Twelfth Bough

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Archive for January 29th, 2009

“The equation has changed.”

Jan 29

Posted by Marlena in Israel, Religion, Terrorism | No Comments

The equation has changed, sayeth Israel. You people had better watch out. Now they’re taking the gloves off.

Meanwhile, in a bid to regain her plummeting popularity ahead of the elections, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told a gathering of the New York-based World Jewish Congress in occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday that Israel would no longer show restraint against Palestinian attacks from the Gaza Strip.

“Israel is going to act according to a new equation. We are not going to show restraint anymore,” Livni said. “We need to change the rules of the game until they learn that the rules have changed and the equation has changed.”

All that WP, targeting civilians, shooting people waving white flags, collective punishment, preventing humanitarian aid, rounding people up and bombing them inside their houses, killing over 1,300 people, 90% of them civilians….that was Israel showing “restraint.” But an Israeli soldier was killed on Tuesday, so all bets are off now.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called an urgent meeting of top defense officials after the bombing. “This is a serious attack, and we will respond, but there is no point in elaborating,” Barak said.

…Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Security Bureau, said Israel’s response would not be limited to closing the crossings into Gaza. “The response will not be the way it used to be,” Gilad said in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The equation has changed.”

The Israelis are angry, angry people. If you really want to understand why, you must read this whole thing, because he nails it.

What it all boils down to, after all the fancy talk and theories, is that the reason this attack took place is because the great experiment in Jewish self-rule in the Middle East is failing. By virtue of the corruption, blackmail and bribery that must take place in lieu of Yahweh’s Old Testament miracles in keeping this sickly stillborn known as the Jewish state alive, the fact is that Yahweh is not living up to his promises. The stories in the Old Testament that revel in the Israelites’ defeat of the various peoples living there are over and done with in a few sentences. The Israelites invade, kill everyone and everything, collect the spoils, burn the cities and with no losses.

Now however, 60 years later, it is still dragging on with no signs of letting up. All those promises by their god to “drive out” the various peoples living there has not happened. The assurance that “Every place you set your foot will be yours“ has turned out to be one giant goose egg.…The plan to make their territory extend “from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea” is so much like that infamous “Special report” Geraldo Rivera did years ago when he opened Al Capone’s secret vault, only to find nothing. The “No one will be able to stand against you and I, the LORD your God will put terror and dread of you on the whole land, wherever you go” is not materializing…

On the contrary, the Palestinians and other “Ishmaelites” in the area are not giving up. The “terror” and “dread” Yahweh is supposed to be sowing in their hearts and minds is not there, save for a few corrupt leaders who fear losing their multi-million dollar paychecks courtesy of Uncle Sam. The people themselves–be they Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad or whatever–do not fear the Jews as the Jews dream. The spell that the god of Israel is supposed to cast over Israel’s foes has no power. The harder the Arabs are hit… the more miserable their lives are made, the stronger their resolve to survive and as a result the Jews are getting batty. Every rock-throwing child or bottlerocket-launching member of Hamas is a living testimony to the fact that the god of the Jews is a fantasy, a mirage and a tin god with no real power outside of his ability to destroy their humanity. Whereas the “Christian” world cowers in fear merely at the prospect of being called names by the Jews, Palestinian Muslim children stare down Israeli tanks KNOWING they will be blown to bits and have no fear in their hearts, and again, in effect making a liar out of Yahweh and his promises of “putting terror” into the hearts of Israel’s enemies.

The equation has changed. The spell of the chosen people has worn off for some of us humans. Well, not for everybody. (From the comments here.)

Israel, ignore the rest of the world !Vote for the one best able to defend you and keep you alive !We in the west,[speak for yourself] will happily sacrifice you [a Freudian slip???] to keep the wolf from our door. At least the Lord God of Israel still stands with the apple of his eye ! [And you know this because???...]

MEANWHILE, al-KI-duh is regrouping. They have to carry out some attacks or they will lose credibility with their funding agencies, man. You know, the “agency” (wink wink).

