Rabbi Yizhak Shapira

(hat tip: D. Bartholomew)

How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Israeli Rabbis Defend Book’s Shocking Religious Defense of Killing Non-Jews (with Video)

by Max Blumenthal

August 30, 2010

When I went into the Jewish religious book emporium, Pomeranz, in central Jerusalem to inquire about the availability of a book called Torat Ha’Melech, or the King’s Torah, a commotion immediately ensued. “Are you sure you want it?” the owner, M. Pomeranz, asked me half-jokingly. “The Shabak [Israel's internal security service] is going to want a word with you if you do.” As customers stopped browsing and began to stare in my direction, Pomeranz pointed to a security camera affixed to a wall. “See that?” he told me. “It goes straight to the Shabak!”

As soon as it was published late last year,Torat Ha’Melech sparked a national uproar. The controversy began when an Israeli tabloid panned the book’s contents as “230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew.” According to the book’s author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, “Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and should be killed in order to “curb their evil inclinations.” “If we kill a gentile who has has violated one of the seven commandments… there is nothing wrong with the murder,” Shapira insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source (or at least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”

In January, Shapira was briefly detained by the Israeli police, while two leading rabbis who endorsed the book, Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef, were summoned to interrogations by the Shabak. However, the rabbis refused to appear at the interrogations, essentially thumbing their noses at the state and its laws. And the government did nothing. The episode raised grave questions about the willingness of the Israeli government to confront the ferociously racist swathe of the country’s rabbinate. “Something like this has never happened before, even though it seems as if everything possible has already happened,” Israeli commentator Yossi Sarid remarked with astonishment. “Two rabbis [were] summoned to a police investigation, and announc[ed] that they will not go. Even settlers are kind enough to turn up.”

In response to the rabbis’ public rebuke of the state’s legal system, the Israeli Attorney General and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept silent. Indeed, since the publication of Torat Ha’Melech, Netanyahu has strenuously avoided criticizing its contents or the author’s leading supporters. Like so many prime ministers before him, he has been cowed into submission by Israel’s religious nationalist community. But Netanyahu appears to be particularly impotent. His weakness stems from the fact that the religious nationalist right figures prominently in his governing coalition and comprises a substantial portion of his political base. For Netanyahu, a confrontation with the rabid rabbis could amount to political suicide, or could force him into an alliance with centrist forces who do not share his commitment to the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.

On August 18, a pantheon of Israel’s top fundamentalist rabbis flaunted their political power during an ad hoc congress they convened at Jerusalem’s Ramada Renaissance hotel. Before an audience of 250 supporters including the far-right Israeli Knesset member Michael Ben-Ari, the rabbis declared in the name of the Holy Torah that would not submit to any attempt by the government to regulate their political activities — even and especially if those activities included inciting terrorist attacks against non-Jews. As one wizened rabbi after another rose up to inveigh against the government’s investigation of Torat Ha’Melech until his voice grew hoarse, the gathering degenerated into calls for murdering not just non-Jews, but secular Jews as well.

Watch the video (article continues below):

“The obligation to sacrifice your life is above all others when fighting those who wish to destroy the authority of the Torah,” bellowed Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, head of the yeshiva in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan. “It is not only true against non-Jews who are trying to destroy it but against Jewish people from any side.”

The government-funded terror academy

The disturbing philosophy expressed in Torat Ha’Melech emerged from the fevered atmosphere of a settlement called Yitzhar located in the northern West Bank near the Palestinian city of Nablus. Shapira leads the settlement’s Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, holding sway over a small army of fanatics who are eager to lash out at the Palestinians tending to their crops and livestock in the valleys below them. One of Shapira’s followers, an American immigrant named Jack Teitel, has confessed to murdering two innocent Palestinians and attempting to the kill the liberal Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell with a mail bomb. Teitel is suspected of many more murders, including an attack on a Tel Aviv gay community center.

Despite its apparent role as a terror training institute, Od Yosef Chai has raked in nearly fifty thousand dollars from the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs since 2007, while the Ministry of Education has pumped over 250 thousand dollars into the yeshiva’s coffers between 2006 and 2007. The yeshiva has also benefited handsomely from donations from a tax-exempt American non-profit called the Central Fund of Israel. Located inside the Marcus Brothers Textiles store in midtown Manhattan, the Central Fund transferred at least thirty thousand to Od Yosef Chai between 2007 and 2008.

Though he does not name “the enemy” in the pages of his book, Shapira’s longstanding connection to terrorist attacks against Palestinian civilians exposes the true identity of his targets. In 2006, Shapira was briefly held by Israeli police for urging his supporters to murder all Palestinians over the age of 13. Two years later, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, he signed a rabbinical letter in support of Israeli Jews who had brutally assaulted two Arab youths on the country’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. That same year, Shapira was arrested under suspicion that he helped orchestrate a rocket attack against a Palestinian village near Nablus. Though he was released, Shapira’s name arose in connection with another act of terror, when in January, the Israeli police raided his settlement seeking the vandals who set fire to a nearby mosque. After arresting ten settlers, the Shabak held five of Shapira’s confederates under suspicion of arson.

Friends in high places

Despite his longstanding involvement in terrorism, or perhaps because of it, Shapira counts Israel’s leading fundamentalist rabbis among his supporters. His most well-known backer is Dov Lior the leader of the Shavei-Hevron yeshiva at Kiryat Arba, a radical Jewish settlement near the occupied Palestinian city of Hebron and a hotbed of Jewish terrorism. Lior has vigorously endorsed Torat Ha’Melech, calling it “very relevant, especially in this time.”

Lior’s enthusiasm for Shapira’s tract stems from his own eliminationist attitude toward non-Jews. For example, while Lior served as the IDF’s top rabbi, he instructed soldiers: “There is no such thing as civilians in wartime… A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew’s fingernail!” Indeed, there are only a few non-Jews whose lives Lior would demand to be spared. They are captured Palestinian militants who, as he once suggested, could be used as subjects for live human medical experiments.

Otherwise, Lior appears content to watch Palestinians perish as they did at the muzzle of Dr. Baruch Goldstein’s machine gun in 1994. Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians and wounded 150 in a shooting spree while they prayed in Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs mosque, was a compatriot and neighbor of Lior in the settlement of Kiryat Arba. At Goldstein’s funeral, Lior celebrated the massacre as an act carried out “to sanctify the holy name of God.” He then extolled Goldstein as “a righteous man.” Thanks to Lior’s efforts, a shrine to Goldstein was constructed in center of Kiryat Arba so that locals could celebrate the killer’s deeds and pass his legacy down to future generations.

Though Lior’s inflammatory statements resulted in his being barred from running for election to the Supreme Rabbinical Council, according to journalist Daniel Estrin, the rabbi remains “a respected figure among many mainstream ZIonists.” By extension, he maintains considerable influence among religious elements in the IDF. In 2008, when the IDF’s chief rabbi, Brigadier General Avichai Ronski, brought a group of military intelligence officers to Hebron for a special tour, he concluded the day with a private meeting with Lior, who was allowed to revel the officers with his views on modern warfare — “no such thing as civilians in wartime.”

Besides Lior, Torat Ha’Melech has earned support from another nationally prominent fundamentalist rabbi: Yaakov Yosef. Yosef is the leader of the Hazon Yaakov Yeshiva in Jerusalem and a former member of Knesset. Perhaps more significantly, he is the son of Ovadiah Yosef, the former chief rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of the Shas Party that forms a key segment of Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Yaakov Yosef has brought his influence to bear in defense of Torat Ha’Melech, insisting at the August 18 convention in Jerusalem that the book was no different than the Hagadah that all Jews read from on the holiday of Passover. The Hagadah contains passages about killing non-Jews and so does the Bible, Yosef reminded his audience. “Does anyone want to change the Bible?” he asked.

Bibi buckles

Only days before direct negotiations in Washington between Israel and the Palestinian Authority planned for early September, Yaakov Yosef’s 89-year-old father, Ovadiah delivered his weekly sermon. With characteristic vitriol, he  declared: “All these evil people should perish from this world… God should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.”

The remarks have sparked an international furor and earned a stern rebuke from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. “While the PLO is ready to resume negotiations in seriousness and good faith,” Erekat remarked, “a member of the Israeli government is calling for our destruction.”

Palestinian Israeli member of Knesset Jamal Zehalka subsequently demanded that the Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein put Yosef on trial for incitement. “If, heaven forbid, a Muslim spiritual leader were to make anti-Jewish comments of this sort,” Zehalka said, “he would be arrested immediately.”

