only anti-semites would notice such trivia

Dozens Arrested in New Jersey Corruption Probe
WSJ, Jul 23 2009

Federal agents swept into New Jersey towns across several counties Thursday morning, charging 44 people, including three mayors and religious leaders, in a federal investigation into public corruption and money laundering. Weysan Dun, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office, said more than 300 FBI and IRS agents began making arrests and executing search warrants at 6 a.m. Thursday. Those arrested in the corruption probe include Mayors Peter Cammarano III of Hoboken, Dennis Elwell of Secaucus and Anthony Suarez of Ridgefield, all Democrats; Leona Beldini, one of three deputy mayors of Jersey City, also a Democrat; and state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, a Republican.

The money-laundering portion of the investigation swept up several rabbis in New York and New Jersey, according to Ralph Marra Jr., acting US attorney for New Jersey. In all, 29 people were caught up in the probe into public corruption, and 15 were implicated in the investigation into money laundering, including one Brooklyn man charged with conspiring to broker the sale of a kidney. Those arrested were expected to be arraigned in court Thursday afternoon. The case underscores “the pervasive nature of public corruption” in New Jersey, Marra said. Corruption among the politicians, he said, was “a way of life.”

At the center of the two investigations was a single “cooperating witness” who directed by the investigators attempted to bribe officials and engage others in money laundering schemes. A person familiar with the matter said the witness is an Orthodox Jewish real-estate developer named Solomon Dwek, a 36-year-old religious-school head and philanthropist from Ocean Township. In 2006, he was arrested and charged with defrauding PNC Bank out of $25m. He was forced to seek bankruptcy protection for himself and his companies, which owned about 300 residential and commercial properties. Dwek remained free on a $10m bond. A lawyer for Dwek couldn’t be reached for comment.

To ensnare most of the defendants, the FBI used Dwek to attempt to bribe public officials in New Jersey, including several in Hoboken and Jersey City, according to a person familiar with the matter. The probe roped in several other real-estate developers who also wanted to bribe officials. Cammarano, a 32-year-old who became Hoboken mayor on Jul 1, allegedly agreed to take $10,000 in bribes from the cooperating witness in exchange for supporting the developer’s future plans in Hoboken, the once-hardscrabble, now gentrified hometown of Frank Sinatra across the river from Manhattan. The alleged bribes occurred during Cammarano’s mayoral campaign earlier this year, according to the FBI’s complaint, which also charged an associate of Cammarano, who allegedly served as a middleman and took cash for him. According to Marra, on May 19, before he was elected mayor of Hoboken, Cammarano said at a diner: “I could be indicted and still get 85% to 95% of the vote.”

Dwek was also the key to the money-laundering probe, according to the person familiar with the matter. Under the FBI’s direction, Dwek represented himself as someone who engaged in illegal businesses and schemes including bank fraud, trafficking in counterfeit goods and concealing assets and monies in connection with bankruptcy proceedings. In 2007, for example, Eliahu Ben Haim, the principal rabbi of Congregation Ohel Yaacob, a synagogue in the shore community of Deal, accepted a $50,000 check from the cooperating witness, which was drawn from an account held by a fictitious company set up by the FBI “for the purpose of enabling Dwek to launder money represented to be the proceeds of illegal activities,” according to one criminal complaint. Ben Haim was named as a co-conspirator in court documents. The check was made payable to one of Ben Haim’s charitable organizations “with the expectation that the proceeds would be returned to Dwek at a later date, minus a 10% fee to be retained by Ben Haim.”

Besides Ben Haim, the charged rabbis include Edmond Nahum, the principal rabbi of Deal Synagogue in Deal; Saul Kassin, a rabbi at Shaare Zion Congregation in the New York borough of Brooklyn; Mordchai Fish, a rabbi at a Brooklyn synagogue, Congregation Sheves Achim, and his brother, Lavel Schwartz, also a rabbi. Women who answered the phones at Ohel Yaacob and Shaare Zion both declined to comment. The alleged money-laundering operations run by the rabbis laundered about $3m for Dwek since Jun 2007, according to the court documents and a person familiar with the matter. The rabbis used charitable, nonprofit entities connected to their synagogues to “wash” money they understood came from criminal activity, prosecutors alleged. “The rings were international in scope, connected to Deal, N.J., Brooklyn, N.Y., Israel and Switzerland,” said Marra, the US attorney, at the news conference. “They trafficked in the cleaning of dirty money all across the world.”

