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Sep 28, 2010
The Latest from Mondoweiss for 09/28/2010
Here are the headlines from Mondoweiss for 09/28/2010:
- The details of those killed on the Mavi Marmara
- Oren: Colonization benefits Palestinians
- Wolff: Peretz's 'vast corpus of disgusting statements' stems from support for Israel
- Blogging Israel/Palestine
- Tutu: 'The issue of a principled commitment to justice lies at the heart of responses to the suffering of the Palestinian people and it is the absence of such a commitment that enables many to turn a blind eye to it.'
- Why I protested AIPAC (and what brought me to that point)
- Bulldozers and caravans are Israel's gift to Obama
- CAMERA will release motheaten lions to gobble up 'Jewish defamers of Israel'
- An American sees the occupation for the first time and–
- NPR ombud says Israel lobby was 'successful' in changing coverage
The details of those killed on the Mavi Marmara
Sep 27, 2010 11:01 pm | Adam HorowitzThe following appears on pages 30 and 31 of the UN report into the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla:
Furkan Dogan, a nineteen-year old with dual Turkish and United States citizenship, was on the central area of the top deck filming with a small video camera when he was first hit with live fire. It appears that he was lying on the deck in a conscious, or semi-conscious, state for some time. In total Furkan received five bullet wounds, to the face, head, back thorax, left leg and foot. All of the entry wounds were on the back of his body, except for the face wound which entered to the right of his nose. According to forensic analysis, tattooing around the wound in his face indicates that the shot was delivered at point blank range. Furthermore, the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back. The other wounds were not the result of firing in contact, near contact or close range, but it is not otherwise possible to determine the exact firing range. The wounds to the leg and foot were
most likely received in a standing position.Ibrahim Bilgen, a 60 year old Turkish citizen, from Siirt in Turkey, was on the top deck and was one of the first passengers to be shot. He received a bullet wound to the chest, the trajectory of which was from above and not at close range. He had a further two bullet wounds to the right side of the back and right buttock, both back to front. These wounds would not have caused instant death, but he would have bled to death within a short time without medical attention. Forensic evidence shows that he was shot in the side of the head with a soft baton round at such close proximity and that an entire bean bag and its wadding penetrated the skull and lodged in the brain. He had a further bruise on the right flank consistent with another beanbag wound. The wounds are consistent with the deceased initially being shot from soldiers on board the helicopter above and receiving a further wound to the head while lying on the ground, already wounded.
Fahri Yaldiz, a 42 year old Turkish citizen from Adiyaman, received five bullet wounds, one to the chest, one to the left leg and three to the right leg. The chest wound was caused by a bullet that entered near the left nipple and hit the heart and lungs before exiting from the shoulder. This injury would have caused rapid death.
According to the pathology report, Ali Heyder Bengi, a 38 year old Turkish citizen from Diyarbakir, received six bullet wounds (one in the chest, one in the abdomen, one in the right arm, one in the right thigh and two in the left hand). One bullet lodged in the chest area. None of the wounds would have been instantly fatal, but damage to the liver caused bleeding which would have been fatal if not stemmed. There are several witness accounts which suggest that Israeli soldiers shot the deceased in the back and chest at close range while he was lying on the deck as a consequence of initial bullet wounds.
Cevdet Kiliçlar, a 38 year old Turkish citizen from Istanbul, was on the Mavi Marmara, in his capacity as a photographer employed by IHH. At the moment he was shot he was standing on the bridge deck on the port side of the ship near to the door leading to the main stairwell and was attempting to photograph Israeli soldiers on the top deck. According to the pathology reports, he received a single bullet to his forehead between the eyes. The bullet followed a horizontal trajectory which crossed the middle of the brain from front to back. He would have died instantly.
41 year old Cengiz Akyüz from Hatay and 46 year old Cengiz Songür from Izmir, both Turkish citizens, were injured on the bridge deck in close succession by live fire from above. They had been sheltering and were shot as they attempted to move inside the door leading to the stairwell. Cengiz Akyüz received a shot to the head and it is probable that he died instantly.
