Top Secret US/Israeli base: Mezuzah-mad "Site 911"

File under: Twilight Language

Gates and doors

Mezuzah-mad Site 911

"Oddly named” Joint US/Israeli Facility is Top Secret

“...authorized by the Chief Rabbinate”

"The employment of Palestinians is...forbidden”

Hi Michael

I came across this Washington Post article today and thought you may have an interest or use for it.  Your CD "Inside the 9/11 Conspiracy" from a decade ago traced the 911 terror attacks to the Israelis, and I thought the Israeli name "Site 911" may very well be an occult signal of Revelation of the Method.  --Sincerely,  Paul P.

______________________ 

U.S. overseeing mysterious construction project in Israel 

By Walter Pincus, Fine Print column, TheWashington Post, November 28, 2012

With an Afterword by Michael Hoffman

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to supervise construction of a five-story underground facility for an Israel Defense Forces complex, oddly named "Site 911," at an Israeli Air Force base near Tel Aviv.

Expected to take more than two years to build, at a cost of up to $100 million, the facility is to have classrooms on Level 1, an auditorium on Level 3, a laboratory, shock-resistant doors, protection from nonionizing radiation and very tight security. Clearances will be required for all construction workers, guards will be at the fence and barriers will separate it from the rest of the base. Only U.S. construction firms are being allowed to bid on the contract and proposals are due Dec. 3, according to the latest Corps of Engineers notice.

Site 911 is the latest in a long history of military construction projects the United States has undertaken for the IDF under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program. The 1998 Wye River Memorandum between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has led to about $500 million in U.S. construction of military facilities for the Israelis, most of them initially in an undeveloped part of the Negev Desert. It was done to ensure there were bases to which IDF forces stationed in the West Bank could be redeployed.

As recorded in the Corps' European District magazine, called Engineering in Europe, three bases were built to support 20,000 troops, and eventually the Israeli air force moved into the same area, creating Nevatim air base. A new runway, 2.5 miles long, was built there by the Corps along with about 100 new buildings and 10 miles of roads.

Over the years, the Corps has built underground hangers for Israeli fighter-bombers, facilities for handling nuclear weapons (though Israel does not admit having such weapons), command centers, training bases, intelligence facilities and simulators, according to Corps publications.

Within the past two years the Corps, which has three offices in Israel, completed a $30 million set of hangars at Nevatim, which the magazine describes as a "former small desert outpost that has grown to be one of the largest and most modern air bases in the country." It has also supervised a $20 million project to build maintenance shops, hangars and headquarters to support Israel's large Eitan unmanned aerial vehicle.

Site 911, which will be built at another base, appears to be one of the largest projects. Each of the first three underground floors is to be roughly 41,000 square feet, according to the Corps notice. The lower two floors are much smaller and hold equipment.

Security concerns are so great that non-Israeli employees hired by the builder can come only from "the U.S., Canada, Western Europe countries, Poland, Moldavia, Thailand, Philippines, Venezuela, Romania and China," according to the Corps notice. "The employment of Palestinians is also forbidden," it says.

Among other security rules: The site "shall have one gate only for both entering and exiting the site" and "no exit or entrance to the site shall be allowed during work hours except for supply trucks." Guards will be Israeli citizens with experience in the Israeli air force. Also, "the collection of information of any type whatsoever related to base activities is prohibited."

The well-known Israeli architectural firm listed on the plans, Ada Karmi-Melamede Architects, has paid attention to the aesthetics of the site design as well as the sensibilities of future employees. The site, for example, will be decorated with rocks chosen by the architect but purchased by the contractor. Three picnic tables are planned, according to the solicitation.

The Corps offered a lengthy description of the mezuzas the contractor is to provide "for each door or opening exclusive of toilets or shower rooms" in the Site 911 building.

A mezuza (also spelled mezuzah) is a parchment which has been inscribed with Hebrew verses from the Torah, placed in a case and attached to a door frame of a Jewish family's house as a sign of faith.

Some interpret Jewish law as requiring — as in this case — that a mezuza be attached to every door in a house. These mezuzas, notes the (U.S. Army) Corps (of Engineers), "shall be written in inerasable ink, on uncoated leather parchment" and be handwritten by a scribe "holding a written authorization according to Jewish law." The writing may be "Ashkenazik or Sepharadik" but "not a mixture" and "must be uniform."

Also, "The Mezuzahs shall be proof-read by a computer at an authorized institution for Mezuzah inspection, as well as manually proof-read for the form of the letters by a proof-reader authorized by the Chief Rabbinate." The mezuza shall be supplied with an aluminum housing with holes so it can be connected to the door frame or opening. Finally, "All Mezuzahs for the facility shall be affixed by the Base's Rabbi or his appointed representative and not by the contractor staff.”

What's the purpose of Site 911? I asked the Pentagon on Tuesday, and the Corps on Wednesday said that only an Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman could provide an answer.

This may be a trend-starter. The Corps is also seeking a contractor for another secret construction project in Israel in the $100 million range to awarded next summer. This one will involve "a complex facility with site development challenges" requiring services that include "electrical, communication, mechanical/ HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning] and plumbing.”

The U.S. contractor must have a U.S. secret or equivalent Israeli security clearance for the project, which is expected to take almost 2.5 years to complete. That sounds like a secure command center. The purpose of Site 911 is far less clear.

For previous "Fine Print" columns by Walter Pincus, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage

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Michael Hoffman’s Afterword: “Mezuzah” denotes gate and doorpost, and is derived from the Assyrian word manzazu whose meaning and origin are opaque. God ordered the Israelites to post His Ten Commandments. The place where they were posted has come to be called a mezuzah. While the posting of God’s Law on doors and gates (i.e. so-called “mezuzot”) is commanded in the Old Testament (Deut. 6:9 and 11:20), Judaism is not an Old Testament religion, and what begins as God-ordained becomes a sinkhole of mezuzah superstition in Judaism. Consequently, the mezuzah of Orthodox Judaism has a cryptogram inscribed on the reverse side. For some reason, the existence of this reverse “fine print” is not reported by Washington Post “fine print” columnist Walter Pincus. The cryptogram inscribed on the back of the rabbinic mezuzah is authorized by Kabbalist soothsayers, not the Bible (cf. Rabbi  Jehiel’s 13th century commentary, Hilkhot Mezuzah). Therefore, what appears to be a pious Israeli act of Old Testament probity, is actually part of an occult ritual tied to the top secret “Site 911," whose symbolism is administered by the Israeli Chief Rabbinate; where goyim are forbidden to enter, and golem are used to construct it. The symbolic stand-ins for the goyim in this case are the hated Palestinians, and the golem are, of course, the Americans. The year 2001 was a Gateway and the rabbinic mezuzah being put into place at "Site 911" is probably meant to channel that energy into the latest incarnation of il fumo di Satana. 

Michael Hoffman is the author of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare; Judaism Discovered; Judaism’s Strange Gods, and most recently, Usury in Christendom. He edits Revisionist History newsletter.

