Recently in my ultra-liberal city of Portland, I found myself driving behind a car with just one bumper sticker. “So many Christians,” it read, “So few lions.” I wondered what could possess a person to adorn their car with this one homicidal sentiment—and then possess my community to let them drive around, unaccosted. A friend and I discussed later what other slogans might be put on a bumper sticker.
What if it said “So many Jews, so few gas chambers”? It could read, “So many blacks, so few nooses.” Or “So many Muslims, so few Abu Ghraibs.” How long would it take for a car with that sticker to be pulled over? Twenty minutes?
The double standard is evident everywhere.
A superior court judge recently ruled that the National Education Association can discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation—if they’re discriminating against ex-gays. The NEA refused to let an ex-gay organization run an information booth at their conference, and the judge said this was fine. The DC Office of Human Rights said ex-gays aren’t protected from discrimination because their sexual orientation obviously isn’t “immutable;” (they abandoned practicing homosexuality). This kind of wordplay just shows the power of legal activists to manipulate discrimination laws to protect some citizens not others.
The Washington Times reports that a ten-year-old New Hampshire girl has been ordered to attend public school; the state disapproves of her mother’s firm Christianity and says she must be exposed to other religious faiths. Would they have done this to a Jewish or Muslim child? Unlikely.
By “exposure to other religious faiths,” the court really means “exposure to severe skepticism about Christianity.” In time for next Easter, children’s author Philip Pullman will treat us to his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The book claims the apostle Paul cooked up the “story” that Jesus was divine. Pullman told The Times that Paul’s “fervid imagination” is the only reason anyone thinks Jesus was the incarnated God. A rep from Canongate Books calls it a “book of genuine importance, a radical and ingenious retelling of the life of Jesus that demystifies and illuminates this most famous and influential of stories.” But you don’t have to wait until Easter for more pseudo-history claiming to uncloak the real facts about Jesus’ illegitimacy, bastard love child with Mary Magdalene, or other attacks on the faith. Christmas is right around the corner, and it brings scholarly attacks on Christianity as dependably as supermarket poinsettias.
The double standard also extends to those notorious cartoons. The Danes’ one-panel Mohammed cartoon created a ruckus around the world. Jews fight back too: the Arab European League is being prosecuted for a one-panel cartoon less than reverent about the Holocaust. But what about Christians? An entire comic book, Prince of Pieces, skewers a zombie Jesus—and no one fears hate crime charges. By Sam Miserendino, the comic book is about “a pissed off zombie Jesus returning to devour the flesh of sinners…As one character wryly observes, "For two thousand years you've been eating His flesh and drinking His blood... Now it's His turn."” The comic book isn’t even enough; a film is in the works, too.
This is not a time for Christians to go silent. Visit www.truthtellers.org for easy-to-follow steps to protest legislative threats to our freedom: threats going forward in Congress right now. This matters far more than protesting even the most grotesque media assault.
There is something each of us can do. My youngest sister reposted one of our stories on Facebook. Sheets of letters to the president, protesting his upcoming signing of the hate bill, sit near our fax machine. I’ve been considering how to carve out twenty minutes daily to call Congress, or commit to call just twenty names.
We need to make protest part of our daily lives, as the attack only thickens. There is reason for hope. Democrats dominate both houses of Congress, making them highly vulnerable at this time of intense voter dissatisfaction. God could still reverse the insidious tide sweeping us out to anti-Christian, anti-freedom seas—if we unite our faith with action.
What really empowers rampant anti-Christianity?
So few Christians who will put lions in their cages.
The 1972 Vintage Books paperback edition of Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinksy has a page of quotes just before the table of contents. In the last of the three quotes, Alinsky himself said the following:
"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins -- or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer."
On page 71, speaking of his training program for political organizers, Alinsky remarked:
"The qualities we were trying to develop in organizers in the years of attempting to train them included some qualities that in all probability cannot be taught. They either had them, or could get them only through a miracle from above or below."
ALINSKY: Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not "Is there life after death?" but "Is there life after birth?" I don't know whether there's anything after this or not. I haven't seen the evidence one way or the other and I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man's obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let's say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell.
PLAYBOY: Why?
ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I've been with the have-nots. Over here, if you're a have-not, you're short of dough. If you're a have-not in hell, you're short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I'll start organizing the have-nots over there.
PLAYBOY: Why them?
ALINSKY: They're my kind of people.
I'm not sure whether Alinsky really was a Satanist/Luciferian of some sort or whether he was just joking. He may well have been just joking. The man certainly did have a sense of humor.
When asked his religion, he would always say that he was Jewish. But, on many levels, he seemed to have distanced himself from his Orthodox Jewish background. For example, in Rules for Radicals, when praising Moses as a "good organizer," Alinsky did so in a manner rather irreverent toward the egotism of the Biblical God (pp. 89 to 91).
