Foster spent the last weekend of his life meeting with Webb Hubbell and Landow on latter's estate. Landow was Al Gore's leading financial backer when he first ran for president. Landow is a major political contributor and has been linked to both the Gambino family and the Meyer Lansky organization through joint casino investments.
- William Styron – Prominent novelist who wrote a cover article in Newsweek concluding that Foster killed himself from depression. His novel, Sophie's Choice, is about the Holocaust.
- Bernard Nussbaum – Foster's boss as Chief White House Counsel. Claimed to have emptied out briefcase where a subordinate later turned up the torn-up "suicide" note.
- Susan Thomases – New York lawyer and Clinton political adviser who told writer James Stewart that Foster confided to her he was having marital problems.21
Other Mysterious Deaths
Scores of people associated with the Kennedy assassination have died violently. But two in particular stand out because of the victims’ high social status. They were George de Mohrenschildt and William Sullivan. Both were prominent men—the latter had served as deputy director at the FBI—and were scheduled to meet with the House Select Committee on Assassinations when they were killed.
On March 29, 1977, George de Mohrenschildt was found dead of a gunshot blast to the head at his sister-in-law’s fashionable home in Manalapan, Florida. De Mohrenschildt had been Oswald’s handler in Dallas (reference Chapter 6). His death was ruled suicide.22 He died three hours after arranging to meet investigator, Gaeton Fonzi,(Footnote 76) from the House Select Committee on Assassinations.23 Earlier that day, de Mohrenschildt had met with writer Edward Jay Epstein.24
Epstein is a highly suspicious individual. In 1969, he wrote Counterplot which attacked Garrison and his prosecution of Clay Shaw. Epstein wrote another propagandistic book, Legend (1978), which pushed the cover story that the Soviet KGB sponsored the Kennedy assassination, and that Oswald was working for them. In 1966, Epstein wrote Inquest, a mild critique of the Warren Report which was hailed by the media—a telling indictment of his virtue.
On November 9, 1977, William Sullivan—number two man at the FBI when Kennedy was shot and killed with a high-powered rifle near his home in New Hampshire. Sullivan had just completed a preliminary meeting with investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The man who shot him was the son of a state policeman and claimed to have mistaken Sullivan for a deer. He was arrested, charged with a misdemeanor—"shooting a human being by accident"—and released into the custody of his father. No further investigation was ever done.25 In addition, Sullivan was finishing an exposé on Hoover’s FBI, with journalist Bill Brown, when he was killed. Two years later, Brown published Sullivan’s book entitled, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI. It was a major indictment of J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson.
Deaths of Rock Stars
The untimely deaths of rock stars have troubled me for years. The first name that comes to mind is John Lennon who was assassinated by Mark Chapman in front of his home in New York City on December 8, 1980. He was 40. In recent years, his younger son—Sean Lennon—made the following comments about his father’s death:(Footnote 77)
[He] was a counterrevolutionary and was very dangerous to the government. If he had said ‘Bomb the White House tomorrow,’ there would have been 10,000 people who would have done it. The pacifist revolutionaries are historically killed by the government, and anybody who thinks Mark Chapman was just some crazy guy who killed my dad for his own personal interest is insane or very naive. It was in the best interest of the United States to have my dad killed. And you know, that worked against them, because once he died, his power grew. So I mean, fuck them! They didn’t get what they wanted.26 |
In addition to being a counterrevolutionary, John Lennon was certainly not a friend of Jews. Although he had many Jewish business associates, he clearly held certain Jews in low esteem and did not hesitate to express his views publicly. In the latter days of the Beatles, John nearly agreed to allow John Eastman—Paul McCartney’s Jewish brother-in-law and attorney—to manage the quartet.(Footnote 78)But after meeting Eastman, Lennon withdrew his support because of Eastman’s abrasive demeanor. Lennon sarcastically labeled Eastman’s communication skills during their first meeting as an "epileptic fit."27 Lennon made the following remarks about Eastman’s ethnicity in a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone:
They’re fucking bastards, they’re—Eastman’s a WASP Jew, man! And that’s the worst kind of Jew on earth, that’s the worst kind of WASP too—he’s a WASP Jew, can you imagine it!28 |
Ironically, all of Lennon’s managers were Jewish. The Beatles original manager, Brian Epstein, was Jewish. So was Alan Klein who became Epstein’s replacement, much to the chagrin of McCartney and his brother-in-law. Based on his comments about Eastman, it appears that Lennon viewed all Jews with a degree of contempt, but apparently wanted one to handle his business affairs because—as I pointed out in the Introduction—the entertainment industry in America is run almost exclusively by Jews. Lennon apparently understood this.
In addition to Lennon, three prominent rock stars—who were headline acts at the celebrated Woodstock rock festival—died about a year after the legendary event. They were Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Al Wilson. The latter is less known than Hendrix or Joplin, but Wilson was one of the founding members of Canned Heat, one of the hottest blues bands of the era. All three died of heroin overdoses.(Footnote 79)
The Woodstock Festival—August 15–17, 1969—brought about the harmonious gathering of about 400,000 young rock-music devotees and marked what is considered the high point of the American youth counterculture of the 1960s. It was also viewed my many as a powerful political statement against US involvement in the Vietnam War at a time when American forces were at an all-time high: 540,000 soldiers. Jimi Hendrix played a dramatic virtuoso rendition of The Star Spangled Banner on a screeching electric guitar that simulated the sounds of bombs dropping, explosions blasting, and machine guns firing, combined with the melody line of America’s national anthem presented as an avante-garde work of musical art before the huge gathering of spellbound American youths.
Al Wilson, guitarist for Canned Heat, was the first to meet his premature demise. He died on September 3, 1970 at the age of 27. A shroud of mystery surrounds his death. Some suggest it was a heroin overdose, others say suicide. His band, Canned Heat, was reportedly the third highest paid act at Woodstock. In addition, they were one of the few bands at the concert who could draw huge crowds in their own right.29
Jimi Hendrix was the second casualty. On September 18, 1970, just two weeks after Wilson’s death, Hendrix was found dead in London, England from a drug overdose. He was also 27.
Janis Joplin was next. On October 4, 1970, two weeks after Hendrix’s death, Joplin was also found dead from a drug overdose in Los Angeles, California. She too was 27. Like Hendrix, she was an incredibly charismatic, high-energy performer.
Within a year, two other legendary rock stars died: Jim Morrison (July 3, 1971, heart attack,(Footnote 80) age 27), Duane Allman(Footnote 81) (October 29, 1971 motorcycle accident, age 24).
A week before Woodstock began, the "Charles Manson Family" committed the ritualistic murders of actress Sharon Tate and several friends at her home in California on August 9, 1969. The bizarre hippie Family also murdered Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary around the same time. Manson had the look of a charismatic rock star(Footnote 82)—shoulder-length hair, beard and mustache, and a sullen stare—and his followers were mostly young "hippie" women in their late teens or early twenties. By appearances, they would have fit in perfectly with the young female groupies at Woodstock.
Manson—who was in his mid-thirties in 1969—used LSD as a form of mind-control over his followers, although he rarely used it himself. This technique has been well-documented as a procedure used by the CIA in various mind-control experiments. In addition, state prosecutors built a case against Manson claiming that he was inspired by the lyrics from the Beatles White Album. Vincent Bugliosi, the LA District Attorney who prosecuted Manson, wrote a book, Helter Skelter, named after one of the Beatle songs that allegedly caused the Manson Family to commit mass-murder.
On December 6, 1969, just four months after Woodstock, the Rolling Stones gave a nightmarish concert at the Altamont Motor Speedway outside of San Francisco. The Stones were the headliners and someone convinced them that using Hell's Angels as security would be useful. While performing Sympathy for the Devil several of the Angels murdered a concert-goer—all in view of the performers. Three other people were murdered by the Angels. Other bands at the concert included the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane,(Footnote 83) and Ike and Tina Turner. In 1970, Albert and David Maysles released a film documentary of the tragic event entitled Gimme Shelter.
The impact of these events on rock music was devastating. The Manson Family’s ritualistic murders tainted the carefree image of flower children. In addition, District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi attempted to tarnish the music of the Beatles by building his entire case against Manson on Helter Skelter, a Beatle song from their White Album. The violent murders of four people at the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont created the illusion that only thugs attended rock concerts. The deaths of five major rock stars—mostly from drug overdoses—within 14 months of Woodstock dramatically slowed the momentum of the rock music phenomenon as a vehicle for artistic and political expression. It also fed the stereotype that all rock musicians were drug addicts. These events had a chilling effect that seriously weakened the youth counterculture movement which expressed itself through rock music. It has never recovered.
As previously stated, the Woodstock rock festival was not merely a large musical gathering. It was also 400,000 young Americans thumbing their noses at Uncle Sam and his war in Vietnam. Woodstock occurred just seven months after Lyndon Johnson abdicated his leadership, thereby leaving 540,000 American soldiers—mostly draftees—in Southeast Asia. Anyone who thinks that Uncle Sam was not intimidated by the solidarity demonstrated by America’s youth at Woodstock—well, to quote Sean Lennon, they’re either "insane or very naïve."
Ironically, America’s youth tended to associate President Nixon with the problems in Vietnam. But as I pointed out in Chapter 12, his view of the war was apparently no different from theirs.
Waco
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the mission of US intelligence agencies shifted from fighting the spread of communism to fighting terrorism. Ironically the war on terrorism began a few years after the FBI’s brutal attack on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993, in which approximately eighty civilians were killed. Independent investigator Carol Valentine has brought to public attention several aspects about the incident that are deeply disturbing—human carnage notwithstanding.
