If it seems to you, gazing at today’s world, that what has come to be referred to as “Jewish power” has surpassed even that that of sovereign countries, there’s a good reason for this—it has. Certainly the global banking system was key in bringing this about, and to be sure Jews are prominent players in the latter. But it has to be stated, in all honesty, that the cooperation and confederacy of slippery, two-faced Gentiles, commonly known as Shabbes goyim, has certainly helped to facilitate the present horrid state of affairs.
And today we are proud and privileged to add to our Rogues Gallery the president and prime minister of Croatia. Yes, folks, occasionally we do throw some worthy Gentiles into our hallowed gallery, and in our humble opinion Croatian President Ivo Josipović…
Take a good close look at Josipović, the guy in the top photo. The poor man looks like he’s near tears, doesn’t he? That photo was made in February of 2012 on the occasion of a state visit Josopović made to Israel. While in the land stolen from the Palestinians, the Croatian president gave a speech before Israel’s Knesset in which, very somber-faced, he issued a thoroughly groveling apology for his country’s alleged guilt in crimes committed during the Nazi era. Here in part is what he said:
We need to look into our hearts, and to come to terms with the darkest stain in our history. Here I am, standing before the parliament of the Jewish state, and more importantly, in front of people born in Croatia, and with no ambiguity, I apologize and I ask for forgiveness from all the Holocaust survivors and all the victims.
I mentioned Josopović’s state visit in an article I wrote in August of last year entitled Swindler’s List: A Brief Look at the Holocaust Reparations Racket. In that article I discussed the concerted efforts of Jewish organizations, such as the Claims Conference and the World Jewish Congress, to extort greater and greater sums of holocaust “reparations” not only from Germany (for the past 60-plus years), but more recently from other European countries as well, and I noted that at least some of the sharks have Croatia in their cross-hairs now as well.
In his address to the Knesset, Josopović went on to say he felt convinced that amendments to his country’s “compensation law” would soon be passed providing for payments to “Holocaust survivors, private individuals, their inheritors or local communities,” but apparently this wasn’t enough to placate Stuart Eizenstat, a former undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration who has played a leading role in reparations negotiations. Eizenstat said he wanted to see EU officials “leverage” Croatia’s desire to join the European Union to get even greater concessions from the tiny country. “Now is the time for the European Union to exact the maximum amount of leverage,” he said, adding that “once they’re in, the leverage is lost.” So apparently it wasn’t enough for Eizenstat that Josopović had made pilgrimage to Israel or that he had issued a pleading entreaty for forgiveness along with a promise to change his country’s law. No. Apparently Eizenstat desired even more than that.
Now let’s fast forward one year, to February 25, 2013, when a report appears in the New York Times detailing a rather large influx of weapons from Croatia into Syria and into the hands of NATO-backed terrorists. It seems that videos posted to YouTube have been the means by which observers, including apparently the Times reporter, have noted the Croatian arms shipments:
YouTube has also been instrumental in allowing analysts to follow certain arming trends, including the arrival of shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles to rebel possession last year and the influx in 2013 of weapons previously unseen in the conflict. This in turn provides an opportunity for traditional investigation. In short, during the past several weeks scores of videos have been uploaded to YouTube that provide evidence of a seemingly distinct flow of new weapons to the country, which The New York Times has now identified as a Saudi-financed flow of arms from Croatia.
I don’t know how the writer, simply from looking at the videos, can be so sure the armaments are “Saudi-financed,” but of course it only takes someone with a knowledge of weaponry to identify the types of arms, and if the Times reporter doesn’t have such knowledge himself, he could easily ask some in the military who does. In any rate, the weapons showing up in the videos have been positively identified. For instance…
The M79 Osa is an antitank weapon originating from the former Yugoslavia. Rather unusually the rockets come in separate pods that are attached to the rear of the rocket launcher. Dozens were present in the first video, and two in the second. Markings visible on rocket pods in both videos indicate that they were manufactured between 1990 and 1991.
We then have the M60 recoil-less gun, seen on the far left of the picture, below left, alongside dozens of M79 Osa rocket pods. Again, the M60 is a weapon originating in the former Yugoslavia and has continued to be used in Serbia, Croatia and Macedonia since Yugoslavia’s breakup.
These and other weapons have shown up in more than 60 videos uploaded to YouTube in January alone, according to the Times report, while another report, here, notes that Croatia is now in essence “breaking the arms embargo against Syria.” How much of all this is being done at the behest of Israel and world Jewry we can only speculate, and of course that’s a subject the mainstream media will never address or broach, but if we go here we can find a spreadsheet cataloguing a large number of videos now on YouTube that show “foreign weapons in Syria” (a total of 131 listings as of this writing), and here is one of the actual videos—showing a group of witless Western-backed hooligans firing a Croatian M60 and screaming the prescribed “Allahu akbar” that invariably accompanies such occasions.