Be that as it may, he's an excellent role model for politically left-leaning Satanists, whether theistic or symbolic. (When I say "role model" I mean only in a very general sense, not one to be followed slavishly.) Certainly he can be said to have manifested his true will. And he espoused a lot of values that are familiar to today's Satanists, such as his emphasis on power, self-interest, creativity, and practicality.
Rules for Radicals is full of pragmatic realism. For example, on page 88:
"In mass organization, you can't go outside people's actual experience. I've been asked, for example, why I never talk to a Catholic priest or a Protestant minister in terms of the Judaeo-Christian ethic or the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. I never talk in those terms. Instead I approach them on the basis of their own self-interest, the welfare of their Church, even its physical property."
Alinsky accomplished a lot. He built many organzations that gave lot of people the power to improve their lives.
In Part 7 of the 1972 Playboy interview, Alinsky said:
"The biggest obstacles we faced were the apathy and despair and hopelessness of most of the slum dwellers. You've got to remember that when injustice is complete and crushing, people very seldom rebel; they just give up. A small percentage crack and blow their brains out, but the other, 99 percent say, "Sure, it's bad, but what can we do? You can't fight city hall. It's a rotten world for everybody, and anyway, who knows, maybe I'll win at numbers or my lottery ticket will come through. And the guy down the block is probably worse off than me.
The first thing we have to do when we come into a community is to break down those justifications for inertia. We tell people, "Look, you don't have to put up with all this shit. There's something concrete you can do about it. But to accomplish anything you've got to have power, and you'll only get it through organization. Now, power comes in two forms -- money and people. You haven't got any money, but you do have people, and here's what you can do with them." And we showed the workers in the packing houses how they could organize a union and get higher wages and benefits, and we showed the local merchants how their profits would go up with higher wages in the community, and we showed the exploited tenants how they could fight back against their landlords. Pretty soon we'd established a community-wide coalition of workers, local businessmen, labor leaders and housewives -- our power base -- and we were ready to do battle."
Unlike many leftists, Alinsky avoided dogma. In Part 10 of the 1972 Playboy interview, he said:
"I've never joined any organization -- not even the ones I've organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it's Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what judge Learned Hand described as "that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're right." If you don't have that, if you think you've got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide. The great atomic physicist Niels Bohr summed it up pretty well when he said, "Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question." Nobody owns the truth, and dogma, whatever form it takes, is the ultimate enemy of human freedom.
Now, this doesn't mean that I'm rudderless; I think I have a much keener sense of direction and purpose than the true believer with his rigid ideology, because I'm free to be loose, resilient and independent, able to respond to any situation as it arises without getting trapped by articles of faith. My only fixed truth is a belief in people, a conviction that if people have the opportunity to act freely and the power to control their own destinies, they'll generally reach the right decisions. The only alternative to that belief is rule by an elite, whether it's a Communist bureaucracy or our own present-day corporate establishment. You should never have an ideology more specific than that of the founding fathers: "For the general welfare." That's where I parted company with the Communists in the Thirties, and that's where I stay parted from them today."
But his "belief in people" certainly did not translate into utopian idealism. Also in Part 10 of the 1972 Playboy interview, Alinsky said:
"People don't get opportunity or freedom or equality or dignity as an act of charity; they have to fight for it, force it out of the establishment. [...] Reconciliation means just one thing: When one side gets enough power, then the other side gets reconciled to it. That's where you need organization -- first to compel concessions and then to make sure the other side delivers. If you're too delicate to exert the necessary pressures on the power structure, then you might as well get out of the ball park. This was the fatal mistake the white liberals made, relying on altruism as an instrument of social change. That's just self-delusion. No issue can be negotiated unless you first have the clout to compel negotiation.[...]
In fact, of course, conflict is the vital core of an open society; if you were going to express democracy in a musical score, your major theme would be the harmony of dissonance. All change means movement, movement means friction and friction means heat. You'll find consensus only in a totalitarian state, Communist or fascist.
My opposition to consensus politics, however, doesn't mean I'm opposed to compromise; just the opposite. In the world as it is, no victory is ever absolute; but in the world as it is, the right things also invariably get done for the wrong reasons. We didn't win in Woodlawn because the establishment suddenly experienced a moral revelation and threw open its arms to blacks; we won because we backed them into a corner and kept them there until they decided it would be less expensive and less dangerous to surrender to our demands than to continue the fight. I remember that during the height of our Woodlawn effort, I attended a luncheon with a number of presidents of major corporations who wanted to "know their enemy." One of them said to me, "Saul, you seem like a nice guy personally, but why do you see everything only in terms of power and conflict rather than from the point of view of good will and reason and cooperation?" I told him, "Look, when you and your corporation approach competing corporations in terms of good will, reason and cooperation instead of going for the jugular, then I'll follow your lead." There was a long silence at the table, and the subject was dropped."