First of all, the Amerian public does not realize that Davidian leader David Koresh taught that Israel was not necessary to fulfil the prophecies. Koresh’s religious teachings were an amalgam of Islam and Christianity. In fact, Koresh was the family name of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. As Koresh’s popularity grew, he became a target of the US government because of his religious teachings. As I pointed out before, America has been under siege by Zionist forces throughout most of the Twentieth Century. For all intents and purposes the US government was overthrown with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 who was replaced by mega-Zionist Lyndon Johnson. Consequently, people like Koresh became enemies of the state. His teachings of Islam and Christianity as a unified religion—one that had no use for Israel—was viewed as a threat by influential elements within the US government. To contain the situation, the Branch Davidians’ compound—Mount Carmel, near Waco, Texas—was placed under aerial surveillance several years prior to the 1993 assault by the BATF.30
Secondly, the American public was led to believe that the BATF botched the initial raid, on February 28, 1993, which led to the FBI assault on April 19, 1993. The facts, however, indicate that Koresh and his followers had been targeted long before. In addition, the government’s initial explanation of the two assaults did not make sense. The American public was told repeatedly by spokespeople for the BATF that the February 28th raid was launched because the government feared the Davidian "cult" was on the verge of committing mass suicide similar to the mass suicide of "cult group leader" Jim Jones and his followers years earlier in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978. Nearly a thousand people died at Jonestown. After the FBI’s April 19th assault on Mount Carmel, Attorney General Janet Reno told a completely different story, claiming she had no idea the Davidians were suicidal. This shift in rationale clearly did not pass the smell test.31
Thirdly, the government’s position was that the Branch Davidians committed mass suicide. Later, the crime was blamed on a few Davidians who set Mount Carmel on fire, thereby murdering their friends—men, women, and children—for no apparent reason. There is, however, strong evidence that Koresh’s successor, Clive Doyle, may have been a government provocateur who set the fire. Senator John Danforth issued a report on the Waco incident which revealed that Doyle told Texas Rangers that the Davidians had started the fire. The report also stated that Doyle’s jacket contained flammable liquids on both sleeves, and his hands were burned in a manner consistent with a flashback from a liquid fire. Clive Doyle has never been charged with murder.
And lastly, Waco was a military operation, not a police action. And it was headed by General Wayne Downing, the same general who now heads the war on terrorism in the Middle East. General Downing is a former commander of the Special Operations Command, which was made a separate command within the US military prior to the 1993 assaults on Mount Carmel by the BATF and FBI..32
The Oklahoma City Bombing
On April 19, 1995, the world was stunned by the "terrorist" bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Timothy McVeigh was tried, found guilty, and subsequently executed for the crime. Ironically the late prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, did essentially the same thing when his terrorist group, Irgun Zvai Leumi, blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946, killing 91 soldiers and civilians. It is interesting that in one country, the so-called terrorist was sentenced to death, while in another country, the person responsible became prime minister.
Seismograms Offered Insight Into Oklahoma City Bombing
Two seismographs near the Murrah building(Footnote 85) each recorded two low-frequency wave trains indicating the possibility of two separate explosions. The Oklahoma Geological Survey noted in an April 26, 1995 press release that "the location and source of the second surface wave recording was unknown. Detailed investigation at the building site may offer an explanation of the cause and origin of the second event."
This advice was never heeded. In fact, the opposite was done. On May 23, 1995, the Murrah Building was demolished with explosives, thereby destroying any traces of evidence pointing to a second bomb. On October 8, 1996, the American Geophysical Union published an article about the seismograms in their scientific journal, Eos. The article, entitled Seismograms Offer Insight Into Oklahoma City Bombing, refuted the possibility of a second explosion. It was the equivalent of the Warren Report. One report claimed that a lone gunman killed a president, even though persuasive evidence indicated the opposite. The other report claimed that a lone bomber killed 168 people, even though two seismograms indicated otherwise. Equally interesting, the group of scientists who wrote the Eos article had names that appeared to be quite Jewish. The main author was Thomas L. Holzer, assisted by Trond Ryberg, Gary S. Fuis, Christopher M. Dietel, Thomas M. Brocher, and Joe B. Fletcher. They reached the following conclusion in their article: "We conclude that the two wave trains recorded during the bombing are consistent with a single impulsive source." That conclusion is suspiciously similar to the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald alone killed President Kennedy.
Even more troubling, Jewish Senator Arlen Specter chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee when the Murrah Building was bombed. This takes us full circle back to the Kennedy assassination when, as a young lawyer serving as legal counsel to the Warren Commission, the same Arlen Specter wrote the "Single Bullet Theory." The essence of the Single Bullet Theory is that one bullet hit President Kennedy in the neck and caused five wounds to John Connally, something that is absolutely untrue. As I stated earlier, the Zapruder film clearly shows a four second delay from the time Kennedy grabbed his neck until Connally reacted to being shot. Arlen Specter’s Single Bullet Theory was the primary lie that supported the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone. Years later, this known conspirator in President Kennedy’s assassination, Arlen Specter, headed Senatorial oversight of the intelligence community when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred.
September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack on America
Independent investigator Carol Valentine(Footnote 86) has written several persuasive articles concluding that the suicide plane crashes on September 11, 2001 were sponsored by Israel with assistance from the US military. Her premise—as I interpret it—is based on two key points. First of all, the airspace over New York City and Washington, DC was intentionally left unprotected by the military agency tasked to protect it. That group is the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Secondly, the suicide jets were controlled by "advanced robotics and remote-control technology, not hijackers." NORAD has had this capability since 1959.
Valentine wrote in great detail how NORAD has the capability to track planes in distress and take appropriate actions to defend US airspace from foreign aircraft or from aircraft within the US.(Footnote 87) In fact, NORAD had at its disposal a number of US Air Force General Dynamics F-106 Delta Dart fighter aircraft configured to be remotely flown into combat as early as 1959 under the auspices of a program known as SAGE.
Another example of remote control technology is a jet, made by Northrop Grumman, called the Global Hawk. This jet has a wingspan of a Boeing 737 and has flown unmanned across the Pacific Ocean.33Valentine further observed that President Bush and Robert Ayling—a former official with British Airways—both claimed that such a technology was a thing of the future. The two men made carefully prepared public statements which envisioned remote-control capabilities as a lofty goal to be achieved in years to come. In fact, President Bush was quoted in the New York Times offering to give grants to airlines to pay for "new technology, probably far in the future, allowing air traffic controllers to land distressed planes by remote control."34 Both men were obviously deceiving the public.
Valentine compared NORAD’s lack of reaction on September 11th to its rapid response to the LearJet carrying golfer Payne Stewart and several companions on October 25, 1999. With Stewart’s ill-fated flight—which was en route from Orlando to Dallas, NORAD’s reaction was fast. One or more US Air Force fighter jets were launched to control the situation shortly after air traffic controllers knew something was wrong. On September 11th, NORAD apparently did nothing because no jets were launched—at least no evidence has been presented indicating that NORAD jets were launched. Based on prior emergencies, there was more than enough time for NORAD to send jets to control the situation.
But how could Israel coerce the US military into committing such an act of treason? One word: OPIUM! History repeats itself. This is what was done when President Kennedy was assassinated. In exchange for helping the Jews kill Kennedy, the military and organized crime were given a war in Southeast Asia in an area where growing opium poppies was big business. Afghanistan and Pakistan are two major producers of opium today. A pact was apparently made between Israeli planners, US generals, and elements of organized crime stipulating that America would wage a war against Afghanistan in retaliation for the self-inflicted September 11th attacks. Osama bin Laden would be blamed, his Al-Queda group would be labeled terrorists, and America would wage war against Afghanistan for harboring these terrorists.(Footnote 88) US forces would drive out the Taliban, who successfully banned the growing of opium poppies in Afghanistan,35 and replace them with the Northern Alliance who would legalize opium production.36 Windfall profits would be shared by the participants from the illicit sale of opium and its derivative narcotics (cocaine, heroin, etc.). The wealthy interests of the Western nations would also share in the illicit drug money as they have done for over a century. It’s the same technique used in the Kennedy assassination.
Everyone would benefit except the American people and the victims and their families. Israel would use the "terrorist" attacks as a pretext to intensify the war against Palestinians. Clearly a cover story was written and distributed to the Western news media prior to the attack.(Footnote 89) To achieve such a vast conspiracy, the plan must have been announced by the president of the World Jewish Congress. That individual is presently Edgar Bronfman, son of the late Sam Bronfman (reference Chapter 8). The junior Bronfman followed the path of Joseph Caiaphas, high priest of the Sanhedrin who sanctioned the plot to kill Jesus. Bronfman also followed the path of Nahum Goldmann, who apparently sanctioned the plot to kill President Kennedy.
Osama bin Laden was made the patsy like Lee Harvey Oswald was years earlier in the Kennedy assassination. The US government provided a video of bin Laden taking credit for the attacks in a secret meetings. While that may seem authentic, we should remember that the US government produced phony pictures of Oswald holding the alleged murder weapon (Mannlicher-Carcano rifle) in the backyard of his Dallas apartment in 1963 (Chapter 6). We also know that the CIA provided the Warren Commission with a fake photograph of Oswald at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. The photograph supported the false claim that Oswald had applied for a visa to Cuba. The Warren Commission used the alleged trip to Mexico City as further proof that Oswald was a communist (Chapter 6). This is the same old story, but most of the actors changed.
If I Were a Jew
Over the past three years I have studied Judaism as a political force and Jewish law as described in the Talmud (Chapter 13). Based on my research, I have developed a degree of mistrust and apprehension toward people of that ethnicity. But recently I asked myself, what would I be like if I had been born a Jew? Would I feel superior to Gentiles because of my Jewishness? Upon reflection, I thought of the words of President Kennedy when he spoke at American University on June 10, 1963:
So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. |
President Kennedy was right. We should be hopeful, but not naïve. We should never be blind to the differences among peoples and their diverse cultures. There are so many differences between Jews and Gentiles (Chapter 13). But we should always remember that we are all mortal. Gentiles and Jews should interact on a personal level. Both should enlighten the other about their cultures. It is fair for Jews to enlighten Gentiles on the negative historical and religious points of their respective non-Jewish religions. But equally, Gentiles should have the right to criticize Judaism and to encourage Jews to challenge Jewish authority as Christ did so many years ago when he blasted the Jewish Pharisees for their evil practices. Here are a few examples of Jesus’s words from the book of Matthew, Chapter 23 (revised standard version):
27 - Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 - So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. 31 - … You are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. 33 - You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? |
I don’t believe Christ meant that all Jews will burn in Hell. He was speaking specifically of those who implemented Jewish law as practiced by the Pharisees. As a Jew, Christ was quite familiar with Jewish law and believed it was evil. The Pharisees believed in oral interpretation of the teachings of Moses. More specifically, they believed they were a master race and consequently interpreted the Ten Commandments in a way that made them apply to Gentiles only, but not to Jews. It could be argued that this is the essence of Jewish law. According the Pharisees, it was acceptable for Jews to lie, cheat, steal, even murder, so long as the victims were Gentiles. The practices of the Pharisees in Jesus’s time were the beginnings of what later became written Jewish law known as the Talmud.
