It really is no wonder when you think about it:
"Trial starts for rabbi who allegedly ran divorce kidnap team" Associated Press February 19, 2015
TRENTON, N.J. — Before prosecutors described Rabbi Mendel Epstein as a leader in a devout Jewish Orthodox community, they played a short, grainy video clip that they say shows he is a criminal.
‘‘Basically, what we’re going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple hours,’’ he’s heard telling two undercover FBI agents about what prosecutors say was a staged kidnapping in 2013.
Opening statements began Wednesday in the trial of Epstein and his three codefendants: his son David, Jay Goldstein, and Binyain Stimler. Epstein, who is accused of employing a kidnap team to force unwilling Jewish husbands to divorce their wives, faces charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and attempted kidnapping. The others face similar charges stemming from a staged kidnapping in 2013 and three other forced divorces.
Defense attorney Robert Stahl disputed the charges and portrayed Epstein, 69, as a ‘‘champion of women’s rights.’’
‘‘This is not a band of criminals extorting men for money or beating them for money,’’ Stahl said, arguing that Jewish law allows recalcitrant husbands to be forced into giving a divorce document known as a ‘‘get.’’
Sorry, but this is secular, separation of church and state America -- or so I was taught and told -- and imagine the uproar if someone argued Sharia law in a US courtroom.
He called the husbands the villains, as Epstein, dressed in a dark suit, silently nodded toward Stahl.
Prosecutors allege the rabbi’s team used brutal methods and tools, including handcuffs and electric cattle prods, to torture the men into granting divorces. The kidnap team brought surgical blades, a screwdriver, and rope to a staged kidnapping in 2013, authorities have said. Epstein allegedly told the undercover agents he arranged similar kidnappings every year or year and a half, US Attorney Joseph Gribko said.
Gribko referred to the recordings throughout his opening statement, including Epstein allegedly describing how the cattle prods were used.
‘‘If [the cattle prod] can get a bull that weighs 5 tons to move, you put it in certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know,’’ prosecutors said Epstein told two undercover FBI agents posing as a brother and sister trying to force the sister’s husband to grant the divorce. Gribko said he was recorded telling the agents the effort would cost $60,000.
I guess the Jewish mafia is no longer off-limits.
Stahl, holding Epstein’s 1989 book ‘‘A Woman’s Guide to the Get Process,’’ called Gribko’s opening statement an ‘‘interesting and compelling story,’’ but not evidence against Epstein.
Stahl said Epstein is simply good at advocating for women and his reputation is ‘‘that he can convince these husbands to go give their wives a get.’’ Stahl didn’t dispute that ‘‘some laws may have been broken along the way’’ but said that did not include kidnapping.
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"Rabbi admits taping nude women at ritual bath" Associated Press February 20, 2015
WASHINGTON— A prominent Orthodox rabbi acknowledged Thursday that for years he videotaped women in a changing room of a Jewish ritual bath, recording approximately 150 nude women.
We call them perverts.
Barry Freundel pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism during a hearing at D.C. Superior Court. Each count is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.
Freundel’s lawyer, Jeffrey Harris, acknowledged after the hearing that it was unlikely that his client would get a 52-year sentence but declined to say what sentence he would seek at a hearing set for May 15. Harris said his client was taking responsibility for his actions and was looking to move on with his life.
Harris could ask for a sentence that would keep his client out of prison, but US Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said in a statement that prosecutors would seek a sentence that includes prison time.
‘‘We will be seeking a prison sentence that reflects the gravity of this disturbing assault on the privacy and dignity of so many victims,’’ Machen said in a statement.
Freundel, 63, was a rabbi at the Kesher Israel synagogue in Washington for more than 25 years before his arrest in October on voyeurism charges. As part of the plea agreement Freundel entered into Thursday, he acknowledged that starting in 2009 he set up hidden recording devices in a changing and showering area of The National Capital Mikvah, a ritual cleansing bath affiliated with Kesher Israel.
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"Retired rabbi arrested on 40-year-old charges
A retired Connecticut rabbi has been arrested on a Virginia warrant on charges of indecent liberties with a child more than 40 years ago. Eric Silver of Cheshire faces felony charges in Norfolk, Va., for the alleged incidents between 1968 and 1970. Details were not available. The Record-Journal reported that an indecent liberties charge is part of Virginia’s sexual offense law and covers indecent conduct with children under the age of 15. It may not involve contact or sexual acts. The statute of limitations does not apply. Silver, 72, was the rabbi at Temple Beth David in Cheshire for 20 years until he retired in 2010."
Related: Ultra-Orthodox Shun Their Own for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse
Sharon Rabbi Redeemed
Rabbi Wriggles Out of Jail
They always seem to.
Ah, the memories.