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn was charged separately with conspiring to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant, at a cost of $160,000 to the transplant recipient. According to the FBI’s complaint, Rosenbaum said he had been brokering the sale of kidneys for 10 years. Rosenbaum couldn’t be reached for comment. A relative of Rosenbaum who answered the phone at an address belonging to him declined to comment.

Ed Kahrer, the supervising FBI agent on the case, said the probe began in Jul 1999. The investigations using Dwek began in mid-2007. A confidential informant, independently verified as Dwek, often wore a wire and was followed by FBI agents who videotaped his encounters with the probe’s targets, federal prosecutors said in a statement. Prosecutors said the bribe-taking by public officials was connected to their fund-raising efforts in heavily contested mayoral and city-council campaigns. The bribes were often parceled out to straw donors, who wrote checks in their names or businesses to the campaigns in amounts that complied with legal limits on individual donations, prosecutors alleged. Other bribe recipients took cash for direct personal use and benefit, prosecutors said. Some of the individuals who were charged with taking bribes from Dwek didn’t win their elections.

New Jersey has been rife with political corruption for decades. Chris Christie, a Republican and former federal prosecutor, is campaigning for governor citing his long track record of winning convictions of public officials. Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year against Christie, issued a statement saying: “Any corruption is unacceptable, anywhere, anytime, by anybody. The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.” Corzine ran four years ago promising to quash corruption in the state. A package of proposed legislative fixes have been held up in the legislature and he has been subject to withering criticism by voters who say he failed to act on his promise. In a move that appears to be related to the investigation, Corzine said he asked for and received the resignation of Joseph V. Doria Jr., his commissioner of community affairs. A former state Assembly speaker, Doria had purview over local-government services. He also has been leading the state Redevelopment Authority and the state Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency. Doria served as mayor of Bayonne, which lies just to the south of Jersey City, for nine years.

two nifty sounding Guns & Butter clips

The Hidden History of 9-11, with Paul Zarembka. How much insider trading occurred in the days leading up to 9/11? How compromised is the evidence against alleged hijackers because of serious authentication problems with a key Dulles Airport videotape? To what extent does the testimony of more than five hundred firefighters differ from official reports of what happened at the World Trade Center buildings that day? How inseparably connected are Western covert operations to al-Qaeda? How is Islamophobia used to sustain US imperialism?
http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20090708-Wed1300.mp3

Osama bin Laden, Dead or Alive? with Dr. David Ray Griffin. We examine all the evidence, both that indicating bin Laden died, and that suggesting he is still alive; the important bin Laden videos and audio recordings, the significance, if any, in the timing of their release; statements by significant political and intelligence figures; and why the hunt for bin Laden must proceed.
http://aud1.kpfa.org/data/20090722-Wed1300.mp3

a good theory about the honduras coup

The Coup and the US Airbase in Honduras
Nikolas Kozloff, Counterpunch, Jul 22 2009

The mainstream media has once again dropped the ball on a key aspect of the ongoing story in Honduras: the US airbase at Soto Cano, also known as Palmerola. Prior to the recent military coup d’etat, President Manuel Zelaya declared that he would turn the base into a civilian airport, a move opposed by the former US ambassador. What’s more, Zelaya intended to carry out his project with Venezuelan financing. For years prior to the coup, the Honduran authorities had discussed the possibility of converting Palmerola into a civilian facility. Officials fretted that Toncontín, Tegucigalpa’s international airport, was too small and incapable of handling large commercial aircraft. An aging facility dating to 1948, Toncontín has a short runway and primitive navigation equipment. The facility is surrounded by hills, which make it one of the world’s more dangerous international airports. Palmerola, by contrast, has the best runway in the country, 8,850 ft long and 165 ft wide. The airport was built in the mid-1980s at a reported cost of $30m, and was used by the US for supplying the Contras during their proxy war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, as well as conducting counter-insurgency operations in El Salvador. At the height of the Contra war, the US had more than 5,000 soldiers stationed at Palmerola. Known as the Contras’ unsinkable aircraft carrier, the base housed Green Berets as well as CIA operatives advising the Nicaraguan rebels. More recently, there have been some 500 to 600 US troops on hand at the facility, which serves as a Honduran air force base as well as a flight training center. With the exit of US bases from Panama in 1999, Palmerola became one of the few usable airfields available to the US on Latin American soil. The base is located approximately 30 miles north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