Here was a perfect opportunity for Netanyahu to demonstrate sincerity about negotiations by  shedding an extremist ally in the name of securing peace. All he had to do was forcefully reject Yosef’s genocidal comments — a feat made all the easier by the White House’s condemnation of the rabbi. But the Israeli Prime Minister ducked for political cover instead, issuing a canned statement instead of a condemnation. “Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef’s remarks do not reflect Netanyahu’s views,” the statement read, “nor do they reflect the position of the Israeli government.”

By refusing to cut Yosef loose, his party remains a central actor in the Israeli government. Thus the statement by Netanyahu was not only weak. It was false.

Imagine if Muslims had put up a similar sign, or if Muslim women were scowling at visitors who dressed in daisy dukes and halter tops. Islamophobes like Bikini Vlogger Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer would be howling to the moon about how Muslims are trying to take over America and impose Islam on the masses. (hat tip: ELi)

Welcome to Kiryas Joel: Please Dress Accordingly

KIRYAS JOEL, N.Y. (CBS 2) – You may never see a more unusual “Welcome” sign in Orange County.

A sign in Kiryas Joel, the Hasidic Jewish enclave, is evoking mixed reaction.

Monroe resident Jessica Pantalemon stopped to cash a check in Kiryas Joel wearing a bright pink tank top and white shorts. She said she noticed scowling faces.

“Just from the women, mostly,” she said. “The guys let me walk by, the women stop and stare, start whispering to each other…I just ignore them.”

The tradition in the village of Satmar Hasidic Jews is modesty. Even on the hottest of days, most residents cover up from head to toe. But visitors don’t necessarily follow that tradition, and now the main synagogue is asking them to comply.

Congregation Yetev Lev posted signs at the village’s entrance – in both English and Spanish – asking outsiders to cover their legs and arms, use appropriate language and maintain gender separation in public.

“It’s a way of respect,” said one resident.

In fact, most residents say it’s simply a polite reminder to respect the local culture, and many visitors take the signs in that spirit.

“It’s nice to request that people behave in a way respect to their beliefs,” said Barry Kaufmann of Wantagh.

But the sign struck a sour note with some.

“They’re telling us that we can’t come into their community unless we dress a certain way,” said Adia Parker, an Orange County resident.

“I feel like my constitutional rights are being violated,” said Tyrone Wheeler, a day laborer in the village seeking work.

A village trustee pointed out the signs said nothing about consequences for violating these guidelines – because there are no consequences.

“We’re not threatening anyone,” said Rabbi Jacob Freund. “Everybody is free to come in and be the same, like all other places in the United States.”

So dressing like Jessica Pantalemon may elicit a scowl, but it won’t earn you a summons.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said because the signs were paid for privately and are not on public land and they pass constitutional muster.

Can you imagine if this happened in a Muslim country? This actually happened in “secular” Israel, not Saudi Arabia or Iran and at the hands of a Rabbi.

If a Muslim cleric had done it you can be sure that Spencer and company would be wailing about how oppressive Shariah is and how there is no fun in Islam. Will we hear a peep from Spencer about this? Don’t hold your breath.

‘Sinner’ singer given 39 lashes by rabbis

A singer who performed in front of a “mixed audience” of men and women was lashed 39 times to make him “repent,” after a ruling by a self-described rabbinic court on Wednesday.

Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, founder of the Shofar organization aimed at bringing Jews “back to religion” (hazara betshuva), has made it his recent mission to fight against musical performances for both men and women.

His “judicial panel,” with Rabbi Ben Zion Mutsafi and another member, sentenced Erez Yechiel to 39 lashes in order to “rid him of his sins.”

In a video clip of the court posted on the Shofar Web site, Ben Zion said that those who make others sin (mahtiei rabim), such as artists who make men and women attend performances or dance together, have no place in the world to come.

He displayed a leather strip he said was made by his father from ass and bull skin, with which Yechiel was to have been whipped.

Yechiel, who said, “I accept upon myself the lashing for my sins,” was ordered to stand by a wooden poll with his head facing north (“from whence the evil inclination comes”), his hands tied with a azure-colored rope (“a symbol of mercy”), and served his “sentence.”

We hear often that Muslims object too much to art or cartoons that are offensive to their religious sensibilities. In fact, Islamophobes love to highlight Islam as some unique motivator in passing laws that ban demeaning or offensive remarks or depictions about religion.

In Russia however, two artists have been convicted and fined by authorities for artwork that depicts Jesus Christ with the head of Mickey Mouse. Expect no complaints from Robert Spencer and company.(hat tip: Daniel R. Bartholomew)

Russians convicted and fined over Forbidden Art show

Andrei Yerofeyev and Yuri Samodurov had set up the Forbidden Art exhibition at the Sakharov Museum in Moscow.

The show provoked condemnation from the Russian Orthodox Church, among others, for artworks that included a depiction of Jesus Christ with the head of Mickey Mouse.

Both men were ordered to pay a fine.

The exhibition featured several images of Jesus Christ. In one painting of the crucifixion, the head of Jesus Christ was replaced by the Order of Lenin medal.

There was also a spoof ad for Coca Cola with the slogan “This is my blood” that visitors looked at through peep holes.

Mr Yerofeyev, an art expert, and Mr Samodurov, the former director of the Sakharov Museum, said they organised the exhibition to fight censorship of art in Russia.

But prosecutors opened an investigation after an ultra-nationalist Orthodox group filed a complaint against the show.

Apology

The court fined Mr Samodurov 200,000 rubles (£4,300) and Mr Yerofeyev 150,000 rubles (£3,200).

The trial began in April 2009 and was fiercely criticised by rights activists and artists.

Last week, 13 renowned Russian artists published an open letter to President Dimitry Medvedev, asking him to stop the trial. They said a guilty verdict would be a sentence “for the whole of Russian contemporary art”.

Amnesty International issued a statement last week, saying a guilty verdict against the curators would “further undermine freedom of expression in Russia”.

In letter send to the Russian Orthodox Church last month, Mr Yerofeyev apologised if the show unintentionally offended Christians.

‘Provocation’

But the Council of the People, the group that brought the complaint, defended the legal action.

A representative of the organisation, Oleg Kassin, told the AFP news agency that he had been disgusted by the exhibition which contained “anti-Christian” images.

“If you like expressing yourself freely, do it at home, invite some close friends,” Mr Kassin said.

“But from the moment that such an exhibition takes place in a public space, and especially if it contains insults, it’s no longer art but a provocation,” he added.

Mr Samodurov has been convicted of inciting religious hatred before. He was fined in 2005 for an exhibition called Caution: Religion! at the Sakharov Museum.

Another case of: what if they were Muslim?

Tel Aviv Rabbis: Renting apartments to foreign workers violates Jewish law

Twenty-five rabbis from Tel Aviv have signed an edict forbidding the rental of apartments to “infiltrators” and illegal foreign workers.

In a public announcement, the rabbis said that “in the wake of the severe pressure that the neighborhoods of south Tel Aviv face and their abandonment by the government, that begins with the Israeli-Egyptian border and ends with the lawlessness and violence that is taking over south Tel Aviv, the residents of the neighborhoods have decided that the present situation cannot continue”.

The authors of a petition on the subject added that “they will not let the neighborhoods in which they grew up to turn into Sudanese neighborhoods, something that has already happened to the Neve Sha’anan neighborhood. After many attempts using acceptable legal means, the residents decided to have the rabbis sign an ‘Edict Forbidding the Rental of Apartments to Infiltrators,’ and hope that this will halt the deterioration of the
neighborhoods.”

An announcement that activists intend to post on bulletin boards around the city states that “we, the undersigned, neighborhood rabbis and synagogue rabbis, hereby warn the public of the religious prohibitions and the foreseeable dangers that would result from renting apartments to these people.” The rabbis added that “may the efforts of those that toil to defend the Jewish character of the City of Tel Aviv be strengthened.”

“This is a sad day for the citizens of Israel, when racism receives legitimization,” said Ran Cohen, the Director of the Migrant Refugee & Non-Status Division of the organization Doctors for Human Rights. “We call upon citizens to fiercely reject this petition and courageously stand in opposition to this display of fear and xenophobia that is gaining traction within our society.”

Meretz MK Ilan Gil’on said that “again, we are witness to racist incitement on the part of the rabbis. The same rabbis that should be preaching love of Israel and all of humanity are attempting to incite hatred and arouse fear among Israeli society. The Attorney General must investigate to find out if these rabbis are on the government payroll.”

