9/11 Crimes and Israel
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Twelfth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question” – Read the Eleventh part here
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 19, 2016
Jonathan Kay’s designation of “conspiracists” as victims of an “incurable disease” marks a dramatic low point in the history of North American journalism. This abuse of language and people with the aim of stoking up fear and hatred is on a par with Kay’s malicious characterization of 9/11 as a crime of Islam (p. 167). As discussed below, Kay made this astonishing slur of a major world religion and all its two billion adherents in the context of his condemnation of Muslim academic Kevin Barrett.
Obviously the crimes of 9/11 were not the crimes of any religion. They were crimes committed by many individuals whose actions were well orchestrated by a powerful directing hand. The intention was to achieve a complex array of immediate and long-term objectives. The immensely complex and sophisticated 9/11 operation could not have been achieved without the involvement of state, military and corporate protagonists.
Certainly the elaborate 9/11 crime could not be the work of a small band of Muslim extremists acting independently to cut through the most formidable national defense apparatus ever assembled with the quixotic hope of creating a worldwide Islamic caliphate. That interpretation is as absurd as it is insulting to the intelligence of rational human beings still capable of independent thought.
The peddling of this concocted myth of Islamic culpability for the crimes of 9/11 represents a monumental case study in the systematic defrauding of the public. Those like Jonathan Kay who advance and defend the religious fable of 9/11 as a crime of Islam are deeply implicated in the work of a ruthless criminal cabal whose top priority seems to be to advance the imperialist agenda of Greater Israel, Eretz Israel. The great mass of evidence points to the engineering of the 9/11 crimes by partisans of Likudnik Israel. Since 2001, they seem to have succeeded in significantly expanding Zionist influence over the course of global geopolitics by manufacturing a new transnational enemy for the military-industrial complex of the post-Soviet West.
In my view there is no other logical way of viewing the 9/11 event in terms of the forensic evidence of whose fingerprints are most evident all over the 9/11crime scene. This 9/11 crime scene is ultimately global in extent, even as its antecedents stretch far back into history, but particularly the history of Israel’s current ruling party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The roots of Netanyahu’s Likud Party lie in Revisionist Zionism, the faction of Israel’s founders most intent on expanding Israel’s boundaries eastward to the Euphrates River. This plan of territorial expansion to create Greater Israel, Eretz Israel, remains integral to the aspirations of Israel’s current ruling coalition.
Through Irgun and the Stern Gang, the proponents of a Greater Israel mounted very calculated acts of heavily publicized terrorism, including at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946. The Jewish terrorists’ immediate goal was to push the British government to withdraw from its mandate to govern Palestine. Once the playing of the terrorism card proved successful in forcing the British out of Palestine, the way was opened for the creation of the Jewish State of Israel in 1947 and 1948. Drawing on the ideas of his father as one of the originators of Revisionist Zionism, Benjamin Netanyahu himself has been a major theorist on the subject of how to play the terrorism card in global geopolitics. Netanyahu’s basic approach is readily apparent from the title of his oft republished book, Terrorism: How the West Can Win. The book’s genesis goes back to the hosting by the Netanyahu family of the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism in 1979.
If the true culprits of 9/11 are ever to be brought to trial, Jonathan Kay’s overzealous promotion of the 9/11 religious fable, like Netanyahu’s published work on terrorism, offers valuable evidence for the prosecution. So too can Chomsky’s interventions on 9/11 be pictured in a similar light.
Kay in particular violates all tenets of civil debate with his rhetorical extremes. Especially reprehensible are his equation of 9/11 skepticism with mental illness and his characterization of the horrific event as a crime of Islam. By invoking the specter of disease to smear those seeking to break through the massive deceptions embedded in the 9/11 cover up, Kay conspicuously violates the rationalist principles of the Enlightenment tradition, a tradition he demeans even as he claims to defend it (p. 315).
You will read “Does Kevin Barrett Seek to “Absolve Islam of a Terrible Crime”?” in the next part.
Dr. Hall is editor in chief of American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.
Moscow Talks Called Off as Israel Says Peace ‘Isn’t Priority’
teleSUR | September 6, 2016
Holding peace talks is “not one of the priorities” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russia’s peace envoy to the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov told a Palestinian official Tuesday, adding that the Russian-proposed talks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been called off, the Middle East Eye reported.
“Bogdanov told us frankly that Netanyahu not only rejected the Palestinian demands for the meeting—such as a settlements freeze and the release of the pre-Oslo prisoners—but also that a meeting with (President Mahmoud) Abbas is no longer one of his priorities,” the Palestinian official told Middle East Eye on condition of anonymity.