In 2006 it looked as if Zelaya and the Bush administration were nearing a deal on Palmerola’s future status. In June of that year Zelaya flew to Washington to meet President Bush, and the Honduran requested that Palmerola be converted into a commercial airport. Reportedly, Bush said the idea was wholly reasonable, and Zelaya declared that a four-lane highway would be constructed from Tegucigalpa to Palmerola with US funding. In exchange for the White House’s help on the Palmerola facility, Zelaya offered the US access to a new military installation to be located in the Mosquitia area, along the Honduran coast near the Nicaraguan border. Mosquitia reportedly serves as a corridor for drugs moving south to north. The drug cartels pass through Mosquitia with their cargo en route from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. A remote area only accessible by air, sea, and river, Mosquitia is full of swamp and jungle. The region is ideal for the US, since large numbers of troops may be housed in Mosquitia in relative obscurity. The coastal location was ideally suited for naval and air coverage, consistent with the stated US military strategy of confronting organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism. Romeo Vásquez, head of the Honduran Joint Chiefs of Staff, remarked that the armed forces needed to exert a greater presence in Mosquitia because the area was full of “conflict and problems.” But what kind of access would the US have to Mosquitia? Honduran Defense Secretary Aristides Mejía said that Mosquitia wouldn’t necessarily be “a classic base with permanent installations, but just when needed. We intend, if President Zelaya approves, to expand joint operations with the US.” That statement was apparently not to the liking of eventual coup leader and US School of the Americas graduate Vásquez, who had already traveled to Washington to discuss future plans for Mosquitia. Contradicting his own colleague, Vásquez said the idea was “to establish a permanent military base of ours in the zone” which would house aircraft and fuel supply systems. The US, Vásquez added, would help to construct air strips on site.

Events on the ground would soon force the Hondurans to take a more assertive approach towards air safety. In May 2008 a terrible crash occurred at Toncontín airport, when a TACA Airbus A320 slid off the runway on its second landing attempt. After mowing down trees and smashing through a metal fence, the airplane’s fuselage was broken into three parts near the airstrip. Three people were killed in the crash and 65 were injured. In the wake of the tragedy, Honduran officials were forced at long last to block planes from landing at the notoriously dangerous Toncontín. All large jets, officials said, would be temporarily transferred to Palmerola. Touring the US airbase himself, Zelaya remarked that the authorities would create a new civilian facility at Palmerola within sixty days. Bush had already agreed to let Honduras construct a civilian airport at Palmerola, Zelaya said. “There are witnesses,” the President added. But constructing a new airport had grown more politically complicated. Honduran-US relations had deteriorated considerably since Zelaya’s 2006 meeting with Bush, and Zelaya had started to cultivate ties to Venezuela, while simultaneously criticizing the US-led war on drugs. Bush’s own Ambassador Charles Ford said that, while he would welcome the traffic at Palmerola, past agreements should be honored. The base was used mostly for drug surveillance planes, and Ford remarked:

The president can order the use of Palmerola when he wants, but certain accords and protocols must be followed. It is important to point out that Toncontín is certified by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