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Why the Israelis Didn’t Win in Gaza

Why Israel Didn’t Win

By Adam Shatz

London Review of Books 

http://www.lrb.co.uk/ 

December 6, 2012, pp. 3-5 

The ceasefire agreed by Israel and Hamas in Cairo after eight days of fighting is merely a pause in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It promises to ease movement at all border crossings with the Gaza Strip, but will not lift the blockade. It requires Israel to end its assault on the Strip, and Palestinian militants to stop firing rockets at southern Israel, but it leaves Gaza as miserable as ever: according to a recent UN report, the Strip will be ‘uninhabitable’ by 2020. And this is to speak only of Gaza. How easily one is made to forget that Gaza is only a part – a very brutalized part – of the ‘future Palestinian state’ that once seemed inevitable, and which now seems to exist mainly in the lullabies of Western peace processors. None of the core issues of the Israel-Palestine conflict – the Occupation, borders, water rights, repatriation and compensation of refugees – is addressed by this agreement. 

The fighting will erupt again, because Hamas will come under continued pressure from its members and from other militant factions, and because Israel has never needed much pretext to go to war. In 1982, it broke its ceasefire with Arafat’s PLO and invaded Lebanon, citing the attempted assassination of its ambassador to London, even though the attack was the work of Arafat’s sworn enemy, the Iraqi agent Abu Nidal. In 1996, during a period of relative calm, it assassinated Hamas’s bomb-maker Yahya Ayyash, the ‘Engineer’, leading Hamas to strike back with a wave of suicide attacks in Israeli cities. When, a year later, Hamas proposed a thirty-year hudna, or truce, Binyamin Netanyahu dispatched a team of Mossad agents to poison the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman; under pressure from Jordan and the US, Israel was forced to provide the antidote, and Meshaal is now the head of Hamas’s political bureau – and an ally of Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi.

War in Gaza as a means for the Israelis to test their new rocket defense shield, Iron Dome

Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s latest war, began just as Hamas was cobbling together an agreement for a long-term ceasefire. Its military commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, was assassinated only hours after he reviewed the draft proposal. Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, could have had a ceasefire – probably on more favorable terms – without the deaths of more than 160 Palestinians and five Israelis, but then they would have missed a chance to test their new missile defense shield, Iron Dome, whose performance was Israel’s main success in the war. They would also have missed a chance to remind the people of Gaza of their weakness in the face of Israeli military might. The destruction in Gaza was less extensive than it had been in Operation Cast Lead, but on this occasion too the aim, as Gilad Sharon, Ariel’s son, put it in the Jerusalem Post, was to send out ‘a Tarzan-like cry that lets the entire jungle know in no uncertain terms just who won, and just who was defeated’.

Victory in war is not measured solely in terms of body counts, however. And the ‘jungle’ – the Israeli word not just for the Palestinians but for the Arabs as a whole – may have the last laugh. Not only did Hamas put up a better fight than it had in the last war, it averted an Israeli ground offensive, won implicit recognition as a legitimate actor from the United States (which helped to broker the talks in Cairo), and achieved concrete gains, above all an end to targeted assassinations and the easing of restrictions on the movement of people and the transfer of goods at the crossings. There was no talk in Cairo, either, of the Quartet Principles requiring Hamas to renounce violence, recognize Israel and adhere to past agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: a symbolic victory for Hamas, but not a small one. And the Palestinians were not the only Arabs who could claim victory in Cairo. 

In diplomatic terms, the end of fighting under Egyptian mediation marked the dawn of a new Egypt, keen to reclaim the role that it lost when Sadat signed a separate peace with Israel. ‘Egypt is different from yesterday,’ Morsi warned Israel on the first day of the war. ‘We assure them that the price will be high for continued aggression.’ He underscored this point by sending his prime minister, Hesham Kandil, to Gaza the following day. While refraining from incendiary rhetoric, Morsi made it plain that Israel could not depend on Egyptian support for its attack on Gaza, as it had when Mubarak was in power, and would only have itself to blame if the peace treaty were jeopardized. After all, he has to answer to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas’s parent organization, and to the Egyptian people, who are overwhelmingly hostile to Israel. The Obama administration, keen to preserve relations with Egypt, got the message, and so apparently did Israel. Morsi proved that he could negotiate with Israel without ‘selling out the resistance’, in Meshaal’s words. Internationally, it was his finest hour, though Egyptians may remember it as the prelude to his move a day after the ceasefire to award himself far-reaching executive powers that place him above any law.

Israelis fear Arab democracy

That Netanyahu stopped short of a ground war, and gave in to key demands at the Cairo talks, is an indication not only of Egypt’s growing stature, but of Israel’s weakened position. Its relations with Turkey, once its closest ally in the region and the pillar of its ‘doctrine of the periphery’ (a strategy based on alliances with non-Arab states) have deteriorated with the rise of Erdogan and the AKP. The Jordanian monarchy, the second Arab government to sign a peace treaty with Israel, is facing increasingly radical protests. And though Israel may welcome the fall of Assad, an ally of Hizbullah and Iran, it is worried that a post-Assad government, dominated by the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brothers, may be no less hostile to the occupying power in the Golan: the occasional rocket fire from inside Syria in recent days has been a reminder for Israel of how quiet that border was under the Assad family. Israeli leaders lamented for years that theirs was the only democracy in the region. What this season of revolts has revealed is that Israel had a very deep investment in Arab authoritarianism. The unravelling of the old Arab order, when Israel could count on the quiet complicity of Arab big men who satisfied their subjects with flamboyant denunciations of Israeli misdeeds but did little to block them, has been painful for Israel, leaving it feeling lonelier than ever. It is this acute sense of vulnerability, even more than Netanyahu’s desire to bolster his martial credentials before the January elections, that led Israel into war.

Hamas, meanwhile, has been buoyed by the same regional shifts, particularly the triumph of Islamist movements in Tunisia and Egypt: Hamas, not Israel, has been ‘normalized’ by the Arab uprisings. Since the flotilla affair, it has developed a close relationship with Turkey, which is keen to use the Palestinian question to project its influence in the Arab world. It also took the risk of breaking with its patrons in Syria: earlier this year, Khaled Meshaal left Damascus for Doha, while his number two, Mousa Abu Marzook, set himself up in Cairo. Since then, Hamas has thrown in its lot with the Syrian uprising, distanced itself from Iran, and found new sources of financial and political support in Qatar, Egypt and Tunisia. It has circumvented the difficulties of the blockade by turning the tunnels into a lucrative source of revenue and worked, with erratic success, to impose discipline on Islamic Jihad and other militant factions in the Strip. The result has been growing regional prestige, and a procession of high-profile visitors, including the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who came to Gaza three weeks before the war and promised $400 million dollars to build housing and repair roads. The emir did not make a similar trip to Ramallah.

Hamas’s growing clout has not gone unnoticed in Tel Aviv: cutting Hamas down to size was surely one of its war aims. If Israel were truly interested in achieving a peaceful settlement on the basis of the 1967 borders – parameters which Hamas has accepted – it might have tried to strengthen Abbas by ending settlement activity, and by supporting, or at least not opposing, his bid for non-member observer status for Palestine at the UN. Instead it has done its utmost to sabotage his UN initiative (with the robust collaboration of the Obama administration), threatening to build more settlements if he persists: such, Hamas has been only too happy to point out, are the rewards for non-violent Palestinian resistance. Operation Pillar of Defense will further undermine Abbas’s already fragile standing in the West Bank, where support for Hamas has never been higher.

Does Palestine have a right to defend itself?