One of the most unethical practices in the Talmud is called the Kol Nidre which frees Jews from fulfilling their vows throughout the year because apparently taking vows is a sin for Jews. The text below is directly from the Talmud. It provides insight as to why Christ was so angry with the Jewish Pharisees. Read on and become enlightened.
"And he who desires that none of his vows made during the year shall be valid, let him stand at the beginning of the year and declare, 'Every vow which I may make in the future shall be null.' HIS VOWS ARE THEN INVALID, PROVIDING THAT HE REMEMBERS THIS AT THE TIME OF THE VOW." (Caps in original.) |
The American Heritage dictionary defines Kol Nidre as "The opening prayer recited on the eve of Yom Kippur. …" It means "all the vows." The Kol Nidre is sung to an ancient melody. This song is sung by Jews in synagogues across the world on the eve of Yom Kippur, a major Jewish holiday. In other words, all practicing Jews know of the Kol Nidre.
(Nedarim, 23a)
For more information on this topic, I invite all inquisitive people to do a search on Kol Nidre on google.com (a search engine used by many journalists).
I looked up Kol Nidre in the Encyclopedia Britannica and it provided some extremely interesting information:
….According to some historians, forced Jewish converts to Christianity in 7th-century Spain recited the Kol Nidre to annul oaths forcibly extracted from them by their persecutors. All that is known with certainty, however, is that the prayer was used as early as the 8th century. Rabid anti-Semites in the European Middle Ages, brushing aside the repeated Jewish assertion that the absolution referred only to matters between God and man, used the prayer as a pretext to question the trustworthiness of all oaths taken by Jews in Christian courts. Fears of misunderstanding led to the elimination of the Kol Nidre from the Reform Jewish liturgy in the 19th century, but revised form was reintroduced in 1945. |
One has to ask, Why was the Kol Nidre reintroduced into Reform Jewish liturgy in 1945 after being eliminated in the previous century? 1945 marked the end of World War II and the end of the Holocaust. Could it be that Jewish historians have written a pack of lies about the Holocaust, a pack of lies sanctified and encouraged by Jewish law, specifically the Kol Nidre? Could it be that Hitler’s war crimes against Jews were greatly exaggerated by Zionist Jews in an effort to get Jews to migrate to Israel, which was established in 1948 (just three years after the Kol Nidre was reintroduced)? Could it be that six million Jews did not die in the Holocaust and that gas chambers were not used? Could it be that between 500,000 and a million Jews died from disease and starvation in Nazi prison camps, not by Nazi extermination in gas chambers?
Most of what we have been taught about the Holocaust appears to be directly linked to Jewish law and the practice of evil, not by Hitler alone, but by organized Jewry itself. But just because Jewish law is evil, does that mean that all Jews are evil? In my opinion, No. But I also believe that any devout Jew should not be trusted because Jewish law teaches devout Jews that they are superior to Gentiles, that Jews are a master race. In fact, everything that Jewish historians have told us about Hitler and the Nazis is also a description of devout Jews who practice Jewish law. Completely intolerant, superior, a master race. But still, is it reasonable to assume that someone is automatically evil just because he/she was born into an ethnic group that encourages the practice of evil? I don’t think so.
Some argue that basic religious teachings are the building blocks of an individual’s value system of an individual’s personal sense of ethics. I agree that religion plays a role, but not necessarily a complete role. The United States is a secular society and its people are influenced by many things above and beyond religion. One of the most positive secular influences in the U.S. is its Constitution. If someone was born a Jew, had minimal training in Jewish law, but had a strong and sincere belief in the principles of the U.S. Constitution, then that person would probably be a decent human being, in my opinion. And lots of Jews admire Martin Luther King, Jr., President Kennedy, his brother Bobby, John Lennon, Mohandas Gandhi. The list goes on. These are all positive role models admired by people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds. Such powerful role models force us all to develop our own sense of ethics that transcend our collective religious heritage.
After all, we cannot choose our parents, our race, our ethnic heritage or the religion we were born into. These things are all forced upon us. But God gave us minds to recognize the difference between good and evil. YES, Jewish law is evil. Christ recognized it, and was likely crucified for stating it so plainly and so openly.
It is up to us—Jews and Gentiles—to use our minds to overcome the backward teachings of any ethnic groups or religions.
If I were a Jew, what would I be like? I think I would be the same. I would search for the truth. I would be proud of the positive aspects of my heritage, and truthful about the negative ones. Like Jesus, I would probably criticize Jewish law, and would likely become the enemy of many powerful forces. Like Yitzhak Rabin, I would be willing to give my life for the cause of peace between Arabs and Jews.
If I were a Jew, I would call upon the US Government to crack down on those who practice Talmudic law (Chapter 13), recognizing that it is no different from Nazi law or Ku Klux Klan law. Talmudic law encourages hatred against non-Jews, racial superiority and ethnic purity. If I were a Jew, I would call upon the U.S. Justice Department to break up the Jewish monopoly of the electronic news media, the printed news media, the Hollywood movie industry, the musical recording industry and CD distributors, the major book publishers and distributors, and the banking industry. I would recognize that those Jewish forces who control those interests are malevolent forces. I would recognize that these Jewish forces are well versed in Talmudic law. I would recognize that those Jewish forces believe it is acceptable to lie to Gentiles, cheat Gentiles, steal from Gentiles and even murder Gentiles. I would recognize that those forces are like "serpents," and "brood of vipers," unable "to escape being sentenced to hell!"
If I were a Jew, I would believe in the US Constitution and in the separation of church of state. As a result, I would not support the Jewish State of Israel, for it does not adhere to that principle. And I would petition the United States government to declare Israel an enemy nation rather than subsidizing it. I would further encourage the United States government to arrest anyone who openly supports an enemy nation and try that person for treason. This would include journalists, bankers, politicians, lobbyists, media moguls, and Hollywood movie producers. The First Amendment could no longer be used as a shield for those who do the bidding of Israel. And speaking of shields, if I were a Jew, I would not use the Holocaust—fact or fiction—as a shield against public criticism toward powerful Jewish interests or the Jewish State of Israel. If I were a Jew, I would visit ghettos of the inner cities and assist poor black youths break the cycle of poverty, ignorance, drugs and crime. I would also visit American Indian tribes for the same reason. But I would not stop there. If I were a Jew, I would visit the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, Nagasoki, and the German city of Dresden. In so doing, I would naturally be reminded that "victims" come in all ethnicities. And suffering is not measured solely by a body count.
If I were a Jew, I would encourage public debate of all topics, especially dialogue among diverse cultures. I would remember the words of President Kennedy: "We are all mortal."
Above all, I would remind myself that I am an individual. And it is up to individuals to make the world a better place to live. I would also recall something else President Kennedy said in his inaugural address: "Here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own."
May God smile upon all enlightened people, Jews and Gentiles alike.
Reasons to be Hopeful
Although I am obviously quite skeptical of today’s world leaders, I am also hopeful of the future. One reason I am interested in the assassination of President Kennedy is because I truly believe his was a message of hope for mankind. Killing him only silenced the messenger, not the message itself. Although there is much evil in the world, I also believe there are many positive aspects to the modern age in which we live.
Unlike any other period of history, mankind today is unable to wage total war because of the advent of atomic and nuclear weapons. The only alternative is peace. In a sense, God has given us a great gift. In the nuclear age, He has given us two choices: total peace or total annihilation. Although Israel and other Zionist forces possess unconscionable international power and influence through their control of information flow and monetary systems, I do not believe such a tyranny will last forever. September 11, 2001 only reinforces my belief that they are quickly losing power. It was an act of desperation.
Unlike any other period of history, mankind today can communicate instantaneously across the globe via the Internet. Unlike any other period of history, mankind today can travel to all corners of the globe in a matter of hours. Unlike any other period of history, mankind today is merging the economies of the world.
President Kennedy was equally hopeful for the future. The following text is the last three paragraphs from a speech he intended to deliver on November 22, 1963 at a luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. Unfortunately, he never got the opportunity to make that speech. His eloquent words become even more poignant when you recall that Joseph Milteer told an informant, prior to the assassination, that he believed Kennedy knew he was a marked man (Chapter 7):
| … My dear friends and fellow citizens, I cite these facts and figures to make it clear that America today is stronger than ever before. Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions. Our dangers have not diminished. Our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom. That strength will never be used in pursuit of aggressive ambitions. It will always be used in pursuit of peace. It will never be used to promote provocations. It will always be used to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes. We in this country, in this generation are by destiny rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask therefore that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time, and for all time, the ancient vision of "Peace on earth, good will toward men." That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago, "Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." [Psalms 127:1]37 |
Perhaps the world might fulfill the prophesy of President Kennedy’s final speech. At his funeral, Jacqueline Kennedy reportedly gave a brief but insightful message to Soviet Diplomat Anastas Mikoyan who was sent by Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Mikoyan later recalled that Mrs. Kennedy said the following words as she greeted him at the reception line: "My husband is dead. Now peace is up to you."38
Indeed, peace is up to all of us.
Endnotes
- William Sullivan & Bill Brown, The Bureau, p. 48
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Vietnam War
- Alfred McCoy et al, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, p. 1. McCoy cited the following sources: US Treasury Department, Bureau of Narcotics, Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs for the Year Ending December 31, 1965 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1966), p. 45; statement from John E. Ingersoll, Director, Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, before the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, New York City, February 24, 1972, p. 5. McCoy’s statement that Army medical doctors believed 10 to 15 percent of GIs were heroin addicts came from The New York Times, May 16, 1971, p. 1.
- Evert Clark & Nicholas Horrock, Contrabandista!, pp. 181 - 182
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Six Day War
- George Ball, The Passionate Attachment, p. 58
- ibid, p. 179
- George Ball, The Passionate Attachment, p. 256
- Ben-Gurion’s statements are from Herzl, Hess, and Histadrut, by Nahum Guttman, p. 18.