Given Alinksi's overall approach to organizing, he has been called a "Machiavelli for the common man." In Rules for Radicals, Alinksy's response to those who ask "Does the end justify the means?" was "The means-and-end moralists, or non-doers, always wind up on their ends without any means" (p. 25).
As even the Latter Rain site acknowledges, in an introduction to its excerpt from Rules for Radicals:
"Alinsky's field of action was the field of change and a constant stream of conflict. Alinsky knew that in today's world, people are not motivated by altruism, you need to somehow appeal to their self-interest. The right thing usually done for the wrong reasons. When he came into a community in order to organize it, he had to get the local churches involved. He said that he never appealed to the ministers or priests in terms of Christian principles because they did not really believe in Christianity. Therefore, Alinsky appealed to what really motivated them, their self-interests and talked more about membership and more money. It worked every time."
Some may ask: Is left-wing politics of any kind consistent with Satanism? LaVeyans have often equated Satanism with pure capitalism.
I do not see Satan as championing any particular social, economic, or political order. I see Satan as encouraging us to think for ourselves and to be in touch with our own personal nature. It is up to us to figure out what kind of social, economic, or political order would work best for us, given our own circumstances.
I personally feel that it's in my best interests to live in the kind of society that, on the whole, works best.
My opinion of pure capitalism and economic libertarianism is that they work fine in a society that is largely rural and where there are a lot of small farm owners, as was the case in much of the U.S.A. until the early 20th century or so. However, in a more urbanized society, neither pure socialism nor pure capitalism works well; some sort of mixed economy is needed and can indeed work well, as per the example of most (though admittedly not all) continental Western European countries.
In small towns, "big government" may seem utterly unnecessary. A lot of small towns even have volunteer fire departments. This would never work in a big city like New York. In a small town where everyone knows everyone, there are strong social incentives to do various kinds of volunteer work. The social rewards for volunteer work are much less in a large city.
In a highly urbanized society, the alternative to having at least a moderately limited "welfare state" is to have very high crime rates every time there's an economic downturn. This sort of thing happened quite a bit in the early 20th century, if I'm not mistaken.
Anyhow, as the financial troubles of the Church of Satan itself should more than adequately demonstrate, we Satanists need to drop the fantasy that we're a bunch of supermen. Yes, we should aim to empower ourselves through our own individual efforts, but it also helps to have organizations that empower entire communities.
‘Simon Wiesenthal’s reputation is built on sand. He was a liar and a bad one at that. From the end of the war to the end of his life, he would lie repeatedly about his supposed hunt for Eichmann as well as his other Nazi-hunting exploits.
“Wiesenthal would also concoct outrageous stories about his war years and make false claims about his academic career.”
With these words, the historian Guy Walters begins his examination of the career of the world’s most famous Nazi hunter. It forms one of the main themes of his new book, Hunting Evil, a history of the Nazi war criminals who escaped and the effort to bring them to justice. And it is impossible to read it without feeling deeply uncomfortable.
There are two reasons for this, and only one of them is to do with Wiesenthal. The first reason for discomfort is simply that Walters lays bare, in what is a fine, very readable but nonetheless important, book about how the victors simply let criminals, thousands upon thousands of terrible murderers, walk away after the war.
A couple of years ago, at the end of a drama documentary on the Wannsee conference, the sentences handed out to the conspirators were rolled on the screen just before the credits. I remember watching aghast as I read that one after another of these monsters appeared to have gone back to Bavaria or wherever and lived a quiet life as a greengrocer. Walters explains how this happened.
To start with, the Allies simply had what they regarded as more important things to do. They didn’t want to spend any time or money catching Nazis. Walters prints a tragi-comic correspondence between a set of war crimes investigators and their superiors in which headquarters declined a request for an English-German dictionary, saying that it was out of print and wouldn’t be available for a year.
The victors were also fighting each other. Nazis were recruited to help fight the Soviets, and thus protected from justice. The Allies were fearful, too, that legal proceedings would expose their own soldiers to liability.
They failed to comprehend the scale of the Nazi crime until the units were disbanded and it was too late. Into the vacuum stepped privateers. And Wiesenthal was the most famous. He did a wonderful thing. He kept the issue in the public eye, kept the memories alive, kept the pressure on.
This made him a secular saint. Until now, criticising Wiesenthal has been the occupation only of cranks and antisemites. Walters is most definitely neither of those. But has he erred by providing them with ammunition? Should Jews welcome his book, or shun it? Very firmly the former, in my view.
