Sources: Jewish-owned Wikipedia, 23andme.com. Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, Jewish Press, Times of Israel and more.
Lavrov: So what if Zelensky is Jewish, even Hitler ‘had Jewish blood’
Attempting to defend claims of need to ‘denazify’ Ukraine, Russian FM says ‘some of the worst antisemites are Jews’; Yad Vashem slams comments as ‘false, delusional and dangerous’
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Sunday said that the fact that Ukraine’s president is Jewish does not contradict Moscow’s claims that it launched the invasion to “denazify” the country, claiming that even Hitler “had Jewish blood.”
In an interview with Italian news channel Zona Bianca, Lavrov was asked how Russian President Vladimir Putin could claim he was trying to “denazify” Ukraine when Volodymyr Zelensky, the country’s democratically elected president, was Jewish.
“So what if Zelensky is Jewish. The fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood,” Lavrov said, adding that “some of the worst antisemites are Jews.”
Persistent conspiracy theories that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had some Jewish ancestry that may have motivated his antisemitism and the murder of six million Jews have been repeatedly debunked by historians.”
We can’t really know who impregnated Hitler’s grandmother, apparently. I will keep digging into that. Anything is possible, at this point. What we know is that the debunks of the theory are authored by Jews for the most part and they have been, in turn, debunked, but you can’t expect the establishment to take that in consideration.
But that is just a pixel in the grand image. here’s why:
The controversial theory has been debated for decades by historians, with many agreeing that he was not a part of “the tribe,” as there was no evidence to substantiate this claim.
However, a study by psychologist and physician Leonard Sax has shed new light supporting the claim that Hitler’s father’s father had Jewish roots.
The study, titled “Aus den Gemeinden von Burgenland: Revisiting the question of Adolf Hitler’s paternal grandfather,” which was published in the current issue of the Journal of European Studies, examines claims by Hitler’s lawyer Hans Frank, who allegedly discovered the truth.
Hitler asked Frank to look into the claim in 1930, after his nephew William Patrick Hitler threatened to expose that the leader’s grandfather was Jewish.
In his 1946 memoir, which was published seven years after he was executed during the Nuremberg trials, “Frank claimed to have uncovered evidence in 1930 that Hitler’s paternal grandfather was a Jewish man living in Graz, Austria, in the household where Hitler’s grandmother was employed,” and it was in 1836 that Hitler’s grandmother Maria Anna Schicklgruber became pregnant, Sax explained.
“Frank wrote in his memoir that he conducted an investigation as Hitler had requested, and that he discovered the existence of correspondence between Maria Anna Schicklgruber – Hitler’s grandmother – and a Jew named Frankenberger living in Graz. According to Frank, the letters hinted that Frankenberger’s 19-year-old son had impregnated Maria Anna while she worked in the Frankenberger household: …that the illegitimate child of the Schickelgruber [sic] had been conceived under conditions which required Frankenberger to pay alimony.”
Sax writes in the study that according to the letters in Frank’s memoir, “Frankenberger Sr. sent money for the support of the child from infancy until its 14th birthday.”
“The motivation for the payment, according to Frank, was not charity but primarily a concern about the authorities becoming involved: ‘The Jew paid without a court order, because he was concerned about the result of a court hearing and the connected publicity,’” the letters state.
However, Sax noted that the accuracy of Frank’s claims and his memoir “have been questioned.”
He added that “contemporary scholarship has largely discounted Frank’s allegations regarding a possible Jewish grandfather for Adolf Hitler.”
In the ’50s, German author Nikolaus von Preradovich said he had proved that “there were no Jews in Graz before 1856,” rejecting Frank’s account.
However, Sax explained in the study that he found evidence to the contrary in Austrian archives that there was a Jewish community in the Austrian town before 1850 and highlighted that Preradovich was a Nazi sympathizer, “who was offended by the suggestion that Adolf Hitler was a “Vierteljude (a one-quarter Jew).”
According to Sax’s paper, “Evidence is presented that there was in fact eine kleine, nun angesiedelte Gemeinde – ‘a small, now settled community’ – of Jews living in Graz before 1850.”
Sax also refers to Emanuel Mendel Baumgarten, who was elected to the Vienna municipal council in 1861, “one of the first Jews to hold that honor.
“In 1884, he wrote a book titled… The Jews in Styria: a historical sketch,” in which he states that “in September 1856, he and several Jewish colleagues met with Michael Graf von Strassoldo, who at that time held the post of governor for the province of Styria.
“Baumgarten and his colleagues petitioned Strassoldo to lift the restrictions on Jews residing in Styria,” Sax explained. Baumgarten cited a letter to local mayors in Styria which noted “that Jews are staying in local districts for a long time and are taking up residence for a long time.”
Sax goes on to say that the official register of Jews in Graz “appears to have been launched following this meeting.
Thus, the establishment in 1856 of a community register of Jews in Graz seems not to have been a first step in the foundation of the Jewish community in 16 Graz, as Nikolaus von Preradovich assumed, but rather the recognition of a community already in existence,” he pointed out.
According to a statement accompanying the study, “Sax [also] presents overwhelming evidence that Preradovich was a Nazi sympathizer.
“Sax’s paper shows that the current consensus is based on a lie,” it states. “Frank, not Preradovich, was telling the truth. Adolf Hitler’s grandfather was Jewish.
