Sunday, February 15, 2009

An abuse of belief

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

An abuse of belief

Feb. 14, 2009
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , THE JERUSALEM POST

Abuse of women, children and the elderly in the religious Jewish community was long denied, on the grounds that observance of the Torah and Talmud prevented it. Physical, sexual, emotional, economic and other types of maltreatment of the weak, claimed this sector, occurs among secular Jews, but "not in our camp."

But this has been disproven by infamous cases of child abuse reported recently in the general media, and the opening of shelters for battered women in haredi neighborhoods.

THE RECENT ninth Jerusalem conference of ATEM Nefesh-Israel - an organization of observant social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists and other therapists - had several sessions devoted to this topic. Although all the 200 or so participants were religious (most of them women), the public nature of the conference at the Bayit Vegan Guesthouse constituted a welcome airing of the religious community's "dirty laundry," though some rabbis still insist on hiding it. The organization of religious therapists was founded by Shaare Zedek Medical Center neuropsychologist Dr. Judith Guedalia and geriatric social worker and Melabev found Leah Abramowitz.

Clearly, most religious Jewish men are good or excellent husbands and fathers. No data were provided on how common abuse is in the religious - especially haredi - community, and how it compares with the secular community, but the fact that it was discussed is a healthy phenomenon.

"Twenty years ago, no one would dream of talking openly about violence in the religious family," said Rabbi Dr. Benjamin (Benny) Lau. The modern Orthodox rabbi - who is director of the Center for Judaism and Society, heads Jerusalem's Institute for Social Justice at Beit Morasha, serves as rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue in the Katamon quarter and lectures on Jewish law and social justice at Bar-Ilan University - delivered a keynote address at the conference. "If a community gives a legitimacy to violence and abuse, these can happen. There are closets in haredi society that are still not open."

AN EYE-OPENING workshop on "Spiritual Abuse" of haredi women opened the closet door a crack. Dr. Nicole Dahan, a social worker at the Ariel University Center and Tzipi Levy, a social worker in the Jerusalem Municipality, have done much to put this subject on the public agenda.

While until recently, men's abuse of their partners was known to involve physical, emotional, sexual and verbal violence, as well as economic abuse and the reduction of freedom, Levy and Dahan discovered that some haredi men use God and the commandments to abuse their wives.

Such spiritual abuse occurs solely in observant communities, mostly the ultra-Orthodox. Men who spend all their time in a kollel (yeshiva for married men) and have a very low level of secular education may be jealous of their wives, who are often required to work and support their large families. A growing number of haredi wives attend courses and colleges, earn degrees and work in advanced fields such as computers and even engineering. This may lead to abuse by their husbands.

Levy, who like Dahan is Orthodox and who has worked as a municipal coordinator against abuse of women, described a haredi man who told all the relatives invited to his daughter's bat mitzva that his wife was "crazy" and proceeded to bad-mouth her even though this is forbidden by halacha.

After running workshops for secular abused women in northern Jerusalem, she began to organize them for haredi women. Groups of women met regularly for a year and a half and poured out their hearts about what they live with. They told stories about husbands who denigrated their prayers. "One husband told his wife that her praying was a 'waste of time,' that 'God doesn't listen' to her and that there was 'no value' to her supplications." Levy recalled one woman whose husband screamed at her in the middle of the night when she got out of bed "immodestly" in her bare feet to breastfeed her crying newborn.

Another example of spiritual abuse was a woman who very much wanted to observe the commandment of "separating halla" - a commandment given especially to women. This involves the removal and burning of a portion of dough before baking bread containing at least 1.6 kilos of flour. The moment of separating the dough and reciting a special blessing is viewed as an especially propitious moment for praying for one's loved ones. The act is symbolic, like offering a sacrifice on the Temple altar in expiation of sins, as a tithe to the kohen or as a plea to God to protect the woman from sorrow and pain. Separation of the halla is also regarded as a way to have an easy, safe birth and a good livelihood.

But one husband denigrated his wife for "wasting money on flour" or "making a mess on Friday afternoons" when she should have been preparing for Shabbat, and declared it was cheaper to buy readymade halla. Levy said the husband then ordered a child to go to the nearest grocery and buy loaves. Instead of saying a blessing on the homemade halla, he did so on the store-bought bread. "He whispered to his wife: 'When I say the blessing on the wine [kiddush], I will not include you!' The woman was thus forced to eat without the required inclusion in this blessing that begins the Shabbat meal."

Another technique of spiritual abuse is to bring bread into rooms that the wife has already meticulously cleaned before Pessah, or disappearing when the woman has returned "pure" from the ritual bath - a time when couples traditionally have sexual relations after about 12 days of abstention. He is thus able to control his wife by using their religion.

DAHAN NOTED that this type of abuse involves repeated attempts to harm the wife's spiritual life. "It is ridiculing, minimizing the wife's spiritual activity. It is usually not a one-time occurrence," she said, after interviewing numerous victims who feel shame, guilt and lack of worth. "The more seriously the woman takes religion, the harder it is for her."

Dahan added that she believes spiritual abuse can cause even more damage than physical abuse, and that "it seems to occur much more in the haredi community than the modern Orthodox because Jewish law has such a supreme role in haredi lives."

"Could spiritual abuse be perpetrated by wives on their husbands?" one woman asked Dahan.

"It could be, but we focused on abuse of women."

One haredi woman in the room, with seating separated by gender, raised her hand and suggested it does go both ways. "I know a woman who goes to the Western Wall to pray every week, leaving her husband to cook for the family, and she refuses to accompany him to weddings and other ceremonial family events."

"A man may dress like a haredi in black and with all the paraphernalia," suggested another haredi woman, "but he is just acting. It may be he suffers from psychopathology, or he may feel jealous of his wife."

Dahan nodded her head. "Yes, he can have a split personality, giving the impression of living a religious life while hiding his bad side."

A participant from the male side of the audience said men who spiritually abuse their wives may get support from their rabbis, some of whom assert that a Jewish woman must do exactly what her husband says, even if he is abusing her. "The rabbi may even quote the Talmud to back the man's arguments and help him control her.

But another haredi man said that "not every such story is spiritual violence. The husband may legitimately be opposed to his wife wearing a wig instead of a hat."

Dahan commented that "therapists have to be very careful not to label everything immediately as spiritual abuse. There's a thin line between a woman serving or listening to her husband and being punished by him."

A hassidic woman in the audience said she knew of spiritual abuse of hassidic women whose husbands are "devoted to the Admor [the hassidic rebbe who heads their community], but go to all events while ignoring their wives. I know of a woman who was getting fertility treatments, but the husband wouldn't cooperate because he "had" to be at the rebbe's sermon and festive meal.

Levy said Jerusalem social workers and mental health professionals have accepted their description of spiritual abuse and now screen haredi women who come for help. "There are all kinds of problems that a non-religious therapist wouldn't identify. But there are observant therapists who have asked me whether it's a desecration of God's name if they investigate accusations of spiritual abuse. I say it is a consecration of God's name to identify such acts and treat victims."

The social workers were more vague about the treatment than the phenomenon. "I am sure that some things have to be changed in the education of haredi girls," said Dahan. "Many may need to get a feeling of empowerment so they can choose a husband carefully and detect signs of potential abusers. Nefesh is gradually bringing changes by educating and integrating rabbis."

"We must give haredi women the choice of whether to be a victim or not," added Levy. "Problems often appear in childhood. We have to help the victim identify the problem. Men will be willing to change if doing so doesn't cost him more than he gains. Rabbis can find a halachic solution for the problem. Sometimes, if there is no hope, they can suggest divorce. They can instruct the woman to pray at the Kotel to empower her."

A haredi woman in the audience suggested: "If the husband is unwilling to take the blame, the rabbi can blame the woman even though she is not at fault, and then the husband will be more willing to go for treatment."

So the "dirty laundry" is being exposed. Now it's time for the sunlight to do its work.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304778373&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

63 comments:

Anonymous said...

YOB should just admit their wrongs and shut down the dungeon they call a "yeshiva."

This is one of the worst - if not, the worst place to send a child. The abuse is overwhelmingly detrimental for self esteem and can carry into adulthood for many.

If you don't mind daily abuse (physical, sexual, emotional) this is the place.

From my perspective, I think it is an absolute crime that shlomo mandel can make believe he is a saint that had no idea his rebbe was abusing little boys. I really hope something will happen to them real soon because this is just insanity.

There are so many off the path people who are that way because of schools like yob and people like shlomo mandel etc.

Anonymous said...

Symposium: Islamic Terror and Sexual Mutilation

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | 2/13/2009
During the horrifying siege of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Islamic terrorists sexually humiliated and mutilated the guests before shooting them dead. Why? Frontpage has assembled a distinguished panel to discuss this question with us today. Our guests are:

Dr. Joanie Lachkar, a licensed Marriage and Family therapist in private practice in Brentwood and Tarzana, California, who teaches psychoanalysis and is the author of How to Talk to a Narcissist (2007), The Many Faces of Abuse: Treating the Emotional Abuse of High -Functioning Women (1998), and The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Marital Treatment (1992). Dr. Lachkar speaks nationally and recently presented, "The Psychopathology of Terrorism" at the International Psychohistorical Association. She is an affiliate member of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute, an adjunct professor at Mount Saint Mary's College, a psychohistorian, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Emotional Abuse.



Dr. David Gutmann, emeritus professor of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago.



Dr. Phyllis Chesler, an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York , a psychotherapist, and the author of thirteen books including, Women and Madness, The New Anti-Semitism, and The Death of Feminism in which she describes how Islamic gender apartheid has been penetrating the West. She has written about her captivity in Afghanistan for Frontpage Magazine. She has a blogsite and may be reached through her website: phyllis-chesler.com.



and

Dr. Nancy Kobrin, a psycho-analyst, Arabist, and counter-terrorism expert.



FP: Dr. Joanie Lachkar, Dr. David Gutmann, Dr. Phyllis Chesler and Dr. Nancy Kobrin, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

Dr. Gutmann, let’s begin with you.

How do you see this sexual humiliation and mutilation that the Islamic terrorists perpetrated at Mumbai? This is a repetitive pattern when it comes to Islamic violence against infidels. How does one interpret this pathology?

Gutmann: The torture, mutilation and murders documented recently in Mumbai are certainly not limited to Kashmiri Jihadists. During the Israeli War of Independence Jewish fighters, including female soldiers captured by Arab irregulars, were routinely tortured and mutilated in the most obscene ways (by contrast, water-boarding would have furnished a pleasant interlude), and IDF officers warned their troops against being taken alive.

I cannot know what passions motivated the Mumbai torturers, but given that they are Islamists, and given that their savage practices matched those of the Palestinian Muslim guerrillas, we may assume that they shared the Palestinian’s sadism, as well as the psychology underlying that perversion.

The Palestinians, along with the majority of Arab males, belong to what has been called a “Shame” culture, in that they are quick to feel humiliated, and equally quick to defend against the sense of insult - usually by gross denial of their shameful condition, by projection of the humiliated condition onto others, or by massive retaliation against the insulting party. Thus, the Palestinians, who ran away from inferior Jewish forces during the Independence War, and who have never recovered from the shame of that self-imposed defeat, have vigorously exercised all of these contra-humiliation tactics: By claiming that they were forced out of their homes by superior Jewish forces, they deny that they ran away; by mutilating the bodies of their Jewish captives, the Palestinians metaphorically rob them of their manhood; and by launching suicide attacks against Jews they retaliate massively against the Israeli conqueror.

The Koran does not call for the torture and mutilation of captives, and so Islam per se cannot be held directly responsible for the Mumbai horrors; but Islam does sponsor, more than any other religion, the Shame cultures which in their turn sanction these terrible rituals. Again, I am assuming that, like the Palestinians, the Mumbai Jihadists are members of a shame culture, and that we can understand their actions from that perspective.

Psychologically speaking, torture and mutilation followed by murder as practiced most recently in Mumbai are the most complex of the shame-dispelling procedures, in that they expunge shame at the cost of incurring guilt: Even the most hardened terrorist will likely feel some qualms of guilt as he mutilates the body of a still living young woman. But for the members of a Shame culture, the feeling of humiliation is the most traumatic, and heavy prices are willingly paid to be rid of it. The aim of torture is to reveal the cowardice and femininity of the foe, and in so doing to export the torturer’s hidden shames onto the enemy, while co-opting his store of courage and hardihood – the masculinity – that he has given up, screamed away, under the knife. The enemy’s terror, castration and invaginated wounds confirm the torturer’s successful projection of his own covert and shameful womanliness and/or homosexuality: “Clearly, he and not me, is actually the woman.” In the murder which – as in Mumbai - follows this projection, the Jihadist kills off the qualities that he despises, now conveniently discovered in the person of the other: “This coward deserves nothing but death.”

Unfortunately, diagnosing the aggravated Shame syndrome will not lead to a cure. The Jihadists, whether in Mumbai or Palestine, can only be killed or jailed.

Chesler: Hello everyone, I am honored to join you.

First, we have no specific details about the torture or sexualized mutilation in Mumbai. The only article that addressed this, but only briefly, is the Mumbai Mirror. The photograph is not clear nor does the reporter, Santosh Mishra, give us any specific data. In the past month, only one Indian doctor was quoted, over and over again, saying that what he saw was "horrifying" and that he's never seen anything like it. For example:

“Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.”