Books and memorabilia on the German leader’s life have found a steady market in some sections of Indian society where he is idolised and admired, mostly by the young.

The numbers are small but seem to be growing.

Latest reports say Bollywood is now planning to cash in. A film – Dear Friend Hitler – is due to be released by the end of the year, focusing on the dictator’s relationship with his mistress Eva Braun.

It’s hard to narrow down what makes the dictator popular in India, but some young people say they are attracted by his “discipline and patriotism”.

Most of them are, however, quick to add that they do not approve of his racial prejudices and the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed.

But the truth is that books, T-shirts, bags and key-rings with his photo or name on do sell in India. And his autobiography, Mein Kampf, sells the most.

‘Bestseller’

Jaico, the largest publisher and distributor of Mein Kampf in India, has sold more than a 100,000 copies in the last 10 years.

Crossword, an India-wide chain of book stores, has sold more than 25,000 copies since 2000 and marketing head Sivaram Balakrishnan says: “It’s been a consistent bestseller for us.”

The dictator is admired by some for his ‘discipline and patriotism’

And demand seems to be growing. Jaico’s chief editor RH Sharma says: “There has been a steady rise of 10% to 15% in the book’s sale.”

Until two years ago, a typical Mumbai (Bombay) bookstore sold 40-50 copies of Mein Kampf a year. Now the figure is more like several hundred copies annually.

The more well-heeled the area, the higher the sales. For example, the Crossword outlet in Mumbai’s affluent Bandra district sells, on average, three copies a day.

The book has several editions and is available in vernacular Indian languages too. Mannyes Booksellers in the western city of Pune keeps at least four editions. There are at least seven publishers now competing with Jaico.

Global sales figures for Mein Kampf are hard to come by, but the book sells well in other parts of the world too.

In the US, it sold 26,000 copies last year 2009. In 2005 it sold 100,000 copies in Turkey in just a few months. The Arabic imprint is popular in the Palestinian territories.

Mein Kampf is published by Random House in the UK but the company would not give sales figures to the BBC.

‘Positive and negative’

Nearly all the booksellers and publishers contacted in India say it is mainly young people who read Mein Kampf.

[Hitler] mesmerised the whole nation with his leadership and iron discipline – India needs his discipline Student Prayag Thakkar

It’s not just the autobiography – books on the Nazi leader, T-shirts, bags, bandanas and key-rings are also in demand.

A shop in Pune, called Teens, says it sells nearly 100 T-shirts a month with Hitler’s image on them.

Prayag Thakkar, a 19-year-old student in Gujarat state, is one of them: “I have idolised Hitler ever since I have had a sense of history. I admire his leadership qualities and his discipline.”

The Holocaust was bad, he says, but that is not his concern. “He mesmerised the whole nation with his leadership and iron discipline. India needs his discipline.”

Dimple Kumari, a research associate in Pune, has not read Mein Kampf but she would wear the Hitler T-shirt out of admiration for him. She calls him “a legend” and tries to put her admiration for him in perspective: “The killing of Jews was not good, but everybody has a positive and negative side.”

Young people have no sense of history – [Mein Kampf] is not easy to understand unless you know the history of Germany Academic Govind Kulkarni

Shilpi Guha says she started reading the book but could not finish it and she wouldn’t like to dwell on the dictator’s negative side.

In the past, a couple of right-wing Hindu leaders have also expressed their admiration for Hitler.

But young Indians’ fascination for him has been explained succinctly by academic Govind Kulkarni: “The youth look for a hero, a patriot, and Hitler was a committed patriot. He is seen as someone who can solve problems. The young people here are faced with a lot of problems.”

Mr Kulkarni says he believes the young are gullible and fail to see the sinister side of Hitler.

“Young people have no sense of history. The book is thick and not easy to understand unless you know the history of Germany,” he says.

Amit Tripathi, a Mumbai-based scholar, read the book a long time ago but just out of curiosity.

“I didn’t find the book inspiring at all. It was interesting to read how he coped with his days of struggle, but his ideology of racial purity smacked of racism.”

Oh look a Muslim terrorist has struck again in Europe, this time against the Greek “counter-terrorism” minister…except…wait…this just in…the terrorist was likely from the rebel guerilla movement Revolutionary Struggle. Looks like the 99.6% of terrorist attacks has struck again.

Bomb kills aide to Greek counter-terrorism minister

A bomb blast at the offices of Greece’s public order ministry in Athens has killed a close aide to the minister responsible for counter-terrorism.

Police said the victim had opened a parcel bomb.

The explosion happened only metres away from the office of the minister, Michalis Chryssohoidis, who was unhurt.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said the bombing was a terrorist attack. So far no group has said it was beind the bomb.

‘Cowardly murderers’

The blast was so powerful that some in the heavily guarded building thought it had been struck by an earthquake, the BBC’s Malcolm Brabant in Athens reports.

The victim was later identified as Giorgos Vassilakis, a 50-year-old father of two.

Visibly shaken, Mr Chryssohoidis said he had “lost a valuable and beloved colleague”.

“We cannot be scared and we cannot be terrorised. These cowardly murderers will be brought to justice.”

The minister added that the parcel had been meant for him.

Mr Papandreou also branded the bombers “cowards”, adding: “They will get the response that they deserve not only from the state but also from all of society. The terrorists will not reach their objective.”

Greek terrorism expert Dr Athanasios Drougas told the BBC that the bomb was probably the work of Revolutionary Struggle, the country’s most deadly active guerilla group.

In recent months police have made major breakthroughs against Revolutionary Struggle and another militant organisation, Conspiracy of Fire.

Dr Drougas said Revolutionary Struggle was sending a message that its was not defeated and was still capable of striking at the heart of the Greek government.

Islamophobes such as Robert Spencer frequently like to say, “there is no fun in Islam.” They gleefully then make posts about how Somali extremists killed men for watching the World Cup. Now, after a man was killed by his family for watching the World Cup instead of a Gospel program will they say that there is no fun in Christianity?

This just highlights that extremism and violence are not the sole property of Muslims.

Police: Family killed dad for watching World Cup instead of Gospel Show

JOHANNESBURG (AP) – Police say a South African man who wanted to watch a World Cup match instead of a religious program was beaten to death by his family in the northeastern part of the country.

David Makoeya, a 61-year-old man from the small village of Makweya, Limpopo province, fought with his wife and two children for the remote control on Sunday because he wanted to watch Germany play Australia in the World Cup. The others, however, wanted to watch a gospel show.

“He said, ‘No, I want to watch soccer,”‘ police spokesman Mothemane Malefo said Thursday. “That is when the argument came about.

“In that argument, they started assaulting him.”

Malefo said Makoeya got up to change the channel by hand after being refused the remote control and was attacked by his 68-year-old wife Francina and two children, 36-year-old son Collin and 23-year-old daughter Lebogang.

Malefo said he was not sure what the family used to kill Makoeya.

“It appears they banged his head against the wall,” Malefo said. “They phoned the police only after he was badly injured, but by the time the police arrived the man was already dead.”

All three were arrested Sunday night, but Lebogang was released on $200 bail Tuesday, Malefo said. The other two are still being held in custody.

Malefo said the mother and son will reappear in the local Seshego Magistrates Court on July 27.

“He was always a happy man, never violent,” Makoeya’s nieces, Miriam and Anna, told the Daily Sun newspaper. “On Saturday, we saw him the last time at a funeral.”

The World Cup, being played in Africa for the first time, started Friday and runs through July 11. Although most the tickets for the 64-game tournament have been sold, many in South Africa are too poor to attend matches.

Imagine if these were two different strains of the same Muslim sect, people would be wailing that Islam and Muslims are racists. As of now I haven’t heard anyone say Judaism or Jews are racists. You can also bet that if these protesters against integration were Muslims, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller would be having a field day.

Orthodox Jews rally against verdict

Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel have staged mass demonstrations against a court ruling that forces the integration of a religious girls’ school.

The rallies took place in Jerusalem and in other cities on Thursday in a show of mass defiance over the ruling by the supreme court.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said 10,000 police were deployed to maintain order as demonstrators held posters that read: “The Supreme Court is fascist.”

“The prisoners of Emanuel are the messengers of the Jewish people,” read another.

At the centre of the dispute is an Orthodox school in the Emanuel Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank.

Parents from the strictly observant Slonim Hassidic sect of Ashkenazi Jewry refused to let their children attend school with girls of Mideast and North African descent, known as Sephardim.