"Julio Acevedo, a driver who crashed into a hired car taking expectant parents to a New York City hospital, has been convicted in the deaths of the couple and their baby. Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21, died that day. Their son, Tanchem, delivered by caesarean section after the accident, died a day later."
Also see: The Other Hernandez Trial
Also found these:
"Israel unveils its largest find of medieval gold coins" Associated Press February 19, 2015
CAESAREA, Israel — Israel on Wednesday unveiled the largest collection of medieval gold coins ever found in the country, accidentally discovered by divers.
The find was made two weeks ago near the port city of Caesarea and consists of some 2,000 coins, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.
The coins were likely swept up in recent storms, said Kobi Sharvit, director of the authority’s marine archaeology unit, adding that they provided ‘‘fascinating and rare historical evidence’’ from the Fatimid era in the 10th and 11th centuries.
The divers initially thought they had spotted toy coins but later showed a few of them to officials. Marine archeologists, using metal detectors, found the larger haul with coins of various denominations.
Sharvit said they probably came from a boat that sank on its way to deliver tax money to Egypt or a merchant ship.
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"Palestinian groups found liable for terror attacks; US court sets damages at $655.5m; Assaults from 2002-2004 killed 33" by Benjamin Weiser, New York Times February 24, 2015
NEW YORK — The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and injured.
The damages are to be $655.5 million, under a special terrorism law that provides for tripling the $218.5 million award made by the jury in US District Court.
That's going to be rough when victims of USraeli war crimes and their relatives start suing.
The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts. While the decision was a huge victory for the dozens of plaintiffs, it also could serve to strengthen the Israeli stance that the supposedly more moderate Palestinian forces are directly linked to terrorism.
Yes, it is AmeriKan JU$TU$ now.
The financial implications of the verdict for the defendants were not immediately clear.
The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, had financial troubles even before Israel, as punishment for the Palestinians’ move in December to join the International Criminal Court, began withholding more than $100 million a month in tax revenue it collects on the Palestinians’ behalf.
Look at how sanitized that sentence is.
Yes, Israel collects and keeps Palestine money that is rightfully theirs on their behalf, and then uses it to extort and oppress the population. The situation is so hypocritical and humiliating, and something which no nation in this world would abide by -- and yet there it is, happening in the Holy Land.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers said they plan to collect the damages by pursuing Palestinian Authority and PLO bank accounts, securities accounts, real estate, and other property that may be in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere.
International law scholars said that might be difficult.
Collecting judgments can be time-consuming in any case and all the more arduous when they involve a foreign entity with a complicated status as an international player, said Jens David Ohlin, a Cornell Law School professor who specializes in international law.
Then the Jews will be crying about for 70 years like the Holocaust™.
The Palestinians gained observer status at the United Nations in 2012, clearing the way for them to join various international organizations.
The verdict came in the seventh week of a civil trial in which the jury had heard emotional testimony from survivors of suicide bombings and other attacks in Jerusalem, in which 33 people were killed and more than 450 were injured.
“Money is oxygen for terrorism,” Kent A. Yalowitz, a lawyer for the families, said in a closing argument Thursday, noting that the antiterrorism law “hits those who send terrorists where it hurts them most: in the wallet.”
The case was brought under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which allows US nationals who are victims of international terrorism to sue in the US courts. The law was used in September by a Brooklyn jury to find Arab Bank liable for supporting terrorism by Hamas. Damages in that case, filed by about 300 victims of 24 terrorist attacks, are to be decided in a second trial, which has not yet been held.
In the Palestinian case, the plaintiffs included 10 families, comprising about three dozen members, eight of whom had been physically injured in the attacks while the others had been left with deep psychological scars, testimony showed.
The plaintiffs also included the estates of four victims who had been killed in the attacks, which occurred on the street and at a bus stop, inside a bus, and in a cafeteria on the campus of Hebrew University.
“It was a terrible thing to see,” one plaintiff, Robert Coulter Sr., 78, testified as he described watching a Fox television news report about the cafeteria bombing and realizing his 36-year-old daughter, a New Yorker on a business trip, was one of the victims.
“They brought a body bag out on the TV station, right on it, and went right down to where she was laying and I knew it was a girl, had blond hair,” Coulter recalled. “I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, that’s Janis.’”
I can't help but wonder if it was another staged and scripted crisis drill production, false flag, or actual event. I'm certainly not buying any event based solely on the pri$m of my jew$paper, that's for sure.
The defense had argued that their clients had nothing to do with the attacks.
Mark J. Rochon, a defense lawyer, told the jury Thursday that he did not want “the bad guys, the killers, the people who did this, to get away while the Palestinian Authority or the PLO pay for something they did not do.”
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO’s executive committee who testified for the defense, told the jury, “We tried to prevent violence from all sides.”
But citing testimony, payroll records, and other documents, the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority and that the authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers.