The pathology report shows four wounds: to the neck, face, chest and thigh. Cengiz Songür received a single bullet to the upper central thorax below the neck, shot from a high angle, which lodged in the right thoracic cavity injuring the heart and aorta. Unsuccessful efforts were made by doctors inside the ship to resuscitate him through heart massage.
Çetin Topçuoglu, a 54 year old Turkish citizen from Adana had been involved in helping to bring injured passengers inside the ship to be treated. He was also shot close to the door on the bridge deck. He did not die instantly and his wife, who was also on board the ship, was with him when he died. He was shot by three bullets. One bullet entered from the top the soft tissues of the right side of the back of the head, exited from the neck and then re-entered into the thorax. Another bullet entered the left buttock and lodged in the right pelvis. The third entered the right groin and exited from the lower back. There are indications that the victim may have been in a crouching or bending position when this wound was sustained.
The location and circumstances of the shooting and death of Necdet Yildirim, a 31 year old Turkish citizen from Istanbul, remain unclear. He was shot twice in the thorax, once from the front and once from the back. The trajectory of both bullets was from top to bottom. He also received bruises consistent with plastic bullet impact
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Oren: Colonization benefits Palestinians
Sep 27, 2010 04:10 pm | Matthew TaylorA howler from today's NYT story about the expiration of the so-called settlement freeze:
Israeli officials said that Mr. Netanyahu felt it important for his credibility not to extend the moratorium beyond 10 months.
"It is a read-my-lips moment," said Michael B. Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. "This establishes credibility, not just for the Israelis but for the Palestinians. Establishing that the man is true to his word is going to be a very important asset going forward."
Wow. Thanks, Bibi, for keeping your word that you would officially endorse continued and intensified violations of international law, land theft, colonization, and ethnic cleansing, ten months after you pretended to slow that stuff down a tad. We trust you, we trust you! You are a man of your word.
P.S.- Another gem from the story:
Several thousand supporters were bused in [to the Kiryat Netafim settlement], balloons were released and speeches were made about Jewish rights and a policy that bars only Jews from building homes there, which the settlers regard as racist.
When has the New York Times made even the slightest reference to Israeli policies towards Palestinians as racist? Oh, but a flimsy, hole-ridden policy intended to mildly inhibit Jews from stealing land violating international law is racist? Puh-lease.
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Wolff: Peretz's 'vast corpus of disgusting statements' stems from support for Israel
Sep 27, 2010 04:05 pm | Philip WeissUMass scholar Robert Paul Wolff participated in the Social Studies celebration at Harvard this weekend at which the Marty Peretz controversy burgeoned. Wolff has urged Harvard to refuse the scholarship given in Peretz's name. The following account of one event is from Wolff's blog. The excruciating/bizarre Michael Walzer moment to which Wolff refers is on the video above, at about 6:30. Notice the frank Israel lobby stuff in Wolff's post. (thanks to Jeet Heer)
In the afternoon panel, several of the speakers alluded to Peretz, and many of the questioners from the floor brought it up. The defense of Marty was, I found, simply incredible. One person after another said that he was a much-loved teacher, as though that somehow excused thirty years of ugly, racist outbursts. The attitude was, if I may put it this way, as though Marty was a fine fellow with the unfortunate habit of farting in public. It was not until the very end of the afternoon session that a young women asked a question that should have been center stage throughout: How did Peretz's appalling views affect his teaching?
The absolute low point of the day, for me, was Michael Walzer's defense of his old friend. Walzer began by telling the audience that in 1969, when Harvard students seized the administration building in an anti-war protest, he and Marty formed a committee to defend them, and most of the advocacy for the students was carried out by Marty. This, we were supposed to conclude, earned Peretz a pass on four decades of ugly racist rants. Then Walzer, widely considered one of the preeminent political philosophers of the present day, sank to a really appalling low. He looked at one of the questioners who had attacked Peretz and said, "Have you examined every writing and footnote and every email of each member of the Standing Committee?" At that, the audience groaned, and he shut up.