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.”

This refusal, or perhaps inability, (of the physicians, police, counter-terrorism officials, family members--possibly the media), to provide us with full forensic details is understandable but frustrating but it also functions as another kind of terrorism. We are free to imagine "the worst" -- but not based on an actual forensic report with specific details.

I wonder if it is wise to engage in psycho-analytic elaborate deep psycho-analytic depth based on what we know in general about Arab, Muslim, male, and terrorist culture which runs the gamut from how they themselves are reared from infancy coupled with the ways in which sexual repression and indoctrination into terrorism jointly operate in terms of torture.

We have just learned two more things in terms of Mumbai and Al-Qaeda. First, that Jews were the highest-priority target in Mumbai. And, that Al-Qaeda has been using child pornography and pedophile sites to safely communicate with each other.

Therefore, based on this recent and additional information, I agree with Dr. Gutmann that central Asia has become Arabized and "Palestinianized." This means that the tribal/collective mentality which engages in the "unspoken" forms of sexualized child abuse (this includes the anal rape of both male and female children), can and does lead to adult paranoia, imagined "slights," savage scapegoating, the practice of human sacrifice and in the need for perpetual revenge to cleanse the real and imagined "shame."

But, these are behaviors that Arabs and Muslims engage in towards their own families and peoples. We need to understand how such normatively pathological groups then "cleanse" themselves of dishonor differently by attacking infidel groups, especially infidel women.

I think Dr. Gutmann's discussion of the Jew as "woman" is very good as is his understanding that the infidel must first be "feminized," by means of torture in order for the terrorist's shame to be "cleansed." I am sure that Dr. Kobrin will have quite a lot to say about this.

One last point: Some of this terrible behavior is not only confined to the Arabian Peninsula or to modern-era terrorism. I would bet that the Afghans taught Bin Laden a thing or two in Afghanistan. For example: an Afghan acquaintance recently related the following story to me:

Back in the 1940s, a close friend of his father's left Kabul for Kandahar. He set up shop as a mullah. He may have been teaching some local women to read or lending books to those who could already do so. One night, his door flies open, and, without a word, three Pushtun men knife him to death in front of his wife and three children, cut his body up into very small pieces, load them into two burlap bags and disappear into the night. His widow flees with her children and seeks asylum and justice in Kabul. Here is what the chief of police told her: He said that yes, he could send some men. The fighting would be close and fierce, he would have to lose some men in order to capture even one of the three murderers. But, he pointed out, were that to happen, the widow's days would be numbered, as would the days of her three children. They would be dead in days. He advised her to "let it go." And she did.

My point: Tribes are savage and atavistic in how they treat their "own." We need more specific forensic information about the torture and sexual mutilation in Bombay/Mumbai in order to psycho-analyze the tragic crime scene.

Kobrin: I want to thank FrontPage and you, Jamie, for intuitively picking up on the need to discussion the imagery of terrorism via the subject of mutilation. The mass media over-focuses on “the talk” of the terrorists and not their “walk.” The media doesn’t question “how they [perpetrators] perform tasks and take action” (p. 66) to borrow Dan Korem’s analogy (cf. his excellent book The Rage of the Random Actor).

This is not to say that the mass media doesn’t get off on the gruesome imagery – they just don’t bother or attempt to understand its symbolic communication. Perhaps because it is too terrorizing so that the media forms an identification with the aggressor. The media hypes the sadomasochism. Hence the media engages in mass mediated passive terrorism. There must be a way that the media can be held accountable for this. I don’t know but Korem rightly notes that the media acts as an accelerant for the perpetrators. (p. 75)

Yes, it is very frustrating not to have access to the forensics and that is crucial. My hope though is that with this unique symposium those who are working in the forensics of terrorism will be willing to explore this symbolic communication, a kind of pantomime that these terrorists unwittingly reveal to us through this horrific mutilation and the making of body parts. It is the result of a shame honor environment as Phyllis and David rightly note. Troubling too is that there is a Palestinization of violence. The ummah is a fused regressed group which engages in passive terrorism by not setting limits with their terrorists and engage in abusive child-rearing practices. Halim Barakat wrote that the Arab family is a miniature of Arab society.

In shame honor families the symbiotic tie to the mother is suffocating. Sudhir Kakar, a Delhi psychoanalyst, writes about large extended families which remind me of Palestinian families: “. . .the frequent comings and goings of other adults in an extended family can also make children clutch to their own parents, especially the mother with marked intensity as they seek to establish intimacy, enduring and trusting relationship in their inner representational worlds – to establish object constancy. . .” The Color of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, and Conflict, p. 93.

Their rage is against their internal mothers, which they project out and into their unwitting victims. The body parts are a symbolic representation of an unintegrated picture of their mothers – part objects of her body left over from very early childhood. They feel persecuted by her because they are not permitted to separate and they are treated as objects by their mothers because of the female’s devalued status. Oddly mutilation is their attempt to seek intimacy.

The mutilation takes us deeper into their internal disturbed lives. To go there we need the brilliant work of Abby Stein, a professor of criminology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who devotes a section of her book Prologue to Violence: Child Abuse, Dissociation and Crime, on the mutilation of objects pgs. 54-55. We can speculate by drawing on FBI profiling for serial killers that they have some kind of a sexual perversion. Mutilation expresses rage that can not be satiated by murder.

You might wonder – well these poor Jewish people did to deserve such a brutal death. Indeed the victims of the Mumbai Massacre did nothing wrong but in the eyes of the terrorists and because it is their projection – “. . ..essentially safe figures [i.e. the victims] can radiate menace while ostensibly posing no real threat to psychic integrity.”

Since Stein says it better than I can, I quote at length and pass the baton on to my esteemed colleagues in this symposium for further comment:

“Guilt forms but, instead of leading to mourning and concern, it leads to an even greater feeling of persecution. As regret grows, the victim seems to be rebuking the criminal, especially the partially perceived eyes that transmit blame and musts be existed. The threatening symbol [i.e. the mother] is concretized so that it seems agentic; only obliteration will suffice. Through mutilation, or other kinds of overkill, any chance that the abuser will revive is eliminated; the imagined persecutor is somehow deader than dead. Mutilation is the ultimate evidence of partialization; the victim is cut up to match the internal picture that the offender has of him: a tongue that scolds, hands that pinion and pilfer, feet that abandon, eyes that see all or naught.” P. 55

Lachkar: I would like to start by asking the panel: why don't terrorists just kill their captives? Why do they need to mutilate or cut off their heads? Most photos were too gruesome for Western broadcast to view, but the Arab world had them displayed throughout.

To expand on Kobrin's theme about symbolic communication, I agree that the rage toward the "internal mother" becomes a symbolic enactment of projected rage via mutilation fantasies .e.g, strewn/severed/mutilated body parts as we just witnessed in Mumbai. I would like to refer to this process as the "unmentalized experience." Terrorists are enacting some kind of unconscious fantasy by translocating their rage, their anger, their shame (Aar), their humiliation, their envy and states of deprivation onto others. According to Melanie Klein, it is an unconscious defense mechanism which allows the "projector" to rid the psyche of its unwanted parts by projecting them externally, hence the "external enemy."

The goal of the projector is to make the "projectee" feel the pain they feel. This is what I have referred to in many of my earlier articles as a collective group unconscious fantasy. In psychoanalytic terms this is known as projective identification, a most useful concept with patients who exhibit primitive defenses, but also helpful in understanding horrific crimes and torturous acts committed on innocent victims by terrorist militant organizations. I believe the answer lies in this concept and is applicable to such groups as Hamas who share similar characteristics. To state this more bluntly: I collectively diagnose them as having a severe malignant borderline personality disorder.

It all comes down to victimization. Using innocent women and children as human shields is a good example. Muslims have learned the art of how to evoke world sympathy. "Look what the bad Americans and Israeli's have done to us. They have destroyed our mosques and schools." The LA Times has even been coerced to referring to them as "Courageous Victims (1/8/08, p1). Al Jazeera uses such phrases as "war crimes" and Palestinian Holocaust." This resorts back to the primitive mind because Arabs have been brainwashed through dogmatic verses paralyzing the capacity to think.

Victimization is the outcome of projective identification that which strips the psyche of all rational thought, the capacity to think, action without critical thinking (Taqlid). "So I will cut off the Rabbi's head so he won't be able think, (the Talmudic mind), and cut off his penis so he won't make more babies (envy as the replacement for thought). "Now you can go to hell and show the devil how you have sinned (Israeli analyst Ronit Brautbar, personal communication). One could say there is a clash of logic, "Inshallah" (the will of Allah), and the other by reason. This can explain why Islam holds a double standard. "You can't make fun of Mohammad but we can make buffoons out of your Rabbis (not only make fun of but mutilate them.)"

According to Klein, all children have murderous and mutilation fantasies, the difference is that as the child evolves the child learns the difference between the fantasy and the act itself. In other words, it is one thing to fantasize about cutting up mother's breast or daddy's penis (as did her children do in play therapy with dolls), but it is another thing to actually do it. I believe O.J. Simpson is a good example of this. I believe this is what is meant by "primitive defenses" or the primitive mind.

This brings our attention to the whole enigma that Islam is allegedly a religion of peace. Why would the terrorists sexually humiliate the guests before killing them? An example of this lies in the concept of peace. Islam has become a political ideology more than a religion. What most people don't realize is that what peace may mean to a Westerner or an Israeli has a different meaning to a Muslim. Peace in the generic terms means "peace." To an Arab it means "honor" (sharaf). Honor means to save face which ultimately leads to revenge and retaliation at any cost.

I completely agree with Guttman's analysis as he associates these savage acts to Palestinian shame and perversion which lurks behind an entire "shame culture," or what Chesler aptly refers to as "cleansing." What I might like to add to the mix is how perversion is inextricably linked to sadism and erotic voyeurism. Robert Stoller (1975) in Hostility of Sex explains how the voyeur derives pleasure through hostility, revenge and being in complete control.

They know how to play the shame/blame game. The Muslim ego never admits to defeat, even if they lose they pretend they won or else blame the Americans or the West. To preserve the group's identity away from shame the preservation of self becomes a more pervasive force than life itself. In sum, terrorism is designed not only to brutalize their victims but also to threaten our freedom, our democracy and our safety. Thus we have beheadings and mutilated genitals.

Gutmann: My co-contributors have added much to our understanding of the motivations driving the Mumbai (and other) Islamic terrorists. But as has been pointed out, there is a limit to what even the most sensitive clinicians can infer from data that lacks forensic detail and personal information.

So I will switch my focus from questions of motive, to questions of prevention.

If, as has been suggested, Islamic terrorism is a product of an Islamic culture devoted to overcoming the sense of humiliation, then how – short of allowing ourselves to be humiliated by the Jihadists – can we Americans, Jews and Europeans of the Democratic West defeat the extremists without adding to the sense of shame that fuelled the sadistic rage of Mumbai?

Not an easy task: the Islamists hoard their shame: they still remember, bitterly, the crusades, and their loss of Spanish Andalucia to the Catholics in the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, the United States has successfully fought and tamed Shame/Honor societies in the past. The Confederacy, the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians, all paradigm Shame/Honor societies, were all overcome in total wars, and all became either part of our nation, or our trusted Democratic allies. And it now begins to appear that Iraq and perhaps Afghanistan will join their company.

There appears to be a uniquely American approach to war – one combining ruthlessness and mercy - that can lead to such unexpectedly good outcomes. Thus, as with the Germans and Japanese in WWII, we first ruthlessly firebombed and A-bombed their cities, destroyed their air forces, sank their fleets, demanded unconditional surrender, and decapitated their wartime leadership. But then, against all precedents, as victors we did not pilfer their industry, turn their men into slaves or their women into whores. Instead, in peace-time we showed a quality of mercy that could not have been predicted from our practice of total war - the mercy that a humiliated enemy would not expect from a triumphant conqueror. Thus, we sponsored the rise of hitherto suppressed moderate leaders, we helped to rebuild the enemy’s shattered cities; and under the Marshall Plan we encouraged their economies to the point where the Germans and Japanese became, for awhile, our major competitors for world markets.

Perhaps, and more important, we may have changed the cultural bases of Japanese and German self-esteem, away from shame-avoidant systems based on autocratic rule over inferiors and women, to a system in which self-esteem is based on tangible accomplishments in the market-place of goods and ideas.

Unfortunately, in bringing about such benign outcomes, total war is as important as mercy and must precede it. The warriors of a Shame/Honor society must be crushed militarily, before they are ready to appreciate, and to respond to, the healing quality of mercy.

Chesler: I love Kobrin's references and how she uses them. I agree with the concept that "mutilation expresses rage that cannot be satiated by murder" and that it renders the "imagined persecutor" as "deader than dead."

I also very much like what Lakhar says, especially that "Arabs have been brainwashed through dogmatic verses paralyzing the capacity to think." I think we all agree that a "shame and honor" culture means that the "shamed" or "humiliated" children (and brainwashed adults) will perpetually be seeking "honor," over and over again. Gutmann is right to want to switch to prevention.