What’s more, Ford declared, there were some airlines that would not see Palmerola as an “attractive” landing destination. He would not elaborate or explain what his remarks were supposed to mean. Throwing fuel on the fire, Assistant Secretary of State John Negroponte, a former US ambassador to Honduras, said that Honduras could not transform Palmerola into a civilian airport “from one day to the next.” In Tegucigalpa, Negroponte met with Zelaya to discuss Palmerola. Speaking later on Honduran radio, Negroponte said that before Zelaya could embark on his plans for Palmerola the airport would have to receive international certification for new incoming flights. According to Spanish news agency EFE, Negroponte also took advantage of his Tegucigalpa trip to sit down and meet with the President of the Honduran Parliament and future coup leader Roberto Micheletti. The news account did not state what the two discussed. Negroponte’s visit to Honduras was widely repudiated by progressive and human rights activists, who labeled Negroponte an assassin and accused him of being responsible for forced disappearances during his tenure as ambassador between 1981 and 1985. Moreover, Ford and Negroponte’s condescending attitude irked organized labor, indigenous groups, and peasants, who demanded that Honduras reclaim its national sovereignty over Palmerola. Carlos Reyes, leader of the Popular Bloc, which included various politically progressive organizations, said:

It’s necessary to recover Palmerola because it’s unacceptable that the best airstrip in Central America continues to be in the hands of the US military. The Cold War has ended and there are no pretexts to continue with the military presence in the region.

He added that the government should not contemplate swapping Mosquitia for Palmerola either, as this would be an affront to Honduran pride. Over the next year, Zelaya sought to convert Palmerola into a civilian airport, but plans languished when the government was unable to attract international investors. Finally in 2009 Zelaya announced that the Honduran armed forces would undertake construction. To pay for the new project, the President would rely on funding from the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and Petrocaribe, two reciprocal trading agreements pushed by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez. Predictably the Honduran right leapt on Zelaya for using Venezuelan funds. Amílcar Bulnes, President of the Honduran Business Association COHEP, said that Petrocaribe funds should not be used for the airport, but rather for other unspecified needs. A couple weeks after Zelaya announced that the armed forces would proceed with construction at Palmerola, the military rebelled. Led by Romeo Vásquez, the army overthrew Zelaya and deported him out of the country. In the wake of the coup, US peace activists visited Palmerola and were surprised to find that the base was busy and helicopters were flying all around. When they asked US officials if anything had changed in the US-Honduran relationship, they were told “no, nothing.” The Honduran elite and the hard right US foreign policy establishment had many reasons to despise Manuel Zelaya. The controversy over the Palmerola airbase certainly gave them more ammunition.

more rubbish about ‘democracy’

Hagee raps US pressure on Israel
JTA, Jul 22 2009

Christians United for Israel founder and chairman Pastor John Hagee on Tuesday evening at the organization’s Washington conference, while not mentioning Obama by name, criticized the Obama administration’s pressuring of Israel. He said in a speech to 4,000 delegates at the group’s Night to Honor Israel banquet that America is singling out Israel in the Middle East:

Despite all of the risks Israel has taken for peace, our government is pressuring Israel to take more risks. Hello, Congress, we’re putting pressure on the wrong people here. You want to get tough, get tough with the terrorists, not the only democracy in the Middle East.

Earlier in the day, when introducing a speech by Netanyahu, Hagee specifically criticized US demands that Israel freeze settlement construction, saying:

We back Israel’s sovereign right to grow and develop the settlements of Israel as you see fit, and not yield to the presssure of the United States government.

CUFI presented its Defender of Israel Award to US Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who noted that he had attended three of the organization’s four annual conferences. Lieberman also made an apparent reference to Obama’s Middle policy, saying:

The chief obstacle to peace in the Middle East is not Israelis living on the West Bank, but the regime in Tehran.

The banquet also included greetings from the new Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren, a speech from Jewish radio talk show host Dennis Prager, and a musical performance from Dudu Fisher. A number of delegates at one point danced the hora during the singing of Hava Nagila (you don’t say – RB). CUFI delegates lobbied Wednesday on Capitol Hill, with Executive Director David Brog saying they would be urging their members of Congress not to pressure Israel, but to respect Israel’s democratically elected government and work with them. They also will be asking for congressional support on two pieces of Iran-related legislation, having to do with sanctions and divestment.

karen kwiatkowski on russia today

The real reason why the US continues its presence in Afghanistan is Iran, the country which is an annoyance for Israel, says Karen Kwiatkowski (Russia Today)

what about the 1933 jewish boycott of germany, then?