“These people will carry out painful attacks. They have announced that they will and they must carry them out or they will lose credibility with their funding agencies. They might carry out assassinations against foreigners and key security officials as well as oil installations,” said Mr al Bahri, who was imprisoned after the USS Cole attack in Aden in 2000 and was released after renouncing violence.

Well, actually, Netanyahu says that the “Islamic” “terrorists” will go straight for the Christian world’s jugular: Jesus’ burial site.

Netanyahu, who claims he had predicted [helped plan] an Islamic extremists attack on the World Trade Center six years before the actual attack, said terrorists will target Church of the Holy Sepulchre also known as the Church of the Resurrection - Christianity’s holiest site.

The church located in Jerusalem (al-Quds) — which according to the New Testament is the site of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus — attracts tens of thousands of pilgrims every year and is considered a spiritual focal point.

“Radical Islam is willing [at least the ones on our payroll] and [we] will want [them] to attack the symbolic heart of the Christian religion,” said the former Israeli prime minister. [Because you Christians and Muslims must kill each other off now. We will help you get started. xo-bibi.]

“This will incur a chain reaction [You know, like nuclear fusion?] we can’t even envision. [Well, we can, but that would ruin the fun. So we can't.] We will witness an escalation of religious conflict above and beyond the regional conflict we have now,” Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying. [Rubbing his hands together maniacally...]

The Right-wing Likud leader said he had warned in a 1995 book — six years before the September 11 attacks — that “Islamist terrorists” would detonate a nuclear device in the World Trade Centre in New York. [And miraculously, it happened. That Bibi, he is such a star.]

Back to The Ugly Truth and a choice quote from Ariel Sharon, who to this day remains on life support for some inscrutable reason, despite being brain dead since 1/4/06.

“Tell me, do the baddies of this world have a bad time? They hunt and catch whatever they feel like eating. They don’t suffer from indigestion and are not punished by Heaven. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe the world will then at last begin to fear us instead of feeling sorry. Maybe they will start to tremble, to fear our madness instead of admiring our nobility. Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that we are a wild country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we might go crazy, that we might go wild and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East, or that we might start World War Three just like that…”

Because they’re terrified. Because “the equation has changed.” Because Israel is built of spit and toilet paper instead of justice, and it has finally started to rain.

No, I do not hear the fat lady singing.

Jan 29

Posted by Marlena in Iran, Israel, Military, NWO, Nuclear Weapons, Obama/Biden, Politics | No Comments

If Netanyahu wins the 2/10 Israeli elections, as seems likely, we can expect him to aggressively push forward the current (psychopathic) Israeli strategy of putting Iran in the crosshairs while systematically murdering the Palestinians and stealing more and more of their land. Now the question is: Will that work?

A very good interview here with a “former” CIA operative, Robert Baer, indicates that an attack on Iran is not possible.

IPS: Is the possibility of a limited attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities by Israel also out of question? Especially given what we learned in a recent New York Times article that last year, Israeli leaders asked President Bush to carry out such an attack, though the president did not accept.

RB: Totally out of the question. Even Bush understood this. The New York Times is right when it says that Bush vetoed an Israeli attack, simply because there is a balance of power in the Middle East between the U.S. and Iran, and it’s a fairly even balance of power. I mean not in terms of aircraft tanks or submarines, but in a monopoly of violence, there is equality.

Lord Stirling has outlined with bitter clarity the meaning of a War on Iran, and you can read all about that here if you wish. You are forewarned. It appears, at least, that our US military commanders have ’seen the light.’ But that does not mean Israel won’t do something totally stupid, for as we can all surmise, the Israelis have gone off the rails. As a matter of fact, Kuwait and some other unnamed countries in the Middle East, Asia and Europe have ordered large supplies of potassium iodide (ie: nukepills). So it’s not like we’re out of the woods.