Alas, it is too late to prevent what is already upon the West in Europe. The Intifada of 2000 has gone global in a frightening, almost "sudden" kind of way. From their perches at the universities and the UN, the Muslim mobs have taken to the streets. Gaza is global. The same kind of Muslim mob that accounts for the intimidation and murder of most other Muslims--is now unleashed in Europe and on North American campuses and political demonstrations.

If Europe does not immediately deport the radical mullahs and their faithful followers they really are doomed. And, if North America allows them entry (via sermons on al-Jazeera, satellite television, poisonous academics) then we too will find ourselves increasingly at risk. There are only 5-8 million Muslims in America as compared to 30-50 million Muslims in Europe. Of course, America should remain a safe haven for Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents, feminists and secularists but I no longer think we can afford to "tolerate" the intolerant, to "negotiate" with the sadistic death-eaters.

The idea that President Obama has already dispatched George Mitchell -- not to solve the crises in Darfur or Congo--but in Gaza -- fills me with sorrow. We now know that no more than 600, mainly Hamas terrorists, died while fighting in Gaza, and that very few civilians died. We also know that Israel kept Gaza supplied with humanitarian aid--something America and our allies did not do during the bombing of Dresden, Berlin, Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

The Dalai Lama recently admitted that "non-violence" against terrorism is useless and will not work because their minds are "closed." One cannot negotiate with closed minds.

I agree with Gutmann in terms of his analogy to how World War Two was won. The de-programming that has to take place cannot even begin until the West has won the day militarily and economically.

Kobrin: I agree with Gutmann in his view wanting to shift us away from mere discussion to that of prevention. Understanding the root causes helps us think more clearly about what needs to be done.

For example, understanding the shame-honor aspect that runs throughout Islamic ideologies and death like fusional imagery dovetailing with tribe and clan cultures, the combination reinforces a concept known in psychoanalytic terms as splitting, i.e. thinking in terms of good and bad, black and white, love and hate thinking -- which promotes hatred and violence because there is no room for areas in between.

With shame and blame comes the inability to think. A closed mind, instilled in early childhood, leads to deprivation, which in turn leads to envy. which then leads to revenge and retaliation at all costs -- even self-sacrifice.

This kind of closed mind has an insatiable reservoir of rage at its core, the likes of which engages in the theme of our symposium – mutilation. This kind of perversion has no boundaries and it profusely bonds and fuses with its victims through mutilation and murder.

Now I will turn to prevention. One way that I have learned well from Lachkar is that when you are in such a hostile environment where the blaming and the threats are non-stop, boundaries maintain safety. Is this not too the ultimate function of war? Establishing a firm boundary. You have to draw a line in the sand and defend it. Hamas still needs to be brought to its knees as well as Hezbollah. The entire culture has to be rebuilt as Gutmann rightly suggests.

Chesler opens the next avenue which must be explored more systematically and that is the media – what to do with it and how should we counter a media that is now identified with the aggressor? What are our options? As Nacos has written, we have mass mediated terrorism. One might refer to this as covert terrorism. Terrorism that is implicit, so most people do not recognize its destructive nature. That is why scapegoating occurs so frequently.

We are now all connected and attached via its imagery. Lachkar points out though that there is a difference between what American news carries concerning images and Arab news channels. It seems that so much more needs to be understood. Indeed some would argue that our attachment to the internet and the media especially during a terrorist attack like Mumbai is addictive in nature and I would argue, expresses a kind of traumatic bonding concerning our mothers. This is the hidden realm of our own terrors, which we share in common with the terrorists. This is how the terrorists speak to us even though we may not know Arabic. They speak in a nonverbal language which I call Desperanto. We get hooked into their terrors as human beings.

As I have said before terrorists don’t have a normative sense of intimacy; their intimacy is violence, blood, mass murder, hysteria of suicide, threats, etc. While this region is foreboding to most, it is key to dismantling the blunt force of terrorism. It is also the "gift of terror" to expand upon the work of Gavin De Becker's Gift of Fear. We have the potential to turn the tables on the terrorists and to call their bluff, even though the work is deadly and serious.

Lachkar: I am very much impressed with Guttman's courage and bravado that although he values our contributors’ psychological insights and motivations, his focus moves the attention to prevention. I agree and appreciate his hard core stance that one must create strong hard-line boundaries or as Chesler reminds us: that even the Dalai Lama admits that "non-violence" against terrorism is useless."

So where do prevention and psychology meet? I believe they go together. Before we "prevent" we must "understand." Kobrin focuses on the early internal mother as a symbolic representation of projected rage via sadism and mutilation fantasies. I expand the notion to the idea that all children have sadistic and mutilation fantasies, and eventually evolve learning the difference between an act of "doing" from an act of "thinking about doing."

Knowing how to play the shame/blame game leads to what I refer to as a collective ego dysfunctionality -- with all the components of victimization, envy and distortions in thinking, judgment and perception, and a media that knows how to manipulate public opinion.

The transparent nature of the Muslim culture must be exposed. For example, when confronted about human rights abuse, the Muslim world often turns it around claiming human rights is a Western concept and not applicable to the Muslim world. How about educating young Muslim potential terrorist recruits, lonely isolated young men who get seduced and enticed into the brotherhood as they are met with warm welcoming embraces, let alone good food, hospitality, music and promises belonging to assuage their isolation and endless feelings of desolation? Finally, I conclude with what I mentioned in our last symposium: we must train and instil worldwide peace counsellors throughout the world, providing education and insights along with cultural events (music, dance, art etc.)

FP: Dr. Joanie Lachkar, Dr. David Gutmann, Dr. Phyllis Chesler and Dr. Nancy Kobrin, thank you for joining Frontpage Symposium.
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's managing editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. He is also the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left and the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union (McGill-Queens University Press, 2002) and 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

Anonymous said...

I, too, live about 900 to 1000 feet from a school.
----------------------------------

Child molester lives too
close to school

* Alyssa Ivanson

BROOKLYN, Ind. (WANE) - A convicted child molester in Brooklyn, Indiana has less than 30 days to find a new home.

Brooklyn is a small town southwest of Indianapolis.

Dennis Waltz lives in a parsonage almost 900 feet away from Brooklyn Elementary School.

The law says that he needs to be at least 1000 feet away.

Waltz lives in the parsonage with his sister and her husband, Reverend Frank Sams.

Sams agrees that the law is the law, but thinks that a little more than a hundred feet doesn't make much of a difference.

The issue will be brought up at a Brooklyn town hall meeting Thursday at 7 p.m.

Anonymous said...

I am against keeping the names of sexual abuse victims private. If they can take down holy torah giants, we should know their names so we can threaten them to withdraw their silly accusations. ---

http://www.macaudailytimesnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22895&Itemid=28

Anonymous said...

Let's by all means hear from Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who emerged from his meeting with Bloomberg to inform us that: "The Orthodox Jewish community will continue the practice that has been practiced for over 5,000 years. We do not change. And we will not change." You can preach it, rabbi, but you have no more right to practice it than a Muslim imam who preaches the duty of holy war has the right to put his teachings into effect. And Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, the 57-year-old man who ministered to the three boys in question, is currently under a court order that forbids him from doing it again—pending an investigation by the health department. What "investigation?" If another man of that age were found to be slicing the foreskins of little boys and then sucking their penises and their blood, he would be in jail—one hopes—so fast that his feet wouldn't touch the ground. If he then told the court that God ordered him to do it, he would be offering precisely the defense that thousands of psychos have already made so familiar. Preach it rabbi. Preach it to the judge.

Read full article - Copy/paste -

http://www.slate.com/id/2125225/

Anonymous said...

TOKYO — Japan’s finance minister, facing ridicule and criticism for embarrassing behavior at the weekend Group of 7 meeting in Rome, said Tuesday he would resign.

Shoichi Nakagawa raised eyebrows for slurred speech, muddled answers and appearing to fall asleep at a news conference in Rome on Saturday. A clip of Mr. Nakagawa in which he appeared to be groggy in front of journalists has been circulating on YouTube.

After intense criticism from politicians who said he had embarrassed Japan on the world stage, Mr. Nakagawa on Tuesday said he would step down after Parliament passes a series of budget measures aimed at stimulating the economy. it was unclear when exactly this will be, but probably not for several weeks, analysts said.

The delay in vacating the position could cause political bickering, with opposition politicians likely to demand that he step down immediately.

“It’s possible that the opposition will demand he resign immediately, rather than after the budget in late March, and that could complicate the situation," said Hiroshi Shiraishi, an economist at BNP Paribas in Tokyo.

Mr. Nakagawa’s behavior was a major embarrassment to Prime Minister Taro Aso, who is under fire for his handling of the economy and whose public support has plummeted ahead of elections later this year.

Anonymous said...

Protecting yourself from abuse

TEEN EDITORIAL

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

As age-old as the issue of abuse may be, recent occurrences have shown that abuse can come from almost anybody for almost any reason. Abuse being physical, verbal or emotional can be life threatening to almost anybody, especially when nothing is done to correct or minimise the problem.

By abuse TEENage is not talking about the 'one good lick' you get for lying to your mother or the 'work detention' given for not completing your assignment. The abuse we speak out against includes parent-child abuse, teacher-student abuse, peer abuse and the usually forgotten relationship abuse that leads to injury or, in worst case scenarios, death.

Recently, parent-child physical abuse has moved from severe black and blue spots from the belt or hand, to nursing third-degree burns, being beaten with a plastic chair and so on. Verbal abuse is also present in the home and includes name-calling and constant teasing from siblings and sometimes even parents.

The home is the place where most TEENs learn interpersonal skills. For this reason, parent-child abuse can be seen as the cause for other types of abuse. Persons may say that it is a result of the TEEN becoming 'a product of his/her environment' and may become the abuser in a peer or relationship situation.

Outside of the home, possibly fatal physical abuse and verbal abuse are also present.

Many girls are inappropriately touched by strangers and even acquaintances while on the bus, in a taxi or while walking. This is a common occurrence and should be reported or avoided as much as possible.

Being bullied or teased at school is abuse, especially when the person on the receiving end cannot fight for himself/herself. Being stabbed for a pen or being beaten because you are smart are forms of peer abuse that are common in most high schools around the island.

Verbal abuse from teachers or peers, such as being called 'stupid', 'retarded' or some other demeaning name can cause even deeper wounds than a slap ever will. It is important to remember that although it is said that 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me' many persons are not as confident or outgoing to dismiss the comments from peers and teachers.

In most cases, verbal abuse is ignored as persons do not consider how much it may affect the victim. Teachers forget that they are to set the example, and peers disregard how the next person may feel.

Most times when the issue of abuse of TEENs is examined, relationship abuse is overlooked for the more publicly acknowledged types outlined above.

Many TEENage relationships are just too serious and many times result in situations where these words are uttered, 'if I can't have you nobody will' or 'you broke my heart so I'm going to kill you/myself'. This type of abuse may be more common in older TEENs, but may become an issue when the relationship is with an older or more demanding partner.

In many cases, abuse is a common cause of TEEN cutting or suicide, just to release the pain.

TEENage believes that TEENs need to stand up against abuse and build up protective barriers to avoid situations, persons or environments that can allow for abuse. Some situations to avoid include:

. upsetting you parents if you know that they are hot-tempered;

. entering a packed taxi or bus and walking alone. Girls, this will minimise the opportunity for a stranger to touch you inappropriately; and

. being around a person who you are not comfortable with, especially if you feel that he/she may be an abuser.

If you feel that you are a victim of abuse, or know someone who is a victim, it is also important to know who to approach to discuss the issue.

TEENage recommends that abuse be discussed with your guidance counsellor, peer counsellors or a trusted adult (parents or church members) or you can contact the abuse hotline or the Child Development Agency at 1-888-991-3353.

Anonymous said...

Keeping Kids Safe
Posted by Lorie Byrd
Published: February 17, 2009 - 2:18 PM

In one of his last assignments as an FBI agent, Bob Hamer went undercover to investigate NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Assoc.). He wrote a book about the experience, The Last Undercover, which I highly recommend. Bob has a piece posted at Big Hollywood today about some of the lessons he learned from that experience. Since his infiltration of NAMBLA he has made it his mission to alert the public to the danger child predators pose in every community across the country.

During my membership I corresponded with approximately 165 members and met face-to-face with about three dozen. The membership ran the socio-economic gamut. I met men with advanced degrees and those who were high school dropouts; Mensa members and the barely literate; married and single; wealthy and destitute. What they all shared was a need and desire to be around like-minded men seeking to legitimize their sexual attraction to boys.

I never met Charles Jaynes, the NAMBLA member convicted of the brutal murder of Jeffrey Curley and now serving a life sentence. He was the exception. All of the men with whom I dealt were "persuasion predators." They didn't sneak into homes in the dead of night and abduct sleeping boys from their beds. Their tactics were much more subtle. One member, a former special education teacher, who as a result of our investigation was sentenced to thirty years, admitted to molesting sixty to seventy boys and "grooming" another 200. Like most members, he cherished the opportunity to develop a relationship with a boy, attempting to legitimize that relationship by calling it "boy love" or "intergenerational sex" or "Greek love." In my discussions and correspondence with these members one thing stood out: They targeted the lonely, the emotionally empty, the hurting boy. Those boys seeking affirmation and attention from a father-figure were especially vulnerable. Grooming was like a courting process. It might begin with a look, then a compliment, a conversation lavishing praise and establishing a common connection, and finally a trust.