What was really going on? I tried to explain this to the Crimson reporter, and a quote from me on this may appear in the story [in the middle of last night, the reporter emailed me to check the quotes before the story was put in final form.] Let me back up a bit and try to get some perspective. This was a gathering of more than four hundred former and present Social Studies majors -- possibly the largest assemblage of sophisticated social theorists since the last garden party of the Frankfort School for Social Research. These are people who think nothing of discerning the deeper ideological meaning in Afghan popular music or Tibetan architecture, or teasing out the epistemological filiations between Foucault and Montesquieu. And yet, confronted at their own conference by a massive protest, the best they could come up with was "Marty is a nice guy."
It is not at all difficult to figure out the real sources of the vast corpus of disgusting statements by Martin Peretz. The answer requires only one word: Israel. Why is it that while these high-powered social theorists were extolling Social Studies' fruitful union of historical research and theoretical analysis, none of them could find a moment to refer to the transformation of left-wing Jewish social theorists into Neo-cons and Peretz' transformation of The New Republic from a liberal journal into a right-wing apologist for war against Muslims?...
I have already told the story in my Memoir of my 1973 phone call to Michael Walzer, and the discovery that he and Peretz were supporting Nixon in the impeachment controversy because Nixon was a strong supporter of Israel. Well, here we were in this huge, elegant auditorium in Harvard's Science Center, and the assembled intelligentsia, a great many of whom are indeed Jewish, evinced not the slightest interest in the historical and political roots of the controversy kept by Harvard's security forces from intruding on their happy reminiscences.
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Blogging Israel/Palestine
Sep 27, 2010 04:00 pm | Adam HorowitzLast week I participated in an event at the Palestine Center called The New Media & the Palestine Question: Blogging Out of Conflict. The event also featured Jerome Slater, Stephen Walt and MJ Rosenberg. You can watch it in two parts below:
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"Pedophilia: The Talmud's Dirty Secret" - by Rev. Ted Pike
PEDOPHILIA: THE TALMUD'S DIRTY SECRET
By Rev. Ted Pike
28 Sep 10 (Update)Editor's Note:
This year, top Israeli Rabbi Moti Elon was indicted by police for sex crimes against minors. "Far from being the rabbi of an obscure Hasidic sect, the charismatic Elon is a high-profile leader, educator and media personality, representing the more mainstream religious Zionists and former head of the renowned HaKotel (Western Wall) Yeshiva. He comes from a family of high achievers in law, politics and academia that has drawn comparisons with the Kennedy clan."
In 2006, Elon was restricted by an organization of rabbis in his contact with students, after confessing to sexual relationships with male students. Yet he continued to act as the president of a Talmudic academy in Jerusalem and did not fully honor the agreement. One Ha'aretz commentary says Elon "managed to turn himself into almost a kind of saint" –a fate certainly to be envied by American religious figures turned pedophiles.
Dr. Aviad Hacohen, dean of the Sha'arei Mishpat College, in 2007 reported that "95% of sexual offences in Jerusalem were performed by the religious and haredi." "Several years ago, I began looking into the issue on a data-based level," said Hacohen. "It turned out that the law enforcement authorities, both the police and the prosecutor's office, were aware of the data but refused to expose it based on sectorial affiliation in order to avoid branding a certain group in the population…"
Since the following article was written in 2006, cases of Jewish leadership figures in Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism being involved in homosexuality or pedophilia scandals continue to mount not only in Israel, but in New York, where Ultra-Orthodox are strongest. The reason is simple: some of the very greatest rabbis who wrote the Talmud were pedophiles.
Read this shocking and timely article for complete documentation.