The Palestinian Authority and the PLO said in a statement that they were “deeply disappointed” in the verdict, calling the lawsuit’s charges “baseless.”
“We will appeal this decision,” Dr. Mahmoud Khalifa, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of information, said in the statement. “We are confident that we will prevail, as we have faith in the US legal system and are certain about our common sense belief and our strong legal standing.
They may be the the only ones left with faith in the AmeriKan JU$tu$ $y$tem these days.
“This case is just the latest attempt by hard-line antipeace factions in Israel to use and abuse the US legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda,” Khalifa added.
While the Israeli government said it had no involvement in the case, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he expected the “international community to continue to punish those who support terrorism, just as the U.S. federal court has done, and to back the countries that are fighting terrorism.”
So when are they going to get around to MI6, Mossad, and the CIA, because those are the primary creators of terror -- with their Muslim allies providing the money and manpower.
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"Palestinians threaten to end security accord with Israel over tax payments" Associated Press February 23, 2015
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to stop security coordination with Israel if the country continues to withhold millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenue, a senior Palestinian official said Sunday.
Nabil Shaath said Abbas warned European leaders on a trip to Europe last week that Palestinian officials would discuss the matter during an upcoming Palestinian central council meeting.
‘‘We have told the international community that we will not be able to continue the security coordination and the Palestinian Authority itself may not be able to continue functioning if Israel continues stealing our money,’’ Shaath said.
Why not? They are stealing your land.
Israel has withheld tax revenue from the Palestinians since they joined the International Criminal Court last month. Shaath said the withheld revenue amounts to $140 million per month for the last two months. Tax revenue accounts for about 70 percent of the Palestinians’ budget.
Palestinian officials said the United States, European Union, and Arab countries have asked the Palestinians to hold off on any decision about canceling security coordination with Israel until after Israeli elections on March 17, saying Israel may release the revenue after the elections.
Why should they have to wait, and why is the West and others making excuses for Israel?
It's their money and they need it now!
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday the United States fears that without a cash injection, the Palestinian Authority could collapse — entailing serious security implications for both Palestinians and Israelis.
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At least the water is flowing:
"Netanyahu OK’s water link to new Palestinian city" by Anne-Marie O’Connor, Washington Post February 28, 2015
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intervened to allow the newly constructed Palestinian city of Rawabi in the West Bank to connect to Israeli-controlled water sources, Israeli senior officials said Friday.
The $1 billion planned community of Rawabi, hailed as a model city in the West Bank, has seen its grand opening delayed for months by Israel’s refusal to provide water.
Related: Israel's Waterworld
Rawabi became embroiled in Israeli politics leading up the March 17 elections — and perhaps even an embarrassment for Netanyahu before his trip to address a joint meeting of the US Congress on Tuesday.
See: UMass Intolerant of Iranians
Since then US officials are playing down the prospects of any lasting damage to US- Israeli ties caused by Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and senior Israeli officials will be briefed by secure phone by top US negotiators on the latest round" (after the US had stopped such practices because Israel was leaking the information and sabotaging talks) that Obama says will test Iran while "foreign-based news websites in recent days have claimed that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been hospitalized in critical condition."
Gee, I wonder jwho could have put out that lie?
So the GOP sends on open letter to Iran that angers White House and gets Democrats ripped, but they will still vote for the bill anyway after the in your face blow job given Netanyahu. Iran is even taking the lead in Iraq as the U.S. arms ISIS.
In addition to the water war in Rawabi, Israeli authorities have pressed the Palestinians hard on other fronts in recent months.
The Israel Electric Corp. began this week to strategically cut off power to the West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin — once for 45 minutes, once for an hour — to force the Palestinian government to pay its electricity bills, now deep in arrears.
While denying them the money to pay for it. Nice trick.
To protest the Palestinian Authority’s move earlier this year to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Israelis have also withheld for three months the transfer of $381 million in custom duties Israel collects on the Palestinians’ behalf.
Makes it sound so nice of them, huh, as if Palestinians were incapable of collecting customs duties themselves?
That money is used to pay salaries of Palestinian government workers, including security and police forces. Palestinian workers have seen their salaries reduced by 40 percent.
Secretary of State John Kerry recently warned that the Palestinian Authority could collapse, which would throw the West Bank into turmoil.
Maybe Israel could turn it into another Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office proposed garnishing $75 million from the customs duties to pay the Palestinian electric bill. Israel Electric agreed to the deal, according to senior Israeli officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Israeli electricity providers say they are owed $485 million in total.
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Globe power must have gone out because that is the last I saw of Israel or Palestine, and I just double-checked the growing stack of March Globes.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Wednesday he was in “utter disbelief” when he read a letter from 47 Senate Republicans to Iran threatening to unravel a nuclear arms pact being negotiated by the Obama administration. He called it an unprecedented break from centuries of congressional action and a threat to US foreign policy."