I am often asked how we can protect our children. There is no magic formula for identifying a molester. There may be clues, but they are not foolproof. We cannot prove a negative. We can prove a person is a child molester. We cannot prove he is not. But Ann, let me expand on what you have said. I know you have been attacked for your chapter on single mothers and of course, there are exceptions to most rules, but single moms (and married moms and dads) let me give one piece of advice that Ann didn't render. Based upon my three year affiliation with these child molesters, I observed one thing: Not one boy who came from a home with a strong, loving father figure was successfully targeted by a persuasion predator.

Protection may be that simple...a boy needs a loving father.

Anonymous said...

Isn't this the problem with the "leaders" we have today? They do not - will not accept responsibility for their sinful ways. Disgusting!
-

"We do not change. And we will not change."

Anonymous said...

http://www.amw.com/fugitives/case.cfm?id=63344

Overview
Babysitter Arrested, Accused Of Running Molestation Ring
Overview
Aaron Zendejas, 24, is in custody for allegedly accepting money to allow Yaffe and others to molest children.
View Larger

San Diego, Calif. cops arrested Aaron Zendejas on January 28, 2009, for allegedly operating a child molestation ring.

Police say Zendejas gained access to young children by working as a babysitter, and accepted payment to allow others to have sex with the young children left in his care.

Authorities say the minors’ ages range from 3 to 10 years old.

Zendejas maintains that he is innocent, but police say they have photographic evidence to the contrary.

Zendejas is being held on $500,000 bail for charges that include child molestation, manufacturing child pornography, kidnapping and committing a sex crime with a child 10 years or younger.

Zendejas is suspected of operating out of the El Cajon and Satee areas of San Diego County. Authorities are trying to get anyone to come forward whose children were in the care of Zendejas.

Cops say they found photographic evidence on Yaffe's home computer and cell phone.
Identified Child Sex Suspect Still At Large

Police are now on the hunt for Jared Ravin Yaffe, a man who allegedly paid Zendejas to sexually abuse children. He is also accused of videotaping the acts.

Cops say they found photographic evidence on Yaffe’s home computer and cell phone.

Cops have identified at least five victims so far.

Yaffe is described as a 30-year-old white male. He is 5’6” tall and weighs 230 lbs. Yaffe has brown hair and brown eyes. His last known address is in San Diego, and he has connections to Florida and Atlanta, Ga.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of Jared Ravin Yaffe, call our hotline at 1-800-CRIME-TV.

Wanted For
Information valid as of last update.
Oral Copulation With A Child Under 10 Years Old, San Diego, CA; Jan 29, 2009

Anonymous said...

*******************************
Gutmann: The torture, mutilation and murders documented recently in Mumbai are certainly not limited to Kashmiri Jihadists. During the Israeli War of Independence Jewish fighters, including female soldiers captured by Arab irregulars, were routinely tortured and mutilated in the most obscene ways (by contrast, water-boarding would have furnished a pleasant interlude), and IDF officers warned their troops against being taken alive.
******************************

Did they torture reb holtzberg and his wife before killing them?

It was reported that there was reason to believe they roughed up little moshe holtzberg, pointing out he was badly bruised. It looked like it was intentionally inflicted.

If these Islamic monsters can be this evil to an innocent baby, surely his parents were susceptible to at the very least, the same cruel treatment.

Anonymous said...

A man who founded a Muslim-American television station to help fight Muslim stereotypes is to appear on Wednesday in a suburban Buffalo court on charges that he decapitated his wife last week.

The man, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, went to a police station in Orchard Park, N.Y., on Thursday to report that his wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan, was dead, Chief Andrew Benz said on Tuesday. Mr. Hassan told the police that her body could be found in the nearby office of the television station, Bridges TV. The police later arrested him on charges of second-degree murder, Chief Benz said.

On Feb. 6, Ms. Hassan, 37, had filed for divorce and obtained an order of protection against Mr. Hassan, Chief Benz said.

It was unclear on Tuesday night whether Mr. Hassan had legal representation.

The news of the killing stunned Buffalo, a city already overwhelmed with emotion by the commuter-plane crash that killed 50 people in the hamlet of Clarence Center on Thursday.

The gruesome death of Ms. Hassan prompted outrage from Muslim leaders after suggestions that it had been some kind of “honor killing” based on religious or cultural beliefs.

Continued..

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/nyregion/18behead.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print

Anonymous said...

Robert James Stoever, 54, was arrested Sunday night after a Baltimore County police officer saw him and a teen in Stoever's parked car in a church parking lot on Edmondson Avenue.

Police said Stoever initially told them he was teaching the boy how to drive. But according to charging documents, he eventually admitted to having sexual relationship with the teen.

Anonymous said...

Andrew Luster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born December 15, 1963(1963-12-15)
Las Vegas, Nevada
Conviction(s) Rape, sodomy, oral copulation, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution
Penalty 124 years imprisonment
Status Incarcerated in Mule Creek State Prison
Parents Elizabeth Luster
Children Two children

Andrew Stuart Luster (born December 15, 1963) is the great-grandson of cosmetics giant Max Factor, Sr. and an heir to the Max Factor cosmetics fortune. He grew up in Malibu, California and attended Windward School in Santa Monica. Convicted of a series of rapes in 2003, Luster had been supported by a $3.1 million trust fund as he traveled and surfed at various beaches.

Arrest, conviction and appeal

In 1996, 1997 and 2000 Luster was accused of giving three women GHB, a known date rape drug, and raping them while they were unconscious. Luster was brought to trial in 2002. Soon afterward, police officers found videotapes of Luster raping the women in question, including one tape labeled "Shauna GHBing."

In January, 2003, while on trial for rape, Luster left the country and was declared a fugitive from justice by the judge. Although his attorneys attempted to halt proceedings until he could be located, the judge ruled that Luster would be tried in absentia.

The trial went ahead without him and on January 22, after two days of deliberations, the jury found Luster guilty of 86 of 87 charges against him (many of which had been added to California state law in the wake of the 1996 federal drug-induced sexual assault law) and deadlocked on a single poisoning charge.

Luster was convicted of 20 counts of drug-induced rape, 17 counts of raping an unconscious victim, and multiple counts of sodomy and oral copulation by use of drugs. Luster was sentenced to six years for each of the 20 counts of rape (to be served consecutively) and another four years for poisoning, for a total of 124 years in prison. Luster was also ordered to pay a $1 million fine.[1]

The California Court of Appeal refused the appeal his attorneys filed on his behalf, [2] ruling that as a fugitive from justice, Luster had forfeited his right to appeal. The California Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court later refused to overturn this ruling.[3] [4][5]

Andrew Luster was later famously caught by bounty hunters, including Duane "Dog" Chapman, in Mexico.

Anonymous said...

"Releasing Gilad Schalit will require us to pay a painful price. We will have to release terrorists, people who are guilty of very difficult crimes," Regev said. "The ministers supported and understood this."

Anonymous said...

At least the beheading was done in the name of honor. Very honorable....

Pakistani-American charged with beheading his wife

NEW YORK: A Pakistani-American businessman has been arrested and charged with the murder of his estranged wife, according to media reports on Sunday.

Police in the town of Orchard Park, near Buffalo, have charged Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with the murder of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, 37. It was reported that he beheaded his wife at his company's office in upstate New York. Police found his wife’s body in his office, the reports said. Hassan had told the police on Thursday evening where his wife’s body was. The couple was in the process of divorcing after bouts of domestic violence, Aasiya’s lawyer told the Buffalo News. She had an order of protection that had him out of the couple’s house as of February 6. app

Anonymous said...

NJ high court looks at child sex abuse law

February 18, 2009

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey's Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Wednesday in a case that examines how the statute of limitations is applied in complaints of child sexual abuse.

The case concerns a man who alleges he was sexually abused by his stepfather beginning when he was nine years old.

The man, identified in court papers as "R.L.," filed a complaint in 2004, nearly 14 years after the last alleged incident. He contends he only became aware of the full effects of the abuse in 2002.

Attorneys for defendant Kenneth Voytac claim that the realization occurred in 1999 and that the complaint didn't fall within the two-year window allowed by law.

Anonymous said...

Nobody treatens me. Jus esk de teachears who vent to my ovvice and demending gelt frim mir. I said. valk out of heer. yuh! ich bin a groiseh drek ic veis. tu bed in yoo.

Anonymous said...

Margulies from tt is as low as they come. He has a long history of abusive and offensive behavior. He should drop dead real soon so the world can benefit from his exit. AN ANIMAL HAS MORE CLASS THAN THIS RASHA MERUSHA.

exposemolesters said...

Rabbis advising to remain quiet. why am I not the least bit surprised?

I detest these dreks of society. They are NOT HUMAN. Hear me Margo? Mandel? Hopfer? Niederman...?

What about the thousands of more senile midgets of the Torah world? Can it get any sicker than having these asher yatzar freaks provide the klal with such catastrophic results?

How hideous!
=====================================

Jerusalem man indicted for sexually abusing nephews
Feb. 12, 2009
Etgar Lefkovits , THE JERUSALEM POST

A 40-year-old Jerusalemite was indicted Thursday in a Jerusalem court for allegedly sexually molesting his two young nephews for more than six years with the knowledge of their parents.

The two children, aged nine and four, were repeatedly molested and physically abused by their mother's brother in their Mea She'arim home from the age of two, the indictment related.

The children's uncle, who has been diagnosed as "slightly mentally retarded," abused the children - the older of whom suffers from autism - both at their parents' home and at nearby locations in the city, including a dentist's office, according to the charge sheet.

These incidents occurred "dozens" of times over the years, the police said.

The children's mother, who is pregnant with her fourth child, heard her kids wailing when they were sexually abused at home, but did nothing to stop the attacks, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said. Police said the children's father, who had also been aware of the abuse, had told interrogators that he had consulted a rabbi and been told to keep quiet.

It was not immediately clear whether a rabbi had actually been consulted in the case.

The charge sheet related that on separate occasions, both the mother and the father had even walked into the bedroom as the suspect was sexually abusing one of the children on the bed. When the parents entered the room, the suspect got dressed and temporarily stopped the abuse, the indictment said.

The case came to light after a woman in the dentist's office saw the suspect molesting the four-year-old in the waiting room, and immediately reported him to police.

The parents, who were also arrested, are expected to be indicted Sunday in the Jerusalem District Court and will be charged with failing to report the abuse and failing to prevent a crime, police said Thursday.

The names of the suspects could not be published due to the involvement of minors in the case.

In another twist to the case, the suspect's brother was arrested this week for allegedly sexually molesting other children in the neighborhood.

He was released on bail Thursday by a Jerusalem court.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304769508&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
[ Back to the Article ]

Anonymous said...

stop embarrassing margulis. He is an honorable friend of mine.

The boys he permitted kolko to abuse were less than honorable.

Anonymous said...

I was just wondering if any people cared about the ass wiping I did for Margulies.
------------------------------
· February 2006 – Eli Greenwald, a graduate of Yeshiva and Mesivta Torah Temimah, son of one of the founders of the Yeshiva and a parent in the Yeshiva receives the letter and spends a few days investigating the matter. He calls Rabbi Yaakov Applegrad, the Yeshiva’s Administrator, and requests a meeting of the Vaad HaHorim in order to address this serious issue. Rabbi Applegrad informs him that there will be no meeting as the allegations are false and that he and Rabbi Margulies have the matter under control. Mr. Greenwald called Rabbi Lipa Margulies and makes the same request of him. Rabbi Margulies responds by shouting at him.

http://www.rabbichildabuse.com/

Anonymous said...

Wait now just a minute please. Yaakov Applegrad is a good chaver. Regency Estates that summer was beautiful!

Camp Silver Lake, frolicking with young boys in bathing suits. What a summer.
----------------------------------

http://rabbimatisyahusalomon.blogspot.com/

· July 2006 – Over the vocal protest of many residents and with the help of his friend Rabbi Yaakov Applegrad, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko takes up summer residence at a home in Regency Estates in the Catskills. Despite the claim that Kolko was on a leave of absence from Yeshiva Torah Temimah, he continues working for Camp Silver Lake, Yeshiva Torah Temimah’s summer home. In addition, Kolko initiates and organizes a multi-camp excursion to Lake Compounce, a water park located in Connecticut, where he is seen frolicking with young boys in bathing suits. A secular media outcry ensues resulting in Kolko being banned from the park by its non-Jewish management. Astonishingly, in August Kolko organizes a second trip to Lake Compounce, which is attended by the same frum boy’s camps who participated in the July trip.

Anonymous said...

by Rudy Larini/The Star-Ledger
Wednesday February 18, 2009, 7:08 PM

In a case closely watched by advocates for child sex abuse victims, the state Supreme Court heard arguments today over whether a man can pursue a lawsuit filed 14 years after alleged abuse by his stepfather.

A state child sex abuse law enacted in 1992 allows victims to sue their abusers, but requires that legal action be taken within two years of the victims' "reasonable discovery" they have been harmed by the abuse.