He added that “no independent scholarship has confirmed Preradovich’s conjecture.”
As ADL, EU and the rest of the Jewish Supremacism avatars are cranking up their propaganda and brainwashing with continental fascist diktates, I felt it’s only adequate to operate a Great Reset on the records.
Russia took a step further Tuesday in its escalating row with Israel by claiming that the country’s leadership supported the “neo-Nazi regime” in Ukraine.
In an 800-word essay, the Russian Foreign Ministry doubled down on controversial remarks made earlier by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Jewish origins are “not a guarantee against rampant neo-Nazism in the country.”
It provided isolated examples of cooperation between Jewish collaborators and Nazis during the Holocaust years.
The verbal spat between Russia and Israel began Sunday when Lavrov was asked how Russia could claim it is “de-Nazifying” Ukraine through its invasion when Zelenskyy is himself Jewish.
“I may be mistaken, but Adolf Hitler had Jewish blood, too. [The fact that Zelenskyy is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews,” Lavrov said in an interview on Italian TV.
Israel chastised Lavrov for these remarks, saying this is an “unforgivable” falsehood that undermines the horrors of the Holocaust. German officials also decried Lavrov’s comments as “absurd” propaganda.
The Israeli foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology on Monday.
“Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. “The lowest level of racism against Jews is to accuse Jews themselves of anti-semitism.”
But on Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated Lavrov’s point that Zelenskyy’s origins do not contradict Moscow’s claims that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis.
“The argument is not only untenable but also wily. History, unfortunately, knows tragic examples of cooperation between Jews and the Nazis,” the statement read.
“The historical tragedy lies in the fact that if during the Second World War some Jews were forced to participate in crimes, while Zelenskyy, speculates on his roots consciously and voluntarily,” the ministry said, further claiming that the Ukrainian leader uses his origins as “cover” for himself and “natural neo-Nazis.”
Zelenskyy weighed in on Lavrov’s comments in a video address published late Monday.
“These words mean that Russia’s top diplomat is transferring blame for the crimes of the Nazis to the Jewish people. [I’m] speechless,” Zelenskyy said.
“Such an anti-Semitic attack by [a Russian] minister means that they have forgotten all the lessons of the Second World War. Or maybe they never learned those lessons,” Zelenskyy said. “Therefore, the question is — will the Israeli ambassador remain in Moscow, knowing their position, and will relations with Russia remain as usual?”
Israel has voiced support for Ukraine after Russia launched an invasion on Feb. 24 but refrained from directly criticizing the Kremlin and joined the Western effort to sanction Russian oligarchs, some of whom based themselves in the country after fleeing Moscow.
Russia is also an essential powerbroker in Israel’s neighbor Syria. Russian speakers also amount to roughly 15% of the Israeli population. Most emigrated from the former Soviet Union and claimed citizenship through their heritage. Israel’s response to the attack on Ukraine has prompted calls to scrutinize the role wealthy Israeli-Russians play in the country’s political scene.
Moshe Reuven Asman has called for the evacuation of the defenders of Mariupol to Israel or third countries.
Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Reuven Asman has called on the Israeli authorities to facilitate the evacuation of the defenders of Mariupol from the Azovstal iron and steelworks, surrounded by Russian troops. Asman spoke out to the Israeli leadership via Michael Malkiel, co-chairman of the Israel-Ukraine parliamentary group.
“Dear Michael Malkiel, I am asking for your urgent help in saving the defenders of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. They are located on the territory of the Azovstal iron and steelworks and are completely surrounded by enemy forces. Among them, over 500 people are seriously wounded, this is a humanitarian mission. Our Torah says, “he who saves one life saves the whole world. We ask for the immediate assistance of the Israeli government in diplomatic negotiations on the evacuation of defenders to Israel or third countries.”
As reported by the Segodnya media outlet, the Russian invaders are storming Azovstal using the forces exceeding the defenders of Mariupol by 10-15 times. This was stated by the mayor of Mariupol Vadym Boychenko.
“There is an assault – they deploy tank artillery, smoothbore artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, use planes with heavy bombs and surface ships. Assault brigades are also joining them. That is, they constantly live by storming, storming and storming our outpost – Azovstal – today,” Boychenko said.
On behalf of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, complex negotiations are underway to evacuate seriously wounded soldiers from Azovstal in exchange for captured Russians.
– Religious Information Service of Ukraine RISU
“Complex negotiation” as in capitulation in exchange for NATO generals and Azov leaders?
“Arabic, which first emerged in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula, is a member of the Semitic family of languages which also includes Hebrew and Aramaic”
All Hebrews are Semitic, but not all Hebrews are Jews and not all Jews are Hebrew. That’s just a tiny subset for Jewishness, not a criteria.
Jewishness refers to religion and there are Jews of all races and many languages. In factual reality you can’t transmit religion genetically, as some Jewish traditions claim, if you have Jewish ancestry but you practice Christianity or Baha’i, they don’t take you aboard, a Catholic Jew is an oxymoron like Build Back Better. Pick one and run with it. You could be a crypto-Jew, perhaps, but then you’re still required to secretly practice Judaism. On the other hand, there should be many millions of people who have an ancestor who practiced Judaism, but no one would fathom calling them a Jew. Having Jewish ancestry is just that. Some take it to another level in their minds, but outside their heads, a devout Catholic with a Jewish grandfather is not a Jew. The difference is made by the faith in their hearts and heads, and we can’t read those, we can only read their actions and words. This allows a lot of deceptions and crypto-Jewishness, but doesn’t alter the principle that faith is decisive, not ancestry.