Bogdanov held a meeting with Netanyahu Monday where the prime minister told him he was not interested in peace talks with Palestinians because Abbas had preconditions, the Russian deputy foreign minister told the Palestinian official.
“Netanyahu said his priority now is two things: fighting terrorism and making peace with Arab countries,” he said and added that the Russian envoy quoted Netanyahu as saying, “When I make peace with the Arabs, Abbas will join us—so let him stand alone.”
However, Abbas had agreed to President Vladimir Putin’s offer for talks Monday, while Netanyahu’s aide had said the he was still considering the offer.
Despite the behind closed doors confirmation that the Russian talks have collapsed before they even started, Bogdanov told reporters that work continues on “the date, form and content of the meeting” after his meeting with the Palestinian delegation Tuesday.
But Netanyahu publicly used the same words he has been using for the past few years regarding any peace talks with the Palestinians.
“If Abu Mazen (Abbas) wants to meet without preconditions for direct talks, I’m ready at all times. I’ve been calling on him to [do] so for seven years already, and if he agrees to do so there’ll [sic] be a meeting,” Haaretz quoted Netanyahu as saying Tuesday.
But Abbas aides told reporters that the meeting was unlikely to happen. “When are we going to agree with Netanyahu on the content of the meeting? It’s very difficult,” Jibril Rajoub, an aide to the Palestinian Authority leader, said following the meeting with the Russian delegation.
The current U.S. administration of Barack Obama has given up on attempting to broker any peace talks between Palestinians and Israel after Secretary of State John Kerry threw in the towel in 2014 after nine months of talks ended in failure.
While Russia’s efforts might end before they even get wings, over the years Washington has demonstrated that despite the billions of dollars in aid it provides to Israel every year, successive administrations have failed to use their leverage on Israel to achieve any steps forward on peace.
Thousands rally against Netanyahu’s visit to The Hague
Former Dutch Prime Minister Dries Van Agt
Press TV – September 7, 2016
Thousands of people have staged a demonstration in The Hague in protest at an official visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the Netherlands, saying he should be brought to justice for his crimes.
On Tuesday, the protesters carried Netanyahu’s mugshots and signs that read “Bring Bibi Netanyahu to International Criminal Court” as the Israeli leader arrived in the Netherlands and met with senior Dutch officials.
Chants such as “Free free Palestine, boycott boycott Israel” could also be heard during the demonstration.
“I’m standing here because Netanyahu is visiting the Netherlands. I’m standing in The Hague and we think that rather than him being received by the parliament, he should be put on trial in the Peace Palace of the UN tribunal,” a protester said in English.
Some of the protesters also criticized local authorities for attempting to cancel the anti-Netanyahu gathering.
“This demonstration is not only against Netanyahu, but it’s also for our right to demonstrate, at the places where we want, where it’s happening, because the Zionists, they always get the permission to stand in front of the parliament,” another demonstrator commented.
The rally was originally planned to be staged outside the Dutch parliament building in The Hague downtown, but authorities later did not allow the protesters to proceed.
The demonstration came a day after former Dutch prime minister Dries Van Agt reacted angrily to Netanyahu’s two-day visit to the Netherlands, calling on government officials to “send him right away to the International Criminal Court.”
Speaking in an interview with the NPO1 public broadcaster on Monday, Van Agt described the 66-year-old Chairman of Israel’s right-wing Likud political party as a “war criminal,” arguing that the Tel Aviv regime has been committing a crime under the ICC’s Rome Statute.
“The occupation and expansion… building of settlements, of occupied territory, this is according to the Rome Statute, which is… the setup… the statute on which the international criminal court is based, in so many words, a war crime,” he said.
“So why should we receive someone who continues with such things, we could have sent him right away to the International Criminal Court, that would have been better,” the 85-year-old politician and activist, known for his vocal support of the Palestinian cause, the ex-PM pointed out.
The Rome Statute, which went into effect in July 2002, outlines the four grave international crimes, namely crimes of aggression, war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The statute forms one of the foundations of The Hague-based International Criminal Court.
Israel signed the treaty in December 2000, but “unsigned” it two years later by means of the US lobby.
One of the primary reasons behind the decision was a clause in the document, which allowed the prosecution of the Israeli regime over war crimes for “transfer of parts of the civilian population of an occupying power into occupied territory.”