The justices must weigh whether, as the victim claims, a recent event spurred his awareness that his depression, gender confusion and cross-dressing were allegedly caused by the sexual abuse years earlier.

Gregory Gianforcaro, a Phillipsburg lawyer who represents several victims of clergy sex abuse, said the case could have widespread implications for victims of childhood sex abuse who do not come forward until later in life.

"This is the most important case on childhood sex abuse ever in New Jersey," he said. "This is a landmark case."

Many accused clergy sex abusers in the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in 2002 escaped prosecution because the criminal statute of limitations had expired. In the future, the case heard today could allow victims in similar circumstances to pursue a civil remedy in the courts when they fail to associate problems as adults to the earlier abuse until later in life.

A trial court judge had ruled the victim, identified only as "R.L.," became aware in September 1999 when at age 19 he had a flashback of the abuse while having sex with his girlfriend. He discussed the incident with his mother the next day and she told him there was "no way this hasn't affected you" and "we need to deal with it," but R.L tried to reassure her it was not a "big deal."

Last September, an appeals court reversed the trial judge, concluding the man did not become aware he had been harmed by the abuse until he and a coworker had a conversation about his sexual identity issues on Feb. 28, 2002. The coworker testified at the trial that the man "sat back, was very pensive and had a shocked look on his face, 'like a kind of lightbulb look.'"

The man filed his lawsuit on Feb. 13, 2004, which was within two years of the 2002 conversation with the coworker, but more than two years after the 1999 talk with his mother.

His lawyer, Victor Rotolo, said the man never associated his sexual identity crisis with the earlier abuse until that "lighbulb" moment in 2002 with the coworker.

"That triggered the avalanche of awareness," Rotolo said.

But Justice Barry T. Albin asked why the 1999 conversation with his mother shouldn't have made the man aware he had been harmed by the sexual abuse.

"What that shows is the mother gets it. It does not show the victim gets it," said R.L.'s other lawyer, said Marci Hamilton, who specializes in child sex abuse cases.

While denying the abuse occurred, William G. Johnson, who represented the man's stepfather, Kenneth Voytac, argued the trial judge was correct in ruling the two-year time clock for the lawsuit began in 1999, not 2002.

R.L. had claimed the abuse began in 1987 when he was 9 years old and lasted several years. Voytac and the man's mother later divorced.

During high school, he started cross-dressing and was treated for depression. He never mentioned the sexual abuse. Also in those years, he increasingly experienced gender confusion, used drugs and got in trouble with the law for stealing.

Mark Crawford, state director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, sat in on today's high court argument and wondered how the justices would clarify when sex abuse victims "reasonably" discover they have been harmed.

"Once they become victims of child sexual abuse," he said, "what is reasonable? There is no more reasonable."

As usual, the Supreme Court reserved decision.

Anonymous said...

To un-ban this ban makes little sense to me.


A Pennsylvania high school is permitting Muslim students to wear scarves known as kaffiyehs in school just a day after ordering two students to remove them for class.

Gateway High School officials met with parents Wednesday after seniors Mohammad Al-Abbasi, 18, and Ahmad Al-Sadr, 17, left school Tuesday after refusing to take off the checkered scarves, believed by some to be a symbol of terrorism.

District spokeswoman Cara Zanella told FOXNews.com the ban was an attempt to diffuse tension between Jewish and Muslim students, after three students wore shirts to school saying "RIP Israel."

The students removed the shirts when ordered to do so but the incident led to a petition from Jewish students saying they felt threatened, Zanella said.

A student then wrote an article in one of the local newspapers about Muslim dress, reportedly caling the scarves "hate" clothing.

"As a result then the tensions started to escalate between the two factions," Zanella said. "So the principal went back to the students and said, 'We're trying to get everyone on the same page here. Could you agree not to wear the scarves for the time being because the tensions are escalating?'"

The students agreed and complied until the incident Tuesday.

In response the principal gathered the students in question Wednesday along with parents, school officials and a number of faith based organizations to find a resolution to the matter.

"It was agreed upon today in the meeting that the students would be allowed to wear the scarves," Zanella said. "They also wanted the students to speak in a group session with one another — the 35 Jewish students that signed the letter to the principal, the students who were wearing the scarves, and the student that did the article."

That meeting was also held Wednesday morning and Zanella said "everyone came out of the meeting with a new sense of respect for the different cultures."

"I think everyone there recognized there's some tensions in the school and also amongst the community,” Al-Abbas’s mother Loretta Riggs told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. “We recognize the need for further education and further dialogue. We were very happy that the school district acknowledged this. They're willing to hold such future dialogues."

Anonymous said...

This calls for an hazmana for motzeh shem rah. That is what I recommend..

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 06:35 18/02/2009
Community members allege child abuse covered up among ultra-Orthodox in Safed
By Eli Ashkenazi

Leaders of the Bratslav Hasidic community in Safed have been covering up instances of physical and sexual abuse of children at school in the community, ostracizing anyone who wants to deal with the issue, several community members said recently.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said that in some cases families have been ripped apart, with the ostracized parents forced to cut off ties with their children.

"Everything blew up after seven children left heder [religious elementary school]," said one community member. "At first we didn't understand why, and then it turned out that they had been sexually abused. The parents wanted the matter to be dealt with, but they were warned that if the abuse became known it would harm their children's chances of finding a match. The parents got quiet and the children remained damaged because no one defended them." He and a former community member also said one of the teachers beat the children. Accusations of child abuse within the Bratslav community in Safed were first made public nine months ago.


One former community member said his family was forced to leave the community after his son was sexually harassed by a male teacher at his religious school. He said his son was receiving psychiatric help and taking medication to ease his mental distress, but refuses to go to the police and said he wants the issue resolved only by an ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court.

"Whoever goes to the establishment is a moser," he said, referring to the Talmudic term for informer. Jews who passed information to the authorities about other Jews have traditionally been treated harshly by persecuted Jewish communities, since in such cases denunciation could lead to death and destruction.

Related articles:
# Haredi women in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak fall prey to phone harassment
# Police: Suspected pedophiles likely involved in at least 20 other cases

Anonymous said...

Becoming Prime Minister Again: Benyamin Netanyahu's Blessing or Curse?
By Sadie Goldman
Senior Policy Associate, Israel Policy Forum
Thursday, February 19, 2009 - 4:16pm

Nine days after the election, Israel finally seems to be nearing a decision on who their next prime minister will be. Expect Netanyahu to be chosen tomorrow, Rena Matzleach predicted on Israel's Channel Two news. And added that, "Netanyahu has already announced that he will call on both Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak to join a wide coalition."

Anonymous said...

http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/news/jt/local_news/child_sex_offender_bills_scrapped/10701

The Senate child sex offender bill is killed in committee.


Barbara Pash
Associate Editor

A state Senate bill to extend the statute of limitations in civil lawsuits relating to child sexual abuse has been defeated in committee. The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on Feb. 11 killed Senate Bill 238 by a vote of 8-2.

The fate of a companion House Bill 556 was unknown at press time, but Del. Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg (D-41st), a co-sponsor of the House bill, said it is highly unlikely the bill will pass in committee if the Senate bill has already been defeated.

“It’s up to the lead sponsor [Del. C. Sue Hecht, D-3A] to propose significant changes [in the bill] to keep it alive,” he said.

The Senate bill was sponsored by Sen. Delores G. Kelley (D-10th), who said she was inundated by hundreds of e-mails from people opposing the bill.

“I regret that the people writing and calling had never seen the bill. They thought there was something in the bill about the Catholic Church, about private schools,” she said, although the bill made no such identifications.

The bill sought to extend the deadline for filing alleged abuse civil suits up to 32 years from the date the victim legally became an adult. Currently, if victims of alleged abuse were minors at the time, they can sue for damages within seven years of attaining the age of majority.

In 2003, Ms. Kelley successfully sponsored a bill that moved that age from 21 to 25. The bill also had a two-year retroactive period during which suits could be filed, by a deadline of Jan. 1, 2012.

In her testimony to the committee earlier this month, Ms. Kelley said there were dire predictions of class action suits when her 2003 bill was passed, and that did not happen. She said opponents of the bill have claimed that trial lawyers are behind it, although she has neither sought their advice nor heard from them about the bill.

Sen. James Brochin (D-42nd), a co-sponsor of the bill and a member of the committee, voted in favor of it. He had sponsored a similar bill two years ago that was also defeated in committee.

“In order to support this bill, you have to believe in post-traumatic stress syndrome,” he said, and also believe that you can have a different statute of limitations in civil suits.

During testimony on the bill, Mr. Brochin said one man stated if the bill passed, his church will have to close. But both Delaware and California have passed similar bills and “no churches have closed, no programs have been cut,” Mr. Brochin said.

Sen. Jennie Forehand (D-17th) was the second committee member to vote in favor of the bill. At the hearing, she said, about 20 people claiming to be victims of child sex abuse testified. “They were well in their 40s and were still trying to come to grips with it,” said Ms. Forehand, noting that only two of the 20 named clergy as the perpetrators, the rest being family friends or people in positions of authority like a coach.

Sen. Lisa A. Gladden (D-41st), vice chair of the committee, voted against the bill. According to Ms. Gladden, the No. 1 issue the Judicial Proceedings Committee members have been hearing about is a bill to regulate puppy mills, not the child sex offender bill.

Said Ms. Gladden: “We’ve heard this bill before and it failed. This is bigger than the alleged sexual assault of kids. It is about the laws about statutes of limitations and about not expanding them.”

Anonymous said...

The Palestinian Authority is calling for an international investigation of the weapons used by Israel during its three-week assault on Gaza. There are claims so-called DIME bombs were dropped from drone aircraft. This kind of bomb is designed to produce an intense explosion in a small space.

Anonymous said...

Haredim attack bus, open own line

Jerusalem haredi group launches alternative bus line from religious neighborhoods to Western Wall, put pressure on Egged to accept initiative by protesting in streets, throwing stones at bus

Kobi Nahshoni
Published: 02.19.09, 19:43 / Israel Jewish Scene

Residents of the haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem are going to war against Egged, an Israeli bus company. Dozens of people demonstrated Wednesday afternoon in the Ge'ula and Mea Shaarim neighborhoods, blocking through traffic to Egged buses.



The protestors are taking action against the bus company after a complaint was submitted by the Transportation Ministry against the operation of private "kosher" lines within the public transportation framework without a license. According to police reports, haredim threw stones at an Egged bus traveling through the neighborhood. No injuries were reported, but damage was caused to the bus' windshield.



Police forces were summoned to the location to maintain the peace. However, it was reported to Ynet that bus traffic to Mea Shaarim will be terminated until order is restored.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3674482,00.html

Anonymous said...

A Fairfax school bus driver accused of molesting young children is reportedly ready to plead guilty.

Robert Fisher, 73, of Cambridge, is charged with five counts of lewd and lascivious conduct. While driving his bus to and from Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax, police say he invited four children between the ages of 6 and 8 to sit on his lap and eat candy. He then allegedly molested the kids.

Fisher denies the allegations, but admits he let some kids ride in his lap.

A change of plea hearing has been scheduled for next month. Terms of the plea deal will not be released until then.

Anonymous said...

[What is exposemolesters problem with me? Is it that he's jealous that I am the posek hador? Is it that I have the power to issue fraudulent hazmanas?]

· February 17, 2006 – Eli Greenwald is served with a hazmana issued by Rabbi Yisroel Belsky calling him to a din torah to answer the charge of hotzoas shem rah allegedly committed against Rabbi Yehuda Kolko. Mr. Greenwald responds on February 21, 2006, that he will appear for a din torah before the Bais Din of America. To this day there has been no reply to Mr. Greenwald’s response by either Kolko or Rabbi Yisroel Belsky.

Anonymous said...

[I want the oylam to remember that I am a Boro Park Rabbi.]

· February 2006 – An askan meets with Rabbi Yaakov Perlow and pleads with him to get involved in this matter. Rabbi Perlow refuses on the basis of his being a yuchid and this being a tzibur matter. After being pressed further Rabbi Perlow takes his final stand that this is a Flatbush matter and as he is a Boro Park rabbi it would be unseemly for him to get involved in this matter.

· March 2006 – Rabbi Lipa Margulies reaches a standstill agreement with the askonim by committing to appear before a panel consisting of two rabbonim and one frum lawyer, all three of whom had been chosen by him. Rabbi Lipa Margulies reneges on his promise to appear before this panel.

· March 23, 2006 – A hazmana to a din torah is sent to Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, Rabbi Lipa Margulies and Yeshiva Torah Temimah summoning them to a din torah before the Bais Din of Mechon L’Hoyroa or a bais din of ZBLA. The hazmana is ignored by all the defendants.

· March 30, 2006 – A second hazmana to a din torah is sent to Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, Rabbi Lipa Margulies and Yeshiva Torah Temimah summoning them to a din torah before the Bais Din of Mechon L’Hoyroa or a bais din of ZBLA. By fax sent on April 5, 2006, Rabbi Lipa Margulies responds to this hazmana stating he will not appear for a din torah “without a prior determination of the charges against Rabbi Kolko.” Rabbi Kolko continues to ignore the hazmanas.