They insist they are not racist, but want to keep the classrooms segregated, as they have been for years, arguing that the families of the Sephardi girls are not religious enough.

However, the court rejected that argument and ordered the jailing of at least 43 sets of Ashkenazi parents refusing to send their daughters back to school.

‘Most dramatic clash’

The dispute was described by the Israeli daily Haaretz as “the most dramatic state-religion clash to break out here”.

Sephardi religious leaders have not publicly criticised the demonstration or the parents’ conduct, suggesting a reluctance to drive a wedge within the religious community.

Nissim Zeev, a legislator from the conservative Sephardic political party Shas, said: “This is an example of something that should have been passed to a rabbinical court.

“It’s out of proportion, and a bit puzzling, that the high court should impose a prison sentence on these parents.”

Still, Zeev said the Sephardi girls had the right to choose to attend a mixed school. “If the children are together under one roof, then they are entitled to the same education,” he said.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox minority of some 650,000 Jews, just under 10 per cent of the nation’s population, is an insular community that has been known to riot over the state’s intrusion into its affairs.

Tina Anderson

We have often heard about horror stories from Saudia Arabia where a woman is raped and along with her attacker is accused of committing fornication and then flogged or at least sentenced to be flogged. Some might think that this sort of thing could never happen anywhere else, but something equally egregious occurred here in the USA.

A Christian church found out that one of its parishioner raped a fellow parishioner twice, impregnating her. What did they do? They sheltered the rapist, made him apologize for raping the girl and made the girl apologize for becoming pregnant.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks#p/u/7/V0hftd5B_Io 350 300]

Police: Girl raped, then relocated

By Trent Spiner / Monitor staff

After being raped and impregnated by a fellow churchgoer more than twice her age, a 15-year-old Concord girl was forced by Trinity Baptist Church leaders to stand before the congregation to apologize before they helped whisk her out of state, according to the police.

While her pastor, Chuck Phelps, reported the alleged rape in 1997 to state youth officials, Concord police detectives were never able to find the victim. The victim said she was sent to another church member’s home in Colorado, where she was home-schooled and not allowed to have contact with others her age. It wasn’t until this past February that the victim, who is now 28, decided to come forward after reading about other similar cases, realizing for the first time it wasn’t her fault that she had been raped, she told the police.

The police arrested Ernest Willis, 51, of Gilford, last week in connection with the case, accusing him of raping the girl twice – once in the back seat of a car he was teaching her to drive in and again after showing up at her Concord home while her parents were away. He was charged with four felonies – two counts of rape and two counts of having sex with a minor, court records show.

In a statement to the police, the victim said Willis came to her home in the summer of 1997 without warning.

“He said he wanted to talk to me about something so I let him in the house,” she wrote. “He locked the door behind him and pushed me over to the couch. I had a dress on and he pulled it off. I pushed my hands against his shoulders and said ‘No,’ but he didn’t stop.”

At the time of the alleged rape, Phelps was in touch with the police, who told him to contact the Division for Children, Youth and Families.

But moving the girl out of state prevented the police from collecting evidence or a statement, the police said yesterday.

“Without a victim, it makes it very difficult to have a case,” said Lt. Keith Mitchell. “That basically made the investigation very difficult.”

At the time, Willis also refused to give a statement, police records show.

So for 13 years, a file on the case sat closed and marked “unresolved” at the Concord police station.

Police records do not show whether detectives asked church leaders to help them get in contact with the victim or if information was withheld.

“If somebody tried to cover this up or not cover this up, that’s a separate issue,” Mitchell said.

Phelps did not return a message seeking comment yesterday. He no longer works at the church.

“The leadership of Trinity Baptist Church reported this alleged crime within 24 hours of hearing the accusations on Oct. 8, 1997,” said spokesman Peter Flint from a prepared statement. “We continue in our commitment to cooperate with authorities so that justice is served.”

‘Completely in shock’

The victim said she came forward after getting in touch with Jocelyn Zichterman, who runs an online group for victims of church abuse.

In a seven-page statement to the police, the victim recounted the moments leading up to her departure from New Hampshire.

At 14, she began babysitting for Willis, a well-known member of the church. She told the police she would often stay the night if he got home late.

Just over a year later, he offered to give her driving lessons. While in the parking lot of a Concord business, Willis asked her to pull over to switch seats, she told the police.

But instead he pulled her into the backseat and raped her, according to a statement to the police.

In the summer of 1997, Willis raped her again, this time while at her home while her mother was out, according to police records.

“I was completely in shock, but too scared to go and tell anyone because I thought I would get blamed for what happened,” she said.

Over the next few months, the girl became suspicious she was pregnant. She called Willis, who brought over a pregnancy test that came up positive, she told the police.

“He asked me if I wanted him to take me to a neighboring state where underage abortions were legal . . . and he would pay for an abortion,” she told the police. “He then asked me if I wanted him to punch me in the stomach as hard as he could because that might cause a miscarriage.”

She declined both.

‘Church discipline’

The victim told her mother about the pregnancy. Soon after, Phelps was also alerted.

The victim said Phelps told her she would be put up for “church discipline,” where parishioners go before the congregation to apologize for their sins.

She asked why. “Pastor Phelps then said that (Willis) may have been 99 percent responsible, but I needed to confess my 1 percent guilt in the situation,” the victim told the police.

“He told me that I should be happy that I didn’t live in Old Testament times because I would have been stoned.”

Fran Earle, the church’s former clerk, witnessed the punishment session.

At a night meeting of the church’s fellowship in 1997, Phelps invited Willis to the front of the room. Willis apologized to the group for not being faithful to his wife, Earle said.

“I can remember saying to my husband, I don’t understand it’s any of our business why this is being brought up,” Earle said.

Phelps then told parishioners a second matter was at hand; he invited the victim to apologize for getting pregnant.

“I can still see the little girl standing up there with this smile on her face trying to get through this,” Earle said.

A day after the session, Earle called the pastor’s wife, who said the victim had decided not to press charges for statutory rape.

“You’ve got to understand, we trusted our pastor and his wife to be telling us the truth,” Earle said. “They told us it had been reported. He reported it as a consensual act between a man and a woman. Well, I didn’t know a 15-year-old was a woman.”

Earle, who left the church in 2001 after 19 years, said it was regular to see young girls who were pregnant called to the front of the congregation to be humiliated.

Rob Sims, another former member, said the discipline sessions were formulaic – Phelps would read Bible verses, give a limited overview of what happened and then each person would read a statement.

“(The) statement agreed that they had done wrong and why they ‘now believed’ that they had sinned,” he said. “Then Pastor Phelps would give a few closing remarks and then a vote would be taken to remove the guilty party from membership or to keep them in membership but under discipline, or something to that effect.”

The police said the victim’s family asked for her to be moved to Colorado.

“I think that she clearly did not want to go to Colorado, and I’m quite sure she expressed that to the church, her mother and the pastor,” said Concord police Detective Chris DeAngelis. “However, she was a juvenile. Her mom requests assistance and that was what they came up with.”

Mitchell said the police are looking at pressing other charges.

Willis was released on $100,000 personal recognizance bail. He faces an arraignment June 16 in Concord District Court.

Trent Spiner can be reached at 369-3306 or tspiner@cmonitor.com

This was a vigilante action but will we be hearing any cry of denunciations from the usual Islamophobes who seem to think “stoning” only happens amongst or to Muslims? What would the reaction have been if the perpetrators of this crime were Muslim? (via. Talk Islam)

Couple Stoned to Death in Andhra Pradesh

HYDERABAD: A couple, who had eloped and married, was stoned to death in what appears to be a case of honour killing in Andhra Pradesh’s Nizamabad district.

Irate residents of Krishnajivadi village rained stones on the couple after tying them to a pole, police said on Thursday.

The macabre incident occurred late Wednesday night in Telangana region, about 250 km from Hyderabad.

Sunkara Srinivas, 32, belonging to the Scheduled Caste (SC), and 22-year-old Swapna Reddy, belonging to an upper caste, had eloped and married six months ago.

Swapna’s family was against the alliance as Srinivas was from a lower caste and already married. He had two children from his first wife.

The newly married couple lived in Hyderabad for sometime as Srinivas was working as a computer operator in a private firm.

They returned to the village three days ago. Swapna’s relatives called the couple on the pretext of discussing some issues. Following an argument, they started thrashing Srinivas and when Swapna tried to protect him, they attacked her as well.

The couple was then tied to a pole and the attackers, numbering about 30, pelted stones on them leading to their death.