Now let’s fast-forward three more days, to February 28, 2013. We have an announcement from Josopović and Milanović that Croatia will be withdrawing its 100 or so “peacekeeping” troops from the Syria-Israel border. The reasoning behind this decision? The two leaders fear their soldiers, in the wake of the published report in the New York Times, could become the targets of Syrian government forces. And oh yes, they also deny having armed the NATO terror gangs, but of course by now “everyone has read those reports” and so of course “our soldiers are no longer safe.” Incidentally, they do admit to having sold, oh, perhaps a few armaments to Saudi Arabia (which of course has been supplying the Syrian opposition, as most of the world knows), but they insist that never, ever would they even think of violating the international arms embargo against Syria, heaven forbid.
Croatian military analyst Igor Tabak told the Associated Press that Croatia — slated to enter the European Union this summer — would not risk breaching an international arms embargo by directly arming the rebels.
But he did not rule out the possibility that the rebels got the Croatian weapons through a third country, possibly Saudi Arabia, which purchased the arms from the Balkan state.
"We do have a surplus amount of weapons," Tabak said. "It would be reasonable to sell something considering Croatia's economic crisis."
Fueling the arms deal reports were the sightings of Jordanian-registered cargo planes flying in and out of Zagreb's international airport earlier this year.
Western countries have mostly refused to arm the rebels, but the United States said Thursday it would start providing noncombat aid to the Free Syrian Army.
So now, discretion being the better part of valor, Croatia has decided to withdraw its troops from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Too bad they can’t also “withdraw” the stockpiles of weapons they sold to the Saudis, the Free Syrian Army, or whomever they sold them to, but I guess it’s a bit late for that.
On Wednesday, February 27, I put up a post entitled Syrian Women Train to Defend Their Country…As US Moves to Arm Their Enemies. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out. The post included a quote from Secretary of State John Kerry, who said, “We are determined that the Syrian opposition is not going to be dangling in the wind wondering where the support is or if it’s coming, and we are determined to change the calculation on the ground for President Assad.” The same post also discussed Syria’s new civilian National Defense Forces, which includes large numbers of women, who have taken up arms to help defend their nation from the hooligans and foreign-backed invaders.
How many of them will still be alive a year from now?
Ivo Josopović and Zoran Milanović, welcome to the Rogues Gallery! Step right in, gents! Make yourselves at home!
The Rabbi with the Wrestling Fetish
In previous Rogues Galleries I have reported on the ongoing controversy at Yeshiva University High School for Boys in New York (see here and here ) regarding alleged sexual misconduct by rabbis who have been employed there as teachers. The problem dates back to at least the late 70s/early 80s, and causing perhaps the greatest uproar in the community at present are recent disclosures of how school administrators dealt with the issue of sexual abuse of students when the concerns were brought to their attention. Rather than turn the alleged perpetrators over to the police, school authorities, including the school president at the time, adopted a policy of allowing them to simply leave quietly and take other jobs elsewhere. This at any rate seems to be what happened in the case of Rabbi George Finkelstein, who worked at the school from roughly 1968 until 1995, when, while serving as principle, he left following accusations of inappropriate contact with students.
Yeshiva University High School for Boys where Rabbi George Finkelstein (left insert) and Rabbi Macy Gordon (right insert) are alleged to have had inappropriate contact with students. The images are taken from an old yearbook. |
And so Finkelstein left YU, in 1995, moved to Florida, and took a job at another school—the Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School, in North Miami Beach, where he became dean. And consider this: not only did Lamm not notify police, he also failed to inform the Florida school about why Finkelstein had been obliged to resign, or as he expressed it, “The responsibility of a school in hiring someone is to check with the previous job. No one checked with me about George.”
Finkelstein stayed with the Hillel school until 2001, at which point he made tracks for Israel, where he took a position as director general of the Jerusalem Great Synagogue. And it was here he remained until resigning abruptly in December of 2012 after disclosures of his past alleged misconduct became public.
In its most recent article on Finkelstein, published February 28, 2013, The Forward reports that “the wrestling did not stop after his (Finkelstein’s) departure from Y.U.”, but rather that it continued at his next two jobs, i.e. at the school in Florida, and later on at the synagogue in Jerusalem.
One official with the Hillel school is quoted on record as saying, “We had no difficulties with Rabbi Finkelstein whatsoever,” but apparently others gave different accounts.
A former Hillel staff member, who requested anonymity, said: “The kids went to convention or camp and they met kids from Y.U. and they asked, ‘Did Finkelstein touch you already?’”
Yudewitz and Maya said Finkelstein often invited boys to stay over at his house during Shabbat. Such behavior was typical for a Jewish educator trying to persuade students to become more observant.
It was during one such sleepover that one former Hillel student said Finkelstein asked him to wrestle.
Even before then, the former student recalled, Finkelstein had taken a particular interest in him. Finkelstein often told the boy that he loved him and, when he called him into his school office, he hugged him “a little bit closer than a normal person might hug.”
“He would lock his feet together and come in close [with his] legs touching each other and he was flat against me,” the former student said. “I never took it as he felt anything more than affection in a father-son type way,” he added.