Hardly had the ceasefire come into effect than Israel raided the West Bank to round up more than fifty Hamas supporters, while Netanyahu warned that Israel ‘might be compelled to embark’ on ‘a much harsher military operation’. (Avigdor Lieberman, his foreign minister, is said to have pushed for a ground war.) After all, Israel has a right to defend itself. This is what the Israelis say and what the Israel lobby says, along with much of the Western press, including the New York Times. In an editorial headed ‘Hamas’s Illegitimacy’ – a curious phrase, since Hamas only seized power in Gaza after winning a majority in the 2006 parliamentary elections – the Times accused Hamas of attacking Israel because it is ‘consumed with hatred for Israel’. The Times didn’t mention that Hamas’s hatred might have been stoked by a punishing economic blockade. It didn’t mention that between the start of the year and the outbreak of this war, 78 Palestinians in Gaza had been killed by Israeli fire, as against a single Israeli in all of Hamas’s notorious rocket fire. Or – until the war started – that this had been a relatively peaceful year for the miserable Strip, where nearly three thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israel since 2006, as against 47 Israelis by Palestinian fire.

Collective guilt of Gaza: the Israeli warrant for genocide

Those who invoke Israel’s right to defend itself are not troubled by this disparity in casualties, because the unspoken corollary is that Palestinians do not have the same right. If they dare to exercise this non-right, they must be taught a lesson. ‘We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza,’ Gilad Sharon wrote in the Jerusalem Post. ‘Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki too.’ Israel shouldn’t worry about innocent civilians in Gaza, he said, because there are no innocent civilians in Gaza: ‘They elected Hamas … they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences.’ Such language would be shocking were it not so familiar: in Israel the rhetoric of righteous victimhood has merged with the belligerent rhetoric – and the racism – of the conqueror. Sharon’s Tarzan allusion is merely a variation on Barak’s description of Israel as a villa in the jungle; his invocation of nuclear war reminds us that in 2008, the deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai proposed ‘a bigger holocaust’ if Gaza continued to resist.

But the price of war is higher for Israel than it was during Cast Lead, and its room for maneuver more limited, because the Jewish state’s only real ally, the American government, has to maintain good relations with Egypt and other democratically elected Islamist governments. During the eight days of Pillar of Defense, Israel put on an impressive and deadly fireworks show, as it always does, lighting up the skies of Gaza and putting out menacing tweets straight from The Sopranos. 

 The Israelis, not Hamas, are the region’s pariahs

But the killing of entire families and the destruction of government buildings and police stations, far from encouraging Palestinians to submit, will only fortify their resistance, something Israel might have learned by consulting the pages of recent Jewish history. The Palestinians understand that they are no longer facing Israel on their own: Israel, not Hamas, is the region’s pariah. The Arab world is changing, but Israel is not. Instead, it has retreated further behind Jabotinsky’s ‘iron wall’, deepening its hold on the Occupied Territories, thumbing its nose at a region that is at last acquiring a taste of its own power, exploding in spasms of high-tech violence that fail to conceal its lack of a political strategy to end the conflict. Iron Dome may shield Israel from Qassam rockets, but it won’t shield it from the future.

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Finkelstein: Israeli army “most cowardly on earth"

There are many reasons Israel can't invade. The most obvious is, this time there are lots of foreign journalists in Gaza.  The IDF (Israeli army) is the most cowardly army on earth. They don't attack without first destroying everything in front and to the sides of them, which of course means massive civilian casualties.

 This time they can't do this because the operation was largely spontaneous, unlike Operation Cast Lead (in Gaza 2008-2009), so they weren't able to seal the borders.

There's even a NY Times reporter in Gaza, and she's plainly not happy with what she's seeing.  The Times even made an “error" yesterday and referred in the headline to the Israeli attack on "civilian buildings."  A few hours later they referred to "government buildings.”  But today the Times led with the deaths of 11 people, five women, four children (killed by the Israelis Sunday, Nov. 18; the victims are now said to be 12).

Of course, Israel can't be thrilled with this, and they know that in the event of a ground invasion, it'll be scores of civilians killed, not just because they like to kill civilians (which they do) but also because that's the only way the know (how) to fight: destroy everything in your path for miles around.  They can't do that now, but also Netanyahu can't risk significant IDF casualties.  (It would be a) Disaster with an (Israeli) election looming.  So, I still say, no invasion. --Norman Finkelstein

New York Times online, Monday Nov. 19, 2012

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Revelation of the Method in Israeli attacks on Gaza

By Michael Hoffman

From Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin comes this key piece of Revelation of the Method. It shows that until a few days ago, the recent rocket attacks on the Israeli state were largely the work of Salafist (Saudi and western-intelligence-connected, Al Qaeda-style) groups who oppose Hamas. Mr. Baskin reveals that it was the chief Hamas negotiator on preventing rocket attacks, Ahmed al-Jabari, who the Israelis assassinated in a Barzini gambit. Jabari was one of the few Hamas enforcers with the power to stop the renegade Salafist rocketeers in Gaza. He was considering an apparent Israeli proposal for a ceasefire, which had been brokered by Egypt, when the Israelis terror-bombed the car he was riding in, killing him and his son.

Recall in the "Godfather" movie that a rival mobster named Barzini wanted to take over the Vito Corloene family by starting a war. Sonny, Vito's hot-headed eldest, was lured into an angry reaction when Barzini paid Sonny's brother-in-law Carlo, to beat Sonny's sister. In response, Sonny thoughtlessly jumped into a car to get revenge. On his way to administer a beating to Carlo, Sonny is cut down in a hail of bullets at a thruway toll booth. The war begins in earnest and tit-for-tat violence becomes the order of the day.

In the latest Gaza version of this blood theatre, the part of Sonny's sister is played by Jabari, who is suckered into believing he will help bring about a ceasefire and is instead murdered. Hamas is the stand-in for Sonny. Their use of rockets against Israeli cities is tantamount to Sonny roaring off in his automobile to vengefully beat Carlo.

Our script might be dismissed as far-fetched were it not for the fact that the Israeli government's own negotiator has confirmed the details. His revelation consists in the fact that every four years or so, the Israelis decide to "mow the lawn" in Gaza -- i.e. as a matter of routine -- destroy dozens or hundreds of buildings and kill dozens or hundreds of Palestinians, as was accomplished the last time this occurred, in "Operation Cast Lead."

To slaughter the requisite number of Palestinians and fulfill the quota for the destuction of the infrastructure in Gaza, Ahmed al-Jabari, the Hamas leader most likely to control renegade rocket attacks, was assassinated last week. Rockets were then launched, Sonny Corleone style, by Hamas, in revenge, and it is only at this point, and not before, that Fox News, the Protestant Fundamentalists and the Catholic neocons begin their account of what has happened: poor little "Israel" -- only defending itself against intolerable rocket attacks by Arab terrorists.

Israel’s Shortsighted Assassination

By Gershon Baskin • New York Times

November 16, 2012

JERUSALEM -- Ahmed al-Jabari, — the strongman of Hamas, the head of its military wing, the man responsible for the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit — was assassinated on Wednesday by Israeli missiles. Why?

Israel’s government has declared that the aim of the current strikes against Gaza is to rebuild deterrence so that no rockets will be fired on Israel. Israel’s targeted killings of Hamas leaders in the past sent the Hamas leadership underground and prevented rocket attacks on Israel temporarily. According to Israeli leaders, deterrence will be achieved once again by targeting and killing military and political leaders in Gaza and hitting hard at Hamas’s military infrastructure. But this policy has never been effective in the long term, even when the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was killed by Israel. Hamas didn’t lay down its guns then, and it won’t stop firing rockets at Israel now without a cease-fire agreement.