Police have registered a case and arrested three people.

AP-West Bank Mosque Arson

Another mosque has been torched in the West Bank:

Israeli Firefighters: West Bank Mosque fire likely arson

Israeli firefighters said Thursday that the fire which occurred in a West Bank mosque earlier this week appears to have been deliberately set.

The Palestinian Authority already implicated Jewish settlers in the fire on Tuesday, which destroyed holy books and prayer rugs in the Nablus-area village of Luban al-Sharqiya. The blaze came at a sensitive time as the Israelis and Palestinians were due to begin new U.S.-brokered indirect peace talks.

Upon first seeing the mosque in flames, residents, along with Israeli police, believed it had been caused by an electrical short-circuit.

But fire department spokesman, Jeky Binyamini, said on Thursday that this wasn’t the case, and cited arson as a likely cause of the fire.

Israeli defense officials are increasingly concerned over the series of mosque burnings in the past six months. In December a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf was set on fire. The Shin Bet security service briefly detained several suspects, and it is not clear whether they will be charged.

In April, stars of David were spray-painted on a mosque in the village of Hawara. No suspects were detained in the incident.

Imagine if a Muslim had done this, the usual chorus of Islamophobes would be pontificating on how such violence is intrinsic to Islam itself. There would be a concerted effort to link the actions of a few extremists to the religious texts and then to the faith itself.

Using such logic, should we ask: what is inspiring these Israeli settlers to commit these violent actions?  Could it be the scriptural commentary on the Torah that say it’s okay to decimate the enemy’s cities and even kill their babies?

Should we now generalize this extremist understanding to all of Judaism?

Of course, we know better than to do that.

Interesting piece about challenging traditions in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette. In it we read about how some ultra-Orthodox Jewish men gather to harass women,

Across a partition, in the men’s section of the Kotel, a group of ultra-Orthodox men gathered to harass the women as they sang and prayed. The men shouted “Gevalt!” — expressing their revulsion in Yiddish — and called the women’s prayer an abomination. One or two threw objects and spat at them. In the women’s section, some Orthodox female worshipers joined in the insults.

Imagine if this had been Mooslims hurling insults at women, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and the whole goof troop would be waxing on how this is “Islam” and just part and parcel of the “misogyny Islam preaches.” Will they cover this story?

Challenging Traditions at the Heart of Judaism

JERUSALEM — A struggle for the character of the Western Wall, this city’s iconic Jewish holy site and central place of worship, is under way, and it is being fought with prayer shawls and Torah scrolls.

On Friday, sheets of rain obscured the Old City’s ancient domes. But by 7 a.m. about 150 Jewish women had gathered at the Western Wall to pray and to challenge the constraints imposed on them by traditional Jewish Orthodoxy and a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Under their coats many of the women, supporters of a group of religious activists called Women of the Wall, wore a tallit, or fringed prayer shawl, a ritual garment traditionally worn only by men. Some wore their prayer shawls openly, an illegal act in this particular setting that can incur a fine or several months in jail.

Last month Nofrat Frenkel, 28, an Israeli medical student and a committed follower of Conservative Judaism, a modern, egalitarian strain, was the first woman in Israel to be arrested during prayers at the Western Wall, also known as the Kotel, for publicly wrapping herself in a tallit.

The police accused her of acting provocatively and in a way that upset public order. Ms. Frenkel said the investigation was still under way.

The Women of the Wall, who meet for prayers at the Kotel at the start of every Hebrew month, are at the vanguard of a feminist struggle in Orthodox Judaism and other more contemporary strains to adapt time-honored religious practice for the modern age. They came in droves on Friday, the first day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, to express their outrage over Ms. Frenkel’s case.

Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women of the Wall, which was founded in 1988, said she had never seen so many turn up in the month of Tevet.

“We are pushing the envelope. History is made of moments like this,” she said.

The group’s activities present a head-on challenge to the religious establishment, which is dominated in Israel by Orthodox rabbis who interpret and apply the rules of religious law in their strictest form.

The Kotel is defined in Israel as a national and holy site that is open to all. In practice, the women say, it operates like an Orthodox synagogue, with separate prayer sections for men and women and a modesty patrol to ensure that visitors are appropriately dressed.

Traditional Orthodox women pray individually, and quietly, by the Kotel’s massive beige stones, a remnant of the retaining wall of the mount revered by Jews as the site where their ancient temples once stood. Al Aksa mosque now sits on the top of the mount.

Critics of the Women of the Wall say that their practices — like holding organized prayers, singing out loud, carrying a Torah scroll and wearing prayer shawls — offend the more traditional worshipers at the site.

Twenty years ago, having suffered verbal and physical abuse as they prayed, the Women of the Wall petitioned the Supreme Court to have their right to religious freedom recognized, on grounds that the Kotel does not belong to the Orthodox establishment alone.

After a lengthy legal battle, the court ultimately ruled against the women in the interest of public order. Consequently, it is illegal for them to read aloud from the Torah or to wear prayer shawls openly by the wall. Instead, the authorities have allocated them a special area where they can conduct services in their own fashion, in an archaeological garden tucked around a corner, out of sight.

“These women come here like a persecuted group,” said David Barhoum, a criminal lawyer there on behalf of the Women of the Wall. If anything, he said on Friday, the criminal behavior seemed to be coming from the other side.

Across a partition, in the men’s section of the Kotel, a group of ultra-Orthodox men gathered to harass the women as they sang and prayed. The men shouted “Gevalt!” — expressing their revulsion in Yiddish — and called the women’s prayer an abomination. One or two threw objects and spat at them. In the women’s section, some Orthodox female worshipers joined in the insults.

Jewish religious law is open to interpretation. The Women of the Wall argue that even according to some Orthodox opinions, they are doing nothing wrong.

“Women are exempt from carrying out certain commandments, but not forbidden,” said Ms. Frenkel, who kept her prayer shawl hidden beneath her jacket by the Kotel this time around.

But the rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, said “there is no value to prayer that creates controversy and offends other female worshipers” at the site.

The dispute is not about interpretations of religious law, he added, but about the sanctity and the accepted custom of the place. “On Friday the heavens wept,” he said.

Others saw the rain as a blessing in this parched land. The downpour was “so fitting,” said Simonne Horwitz, an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan in western Canada, who said she had flown in especially for the event.

By and large, the inclement weather was on the side of the police who were sent to uphold the law and keep the peace.

There had been a plan for the women concealing their prayer shawls to open their coats, but Ms. Hoffman said most did not want to because of the storm.

Plans to take out a Torah scroll at the Kotel, and perhaps to read from it, were also aborted for fear the parchment would be damaged by the rain. Even so, one of the scrolls ended up with water stains.

Whether or not it was an act of divine intervention, the deluge allowed everyone to claim victory — the drenched women, their detractors and the police. The women were obviously wearing prayer shawls at the wall, but no arrests were made.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09356/1022781-82.stm?cmpid=news.xml#ixzz0aSDQCPKN

Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

Israel’s former Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef describes Islam as an “ugly” religion. (Hat tip: Ustadh) This is something that no American newspaper would report or discuss let alone Robert Spencer. Imagine if it had been Ali Gomaa the head Mufti of Egypt who said something like this about Christianity or Judaism. This also highlights a troubling trend from conservative Orthodox Rabbi’s disparaging and describing Islam and Muslims in hateful terms.

Israeli Rabbi Describes Islam as “ugly”

Israel’s top Rabbi, Shas party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, harshly criticized Islam as a religion and described it as an “ugly” faith during a speech he delivered on Saturday night for the occasion of Hanukah. The comments have left many in the Arab world questioning the role of religious leaders in the Jewish state. The Rabbi, according to a report by Egypt’s al-Youm al-Saba’a newspaper, who quoted the statements of the Rabbi from Israel’s Ma’arev daily newspaper, reportedly said, “Islam is the worst religion and a religion that disregards the rules of marriage and divorce among Muslims,”

In another case of what if they were Muslim, Israeli settlers spurred by a mandate from G-d attacked a West Bank Mosque, sprayed graffiti on it and burned Qurans inside of it. Of course this isn’t big news for most, and we will see the likes of Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Rabbi Jonathan Hausman either remain silent on this or somehow justify it. (hat tip: retaane)

Settlers attack West Bank Mosque and burn holy Muslim books

Suspected Jewish settlers today attacked a mosque in the northern West Bank, burning holy books and spraying threatening graffiti in Hebrew on the building, Palestinian officials and Israeli police said.