The former student said he stayed at Finkelstein’s house many times. Then, one time when the two were alone, Finkelstein asked him to wrestle.
“His demeanor changed and he puts on this face like you would do with a kid if [you were] pretending to be angry,” the former student said. “[He] starts making a fist and says, ‘We’re going to come to blows.’”
“The whole thing ended with my getting pinned to the ground and he’s on top of me and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know what the hell is going on,’” the former student said. “And he starts tickling me…and he got off [me] and that was the end of it.”
The man said that he felt uncomfortable enough that the next time Finkelstein asked to wrestle he refused. But he said that he remained friendly with Finkelstein.
A few years ago, he discovered a blog where former Y.U. High School students wrote of what they perceived to be the sexual undertones beneath Finkelstein’s wrestling. “It made me furious,” the man said. “I realized if he’s doing this to all these guys he’s either really naive or some kind of predator.”
Despite the official denial from the Hillel official, school authorities apparently at some point did become aware of Finkelstein’s proclivities. A former YU student reportedly contacted them and “warned the Florida school that Finkelstein liked to wrestle with boys.” This, as it turns out was in 2001—the same year Finkelstein took off for Israel.
As The Forward notes, “allegations of Finkelstein’s inappropriate behavior preceded him when he applied for the job of director general of Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue, in 2001,” but as before, this didn’t stop him from gaining employment or from remaining on the job for a number of years. And apparently the behavior even continued. As The Forward reports, “The most recent wrestling incidents documented by the Forward were in 2009.”
Finkelstein’s resignation (which, as I noted above, came in December last year) was tendered only after The Forward had published its first article detailing the allegations against him, but the allegations of his sexual misconduct had “trailed him for at least 30 years, according to dozens of interviews with former students, colleagues and peers in the United States.”
Thirty years. All in all a rather amazing story—but perhaps the most astounding episode of all took place in 1995 at the time of Finkelstein’s resignation from YU. Here again, as I said above, law enforcement officials were not notified, even though Lamm, and probably other officials as well, were well aware of his conduct around students. But hey, not only did the school not have him arrested, they actually gave him a grand send-off, with a dinner in his honor!
Y.U.’s knowledge of Finkelstein’s problematic behavior did not stop the school from honoring him upon his departure. At Y.U.’s annual tribute dinner, held in March 1995 at the New York Hilton hotel in Manhattan, Lamm presented Finkelstein and his wife, Fredda, with the Heritage Award “for 25 years of dedicated service.”
Asked why Y.U. honored Finkelstein despite forcing him out because of the wrestling, a Y.U. spokesman said: “As you are aware, everything is being independently investigated by outside counsel who will make their report when the investigation is fully finished.” The spokesman did not respond to a request for details about how the investigation is proceeding and when it might be complete.
Despite all that has come out, apparently there are those who still think highly of Finkelstein, or at least who don’t update their websites with a great deal of regularity. At the site FloridaJewish.com, we find featured an article by the rabbi entitled, amusingly, Shofetim, “Judges.” Apparently the piece was written when Finkelstein was still a resident of Florida—(the words, “Each week we feature a different outstanding Florida Rabbi” appear at the top of the page)—and I’m assuming it is the same Rabbi George Finkelstein, since accompanying the article is a photo of the author that looks very similar to the one above only older.
“The Torah portion of Shofetim begins with a set of guidelines to insure that we will have a judicial system that is free from corruption and dishonesty,” Finkelstein starts off with a sort of utopian erudition. The piece also includes a couple of quotes from the Talmud before closing with the following paragraph:
In contemporary times, with political alliances, media hype, lobbyists, pressure groups, etc. it becomes more difficult to think objectively and to have opinions that aren't biased or preconceived. This is not only the requirement for Judges, but rather for each of us. For, in fact, we are each called upon to "judge" people, ideas and situations hundreds of times each day. May the standards of the Torah become our guides and our goals for living a moral, ethical and truly honest life.
Psychiatrist charged in Wisconsin
Madison psychiatrist with history of inappropriate behavior charged with possessing child pornography
By Sandy Cullen
A Madison psychiatrist who has been reprimanded twice in the past for inappropriate conduct with patients was charged Thursday with two counts of possession of child pornography.
Dr. David M. Israelstam, 73, was released on a signature bond after an initial court appearance Thursday morning.
Israelstam was ordered to have no contact with a computer technician and former patient who discovered pornography on his computer, nor with anyone under 18, and to not use any device capable of accessing the Internet. He is allowed contact with his two grandchildren if two adults are present.
Read more
And that’s going to wrap up today’s Weekly Rogues Gallery. I’ll close with a quote from one of my favorite contemporary poets, Nahida the Exiled Palestinian:
I have a dream
When they stop bombing
No more shelling
To rush outside
And up a tall tree
To tie a string
Make a swing
Fly up so high
And touch the blue sky
Leave my tears up there
To come down as rain…
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
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