Walters’s documentary evidence on Wiesenthal’s inconsistencies and lies is impeccable. He shows how the Nazi hunter’s accounts of his wartime experiences are contradictory and implausible. He demonstrates that he had no role, contrary to his own assertion, in the capture of Adolf Eichmann. He pitilessly dissects Wiesenthal’s overblown claims about the numbers he brought to justice, suggesting it was not much more than a handful.
When you read Hunting Evil, you know its author is telling the truth. And, above all — above everything — the truth matters. The truth however painful, the truth however embarrassing, the truth wherever it takes you. Jews can never be hurt by the truth about the Holocaust and must never fear it, never run away from it.
Ben Barkow, the director of the Wiener Library, the institution that my grandfather established to document the truth, has lent his voice to that of Walters, agreeing that a revaluation of Wiesenthal’s contribution was in order. Barkow argues that a nuanced view is possible. That accepting that Wiesenthal was a showman and a braggart and, yes, even a liar, can live alongside acknowledging the contribution he made.
Surely he is right. But even if he is not, Walters has done a service to history and therefore to Jews.
Ariel Toaff is a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel who made a name for himself for his study of medieval Jewry. (2) He also happens to be the son of Elio Toaff, former chief rabbi of Rome.
That such a historian was demonstrating that crucifixions of Catholic children did in fact occur in Ashkenazi Jewish communities in the medieval period was big news. Further, he based his conclusions in good part on the trial records of the famous case of St. Simon of Trent, which he had found worthy of belief. More big news, especially since after Vatican Council II, the Vatican examined the same records, decided they were unreliable, and discontinued the popular cult of St. Simon of Trent.
I saved the page, determined to purchase a copy of the book for review after its release. Some months later, when I finally got around to making the purchase, I learned that Bloody Passovers had raised a titanic storm in Jewish and academic circles. The book sold out its 3,000 copies the first week, and then was pulled by the author off the market, never to return.
Controversy and Pressure
The controversy was set into motion February 6, two days before the book’s official release, when the Italian magazine Corriere della Sera ran an approving review by Sergio Luzzatto, professor of Modern European History at the University of Turin. The piece ran under the expressive title: “Ariel’s Toaff’s Disconcerting Revelation: The Myth of Human Sacrifice Is Not Just an Antisemitic Lie.”
According to Luzzatto, Toaff’s “courageous” book argues that some Christian children, “or perhaps even many,” were killed by Ashkenazic Jews between 1100 and 1500. Furthermore, Toaff described unleavened bread baked with dried blood, possibly taken from murdered Catholic children. Toaff also affirmed that the accusation against the Jews of Trent in the case of the murder of St. Simon of Trent “might have been true.” (3)
That review raised quite a furor. There was an immediate response from the professor’s father Rabbi Toaff and 12 other senior rabbis of Italy. They issued a joint statement condemning the book and denying the use of human blood for ritual purposes, stating that the only blood shed in any past centuries was “that of many innocent Jews.” (4)
In Israel, Knesset members urged legal authorities to bring Prof. Toaff to trial over his book Bloody Passovers. MK Marina Solodkin proposed filing civil suits against him for having damaged "historic truth and the reputation of the Jewish people." (5)
Abraham Foxman, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), immediately made a public statement calling the whole thesis ridiculous. “It is incredible that anyone, much less an Israeli historian, would give legitimacy to the baseless blood accusation,” he stated. (6)
Catholic scholars, such as Msgr. Ignio Rogger, the Church historian who led the investigation in the 1960s in the St. Simon of Trent case, jumped on the bandwagon condemning Toaff’s research. Rogger said Toaff had not presented any new documents and that he gave credence to confessions extracted under torture; therefore Toaff’s thesis was unsustainable. In fact, not a single historian dared come to his defense. (7)
At first, Bar-Ilan University remained calm, summoning Prof. Toaff to ask for explanations regarding his research. But as the pogrom against the Jewish professor swiftly escalated, University heads issued a condemnation against “any attempt to justify the awful blood libels against Jewish people.” Prof. Toaff’s career was on the line.
It must be said that at the beginning of the attack, Toaff stood resolutely behind his research, insisting there was factual basis for some of the medieval blood accusations against the Jews. “I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me,” he dramatically stated. (8)
But his resistance didn’t hold out long. Under such strong, widespread coercion, a week after the publication of Bloody Passovers, Toaff published a full apology, stopped distribution of his book, and promised to rewrite problematic parts. To appease the powers that be, he announced that all the profits from its sale would be donated to the Anti-Defamation League.