Extremists broke into the mosque in the village of Yasuf, near the city of Nablus, and burned Muslim holy books and prayers carpets, while sprayed slogans on the floor reading “Price tag – greetings from Effi.”

The so-called price tag is the Jewish settlers’ policy of attacking Palestinians and their property in retribution for any Israeli government curb on settlement expansion. Effi is a Jewish name.

The dawn attack appeared to be the work of hardline settlers furious that the right-wing government of Binyamin Netanyahu has given in to US pressure to try and enforce a temporary freeze on the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where some 300,000 settlers live.
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While the attackers escaped, the Israeli government was quick to condemn the attack. “This is an extremist act geared toward harming the government’s efforts to advance the political process for the sake of Israel’s future,” said Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, whose department is overseeing the freeze.

When they discovered the desecration of their mosque, Palestinian villagers started throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, whom they often accuse of complicity with settlers when they carry out such attacks on them and their olive orchards. Two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were hurt in the clashes.

There have been rising tensions since Mr Netanyahu announced the proposed freeze last month, in an effort to meet US and Palestinians demands for a total halt on settlement construction, deemed illegal by the international community but often backed by the Israeli state.

Thousands of angry settlers gathered for a demonstration close to the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem this week, vowing to continue building and condemning Mr Natanyahu’s decision to bow to pressure from Barack Obama, the US president. They carried banners that said “Obama wants us frozen, God wants us chosen,” and “God’s Bible gave us this land.”

The settlers believe that the West Bank – which they call by its Biblical name, Judea and Samaria – should be part of a greater Israel, and are adamantly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.

They have torn up freeze orders delivered by the Israeli authorities to settlements in the West Bank, and blocked inspectors trying to enforce the building ban. Last week at the settlement of Qedumim, close to Nablus, residents prevented inspectors from entering while cheering as trucks of building materials were brought in.

A right-wing cabinet minister said that the freeze was largely a sham and that the settler population could grow by as many as 3,000 people in the next 10 months, the period of the proposed moratorium.

“This is neither a freeze nor a suspension,” Benny Begin, the son of former prime minister Menachem Begin, told a conference in Tel Aviv, according to an Israeli newspaper. “Construction in Judea and Samaria will continue in the next 10 months.”

“We are … saying that we don’t intend to restrict or suspend new building permits,” he added.

And Mr Netanyahu has tried to temper anger by allocating special development grants to tens of thousands of the settlers, sparking anger from Mr Barak’s centrist Labour party, which has threatened to vote against the measure.

Martin Ssempa

A prominent evangelical pastor in Uganda, Martin Ssempa has proposed and received wide backing for a law which would jail homosexuals and murder “flagrant” homosexuals. He has received support for this from the president of Uganda and a large number of politicians. Ssempa, is connected to a number of American Evangelical organizations and politicians. What would happen if it were an Imam or a Muslim country proposing this legislation, you could be sure Spencer and company would be howling to the wind about it, but on this news story we hear not a peep from them.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNirBgffRkM 300 250]

From Advocates to Outlaws

KAMPALA – If Uganda?s recently tabled Anti-Homosexuality Bill becomes law, Frank Mugisha and other individuals found campaigning for gay rights will face the choice of going to jail or leaving the country.

Mugisha heads Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a leading sexual rights advocacy group that could soon be classed a criminal organization.

“I have never really considered moving out of Uganda. But if I cannot work within the country, then I will have to leave,” said Mugisha.

The bill has baffled legal experts who read it as the product of an over-zealous Evangelical community that is clueless about both Uganda?s constitution and international law.

But for the bill?s proponents, chief among them Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo, who has repeatedly alleged that there exists an organized, western-backed plot to recruit people into homosexuality, the law is necessary to confront a national emergency.

Homosexuality is spreading, Buturo argues, and if people like Mugisha aren?t stopped they will continue to lure impressionable youths into their sinful lifestyle and thereby threaten the perpetuation of the Ugandan people.

“Who is going to occupy Uganda in 20 years if we all become homosexuals? We know that homosexuals don?t reproduce,” Buturo said last year when announcing plans to table the bill.

In one of its most curious provisions, the draft law calls on Uganda to nullify any international treaty or convention that is inconsistent with the spirit of anti-homosexuality.

“You cannot as a country say we will nullify all the treaties we have ratified in the past,” Sylvia Tamale of Kampala?s Makerere University Law School told AFP.

For Tamale, the bill?s composition reveals an absence of qualified legal input and an unhealthy amount of input from people like Martin Ssempa, a prominent Evangelical pastor and internationally known anti-gay crusader who has confirmed having contributed to the bill.

“It would be political suicide for any Ugandan politician to vote against this. Leaders will have to ask themselves, do I listen to my own people, or … to top down orders coming from New York and the UN,” he added.

Ssempa seems to relish the criticism hurled at him by western rights groups, but he is concerned the proposal will create a fissure within the Evangelical Church.

“The western church is going to find itself increasingly at odds with the African church and find itself in a situation where there is a split like in the Anglican Church,” he said.

Ssempa told AFP he was disappointed by a recent statement by American mega-Pastor Rick Warren, who delivered the convocation at US president Barack Obama?s Inauguration.

Warren did not mention the Anti-Homosexuality Bill specifically, but said he and his wife ended their relationship with Ssempa, “when we learned that his views and actions were in serious conflict with our own”.

Mugisha is an unlikely candidate to be at the centre of such politically charged debate.

From SMUG?s humble three-room office in a Kampala suburb he explained he never wanted to become a political advocate.

While in university, he volunteered as an undercover health researcher, finding out which clinics could treat certain conditions and where gay men could access the things necessary for safe sex.

He distributed the information on-line and through a small support group he founded.

When SMUG?s leadership learned about his work, they lobbied him to get involved.

At first reluctant, he eventually gave in, and was appointed chairperson of the group in 2007.

He smiled when recounting his earlier health work.

“These young boys, they didn?t know anything about being protected,” he said, half-laughing.

If the new bill had been in place at the time, Mugisha?s attempts to promote safe sex could have qualified as a crime. “Aiding and abetting homosexuality” attracts seven years in prison.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Haaretz brings us an update on the case of the West Bank Settler Rabbi who endorsed the murder of Gentiles including babies and innocents.

Who is Funding the Rabbi who Endorses Killing Babies?

Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov “Jack” Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other “political/ideological” murderers.

True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them.

The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies.

Is that so? Not really.

For example, government ministries regularly transfer support and funding to a yeshiva whose rabbi determined that it is permissible to kill gentile babies “because their presence assists murder, and there is reason to harm children if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us … it is permissible to harm the children of a leader in order to stop him from acting evilly … we have seen in the Halakha that even babies of gentiles who do not violate the seven Noahide laws, there is cause to kill them because of the future threat that will be caused if they are raised to be wicked people like their parents.”

Lior Yavne, who oversees research at the Yesh Din human rights organization, checked and found that in 2006-2007, the Ministry of Education department of Torah institutions transferred over a million shekels to the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar.

The Ministry of Social Affairs has allocated over 150,000 shekels to the yeshiva since 2007, scholarships for students with financial difficulties studying there. And what can they learn with the help of public funding from the head of the yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira? According to selected items published last week in the media, the boys can learn that Teitel is not only innocent, but also a real saint.

Their spiritual leader stated in his book, “Torat Hamelekh” that “a national decision is not necessary in order to permit the shedding of blood of an evil kingdom. Even individuals from the afflicted kingdom can attack them.”

A brochure distributed in Judean and Samarian communities stated that “needless to say that nowhere in the book does it state that these remarks are aimed only at gentiles in ancient times.”

The commandments in the book do not suffice only with gentiles; you can also find in them approval to attack leftist professors: every citizen in the kingdom opposing us who encourages the fighters or expresses satisfaction with their actions is considered a pursuer and his killing is permissible,” wrote the rabbi and adds, “and also considered a pursuer is someone whose remarks weaken our kingdom or have a similar effect.”

Not long ago, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that he would ask European Union countries to halt their support for the Breaking the Silence organization because he was displeased with their publications.

The minister surely has reservations about the rabbi’s publications.

He is invited to approach his colleagues at the Ministry of Education and at the Ministry of Social Affairs.

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef recommends the book

An Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in the West Bank has written that it is permissible for Jews to kill Gentiles including children and babies who threaten Israel or break the commandments. This is a strange pronouncement not in line with what the majority of Jews believe but we must ask what if the Rabbi was an Imam, what would the reaction be?