When we were negotiating with Hamas to release Mr. Shalit, members of the Israeli team believed that Mr. Jabari wouldn’t make a deal because holding Mr. Shalit was a kind of “life insurance policy.” As long as Mr. Jabari held Mr. Shalit, Israelis believed, the Hamas leader knew he was safe. The Israeli government had a freer hand to kill Mr. Jabari after Mr. Shalit was released in October 2011. His insurance policy was linked to their assessment of the value of keeping him alive. This week, that policy expired.

I believe that Israel made a grave and irresponsible strategic error by deciding to kill Mr. Jabari. No, Mr. Jabari was not a man of peace; he didn’t believe in peace with Israel and refused to have any direct contact with Israeli leaders and even nonofficials like me. My indirect dealings with Mr. Jabari were handled through my Hamas counterpart, Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of Hamas, who had received Mr. Jabari’s authorization to deal directly with me. Since Mr. Jabari took over the military wing of Hamas, the only Israeli who spoke with him directly was Mr. Shalit, who was escorted out of Gaza by Mr. Jabari himself. (It is important to recall that Mr. Jabari not only abducted Mr. Shalit, but he also kept him alive and ensured that he was cared for during his captivity.)

Passing messages between the two sides, I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency. Mr. Jabari enforced those cease-fires only after confirming that Israel was prepared to stop its attacks on Gaza. On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. This draft was agreed upon by me and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, Mr. Hamad, when we met last week in Egypt.

The goal was to move beyond the patterns of the past. For years, it has been the same story: Israeli intelligence discovers information about an impending terrorist attack from Gaza. The Israeli Army takes pre-emptive action with an airstrike against the suspected terror cells, which are often made up of fighters from groups like Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees or Salafi groups not under Hamas’s control but functioning within its territory. These cells launch rockets into Israeli towns near Gaza, and they often miss their targets. The Israeli Air Force responds swiftly. The typical result is between 10 and 25 casualties in Gaza, zero casualties in Israel and huge amounts of property damage on both sides.

Other key Hamas leaders and members of the Shura Council, its senior decision-making body, supported a new cease-fire effort because they, like Mr. Jabari, understood the futility of successive rocket attacks against Israel that left no real damage on Israel and dozens of casualties in Gaza. Mr. Jabari was not prepared to give up the strategy of “resistance,” meaning fighting Israel, but he saw the need for a new strategy and was prepared to agree to a long-term cease-fire.

This war is being presented in Israel, once again, as a war of “no choice.” The people of Israel are rallying around the flag as would be expected anywhere in the world. The United States government has voiced its support of the Israeli operation by stating, “Israel has the full right to defend itself and protect its citizens.” It certainly does, but we must ask whether there is another way to achieve the same goal without the use of force.

Israel has used targeted killings, ground invasions, drones, F-16s, economic siege and political boycott. The only thing it has not tried and tested is reaching an agreement (through third parties) for a long-term mutual cease-fire.

No government can tolerate having its civilian population attacked by rockets from a neighboring territory. And the firing of thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel must end. There was a chance for a mutually agreed cease-fire. The difference between the proposal I drafted in cooperation with my Hamas counterpart and past proposals was that it included both a mechanism for dealing with impending terror threats and a clear definition of breaches. This draft was to be translated and shared with both Mr. Jabari and Israeli security officials, who were aware of our mediation efforts.

In the draft, which I understand Mr. Jabari saw hours before he was killed, it was proposed that Israeli intelligence information transmitted through the Egyptians would be delivered to Mr. Jabari so that he could take action aimed at preventing an attack against Israel. Mr. Jabari and his forces would have had an opportunity to prove that they were serious when they told Egyptian intelligence officials that they were not interested in escalation. If Mr. Jabari had agreed to the draft, then we could have prevented this new round of violence; if he had refused, then Israel would have likely attacked in much the same way as it is now.

The proposal was at least worth testing. Moreover, it included the understanding that if Israel were to take out a real ticking bomb — people imminently preparing to launch a rocket — such a strike would not be considered a breach of the cease-fire and would not lead to escalation.

Instead, Mr. Jabari is dead — and with him died the possibility of a long-term cease-fire. Israel may have also compromised the ability of Egyptian intelligence officials to mediate a short-term cease-fire and placed Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt at risk.

This was not inevitable, and cooler heads could have prevailed. Mr. Jabari’s assassination removes one of the more practical actors on the Hamas side.  Who will replace him? I am not convinced that Israel’s political and military leaders have adequately answered that question. (Emphasis supplied).

Gershon Baskin is a co-chairman of the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post and the initiator and negotiator of the secret back channel for the release of Gilad Shalit.

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For Further Research

Israeli assassinations: recent by Mossad; by the Israeli military

The Israeli Holocaust Against the Palestinians 

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Israelis Bomb Gaza, Kill at Least 11, Including Children
By Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram
Sunday, November 18, 2012, New York Times online

GAZA CITY — Israeli forces killed at least 11 people, including several children, in a single airstrike that destroyed a home here on Sunday, as Israel pressed its bombardment of the Gaza Strip for a fifth day, deploying warplanes and naval vessels to pummel the coastal enclave.

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Did Israeli Lobby Stage a Coup Against Petraeus?

Did the Israeli Lobby Stage a Coup Against the Director of the CIA?

New York Times Hints that the Downfall of Petraeus was Politically-Motivated

By Michael Hoffman

Motives Questioned in F.B.I. Inquiry of Petraeus E-Mails

By Scott Shane And Charlie Savage

New York Times online, Nov. 12, 2012

WASHINGTON — Is a string of angry e-mails really enough, in an age of boisterous online exchanges, to persuade the F.B.I. to open a cyberstalking investigation?

...e-mails sent anonymously to Jill Kelley...prompted the F.B.I. office in Tampa, Fla., to begin an investigation last June....The inquiry traced the e-mails to Mr. Petraeus’s biographer, Paula Broadwell ...Some commentators have questioned whether the bureau would ordinarily investigate a citizen complaint about unwanted e-mails, suggesting that there must have been a hidden motive, possibly political, to take action. 

...Ms. Kelley, a volunteer with wounded veterans and military families, brought her complaint to a rank-and-file agent she knew from a previous encounter with the F.B.I. office... Ms. Kelly was fairly prominent in Tampa social circles and had previously had dealings with the F.B.I. agent who took her complaint...That agent, who had previously pursued a friendship with Ms. Kelley and had earlier sent her shirtless photographs of himself, was “just a conduit” for the complaint, a law enforcement official said. He had no training in cybercrime, was not part of the cyber squad handling the case and was never assigned to the investigation...But the agent, who was not identified, continued to “nose around” about the case...

Later, the agent became convinced — incorrectly, officials say — that the case had stalled. Because of his “worldview,” as the official put it, he suspected a politically motivated cover-up to protect President Obama. The agent alerted Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who called the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, on Oct. 31 to tell him of the agent’s concerns. The official said the agent’s self-described “whistle-blowing” was “a little embarrassing” but had no effect on the investigation. (End quote from the New York Times online).

 There’s definitely a hint in the preceding report by the New York Times that Jill Kelley invites erotic responses from male FBI agents, one of whom was an asset of a powerful Israeli lobbyist, Republican Rep. Eric Cantor. On his own initiative this “shirtless” agent reported the case to Cantor. The New York Times does not say if this FBI agent breeched security by doing so.