- Michael Fischbach, The Oslo Accords, http://www.palestinecenter.org/palestine/osloaccords.html
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Yitzhak Rabin
- Information about Johan Joergen Holst and the secret negotiations was obtained from the Carter Center website. Reference an article entitled A SPECIAL PRIZE of THE CARTER-MENIL HUMAN RIGHTS FOUNDATION: Honoring the People of Norway for Their Contribution to Peace, May 18, 1994, Oslo, Norway, (http://www.cartercenter.org/CCNEWS/CCN-S94/menilnwy.html). Other sources were: Norwaves Volume 1, Number 27, September 7, 1993 [archive, produced by NORINFORM, Norwegian Information Service, P.O. Box 241 Sentrum, N-0103 Oslo, Norway Tel (47) 22 11 46 85, Fax (47) 22 42 48 87 Editors: Ragnvald Berggrav, Helge Loland, http://www.norwaves.com/norwaves/Volume1_1993/v1nw27.html]
- Reuters, Oslo peace brokers urge Israel to make concessions, March 5, 1998; death date and age from Daily Almanacs, Jan. 13, 1994 (http://www.dailyalmanacs.com/almanac2/january/0113.html)
- Roger Morris, Partners in Power, p. 404. Morris cited the following sources for L. D. Brown’s account: deposition of L. D. Brown in Reed v. Young, July 25, 1995; plaintiff’s response to defendant’sMotion in Limine, December 14, 1995; Nation, September 25, 1995; American Spectator, August 1995; and confidential interviews.
- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, p. 333. Evans-Pritchard cited an interview with L. D. Brown, December 1985, as the source for his description of Hillary’s relationship with Foster.
- Roger Morris, Partners in Power, p. 444. Morris cited the following sources for his description of the relationships President and First Lady Clinton had with Vince Foster: American Spectator, January 1994, and April-May 1994; American Lawyer, July-August 1992; Sunday Telegraph (London), February 6, 1994; Washington Post National Weekly Edition, August 23-29, 1993; New Yorker, August 9, 1993; Esquire, November 1993; National Enquirer, August 10, 1993; Village Voice, August 3, 1993; Economist, February 12, 1994; Hope Star (Arkansas), July 20, 1993; In These Times, September 6, 1993; New York Times, August 13, 1993; US News and World Report, August 23, 1993; and confidential interviews.
- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, p. 246. Evans-Prichard interviewed Jane Parks, widow of Jerry Parks, in April 1994. In the interview she revealed that Foster had asked her late husband to keep tabs on Governor Clinton at Hillary’s behest.
- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton, p. 233. Evans-Pritchard cited the police report, family interviews, and witness observations as his source for details of the shooting.
- Ibid. p. 245. Evans-Prichard interviewed Jane Parks in April 1994.
- The list of journalists came from David Martin’s paper, America’s Dreyfus Affair: The Case of the Death of Vince Foster. (http://www.thebird.org/host/dcdave/) The journalists wrote erroneous stories indicating that Foster was depressed when there was no evidence offered to substantiate the charge.
- ibid
- Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p. 287; Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, p. 64. Marrs supplied the date of de Mohrenschildt’s death, that he was killed by a shotgun blast to the head, and that it occurred at his sister-in-law’s home in Manalapan, Florida. Garrison wrote that his death was ruled suicide.
- Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p. 523
- Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p. 287; Michael Collins Piper, Final Judgment, p. 121
- Jim Marrs, Crossfire, p. 564
- Geoffrey Giuliano, Lennon in America, p. 222
- 1970 Rolling Stone interviews conducted and transcribed by Jann Wenner, Lennon Rembers, p. 123
- ibid, p. 125
- Canned Heat biography on Ruf Records website. (http://www.rufrecords.de/bios/canned.html)
- Carol Valentine, David Koresh and the Cuckoo’s Egg, April 19, 2001, http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/burial/page/b_kce.html
- Carol Valentine, Waco Holocaust Electronic Museum: War
- Carol Valentine, Waco Paradigm and the Church of the Nativity, April 2002, http://www.public-action.com/zoa/downing.html
- "Robot plane flies Pacific unmanned" (article), International Television News, April 24, 2001
- "Bush to Increase Federal Role in Security at Airports," New York Times, September 28, 2001
- Tim Golden, "Taliban opium-growing ban may be unraveling," New York Times, October 22, 2001
- Barry Meier, "Most Afghan Opium Grown in Rebel-Controlled Areas," New York Times, October 5, 2001
- President Kennedy’s final speech which he never delivered, transcribed from As it Happened, NBC-TV coverage of JFK assassination. The words were read by NBC anchorman Bill Ryan, on live television, on November 22, 1963.
- Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years, pp. 681 - 682
APPENDIX A
JFK’s Letter to Eshkol About Dimona
| Dear Mr. Prime Minister [Eshkol]: It gives me great personal pleasure to extend congratulations as you assume your responsibilities as Prime Minister of Israel. You have our friendship and best wishes in your new tasks. It is on one of these that I am writing you at this time. You are aware, I am sure, of the exchange which I had with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion concerning American visits to Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona. Most recently, the Prime Minister wrote to me on May 27. His words reflected a most intense personal consideration of a problem that I know is not easy for your Government, as it is not for mine. We welcomed the former Prime Minister’s strong reaffirmation that Dimona will be devoted exclusively to peaceful purposes and the reaffirmation also of Israel’s willingness to permit periodic visits to Dimona. I regret having to add to your burdens so soon after your assumption of office, but I feel the crucial importance of this problem necessitates my taking up with you at this early date certain further considerations, arising out of Mr. Ben-Gurion’s May 27 letter, as to the nature and scheduling of such visits. I am sure you will agree that these visits should be as nearly as possible in accord with international standards, thereby resolving all doubts as to the peaceful intent of the Dimona project. As I wrote Mr. Ben-Gurion, this Government’s commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized if it should be thought that we were unable to obtain reliable information on a subject as vital to the peace as the question of Israel’s effort in the nuclear field. Therefore, I asked our scientists to review the alternative schedules of visits we and you had proposed. If Israel’s purposes are to be clear beyond reasonable doubt, I believe that the schedule which would best serve our common purposes would be a visit early this summer, another visit in June 1964, and thereafter at intervals of six months. I am sure that such a schedule should not cause you any more difficulty than that which Mr. Ben-Gurion proposed in his May 27 letter. It would be essential, and I understand that Mr. Ben-Gurion’s letter was in accord with this, that our scientist have access to all areas of the Dimona site and to any related part of the complex, such as fuel fabrication facilities or plutonium separation plant, and that sufficient time to be allotted for a thorough examination. Knowing that you fully appreciate the truly vital significance of this matter to the future well-being of Israel, to the United States, and internationally, I am sure our carefully considered request will have your most sympathetic attention. Sincerely, John F. Kennedy |
George Magazine Article
In March 1997, President Kennedy’s son, John, Jr., ran a controversial article in his magazine, George. The article was written by Guela Amir, mother of Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. In the article, Ms. Amir made it quite clear that her son did not act alone in assassinating Rabin. She provided compelling evidence that Rabin’s assassination was sponsored by the Israeli government, and that her son, Yigal Amir, had been goaded into shooting Rabin by an agent provocateur working for Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of the FBI and Secret Service combined into one agency. The following is Guela Amir’s article in its entirety:
"A Mother’s Defense" by Guela Amir
(by Guela Amir, published in George Magazine, March 1997 edition, p. 138)
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin looked exhilarated as he made his way down the podium stairs that chilly autumn night. The pro-peace rally that Rabin had just addressed was an unqualified success. Some 100,000 supporters attended, and public attention was briefly deflected from the mounting criticism of his administration.
Rabin's carefree, buoyant demeanor that night seemed to put his bodyguards at ease, and the half dozen or so agents who accompanied him to his limousine in the parking lot behind the stage encircled him only loosely. None of the Shin Bet (General Security Service) agents in the entourage seemed to notice the slight young man leaning casually against one of the government cars.
As Rabin walked past, the young man drew a pistol, slipped into the crowd of towering security agents, and fired three rounds at the prime minister. Two of them hit Rabin's exposed back, and one shot wounded his bodyguard. As the shots rang out, someone at the scene shouted, "Blanks! Blanks!" as if to reassure the others that the bullets were not real. But the shots were not blanks. Rabin, mortally wounded, was rushed to nearby Ichilov Hospital. Curiously, as Leah Rabin was whisked away by car to Shin Bet headquarters, one of the agents assured the prime minister's wife that the gunman had actually used "a toy gun" and that her husband was fine. The reality was that Rabin lay dying in an emergency room.
The gunman was my son Yigal. The shooting seemed to be an open-and-shut case of assassination. An amateur videotape of the event clearly showed Yigal walking up to the prime minister and shooting him. So how could anyone at the scene have thought that Yigal was shooting blanks? Why was another guard so certain that the gun wasn't real? And how is it that minutes after the shooting, even before the details of the incident were broadcast, Israeli TV received a phone call from a man who claimed to represent a right-wing Jewish organization. He confidently declared, "This time we missed. Next time we won't." Other journalists simultaneously received messages on their pagers with the same statement.
Throughout the tense and painful period since the assassination, the answers to these troubling questions have begun to emerge, and they depict what I believe is an unsavory intrigue at the highest levels of government. This is the story of my search for the truth about the Rabin assassination.
I was visiting a friend's home when the first news bulletin about the assassination was broadcast. The report said that a law student "of Yemenite origin" from Bar-Ilan University had shot the prime minister during a peace rally in Tel Aviv. I had heard about the rally but had no reason to think that my son Yigal would be there. Nervously, I ran to my car and drove the short distance home to Herzliyya, a northern suburb of Tel Aviv, my hands shaking with fear all the way. When I pulled up in front of our house I could hear my husband, Shlomo, shouting. He is a religious scribe with a particularly gentle personality. In our more than 30 years of marriage, I have almost never heard him raise his voice. If he was shouting, something was terribly wrong.