And even more absurd: some reactions to the afore-mentioned article, comments claiming everyone does have some Jewish blood. I don’t mind, I just want ADL to recognize us all as “chosen people” and represent everyone as they represent Jewish Supremacy now. But who do we reign supreme over then? If there’s no one to discriminate against, ADL remains without scope…
The many criteria for Jewishness varies from Jew to Jew, eventually, but one thing is set in stone: The only necessary and sufficient condition for Jewishness is adherence to the religion. However, this didn’t prevent Jews from developing a genetic test for faith. Totally not another scam.
Race, language religion are shuffled and interchanged as necessary to deal a place aboard the Jewish cruiser, which comes with the notorious SUN (“Shut Up, Nazi!”) shield against inquiry and criticism.
Neither Jewishness or Semitism are a racial identity. Ashkenazi is. Regardless of religion. Most Ashkenazis in Israel are atheists anyway.
The cross section between Semitic speakers and Judaism followers is therefore a niche cultural selection of populace, not a race.
This group is on the verge of extinction, somewhere between 1-2 million in Israel, even less outside.
There might be more Arab Semites than Jewish Semites in Israel.
There are about half a billion Semitic Arabs and Bedouins out there.
And yet, anti-Semitic = anti-Jewish, simpletons believe.
About 3/4 of Israelis self-identify as Jewish = members of Judaic religion. Coincidentally, of course, about just as many identify as non-religious or secular. Surely, Arabs are not among any of these categories.
To these six quarters add one more comprised of all other religions present there. Jewish math is always fantastic.
In conclusion:
The self-identified Semitic Jewish race is an entirely fictitious and nonsensical concept, just like their narrative on “anti-Semitism” and racism.
This race-but-also-religion-wanna-be is nowadays a group largely comprised of atheists of Ashkenazi and Sephardic genetic origin, and little to no Semitic cultural heritage. They’re often blue-eyed blonds posing in brown-face as white-supremacism victims, not perpetrators.
Ashkenazi or Sephardim, on the other hand, are two distinct actual races. Ashkenazi is a race that forbid interbreeding on supremacist basis, and, after centuries of inbreeding, its genes are now associated by Ashkenazi scientists with higher incidence of neurodegenerative diseases and mental illness, especially schizophrenia. There is an actual Ashkenazi Schizophrenia gene.
So it might not be a historical accident that they are provably the most anti-Semitic, racist, supremacist and Nazi peoples on the face of the Earth, with Chinese as only competition.
If anything at all, anti-Semitism is that anti-Arabic feeling that’s more common than love among white supremacist Jews, in my experience, and in their statements. A feeling that lead to the death of more Arab Semites than Jews killed by Hitler, not only at the hands of the Israeli Army, but also with support from their proxies, most notably the US. The US of I?
Imagine, if you will, millions of atheist Askenazis exterminating millions of Semitic Arabs while posing as victims of antisemitism.
“Cultural appropriation”.
UPDATE MAY 11, 2022:
In an unprecedented and surprising move, given their collaboration so far, China has just told Israel it’s getting too bold. And Israel doubled down.
The anti-semitism card is only backed by guns and sheer force now. Russia is leading the unofficial Chabad Defense Army, ahead of ADL in severity. But Lavrov may have blown a massive hole in it.
Some of my best efforts to help with the current state of general confusion, I hope it works! And if it does, please remember to share it!
I don’t talk much about myself because I don’t want or need to leverage my persona / CV / bio to support anything I say. If my arguments don’t speak for themselves, my CV is useless and it won’t really speak for the facts.
However, this time it’s particularly relevant where this is coming from, because many years ago I was a fake news operative in the country that borders Ukraine to the south. In other words, I was a mainstream news journalist in Romania, a media mercenary, a low/middle echelon disinformation agent exactly like those exposed by Project Veritas. This was long ago in my life’s timeline, but historically it was yesterday, around the same time Putin was raising to fame. 9/11 caught me at my desk in a radio station’s news dept. I shook hands with all Romanian presidents after Ceausescu, I partied with much of today’s political class there, attended international meetings etc. And today’s Ukraine and its deep state resembles quite a lot 1990’s / early 2k Romania. This experience offered me not only great deep insights of the system, but also the ability to reverse-engineer news to the point where I can often see the real story behind a propaganda news piece, I can tell what the writer thought doing it, what his editor’s thoughts were and who financed it. Because I played all those positions and more. I quit all that for an artistic career just the last second before getting completely sucked in for life, I left because I grew disgusted with myself and the people who saw me as their asset. Then I left the country completely. I am sorry sorry for what I did, but I don’t apologize or excuse myself, instead I just did the work I thought fit to to redeem myself in my own eyes, to fix what I can in this world. Not because I’m a great altruist and I love you so much I lose sleep over it, but because I love myself and I don’t fare well as part of the problem in a slave farm. This where this work comes from. As for my biases, I’ not a fan of and I have no loyalty to any group of people, the largest the worse, with the exception of music concert and festival audiences. I think all governments are terrorist organizations, all ideologies are dumb BS by their core definition and good people don’t dream of ruling over others or leading them. And from where I stand, this is what I see:
FULL
A higher resolution downloadable version will be uploaded next days on our Odysee. Feel free to reupload it, I just hope you will link back to the source.