Hudson Institute Award to Netanyahu Named for Neocon Who Inspired Dr. Strangelove
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | August 28, 2016
Herman Kahn as featured in a Life Magazine profile
When Bibi Netanyahu comes to New York next month for the UN General Assembly, the Hudson Institute will bestow its Herman Kahn award on him. Kahn was an early neocon intellectual who advocated U.S. first-use of nuclear weapons. He propounded this theory in his provocatively titled 1960s book, Thinking the Unthinkable.
The Institute is a leading neocon think-tank based in Washington DC. It is a wonky version of the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation. It’s senior vice-president is Scooter Libby, a man who barely escaped spending time in a federal prison.
The Hudson Institute is the primary funder (see Didi Remez’s post for a fuller discussion of the funding and relationships) of the far-right Israeli NGO, Institute for Zionist Strategies, which advocate purging “post-Zionist” material from Israeli academic curriculum. They’ve been so successful at pressuring academia to “Zionize” the curriculum that Tel Aviv University President Joseph Klafter promised he would personally examine individual course syllabi for tainted content.
Hudson is also the primary backer of Uzi Arad’s Atlantic Forum, a shadowy Israeli think tank founded by the former Mossad officer. The NGO’s mission is to strengthen Israel’s security relationship with NATO. He’s reputed to have “run” Larry Franklin, the former Defense Department analyst caught with Steven Rosen passing U.S. secrets to the Israelis. Rosen too came within a whisker or two of landing in federal prison. Luckily for him, the Israel Lobby came to his defense and the Justice Department dropped the case against him. Arad worked with Kahn at Hudson in the 1970s.
Bush-era neocon analyst, Meyrav Wurmser, runs Hudson’s Center for Middle East Policy. That explains Hudson’s love affair with Netanyahu and the award he is to receive. In many ways it seems fitting for the Israeli leader to receive an award named for Kahn. Israel is, after all, one of the most dangerous of the nuclear states. One of those most likely to engage in first-use of nuclear weapons would the circumstances arise. One may argue whether that distinction should rather belong to North Korea or Pakistan. But the Koreans don’t yet have the capacity to destroy western Asia as Israel does the Middle East. And Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is child’s play compared to Israel’s estimated 200 nuclear warheads.
Herman Kahn (David Levine)
It may be worth hearing some words said about Kahn’s work. A reader summarized another of his books: “On Thermonuclear War, was ‘a moral tract on mass murder: how to plan it, how to commit it, how to get away with it, how to justify it.’” Some other words of wisdom from Kahn on nuclear deterrence:
“If it is not acceptable to risk the lives of the three billion inhabitants of the earth in order to protect ourselves from surprise attack, then how many people would we be willing to risk?”
Another critic said that the publication of that book “should properly have caused the sequestration of its author into psychiatric care.” A science reporter, reviewing Kahn’s book called him a contemporary version of the devil:
“Not the traditional devil, reeking of brimstone and tempting men to old-fashioned sins, but a slick, talcum-scented, contemporary Satan, rationalising hideous emotions by reference to strategic studies, electronic computers, contingency planning, and all the other gimmicks of paranoiac gamesmanship.”
The following comment by Kahn to a reporter surely served as the inspiration for Terry Southern’s screenplay for Dr. Strangelove: “I can be funny on the subject of thermonuclear war.” In fact, writing in the NY Times, Fred Kaplan says:
… The real model [for the Strangelove character] was almost certainly Herman Kahn, an eccentric, voluble nuclear strategist at the RAND Corporation, a prominent Air Force think tank. In 1960, Mr. Kahn published a 652-page tome called “On Thermonuclear War,” which sold 30,000 copies in hardcover.
… When Dr. Strangelove talks of sheltering people in mine shafts, President Muffley asks him, “Wouldn’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief-stricken and anguished that they’d, well, envy the dead?” Strangelove exclaims that, to the contrary, many would feel “a spirit of bold curiosity for the adventure ahead.”
Mr. Kahn’s book contains a long chapter on mine shafts. Its title: “Will the Survivors Envy the Dead?” One sentence reads: “We can imagine a renewed vigor among the population with a zealous, almost religious dedication to reconstruction.”
So it is altogether fitting that Bibi Netanyahu be enshrined along with Herman Kahn in a sort of Nuclear War Hall of Fame, as two men prepared to see their region (in Bibi’s case) or world (in Kahn’s) go up in flames in order to “save” their country.
It’s perfectly fitting that a past recipient of the award was Dick Cheney (especially considering his former protege, Scooter Libby works for Hudson).
Iran, the U.S., and Nuclear Development
By Robert Fantina | Aletho News | August 17, 2016
In 2015, after much ado, and with great, international fanfare, the United States and 5 other nations (China, France, Russia, Great Britain and Germany) entered into an agreement with Iran, regulating that country’s nuclear activities. This was not an easy sell to the U.S. Congress, which, apparently, exists to serve Israel first, and U.S. citizens only after Israel’s needs have been satisfied.