· April 6, 2006 – A third hazmana to a din torah is sent to Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, Rabbi Lipa Margulies and Yeshiva Torah Temimah summoning them to a din torah before the Bais Din of Mechon L’Hoyroa or a bais din of ZBLA. By fax sent on April 10, 2006, Rabbi Lipa Margulies responds to this hazmana by stating “the Hazmonah that you sent to us was not a valid Hazmonah.” Rabbi Kolko does not respond at all. It is of note that Rabbi Yehuda Kolko is still teaching in Yeshiva Torah Temimah while these exchanges are taking place.

· May 4, 2006 – A lawsuit is filed in United States District Court: Eastern District of New York, naming Rabbi Yehuda Kolko; Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah, Inc. and Camp Agudah as defendants. Rabbi Yehuda Kolko remains in the classrooms of Yeshiva Torah Temimah.

Anonymous said...

http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/AwarenessCenterBrochure.pdf

Anonymous said...

Taking the approach of a novice is what this pornographic article portrays. It insinuates that all Jews masturbate for fun. That's incorrect. Many masturbate and don't even have fun doing it.
------------------------------------

Reading sacred texts alone, for both clergy and laypeople, is a bit like masturbation - it's safe and fun, but not likely to be as productive as sex with a partner. And before anyone misconstrues this analogy, in no way do I endorse the notion that all human sexuality should have the potential to create a life. Jewish tradition, as understood by almost all authorities, approves of many, if not all forms of birth control. But in both the bedroom and in the study hall, it prefers partnerships to solo acts.

Both sex and study are understood as acts of discovery.

The Hebrew Bible call sex "knowing", as in "Adam knew Eve, his wife". That is not a euphemistic term employed by a text uncomfortable with sex. It is the first description of what it means for sex to be sacred - it brings us to new levels of knowledge and understanding about our partner, it overcomes the loneliness which Adam experiences and for which the Bible describes Eve as the antidote.

in full:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/windowsanddoors/2009/02/the-secret-to-reading-sacred-t.html

Anonymous said...

YOB should just admit their wrongs and shut down the dungeon they call a "yeshiva."

This is one of the worst - if not, the worst place to send a child. The abuse is overwhelmingly detrimental for self esteem and can carry into adulthood for many.
>>>>>

I agree. I was there. Parents sending kids there are putting them in harms way.

Anonymous said...

Netuei Karta must have written this. They are Palestinians dressed like Jews.

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-20-2009/0004975746&EDATE=
------------------------------------

Israeli 'Religious' Parties Do Not Represent True Torah-Based Judaism


BROOKLYN, N.Y., Feb. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As traditional Jews observe the political maneuvers of Israel's purported "religious" right-wing parties in recent elections, there is growing concern that these groups are gravely misleading the international community in its perception of Judaism and the Torah. Claiming to represent Judaism, these "religious" parties manipulate the Torah's values to suit their own political goals, giving the uninformed individual the impression that the Torah is politically extreme and against peace.

The uncontestable truth is that the Torah strongly advocates for peace. The Torah absolutely forbids Jews from waging war against non-Jews; in fact, Jews were avowed by God not to revolt against any nation or people. The Jewish set of laws commands that Jews be law-abiding citizens in whichever country they choose to take up residence. And for close to two thousand years - ever since the destruction of the holy Temple in Jerusalem - this has been a basic principle for all observant Jews.

Millennia ago, Jews were instructed by the biblical prophet Jeremiah to "Seek out the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray for it to the Almighty, for through its welfare will you have welfare." (29:7). Indeed, observant Jews have abided by this fundamental teaching for thousands of years.

In blatant contrast, Zionist ideology is directly opposed to the Torah. Zionism was deviously designed by its founders to replace the Torah and its holy, God-given commandments with nationalistic, power-driven ideals that are devoid of holiness, godliness, or spirituality. Zionism and the Israeli state have consistently endeavored, via persuasion and coercion, to replace the Divine and Torah-inspired understanding of our people with one of armed materialism.

At the time of its founding by Theodor Herzl, Zionism was rejected by every God-fearing Jew. Respected Jewish authorities everywhere consistently warned their constituents against associating with the Zionist movement in any manner. It was clear to every observant Jew that the Zionist movement was deviant sect designed to steer Jews away from the Torah, no different from the other heretical sects that existed for brief periods of time throughout Jewish history.

Tragically, with the passing of time, the Zionist movement succeeded in ensnaring certain religious rabbis into their trap. Perhaps these individuals were shortsighted and did not comprehend the true motives of the Zionist founders, or maybe they were motivated by the perceived rewards of ultimate power, wealth, or fame. In any event, as they spiraled downward into and under the Zionist quicksand, a brand-new and strange concept was formed: the "Nationalistic Religious Movement."

These rabbis - better yet, these politicians- convinced the uninformed Jewish masses to support and join this new-fangled movement. "To combine the greatest of contradictions - the Jewish faith and the holy Torah with nationalistic ideals that are devoid of holiness and designed to replace the Torah - is the epitome of hypocrisy and confusion. Imagine if a Jew would make sure that his pork [forbidden meat] was slaughtered, and koshered - this is Religious Nationalism," said Rabbi Hersh Lowenthal.

These politicians are exploiting the Torah for the sake of nationalism. For example, they continually misinterpret Biblical verses to "prove" that the Torah forbids the relinquishing of territory. How deceitful to use verses that apply to the times of the holy Temple to our current age, when Jews are in exile by decree of God, and are in fact avowed by God not to create a Jewish government with a Jewish identity prior to the Divine Redemption. How devious - in particular - to apply Biblical verses to a secular country whose leaders are non-believers and outspoken enemies of the true Jewish faith.

Our message to these rabbi-politicians is, to quote the Bible: "How much longer will you be positioned on two doorsteps? If you believe in God, follow Him. If you believe in the idol, follow it" (I Kings 18:21). If you wish to follow God and His holy Torah, then follow Him! And if your goal is to pursue hollow, secular, nationalistic values - pursue them. Don't attempt to combine these inherently contradicting ideals and, as a result, confuse the public with blatant lies and falsities.

True Torah Jews (a.k.a. Natruna) is investing tremendous effort to expose the falsehoods of this new movement to the Jewish community at large. With God's help, the results are positive and reassuring as the truth is welcomed by Jews all over the world. In a massive explanatory campaign in Israel, we implored the public not to heed the politicians' campaigns; instead, we asked voters to boycott the elections and thereby demonstrate their staunch separation from any form of Zionism.

The results of this campaign were overwhelming and far exceeded the organizers' expectations. One would expect that with the recent increase in eligible voters, there would be a far greater turnout of religious voters than in the past; with this reasoning, the acquisition of more seats in Parliament for religious politicians was taken for granted. Instead, the final tallies showed that the national religious parties had in fact lost several seats.

Obviously, the religious community is now more open-minded as more and more individuals begin to perceive the insincerity of the politicians: this is "politics as usual" and has absolutely no association with either the Torah or Judaism. The hope is that before long every single Torah-observant Jew will abandon this movement and the entire world will clearly understand that:

The government of the State of Israel is not associated with either Jews or Judaism. It is a Zionist state, not a Jewish State.

In conclusion, True Torah Jews would like to make it perfectly clear that the "religious parties" that participate in the government of the State of Israel do not represent traditional Torah-based Judaism. The true Torah position can be heard and accepted only from honest rabbinical authorities who are bound only to the Torah and harbor absolutely no ulterior motives. Every single such authority is completely opposed to the concept of Zionism in any form or shade, from the moment it was conceived until the present date.

We hope this clarifies the difference between Torah based Judaism and the nationalistic so-called Judaism. We pray that Jews everywhere will come to understand that ultimate salvation does not originate from the acts of humans, and will trust in the Divine Redemption which will bring peace for the entire world. May we merit that great day soon, Amen.

Additional information on the secular "religion" of Zionism and the Jews opposed to it can be found at www.truetorahjews.org.

ABOUT TRUE TORAH JEWS

True Torah Jews is dedicated to informing the world and, in particular, the American public and politicians that not all Jews support the ideology of the Zionist state called "Israel" which is diametrically opposite to the teachings of traditional Judaism. We are concerned that the widespread misconception that all Jews support the Zionist state and its actions is endangering Jews worldwide.


SOURCE www.TrueTorahJews.org

Anonymous said...

Security cameras lead to Shabbat desecration?

Ultra-Orthodox residents fear Jerusalem Municipality's plan to place dozens of surveillance cameras in central spots across capital will expose them to indirect desecration of holy day
Uri Gilhar

The Jerusalem Municipality's plan to place security cameras in various spots around the city spurred anger among the capital's ultra-Orthodox residents, who fear the cameras' activation could lead to Shabbat desecration.



According to the plan, surveillance cameras will be hung in Saker Garden, Liberty Bell Garden, Pisgat Ze'ev, Gilo Park, the Rose Garden and the Sanhedria neighborhood, among other places.



Notices warning against the city's new project were posted in Jerusalem's synagogues last week. The major concern is that once a person passes by one of the cameras he will create an electric response on the screen, thus indirectly causing Shabbat desecration.



In light of this, the notice advised parents to prevent their children from visiting areas in which cameras have been placed.



Notably, Jerusalem's haredi residents have already faced the dilemma of security cameras operating on Shabbat at the Old City and the Western Wall, where many worshippers arrive to pray on the weekend.


However, rabbis have ruled that in this area the cameras serve to protect lives, and therefore there was no Shabbat desecration risk involved in walking by them.

Anonymous said...

EM: Shabbat shalom. Keep up the fantastic work.

Anonymous said...

OGDENSBURG, N.Y. (AP) - The state agriculture department has shut down a troubled kosher cheese plant near New York's northern border.

The action Friday was based on inspection of the Ahava plant and samples of its products, which showed excessive levels of bacteria. State inspectors have seized more than 25,000 pounds of cheese found unfit for human consumption.

Ahava only sold its products in bulk. State officials said they were trying to determine if any retail outlets had received unsafe Ahava products.

Earlier this month, the city of Ogdensburg started seeking potential buyers for the kosher cheese operation because the company reportedly owes the city $90,000 in back rent and more than $600,000 in delinquent utility payments. The city had notified the company it would be evicted March 10th if the bills weren't paid. The company reponded that it wouldn't contest the lease termination.

Ahava filed for bankruptcy protection last year but its petition was rejected.

Anonymous said...

At least it's not just me this article speaks of. It could be insinuating that the Catholic Church - as well as the Rabbinate - being involved in such rug sweeping.
------------------------------

http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/3338

*Additionally, not one bishop in the United States has been disciplined for his actions in the cover up and the knowing transfer of pedophiles from one job to the next. If bishops were school principals who knowingly allowed teachers to rape multiple children, the principals would have been removed immediately. Instead, no bishop has been removed from ministry for what would normally be considered criminal behavior.

Anonymous said...

Rabbis Play Matchmaker for Jewish Singles

By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 20, 2009

MEMBERS OF BETH EL CONGREGATION in Baltimore come see Rabbi Steven Schwartz for all sorts of reasons: to discuss their faith or a problem they're having at work or at home.

More frequently than one might imagine, they come to say: "Rabbi, I'd like to meet someone. Do you have anyone in mind?"

He doesn't. Not usually, and not right off the top of his head anyway. Matchmaking is one part of the job for which he was wholly unprepared.

But Schwartz, ever ready to meet his congregation's needs, has done so most recently by purchasing bulk memberships to JDate.com.

"We are proponents of the idea of Jews marrying Jews. And you can say that, but what can you actually do about it?" he asks. "I'm not going out to bars at night walking up to people and saying, 'Are you Jewish? You should meet that guy over there, 'cause he's Jewish.' "

Already, Schwartz estimates that 15 to 20 percent of the couples he has married in recent years met on JDate. So when he heard that the online dating site offered discounts to rabbis buying memberships for their congregants, he signed up his synagogue for a dozen and distributed them to willing singles.

More than 20 rabbis like Schwartz have enrolled in the JDate program, which to some Jewish singles might seem like a conspiracy of tag-team pressure -- as if Mom's incessant nagging wasn't annoying enough on its own.

But Greg Liberman, president of JDate, which has 600,000 active members, says from his perspective it's a win-win. It's good for business, of course, but also for rabbis looking to keep their synagogue services packed for generations to come.

Got a D.C. dating tip, trend or gripe? Drop us a line at dating@washpost.com.

Anonymous said...

Was there any penetration involved?

BLOOMING GROVE – Gregory Ritter, of Greentown, a teacher in the Bethlehem School District, turned himself in Thursday to answer multiple charges alleging sexual contact with a 14-year-old boy.

Ritter, 44, of 155 Tauschman Road, is charged with involuntary deviate sexual intgercourse, statutory sexual assault, indecent assault, corruption of minors, criminal attempt to commit unlawful contact with a minor and criminal use of a communication facility.

The investigation was initiated by state police after the victim reported the crimes. Through the investigation, it was determined that Ritter met the victim at Camp Trexler, near Kunkletown in Monroe County. Ritter served as a first aid supervisor at the camp.

Police also learned that Ritter was having sexual contact, in addition to watching a pornographic video, with the victim, at his Pike County home. Ritter later sent text messages making reference to the encounter.