I strongly recommend watching it as I meant it and built it – in one séance, but if you can’t, for whatever reasons…
Now, this took a hell lot of effort and time, and I have another one in works that helps understanding how we got here. A prequel, if you wish. It could’ve been done by now, but my equipment is aging fast, its performances are slow and getting slower, while I am refused my normal existence and means to earn it, except for your voluntary donations. So any help is much needed and appreciated these days, many many thanks go to the generous souls that have made this possible so far! It meant something, we’ve already made a serious impact.
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Around 450 militants from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) armed group, a re-branded Jabhat al-Nusra (the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda), arrived in Ukraine on 8 March to fight against the Russian army.
The militants reportedly left Idlib governorate in northern Syria only three days ago, entering Ukraine after passing through Turkey.
The militants consist of both Arab and foreign nationals, as HTS, ISIS, and other militias in Syria allow foreigners to join their ranks.
The newly arrived fighters in Ukraine reportedly consist of approximately 300 Syrians, with the rest a mix of Belgian, French, Chechen, Chinese, Tunisian, British, and Moroccan nationals.
Family members of the militants reported to Sputnik News that high-ranking HTS fighters are coordinating with senior leaders of the Turkistan Islamic Party group, Ansar al-Tawhid, and Hurras al-Din groups, to facilitate the passage of fighters from Idlib to Turkey and then on to Ukraine.
The sources explained further that many of those who have gone to Ukraine are veterans of the US-backed war against the Syrian government and were offered this new task as a means of resolving disputes between the soldiers and the HTS leadership.
The income for Syrian fighters is reported to be around $1,200-$1,500. The income for foreign nationals is not yet known.
Foreign mercenaries from around the globe have joined in on the side of Ukraine as President Volodymyr Zelensky pleads for global assistance in the wake of the Russian military operation.
Russian intelligence services warned on 4 March that the US was sending extremist militants from Idlib governorate to Ukraine to fight against Russia. Moscow has accused Washington of training these extremist militants at the US Al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria.
This latest escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict comes as wheat and oil prices surge and stocks are straitened due to the conflict.
The two sides have been negotiating in Belarus to address points that could potentially lead to a ceasefire agreement.
450 Arab and foreign extremists from Idlib arrive in Ukraine
Almost 450 extremists from various nationalities arrive to Idlib to fight against Russian troops, after leaving Syria and passing through Turkey.
Sources confirm that most of the foreign extremists that left Syria for Ukraine are Hayat Tahrir al-Sham veteran fighters
Close to 450 extremist Arab and foreign nationals have arrived in Ukraine from Idlib to fight against Russia’s forces, less than only three days after they left Syria, passing through Turkey.
Relatives of extremists that have arrived in Ukraine told Sputnik that senior fighters from terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the rebranded version of Jabhat Al-Nusra, i.e Al-Qaeda) have held a number of meetings with senior leaders in the Turkistan Islamic Party group and Ansar Al-Tawhid and Hurras al-Din groups, and agreed on allowing a number of all their fighters to enter Ukraine through Turkish soil.
The sources added that most of these foreign fighters are veterans of the Syrian war, had been causing issues in Idlib, and were given this opportunity to fight against Russia as a compromise by which they would receive a new start and with an acceptable income.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham also gave these fighters assurances that their families would be allowed to join them later.
Around 300 of these fighters are Syrian nationals that are originally from the Idlib and Aleppo countrysides, while the 150 others are Belgian, French, Chinese, Moroccan, Tunisian, Chechen and British nationals.
As for the financial compensation, the sources said the fighters that hail from Syria will receive around $1200-$1500, but had no knowledge what the foreign nationals were going to be paid.
Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has previously stated that 16,000 foreign mercenaries will fight for the country.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had warned Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a meeting last Friday of the growing number of foreign mercenaries operating in Ukraine, including those coming from Albania and Croatia and namely militants and Jihadists coming from Kosovo in order to put their experience from military operations in Syria to use.
2015 Putin explains why we have Al-Qaeda in Ukraine in 2022
Syrian activist on Ukraine: ‘We share a similar suffering’
Syrian opposition activists say they know what it’s like to go up against the Russian military. Some experts think things may have turned out differently in Ukraine if the West had stood up to the Kremlin over Syria.
“I very much feel for the people of Ukraine,” says Huda Khayti, the head of a women’s center in Idlib. “It’s terrible to see how ruthless Russia is also in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin does what he wants, nobody has ever set limits on him. We Syrians know what we’re talking about,” she explains.
She’s not originally from Idlib, but like hundreds of thousands of Syrians, she became an internally displaced and had to flee several times to survive.
Khayti has often seen just how cruel the bombing raids from Putin’s military can be. Back in 2018, she had to leave East Ghouta, near Damascus, because Russia, alongside Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, was bombing the area to the ground.
“I come from Douma and survived a poison gas attack by the Syrian regime. I know what it’s like to live under a hail of bombs or to be cooped up like I did in East Ghouta,” she says.
In the spring of 2018 she finally came to Idlib province. All opposition and rebel groups alike then moved into the province, which is now controlled by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is close to al-Qaeda.