My husband grabbed my hand and we stood together, eyes fixed stonily on the television. Within minutes, our other seven children joined us. Relatives and neighbors streamed into our home. Somebody insisted that it couldn't be Yigal, that "Gali" (his nickname) was visiting a friend. But then a broadcast showed a clear image of my son in the custody of the police. There was no mistake: That was my Yigal. As we sat, dazed, in front of the television, a swarm of Shin Bet agents burst into the living room, charged upstairs to Yigal's room, and took it apart from floor to ceiling.
In the streets outside, hundreds of neighbors gathered at the edge of our yard. Reporters and television crews soon joined them. My youngest children were crying uncontrollably. The phone rang off the hook that night, and it has not stopped since.
Daybreak brought the peculiar combination of unreality and routine that is painfully familiar to anyone who has experienced a family tragedy. For years I have managed a nursery school in our home for neighborhood children. Forty preschoolers had enrolled that autumn. At 8 A.M. parents began to arrive with their toddlers; all but a few came that day.
Later, the Shin Bet returned to raid the house. Concealed in the rafters, in a backyard shed, and in an underground cache they found weapons and ammunition. The agents seemed to revel in our shock at each new discovery. At one point I asked one of them why he was spending so much time examining several bars of soap found in the house. He showed me the explosives that were hidden inside. And then they arrested my firstborn son, Hagai, on suspicion of being an accomplice in the assassination of Rabin. Several of Yigal's and Hagai's friends and schoolmates were also hauled in for questioning.
I had lived through four wars and the terrifying Iraqi Scud missiles that struck Israel—just miles from our home—during the Persian Gulf War. But the fear I now felt was something entirely different. In wartime we had been part of a brave and unified community; now I felt that it was my family's own battle—that our family stood alone. Politicians and newspaper columnists branded us a family of "religious fanatics" and "extremists," never pausing to distinguish between us and Yigal. Leading the attacks against us was Rabin's former chief of staff Eitan Haber, who showed up at one of the early court hearings for Yigal and announced that he wouldn't leave the "Amir family in peace until the end of [his] days." Haber's pledge helped inspire a new round of telephone harassment against us, and our home was attacked by vandals.
When the news leaked out that my oldest daughter, Vardit, would soon be married, Haber was on her trail. Needless to say, we were in no mood for celebrations, but according to Jewish religious tradition, once a wedding date has been set it cannot be postponed; Vardit's wedding date had been decided on six months earlier. Haber called for protesters to show up by the thousands.
To our amazement, Haber's plan backfired. There was a spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for our family. Gifts began to arrive from anonymous well-wishers. People we did not know called to offer us help. A stranger lent the young couple a new car for their honeymoon. Nearly every one of our invited guests showed up.
In Jewish tradition the righteous are rewarded with a place in the world to come, and those who are sinful are punished until their souls have been cleansed. When I was a little girl, my grandfather, a revered rabbinical sage, would tell me stories about rare individuals whose sins were so grievous that they could not even enter purgatory. Such a soul, termed a dybbuk in Hebrew, is sent back to the earthly realm to repair the spiritual damage it has wreaked. The dybbuk's only hope is to infiltrate and possess the body of a living person and cling tightly to this purer soul in the hope of securing enough credit, through that person's meritorious deeds, to be forgiven for his own misdeeds. In the spring of 1992, a baneful dybbuk took possession of Israel's radical right-wing political movements and almost succeeded in driving them to ruin. This dybbuk's name was Avishai Raviv.
Raviv was a part of Yigal's other world-his world away from home-and I didn't realize what a central role he played in my son's life until his name began cropping up again and again as the Israeli press probed deeper into the Rabin assassination.
Avishai Raviv was born in 1967 in Holon, a backwater development town just south of Tel Aviv. He is remembered in Holon as a youngster who made up for his shyness and stuttering by playing practical jokes on his classmates. Raviv's family was not religious and tended to vote Labor. His life changed suddenly and dramatically when, at the age of 16, he attended a lecture by Rabbi Meir Kahane, the fiery leader of the Israeli nationalist Kach movement. Raviv became active in the movement and, under Rabbi Kahane's influence, seemed to undergo a religious awakening that resulted in his embracing traditional Judaism. While on leave from service in the Israeli army's elite Givati Brigade, Raviv began attending demonstrations and other Kach activities.
Subsequent Israeli and foreign media reports alleged that at some time during or immediately following his military service, Raviv was recruited as an informer for the Shin Bet. Raviv, however, was no ordinary snitch. It was reported that for five years he initiated, organized, and led dozens of extremist right-wing activities.
After the November 1990 assassination of Rabbi Kahane, the Kach movement split into two factions. Raviv managed to remain active in both. He consistently appeared at each group's events and soon became an infamous fixture on the nightly news. When scuffles broke out with the police or hostile passersby, Raviv was often in the center of the trouble and was arrested dozens of times (although he was rarely charged and never imprisoned).
While he was active in the various Kach splinters, Raviv joined the Temple Mount Faithful, a group that protests for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount, the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem upon which Muslims built the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine. Israelis must get permission from the police before they can pray on the mount for fear of violence between Arabs and Jews, and the Temple Mount Faithful has responded with protests. Raviv's attempt to wrest control from the founder of the group would lead to his expulsion.
Raviv's agitation led to a particularly ugly episode in August 1991 during a protest outside the Tel Aviv office of Israel's Communist party. As Tamar Gozansky, a Communist member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), left the building, Raviv charged at her with a large metal flagpole. Gozansky's aide blocked the assault, and a brawl ensued. Photos of a bloodied Raviv limping away from the rally enhanced his stature among the Kahane activists. Raviv was arrested, but it took nearly four years for the case to go to court. He was let off with a mere nine months' probation and a small fine. The decision by Israeli prosecutors to request probation rather than imprisonment seemed curious.
In the meantime, Raviv had enrolled at Tel Aviv University and was busy making trouble on campus. When a Druse student was elected head of the student union (the largely Jewish student body had chosen a Muslim), Raviv publicly accused him of being disloyal to Israel. The university administration brought disciplinary charges against Raviv for racism. Eventually Raviv was expelled from the university-but not before he asked the Office of the Prime Minister to intervene on his behalf Tel Aviv University officials, however, had had enough of his provocations and his appeal was rejected.
Raviv then founded an organization with settlement activist David Hazan, called Eyal (the Jewish Fighting Organization). It was a religious-nationalist youth movement with barely two dozen members at the start. But Raviv devoted all of his energy to recruiting new members. He soon built himself a small but loyal following, made up primarily of religious teenagers. Raviv lured these youngsters with the enticement of violence and rebellion. According to one girl's later testimony, the charismatic Raviv would arrange Sabbath weekend retreats for Eyal members in various Jewish settlements. I believe the cost of these weekends was usually footed by Raviv.
Before long, Raviv was quarreling with Hazan over the group's direction. Hazan thought Raviv went too far at times, and, reportedly, when Raviv started to openly discuss assassinating a prominent Israeli, Hazan resigned. Raviv took over and shaped Eyal into his vision of the militant vanguard of the Israeli Right. His former roommate, Eran Ojalbo, claimed that Raviv was obsessed with obtaining publicity for himself and his small band of followers and developed a real flair for media stunts. On one occasion, Raviv invited a television crew to watch Eyal members training with weapons. On another, he launched a well-publicized leafleting campaign against mixed Jewish-Arab classes in public schools. He and several Eyal teenagers were brought in for police questioning. Leaflets of this sort are illegal in Israel because they're considered racist, and those who are responsible for creating them are often prosecuted. With Raviv, no charges were pressed.
In September 1993, the Rabin government signed the Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The accords, and the series of terror bombings that followed their implementation, brought thousands of previously apolitical Israelis into the streets and onto the barricades in embittered protest. These neophyte activists poured into the pre-existing right-wing groups and placed themselves at the disposal of experienced organizers such as Avishai Raviv. One of these new activists was my son Yigal.
The election of Labor party leader Yitzhak Rabin as prime minister in 1992 was the climax of an extraordinary political comeback. After four straight national election losses and more than 15 years in the political wilderness, Rabin led the center-left Labor parry to triumph.
Like many Israelis, my husband and I were saddened by Rabin's election, but we sought consolation in the platform upon which he ran: no negotiations with the PLO, no establishment of a PLO state, and no surrender of the strategically vital Golan Heights. If Rabin adhered to his party's declared principles, Israel's basic security needs would be protected.
In utter disregard of Rabin's platform and in defiance of the Israeli law prohibiting contact with the PLO, Labor party emissaries initiated negotiations with the terrorist group. In September 1993, Rabin announced to a stunned nation that he was going to sign an agreement with PLO chairman Yasir Arafat, giving the PLO partial control over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. He also planned to release jailed terrorists in exchange for a PLO peace pledge.
In Israel, we hoped desperately that peace would emerge. As a wife and a mother, I know the pain and fear of having watched my sons go off to serve the mandatory three years in the Israeli army. I yearn for the day when we can beat our swords into plowshares.
Sadly, the Oslo process did not produce the peace we expected. Within weeks of the White House handshake, the horror began. A Palestinian terrorist drove a car filled with explosives into a bus near the community of Beit-El, wounding 30 people. Next, a Palestinian driving a car filled with explosives pulled up alongside a bus in the northern Israeli city of Afula. The explosion killed eight people and wounded dozens more. On Remembrance Day, a Palestinian suicide bomber boarded a bus in nearby Hadera and blew himself up, killing five and wounding 25. Public support for Rabin and the Oslo process plummeted. Labor had insisted that the agreement would bring Israel untold benefits. But such dreams were shattered by the rude reality of the old Middle East.
At the same time, a dangerous schism was emerging in Israeli society between those who continued to support the peace process and those who opposed it. Faced with widespread public rejection of the Oslo process, an increasingly defensive Rabin and his cabinet ministers responded by forging ahead with policies that did not have the support of the public majority.
The terror continued. On October 19, 1994, in the heart of Tel Aviv, a Hamas bomber blew up a bus, killing 22 passengers and wounding 48. Three weeks later a terrorist riding a bicycle and carrying a knapsack filled with explosives pedaled up to an army checkpoint in Gaza and killed three soldiers. Each week brought more death, violence, and disillusionment. Around our Sabbath dinner table, the one time each week when all of our children were together, there was a growing sense of despair. Yigal once said, almost in tears, "Who cares if you can now take a vacation trip to Jordan if the street outside is running with Jewish blood?" We didn't know how to answer him. But we did not quite understand just how deeply he felt the pain of the massacred victims. We could not imagine that these terrible events were pushing him past the point of no return.