A group of 47 senators succeeded in humiliating the nation by sending a letter to Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian Foreign Minister, purportedly explaining U.S. law.
Mr. Zarif, a U.S. constitutional expert, responded by schooling them.
Then, none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress, telling its members, yet again, for the umpteenth time in the last ten years, that Iran was only ‘months away’ from having a nuclear weapon.
Democratic members of Congress particularly beholden to Israel but not wanting to embarrass a Democratic president, danced to a particularly awkward tune as they waited to see if the agreement had enough votes in the Senate to pass. Once it was apparent that the agreement would be approved by a Congressional majority, they were at liberty to express their opposition to it, knowing that doing so would please their Israeli masters, and not impact the vote, thus embarrassing President Barack Obama.
Now, the bizarre reasoning behind why Iran, a nation that hasn’t invaded another country in decades, should be forbidden from developing nuclear weapons, when Israel, a brutal, apartheid regime with more blood on its hands than a doctor after a botched surgery, can, is a topic for another essay. Our purpose today is to examine the agreement that was made with Iran, what concessions were made on each side, and how each is following through.
Iran, which never claimed it had the development of nuclear weapons as its goal, agreed to major reductions in its nuclear development program. It also agreed to allowing an international monitoring team to verify compliance. In return, the U.S. agreed to lift decades-old sanctions that, like most of U.S. sanctions, did little to impact the government, but caused untold suffering among the Iranian population.
It seems, however, that Iran overlooked an important aspect in its negotiations with the U.S. While there is a mechanism in place to monitor Iranian compliance with the agreement, no such measures exist to monitor U.S. compliance.
The U.S., in its usual hypocritical way, has released the obligation of European banks to avoid doing business with Iran, yet maintains some sanctions, thus effectively preventing the banks from conducting any business with that country. As reported by CNN Money in May of this year, “HSBC, Standard Chartered and France’s BNP Paribas have all been in trouble before — and paid billions in fines — for dealing with Iran while U.S. sanctions were in place. So while they may see attractive commercial opportunities in the country of about 80 million people, they’re treading very carefully because some sanctions still linger, including a ban on conducting transactions with Iran in U.S. dollars.”
So while the U.S. adheres to the letter of the law, it violates the spirit of it, and as a result, Iran is getting next to nothing for the concessions it made. “We hold the US responsible for all violations [of the nuclear agreement]. The US must accept responsibility for reneging on its promises on the international level,” Alaeddin Boroujerd, Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy, stated on August 1. He further emphasized that the U.S., despite Iran’s adherence to the terms of the agreement, continued to damage “Iran’s economic relations with other countries.”
Now, isn’t the U.S. the land of the free and the home of the brave? Does it not proclaim its moral superiority around the globe, even as it bombs innocent men, women and children? Is its word not worth gold?
The U.S. does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons, because doing so would provide an equal, yet opposing, force to Israel in the Middle East. Current Democratic candidate, the corrupt former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has made support for Israel a cornerstone of her campaign. She has stated that the best way to serve Israel is to topple the government of Syrian president Bashar Assad. So if U.S. government officials will go so far as to overthrow foreign governments (please see Ecuador, Guatemala, Brazil, Bolivia (twice), Portugal, Nicaragua, etc.), with all the killing, mass arrests and oppression that accompanies each coup, certainly crippling the economy of one of Israel’s enemies, and violating its word in order to do so, is a trivial matter by comparison.
When one party to any contract violates the terms of that contract, the other party is no longer bound by it. So when Iran decides that it need not slow its nuclear program, because the U.S. hasn’t respected its side of the agreement, we will all watch U.S. members of Congress proclaiming “I told you so! Those Iranians can’t be trusted!’, when, in fact, it is the U.S. that can’t be trusted. But the corporate-owned media will only report on what it will see as Iran’s violations of the agreement, without mentioning that the U.S. violated it first.
U.S. citizens will gasp in horror at the perfidy of Iran; after all, most Iranians are Muslim, and as the news media either hints at, or boldly proclaims, all Muslims are terrorists. And the way will be open for another U.S. imperial misadventure, something to match the tragedy of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam or the countless other places where the U.S. has disastrously and illegally intervened. Countless innocent people will suffer and die, the Middle East will be further destabilized, and military contractors’ profits soar. It will be business as usual in the mighty, corrupt U.S.A.
Inside Job? Inside What?
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 28, 2016
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Sixth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question” – Read the fifth part here.