The Case of St. Simon of Trent
According to the reviews I read, what Toaff discovered was that the fundamentalist Ashkenazi Jews did actually steal and crucify Catholic children, obtaining their blood and using it for religious rituals, especially at Passovers. (9)
In particular, Toaff looked at the case of St. Simon of Trent, a two-year-old boy from the Italian town of Trent kidnapped by Ashkenazi Jews from his home on the eve of Passover 1475. He was murdered, his body mutilated and crucified head down. The killers were apprehended, confessed and found guilty by Bishop Hinderbach of Trent. Fifty years later, Pope Sixtus IV assembled a commission of six cardinals chaired by the best legal mind of that time for a retrial, and this court also found the murderers guilty. Records of the trial have survived for centuries.
St. Simon’s worship was approved in 1588 by Pope Sixtus IV, and every year the town of Trent celebrated his feast with processions and fanfare - until 1965. In that year, to foster better relations with the Jews after Vatican II, Paul VI ordered the Trent case to be re-examined, and ruled that the confessions of the killers were unacceptable because they were obtained under torture. A decree forbade the cult of St. Simon of Trent. His cult was discontinued and prohibited, and the remains of the martyred child removed and hidden to avoid resumption of pilgrimages.
In his research, Dr. Ariel Toaff made a thorough examination of those court records preserved at Trent. His discovery was that the confessions of the killers contained material that could not have been known to the Italian churchmen or police. The secret rites practiced by the Ashkenazi community, which could not have been known by the judges, were faithfully reproduced in the confessions. Toaff told Haaretz News: “I found that there were statements and parts of the testimony that were not part of the Christian culture of the judges, and they could not have been invented or added by them.” (10)
Such data would seem to at least deserve a fair reading. One might expect that the Vatican in particular would welcome the confirmation by a Jewish scholar of the past findings of Church authorities in the Trent court hearings. But sadly, no hearing or welcome was forthcoming. Toaff discovered many cases of bloody sacrifices connected with the mutilation of children, the outpouring of blood and its baking in Matzo (unleavened Passover bread). The flood of blood accusations in the South Tyrol and upper Veneto at the end of the 15th century, were grounded in facts, according to Toaff’s research. Another Jewish scholar, Kenneth Stow, provides this summary of several chapters of Bloody Passovers:
“Discussions of the negativity Jews expressed about Christianity during the festivals of Purim and Passover and the prominence of blood-imagery especially in Passover rituals (chapters 10 and 11) are followed by the opening words to chapter 12, which say ‘The use of the blood of Christian children in the celebration of Passover was apparently framed by precise rules, or at least this is what the deposition to the Trent trial indicate.” (11)
What Toaff’s study certainly demonstrates is that the Catholic-Jewish antagonism of the Middle Ages was not a one-sided bias on the part of the Catholics, as it is generally presented today. But any discussion on this topic or the general thesis of Bloody Passovers - that Jews crucified Christian children and used their blood ritually - was summarily closed before it could start.
No Objections Permitted
It is interesting to note that the strongest objections to Bloody Passovers came from those who obviously never read the book. The “reasoning” was this: If it is against the Jews, it is wrong, that’s all there is to it.”
We are simply supposed to dismiss as anti-Semitic ranting any argumentation, even data presented by a serious Jewish scholar, which would uphold that the Catholics could have been justified in their claims that Jews in the Middle Ages practiced blood libel, Kabbalitic black magic, and child crucifixions.
In principle, I regard Toaff’s testimony and research as scholarly, honest and authentic. I consider that the enormous psychological pressure he underwent that induced him to take his book out of circulation and apologize is equivalent to physical torture. Anyone with a little experience in law knows that an apology like Toaff’s, made under such violent and universal pressure, is worthless. Therefore, I don’t considerer his apology as a scholarly denial of his long research, and deem the assertions in his book valuable.
It is a pity that the book is no longer available. If any of my readers have it and would make a copy and send it to me, I would like to make a very detailed review of his arguments.
By Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D.
1. Pasque di sangue, ebrei d’Europa e omicidi rituali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2007), 325 pp. 2. His works include The Jews in Medieval Umbria (1979), and The Jews in Umbria (3 vols., 1993-4), and Love, Work and Death: Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria, (1998). Toaff is the acknowledged master of the social history of Umbrian Jewry. 3. “Scholar Pulls Book Revisiting Blood Libel,” February 26, 2007, The Jewish Daily Forward online) 4. Arutz Sheva Israel National News online, June 14, 2007) 5. “MKs seek to try Prof. Toaff over claims in blood libel book,” Haaretz.com online, February 27, 2007. 6. “Scholar Pulls Book Revisiting Blood Libel,” op. cit. 7. “Bar-Ilan prof defiant on blood libel book ‘even if crucified,’” Haaretz.com online, February 28, 2007 8. Ibid. 9. From the book review of Kenneth Stow, Prof. Emeritus of Jewish History at Un. Of Haifa: “To begin with, the thesis of Pasque di sange is unambiguous: Jews crucified Christian children and used their blood ritually. The author’s disclaimers … are unpersuasive.” Storicamente website 10. “Scholar Pulls Book Revisiting Blood Libel,” op. cit. 11. Kenneth Stow, “Blood Libel: A Book Full of Sound and Fury,” Storicamente website. Stow vehemently opposes Toaff’s work, his chief argument being that Toaff trusts too much in the words of Catholic chroniclers and court notaries.