But there’s a new twist (new to me anyway). Netanyahu and the Clintons don’t get along, going way back to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which so happened to be under Netanyahu’s Likud government. Here’s the full text of a story from September, 1998 in The New Federalist: What Was the Mossad Role in the Lewinski Affair? by Edward Spannaus, captured at WhatReallyHappened:

According to a little-noticed passage in the Starr Report, during March 1997, President Clinton told Monica Lewinsky that he suspected a foreign embassy was tapping his telephone conversations.Nothing more is said in the report about the incident, but according to information received by this news service, that reference could provide the key to the entire Lewinsky scandal and to the setting-up and entrapment of the President. Reportedly, the embassy involved was that of Israel, under the control of the right-wing Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

First, the time-frame of the Lewinsky affair should be taken into account. It is bounded by two events: (1) the assassination of President Clinton’s partner in the Middle East peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, on Nov. 4, 1995, which opens the path for Netanyahu becoming Prime Minister in May 1996; and (2) Netanyahu’s visit to Washington in mid-January 1998–just as the Lewinsky affair was breaking in the U.S. news media. On this visit, Netanyahu publicly insulted the President by meeting with Bill Clinton’s worst enemies, televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Netanyahu carried out this affront over the objections of both President Clinton and moderate Jewish leaders in the United States.

The question must be asked: Was the set-up of President Clinton part of the effort by the Likud fanatics in Israel, and their “Temple Mount” backers in London, to punish the President for his efforts to force through an implementation of the 1993 Oslo peace accords?

The Real Lewinsky Tapes British investigative journalist Kevin Dowling has released an article for publication to a variety of British and American news organizations, charging that the Israeli Mossad was bugging the Watergate apartment telephone of Monica Lewinsky, and was able to obtain material used to blackmail the Clinton administration into shutting down a probe of widespread Israeli espionage in Washington.

Dowling reports that well-placed sources in Tel Aviv say that full transcripts of more than 30 sexually explicit conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky are held by the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

The backdrop is as follows, Dowling reports, and it is backed up by published sources in the U.S., that the U.S. government was aware, from late 1995 on, that the Mossad was carrying out extensive espionage activity in the United States. When the Defense Investigative Service issued a warning to defense contractors about the Israeli spy program, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith went into an all-out mobilization to denounce the DIS memo as “anti-Semitic.” Of course, just one year earlier, the ADL had been the subject of a lengthy espionage probe by the FBI and the San Francisco Police; and the ADL had earlier been deeply implicated in the Jonathan Pollard spy affair.

In May of 1997, the Washington Post and other media reported that the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted a phone conversation between a Mossad officer posted at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and Danny Yaton, the Mossad chief, in Tel Aviv, during January 1997. The Mossad agent was seeking clarification whether he should attempt to obtain a copy of private letter from then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Yassir Arafat, via a Mossad mole high-up in the Clinton administration codenamed “Mega.” [allegedly Rahm Emanual - ed.] The Mossad boss told the agent that under no circumstances should “Mega” be approached, as he/she was the top Israeli penetration agent inside the Clinton inner circle. An extensive FBI counterintelligence probe to determine the identity of the high-level Israeli mole in the U.S. government was triggered by the NSA intercept.

Comparisons to the Pollard spy affair were naturally raised; the deeper issue is that many observers believe that Pollard’s controller (sometimes referred to as “Mr.. X,” or the “X Committee”) is still burrowed deep in a high-level position in a U.S. government agency.

According to the Tel Aviv sources cited by Dowling, there was an emergency meeting of top Israeli intelligence officials, as soon as the NSA intercept was discovered; a Mossad electronic-bugging team of yalohim was dispatched to Washington, and one of the targets of their operation was the home telephone of Monica Lewinsky.

According to the Dowling sources, the Mossad obtained wiretap tapes of at least 30 X-rated conversations between the President and Lewinsky. These tapes, according to the sources, were hand-carried back to Tel Aviv, and were then used to blackmail the Clinton administration into calling off the search for “Mega”; the threat was that if the search for “Mega” were not shut down, the Israelis would begin leaking material from the tapes.