In his chapter on “Left Gatekeepers” and the “Shame of Noam Chomsky,” Barrie Zwicker refers to the the “New World Order” as the “diaboligarchy’s” directing agency. Less compelling is Zwicker’s reference to the “New World Order” as the “diaboligarchy’s” directing agency. To me this unfortunate choice of words is much too closely associated with the often crude and chauvinistic populism of Alex Jones and his Infowars media network. Many have come to see Jones’ lucrative media operation as a limited hangout set in place by handlers trying to hold the activities of the 9/11 Truth Movement within manageable constraints.
Due to the important findings over fifteen years of the citizens’ investigation into 9/11, the culprits most deeply implicated in the crime can be identified with much more specificity than an entity vaguely described as a “New World Order.” As Kevin Barrett and many others insist, the time has come to name the names of the probable culprits, Noam Chomsky prominent among them.
While Alex Jones ultimately serves the same masters as Chomsky, the former’s media product is often much closer to the mark of what is really going on than the content of Noam Chomsky’s more magisterial pronouncements. Jones goes at least part of the way into realities of the deep state politics of the twenty-first century. Chomsky, however, sacrificed his capacity to contribute cogently to sensible discourse on contemporary geopolitics by making himself a primary instrument of the most consequential deep state deception of recent times. As a leading agent of disinformation in the psychological trenches of the ongoing Global War of False Flag Terrorism, Chomsky has reduced himself to the level of skeptic pretender Michael Shermer. In the style of Shermer, the elder Chomsky has become an establishment TV professor readily available on Netflix.
“Inside job” is another turn of phrase closely identified with Alex Jones. The term “inside job” effectively conveys in simple language that the originators of the 9/11 crime are not Islamic jihadists acting independently. The idea of an inside job, however, begs the question about how to describe the receptacle containing this phenomenon. Is the ongoing inside job of 9/11 primarily within the box of the US government or is the receptacle larger with multiple compartments? Does this larger receptacle allow for the interpretation emphasized by Kevin Barrett, Christopher Bollyn, Alan Sabrosky and many others that insist that the primary executive oversight of the 9/11 inside job originates primarily with the partisans of Greater Israel?
Long before 9/11, Alex Jones declared himself to be a friend and supporter of the Jewish state of Israel. In declaring his position he condemned the United Nations as Israel’s enemy. Jones’ bias is reflected in his effort to deflect interpretations of the 9/11 crime away from Israel and away from the inner circle of neocon proponents of the Zio-American empire. Webster Tarpley is another early analyst of the 9/11 crimes who has kept to the interpretation outlined in his important book on the subject. As Tarpley sees it, the strikes on the WTC skyscrapers and on the Pentagon were Synthetic Terror: Made in the USA. Many times Tarpley has expressed his opinion that the government of Israel was not a factor in the planning of the most audacious act of “synthetic terror” in US history.
Interestingly, Chomsky’s smear of the 9/11 Truth Movement follows some lines of disinformation similar to those followed by Alex Jones. From their different positions inside and outside the 9/11 Truth Movement, both Jones and Chomsky disseminate dis-info concerning the role of US President George Bush in the 9/11 crime. In reality, Bush seems to have been a marginal figure, at least in the planning phase of the 9/11 operation. Did the core planners of the 9/11 crime send a signal in the title of the storybook being read by the US President to the schoolchildren in Sarasota Florida at the moment of maximum crisis?
Was Bush being labeled the 9/11 scapegoat when he was filmed on the fateful morning reading “My Pet Goat” to the assembled students? Why did Bush continue reading from the book rather than leave the school as news of the two WTC strikes came into Booker Elementary School? Why did the US secret service not whisk the US President away at such a consequential moment of crisis? Why did Bush’s Press Secretary, Ari Fleisher, hold up a sign at the back of the classroom telling the US President in block letters, “DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET”? Why did the US President not return immediately to Washington, as he initially wanted, but instead was taken to Barksdale Air force Base in Louisiana and then to Offut Air force Base in Nebraska?
What transpired to make Dick Cheney rather than George Bush the hands-on Commander In Chief of the US Armed Forces on the morning of 9/11? What was the nature of the alleged credible threat on Air force One and who or what was behind this threat? What should we make of the conflicting testimony of Cheney and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta concerning Cheney’s activities in the White House Bunker on the morning of 9/11?