European court: Israel boycotts are unlawful discrimination
Herb Keinon, JPost, Jul 20 2009

Israel finally won one last week in an international human rights court. On Thursday, the Council of Europe’s European Court of Human Rights upheld a French ruling that it was illegal and discriminatory to boycott Israeli goods, and that making it illegal to call for a boycott of Israeli goods did not constitute a violation of one’s freedom of expression. The Council of Europe is based in Strasbourg, has some 47 member states and is independent of the EU. The court is made up of one judge from each member state, and the rulings of the court carry moral weight throughout Europe. On Thursday the court ruled by a vote of 6-1 that the French court did not violate the freedom of expression of the Communist mayor of the small French town of Seclin, Jean-Claude Fernand Willem, who in Oct 2002 announced at a town hall meeting that he intended to call on the municipality to boycott Israeli products. Jews in the region filed a complaint with the public prosecutor, who decided to prosecute Willem for “provoking discrimination on national, racial and religious grounds.” Willem was first acquitted by the Lille Criminal Court, but that decision was overturned on appeal in Sep 2003 and he was fined €1,000. His appeal to a higher French court was unsuccessful, and as a result he petitioned the European Court of Human rights in Mar 2005, saying his call for a boycott of Israeli products was part of a legitimate political debate, and that his freedom of expression had been violated.

The court, made up of judges from Denmark, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Macedonia and the Czech Republic, ruled that interference with the former mayor’s freedom of expression was needed to protect the rights of Israeli producers. According to a statement issued by the court on Thursday, the court held the view that Willem was not convicted for his political opinions, but for inciting the commission of a discriminatory, and therefore punishable, act. The Court further noted that, under French law, the applicant was not entitled to take the place of the governmental authorities by declaring an embargo on products from a foreign country, and moreover that the penalty imposed on him had been relatively moderate. The one dissenting opinion was written by the Czech judge. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor hailed the ruling Sunday, saying it provided important ammunition for those challenging on legal grounds calls frequently heard in Europe for a boycott of Israeli products, as well as calls for a boycott of Israeli academia. Palmor said:

It is now clear that in every country in Europe there is a precedent for calling boycotts of Israeli goods a violation of the law. This is an important precedent, one that says very clearly that boycott calls are discriminatory. We hope this will help us push back against all the calls for boycotts of Israeli goods.

well, if they’re happy, we’re happy (aren’t we)

Boeing, Lockheed hail US-India defence deal
Pratap Chakravarty, AFP, Jul 22 2009

Boeing and Lockheed Martin on Wednesday hailed a bilateral accord promising to open the door to greater military commerce between the countries. Lockheed Martin and Boeing are competing for the world’s richest fighter aircraft deal in 15 years, worth almost $12b, to sell 126 jets to the Indian Air Force. On Monday US Secretary of State Clinton and her Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna agreed on an end-use monitoring arrangement that would provide safeguards for the sale to India. Clinton said the deal, which also provides for co-operation in providing nuclear technology, would pave the way for billions of dollars in exports of military hardware and civilian reactors to India. Boeing is offering its F-18 Superhornet to the Indian Air Force, the world’s fourth-largest, while Lockheed Martin is offering the F-16. Vivek Lal, India head of Boeing Defence Integrated, praised the accord in a statement:

The agreement is a cornerstone of the increasing trust forged by both countries. It will make it easier to share important US defence technology with India. Boeing looks forward to working within the framework of this agreement to support India in modernising its defence forces.

Richard Kirkland, Lockheed Martin’s South Asia president, also applauded the deal, telling AFP in an email:

We look forward to supporting the requirements of the Indian armed services in partnership with Indian industry.

Industry sources say Boeing and Lockheed have emerged as frontrunners in the bidding for the 126-jet contract, which is also being sought by European, Russian, Swedish and French contractors. The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company has offered its Typhoon Eurofighter; the Russian manufacturers have offered the MiG-35 and MiG-29; Sweden’s Saab has offered the Gripen fighter; and French firm Dassault Aviation is offering its Rafale fighters. India is slated to begin field trials of the aircraft in the race for the contract next month. The trials will continue until Jul 2010. India issued the request for proposals to the six short-listed companies in Aug 2007 and the companies submitted their bids last year. The contract includes the outright purchase of 18 fighter jets by 2012, with another 108 to be built in India under a transfer of technology agreement. India also wants the option to buy 64 more jets. It is the largest arms buyer among emerging economies. India announced in March it plans to buy six Hercules transport planes from Lockheed for nearly $1b, marking the country’s biggest ever military aircraft deal with the US. In January, India signed a $2.1b deal with Boeing to buy six maritime surveillance aircraft for the Indian navy.

russia ‘worries israel’. so what.