Eric Cantor said “an F.B.I. employee whom his staff described as a whistle-blower told him about Mr. Petraeus's affair and a possible security breach in late October... 'I was contacted by an F.B.I. employee concerned that sensitive, classified information may have been compromised and made certain (FBI) Director Mueller was aware of these serious allegations and the potential risk to our national security,' Mr. Cantor said in a statement.” (New York Times online, Nov. 11).

 One wonders if Petraeus was set up, like Mordechai Vanunu; only in this case Broadwell may have been a patsy: “On Monday night, F.B.I. agents went to Ms. Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, N.C., and were seen carrying away what several reporters at the scene said were boxes of documents. A law enforcement official said Ms. Broadwell had consented to the search” (NY Times online, Nov. 12).

Her surrender of documents from her house without a search warrant would appall any competent defense attorney. It is the action of a scapegoat, or a person under some type of duress or mind control.

In 2010, General Petraeus fingered the Israeli-Palestine conflict as making life difficult for US troops in the Middle East and Afghanistan. His assessment violated the Israeli lobby’s sacred taboo against any such linkage:

“In March 2010, when Petraeus was still head of the US Central Command, he gave testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee which included this observation about one of the “challenges to security and stability” faced by the United States:

"The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Operations]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world...’

“Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was so alarmed he issued a statement condemning Petraeus’ testimony, asserting in part of it: ‘Gen. Petraeus has simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. and coalition forces in the region to a solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and blaming extremist activities on the absence of peace and the perceived U.S. favoritism for Israel. This linkage is dangerous and counterproductive.’

“....Obama appointed Petraeus as CIA director after he made his Senate statement about Israel.” (Source: “When former CIA chief David Petraeus enraged the Israel lobby” http://electronicintifada.net/)

 In this writer’s opinion, the Petraeus sex scandal may have been intended to break during the presidential election campaign to embarrass Obama and cost him votes. The fact that it became public only after Nov. 6 shows that Obama’s forces inside the Cryptocracy successfully kept it under cover, and that’s some feat.

Nonetheless, there is a thinly-veiled message here for the President of the United States from the wing of the Cryptocracy which opposes him: we can bring you down too, if you don’t get on the Israeli bus and do the bidding of the necon war lobby, at least to the extent that your base will permit.

Of course, Petraeus should not have committed adultery. It is certainly gravely wrong. A man who will betray his wife will betray his country. But there are hundreds of high-level adulterers, to say nothing of thousands of practicing sodomites, working in La Cesspool Grande (Washington D.C.), who fornicate and sodomize with impunity. When one among this legion is singled out it is prudent to ask why.

Observe that the Zionist New York Times is subtly hinting at a possible conspiracy against Petraeus. By this means they display to the world the intimidating power of The Lobby. They don’t mind suggesting that Petraeus was deposed by hidden forces, knowing that informed observers are aware that Petraeus bucked the Israelis at one point in his career, and that’s all it takes for the axe to fall.

Unless serious investigative reporting and Congressional hearings dig up the conspirators behind this honey trap, we see in the Petraeus scandal a case of the Israeli lobby flexing its muscle on the national stage. The warning to Obama and his allies is unmistakable: pay and obey -- or else. It’s the old mobster’s dictum and that’s who Petraeus and company are dealing with -- hoodlum grandees with the power to ruin the director of America’s Central Intelligence Agency.

Think about the kind of clout this represents and then ask yourself, does anyone in gentile America have the power to depose the director of Mossad? Not bloody likely.

Petraeus was brought down in a coup d’etat. He is fortunate it happened like this, rather than in that other classic gangland sendoff, the arranged “accident” -- the chemically-induced heart attack; the automobile with “defective” brakes that sails off a cliff, or a strategic shove, like the one that led to the defenestration of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in 1949.

Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press, where he investigated the Son of Sam and Double Initial serial murders. His latest book is Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not, due to be published by Independent History and Research in December. He edits Revisionist History Newsletter. As an independent scholar Hoffman’s writing is funded by the sale of his publications and broadcasts, and donations mainly from the working poor and middle class.

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Policy wonk talks of how to start a war with Iran

This is Revelation of the Method from a policy wonk at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that would have been unheard a few decades ago.

Why are these revelations made? In part because the revealers are confident we have such an insufficient love of peace and truth, that we won’t care that these elitists are seeking ways to trick Iran into attacking us or, failing that, launching an attack on ourselves and blaming Iran.

The revelation in this video is predicated on their own high level assessment that we the people have a depraved indifference to the truth.

History buffs and Lincoln-cultists: listen closely to the speaker’s (truthful) claim that Abraham Lincoln goaded the South into the war (as many other U.S. presidents deceived America into war, as noted in this brief video).

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Usury in the Name of Jesus

Michael Hoffman's Note: Here below is current information from a generally reliable journalist on the usury bank ("IOR" - "Institute for Works of Religion") of the Catholic Church. This is another case where mortal sin is institutionalized and conducted without controversy. Usury in the name of Jesus Christ becomes business-as-usual, operated as the "religious works" of God.

EXCERPT: “...there has never been a sample testing of the CDD files maintained by the IOR or a supervisory assessment by the FIA including the scrutiny of transactions and the origin of funds in transactions carried out by the IOR.”

Translation of the subtle code employed above: the usury bank of the Catholic Church has never been in compliance with anti-money laundering laws.  A certain "René Brülhart" has been hired to give the Vatican Bank a better image.  The report's emphasis is on the crime of money-laundering. The crime (and mortal sin) of usury is not an issue.

Here is another excerpt from the article, this time in uncoded language:

 "...the Italian judiciary...is looking into suspect money flows noticed in the Vatican Bank’s accounts...Despite the introduction of anti-money laundering laws and the assurance given by Vatican Bank heads that it no longer holds any anonymous accounts, investigators found that dirty money can also pass through non-anonymous accounts belonging to priests or clerics..."

It might seem strange to present this information on the day before the presidential election. Yet nothing exceeds the empire of the Money Power when it comes to nullifying the laws of God or threatening our liberties. Like more foreign wars in places like Iran, the rule of the Money Power has largely escaped scrutiny in the Romney-Obama election contest.

Hoffman is the author of Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not (paperback, 416 pages), forthcoming  in December from Independent History and Research.

VATICAN FINANCES: SWISS JAMES BOND TO THE RESCUE

The Holy See’s Swiss anti-money laundering advisor, René Brülhart, is playing an increasingly key role in the Vatican’s finances. Meanwhile, the Vatican Bank (IOR) still has no president

By Andrea Tornielli

La Stampa (Italy) November 5, 2012

VATICAN CITY --[H]is success, combined with his good looks, led one magazine to dub the 40-year-old Swiss lawyer the James Bond of the financial world.”

This is how The Economist described René Brülhart, the director of Liechtenstein’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), in its 20 October issue. Brülhart is now the Vatican’s new financial advisor, whose job it will be to get the tiny State onto the “white list” of territories deemed to comply with international standards on combating financial crime. Last September, Fr. Lombardi had announced that Brülhart was being hired to strengthen the Vatican’s armor in the battle against financial crime.

In actual fact, Brülhart had, albeit in an informal and low key way, Brülhart had already started working with the Holy See back in December 2011, when, in a matter of weeks, the Secretariat of State changed its anti-money laundering law, in line with Moneyval’s requirements. Moneyval is the Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering group. These changes, which were set in stone by a new law promulgated in January 2012, were at the centre of a heated internal debate, whose protagonists included the President of the FIA (Financial Information Authority), Cardinal Attilio Nicora and the President of the IOR (Institute for Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank), Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Both these figures were concerned about a downsizing of the body in charge of combating anti-money laundering.