See the final chapter of Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire and the Future of America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008)
Fifteen years of the 9/11 cover up has prevented us from getting clear answers to these any many other basic questions about what really happened on September 11, 2001. In this cover up Chomsky and Jones inhabit different compartments of the same elaborate system of controlled opposition in the United States. Both Jones the truther and Chomsky the anti-truther highlight the role of Bush in their 9/11 commentaries. The effect of this Bush-centric preoccupation points attention away from the main 9/11 suspects including Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barack, Ehud Olmert, Richard Perle, Michael Chertoff, Paul Wolfowitz and other Israel First neocons. Their fingerprints are all over the 9/11 crime.
Chomsky, for instance, tries to highlight Bush in his effort to put a veil over the case of the controlled demolition of WTC 7. Its instant collapse hours after the pulverization of the Twin Towers is often characterized as the “smoking gun” of 9/11. Chomsky seeks to minimize this most damning feature of the 9/11 evidence by putting forward cartoon-like characterizations of 9/11 Truthers. Chomsky mocks us, for instance, with bizarre non-sequiturs like the notion that we think “Bush put the bombs in Building 7.”
You will read “Noam Chomsky and Zionism” in the next part.
Netanyahu Corruption Scandal Envelops Wealthy U.S. Haredi Family
By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | July 17, 2016
… I reported yesterday on an investigation that has caught up Netanyahu, his son, Yair, possibly his wife, Sara, and his former chief of staff Ari Harow. …
Today, a Channel 2 news report snares a new player in the scandal, Shlomo Rechnitz. There’s a baseball saying: you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. As this criminal probe expands, I’ll try to keep the players clearly identified and offer some background.
Robert Rechnitz with pal, Bibi Netanyahu
Rechnitz comes from a wealthy, extended ultra-Orthodox family based in California. The scion of the family and Shlomo’s uncle, is Robert Rechnitz, a real estate investor who founded the Bomel Companies and an Israeli subsidiary, Bomel Israel. He has been vice chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition and founded a Congressional lobbying group on behalf of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system (or should I say, “racket system?) the Iron Dome Tribute. He even developed a branding slogan: “the Humane Defensive Weapon.” I always thought the words “humane” and “weapon” were oxymorons. But not in the topsy-turvy world that is pro-Israel advocacy.
I learned all this not from Wikipedia or Rechnitz’s corporate biography, but from the corporate PR firm Rechnitz hired to polish his image, the Friedlander Group. Unfortunately, he didn’t hire them to monitor the reputation of his children and close family members. Because now two of them are in very hot water.
His nephew, Shlomo owns the largest nursing home conglomerate in California: Brius Healthcare Services (brius is the Yiddish version of the word for “health”). The State of California has investigated his firm numerous times for violations of health regulations. He was the subject of a class-action suit. His Pasadena nursing care facility was accused of recruiting felons as patients. Several employees faced criminal charges from that escapade. He complained once to the Sacramento Bee that the charges against him made him out to be “the Charles Manson of the nursing home business.” I’m guessing no one from Friedlander was available to accompany him to this interview. That image really sticks in your mind.
Not to mention the time he announced that his employees, for whom he’d purchased 18,000 Powerball tickets, had won the Powerball jackpot. The NY Times even featured him in a major story. Well, it turns out it wasn’t true. It was all a hoax, supposedly perpetrated by the son of one of the “winning” employees.
Rechnitz is also reported to have bought the anti-Haredi blog, Failed Messiah, written for years by Shmaryahu Rosenberg. Rechnitz and many of his associates had been skewered in its posts for years. Though conditions of the sale were not made public, they apparently bar Rosenberg from creating a new blog; or at least one covering the same subject as his old one. That online property promptly disappeared from the internet. Clearly, the Haredi community had withstood the slings and arrows of outrageous (mis)fortune from Rosenberg’s pen for too long. The tycoon stepped in to end the attacks. Lately, a new iteration of the blog, Lost Messiah, was launched by readers of the old blog who wished to maintain the service it had done to the Orthodox community and the Jewish world.
Rechnitz appears to be playing a lead role in the Scandal of the Day as a major donor to Netanyahu and the Likud. His uncle, Robert, was the western chair of American Friends of the Likud, which would mean he both donated and raised massive sums from Orthodox Jews on behalf of the Israel far-right. As such, the elder Rechnitz would’ve worked closely with Ari Harow, the man in the spotlight of the current scandal. That’s how Shlomo would’ve come to the attention of the Israeli police investigating the money-laundering operation.
I haven’t dug deeply into the background of Victor Deutsch, Harow’s former business partner. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he too is Orthodox and perhaps a close friend of the Rechnitz family. If this guess turns out to be true, Deutsch would have excellent motive to benefit Harow and the Likud by the sort of fraudulent business transaction they’re accused of arranging, in selling the latter’s company for $3-million in largely unaccounted-for funds.