Allegations of war crimes
Supported by the Russian military, the Syrian Air Force has repeatedly attacked the province. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has ruled that Syrian and Russian civil and military officials are involved in war crimes because of their command responsibilities.
The scale of the destruction in Syria would not have been possible without the Russian President’s military support for al-Assad. In 2015, it actually looked like he might be losing the war, but that same year, Moscow intervened at the request of the regime in Damascus. Unlike the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s intervention was therefore not in breach of international law.
Nevertheless, rules governing war were consistently violated: together with its allies in Iran, Russia and the Syrian government attacked hospitals, schools and markets in order to recapture areas from al-Assad’s opponents.
Syria: Will Germany indict Bashar Assad for war crimes?
The use of barrel bombs, cluster munitions and vacuum bombs, which violate international law, has been thoroughly documented.
A UN report released in 2020 investigated various atrocities in Syria and concluded that Russia’s military was directly implicated in war crimes by indiscriminately bombing civilian areas. But neither al-Assad nor Putin have faced serious consequences.
Russia’s veto at the UN Security Council
As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, Moscow has blocked at least 16 resolutions on Syria. This has prevented crimes committed by the Syrian regime from being referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“All the events in Syria should have raised the question of how far it is possible for a permanent member of the UN Security Council to be able to decide over a war it is itself involved in,” says Bente Scheller, director the Middle East and North Africa Department of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. According to Scheller, this setup is outdated and a different format is needed. But so far, all attempts to restructure the UN Security Council have failed.
Has the West looked the other way in Syria? “No,” says Scheller, explaining that it didn’t ignore these crimes — but also couldn’t get itself to act. When Western countries eventually decided to intervene militarily in Syria, it was more about fighting the “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist group than protecting the population.
Cluster bombs and propaganda
Could we have learned from Syria? “Yes,” believes Khayti. “Due to the inaction of the international community in Syria, Putin was given the green light to take brutal action elsewhere.”
Whether propaganda wars, the use of brutal mercenary groups or war crimes, “Putin was able to try out his weapons and warfare technology in Syria,” says Scheller. “These are all precursors from which he was able to draw the lesson: He has nothing to fear from the West.”
Even if crises and wars are not always comparable, says Khayti, “I wonder whether an attack of this kind on Ukraine would have been possible if the world had previously taken a more determined stand against Russia’s interference in the Syrian war.”
Hope that tide will turn against Russia
She is relieved that the Russian government is now being met more harshly, at least with regard to Ukraine. “I wish that the Ukrainians would be spared years of suffering,” says Khayti.
Many Syrians would like a direct channel to the Ukrainians, she explains, to tell them, for example, how best to protect themselves. Some would even like to fight alongside the Ukrainians against the Russian military, she says. “We share a similar suffering. We know better than anyone else in the world what Ukraine is going through right now.”
But there also is a stale aftertaste for Khayti. “There have not been such harsh sanctions in so many years of war in Syria,” says the women’s rights activist. She also points to the sometimes different treatment of refugees in Europe. “There seems to be something like first-class and second-class refugees.”
She hopes that the fate of Syrian refugees will also be taken very seriously: there are still people drowning in the Mediterranean, or freezing to death at European borders or stuck in makeshift camps in Greece for years.
Still, there are hopes in Idlib that the tide could turn against Russia’s government in both Ukraine and Syria.
Foreign fighters are dangerous—for the groups they join
The release of John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” from prison after 17 years has raised concerns that he will return to terrorism, sparked anger at what some see as the early release of a traitor, and generated reflections on the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. Lost in the discussion, however, is an important yet often-missed issue: Foreign fighters like Lindh often bring little value to the jihadi groups they join.
After his capture in Afghanistan in 2001, Lindh proved an early ripple in what became a foreign fighter wave. Subsequent wars in Iraq and Somalia drew more foreign recruits from the United States and Europe, while the process went on steroids when the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011 and over 40,000 foreigners traveled there to fight. Of these, almost 6,000 were from Europe, compared with around 700 between 1990 and 2010 for jihads like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Iraq combined. The number of American figures is far smaller—a study from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism found that by 2018 fewer than 100 Americans had successfully traveled to Syria to fight—but even that figure is large compared with previous jihads.
On the surface, Western foreign fighters would seem desirable for jihadi groups. Those who leave their homes to travel to a faraway war zone are likely to be particularly committed to the cause and willing to do anything to help the group. Terrorism expert Mohammad Hafez found that foreigners represented a disproportionate share of suicide bombers attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. In addition, foreign fighters lack local ties. As such, they are not concerned about retaliation against their own families and communities and are often involved in the worst atrocities both because of their zealotry and because groups like the Islamic State use them to repress and intimidate local communities.
Finally, foreigners are valuable if the group wants to conduct terrorism in their home countries. They have passports, know the language, can form and work with local radical groups, and in general have a comfort and familiarity with the West that a non-Western operative would lack. According to terrorism scholar Thomas Hegghammer, the presence of a veteran of a foreign jihad increases both the success rate and the lethality of a terrorist attack in a western country. Finally, the foreigners also validate the group they join. Al-Qaida and the Islamic State group boasted that they were leaders of the global Muslim community, and the presence of Muslims from around the world helped substantiate that grandiose claim.