In the Moneyval report published last July, Strasbourg experts recognised the progress made by the Vatican and indicated areas where work still needed to be done. The legislative basis for the surveillance of money-laundering practices needed further reinforcement. Assessors commented the role, responsibilities, authority, powers and independence of the FIA were not clear. The FIA is the financial authority created by the Vatican to intervene in cases where suspicious operations are performed or when transferrals of money of dubious provenance are made.

Furthermore, experts observed, “there has never been a sample testing of the CDD files maintained by the IOR or a supervisory assessment by the FIA including the scrutiny of transactions and the origin of funds in transactions carried out by the IOR.” Hence “it [was] strongly recommended that IOR is also supervised by a prudential supervisor in the near future as currently there is no adequate, independent supervision of the IOR and that the supervisor should have adequate powers of enforcement and sanction against financial institutions, and their directors or senior management for failure to comply with or properly implement requirements.”

Brülhart has begun to play an increasingly central and important role, significantly lightening the workload of American lawyer Jeffrey Lena who had been part of the Vatican Secretariat of State’s team in charge of changing the anti-money laundering law, right from the start. According to The Economist, Brülhart has two aims: the first is to “build a financial-intelligence unit that can investigate suspicious money flows properly.” The second is “to create a truly independent supervising authority for the Vatican Bank and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which manages the Vatican’s property and securities holdings.” This is given that the FIA “lacks the legal powers and independence necessary to monitor and sanction these financial institutions.”

The Vatican has assured it is not thinking about establishing a new body, although the idea was taken into consideration ten months ago. It is, however, working on responding effectively to Moneyval’s requests. In recent weeks the Italian judiciary, which is looking into suspect money flows noticed in the Vatican Bank’s accounts, sent some rogatory letters to the Holy See. Despite the introduction of anti-money laundering laws and the assurance given by Vatican Bank heads that it no longer holds any anonymous accounts, investigators found that dirty money can also pass through non anonymous accounts belonging to priests or clerics who are deceived or who are too complaisant. This problem exists in banks in every State but is particularly embarrassing for a “sui generis” State like the Vatican.

The path towards transparency which Benedict XVI is so eager for the Vatican to follow is not simple by any means, despite the impressive efforts of the sturdy young Swiss “Deus ex machina” the Holy See has placed its trust in. This is partly because there are some in the Catholic Church who, following the scandals of recent months, are wondering whether it is really necessary for the Vatican today to keep an institution like the IOR going.

Meanwhile, no progress seems to have been made in the choice of a successor to the Vatican Bank’s former president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. He was fired last May in a way that had never been seen before in the history of the Holy See.”There is no hurry; there is no reason to do things in a hurry,” reliable Vatican sources assure. According to information “filtering through” from the Holy See, the Vatican Banks’ new president will neither be Italian nor American. Instead, it looks likely that a German (the 74 year old Ronald Hermann Schmitz, the former MD for Deutsche Bank and current vice president of the IOR who is temporarily standing in for Gotti Tedeschi, is a German). A decision is expected before Christmas.

The selection process appears incredibly thorough, which is a sign of the significant interest and attention which Secretariat of State authorities are giving to this issue. The fact a new president has not been chosen, five months after Gotti Tedeschi’s dismissal, shows that the position does not urgently need to be filled and that the bank’s management, which has been entrusted to the IOR and its director general, Paolo Cipriani, is currently deemed satisfactory.

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Interview with Zionist agent Maximilian Krah

(Krah is the attorney for the Society of Saint Pius X as administered by Bishop Bernard Fellay)

Editor's Note: Bishop Fellay is the prelate who expelled Bishop Richard Williamson from the SSPX. Maximilian Krah is the attorney who was assigned by Fellay to "defend" Bishop Williamson against prosecution in Germany for blaspheming the sacred relics of the religion of Holocaustianity, which is illegal in the German state. In the course of "defending" Williamson Krah actually attacked and insulted him in front of the German court.

Krah is an associate of the murderous Israeli army and has attended an Israeli army training event as a "tourist" as well as a fund-raiser for Tel Aviv University. He assures the interviewer that this all very innocent on his part.

Krah claims that Williamson was given Pressac's report on the alleged homicidal gas chambers to study "for a year" but he "failed" to do so. What actually transpired was that Bishop Williamson made contact with a revisionist researcher after a worldwide explosion of media venom was directed at him after he granted, on German soil, an interview with a Swedish television station. In the course of the interview he did not "deny the 'Holocaust." He questioned the existence of homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

As the media lynch mob grew in intensity, Bishop Williamson wanted to have access to the latest revisionist research on the subject of the gas chambers. The revisionist researcher he contacted in turn organized an international team of researchers and historians, led by an American editor (who I do not have permission to name), other youthful revisionist historians, as well as the eminent Dr. Arthur Butz and Dr. Robert Faurisson.

Bishop Williamson carefully studied the documents and texts these scholars kindly made available to him. These included large portions of the Pressac material, because Pressac, toward the end of his life, threw up his hands in frustration and disgust over trying to scientifically prove the existence of homicidal gas chambers. Yet Mr. Krah is either too ignorant or too duplicitous to acknowledge Pressac's failure and instead invokes Pressac as a means of discrediting Williamson's skepticism toward the gas chamber dogma.

Why didn't Krah and Fellay study the books of Faurisson, Butz, Samuel Crowell, Carlo Mattogno, Germar Rudolf and Fred Leuchter? Why was the burden of reading  and study on Williamson alone? Why does the Catholic Church sanctify and unquestioningly uphold secular consensus history that has no bearing on the Faith of Jesus Christ? Indeed, some would say that Auschwitz has replaced Calvary as the central ontological event of western history. In Europe there are no laws against blaspheming Jesus Christ or denying His resurrection. Only the relics of Holocaustianity are protected from scrutiny in Europe by the threat of criminal prosecution. Holocaustianity is the de facto civil religion of Europe; the last truly believed religion in that otherwise largely agnostic continent. 

In the interview Krah claims that the Israeli Zionists are the defenders of Christian shrines in the Holy Land. Krah makes no mention of the Israeli attacks on the Church of the Nativity during the Israeli holocaust in Jenin, during which the Church of the Nativity was shot up by Israeli soldiers and others churches bombed. He makes no mention of the large number of Palestinian Christians who have been driven out of Palestine or murdered by the Israelis. He makes no mention of the constant vandalism and assaults on Christian Churches by Talmudic terrorists. He makes no mention of the fact that Christian missionary activity is banned in the Israeli state. Spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the land of Christ is forbidden by the Israelis, but Krah praises them. He writes, "And there is also a rising group of so-called Hebrew Catholics, who are converted Israeli Citizens."

Really, Mr. Krah? Who converted them and where were they converted? Where do they reside in the Israeli state and where is there home church in the Israeli state? 

Has Mr. Krah bothered to ask native Palestinian Christians who they would rather be ruled by -- fellow Palestinians or Israelis? The Palestinians have no voice in Krah's obsequiously Zionist narrative. 

In Maximillian Krah we have a very serious and committed Zionist agent operating inside the highest levels of the SSPX, by Bishop Fellay's mandate.