According to Michael Isikoff, the reporter who first started investigating the Lewinsky story, he first learned about a story involving the President and “an intern” in March-April of 1997.

The Dowling story is consistent with many leads assembled by this news service over the past several years, suggesting that the Israelis were operating against the Clinton Presidency in underhanded ways, as well as in an overt policy was, to sabotage the Middle East peace process.

It should not be overlooked that the appellate attorney for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard was Theodore Olson–Kenneth Starr’s long-time colleague and close friend, and host of the “Get Clinton” salon. Olson was still Pollard’s lawyer as late as 1993, when Olson was already launching the anti-Clinton “Arkansas Project” with the American Spectator magazine and Richard Mellon Scaife’s money–out of which operation came the Whitewater investigation and the Paula Jones case.

On 9/14/98, during a White House press conference, a reporter asked Mike McCurry , “Is it true that the White House is bugged by a foreign country?”

McCurry said he had no comment on that and moved on to other things.

It is known that Bill Clinton ordered the FBI to stop searching for a White House mole code-named “Mega”.The prevailing story is that Clinton was being blackmailed by a recording of Bill having phone sex with Monica Lewinsky. It’s now known that the Israeli owned companies providing billing and tapping sevices were well positioned to intercept any and all phone calls going into Monica’s Watergate apartment, as well as all phone calls in and out of the secure White House communications system.

So all this brouhaha took place because Israel, under Netanyahu, wanted to sabotage the peace process, the same as today. And very strangely, it looks like we will have another confrontation coming up with many of the same players in a matter of weeks. Do Hillary and Bill, currently under extreme duress due to the financial corruption being exposed and liable to throw Bush Sr. et. al. under the bus to save their own skins, despise Netanyahu for setting them up? If that’s true, the upcoming clash between Israel and the Obama Administration could have a very high popcorn factor. Hillary Clinton, in particular, would have ample motivation to go for Bibi’s jugular. And should her courage fail her for some reason, the unraveling financial corruption scandal dangles the threat of jail over her head.

I must be imagining all of this. It’s just too wild to contemplate how these planets are lining up. We are potentially looking at some of the most treacherous people in the world being pitted against each other.

People who live in glass houses

Jan 29

Posted by Marlena in Evil, Israel, Palestinians, Religion, UK | 10 Comments

As a Catholic, I am accustomed to Catholic bashing. If you can’t stand a little Catholic bashing, you might as well not be a Catholic. It comes with the territory. None of which is to get into the myriad reasons for Catholic bashing, many of which are legitimate. But, you know, when people bash the Catholic Church–and Catholics do it all the time–I don’t usually take it personally. But one cannot help notice that Catholic bashing is quite popular. One wrong move and….WHACK!

Jewish leaders condemn Pope over Holocaust bishop

Leading members of Britain’s Jewish community have joined in condemnation of the Pope’s decision to lift the excommunication on a bishop who denies the Holocaust at the same time as the nation commemorates the six million Jews murdered in the Nazi death camps.

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday, in the middle of the Jewish Sabbath, lifted the excommunications on four bishops of the traditionalist Society of St Pius X, including the English Old Wykehamist Bishop Richard Williamson.

In an interview broadcast on Swedish television last week, Bishop Williamson said: “There were no gas chambers.” He also stated that he did not believe six million had died, and the number was between 200,000 and 300,000. In the past, he has endorsed the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The lifting of the excommunications could not have come at a more sensitive time for British Jewry, already facing an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitic attacks as a result of Israel’s action in Gaza.

Look at the Pope, making decisions affecting Catholic bishops in the middle of the Jewish Sabbath???? What was he thinking????? This is a sensitive time for British Jewry, coming on the heals of Israel’s vicious attacks on the Palestinians. And shouldn’t the Pope be thinking about British Jewry at all times? Clearly, the Pope has No Business conducting Catholic business at a sensitive time for British Jewry. Actually, it’s pretty much always a sensitive time for somebody somewhere, so why don’t we just skip any and all decisions that might upset some people someplace at any time ever. That makes more sense.