I'm talking about the kidneys offered by an "organist" named Izzy Rosenbaum. The FBI scooped him up in a corruption probe that focused on pay-offs to New Jersey pols (nothing surprising about that) and money laundering by prominent rabbis:
The probe also uncovered Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, who is accused of conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. According to the complaint, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering sale of kidneys for 10 years.
"His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000," said Marra.
Marra is a US attorney involved with the case. News accounts like the one quoted above have led the public to believe that the "donors" were both willing and compensated, and that this operation was purely private. But good evidence indicates that the matter is far, far more troubling.
The kidneys were "donated" at gunpoint by unwilling victims.
The Israeli government directed Rosenbaum's grisly scheme.
Major American hospitals wittingly participated in the plot.
Before we get to that evidence, let us confront two simple questions: Whose kidneys, exactly, were taken? And what kind of doctor would extract a kidney from a healthy patient?
"I am what you call a matchmaker," the complaint quotes Rosenbaum as telling the undercover agent.
Had the transaction been real, federal authorities said, it would have been the most recent chapter in Rosenbaum's 10-year career as an illicit middleman. In each case, he would take a blood sample from a prospective recipient and give it to an associate at an insurance company who could analyze it at a lab without arousing suspicion. The sample would then be shipped to Israel, and the necessary people paid off to find a match.
"He prayed on vulnerable people, " said assistant US district attorney Mark McCarron.
Rosenbaum would then arrange the donor's flight to New York, including obtaining a visa, authorities said. Once the donor arrived in the US, Rosenbaum would help fabricate a relationship between donor and recipient -- a story both would repeat during interviews with medical professionals. The two might pretend to business associates, for instance, or close friends from a religious congregation.
"The hospitals seemed to be in the dark," McCarron said.
As we shall see, we should take that last statement with a grain of salt roughly the size of Lot's wife.
A close reading of the actual indictment of Rosenbaum (pdf) is troubling. Rosenbaum spilled his guts (so to speak) to an undercover informant posing as a prospective organ purchaser. During these interviews, an FBI agent posed as the purchaser's secretary.
Let's look at some excerpts from the indictment. "UC" refers to the informant, whose real name is Solomon Dwek.
[The UC asked defendant ROSENBAUM how defendant ROSENBAUM could obtain a kidney on behalf of UC’s uncle, and defendant ROSENBAUM explained that defendant ROSENBAUM could send a blood sample from the UC’s uncle to Israel to find a matching prospective donor. Defendant ROSENBAUM added that "if you want to arrange it faster, then I, I bring the donor over here... The hospital is the authority who decide it's a match or not. Not me, not you, not him, not nobody."
Defendant ROSENBAUM then explained that it would be necessary to fabricate some sort of relationship between the donor and the recipient. Defendant ROSENBAUM stated that "we put together something–-the relationship. The hospital is asking what's the relationship between” the donor and the recipient. Defendant ROSENBAUM continued, “So we put in a relationship, friends, or neighbor, or business relations, any relation.”
Defendant ROSENBAUM explained that he was not a surgeon and that once he had brought a willing donor to this country, "it's beyond my control." He did add that "I take care of [the donor] after, after the surgery also.” When pressed on this last point, defendant ROSENBAUM explained that "I place him somewhere,” to look after the donor. Defendant ROSENBAUM further stated: “You have to babysit him like a baby because he may have a language problem, maybe not." Defendant ROSENBAUM explained the process of finding a donor in Israel and stated that "[t]here are people over there hurting . . . One of the reasons it's so expensive is because you have to shmear (meaning pay various individuals for their assistance) all the time."
Defendant ROSENBAUM indicated that among those who would need to be paid were the donor and the doctors in Israel who would examine the donor, and further added that there would be expenses incurred for preparing the Visa work and paying the donor's expenses while in the United States.]
The only evidence that the donor would be willing came from Rosenbaum, who had the following motives for lying:
1. He needed to ease the conscience of the prospective recipient.
2. He needed to justify the large amount of cash involved.
3. He needed to protect the hospitals and doctors involved with his operation. Rosenbaum understood that he was engaged in a risky business, and that even if he got caught, he would still need to provide cover for any hospital or surgeon connected to this wretched business.
Do we have evidence of that the donors were coerced? Yes. In fact, we have the testimony of an "insider" witness:
Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley, was and is very clear as to Rosenbaum's role in the ring.
"He is the main U.S. broker for an international trafficking network," she said.