The following interview with Mr. Krah was published in The Remnant newspaper. The Remnant's senior adviser is Mr. Christopher Ferrara who has excoriated Bishop Williamson. It seems that Mr. Ferrara knows for a fact that large numbers of people were gassed to death in Auschwitz. He also knows for a fact that it was Arab terrorists from the caves of Afghanistan who brought down the World Trade Center, and Building Seven of the WTC.  Using the publishing facilities of the Remnant, Mr. Ferrara has heaped abuse and contempt on Bishop Williamson for doubting execution gas chambers and believing that 9/11 was an inside job.

The Church of Jesus Christ is called to be counter-cultural; a pilgrim church in the midst of worldly people and their lies and hoaxes. Yet we observe in both the Vatican and the SSPX an imprimatur extended to establishment propaganda which is made holy and incumbent upon Catholics to believe, on pain of expulsion. This is truly a perversion of everything for which Jesus Christ stood. The fact that Bishop Bernard Fellay has Zionist agent Krah installed in the inner circle of the SSPX tells us all we need to know about Fellay and the current direction of his "traditional Catholic" SSPX.  --Michael Hoffman  www.revisionisthistory.org

[The following is an excerpt from Krah's interview with The Remnant newspaper]

Maximilian Krah: First, regarding the Williamson case. It is obvious to me that the statement he made concerning the Holocaust is historically wrong, and he is not open to arguments of historical facts. But, as a lawyer, it was clear to me that he did not violate the German law because, in the moment he made his statement, his wrong statement, he had no idea that the interview would be broadcasted in Germany. This is the whole reason why I believe he is not guilty of having violated the German law. I am not a criminal lawyer, so I had to find one for him. And in such a case I would always highly recommend to take a criminal lawyer, who was under no circumstances linked with, in any way, pro-Nazi movements. To explain, the neo-Nazi movement in Germany is extremely small. It is maybe 1% of the population. It is absolutely small, and you usually don't want to be linked with those persons, because they are exactly the persons you don't want your kids to play with.

And so, to make his defense as successful as possible, I highly recommended him to choose an attorney which was more to the left side so that he can focus on the legal aspects, and was completely free of any political implications in his case. I explained it to him and I introduced Lossmann to him. Lossmann is a widely accepted criminal lawyer, who publishes in research journals on criminal law. He is not as left as the rumors have presented him, because even the Greens [the Green Party], has two wings. And he is definitely not from the left wing of the party. He is, I would say, comparable to an East Coast Liberal. That means he is definitely not a Communist or anything like that. He is just a liberal citizen, interested in the fine arts, and maybe in the fine wine. I introduced both to each other. I explained the reason why I think we needed a more liberal person, than I am myself, and most of my colleagues, with whom I usually cooperate. The Bishop absolutely was fine. Lossmann was doing a great job, and then Bishop Williamson decided, without any explanation, to choose a different attorney…

Robert J. Siscoe:…So when you initially presented Bishop Williamson with your recommendation, and the reasoning for your recommendation, he agreed?

Krah: I explained everything and made it transparent. And he understood and agreed.

Siscoe: And then he at some point changed attorneys?

Krah: Yes, and he changed to a completely unacceptable person, and he got a warning from the General House [of the SSPX] and changed lawyers once again. Now he has chosen, once again, a completely un-political lawyer, who by the way is the president of the Association for Pop Music. He is doing a brilliant job, just as Lossmann did. They argue exactly the same way. They don't argue in any way politically or historically. They say "look this is the law. This is what he has done. He had no idea at the time he gave the interview that it could be broadcasted in Germany, so the case will not have a successful prosecution". And it is the same argumentation, and the same style of defending. It is a deduction to the legal problems, and does not involve bringing the historical and political matters into the court room. And this is the only chance he has. This is what Lossmann did, and this is what Edgar Weiler is now doing. And in the middle, he had, for I guess one week, another approach, and I'm sure this other approach would have led to a catastrophe.

Siscoe: Can you explain your involvement with the Society when "the Williamson affair" first broke? What was the Society facing in Germany, and what did you do to assist the SSPX in this matter?

Krah: The interview was broadcast at the same time that the Pope lifted the so-called excommunications against the Bishops of the SSPX, including Bishop Williamson. So the headlines in Germany were "Pope rehabilitates holocaust-denier", and the SSPX became seen as a neo-Nazi-group in the masquerade of religion. The Chancellor herself expressed her misunderstanding about the Papal decision in favor of Bishop Williamson. The German District made plenty of public declarations, expressing that Bishop Williamson is in no way speaking for the SSPX and pointing out that the SSPX has absolutely no acceptance for anti-Semitism and such wrong ideas on history. But no one believed it, because no one trusted them. Many of the Faithful, and even some priests, began to get nervous, and demanded clear action against Bishop Williamson. Some even began attending the Fraternity of Saint Peter or Motu Proprio masses.

In this serious situation, I was asked if I could help quiet things down by using my network of associates, and especially my connection into the media. Like in all countries, only a few media outlets have national impact. The Church's correspondent scene is very small, about 10 journalists for the whole of Germany. Most of them are aligned with the Novus Ordo, which means they are incurably hostile against the SSPX. One of the rare exceptions is Peter Wensierski of Der Spiegel – ("The Mirror”) – who is really independent, which also means he is equally distant, some say equally hostile, to everybody. But as he is equal toward everyone, he was honest enough to state that the SSPX might be ultra-conservative, old-fashioned, etc., but they are certainly not Nazis. He is tough, but he is fair. Whatever one thinks of the SSPX, they are not even close to fascism or the Nazis. And since Der Spiegel is the "must-read" of the whole German elite, within two weeks the other media accepted the distinction of: the position of the SSPX, and the opinion of the one bishop. It could be seen in the wording of the headlines: Whilst before there was written about "these holocaust-deniers", then it was distinguished between the "conservative group SSPX" and "the Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson". We had just one shot, and it hit. Clearly a sign of grace. I sometimes wonder myself how we succeeded.

Siscoe: But this wasn’t the end of it.

Krah: No, it was just a step. But it brought us back on track. It gave us credibility. We then communicated that the Superior General has given Bishop Williamson one year to study the facts and ordered him to read a book on the issue, written by Jean-Claude Pressac, who himself had doubts about the existence of gas chambers in Auschwitz and later changed his mind after he started to look into the facts. This gave us a one year respite, and the media stopped it´s attacks, waiting for the year to pass by. Bishop Williamson did not read the book. So when the year was over, we had to explain it. We just chose to be honest and transparent. We showed the efforts taken by the SSPX, but we also conceded that there was no influence on the Bishop, who has started to go his own way, unfortunately. In the end, we were able to successfully communicate that the SSPX in no way shared these views of Bishop Williamson.****

Siscoe: How were you able to influence the media?

Krah: By plenty of behind-the-scene talks. I went to many distinguished journalists and explained to them the SSPX, its mission, its history. Most of them were completely unaware. Look, for us all of these issues are very present; we live them, and are familiar with them. But for outsiders, the SSPX is something unknown; at least it was so in 2009. For a liberal journalist, who is not practicing religion at all, the idea of saying Mass in an ancient language like Latin is somehow curious. You have to explain it to him in a way he can understand. You have to convince, instead of judge. This is what I did and what I still do. And as I am far away from every kind of political extremism, and always have been, they considered me to be trustworthy, which allowed me to influence them in favor of the SSPX. This is something I would like to point out in general; we should always take in consideration the background and the thinking of our counterparts. Most people are not hostile. They are just uninformed. Instead of judging them, we should explain our views. In most cases we will see an acceptance, and in some cases, even support.