Jona Rechnitz: show him the money!
Another Rechnitz facing the glare of bad PR is Jona, Robert’s son and cousin to Shlomo. Jona attended Yeshiva University and was photographed during his student days visiting the Cave of the Patriarch, a venerated settler holy site where Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers.
Jona began his career in real estate working for Lev Leviev’s Africa Israel. Leviev, who began his own career as a blood diamond merchant to the stars, also maintains vast real estate holdings in the U.S., Britain and Israel. His company has also built Israeli settlements. Jona helped manage the Leviev real estate portfolio in New York until they had a falling out. After that, Rechnitz formed his own company, JSR Capital.
Jona and another wealthy Hasidic Jew have been swept up in the bribery and corruption scandal which has rocked the De Blasio administration in New York City. They did favors for the corrupt head of the city prison officers union, Norman Seabrook, and offered gifts and benefits to senior police officers in the precinct where they lived. Among the crooked deals was a $60,000 payment to Seabrook (paid in a $1,000 Ferragamo hand bag) in return for the union boss’ steering $20-million to a Rechnitz associate’s investment fund. Seabrook was miffed as he’d been told he could net $150,000 from the arrangement.
Among other favors were all-expenses paid gambling junkets to Las Vegas on a private jet. Another part of the entertainment provided was a prostitute dressed as a flight attendant whose “services” included far more than providing drinks and snacks.
Presumably, Rechnitz did this so he could gain favorable service response and attention from local police personnel in Brooklyn Orthodox neighborhoods. But he had even bigger ambitions, which led him and his associate to make six-figure donations to various DeBlasio political fundraising vehicles once he’d won the Democratic mayoral primary.
Jona lobbied the City Council and succeeded in gaining a $655,000 “discretionary” allocation to underwrite a “cultural sensitivity” police training seminar hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which was Rechnitz’ pet project. Presumably, part of the curriculum was learning sensitivity to the special interests of the Haredi community. You certainly won’t find any sensitivity to the Muslim community in this program.
All of this paints a portrait of a wealthy Haredi family parlaying money into political clout on a local, national and international scale. Unlike other American families in which wealth is wielded within discrete nuclear families, in the Haredi world extended families (clans) unite to pursue objectives that benefit both their families personally and their extended Orthodox communities. It’s certainly cleaner and less deadly than the old Italian mob. But as the Netanyahu investigation shows, it’s no less venal and corrupt.
Fraud probe against Netanyahu to go public: Israeli official
Press TV – July 10, 2016
An Israeli official says the details of an investigation into allegations of large-scale money laundering by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be made public soon.
The official, whose name was not mentioned in reports, said on Saturday that police believe that they have adequate evidence to make the probe public this week or early next week.
Some of the inquiry materials had originated in other, unrelated investigations, but they have now been linked to the money laundering case involving the Israeli prime minister.
The police and the attorney general’s office think it is untenable to keep the investigation secret anymore due to its sensitivity, he said, adding that a decision was made to make an official announcement about the case.
Police have so far prevented leaks to the media concerning the probe, but there were reports of people being summoned for questioning by the police’s anti-fraud unit.
Recently, Israeli media said the investigation against Netanyahu focuses on foreign funds he received after resuming office in 2009. The premier has dismissed the allegations.
Netanyahu is also implicated in a separate fraud case involving French tycoon Arnaud Mimran, who is said to have previously made unrelated donations to the Israeli premier.
Earlier this week, a French court convicted Mimran of fraud and sentenced him to eight years in prison and one million euros in fines in a 2008-2009 fraud case.
On Friday, Channel 10 reported that the latest police investigation into Netanyahu’s affairs involves suspicions of money laundering on a wide-scale.
The suspicion pertains to the alleged transfer of “large sums” to either Netanyahu or one of his family members and is not linked to campaign or political funding, it said.
The television said the investigation may require questioning abroad, but no investigators have yet been sent out of Israel.
French fraudster linked to Netanyahu jailed over vast tax scheme
Press TV – July 7, 2016
A French court has sentenced to eight years in jail a tycoon, who previously made unrelated donations to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, over a massive fraud scheme.
Arnaud Mimran was convicted of fraud on Thursday and sentenced to eight years in prison and one million-euro fine for the 2008-2009 fraud, which French authorities say resulted in a major tax shortfall.
Mimran has been on trial as a key suspect in a 283 million-euro scam in the trade and taxation of carbon emissions permits.