Her sources include a man who started working with Rosenbaum imagining he was helping people in desperate need. The man then began to see the donors, or to be more accurate, sellers, who were flown in from impoverished countries such as Moldova.
"He said it was awful. These people would be brought in and they didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing and they would want to go home and they would cry," Scheper-Hughes said.
The man called Rosenbaum "a thug" who would pull out a pistol he was apparently licensed to carry and tell the sellers, "You're here. A deal is a deal. Now, you'll give us a kidney or you'll never go home.'
(Moldava, incidentally, is a small country bordering the Ukraine.)
Scheper-Hughes, who is writing a book on this topic, went to the FBI in 2002. They dismissed her evidence. The State Department issued a 2004 report which labeled organ trafficking an "urban legend." By contrast, authorities in other countries acted on her leads and made arrests.
Scheper-Hughes had better luck in Brazil and in South Africa, where law enforcement corroborated her findings and acted decisively.
But the ring kept operating elsewhere. Scheper-Hughes visited villages in Moldova where, "20% of the men were siphoned off to be kidney sellers in this same scheme."
We must now pause to re-think Rosenbaum's statements to the FBI informant. How could any rational person working for a hospital buy the story that the recipients -- American Jews -- attended services with Brazilians and Africans?
You can see a lecture by the heroic Nancy Scheper-Hughes here. The video also gives her resume, which is extremely impressive. Her testimony to a House subcommittee is here. NPR's Brian Lehrer interviewed Scheper-Hughes yesterday morning. An excerpt:
"I had begun to unravel a huge network -- a criminal network that really looks like, smells like, kind of a mafia. The head office of the pyramid scheme originated in Israel, with brokers placed in Turkey; in New York City; in Philadelphia; in Durban; in Johannesburg; in Recife, Brazil; Moldova -- all over the place. And I used my ethnographic investigative skills to just go country-hopping and try to connect the dots.
Eventually, it brought me to Isaac Rosenbaum being the head broker for Ilan Peri in Israel, who is the don, basically, of the operation, and who is a slippery guy. The Israelis tried to nail him and arrest him. They tried to get him on tax evasion and he escaped to Germany. I think he's back in Israel."
A cynic might posit that Mr. Peri has what Mossad calls "a horse" pulling for him. (A "horse" is an Israeli slang term for a big shot offering covert aid.) Although he has left a very scant public trail, Mr. Peri and his operation are mentioned in this 2004 story. This fascinating article from Agence-France Presse offers blockbuster information. A retired Israeli army officer named Geldaya Tauber Gady was arrested in Brazil for his participation in this international organ trafficking ring. (I suspect that the information from Scheper-Hughes -- which was taken seriously in Brazil -- led to Gady's arrest.)
He told the court that the Israeli government financed the operation. Not only that:
Gady told the court that an Israeli government official, identified only as Ilan, put him in touch with an intermediary in Brazil...
Gady's courtroom testimony puts the Rosenbaum case in an entirely new light.
The American media's coverage has led the public to believe that Rosenbaum's kidney trafficking was purely a matter of private enrichment. But a former Israeli officer has said under oath that the Israeli government runs this ring, and that the master of the ring -- "Ilan" is obviously Ilan Peri -- functions as an agent of that government.
(Now I'm wondering: Was the Israeli government involved with the money laundering conducted through New Jersey synagogues?)
Frankly, I suspect that Scheper-Hughes knows all about Gady's testimony and its implications for the Rosenbaum case. She probably has chosen to keep mum about it in order not to lose credibility with the American media.
The Lehrer interview with Scheper-Hughes goes on to deliver more details about her findings in Moldova. In villages there, many young men reported that they had been told that they expect to find work in other countries (including the United States) as house painters. Once in the new country, they were forced to give up their kidneys.
According to Scheper-Hughes' informant within Rosenbaum's organization, confused and disoriented Russians would be flown into New York City by Israeli brokers who forced them at gunpoint to "donate" kidneys.
[Scheper-Hughes: They told me the names of the hospitals, and they were our best hospitals!
Brian Lehrer: And did they know, professor, that they were performing kidney surgery on people who were unwilling participants and were being exploited and threatened?
Scheper-Hughes: My sense is, how could some of them not have known? The people that arrived, some of them didn't speak the same languages, they were poor, they were disoriented...
We have rules. We have transplant coordinating committees. We have ethical guidelines. And you don't just let people walk in off the streets.]
She goes on to name Mount Sinai hospital, against whom she has videotaped evidence. She brought the videotape to the attention of 60 Minutes, which did not broadcast it. Later in the interview, she refers to operations done at Albert Einstein Medical Center. Mount Sinai says that its kidney donors "undergo an extensive evaluation to provide for their safety and well-being." Over the years, many have accused Israel of trafficking in the organs of Palestinians. The Palestinians themselves have no doubt that the practice is common.