Siscoe: If you don't mind my asking, what impact did "the Williamson affair" have on the current developments concerning Bishop Williamson?

Krah: I am not involved in these current events. As far as I know, the 2009 affair is unrelated to the current threat of expulsion. Look, the affair of 2009 was settled with the final article in "Der Spiegel" early in 2010. Since that time, the public has distinguished between the official position of the SSPX and the private opinion of Bishop Williamson. What has happened since then is that Bishop Williamson has openly undermined authority and hierarchy, which has caused division within the SSPX. This is an internal affair, for which my advice is neither required nor requested. This is the core business of the superiors. I am used to mediate between the SSPX and different sorts of secular players: judges, journalists, politicians, state officials, bankers. But I have no share in internal affairs. Here I am an ordinary faithful like all others. And I´m happy with that.

Siscoe: There is another rumor claiming that you were fundraising for Tel Aviv University. Can you fill us in on that?

Krah: Yes, of course. I have a lot of friends, including many who are not Catholic. And I have Jewish friends, which I appreciate very much. They are wonderful people, and there is absolutely no reason for me to hide them, or to take their friendship into question. So, with that said, I have no understanding for these accusations or insinuations. They are my friends, and they can trust me as I trust them. I was in New York one evening when I received a phone call asking if I had plans for the night, which I hadn't. But my friend had one, and we went to a reception in a gallery in Chelsea, and there were plenty of people, both Jewish and non-Jewish, from different countries, and it was hosted by the American Friends of Tel Aviv University, and of course they took pictures [chuckle], and they posted them on the internet, and this gave those people reason enough to attack me without asking me what happened. It was just a nice evening, a gathering, in New York City. I´d attend it again, even if I knew about the rumors it caused.

Siscoe: To clarify, you are not a member of The American Friends of Tel Aviv University, and you did not organize this event?

Krah: No, to both questions.

Siscoe: There is another picture online as well that has caused some controversy. It shows you attending an IDF military camp recruitment event. Can you explain?

Krah: Yes, it was not a recruitment event. One of my friends got married in the Negev Desert, and he invited friends from all over the world, including my wife and me. He generously arranged a tour, which included both the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem and a visit into a military camp, so we could have a personal impression of what the Israeli army is doing. It was, you could say, a tourist tour, on the way from Jerusalem to the Negev Desert, and included a luncheon. We were able to visit them and talk to them, in order to get a personal impression of the military. And as far as I know, it is widely common for groups that visit the State of Israel to arrange these kinds of tours. I received an e-mail from a member of the city council in Dresden, who told me that he himself had taken part in similar events. So, for me it was an interesting invitation. And as I was a German soldier for one year after High School, I enjoyed the opportunity to see how things are done in the IDF.

Maybe a word about… it is common to read things on the internet about the State of Israel. Let's bring it back to history. In the middle ages, Christianity made several Crusades to the Holy Land for one reason: to get the holy places open so we would have access to them for Pilgrimages. We have, currently, more Pilgrimages to the Holy Land than ever in the past. We had more in 2012 than in 2011, and more in 2011 than in 2010, and in 2010 we had more than ever since. That means, the holy places are open; they get protected. They are safe, and there is money invested. And the Catholic Church gets tax benefits by the Israeli government in that country. I don't know anybody who believes that, if this country was under Islamic rule, we would have nearly as many Pilgrims there, and free access. And even the Pilgrim groups from the SSPX Germany, that go from Jerusalem and Nazareth to Bethlehem, always stay in a hotel on the other side of the wall – the Israeli side. If you just see facts and reality, than we have to say it is hard to attack those authorities that provide open access to those holy places. This is what I say: just calm down and judge by facts. We have to see the facts as they are, and we have to see that there are plenty of people living there. They have police, everything is organized, and they do not harm the Christians there. And there is also a rising group of so-called Hebrew Catholics, who are converted Israeli Citizens. We have none of those in the Islamic countries. I only can warn all those Christians who are so opposite, or hostile against the Israeli State, what would happen if that State would disappear. We would have a lot of problems with our holy places. And what would happen to the Christians in that country if we had a change on the political landscape? And so I have absolutely no problem to say that I have a positive attitude towards the state of Israel. The world is not perfect. It never has been. There are wars always. There is a state of imperfection. And if we see this, if we see the reality, we can say it could be much worse. And this should lead us to a more distinguished position towards the political situation in the Holy Land.

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Mitt Romney is a pathological liar

A VOTE FOR ROMNEY IS A VOTE FOR AN UNCONSCIONABLE LIAR

Conservative priests and ministers are running around America advising their Christian flock to vote for Romney (or subtly insinuating as much), using the old "lesser of two evils" line of malarkey.

• A vote for Romney is a vote for more useless foreign wars that will bleed and bankrupt America.

• A vote for Romney is a vote for a respectable-looking, family-values spouting whore who will say or do anything to get elected President of the United States.

If you vote for Romney, remember that you have been warned. 

If he is elected, you will bear responsibility for his wars, the police state those wars will engender here at home, and treacherous deceiving of the American people on the model of George W. Bush.

Romney Versus the Automakers

New York Times, Nov. 1, 2012

When General Motors tells a presidential campaign that it is engaging in “cynical campaign politics at its worst,” that’s a pretty good signal that the campaign has crossed a red line and ought to pull back. Not Mitt Romney’s campaign. Having broadcast an outrageously deceitful ad attacking the auto bailout, the campaign ignored the howls from carmakers and came back with more.

Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth.

This started months ago when he realized that his very public 2008 stance against the successful and wildly popular government bailout of G.M. and Chrysler was hurting him in the valuable states of Ohio and Michigan. In February, he wrote an essay for The Detroit News calling the bailout “crony capitalism on a grand scale” because unions benefited and insisting that Detroit would have been better off to refuse federal money. (This ignores the well-documented reality that there was no other cash available to the carmakers.)

When that tactic didn’t work, he began insisting at the debates that his plan for Detroit wasn’t really that different from President Obama’s. (Except for the niggling detail of the $80 billion federal investment.)

That was quickly discredited, so Mr. Romney began telling rallies last week that Chrysler was considering moving its production to China. Chrysler loudly denounced it as “fantasies,” saying it was only considering increasing production in China for sale in China, without moving a single American job.

“I feel obliged to unambiguously restate our position: Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China,” Chrysler’s chief executive, Sergio Marchionne, said in a statement. “Jeep assembly lines will remain in operation in the United States and will constitute the backbone of the brand. It is inaccurate to suggest anything different.” In fact, 1,100 new jobs will be added in Toledo to produce a new generation of Jeep.

The Romney campaign ignored the company, following up with an instantly notorious ad saying President Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” If the false implication wasn’t clear enough, the campaign put out a radio ad on Tuesday saying “Barack Obama says he saved the auto industry. But for who? Ohio or China?” What happened, the ad asks, “to the promises made to autoworkers in Toledo and throughout Ohio?”

What happened was that those promises were kept. Nearly 1.5 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout. Ohio’s unemployment rate is well below the national average. G.M.’s American sales continue to increase, and Chrysler said this week that its third-quarter net income rose 80 percent. These companies haven’t just bounced back from the bottom; they are accelerating.

What Mr. Romney cannot admit is that all this is a direct result of the government investment he would have rejected. It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it.

By doing that in a flailing, last-minute grab for Ohio, Mr. Romney is providing a grim preview of what kind of president he would be.

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