PEDOPHILIA: THE TALMUD'S DIRTY SECRET
By Rev. Ted Pike
11 Oct 06For nearly a century, the Jewish-dominated Hollywood film industry and big media have conspicuously influenced Christian America away from Biblical morals and values. (See, "Jews Confirm Big Media Is Jewish")
Yet, with the hippie rebellion of the early sixties, the Jewish media found exponential opportunities to hasten America's moral decline. Encouraging drugs and pornography it persuaded America that "free love" and living together outside of marriage were socially acceptable. With astonishing rapidity the movie, TV, and print media helped produce a generation of sexual libertines. By the end of the sixties, it hastened the sexual revolution to its next stage, homosexuality.
Now, more than 40 years later, even homosexuality has lost its attraction to many children and grandchildren of the hippie generation. Pedophilia (sex with little boys and girls along with child pornography) is the latest underground obsession sweeping America and the world.
Last fall, I alerted the nation to the power of the pedophile lobby in Congress; Sen. Edward Kennedy, long backed by homosexuals in support of the federal anti-hate bill, betrayed them to favor the evidently more powerful and rewarding pedophiles. (See "How Kennedy and His Pedophiles Weakened the Child Safety Bill")
Rotten Roots
What kind of moral foundations do Jews of the media rest upon, that they could consciously ignite and fan the flames of a sexual inferno that continues to ravage our once Christian society?
Virtually all the media moguls who founded Hollywood and the big three TV networks were immigrants, or their children, from predominantly orthodox Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.
In the late 19th century, most European Jews were a people of the book. But their book wasn't the Bible. It was the Babylonian Talmud. To this day, the Talmud remains Judaism's highest moral, ethical and legal authority.
Does the Talmud share Christianity's foundation of wholesome moral values? Hardly. Instead, the Talmud is the sleazy substrata of a religious system gone terribly astray; it is that code of Pharisaic unbelief Christ described as "full of all uncleanness" (Matt. 23:27). Shockingly, Judaism's most revered authority actually endorses such sins as lying, oath-breaking, and indirect murder. And it even sanctions one of the greatest sins of all: child molestation.
Three Year Old Brides
When Christ accused the Pharisees of His day of being Satan's spiritual children, He fully realized what they were capable of. Second century Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, one of Judaism's very greatest rabbis and a creator of Kabbalah, sanctioned pedophilia—permitting molestation of baby girls even younger than three! He proclaimed, "A proselyte who is under the age of three years and a day is permitted to marry a priest." 1 Subsequent rabbis refer to ben Yohai's endorsement of pedophilia as "halakah," or binding Jewish law. 2 Has ben Yohai, child rape advocate, been disowned by modern Jews? Hardly. Today, in ben Yohai's hometown of Meron, Israel, tens of thousands of orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews gather annually for days and nights of singing and dancing in his memory.
References to pedophilia abound in the Talmud. They occupy considerable sections of Treatises Kethuboth and Yebamoth and are enthusiastically endorsed by the Talmud's definitive legal work, Treatise Sanhedrin.
The Pharisees Endorsed Child Sex
The rabbis of the Talmud are notorious for their legal hairsplitting, and quibbling debates. But they share rare agreement about their right to molest three year old girls. In contrast to many hotly debated issues, hardly a hint of dissent rises against the prevailing opinion (expressed in many clear passages) that pedophilia is not only normal but scriptural as well! It's as if the rabbis have found an exalted truth whose majesty silences debate.
Because the Talmudic authorities who sanction pedophilia are so renowned, and because pedophilia as "halakah" is so explicitly emphasized, not even the translators of the Soncino edition of the Talmud (1936) dared insert a footnote suggesting the slightest criticism. They only comment: "Marriage, of course, was then at a far earlier age than now." 3
In fact, footnote 5 to Sanhedrin 60b rejects the right of a Talmudic rabbi to disagree with ben Yohai's endorsement of pedophilia: "How could they [the rabbis], contrary to the opinion of R. Simeon ben Yohai, which has scriptural support, forbid the marriage of the young proselyte?" 4
Out of Babylon
It was in Babylon after the exile under Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC that Judaism's leading sages probably began to indulge in pedophilia. Babylon was the staggeringly immoral capitol of the ancient world. For 1600 years, the world's largest population of Jews flourished within it.