West Bank Rabbi: Jews can Kill Gentiles

Just weeks after the arrest of alleged Jewish terrorist, Yaakov Teitel, a West Bank rabbi on Monday released a book giving Jews permission to kill Gentiles who threaten Israel.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book “The King’s Torah” that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation.

Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs.

“It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation,” he wrote, adding: “If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments – because we care about the commandments – there is nothing wrong with the murder.”

Several prominent rabbis, including Rabbi Yithak Ginzburg and Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, have recommended the book to their students and followers.

La Familia

La Familia (The Family), a drug cartel in Mexico is unique to say the least. They stand out because they claim Divine Right for their drug pushing project, regularly passing out Bibles and silencing opponents at the barrel of a gun. This quasi-Christian criminal organization’s US-based distribution network has recently been devastated by a Federal crackdown that has busted their drug ring. Most of the media has properly reported that this group’s religious ideology is an anomaly and not representative of mainstream Christianity, but of course if it were Muslims involved this would be front page news and Islam would be castigated as the root of the menace.

US Strikes at Mexican Cartel

Federal agents have launched a massive assault on the US-based distribution network of a major Mexican drug cartel in an effort to disrupt the flow of drugs into the US and the counter-flow of military-grade firearms to Mexico.

The cartel’s network was heaviest in California and Texas, but it stretched across the nation to Boston, Seattle, even St. Paul, Minn.

The coast-to-coast take-down was aimed at La Familia Michoacana, Mexico’s youngest cartel and one of its most violent.

“The sheer level of depravity of violence that this cartel has exhibited far exceeds what we unfortunately have become accustomed to from other cartels,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in announcing the operation in Washington.

The operation, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, featured raids in 19 states and 49 US cities. It is said to be the largest coordinated effort against a Mexican drug cartel in law-enforcement history.

Agents made 303 arrests and seized $3.4 million in cash, nearly 730 pounds of methamphetamine, 62 kilograms of cocaine, 967 pounds of marijuana, 144 weapons, and two clandestine drug labs.

“This operation has dealt a significant blow to La Familia’s supply chain of illegal drugs, weapons, and cash flowing between Mexico and the United States,” Attorney General Holder said. “The cartels should know that we here in the United States are not going to allow them to operate unfettered in our country.”

The aggressive action is aimed at helping Mexican officials dismantle a growing and increasingly violent group of six criminal cartels.

La Familia Michoacana was organized in the 1980s as a marijuana production and distribution organization, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The group reportedly served as a vigilante force to protect the local population from street crime and police corruption.

By 2006, La Familia emerged as one of the top five drug cartels in Mexico.

The group is lead by an executive council, and members share common and strong religious beliefs. Members are forbidden from using illegal narcotics themselves. According to the DEA, La Familia portrays itself as a kind of Mexican Robin Hood, taking from the rich (North Americans) and giving to the poor.

“They believe they are doing God’s work, and pass out Bibles and money to the poor,” the DEA report says. Local schools and officials also benefit, the report says.

But if law enforcement gets too close, La Familia reacts with extreme violence. When Mexican authorities arrested several key members of La Familia in June and July, the organization retaliated by kidnapping, torturing, and murdering 12 Mexican police officers.

In response, Mexico sent 5,500 soldiers to Michoacan.

“We are fighting an organization whose brutal violence is driven by so-called divine justice,” said Michele Leonhart, acting DEA administrator. “La Familia’s narco-banner declared that they don’t kill for money and they don’t kill innocent people. However, their delivery of that message was accompanied by five severed heads rolled onto a dance floor in Uruapan, Mexico,” Ms. Leonhart said.

Officials said La Familia had become a major supplier of methamphetamine in the US. The group reportedly refuses to sell the drug in Mexico and instead ships it to the US for sale. The cartel uses a portion of its drug proceeds to purchase high-powered military-style weapons in the US, which are then smuggled back into Mexico for use to protect its drug and other criminal operations, officials said.

Attorney General Holder said the US was working closely with Mexican authorities to arrest and prosecute the drug cartel leaders. “They are doing, I think, the best they can,” Holder said of his Mexican counterparts.

He said the US would pursue the same strategy it used against organized crime. “What we learned in our fight against the Mafia is that you cut off the heads of these snakes,” Holder said. “We want to bring those people north, if we can.”

The arrests announced Thursday were part of a 44-month operation called Project Coronado. So far the effort has resulted in the arrests of 1,186 individuals and the seizure of $33 million in drug cash, nearly 2,000 kilograms of cocaine, 2,730 pounds of methamphetamine, 29 pounds of heroin, 16,390 pounds of marijuana, and 389 weapons.

The effort is a joint operation of the DEA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, US Customs, US Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

This Aug. 18, 2009 photo shows children accused of witchcraft waiting for food at the Children's Rights and Rehabilitation Network in Eket, Nigeria.

In a grisly article, the LA Times reports via the AP that thousands of African children have been tortured and murdered in the name of Christianity because they were thought to be witches. The burning and murdering of “witches” is something that was thought to have died out in the 17th century with the Salem Witch Trials but it is all too real in some places around the world, especially in Africa where Evangelicalism has been on the rise.

Rest assured Robert Spencer won’t be reporting on this any time soon, nor will the mainstream media say (rightly so) “Christianity” is to blame for this because it is not; human beings are the cause. This highlights a double standard, the continuing saga of “what if they were Muslim?” If we replaced the word Christian here with Muslim and the word Churches with Mosques, we know very well that this would be plastered all over the internet in a second. The anti-Muslim blogosphere would be erupting in delirium and pundits would be pontificating on how Islam is the cause, Islam is barbaric, Islam is irreconcilable to modernity and must be stopped, etc.

Churches Involved in Torture, Murder of Thousands of African Children

by, Katharine Hourfeld

EKET, Nigeria (AP) — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse.

A month later, he died.

Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files.

Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

“It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity,” said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria.

For their part, the families are often extremely poor, and sometimes even relieved to have one less mouth to feed. Poverty, conflict and poor education lay the foundation for accusations, which are then triggered by the death of a relative, the loss of a job or the denunciation of a pastor on the make, said Martin Dawes, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund.

“When communities come under pressure, they look for scapegoats,” he said. “It plays into traditional beliefs that someone is responsible for a negative change … and children are defenseless.”

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The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire.

Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa.

Church signs sprout around every twist of the road snaking through the jungle between Uyo, the capital of the southern Akwa Ibom state where Nwanaokwo lay, and Eket, home to many more rejected “witch children.” Churches outnumber schools, clinics and banks put together. Many promise to solve parishioner’s material worries as well as spiritual ones — eight out of ten Nigerians struggle by on less than $2 a day.

“Poverty must catch fire,” insists the Born 2 Rule Crusade on one of Uyo’s main streets.

“Where little shots become big shots in a short time,” promises the Winner’s Chapel down the road.

“Pray your way to riches,” advises Embassy of Christ a few blocks away.

It’s hard for churches to carve out a congregation with so much competition. So some pastors establish their credentials by accusing children of witchcraft.

Nwanaokwo said he knew the pastor who accused him only as Pastor King. Mount Zion Lighthouse in Nigeria at first confirmed that a Pastor King worked for them, then denied that they knew any such person.

Bishop A.D. Ayakndue, the head of the church in Nigeria, said pastors were encouraged to pray about witchcraft, but not to abuse children.

“We pray over that problem (of witchcraft) very powerfully,” he said. “But we can never hurt a child.”

The Nigerian church is a branch of a Californian church by the same name. But the California church says it lost touch with its Nigerian offshoots several years ago.

“I had no idea,” said church elder Carrie King by phone from Tracy, Calif. “I knew people believed in witchcraft over there but we believe in the power of prayer, not physically harming people.”

The Mount Zion Lighthouse — also named by three other families as the accuser of their children — is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship’s president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members.

“We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody,” he explained.

But Foxcroft, the head of Stepping Stones, said if the organization was able to collect membership fees, it could also police its members better. He had already written to the organization twice to alert it to the abuse, he said. He suggested the fellowship ask members to sign forms denouncing abuse or hold meetings to educate pastors about the new child rights law in the state of Akwa Ibom, which makes it illegal to denounce children as witches. Similar laws and education were needed in other states, he said.

Sam Itauma of the Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children — the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor — who are most often denounced. In Nwanaokwo’s case, his poor father and dead mother made him an easy target.

“Even churches who didn’t use to ‘find’ child witches are being forced into it by the competition,” said Itauma. “They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism.”