Ten other defendants were also given prison terms ranging from one to eight years and six were also fined 1 million euros. All the defendants were convicted of aggravated fraud and money-laundering.
Half of the defendants were tried in absentia and one person was acquitted.
The tax scam case has been described as “the heist of a century” by French authorities.
During his trial, the French magnate also testified that on another occasion he had gave 1 million euros to Netanyahu’s election campaign.
Netanyahu’s office has denied any campaign payments and said the contribution was made in 2001 to a fund used while he held no office.
Mimran was convicted of tax offenses in France in the late 1990s as well.
Meanwhile, Israel’s police are reportedly probing whether the prime minister had received illegal contributions from foreign businessmen during his current tenure.
Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, have become embroiled in a series of controversies about how their wealthy lifestyle is funded.
Netanyahu demands expulsion of Arab MK Zoabi from Knesset
Palestinian Information Center – June 30, 2016
NAZARETH – Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke with Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit Wednesday afternoon regarding the possible expulsion of Arab MK Hanin Zoabi from the Knesset.
Netanyahu’s demand came following Zoabi’s condemnation of the continued Israeli crimes against Palestinians and calls for lifting Gaza siege.
“With her actions and lies she crossed every line and she has no place in the Knesset,” Netanyahu claimed.
Earlier on Wednesday Zoabi caused an uproar on the Knesset floor when she strongly condemned the Israeli forces’ videotaped attack on Turkish activists who were killed during their participation in Freedom Flotilla in 2010. The murderer has to pay compensation for the families of Turkish victims, she said during a debate discussing the newly-signed deal between Israel and Turkey. Zoabi considered the deal as a “murder confession.”
Zoabi demanded the Israeli government issue an apology both to the “political activists” aboard the Mavi Marmara, on which she sailed in solidarity, and to herself, from those who “incited against [her] for six years.”
During the debate, Israeli MKs tried to physically attack Zoabi following her address. Several MKs began shouting and moved toward the podium to complain. “Come hit me! Come hit me!” Zoabi shouted to the MKs who were pointing and yelling at her.
As MKs mobbed the stage, Zoabi shouted “they murdered” and “shut up” repeatedly. When Deputy Knesset Speaker Hamad Amar (Yisrael Beytenu) asked her to apologize, Zoabi said: “The Israeli soldiers who murdered are the ones who need to apologize! You need to apologize!”
The Joint List strongly denounced the attack, considering it a “fascist assault.” It added, “The racist and bloody attack against Joint List MKs has notably escalated, calling for an end to the continued incitement against Arab MKs and Hanan Zoabi in particular”.
In May 2010, a flotilla of six ships headed to Gaza but Israeli navy forces intercepted and boarded them and forced them to dock in Israel after brutally attacking the passengers. Nine of the Turkish activists were killed during the attack.
Zoabi’s comments came a day after Israel signed a deal with Turkey to restore ties, after years of frosty relations exacerbated by the flotilla attack. The deal stipulates that Israel would pay Turkey $20 million in compensation to families of the victims.
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Book Summary
Medicalized Motherhood (2026)
Unbekoming | January 15, 2026
A healthy woman downloads a fertility app before she’s even trying to conceive. The algorithm tells her she’s “irregular,” suggests she might have a problem, builds a referral pathway to a fertility clinic directly into the interface. She arrives at pregnancy already a patient—monitored, tested, supplemented, optimized. Forty weeks later, she’s induced for passing an arbitrary due date, monitored continuously, confined to bed, augmented with synthetic hormones, numbed with an epidural, and delivered by cesarean for “failure to progress.” Her newborn is immediately clamped, separated, injected, tested, and supplemented with formula. A year later, her baby has a diagnosis for falling below the 10th percentile on a growth chart. Five years later, she’s still in the system—annual screenings, ongoing surveillance, carrying diagnoses that originated in pregnancy. She entered healthy. She never exits.
Medicalized Motherhood: From First Pill to Permanent Patient documents 123 medical interventions that operate through a single logic: each one creates conditions requiring the next. The induction requires monitoring. The monitoring requires confinement. The confinement slows labor. The slowed labor requires drugs. The drugs intensify pain. The pain requires anesthesia. The anesthesia impairs pushing. The impaired pushing requires surgery. This isn’t system failure—it’s the system functioning exactly as designed, converting healthy women into lifelong patients while generating revenue at every step. The book maps this cascade across six phases: pre-conception capture, pregnancy surveillance, labor management, immediate newborn intervention, infant pathologizing, and postpartum capture. No other single resource traces how a fertility tracking app connects to a cesarean scar connects to a “failure to thrive” diagnosis connects to permanent patient status. … continue
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