Dr Ed Kessler, of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Christian Relations at the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, said: “In the 20 odd years that I have been teaching Jewish-Christian relations I never thought I would witness a time when in the name of Christian unity, a German-bred Pope would bring back into the fold a Holocaust-denier. It is absolutely astonishing. While it is an internal decision for the Roman Catholic Church it has huge consequences, not just in terms of relations with Jews but also other faiths and ecumenical relations. It is a very very sad day for Catholic-Jewish relations.” [filling many tissues]

Dr Kessler said he doubted the Pope’s planned trip to Israel would now go ahead but warned that if it did, it would be dogged by huge controversy.

He said: “It is not enough to say that it is a technicality that these people are being brought back into the fold. This is not just a problem for the Jews, it is a problem most of all for the Catholics.” Traditional Catholics however continued to celebrate the lifting of the excommunications, timed to coincide with the end of the annual Week for Christian Unity.

How does Dr. Kessler presume to speak for the Catholics? That’s just amazing. He’s not even Catholic. After that all happened, the “scandal” escalated when the Chief Rabbinate broke Vatican ties.

Chief Rabbinate Director-General Oded Weiner wrote in a letter to Vatican officials that because of Pope Benedict’s decision to reinstate Britain’s Bishop Richard Williamson “without a public apology and recanting, it will be difficult to continue the dialogue,” The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday.

Weiner addressed the letter to Cardinal Walter Casper, chairman of the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, saying he had canceled a meeting scheduled for March in Rome, the newspaper reported.

Apparently, the Pope’s decision to reinstate Bishop Williamsom without forcing him to publicly apologize and recant his positions effectively suspends relations with the Jews. I guess this is like the old “one drop” theory of racial purity, except in this case, even one Catholic Bishop believing something distasteful to the Jews poisons the whole relationship. Of course, the Pope quickly caved under this public pressure, and expressed solidarity with the Jews.

In his weekly audience with the public on Wednesday, Benedict said he “renewed with love” his “full and indisputable solidarity” with Jews, whom he called “our brothers of the first covenant.”

He added that he had repeatedly visited Auschwitz, the location of the “brutal massacre of millions of Jews, innocent victims of blind racial and religious hatred,” and said that the Holocaust “should be a warning for everyone against forgetting, denying or diminishing its significance.”

But tensions remained, a day after Israel’s highest religious body sent a letter to the Vatican asking to postpone an annual bilateral meeting and voicing “sorrow and pain” at the pope’s decision to welcome the bishop back into the fold.

[snip]

The Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, Mordechay Lewy, said he welcomed the pope’s remarks about the Holocaust and called them “instrumental in shaping the parameters of the existing and future relations between Jews and Catholics.”

Makes you wonder about those parameters. Well, while we’re putting people under the microscope for their beliefs, how’s about we ask some Rabbis to explain the Talmud? I mean, there’s a few bits in there that call for some public apologies and recanting. (Go get your box of tissues…I’ll wait…)

A place of Christian worship is called (1) Beth Tilfah, a house of vanity and foolishness, in place of Beth Tefilah, a house of prayer; (2) Beth Abhodha Zarah, a House of Idolatry; (3) Beth Hatturapi Schel Letsim, a house of Evil Laughter.

Chalises used in the Sacrifice of the mass are spoken of as vessels in which filth is offered up to the idol. Moses Kozzensis, in Hilkoth Abhodah Zarah (10b) says:
“A Jew who buys Chalises of the Goi, which are broken and thrown away, it is not permitted to sell them again to them, because their priest of Baal will use them in the worship of the idol.”

The Talmud calls the books of the Christians Minim - heretical books - Siphre Debeth Abidan - Books of the House of Perdition. The Talmud in particular speaks of the books of the Gospels. Thus in Schabbath (116a) Toseph:

“Rabbi Meir calls heretical books Aaven Gilaion (volumes of iniquity) because the call them Gospels.”