In the summer of 1995, as Rabin entered the fourth and final year of his term, his popularity was rapidly declining and his coalition government had to count on the support of five Arab members in the Knesset for its survival, though he could not be assured of these crucial votes indefinitely. And there was turmoil inside the Labor party itself Rabin had indicated his willingness to surrender most or all of the Golan Heights region to the Syrians, and a handful of Labor members of the Knesset, led by the 1973 war hero Avigdor Kahalani, balked. Recalling how the Syrians had used the Golan from 1949 to 1967 to shell northern Israel, the Kahalani faction announced that it would vote against the government if it sought to surrender the Golan.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1995, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu began to rise in the polls. By late summer of 1995, the polls showed that if elections were held at that time, Netanyahu. would be elected prime minister. The polls found that a majority of the nation no longer supported new territorial surrender.
With elections less than a year away, Rabin's career appeared to be on the verge of ruin, and it's my belief that the Labor leadership quietly turned to the security services to help stave off a defeat at the polls.
The dybbuk in our story will now be joined by an authentic spook. Karmi Gillon came from one of Israel's prominent families. His grandfather, Gad Frumkin, had served as a Supreme Court justice during the pre-state years under the British Mandate. Gillon's father, Colin, was Israel's state attorney during the 1950s, and his mother, Saada, was a deputy attorney general. Gillon's brother, Alon, is a judge who serves as the registrar of Israel's Supreme Court. Karmi Gillon forsook the family profession for a career in the Shin Bet. Created shortly after Israel's birth, the Shin Bet is, in effect, the Israeli FBI and Secret Service combined; it is charged with the tasks of gathering domestic intelligence, counterespionage, and protecting diplomats and VIPs. Control of the Shin Bet is in the hands of the office of the prime minister.
The Shin Bet like the FBI, has had no small share of controversy over the years. During the time that Gillon was rising in its ranks, the Shin Bet was implicated in a series of scandals. The Landau Commission, established in 1987 to investigate the methods of the Shin Bet, found a pattern of perjury spanning almost two decades. It released an 88 page report sharply censured the Shin Bet leadership for having "failed by not understanding that no security operation, however vital, can put its operatives above the law." The commission characterized the Shin Bet's lawlessness as a danger to democratic society.
Karmi Gillon had a unique field of expertise. While most of his fellow agents spent their time combating the threat of Arab terrorism, Gillon was the Shin Bet's resident expert on Jewish extremist groups; he even wrote his master's thesis at Haifa University on the topic in 1990. He was an advocate of cracking down on Jewish nationalist movements and made no secret of his antipathy to the right-wing outlook.
A few months prior to Gillon's appointment as chief of the Shin Bet in February 1995, Avishai Raviv pulled off an extraordinary stunt. Raviv, accompanied by a band of former Kach activists, attempted to stage a demonstration outside Gillon's Jerusalem home to demand his resignation from the Shin Bet. Raviv and two other people were briefly detained as they approached Gillon's house. Raviv told reporters at the scene—I believe he tipped off the press—that the planned-demonstration was "to protest that the head of the Shin Bet is being used as a political tool against the right wing."
To some, Raviv's threatening behavior was just further "evidence" that the Jewish Right was a menace that had to be combatted. In fact, Raviv, as it was later alleged, was already serving as an informer for the Shin Bet, and I find it hard to believe that his stunt hadn't been cleared by Gillon himself. Even before Gillon assumed control of the service, Raviv's provocations had become completely unrestrained. According to the Jerusalem Post, a few days after the machine-gunning of 29 Palestinians by Dr. Baruch Goldstein in March 1994 at Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, Raviv rented an apartment—directly above the one where Goldstein had lived—in Kiryat Arba. While Kiryat Arba's leaders were denouncing Goldstein, Raviv was boasting about his admiration for him. According to the Post, one of Raviv's splinter groups, DOV [Suppression of Traitors], vandalized a car belonging to the Kiryat Arba council head, Zvi Katzover, and the next day, Eyal took credit for assaulting Katzover's son so seriously that the boy had to be hospitalized. Again, Raviv was not prosecuted.
Raviv was then accepted by Bar-Ilan University, an Orthodox Jewish institution located in Ramat Gan, not far from Tel Aviv. Raviv registered for several history and philosophy courses and also enrolled in the school's Institute for Advanced Torah Studies. It was there, in the spring of 1994, that he met my son Yigal.
By the time summer rolled around, Raviv was sponsoring a paramilitary Eyal summer camp for militant youngsters. Reporters were invited to watch as Raviv ordered his young recruits, armed with automatic weapons, pistols, and knives, to engage in paramilitary drills and martial-arts training.
Throughout 1994, my husband and I were aware that Yigal was becoming increasingly involved in political activities. But as long as his actions were within the law (and to my knowledge, they were) and he kept up his grades (and he did), we saw no reason to object. If Yigal felt that the Oslo process was endangering Israel—and many, many Israelis felt that way—it was his right, even his obligation, to protest.
What we did not know was that Yigal was being drawn into Raviv's netherworld. Raviv was blanketing the campus with extremist posters. He clashed with campus security when some of the more militant notices were taken down by guards. This resulted in a hearing before an academic disciplinary committee that issued a warning: He would be expelled if he caused any more trouble.
In the summer of 1995, Raviv was once more summoned to a disciplinary committee for his activities. Raviv was again let off with a mere warning by the university administration. Acquaintances from that period later told me that he had behaved as if he had protectzia, the Hebrew slang for pull, or influence in high places. The rabbis at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, however, had seen enough of Raviv's antics. He was expelled from the institute.
In Hebrew, Yigal means "he will redeem." My second son was born during those first heady years after the Six Day War, when Israel, on the brink of annihilation by the Arab armies, miraculously beat back the enemy and liberated sacred territories that are so central to Judaism and Jewish history: Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and, of course, Jerusalem. God had redeemed his nation, and we named our second child Yigal as an affirmation of that miracle. Even as a young child, Yigal displayed an energy and drive that set him apart from other children. Whatever Yigal wanted, he found a way to get.
Yigal had never given us a day of trouble in his life. After graduating at the top of his high school class, he began his military service. His fierce patriotism compelled him to volunteer for an elite combat unit. As a mother, I dreaded his decision to serve in the unit that is called into battle first when war breaks out. But how could we stand in the way of our son's desire to defend his country?
When Yigal finished his three mandatory years of service, I detected a new seriousness in him. He was hired as a government emissary to Latvia, where he taught Hebrew to potential Jewish immigrants to Israel. He subsequently told me that this is where he was trained by the Shin Bet.
Upon his return, Yigal gained admission to law school at Bar-Ilan. For a young man of Yemenitc background, this was quite an accomplishment: Jews from Yemen and other Arab countries start out at the bottom of Israel's socioeconomic ladder, and it has taken decades to break into professions dominated by those of European origin. Yigal enrolled not only in the Bar-Ilan University law school but simultaneously in its computer classes and the university's religious-studies program.
Like many of his fellow students, Yigal was drawn to political activism by the Oslo accords. He attended a number of mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and helped organize a number of campus rallies, but he soon despaired of their impact because there was no chance of changing Rabin's mind.
Yigal found himself overwhelmed by a sense of frustration, and this helped to pave the way for his association with Raviv. He was now spending a good deal of his time organizing Sabbath weekend retreats for student activists in various Israeli towns and in the settlements. As Yigal's friends told me subsequently, he and Raviv worked together, publicizing the retreats, preparing literature for the discussion groups and seminars, and arranging for guest lecturers.
We hardly saw Yigal during the summer and early autumn of 1995. 1 couldn't imagine how he mustered the energy for such outings after his grueling schedule of classes. But if he was using his day and a half off from school (Israel's weekends last only from Friday afternoon until Saturday night) for educational purposes, we considered it worthwhile.
According to Yigal's friends and others who have since testified in court, Raviv seemed to be obsessed with one topic: killing Rabin. He and Yigal frequently engaged in discussions about the feasibility of assassination.
On September 16, Israeli television broadcast what was purported to be a secret late-night swearing-in ceremony organized by Eyal. At the ceremony, which was later revealed to have been staged for the television cameras, Raviv assembled what he claimed were a group of new Eyal recruits at the graves of pre-state Jewish underground fighters, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Raviv scored his biggest media triumph on October 5,1995, when the opposition political parties organized a mass rally in downtown Jerusalem to protest the mounting Arab terror and the government's weak response. Although I rarely attended demonstrations, Yigal and I went to, this one together. The main speaker that Saturday night was Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Circulating among the huge crowd was Avishai Raviv and his band of Eyal hotheads. According to the Jerusalem Post, Raviv had given them handouts depicting Prime Minister Rabin dressed up in an SS uniform. When demonstrators urged the Eyal sign holders to remove the offensive placards, they refused. Eyal's founder, David Hazan, passed by and tore up one of the posters. A gang of Eyal toughs promptly pummeled him.
The Post reported that an Israeli television reporter, Nitzan Chen, later revealed that Raviv had approached him and urged him to broadcast the sign on the nightly news report, and that he had even called later to be sure that it had been included.
In the Knesset the next morning, the Labor party made good use of the poster. Netanyahu was accused of having failed to condemn them. It helped reinforce the notion that the Likud was extremist and irresponsible. In a radio interview shortly afterward, Rabin told the public that "the Likud provides extremists with inspiration. It cannot wash its hands of this and claim it has nothing to do with it."
Netanyahu's request to meet with Rabin to attempt to ease the mounting political tensions was ignored. Rabin's refusal to even meet with the Likud leader again strengthened the idea that Netanyahu was beyond the pale. It also helped deflect public attention away from Arab terrorism. Finally, so it seemed, Rabin had found an effective campaign strategy.
On November 4, 1995, Yigal exited a bus and made his way toward Malchei Yisrael Square, where thousands of supporters had already assembled. The large floodlights placed outside the Tel Aviv city hall illuminated the area for many blocks, and security was stepped up around the demonstration. On hand were more than 700 police and border-patrol officers, dozens of undercover police, and agents of the Shin Bet who had been assigned the job of guarding the featured political leaders.