As an example of their evil, Babylonian priests said a man's religious duty included regular sex with temple prostitutes. Bestiality was widely tolerated. So Babylonians hardly cared whether a rabbi married a three year old girl.
But with expulsion of the Jews in the 11th century AD, mostly to western Christian lands, Gentile tolerance of Jewish pedophilia abruptly ended.
Still, a shocking contradiction lingers: If Jews want to revere the transcendent wisdom and moral guidance of the Pharisees and their Talmud, they must accept the right of their greatest ancient sages to violate children. To this hour, no synod of Judaism has repudiated their vile practice.
Sex with a "Minor" Permitted
What exactly did these sages say?
The Pharisees justified child rape by explaining that a boy of nine years was not a "man" (See, "Judaism and Homosexuality: A Marriage Made in Hell") Thus they exempted him from God's Mosaic Law: "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination" (Lev. 18:22) One passage in the Talmud gives permission for a woman who molested her young son to marry a high priest. It concludes, "All agree that the connection of a boy aged nine years and a day is a real connection; whilst that of one less than eight years is not." 5 Because a boy under 9 is sexually immature, he can't "throw guilt" on the active offender, morally or legally. 6
A woman could molest a young boy without questions of morality even being raised: "…the intercourse of a small boy is not regarded as a sexual act." 7 The Talmud also says, "A male aged nine years and a day who cohabits with his deceased brother's wife acquires her (as wife)." 8 Clearly, the Talmud teaches that a woman is permitted to marry and have sex with a nine year old boy.
Sex at Three Years and One Day
In contrast to Simeon ben Yohai's dictum that sex with a little girl is permitted under the age of three years, the general teaching of the Talmud is that the rabbi must wait until a day after her third birthday. She could be taken in marriage simply by the act of rape.
R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. (Sanh. 55b)
A girl who is three years of age and one day may be betrothed by cohabitation. . . .(Yeb. 57b)
A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her she becomes his. (Sanh. 69a, 69b, also discussed in Yeb. 60b)
It was taught: R. Simeon b. Yohai stated: A proselyte who is under the age of three years and one day is permitted to marry a priest, for it is said, But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves, and Phineas (who was priest, the footnote says) surely was with them. (Yeb. 60b)
[The Talmud says such three year and a day old girls are] . . . fit for cohabitation. . . But all women children, that have not known man by lying with him, it must be concluded that Scripture speaks of one who is fit for cohabitation. (Footnote to Yeb. 60b)
The example of Phineas, a priest, himself marrying an underage virgin of three years is considered by the Talmud as proof that such infants are "fit for cohabitation."
The Talmud teaches that an adult woman's molestation of a nine year old boy is "not a sexual act" and cannot "throw guilt" upon her because the little boy is not truly a "man." 9 But they use opposite logic to sanction rape of little girls aged three years and one day: Such infants they count as "women," sexually mature and fully responsible to comply with the requirements of marriage.
The Talmud footnotes 3 and 4 to Sanhedrin 55a clearly tell us when the rabbis considered a boy and girl sexually mature and thus ready for marriage. "At nine years a male attains sexual matureness… The sexual matureness of woman is reached at the age of three."
No Rights for Child Victims
The Pharisees were hardly ignorant of the trauma felt by molested children. To complicate redress, the Talmud says a rape victim must wait until she was of age before there would be any possibility of restitution. She must prove that she lived and would live as a devoted Jewess, and she must protest the loss of her virginity on the very hour she comes of age. "As soon as she was of age one hour and did not protest she cannot protest any more." 10
The Talmud defends these strict measures as necessary to forestall the possibility of a Gentile child bride rebelling against Judaism and spending the damages awarded to her as a heathen - an unthinkable blasphemy! But the rights of the little girl were really of no great consequence, for, "When a grown-up man has intercourse with a little girl it is nothing, for when the girl is less than this (three years and a day) it is as if one put the finger into the eye." The footnote says that as "tears come to the eye again and again, so does virginity come back to the little girl under three years." 11
In most cases, the Talmud affirms the innocence of male and female victims of pedophilia. Defenders of the Talmud claim this proves the Talmud's amazing moral advancement and benevolence toward children; they say it contrasts favorably with "primitive" societies where the child would have been stoned along with the adult perpetrator.