Yet for all these benefits, foreign fighters—especially the Western ones—come with many drawbacks. Their zealotry does not make up for their lack of military training or experience. At times, as in Afghanistan before 9/11, when Lindh joined the Taliban, groups had a range of training camps to correct for this problem, but this is extensive infrastructure is largely a thing of the past. In most war zones training is hurried, with combat itself leading to a survival-of-the-fittest winnowing.
Foreign fighter mortality rates are high, often well over 20 percent. The class of recruits that included Omar Hammami, an early American volunteer for Somalia’s al-Shabab, is suggestive. In his autobiography, Hammami noted that out of the five volunteers for one of his groups, one was captured and three were killed (Hammami, the fifth, would also later be killed). The foreigners’ zealotry in combat and eagerness for martyrdom is one reason for the high casualty count, but their foreign looks and ways also made them more likely to be arrested or killed.
Not surprisingly, the foreigners are easily disillusioned. Hammami recalled he had to dismiss his initial fantasies about divine intervention, inspired by the works of jihadi propagandists: “I had to come to terms with the fact that the angels don’t come down and save the day for every battle.” Recruits also chafed at the boredom and tedium common to soldiers in any war. When asked to stand down when the al-Shabab sought a break in the fighting, Hammami and others considered trying to find another place to fight. One of his fellow jihadis quipped, “The true blessing is not make it to Jihaad … the true blessing is staying in Jihaad.”
The foreigners also cause problems for the jihadi groups themselves because their extreme views (and often superficial knowledge of Islam) alienate locals. At times, this would take the form of lecturing locals on proper behavior, but it might also result in beatings and even killing for supposed infractions. An al-Qaida in Iraq after action report blamed foreigners for their “disdain for differences in opinions, arguments and exposing faults.” Even when they are better behaved, their very presence conflicts with the nationalism and anti-foreign sentiment that often motivates local fighters.
The foreign presence also shapes the war in ways that hinder jihadi groups’ ultimate success. Foreign fighters often reject borders within Muslim lands as colonial creations meant to divide the faithful, and they have transnational connections and networks that brought them to the war zone. Foreign fighters often spark or legitimate war against the jihadi group. In Chechnya, where locals enjoyed hard-won autonomy from Russia after a bitter war that ended in 1996, foreigners played an instrumental role in shattering this peace and expanding the fight into the neighboring Russian region of Dagestan in 1999. A hitherto little-known politician named Vladimir Putin seized on the Dagestan attack to renew the war in Chechnya and used the presence of foreigners among Chechen fighters to justify a harsh Russian response that eventually put Chechnya back under Moscow’s thumb. Bashir al-Assad would similarly exploit the presence of foreign jihadis on Syrian soil to paint the opposition as a terrorist group and himself as a defender of civilization.
Even when it comes to terrorism in the West, those who travel to foreign battlefields and then return, are often less effective than commonly realized. In the pre-9/11 era, most governments paid little attention to foreign fighters, and they could go to Afghanistan or other countries to train and fight with little interference. After 9/11, however, governments focused far more on this danger, and foreign fighters were far more likely to be arrested on their return. Their transit, activities in the war zone, and social media presence made them more detectable than those who simply stayed home to do attacks. In the United States, no foreign fighter has successfully committed a terrorist attack since 9/11—a remarkable success story.
Some jihadi groups are now placing limits on the role of foreigners. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, one of the group’s most successful affiliates, is careful not to deploy foreigners to sensitive areas where they might alienate locals. Many groups, however, are still desperate for manpower, and their self-image makes them reluctant to reject Western Muslims who claim to follow their credo.
Foreign fighters like Lindh are thus a mixed blessing. Although they help terrorist groups fight their wars, they also gain those groups new enemies and cause problems with the locals, both of which make long-term jihadi success less likely. For the United States and allied governments, vigilance is necessary to prevent the foreign fighters from becoming a dangerous terrorism risk, but local allies are often eager to cooperate with the Western governments against these dangerous imports for their own reasons.
Counter-Extremism Project from Germany are German Jewish Ukraine-fanboy WEF types and they always try to spin the facts they present, but they give out some good scoops in the process and an intelligent and informed listener can weed out the BS and extract some valuable tips. As I did in the following video
The eruption of war between Russia and Ukraine appears to have given the CIA the pretext to launch a long-planned insurgency in the country, one poised to spread far beyond Ukraine’s borders with major implications for Biden’s “War on Domestic Terror”
Hillary Clinton hails mujahideen for driving out Russia, explains how by dropping enough weapons in Ukraine, an Afghanistan-like condition can be achieved
Many social media users reminded Clinton that arming insurgents with modern weapons and giving them millions of dollars did not work out very well for the USA either.
Clinton explains how by dropping enough weapons and money in the hands of insurgents, like Afghanistan, Russia can be defeated
On March 1, American politician and diplomat Hillary Clinton took a jibe at Russia and hailed how armed insurgents in Afghanistan had driven out Russia from Afghanistan in the 1980s. During a talk show on the news channel, MSNBC Hillary pointed out Russia had invaded Afghanistan in 1980, and they had a lot of help in terms of weapons and advice from the people in the war zone, including some of the advisors who were recruited to fight Russia.
“Russia invaded Afghanistan back in 1980, and although no country went in, they certainly had a lot of countries supplying arms and advice and even some advisors to those who were recruited to fight Russia,” She said.