Unfortunately, many of the websites trumpeting charges of Israeli organ theft often display an undeniable anti-Semitic bent. Some of the allegations I've looked into do indeed appear to be spurious. (I would, for example, dismiss any claim that traces back to so notorious a source as La Voz de Atlan.) But before you categorize all such accusations as fantasies, consider: As recently as 2004, the State Department officially denounced as mythical the claim that organ trafficking occurs in the United States. As we now know, that "myth" had a basis in reality.
Knee-jerk accusations of anti-Semitism should not deter us from conducting candid and unbiased research into Israel's record. I would note that those who discuss organ trafficking in India and China are not accused of racial animosity toward the Indians or the Chinese. This online book is written to a high standard and cites responsible sources, including Scheper-Hughes. The endnotes attribute the following story to the respected author David Yallop:
[West Bank, 8th of February 1988
Nineteen years old Khader Elias Tarazi, a Christian Palestinian, went shopping for groceries in the Gaza. Upon returning with two bags on his bicycle he crossed a road near a demonstration where stone throwers were fleeing Israeli Army soldiers. The soldiers grabbed Khader and beat his head and body with truncheons. Shopkeepers shouted that Khader wasn’t involved but soldiers broke one of Khader's arms and a leg. They continued the beating then threw him onto the bonnet of their jeep handcuffing the now unconscious Khader to the front crash bar. They drove off continually braking hard whereupon he sustained further injuries including a broken back, skull injuries and his face kept banging against the bonnet.
The Israeli doctor at the Military Prison in Gaza refused to attend Khader because of his serious injuries and inadequate paperwork. He was taken to Ansar Two prison and thrown into a prisoner tent holding thirty to forty prisoners. The other Palestinian prisoners screamed that he must be taken to hospital and the guards responded by forcing them to strip naked and stand outside in the winter cold. Khader died in the tent and later was taken to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheva and pronounced dead.
Khader’s mother was outside the prison where Israeli officials denied they had a prisoner by his name inside. Later, they admitted he was inside but said he must have been very sick when he went out shopping because he was now dead.
Israeli officials refused to hand over the body and it was transferred to Abu Kabeer hospital, officially for a post-mortem. Mrs Tarazi told David Yallop that during this time many of his organs were illegally removed from his body.
No inquiry was made into the death and the Tarazi family were told if they continued to ask for an inquiry they would be looking for trouble. Five months later soldiers and secret police visited the Tarazi house at midnight, beat up Khader’s brother and father and threw the former into Ansar Three prison.]
Yallop is also the source for the following:
[West Bank, 30th of October, 1988
When Roman Catholic Palestinians were leaving mass they were confronted by the Israeli Army and began throwing stones. Nineteen-year old Iyad Bishara Abu Saada was killed by a plastic bullet that cut an abdominal artery. The same grim chase for the body entailed. The mourners eluded the Israelis and Iyad was buried a few hours later. Somewhat predictably the Israelis fired teargas canisters into the family home four days later. Mrs Saada told David Yallop the practice of removing organs was common and named Arab and Israeli hospitals where she said organs were removed. She said doctors, accompanied by soldiers, offered large amounts of money to parents of the killed.]
Mary Barrett, identified as a Boston-based photo-journalist (I know nothing else about her) wrote this piece in 1990: [Dr. Abu Ghazalch attributes the widespread anxiety over organ thefts which has gripped Gaza and the West Bank since the intifada began in December of 1987 to several factors. "There are indications that for one reason or another, organs. especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half'. There were just too many reports by credible people for there to he nothing happening. If someone is shot in the head and comes home in a plastic bag without internal organs, what will people assume'?]
The doctor went on to state that there were "fewer incidents which point in that direction" as of 1990. Incidentally, the story mentions Dr. Yehuda Hiss, more recently accused of harvesting organs from fallen Israeli soldiers without permission.
According to a story which was published in Ha'aretz (a source not open to charges of anti-Semitism), Romanian authorities have accused an Israeli adoption agency of being part of a global organ theft conspiracy.
[The Romanian Embassy in Israel has asked for, and received from the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, a list of all children born in Romania who have been brought to Israel for adoption in recent years. The Romanian officials are trying to ascertain if all such children arrived in Israel with all organs in their bodies.]
Let's close with a tale about a willing Palestinian organ donation: In 2005, in the town of Jenin, the Israeli Defense Forces shot and killed a Palestinian child named Ahmed Khatib. His grieving father allowed the child's various organs to be used to save the lives of other children, both Jewish and Arab. A generous and humane offer. Nevertheless, the father of a Jewish girl whose life was saved said that he would never allow his daughter to befriend an Arab -- for fear of "bad influence."
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