And Rabbi Jochanan calls these books Aavon Gilaion, evil books. The Schulchan Arukh, Crakow edition, gives this name as Aven Niktabh al Haggilaion - iniquity written in a book.

Buxtorf says: “In the Arukh there is a note Scheker Niktabh al Gilaion, which means, a lie written in a book.”

All the Talmudists agree that the books of the Christians should be destroyed. They differ only as to what should be done with the names of God contained in them. In Schabbath (116a) it says:

“The Glossaries of our own books and the books of the heretics are not to be saved from the flames, if they should catch fire on the Sabbath day. Rabbi Jose, however, says: ‘On festival days the divine names should be torn out of the books of the Christians and hidden away; what remains must be given to the flames.’ But Rabbi Tarphon says: ‘In order that I may be remembered by my children, if those books should ever fall into my hands I would burn them together with the divine names contained therein. For if one is chased by an assassin, or by a serpent, it would be better to take refuge in a pagan temple than in one of theirs; because the Christians knowingly resist the truth, whereas the pagans do so unknowingly.”

Christian prayers are called, not Tefillah, but Tiflah. They change the point and insert Iod, which makes it read to mean sin, foolishness and transgression.
Christian festivals, especially Sunday, are called Ion Ed - day of destruction, perdition, misfortune or calamity. They are also simply called Iom Notsri - Christian Days. The word Ed rightly interpreted means misfortune or calamity, as appears from the Gemarah and the Glossaries of Maimonides in Abhodah Zarah (2a):

“The word Edehem means the festivals of the Christians, since it is written (in Deuter. XXXII, 35): the day of their calamity.”

Maimonides also says in Abhodah Zarah (78c):

“The words Edehem means the foolishness of their festivlas. It is the name for their despicable feast days which do not merit the name of Moedim, for they are really vain and evil.”

Baretenora also writes:

“The word Edehem is the name for their ignominious festivals and solemnities.”
The marginal notes of Tosephtoth also give this name to Christian festivals. Thus in Abhodah Zarah (6a):

“The Day of Evil, that is the Christian Day, is forbidden to us as well as all their other feast days.”

Some Christian festivals are mentioned by name, such as the feast of Christmas and Easter. Moses Mikkozzi, referring to the above text of Abhodah Zarah , says:

“Rabbi Sammuel declares, in the name of Solomon Iarchi, that in particular the festivals of Christmas and Easter, which are their principal evil days and the foundation of their religion, are forbidden to us.”

Maimonides, in hilkoth Akum (ch. IX) has the same:

“Sammuel repeats the words of Rabbi Sal. Iarchi which forbid us particularly to celebrate the feasts of Christmas and Easter, which are celebrated on account of him who was hanged.”

Furthermore, indications of the impiety of the Jews are to be found in the names which they give to these Christian festivals: For in place of using Tav in the word Nithal, they often write Tet and call it Nital for the Latin word Natalis, the Feast of the Nativity. They make it appear as if this word were from the root Natal which connotes extermination or destruction. Likewise they refuse to use the word Paschal (Pesach) for the Christian feast of Easter. The substitute Koph for Phe and insert the letter iod and call it Ketsach or Kesach. Both pronunciations have an evil meaning. Ketsach is from the root Katsah, meaning to amputate or cut off from, and Kesach is from the root Kesa, meaning to wood or a gallows. This is done because the feast of Easter is celebrated by Christians in memory of Christ - the one who was hanged - who was put to death and who rose again from the dead.

Oh sad sad day. This is actually just a small sample of disturbing things in the Talmud. If you’re a Christian, are your feelings hurt knowing that your religion and everything about it is considered evil in the Talmud? Or is this “just a technicality?” I’m just curious how many Rabbis believe these vicious things about the Christian faith, and Christians, and do they teach these hateful things to their followers? And if so, shouldn’t this information also be dragged through every newspaper as scandalous? And shouldn’t these Rabbis be forced to publicly apologize and renounce such hateful teachings? Or is all this religious scrutiny just a one way street?