Clinton further added that things did not go well for the Russians at that time as “a very motivated and then funded and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan”. She said though the situation in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is different, if Ukraine is supplied with sufficient armaments, they can fight Russia and take back control of the land.
Clinton also pointed out how Russia brought a lot of airpower to Syria, but it took a long time to defeat the terrorist organizations. She said, “Now let’s be clear that Russia has overwhelming military force, but of course, they did in Afghanistan as well. They also brought a lot of airpower to Syria. It took years to finally defeat Syria in terms of insurgencies and democratic forces as well and others who battled the Russians, Syrians and Iranians.”
She added the US should keep providing Ukraine with weapons to continue fighting Russia. She said, “So I think we have to watch this carefully. We have to provide sufficient military armaments for the Ukraine military and volunteers, and we have to keep tightening the screws.”
Many social media users reminded Clinton that arming insurgents with modern weapons and giving them millions of dollars did not work out very well for the USA either.
What Hillary Clinton forgot to mention was, it was the weapons and funding provided by the West, especially the USA, that created the Islamic terrorist organisations like Al Qaeda and Taliban that eventually turned Afghanistan into a radical wasteland and killed and displaced millions of innocent people.
The Soviet-Afghanistan war and how USA helped create the Al Qaeda and Taliban
In December 1979, the Soviets forces invaded Afghanistan to support the then-Communist government against the Muslim guerrillas in the Afghan war that ran from 1978 to 1992. In April 1978, the left-wing military force under the leadership of Nur Mohammad Taraki overthrown Afghanistan’s centrist government, headed by Pres. Mohammad Daud Khan. The People’s (Khalq) Party and the Banner (Parcham) Party were the two Marxist-Leninist groups that took control of the nation. They formed the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan to run the government and formed close ties with the Soviet Union.
The then-Afghanistan government used forced tactics to suppress the domestic opposition. The devout Muslims and anti-communist population started rising against the government, leading to insurgencies among both urban and tribal groups that were collectively known as the mujahideen. The uprising prompted the Soviet Union to invade the Country. Around 30,000 troops entered Afghanistan, which resulted in toppling the then-communist government.
The United States and other countries backed mujahideen groups and helped them spread the insurgencies across Afghanistan. The support rebellion groups got from the US and other nations practically neutralized Russian Soviet forces across the Country. Notably, the airpower that Russia brought in the war was brought down by the rebellions by using shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles supplied by the US. Pakistan played a vital role in supplying weapons to rebel groups in Afghanistan too.
In 1988, the Soviet Union signed an accord with the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan to withdraw the troops. The withdrawal of the troops was completed on February 15, 1989, almost ten years after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.
Mujahideens – The rebels that turned into Taliban and Al-Qaeda
Though Hillary conveniently praised the “highly motivated insurgents” of Afghanistan, commonly known as the mujahideen, to force Russia (then-Soviet Union) out of Afghanistan, she forgot to mention that those groups were the same that formed terrorist organizations like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The same Taliban that is now controlling Afghanistan forced US troops out of the country after a 20-year war. Al-Qaeda, another terrorist group formed out of the mujahideen, was responsible for the 9/11 attack in which thousands of Americans lost their lives.
Over the years, Afghanistan has become a dysfunctional state where deaths and misery rules and human lives have no value.
How Russia foiled an US-UK program for grooming Nazis and sending them behind Russian lines SHARE VIDEO
Ukraine has supported the EU’s restrictive measures against ISIS, al-Qaeda, as well as persons and groups associated with them, and has undertaken to align its policies with the EU’s decision.
That’s according to the Declaration by the High Representative on behalf of the EU, the full text of which has been published on the website of the European Council, Ukrinform reports.
“On 18 October 2021, the Council adopted Decision (CFSP) 2021/1825. The Council Decision extends the existing restrictive measures until 31 October 2022. The Candidate Countries the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Albania, and the EFTA countries Iceland and Liechtenstein, members of the European Economic Area, as well as Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Armenia and Georgia align themselves with this Council Decision,” the declaration reads.
According to the document, these countries will ensure that their national policies conform to these Council Decisions. The European Union takes note of this commitment and welcomes it.
The funniest part:
The boat seems to be largely owned and commended by Jewish oligarchs. See below
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told Ukraine doesn’t really have a problem with its far-right. It’s all Kremlin propaganda; you’re personally helping Putin by talking about it; other countries have far-right problems too, so why single out Ukraine? I’ve heard it all.
But I expect hear even more lines like this in the New Year, all because I’m going to point out the obvious: Ukraine really does have a far-right problem, and it’s not a fiction of Kremlin propaganda. And it’s well past time to talk about it.
Ukraine’s far-right is like a hydra, with ugly heads that pop up far too frequently. Just within the last few weeks, an American-born cabinet minister thanked a group of violent neo-Nazi “activists” for their services, a soldier was photographed wearing a Nazi death’s head patch right behind President Petro Poroshenko and almost 1,500 neo-Nazis and friends threw a two-day Hitler-salute-fest.
Violent far-right groups have been around in Ukraine for years, albeit in marginal numbers. But over the last year they’ve grown not just in significance but in aggressiveness.
I know because I’ve been on the receiving end myself.