Ritter was arraigned and sent to the Pike County jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Ritter reportedly is a teacher, and track and field coach, at the East Hills Middle School in Bethlehem. He has been suspended without pay.

Anonymous said...

Nightmares of sexual abuse haunt the 7-year-old girl.

Nearly nine months after the first-grader spoke out during class about improper touching, her mother cries at how she has changed.

Her child eats less.

She fights with her brothers.

She rebels.

"In her nightmares she dreams that someone grabs her, that someone touches her," the mother said in Spanish.

The little girl and nine other children say Armando Silvestre Gutierrez, a former computer lab proctor at Clinton Elementary School near Peñitas, fondled them in May 2008.

It was nearly nine months before La Joya school district police arrested Gutierrez, 35, on 10 counts of indecency with a child. Gutierrez has no previous criminal record.

The victims and the attorney hired to represent them say they believe the district tried to cover up the allegations against Gutierrez, who is reportedly the brother of an assistant principal at the school..

Anonymous said...

· February 2006 – An askan meets with Rabbi Yaakov Perlow and pleads with him to get involved in this matter. Rabbi Perlow refuses on the basis of his being a yuchid and this being a tzibur matter. After being pressed further Rabbi Perlow takes his final stand that this is a Flatbush matter and as he is a Boro Park rabbi it would be unseemly for him to get involved in this matter.

Anonymous said...

Whoever says we cover up sex abuse is right. Whoever says we have no remorse is also right.

Anonymous said...

We have such wonderful mechanchim and mechanchos in Baltimore. In no way, shape, or form was Robert Stoever ever a school therapist for us.

BALTIMORE -

Baltimore County police say a therapist who worked at a Baltimore middle school has been charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy.

Police say 54-year-old Robert Stoever of Halethorpe was arrested Sunday night when an officer saw him and the boy in a car in a Catonsville parking lot.

Stoever was charged with a second-degree sex offense and perverted practice and sent to the Baltimore County Detention Center.

A schools official says Stoever, who worked for a vendor that provides therapy services, had been at Booker T. Washington Middle School since September 2007 and has been fired.

The school's principal informed parents in a letter Tuesday. It could not be determined whether the boy Stoever is accused of molesting was a student at the school.

---

Information from: The (Baltimore) Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com

Anonymous said...

http://www.theawarenesscenter.org/Meystel_Yosef.html

Steve's Story

By "Steve"

Originally Published: April 26, 2006 (Revised, 2008)

Yosef Meystel was expelled from Rabbi Naftali Riff Yeshiva in South Bend, Indiana when he was in 9th or 10th grade for pulling his pants down of another boy during an argument. It is believed that because Meystel's father donated a great deal of money he was allowed back into the school. Yosef's father owned a well known clothing store in Chicago at the time. There was also a rumor floating around that Yosef Meystel's also molested one his younger siblings.

Rabbi Rephael Moshe Gettinger was the Rosh Yeshiva (dean of the school) at the time. The Rav (Rabbi) was Yisrael Gettinger, Rephael's older brother.

During 1995, "Steve" attended the Rabbi Naftoli Riff Yeshiva in South Bend, Inc. when he was 13 years old. The 25 year-old school administrator was Yosef Meystel. "Steve" was warned by the other boys at the school that it was best to be on the good side of Meystel, "because if you weren't he would harass you all the time".

One of Meystel jobs was to organize the food for the yeshiva (making sure it was kosher). Being in South Bend having kosher food could be a challenge.

"Steve" stated that Meystel was overly generous to him. Instead of "Steve" having to use the public pay phone in the hallway to call home, Meystel would always let him use a private phone in an office. "Steve"" was always grateful for this since he would often be on the phone crying because of the illness at home. The survivor was a straight "A" student.

Meystel started grooming "Steve" by doing all sorts of special things for him, which lead to "Steve" spending time in Meystel's room. Gradually Meystel started showing him pornography, laying in bed exposing himself , and masturbating in front of "Steve". Meystel slowly encourage "Steve" to do the same thing, and "things progressed from there". The boys grades dropped from being an "A" student to a "C" student.

"Steve" told some of his friends that Meystel wouldn't leave him alone; yet didn't go into details about what was happening.

"Steve" left the school for summer break, never told his family what happened and ended up returning the next year. Nothing happened at first, so "Steve" thought he was going to be ok. After Succos (a Jewish holiday in the fall) the abuse began. "Steve" stated he did his best to stay away from Meystel, but things continued. When "Steve" was 14. He disclosed his secret to a few friends. Together they decided to get Meystel on tape, which they did, and took the tapes to the Rosh Yeshiva, Raphael Gettinger right before parents day at the school. Steve still was not at a point he could disclose to his parents what was happening.

Rabbi Gettinger's confiscated the evidence and stated that he would take care of the situation. Nothing was done, except Yosef Meystel left the school a few days before the parent's day weekend. At one point "Steve" told his parents what was happening. "Steve's" parents confronted Rabbi Gettinger who then offered to pay for the boy to see a therapist connected to the school. The therapist had no training in dealing with survivors of sexual abuse, and told "Steve" to read self help books. "Steve" stated that at this point the rosh yeshiva did what he could to make the incidents public knowledge and the boy was being harassed by his classmates, being called gay, etc. He eventually left the school.

exposemolesters said...

To pity or not to pity. That is a dilemma we are sometimes faced with. Fortunately, if we have compassion for another human being, hopefully the ribono-shel-olam will be merciful towards us.

We must remember, though, that those who harbor child abusers, and those who leave psychological scars on children because of their aggressive style of "chinuch," such people - it is no mitzvah that they should receive any sympathy from us.

If we start feeling bad for the perpetrator and turn a blind eye to the emotional, physical and sexual abuse that they inflicted - who will ever be the voice for the numerous victims that are left to suffer in that scenario?

And for someone in a position of power to knowingly allow ANY form of abuse to flourish under their command - and to do nothing about it - should be sufficient to get us all riled up.

I am far from perfect and realize that everybody makes mistakes. Everybody goes through tzar (pain) in life to some extent. Some is within our control; some not.

The important thing to take into consideration is - if one is a serious threat to ruin a child's life, and you are in a position to stop the would-be offenders from doing so by shaming them, what do you think should be done?
================================

http://www.michellejones.net/onapath/2008/12/i-want-your-pity.php

I Want Your Pity
I have always been befuddled when people say "I don't want your pity" or "I don't want your charity." Pity and charity have always seemed like good things to me. Having heard a friend talk with disgust about an invitation he received to a party as a "pity invite" gave me great pause. Since he was so displeased about having been invited to an event because someone "pities" him I wondered if perhaps my understanding of pity and charity have been wrong all along. I think of pity and charity as being markers of compassion and concern toward others but maybe I've been confused.

pity |ˈpitē|
noun ( pl. pities)
1 the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others : her voice was full of pity.
2 [in sing. ] a cause for regret or disappointment : what a pity we can't be friends.

charity |ˈ ch aritē|
noun ( pl. -ties)
1 the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need.
• help or money given in this way : an unemployed teacher living on charity.
2 an organization set up to provide help and raise money for those in need.
• such organizations viewed collectively as the object of fund-raising or donations : the proceeds of the sale will go to charity.
3 kindness and tolerance in judging others : she found it hard to look on her mother with much charity.

Um, so no, not confused on definitions. Pity and charity actually do mean what I think they mean. I am confused on why someone having compassion for you is a bad thing. Why someone acting out of this compassion is a bad thing. Why someone trying to help you is a bad thing. I really don't understand.

Regarding my friend and his complaint about a pity invite I confess that there were two or three people at our holiday party that were invited out of pity. That is to say I was concerned that the people might be feeling particularly lonely during the holiday season and an evening of socializing with interesting people and having good food and drink might be good for them. So I invited them to our party. It is my deep hope that someone would do the same for me. I sincerely do not understand how this could be considered a bad thing. Perhaps there is a flaw in my understanding, some failure in my brain to grasp some component here.

But what I know is this: I try hard to live a deliberate life and to each day put more good, kindness and compassion into the world and it's my deep and sincere hope that other people do the same. If someone passes on a kindness or good deed to me because they pity me (because I'm struggling, because I'm not so successful professionally, because my project flopped, etc) I hope my response is a sincere "Thank you" and deep appreciation of the pity shown to me.

It is also my deep and sincere hope that I can grow more compassionate and charitable each day. This will sound too silly for words I know but sometimes I think back about the person I used to be and I'm a little sad at the lack of compassion and concern she had for the rest of the world around her. She has grown and progressed but she still has so much work to do.

Anonymous said...

Answering a reader's question on the subject in the religious "Ma'ayaney Hayeshua" journal, Aviner stated that trips to Poland were "not good" due to the halachic ban on leaving Eretz Israel, and because they "provide livelihood to murderers."

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3675990,00.html

Anonymous said...

Orthodox Union
www.ou.org
OU and KJ To Offer Workshop on Navigating the Financial Crisis, 3/15

The Orthodox Union Department of Community Services will present a workshop at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan, “Navigating the Financial Crisis,” in response to the various challenges that the current economy presents. It is intended for the entire community, featuring financial information, tips and strategies, especially for those weathering the storm of these tough economic times. The program is part of the OU’s effort to raise awareness on how to address the challenges we face today and how to respond effectively.

The workshop will take place on Sunday, March 15 at 7:15pm in Manhattan at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 125 East 85th Street.

The program will include two presentations by experts in their fields. The first one will be given by Ruby Herman, a consultant for the budget and financial consulting firm of Future Performance on the topic of, “Adjusting your Budget to a Changing Financial Environment.” The second topic will be, “What’s Hot and What’s Not: Retraining, Retooling, and Finding Employment,” presented by John Malindretos, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Finance, Sy Syms School of Business, Yeshiva University.

According to Frank Buchweitz, OU National Director of Communal Services and Special Projects, “We would like to assist and empower our member communities in expressing concern for individuals and families who have been affected by the economic downturn with programmatic resources, while respecting individual dignity in the face of adversity. The workshop at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun is part of that effort.”

Rabbi Elie Weinstock, Associate Rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, declared, “These workshops are just what the doctor ordered for many people. In these difficult and uncertain times, giving people some concrete guidance is essential. This program is an extension of what KJ has been presenting to the community for the last few months, and we are pleased to partner with the OU to make such sessions available.”

The seminar is only one aspect of the OU’s response to the economic meltdown. The OU Job Board, for example, lists thousands of available jobs nationwide; posts hundreds of resumes; and offers seminars, workshops and lots more help, all free, at www.ou.org/jobs. To post a job or for more information, email jobs@ou.org.

Anonymous said...

Originally, when we are born, the animal within our psyche is innocent and even cute, like a cute little puppy. Its primary goal is merely to preserve its existence, to gratify its natural quests, and to enjoy a good and comfortable life. However, if our animal consciousness is not educated, cultivated and refined, this cute innocent animal can become a self-centered beast; sometimes the beast can turn into a monster, prone to destroy itself and others in its quest for self-enhancement and self-aggrandizement. Sometimes our animal can become addicted to various things (food, drugs, nicotine, alcohol, sexuality etc.) to desperately fill a void its experiencing.

Anonymous said...

This is a very bad boy. Even Tranquility Bay can't cure this problem child. ---

PITTSBURGH – An 11-year-old boy apparently covered his shotgun with a blanket to keep it hidden when he left his bedroom, went downstairs and fatally shot his father's pregnant girlfriend in the head as she slept, a prosecutor said Monday.

The blue blanket, which has a quarter-sized hole that appeared to be singed from a shotgun blast, supports a claim that the crime was premeditated, Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo said.

Police found the blanket in the farmhouse where the boy, Jordan Brown, lived with his father; the father's girlfriend, Kenzie Marie Houk; and her two daughters, ages 7 and 4. Houk was killed Friday morning while Brown's father was at work and the two girls were in the home, authorities believe.

"The operating theory is that he covered the gun with the blanket to hide it when he came downstairs" from his bedroom to shoot Houk, who was in a first-floor bedroom, Bongivengo said. "It wasn't used to muffle (the shot) or anything, the blanket wasn't thick enough for that."

Brown got the youth-sized shotgun as a Christmas present, and used it to win a turkey shoot on Valentine's Day.

Anonymous said...

Spare me from this insanity. 300 Reformeisters in one room is too much for me to handle.
*
North American Reform rabbis to meet in J'lem this week
Feb. 22, 2009
Etgar Lefkovits , THE JERUSALEM POST

More than 300 Reform rabbis from North America will convene in Jerusalem this week for their annual rabbinical conference, seeking to bolster the tiny Reform Judaism movement in Israel. The six-day event, which opens Tuesday, aims to strengthen the liberal movement's ties with Israel and build bridges to its religious and secular communities.

Although Reform represents the largest denomination of American Jews, the Orthodox establishment has a virtual monopoly on religious life in Israel, where both the Reform and Conservative movements are largely marginal.

The Reform movement in Israel operates 24 congregations, which, like the Conservative movement's synagogues, are not recognized by the state, and do not receive state funding.

"The fact that the largest Jewish community in the world still has not recognized Reform rabbis and Reform Judaism's institution of learning is something that must be fixed," said Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and political arm of Reform Jewry in Israel. "I want to see liberal Jews around the world break their silence and make their voice heard," she said, adding that "there was not much room for hope" within Israel on the issue.