The gathering, whose theme was "Yes to peace, no to violence," had been heavily advertised for weeks. Labor party-dominated municipalities and unions pulled out all stops in their drive to generate a large turnout for the rally. Some of the biggest names in Israeli entertainment were recruited to perform. In addition to Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres, other top Labor leaders were present. It was meant to be an impressive show of strength for the party and proof positive that large segments of the country still supported the peace process.
Yigal strode quickly through the crowd. The police had erected special metal railings to keep the crowd away from the rostrum, but people were simply walking around the barriers. When Yigal arrived near the stage he circled around the police line and descended the stairway that led to the cordoned parking area, where the limousines of the prime minister and other government officials were parked.
After a while, a Shin Bet agent approached and asked Yigal who he was. He reportedly replied that he was one of the drivers. The agent apparently accepted the answer and walked away. At no point did anyone ask Yigal to produce identification or seriously challenge his presence near the cars. Much criticism was later leveled against the police and the Shin Bet for failing to create a "sterile" area near the stage, a standard security precaution.
Yigal struck up a conversation with some of the drivers and police officers who were mingling in the parking lot. Later they would admit that they had assumed he was either an undercover policeman or one of the entertainers' drivers. From his position in the parking lot, Yigal could clearly hear the singing of the performers.
As the speeches and performances continued on the stage above him, Yigal bided his time. He did not check his watch, nor did he display any anxiety, he told me. He said that if the police had stopped him or seriously questioned him at this stage, he would have taken it as a sign from above and abandoned the plan to kill Rabin. But on this evening there were no such actions by the police or Shin Bet agents. And so Yigal was content to peacefully wait for the rally to end and the prime minister to be escorted to his car.
In the chaotic aftermath of the assassination, rival Israeli law-enforcement officials engaged in a frenzy of finger-pointing and recriminations. In the newspapers and on the airwaves, the Police Ministry and the Shin Bet hurled accusations at one another, each attempting to blame the other for the lax security. Shin Bet head Karmi Gillon, whose name was then a state secret, announced that the security services would conduct an internal investigation. The police announced their own internal probe. Astonishingly, within 48 hours—on November 7—the Shin Bet report was concluded and leaked to the press. The document, which was authored by three former branch heads of the Shin Bet, found that the entire protection system assigned to the prime minister had collapsed. The report lambasted the inability of the Shin Bet to gather intelligence on extreme right-wing groups. After the report's release, the head of the protection department, identified as "D," was forced to resign. The Shin Bet insisted that D's negligence was the sole reason for the procedural breaches on the night of the killing.
On Tuesday, November 7, Raviv was arrested by the police, on charges that he was involved in the assassination. The Jerusalem Post asserted that his group, Eyal, was being investigated in connection with a conspiracy to kill the prime minister. As the handcuffed Raviv was brought to court under heavy police guard, he yelled to reporters, "This is a political investigation and a false arrest! This is a dictatorship!"
The next day, the government announced the formation of a commission of inquiry into the assassination, to be headed by former Supreme Court justice Meir Shamgar. And from the outset, the Shamgar Commission was plagued by conflicts of interest and questions of impartiality. Shamgar himself had served for many years as Judge Advocate General of the Israeli army and maintained ties to the military establishment. He was also a close personal friend of the Rabin family. Shamgar was joined on the panel by a former head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, and Professor Ariel Rosen-Zvi, dean of Tel Aviv University law school. Professor Rosen-Zvi was in the advanced stages of cancer at the time and would be dead within weeks of the commission's final report.
In a strange twist, Judge Alon Gillon, the older brother of Shin Bet head Karmi Gillon, was named secretary of the commission. Sitting in on the commission's proceedings was the brother of the government official who was most likely to be blamed if the commission concluded that the Shin Bet had failed to safeguard Rabin. The possible conflict of interest apparently escaped the notice of the commissioners—Karmi Gillon would testify before the commission at length. Unfortunately, neither the public nor the news media were allowed to attend many of the commission's hearings.
Equally troubling was the presence of Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair. Since the commission was investigating, among other issues, whether the attorney general's office was granting some Shin Bet informants—one of which was later alleged to be Raviv—immunity from prosecution, the presence of the attorney general at the hearings was surprising indeed. If the government's intent was to definitively ascertain what led to Rabin's assassination, then even the perception of impropriety should not have been tolerated.
During the days following the assassination, Attorney General Ben-Yair had ordered a crackdown on individuals who were suspected of engaging in "inflammatory speech." Curiously, the crackdown continued for several weeks, then stopped suddenly. Ben-Yair announced—in a stunning reversal—that mere words could not cause an individual to engage in criminal acts, and they had not caused Yigal's act. "The person who killed the prime minister did not do so under the influence of incitement.... He acted due to a complete worldview, which he had developed.... It wasn't because of a poster here or there." Ben-Yair was not the only one to engage in a sudden, unexplained about-face. Police Minister Moshe Shahal, who had previously declared, "We believe that a group of people carefully prepared the ground to conspire to murder carefully chosen targets," now asserted that Yigal was a lone gunman who had organized the assassination on his own.
But the "inciting rhetoric" and "organized conspiracy" theories had served their purpose they had inflamed public opinion against the Israeli Right. Now, I believe they needed to be discarded lest they open an even bigger can of worms about incitement and conspiracy.
On the weekend before the Shamgar Commission was to hear its first witness, Karmi Gillon, there was a stunning revelation: Israeli television and radio both reported that Raviv was, indeed, an undercover agent for the Shin Bet. According to the reports, Raviv, codenamed "Champagne" by his Shin Bet handlers, had been on the government's payroll for at least two years as a top infiltrator of the far Right. But according to an investigation by the Jerusalem Post, Raviv's task involved much more than infiltration: His orders were to attract individuals to Eyal, incite them to illegal activities, and then inform on them to the Shin Bet.
One of the sources of this information was Rabbi Benny Elon, the dean of Yeshivat Beit Orot, a religious college, and son of a retired Supreme Court justice. Elon would later become a Knesset member in 1996. This prominent Jewish-settlement activist and leader of the right-wing group Moledet held a press conference and charged that Raviv had effectively manufactured the wild far Right. He was, in Elon's words, an "agent provocateur," carrying out a mission by the government to discredit the right-wing opposition, including, by association, the Likud. "I would venture to say," Elon added, "that the whole organization [Eyal] and its activities, including the poster depicting Rabin in an SS uniform, were all paid for by the Shin Bet." (The Shin Bet later denied the charge.) Elon went on to say, "There is a reasonable suspicion that [Raviv's activity] was okayed by the legal authority."
Elon, who had met Raviv and other Eyal activists on a number of occasions at demonstrations and elsewhere, said that Raviv had been Yigal's constant companion in the months prior to the killing. How could Raviv have been so close to Yigal and not known, as Raviv later claimed in court, of the assassination plan? And how could a Shin Bet informer have been so closely involved in all of these activities without the knowledge of the Shin Bet, which is supervised by the Office of the Prime Minister?
The two weeks after the assassination were the most horrible period of my life. Now, suddenly, came the revelation of a Shin Bet connection to Yigal's "pal" Raviv.
The Likud, which had been on the defensive since the assassination, came to life in the wake of the Raviv-Shin Bet accusations. At a meeting of the Likud executive bureau, Netanyahu called for "a full, thorough, and exhaustive investigation into the Raviv affair. There must be no coverup. Even if only a fraction of the provocative activities attributed to Raviv are true, they constitute a grave danger to democracy. There must be an investigation, and it must come now, with no delays and no excuses."
And then there were more revelations. Israel's leading daily, Yediot Ahronot, reported that in testimony before a closed session of the Shamgar Commission, several young women at a religious seminary said that they had recognized Yigal and Raviv from a Sabbath retreat at Ma'aleh Yisrael the previous summer. The girls told their teacher, Sarah Eliash, that Raviv had denounced several Rabin government officials as "traitors." During several marathon ideological discussions that weekend, Raviv had attempted to goad Yigal into killing Rabin, ridiculing his "cowardice" for not being willing to assassinate a "traitor." In court, Raviv said he had heard Yigal talk about the "need to kill Rabin" but claimed he hadn't taken him seriously.
The girls testified: "We used to see Raviv and Amir on Saturdays during last summer. These gatherings were arranged by Yigal. We would sit out on a hilltop there. There were no demonstrations or any violence. They were basically study groups. We met, like, several times.... Raviv was real macho. He kept saying to Yigal, 'You keep talking about killing Rabin. Why don't you do it? Are you frightened? You say you want to do it. Show us that you're a man! Show us what you are made of"' The girls testified that Yigal didn't react at all to Raviv's pressure and just changed the subject of discussion.
Suddenly, information about Raviv was spilling forth. Raviv's former roommate in Kiryat Arba, and former member of Eyal, Eran Ojalbo, testified as a witness for the defense at Yigal's trial. He revealed that Raviv had said that Rabin was a rodef—the Hebrew term for someone who endangers others and therefore should be killed. At a weekend retreat organized by Yigal in the settlement of Ma'alch Yisrael, press reports say, Raviv had marked several different government leaders for death.
Ojalbo also testified that ten minutes after news of the assassination had been announced, Raviv called him and asked how he was and if he knew who had shot Rabin. Ojalbo responded that in television reports he had seen that it was "a short Yemenite guy." Raviv asked if it was Yigal. "I looked again," Ojalbo testified, "and said that it was Yigal."
Ojalbo also maintained that Raviv had verbally pressured Yigal to attempt an assassination of Rabin. "Raviv told Yigal and others, time and time again, that there was a din-rodef [judgment] on Yitzhak Rabin. He said, 'Rabin should die,' and whoever killed him was a righteous person.... Raviv had a powerful influence on Yigal. He continuously emphasized to him and other students that whoever implemented the din-rodef against Rabin was carrying out a holy mission."
Israel television's Chen appeared before the Shamgar Commission and related the details of Raviv's involvement with the SS handouts. Raviv's job was to discredit the Right, Chen said, and what could be more effective than giving the public the idea that the entire opposition considered Rabin to be a Nazi?