Russia builds key naval HQ in Syria
Missile presence worries Israel
DEBKAfile, Jul 21 2009

A high-ranking Russian navy source reported Jul 21 that the Soviet-era naval maintenance base near Tartus in Syria is to be expanded and modernized to become fully operational. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Russian is building the facility up as its main sea base for operations in four seas: the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The upgrade of Russian port facilities at Tartus, Russia’s only foothold in the Mediterranean, will automatically enhance Moscow’s strategic interests in Syria and Bashar Assad’s regime. The Russian source said that the 50 naval personnel and three berthing floats currently deployed at Tartus with accommodation for up a dozen warships will be beefed up with a new berthing float delivered by two tugboats from the Black Sea Fleet. DEBKAfile’s sources disclose that those warships will include large vessels such as the nuclear-armed guided missile cruiser Peter the Great and the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which called in at Tartus in January. In Sep 2008, DEBKAfile reported that the Russian Navy commander Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky and his Syrian counterpart Gen. Taleb al-Barri had signed contracts for converting Tartus into one of Russia’s most highly-developed naval infrastructures outside its territory. Its warships based there will capable of reaching the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar in a matter of days.

Israel is deeply concerned, according to our military sources, by the sophisticated air-defense S-300PMU-2 and Iskander-E missile systems the Russians propose to hand Syria, on the pretext of installing a shield to defend the facility against air or missile attack. Moscow claims they will remain under the control of Russian crews, but according to information reaching Israel they will be quietly and gradually handed over to the Syrian army; the Russian teams are in fact instructors. Russia justifies this, according to DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources, by the deployment of the highly sophisticated American FBX-T missile-interception radar systems at the Israeli Negev base of Nevatim. Furthermore, Moscow will have its rejoinder for the disputed US deployment of missile interceptors in Eastern Europe. As we reported last September, the Russian Black Sea fleet and new Mediterranean based warships will coordinate their operations under a single command. They are designed as counter-deployments to the post-Georgian-war US and NATO naval presence in the Black Sea as well as its fleets in other parts of the Mediterranean, including Israel’s shores.

from the dead sea scrolls to the proverbial kitchen sink

Erasing Jewish heritage, one historical omission at a time
Uzi Silber, Haaretz, Jul 23 2009

Diligent media watchdogs such as CAMERA have documented the BBC’s chronically hostile coverage of Israel in its conflict with its Arab neighbors. My own ears are exposed to this biased barrage daily on my drive to work. I grudgingly tune in nevertheless; after all, the BBC does produce other segments of interest to the intellectually curious, ostensibly unrelated to the Middle East conflict. And yet even among such benign reports, there are those that, while not intentionally hostile to Jews or Israel, are potentially inimical to Jewish interests, not for what they report but for what they don’t. The BBC recently presented just such a report, on the recovery, digitization and online availability of the so-called Codex Sinaiticus, billed at the onset as ‘the world’s oldest Bible’. While of immediate interest to Christians, the subject matter would attract any avid student of scripture and so I turned up the volume on the car radio. The segment was indeed illuminating, and I found myself considering its implications for Jewish tradition. But what was left unsaid was downright deafening.

Here then is the gist of the segment: the Codex is a 16-century old bound bible stowed away for many centuries at St Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. It contains the entire Christian bible, comprising the Greek translation of the Tanakh, Apocrypha (books left out of the Tanakh), Gospels and other Christian scriptures. The manuscript fascinates Bible historians for many reasons but what intrigued me most were its layers upon layers and 800 years worth of monastic editing, alterations, corrections, deletions and rewrites on each of its pages, reflecting the evolution of Christian dogma from the late Roman period to the Medieval era. I soon detected parallels between the centuries-long development of the Codex by the monks and the creation of the Talmud and its commentaries by the rabbinic sages. Perhaps this was no coincidence, considering that the monks of Sinai and Galilean Rabbis lived both contemporaneously and in relative proximity. Secular biblical scholarship demonstrates that even the authorized version of the Tanakh evolved from a similar scribal editing process, lasting from about 1000 BCE to 150 BCE.