Actually, the rabbis, from self-protection, were intent on proving the innocence of both parties involved in pedophilia: the child, but more importantly, the pedophile. They stripped a little boy of his right to "throw guilt" on his assailant and demanded complicity in sex from a little girl. By thus providing no significant moral or legal recourse for the child, the Talmud clearly reveals whose side it is on: the raping rabbi.
Pedophilia Widespread
Child rape was practiced in the highest circles of Judaism. This is illustrated from Yeb. 60b:
There was a certain town in the land of Israel the legitimacy of whose inhabitants was disputed, and Rabbi sent R. Romanos who conducted an inquiry and found in it the daughter of a proselyte who was under the age of three years and one day, and Rabbi declared her eligible to live with a priest.
The footnote says that she was "married to a priest" and the rabbi simply permitted her to live with her husband, thus upholding "halakah" as well as the dictum of Simeon ben Yohai, "A proselyte who is under the age of three years and one day is permitted to marry a priest." 12
These child brides were expected to submit willingly to sex. Yeb. 12b confirms that under eleven years and one day a little girl is not permitted to use a contraceptive but "must carry on her marital intercourse in the usual manner."
In Sanhedrin 76b a blessing is given to the man who marries off his children before they reach the age of puberty, with a contrasting curse on anyone who waits longer. In fact, failure to have married off one's daughter by the time she is 12-1/2, the Talmud says, is as bad as one who "returns a lost article to a Cuthean" (Gentile) - a deed for which "the Lord will not spare him." 13 This passage says: "… it is meritorious to marry off one's children whilst minors."
The mind reels at the damage to the untold numbers of girls who were sexually abused within Judaism during the heyday of pedophilia. Such child abuse, definitely practiced in the second century, continued, at least in Babylon, for another 900 years.
A Fascination with Sex
Perusing the Talmud, one is overwhelmed with the recurrent preoccupation with sex, especially by the most eminent rabbis. Dozens of illustrations could be presented to illustrate the delight of the Pharisees to discuss sex and quibble over its minutest details.
The rabbis endorsing child sex undoubtedly practiced what they preached. Yet to this hour, their words are revered. Simeon ben Yohai is honored by Orthodox Jews as one of the very greatest sages and spiritual lights the world has ever known. A member of the earliest "Tannaim," rabbis most influential in creating the Talmud, he carries more authority to observant Jews than Moses.
Today, the Talmud's outspoken pedophiles and child-rape advocates would doubtlessly spend hard time in prison for child molestation. Yet here is what the eminent Jewish scholar, Dagobert Runes (who is fully aware of all these passages), says about such "dirty old men" and their perverted teachings:
There is no truth whatever in Christian and other strictures against the Pharisees, who represented the finest traditions of their people and of human morals. 14
Aren't Christ's words more appropriate?
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Matthew 23:27, 28.)
(Adapted from Ted Pike's book, Israel: Our Duty, Our Dilemma)
Endnotes:
1 Yebamoth 60b, p. 402.
2 Yebamoth 60b, p. 403.
3 Sanhedrin 76a.
4 In Yebamoth 60b, p. 404, Rabbi Zera disagrees that sex with girls under three years and one day should be endorsed as halakah.
5 Sanhedrin 69b.
6 Sanhedrin 55a.
7 Footnote 1 to Kethuboth 11b.
8 Sanhedrin 55b.
9 Sanhedrin 55a.
10 Kethuboth 11a.
11 Kethuboth 11b.
12 Yebamoth 60b.
13 Sanhedrin 76b.
14 Dagobert Runes, A Concise Dictionary of Judaism, New York, 1959.
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Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.
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