The next Raviv revelation came from the Jerusalem Post investigative reporter Steve Rodan. He reported that "Israel Broadcasting Authority spokesman [Ayala Cohen] said the first report of the Rabin shooting was broadcast at 9:48 P.M. Channel 1 began broadcasting live at 10:15, and 15 minutes later, the alleged assassin was identified as a 25-year-old student from Herzliyya."
But Rodan also wrote that Raviv had arrived at the Tel Aviv rally 15 minutes before Rabin's murder. When the first rumors of the shooting swept through the crowd, at 9:50 P.M., Rodan reported, "Immediately Raviv pulled out his mobile telephone and spoke to an unidentified person. 'He called somebody,' one of the witnesses said. 'He asked whether they shot Rabin.' Then Raviv asked, 'Was he hurt?'.... When he finished [the conversation] he shouted, 'It was Yigal. Don't you know Yigal? He was at the Orient House demonstrations [Eyal's protests at PLO headquarters in Jerusalem].' Raviv then made his way toward nearby Ichilov Hospital and then disappeared."
"Those around him could not understand how Raviv knew the identity of the assassin before anyone else," Rodan reported.
As the accusations about Raviv mounted, the opposition Tsomet party petitioned the High Court of Justice to prevent Attorney General Ben-Yair from attending further Shamgar Commission hearings. The petition asked that, at a minimum, Ben-Yair be prohibited from questioning witnesses, including Shin Bet agents and confidential informants, whose activities he might have authorized. The petition also argued that since Ben-Yair might himself be called to testify, it was improper for him to become familiar with others' testimony.
Instead of ruling on the merits of the petition, the High Court offered a compromise proposal under which Tsomet would withdraw its petition in exchange for a promise that Ben-Yair would absent himself if a conflict of interest arose. But it was a disappointing action by the Court, and it did little to restore the image of the commission. The growing public perception was that Ben-Yair was sitting in on the commission hearings to conduct damage control for the government in the wake of the Raviv-Shin Bet revelations.
On December 14, Raviv himself appeared before the Shamgar Commission. After completing his secret testimony, he was whisked away in a government car and vanished from public view.
Following Raviv's testimony, the commission issued warning letters to six Shin Bet officials, including Karmi Gillon. The letters cautioned the officials that they might face criminal liability as a result of their involvement with the events surrounding Raviv and the Rabin murder. Gillon and several other Shin Bet agents were called back for additional testimony, in light of Raviv's statements to the commission.
On January 8, 1996, Karmi Gillon resigned. The Israeli media concluded that had he not stepped down voluntarily, the Shamgar Commission would have insisted on his removal. The man who had been championed as an expert on Jewish extremism had failed to examine and follow up on information that he had received regarding a possible attack on the prime minister by Jewish extremists. But what was widely perceived as Gillon's negligence explained only a fraction of the events that led to the assassination. Why hadn't the Shin Bet ordered Raviv to cease his provocations? Why had it not detained or at least questioned Yigal before he acted? Why the strange restraint in the face of a threat to the prime minister?
The Jerusalem Post reported: "Yigal told investigators that he acted alone, did not belong to an extremist organization, and had 'received instructions from God to kill Prime Minister Rabin.'" Yigal also reiterated in court that he acted alone. I believe he did so in order not to implicate others.
On March 28, 1996, the Shamgar Commission released its report. Of the 332 pages, 118 were declared classified. The unclassified parts blamed Gillon for the failures of the Shin Bet on the night of the murder but did not find him or any other agents criminally negligent. According to the Jerusalem Post, the unclassified sections contained only a few scattered references to the relationship between the running of agents and the Shin Bet. The report depicted the assassination as a failure by the agents protecting Rabin to organize themselves effectively. In one of its least believable conclusions, the Shamgar report claimed that Gillon—the expert on right-wing Jewish extremism—"did not conduct even one substantive, relevant, thorough, and comprehensive discussion with all the security and intelligence-gathering bodies to review methods." This was after two senior Shin Bet officers told the commission that they had gathered intelligence reports that right-wing groups could be a threat to both Jews and Arabs.
Equally bizarre was the commission's assertion that in order to "safeguard" the Shin Bet's operational methods, testimony by or about Raviv and his role had to be placed in a classified appendix to the report. In Chapter 5 of the commission's report is a section entitled "The Avishai Raviv Episode." The page is blank except for the cryptic note that "the details of this subject will be discussed in the secret appendix."
A section entitled "The Operation of Agents" states: "The body that operates an informer must keep tight control of him and not allow him to initiate actions at his will ... and to prevent the carrying out of provocations that in the end might have a boomerang effect." Could they have been referring to Raviv?
The official investigation of Raviv's relationship with Yigal remains shrouded in secrecy. Labor, of course, wanted no further probing into a potentially explosive scandal. Ironically, Likud, having forced national elections in two months, preferred to put the issue to rest.
The idea of using an agent provocateur was not originated by the Shin Bet. The secret police in czarist Russia created fake anarchist cells in order to attract genuine anarchist militants whom they would arrest and execute. When the Soviets came to power, they employed the same tactic against their political enemies. In the United States, the FBI created COINTELPRO (the counterintelligence program) to recruit potential lawbreakers, help incite them to break the law, then arrest them. By the late 1970s, the use of such unscrupulous tactics had been exposed and widely condemned as improper interference with citizens' rights. In Israel, unfortunately, dirty tricks are still commonly used.
Neither the Shin Bet nor the political echelon that controls it, the Office of the Prime Minister, seems to have appreciated the difference between a legitimate informant and an agent provocateur.
I believe Raviv enjoyed the full backing and protection of the Shin Bet. He assaulted a member of the Knesset and did not serve a day in jail. The Office of the Prime Minister was contacted to help intervene in an attempt to prevent his expulsion from Tel Aviv University. He emerged scot-free from distributing racist literature, publicly praising Baruch Goldstein, holding illegal summer militia camps, and allegedly distributing the Rabin-SS poster. On many occasions, he allegedly urged the assassination of Rabin and other Labor government officials and was never prosecuted. Raviv's lawlessness had to have sent the message to potential extremists that violence could be employed with impunity.
As I see it, Karmi Gillon and Avishai Raviv were the perfect match: Gillon, the Shin Bet chief obsessed with the belief that right-wing Jewish terrorist groups were on the loose; and Raviv, the alleged Shin Bet informer actively ensuring that Gillon's dark prophesies came true. If Raviv was an informer, did he alert Shin Bet agents that Yigal was now a potential assassin? I find it inconceivable that he would have kept such information to himself. Yet Yigal was never arrested. Never questioned. Never had his gun license revoked. Never had his gun confiscated. Did Gillon know from Raviv about Yigal's activities? If so, why didn't he order his agents to undertake any action against Yigal? What were they waiting for?
Just minutes after Yigal had shot the prime minister, somebody called reporters, identified himself as a spokesman for a right-wing organization, and claimed, "This time we missed. Next time we won't." It seems astonishing to me that the caller could have known that the shots were fired by a right-wing Jew rather than an Arab. Why did he think that the attack had failed?
Could the caller have been Raviv? I think he spent months inciting Yigal to make the attempt. He may have suspected that it would take place that night. I also think that he positioned himself at the rally, close enough to the scene of the crime to know that the shots had been fired, enabling him to make the immediate calls to the reporters. (One wonders what might emerge from an investigation of the itemized bill of Raviv's cellular phone.)
Yet, for some reason, Raviv was sure that the attempt would fail. Why? Perhaps somebody—either Raviv or someone else—was surreptitiously supposed to have disabled Yigal's gun, either by removing the firing pin or by replacing the bullets with blanks, before the shooting. It has been claimed in court that it was Yigal who shouted, "Blanks! Blanks!" But Shin Bet agents are trained to shout out "Blanks! Blanks!" in security drills. And I believe that that cry, combined with the fact that an agent assured Mrs. Rabin that the gun was not real, might mean that the Shin Bet were expecting an unsuccessful assassination attempt.
The Shin Bet could have arrested Yigal at any time in the weeks before the rally and charged him with plotting to kill Rabin. But the impact on the public would be so much more dramatic if Shin Bet agents heroically foiled an attempt on the prime minister's life. But something went terribly wrong. The bullets were not blanks; the gun was not a toy.
My belief has some basis in past events. Foiling attempted crimes at the last second is a well-established Shin Bet method. In April 1984, in a Shin Bet operation, agents were tracking a group of settlement leaders who were engaged in retaliatory attacks against Arab terrorists. They followed the suspects as they planted explosives on several Arab buses in East Jerusalem. After this, the suspects were allowed to travel back to their residences. Only then did the Shin Bet raid their houses and conduct arrests. At the time, it was reported that the Shin Bet delayed taking suspects into custody until after the bombs were planted in order to sensationalize their own heroic efforts. Faced with the shocking news story, then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir had no choice but to let the security services arrest dozens of other suspects and crack down on the settlement organizations.
More recently, there is the disturbing case of the Kahalani brothers, Eitan and Yehoyada, from Kiryat Arba. The two men were convicted of plotting to shoot an Arab in retaliation for the murder of a Jewish settler. The pair had taken their loaded rifles to a road near the village of Kafr Batir, where they spotted an Arab man on a bicycle. As the Arab approached their truck, Eitan raised his rifle to fire, but the gun malfunctioned and Shin Bet agents waiting in ambush rushed to arrest the two brothers. The charge sheet is revealing. It contends that the murder was dramatically foiled "as a result of the removal of the firing pin by GSS [Shin Bet] without prior knowledge of the accused, [hence] no shot was fired."
The Kahalanis' attorney argued that a third individual involved in planning the attack was a Shin Bet plant who had disabled the guns. The alleged informant was arrested and then quickly released despite the charge that he was involved in the conspiracy. Why did the Shin Bet wait until after Eitan Kahalani had pulled the trigger to move in and make the arrest?
What Israel needs now is to heal the terrible wounds that the nation has suffered as a result of the assassination and its aftermath. To ease the malaise that is eating away at our society. To restore the public's confidence in our government. And, above all, to preserve the principles that are the basis of our democratic way of life.
My concern for the lives and the freedom of my two sons ensures that I will not rest until the truth—about Avishai Raviv, the Shin Bet and my son Yigal—is fully revealed.
(A Mother’s Defense, Guela Amir; published in George Magazine, March 1997, p. 138)
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