The gathering of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which will also focus on Arab-Jewish relations, will include a intra-religious study session with members of all streams of Judaism, and an east Jerusalem tour with "Rabbis for Human Rights," a fringe group which is most widely known for their vocal opposition to the demolition of illegally built homes in east Jerusalem.

The conference will include addresses by both Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, as well as Labor MK Ophir Paz-Pines.

Religious Jerusalem city councilmen from both Shas and United Torah Judaism, which are part of Barkat's wall-to-wall city coalition and view Reform Jewry as anathema, declined to comment Sunday on Barkat's scheduled address at the conference.

The event will also include the inauguration of the group's president-elect, Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus, who leads a small congregation in Homewood, Illinois. Dreyfus, 57, will become the second woman to head Reform's rabbinical assembly.

The annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which is the representative organization of nearly 2,000 Reform rabbis, takes place in different cities around the world, with Jerusalem serving as host city once every seven years.

The last time the conference was held in Jerusalem was in March 2002, when more than 200 Reform rabbis came to Israel at a time of rampant Palestinian suicide bombings.

"To return to Jerusalem and Israel for our conference every seven years is an important symbolic statement for our movement in terms of our connection to the State of Israel," said Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback of Los Altos, California, a participant in the conference who is relocating to Israel this year to head the Hebrew Union College's year in Israel program.

"If Reform and Conservative Judaism want to stay alive in the world, they must take root in Israel," Hoffman concluded.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304850051&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Anonymous said...

Survey: Jewish communities show 'deep support' for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jews

Here's an interesting news release I got today from GLAAD:

Jewish Synagogues surveyed and show overwhelming desire to welcome of LGBT people but more work to do

Gay Jewish leaders released new research results on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) inclusion in the Jewish world at a strategy session in New York City on February 22 and 23. The research showed deep support for the inclusion of LGBT Jews in Jewish communities.

Clergy, experts on Jewish communities and synagogue transformation, along with Christian leaders experienced in welcoming congregations programs, converged at The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. They discussed the results of the research and strategies to help synagogues become more welcoming to LGBT people – as well as people with disabilities, those who have converted to Judaism, people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and religiously interfaith families.

Anonymous said...

Israel has every reason to retaliate against Hamas, and yet they are forever vilified in the media and by the world for self defense.

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 03:18 24/02/2009
Memories of shooting still fresh one year after yeshiva attack
Eight Torah scrolls to be concluded in memory of Mercaz Harav students
By Nadav Shragai

A memorial will be held this afternoon marking one Jewish calendar year since a terrorist attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem killed eight yeshiva students. The memorial gathering will include a ceremony marking the conclusion of the work of scribes who are completing eight new Torah scrolls in memory of the eight victims.

Netanel Furman, 21, who attends the Jerusalem yeshiva, still remembers the scene from a year ago. He was the first one to see the terrorist, who was wearing a black stocking cap and carrying a large carton, which looked like a box for a television set.

"In passing him, I thought to myself that it was strange that someone would have ordered a television for the yeshiva. And after I had walked a matter of six or seven meters past him, I heard the shots, but it was only after I started running and saw the blood which splattered from one of the victims did I realize that these weren't Purim firecrackers but shots from a Kalashnikov rifle."

Over the years, the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, the flagship of religious Zionist yeshivas, has become synonymous in the public eye with the Gush Emunim movement, which advocates establishing settlements in the West Bank. One of the heads of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yehoshua Magnes, said the terrorist attack taught the broader public about the spirit of Mercaz Harav.

"The trauma was felt by Jews of all kinds, both religious and secular," he noted. "The scene of innocent boys lying in pools of blood heightened the Jewish identity of a great many people, and enhanced the public's understanding of the connection of Mercaz Harav with the country, its institutions and the partnership with the whole of the Jewish people. It was not self-evident previously, and now, when I meet the man in the street and I say that I am from Mercaz Harav, he immediately responds with where he was on the night of the terrorist attack, and what he was doing at that moment, along with praise as to how the staff and students dealt with this trauma, without any hint of the isolated and disengaged approach with which our public was portrayed in prior years."

A week ago, Tzemach Hirschfeld, father of Yonadav Chaim Hirschfeld, who was killed in the attack on the yeshiva, performed the ritual circumcision of the son of Rabbi Yitzhak Dadon. A long-time student at the yeshiva, it was Dadon, along with army officer David Shapira, who killed the terrorist that night.

The the circumcision ceremony was held in the library of the yeshiva. A passage from the book of Ezekiel had special meaning when it was read at the circumcision: "And when I passed by you, and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said unto you: In your blood, live".

Hirschfeld, who performs circumcisions as a profession, said that he sees his job as fostering continuity and the renewal of life. Yonadav's brother Shalom, who began his yeshiva studies at Mercaz Harav this year in a program for younger students, lives in an adjoining dormitory together with a student who was wounded in a terrorist attack in the Gaza Strip.

Their classmates half-jokingly call their room the trauma room. At the same time, the classmates of the students who were killed at Mercaz Harav have been involved in a range of memorial projects which will now be made public to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the attack.
/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=1066542
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Anonymous said...

Olmert abruptly announced last week that Israel would not reopen Gaza's long-blockaded borders — the main Israeli concession sought by Hamas — unless Hamas-affiliated militants first freed Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who was seized in a June 2006 cross-border raid.

Anonymous said...

DEBKAfile - We start where the media stop

Livni blocks unity government on pro-Palestinian pretext, Abbas frees Hamas terrorists

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report and Analysis

February 23, 2009, 12:19 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile's military sources report that Sunday, Feb. 22, the Palestinian Authority on orders from chairman Mahmoud Abbas began releasing Hamas terrorists detained as part of his commitment to join forces with Israel to combat Palestinian terror. Abbas did not consult Israel before freeing the first batch of 21 prisoners.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas began releasing activists of Abbas' Fatah.

Our sources reveal that, under pressure from Washington, prime minister Ehud Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni agreed to their transfer to the West Bank, where they took part in a conference of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee last Saturday.

DEBKAfile's military sources warn that the reopening of the covert corridor to terrorist traffic between the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a recipe for the revival of Palestinian attacks against central Israel, Hamas' long-held goal.

While Israel's unity talks stumble forward, the rival Palestinian Fatah and Hamas are on a fast-moving secret track towards a power-sharing accord.

It is Abbas' intention to unveil his Palestinian unity administration simultaneously with the presentation of Binyamin Netanyahu's broad national government. By this means, he expects to maneuver the Americans into non-cooperation with Israel unless its new government swallows the Hamas component of a legitimate Palestinian government.

Hamas, for its part, is making hay. Not only are the Islamist fundamentalists not asked to meet international demands and give up their avowed aim to destroy Israel, they have cornered Abbas by requiring him to give up his security partnership with the United States and Israel. He has responded with a directive to Fatah negotiators to promise that their joint regime will in time edge out of this partnership.

The undercover Palestinian moves climax Wednesday, Feb. 25 at a formal Palestinian reconciliation conference in Cairo chaired by Egypt's intelligence minister and senior Palestinian negotiator Gen. Omar Suleiman.

Cairo has reopened Gaza's Rafah gateway for three days as a gesture to Hamas.

Abbas is therefore moving along his own underhand track unrelated to the Palestinian pretext Kadima's Livni is using to opt out of Netanyahu's coalition government. She wants him to commit to the two-state solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict as his government's top priority. Netanyahu argues that the Olmert-Livni talks with Abbas over many months got nowhere, while the perils posed by Iran and its advance on Israel's borders are immediate and existential.

Some of Livni's key associates in Kadima have launched their own freelance approach to Abbas. It aims at discrediting the Netanyahu administration from the moment he presents his lineup to the president. At that moment, on their advice, Palestinian Authority leaders will announce the break-off of contacts with Israel until the new Israeli prime minister publicly states his commitment to a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel and a halt to settlement expansion.

Livni's close circle is thus hoping to use the Palestinians as a blunderbuss to beat the Netanyahu government into accepting Kadima's point of view or face international condemnation.

Anonymous said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/us/24judge.html

A sexual abuse case against a federal judge in Galveston, Tex., that shocked the community and prompted courthouse demonstrations ended abruptly on Monday with a plea agreement.

Judge Samuel B. Kent retired from the bench and pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice in federal court in Houston, averting a trial on five other counts involving sexually inappropriate behavior with employees. Judge Kent would have been the first district judge to be tried on federal sexual harassment charges.

“Judge Kent believes this compromise settlement was in the best interests of all involved,” his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, said in a statement. “A trial would have been embarrassing and difficult for all involved.”

Appointed by President George Bush in 1990, Judge Kent, 59, was the sole federal district judge in Galveston until September 2007, when a special investigating committee of the Judicial Council of the Fifth Circuit officially reprimanded him after investigating accusations by his formal case manager that he had harassed her beginning in 2003.

He was ordered by the committee to take a four-month paid leave of absence. While prosecutors pursued an inquiry, Judge Kent returned to the bench in January 2008, hearing cases in Houston. His return prompted protests on the courthouse steps.

Judge Kent was indicted on the federal charges last August. The indictment accused him of forcing himself on his case manager and his secretary and described his advances as particularly lewd, involving groping and forcing the women’s faces into his groin area.

Rusty Hardin, who represented Judge Kent’s former case manager, said his “client is very relieved this first step is over” and “feels vindicated that he admitted the sexual contact was not consensual.”

Judge Kent had maintained that his advances were invited and enjoyed. His admission that they were not was part of the plea deal.

Anonymous said...

Those who know the priest say they are surprised by the sex abuse allegations.

The accuser says the abuse happened when she was 10-years-old.

She has posted her story on a website, pedophilepriest.org, where she claims her and several friends were terrorized by LeBlanc's assaults over a period of a few years.

The Archdiocese of Boston released this statement:

"The decision to place Fr. LeBlanc on administrative leave represents the Archdiocese's commitment to the safety of all parties and does not represent a determination of Fr. LeBlanc's guilt or innocence as it pertains to this allegation. The Archdiocese will work to resolve this case as expeditiously as possible and in a manner that is fair to all parties.

Cardinal O'Malley expressed his sadness over this new allegation and reiterated his concern for all persons impacted by sexual abuse. Through its Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach, the Archdiocese continues to make counseling and other services available to survivors, their families and parishes impacted by clergy sexual abuse."

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Compassion is a profound human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in what manifests in the social context as altruism. In ethical terms, the various expressions down the ages of the so-called Golden Rule embody by implication the principle of compassion: Do to others as you would have done to you.[who?] Ranked a great virtue in numerous philosophies, compassion is considered in all the major religious traditions as among the greatest of virtues.

The Jewish tradition

In the Jewish tradition, God is the Compassionate and is invoked as the Father of Compassion[7]: hence Raḥmana or Compassionate becomes the usual designation for His revealed word. (Compare, below, the frequent use of raḥman in the Quran).[8]Sorrow and pity for one in distress, creating a desire to relieve, is a feeling ascribed alike to man and God: in Biblical Hebrew, ("riḥam," from "reḥem," the mother, womb), "to pity" or "to show mercy" in view of the sufferer's helplessness, hence also "to forgive" (Hab. iii. 2); , "to forbear" (Ex. ii. 6; I Sam. xv. 3; Jer. xv. 15, xxi. 7.) The Rabbis speak of the "thirteen attributes of compassion." The Biblical conception of compassion is the feeling of the parent for the child. Hence the prophet's appeal in confirmation of his trust in God invokes the feeling of a mother for her offspring (Isa. xlix. 15). [8]

Lack of compassion, by contrast, marks a people as cruel (Jer. vi. 23). The repeated injunctions of the Law and the Prophets that the widow, the orphan and the stranger should be protected show how deeply, it is argued, the feeling of compassion was rooted in the hearts of the righteous in ancient Israel.[9] A classic articulation of the Golden Rule (see above) came from the first century Rabbi Hillel the Elder. Renowned in the Jewish tradition as a sage and a scholar, he is associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud and, as such, one of the most important figures in Jewish history. Asked for a summary of the Jewish religion in the most concise terms, Hillel replied (reputedly while standing on one leg): "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah. The rest is the explanation; go and learn." [10] Post 9/11, the words of Rabbi Hillel are frequently quoted in public lectures and interviews around the world by the prominent writer on comparative religion Karen Armstrong.

Anonymous said...

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

adapted

private schools said...

This is a major issue that i really dont know how to comment on. It is just so terrible to talk about and I know that a lot of people have been uncomfortable that all of this abuse has been brought up by the catholic church and that it isnt just little girls being abused. There needs to be some way to get it to stop and we need to fix it as soon as possible.

About Me

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It is unfortunate that it has come to this. It is a big darn shame it has come to this. It is very hurtful that it has come to this. But yet, IT HAS COME TO THIS. It has come at the price of a GREAT CHILUL HASHEM. It has come to Hashem having to allow his holy name to be DESECRATED so that his CHILDREN remain SAFE. Shame on all those responsible for enabling and permitting Hashem's name to be desecrated! When you save children you save the future. You save the future you save generations. You save generations you save lives. You save lives you have saved the world!!!!!!!