Nevertheless, I found the segment as troubling as it was enlightening, since its crucial omissions would have the effect of misleading a radio audience of millions. BBC’s website describes the Codex as ‘the world’s oldest bible’. But it isn’t. And while the broadcast itself called it ‘the oldest surviving bound bible, such a distinction is easily lost on the program’s worldwide audience. For the record, the oldest books of the bible were uncovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls and predate the Codex by six centuries. Secondly, listeners could easily assume that the bible was originally written in Greek 1600 years ago. Considering that Hebrew isn’t mentioned even once throughout the segment, listeners would never know that the bible was first composed in Hebrew beginning 3000 years ago. While misleading, these omissions by the BBC are unlikely to have been intentional, at least not in this instance. On the other hand, in the hands of Israel’s adversaries, omission and the related act of denial are potent weapons used to sever the Jewish People’s bonds to its ancient heritage in the eyes of the world.

Historical omission and denial is a particular expertise of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, whose 1982 doctoral dissertation espouses views identical to those of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the holocaust denying President of Iran. Abbas, widely viewed as ‘moderate’, earned his doctorate from Moscow Oriental College by arguing, among many things, that that six million were not murdered during the Holocaust and that gas chambers were not used to exterminate them. Similarly, Yasser Arafat, Abbas’ mentor, adamantly denied the existence of the ancient Jewish Temple that is buried beneath the gold-domed Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Omission and denial has given license to the Muslim religious authorities on the Temple Mount (Mt Moriah in the Hebrew bible) to trample the Jewish presence there that preceded the Muslim conquest by 14 centuries. During recent renovations in and around the famous gold-domed Mosque, bulldozers shoveled through deep layers of previously buried ancient Jewish artifacts, and dumped them outside the city walls in haphazard trash piles. The damage done to the Jewish historical record is irreversible and criminal.

Historical omission is a worrying trend worldwide. The Simon Wiesenthal Center reports on a growing phenomenon of Holocaust omission and denial in schools in Britain and throughout Europe. Meanwhile, Phil Orenstein of the Democracy Project blog anecdotally relates that, “half of the teachers in (a certain Queens public school) social studies department refuse to teach the Holocaust, for fear that it might offend Muslim students.” Overt demonization of Israel is detected easily enough; historical omission, intentional or purposeful, and whether by BBC correspondents or outright foes of the Jewish State, is more insidious. Unless confronted, we Jews may find ourselves pushed off Mount Moriah, tumbling down the slippery slope and into Gehena below, the biblical Valley of Hell.

let’s flood the media with ‘anti-semitic’ irrelevancies

Israel circulates photo of Hitler greeting late Palestinian mufti
Reuters, Jul 23 2009

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has ordered diplomats to use an old photograph of a former Palestinian religious leader meeting Adolf Hitler to counter world criticism of a Jewish building plan for East Jerusalem. Israeli officials said on Wednesday that Lieberman told Israeli ambassadors to circulate the 1941 shot in Berlin of the Nazi leader seated next to Haj Amin al-Husseini, the late mufti or top Muslim religious leader in Jerusalem. One official said Lieberman, an ultranationalist, hoped the photo would “embarrass” Western countries into ceasing to demand that Israel halt the project on land owned by the mufti’s family in a predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. Some diplomats opposed Lieberman’s move, arguing it could earn Israel stiffer world criticism for seeming to sidestep the wider conflict it faces with the Palestinians who want East Jerusalem as capital of a future state, another official said. Asked why Lieberman issued the order, a spokesman said: “because it’s important for the world to know the facts” and would not elaborate. An official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s government accused Lieberman of “political bankruptcy” in ordering the distribution of the Husseini-Hitler photograph. “It’s an old story that has its own circumstances and doesn’t apply to the present,” said Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority-appointed governor of Jerusalem, and a relative of the late mufti.