That’s what Margaret Eyekang did when her 8-year-old daughter Abigail was accused by a “prophet” from the Apostolic Church, because the girl liked to sleep outside on hot nights — interpreted as meaning she might be flying off to join a coven. A series of exorcisms cost Eyekang eight months’ wages, or US$270. The payments bankrupted her.

Neighbors also attacked her daughter.

“They beat her with sticks and asked me why I was bringing them a witch child,” she said. A relative offered Eyekang floor space but Abigail was not welcome and had to sleep in the streets.

Members of two other families said pastors from the Apostolic Church had accused their children of witchcraft, but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.

The Nigeria Apostolic Church refused repeated requests made by phone, e-mail and in person for comment.

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At first glance, there’s nothing unusual about the laughing, grubby kids playing hopscotch or reading from a tattered Dick and Jane book by the graffiti-scrawled cinderblock house. But this is where children like Abigail end up after being labeled witches by churches and abandoned or tortured by their families.

There’s a scar above Jane’s shy smile: her mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and repeated exorcisms costing a total of $60 didn’t cure her of witchcraft. Mary, 15, is just beginning to think about boys and how they will look at the scar tissue on her face caused when her mother doused her in caustic soda. Twelve-year-old Rachel dreamed of being a banker but instead was chained up by her pastor, starved and beaten with sticks repeatedly; her uncle paid him $60 for the exorcism.

Israel’s cousin tried to bury him alive, Nwaekwa’s father drove a nail through her head, and sweet-tempered Jerry — all knees, elbows and toothy grin — was beaten by his pastor, starved, made to eat cement and then set on fire by his father as his pastor’s wife cheered it on.

The children at the home run by Itauma’s organization have been mutilated as casually as the praying mantises they play with. Home officials asked for the children’s last names not to be used to protect them from retaliation.

The home was founded in 2003 with seven children; it now has 120 to 200 at any given time as children are reconciled with their families and new victims arrive.

Helen Ukpabio is one of the few evangelists publicly linked to the denunciation of child witches. She heads the enormous Liberty Gospel church in Calabar, where Nwanaokwo used to live. Ukpabio makes and distributes popular books and DVDs on witchcraft; in one film, a group of child witches pull out a man’s eyeballs. In another book, she advises that 60 percent of the inability to bear children is caused by witchcraft.

In an interview with the AP, Ukpabio is accompanied by her lawyer, church officials and personal film crew.

“Witchcraft is real,” Ukpabio insisted, before denouncing the physical abuse of children. Ukpabio says she performs non-abusive exorcisms for free and was not aware of or responsible for any misinterpretation of her materials.

“I don’t know about that,” she declared.

However, she then acknowledged that she had seen a pastor from the Apostolic Church break a girl’s jaw during an exorcism. Ukpabio said she prayed over her that night and cast out the demon. She did not respond to questions on whether she took the girl to hospital or complained about the injury to church authorities.

After activists publicly identified Liberty Gospel as denouncing “child witches,” armed police arrived at Itauma’s home accompanied by a church lawyer. Three children were injured in the fracas. Itauma asked that other churches identified by children not be named to protect their victims.

“We cannot afford to make enemies of all the churches around here,” he said. “But we know the vast majority of them are involved in the abuse even if their headquarters aren’t aware.”

Just mentioning the name of a church is enough to frighten a group of bubbly children at the home.

“Please stop the pastors who hurt us,” said Jerry quietly, touching the scars on his face. “I believe in God and God knows I am not a witch.”

Edward Wycoff

What would happen if a Muslim man stabbed and bludgeoned his sister and her husband to death because he thought they were too liberal and were raising their children wrong? There would be a sure fire media storm, the anti-Muslim blogosphere would be in a crazed frenzy like a pair of zombies gorging on a fresh human victim. Accusations of “honor killing” would be flying around, and how “Islam” influenced the criminal actions.

Murder Suspect Disapproved of his Victims

EL CERRITO — A man stabbed and bludgeoned his sister and her husband to death in El Cerrito in 2006 because he thought the couple were too liberal, were raising their children wrong and because they hadn’t invited him over for Christmas, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.

Edward Wycoff, 40, of the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights coldly planned the slayings, including getting Lasik surgery and using night-vision goggles so he could find his way around the house where Julie Wycoff Rogers, 47, lived with her husband, Paul Rogers, 48, prosecutor Mark Peterson said.

He also purposefully picked the date for the killings – Jan. 31, 2006 – Peterson said in Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez. That was 20 years to the day after Wycoff’s grandmother, whom he hated, left his home after breaking her hip, the prosecutor said.

Wycoff regarded his grandmother as “evil” and thought his life improved considerably after she left, Peterson said. Because he believed the couple had also been making his life miserable, he chose that date to break into their home on Rifle Range Road overlooking Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, stab them repeatedly with a knife and bludgeon them with a wheelbarrow handle, Peterson said in his opening statement in Wycoff’s murder trial.

Although Wycoff was also armed with a gun, he didn’t use it because he didn’t want to boost the cause of gun-control supporters, the prosecutor said.

Wycoff, who is serving as his own attorney, told jurors that he still hates the couple “a little.”

“They owe me a life,” he said. “This has ruined my life, and Julie and Paul owe me for that.”

Wycoff agreed with the prosecutor that he resented members of Paul Rogers’ family for their liberal politics, and that he thought the couple were at times “too easy” when they disciplined their children.

He also said that “it wasn’t just Christmas” when he wasn’t invited over. It was also Thanksgiving in 2005, the year his and Julie Rogers’ father died.

“When someone does that, they hate you – they’re out to destroy you,” Wycoff said.

Peterson said Wycoff had planned to adopt the couple’s three children after he committed the killings.

The prosecutor played for the jury the 911 call made by Eric Rogers, then 17, after the killer broke into the home about 4:30 a.m. The boy’s sister, Laurel, then 12, could be heard screaming in the background.

The children tried to help their father, who told them, “I love you all” before dying, the prosecutor said. Eric Rogers brushed his father’s hair, telling him, “I love you, papa.”

Peterson said Julie Rogers’ last words to police were, “Kids OK?”

The children were not harmed. A third child, then 15, was not living at the home at the time.

In an interview from jail after the slayings, Wycoff, who is 6 foot 5 and weighs 300 pounds, said he had tried to disguise himself during the killings by wearing a motorcycle helmet and attaching a ponytail with his late mother’s hair.

In a poem, Wycoff wrote, “My sister, I gutted her like a fish,” Peterson said.

“And in fact, he did,” the prosecutor added, “and he’s proud of it.”

Wycoff was arrested after he turned up at a hospital in Placer County, seeking treatment for a gash on his leg that he probably sustained while breaking into the home, Peterson said.

Wycoff is charged with two counts of murder along with the special circumstance alleging that he committed more than one murder. Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.

Wycoff’s opening statement indicated he would try to justify the killings to the jury, rather than deny he committed them.

At the close of his remarks, Wycoff told the “few fans” in the gallery to contact his advisory attorney, David Briggs, if they wanted autographs.

E-mail Henry K. Lee at hlee@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/14/BAL81A4SU0.DTL

This article appeared on page D – 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

In a related incident of what if they were Muslim, a human rights group has revealed that a Texas man has been sentenced to be executed after jurors at his trial consulted the Bible to decide his fate. Imagine what would happen if it were the other way around and Muslims had consulted the Quran! This is a theocratic action that contradicts the rules and procedures jurors are supposed to work from considering that an external factor was employed while delivering this man’s punishment.

Amnesty Reveals Bible was Used to Decide Execution

Amnesty International has highlighted a case of a man facing execution in Texas.

The human rights group has revealed a Texas man faces execution after jurors at his trial consulted the Bible when deliberating his fate.

Khristian Oliver, 32, is set to be executed on 5th November.

Jurors used Biblical passages supporting the death penalty to help them decide whether he should live or die. Amnesty considers that the jurors’ use of the Bible during their sentencing deliberations raises serious questions about their impartiality.

According to people in the jury room at the time, several Bibles with passages highlighted were passed around during deliberation.

One juror read aloud from the Bible to a group of fellow jurors, including the passage “And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death”.

A US federal appeals court acknowledged last year that the jurors’ use of the Bible amounted to an external influence prohibited under the US Constitution, but nonetheless upheld the death sentence.

Amnesty International is asking for the death sentence to be commuted.

Khristian Oliver was sentenced to death in 1999 for a murder committed during a burglary.

According to accomplice testimony at the trial, 20-year-old Oliver shot the victim before striking him on the head with a rifle butt.