At a march in November to commemorate people who’ve fallen victim to transphobic violence, I watched as a march of barely 50 participants was shut down by some 200 far-right extremists. I felt their wrath myself as two of them assaulted me in separate incidents afterwards.
I’m far from the first person who’s fallen victim to Ukrainian far-right groups, nor anywhere near the most serious. Their members have attacked Roma camps multiple times, even killing a Roma man earlier this year. They’ve stormed local city council meetings to intimidate elected officials. They’ve marched by the thousands through the streets to commemorate WWII-era nationalist formations who took part in ethnic cleansing. They’ve acted as vigilantes with little to no negative reaction from state authorities.
…checking out Instagram photos from last night, and Goatmoon’s guitarist has an….interesting tattoo. pic.twitter.com/6fFIG4OgJQ
Members of Ukraine’s far-right also offer themselves up as thugs for hire – sometimes with deadly consequences. This summer, anti-corruption activist Kateryna Handziuk was the victim of a horrifying acid attack. In July, several extremists – who apparently were paid by corrupt local police to carry out the attack – doused her with sulfuric acid, burning her over 40 percent of her body. She died from her injuries in November.
Ukraine’s notorious Azov movement keeps growing. Since it was created in 2014 to fight Russian-led forces in the east, it made news by accepting openly neo-Nazi members into its rank. Now the Azov Battalion has become an official Ukrainian National Guard regiment. In 2016 the group formed a political party, which, they claim, now has tens of thousands of members. Earlier this year they unveiled a paramilitary force that doubles as a street gang.
Even as their party polls barely a percent, Azov is trying – as one of their higher-ups has told me personally – to build a far-right “state within the state,” running everything from nationalist study groups and mixed martial arts training to free gyms for youth and programs for the elderly. They’re also trying to turn Kiev into a capital of the global far-right, inviting neo-Nazis and white supremacists from around the world to visit.
Whatever group they’re part of, Ukraine’s far-right is increasingly nonchalant about the use of violence. When I was covering the march in Kiev on November 18, one of them walked up to me and sprayed me with a quart-sized bottle of pepper spray. Another then sucker-punched me in the face just yards away from onlooking police – hard enough to smash my glasses and cut me up.
Yes, I’m still mad about what happened to me. But I’m even more mad about a peaceful assembly of barely fifty people being cancelled because some violent hooligans decided it should be.
And what makes me angriest of all is that many prominent people in Ukraine and beyond that keep wanting to tell you that the far-right isn’t that big a problem.
But it’s time to talk about why extremists in this country are able to attack people in broad daylight as police stand by. It’s time to talk about why some of them are receiving state funds and taking part in official police patrols in some cities. It’s time to talk about why a group that denies it has neo-Nazi leanings can help host a two-day neo-Nazi music festival with barely a peep from anyone. It’s time to talk about why Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, up for re-election in March, is happy to flirt with hardline nationalist rhetoric and hasn’t bothered to condemn incidents like last month’s attack on a peaceful protest.
And more. Fans are freely posting this stuff publicly in the days after the festival. pic.twitter.com/EbcxD0d9md
It’s time to talk about why so many mainstream figures in Ukraine and abroad don’t seem too bothered by any of this. Yes, every country has its extremists, but not every country has public figures that (repeatedly) defend the actions of violent vigilante groups like the notorious C14 – or, like Ukraine’s American-born health minister Ulana Suprun, sully a (deserved) positive reputation by hobnobbing for photos with the group’s leaders on social media).
And no, I haven’t forgotten that Ukraine is still mired in a Russian-orchestrated war on part of its territory, and that Moscow likes to use Ukrainian nationalists in its propaganda – part of its longstanding practice of painting all Ukrainians, nationalists or not, as “Nazis” (not true), or as supporters of Nazi-era collaborationist movements that were active in some parts of Ukraine (also not true). I also don’t doubt that the Kremlin itself funds or supports some of the far-right agitation here so that it can use them for its own purposes.
That’s why I know what I’m going to hear next. I’ll probably be told that I’m part of Putin’s hybrid war (really?), that I work for the Kremlin (um, no), or that I’m doing the Kremlin’s work (also no). But I didn’t invent Ukraine’s far-right, and I certainly haven’t helped them gain the prominence they’ve got heading in 2019.
The problem is real. It’s time for Ukraine to talk about it and take it on.
Michael Colborne is a Canadian journalist who covers central and eastern Europe and is writing a series of articles about Ukraine’s far-right.
Rights Groups Demand Israel Stop Arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine
Human rights activists petition the court to cease Israeli arms exports to Ukraine since some of these weapons reach neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine’s security forces
A group of more than 40 human rights activists have filed a petition with the High Court of Justice, demanding the cessation of Israeli arms exports to Ukraine.
They argue that these weapons serve forces that openly espouse a neo-Nazi ideology and cite evidence that the right-wing Azov militia, whose members are part of Ukraine’s armed forces, and are supported by the country’s ministry of internal affairs, is using these weapons.
An earlier appeal to the Defense Ministry was met with no response.
The ministry’s considerations in granting export licenses for armaments are not disclosed to the public, but it appears that the appearance of Israeli weapons in the hands of avowed neo-Nazis should be a consideration used in opposing the granting of such a license.
Nevertheless, this is not the first time in which the defense establishment is arming forces that embrace a national socialist ideology.
In the past, Israel has armed anti-Semitic regimes, such as the generals’ regime in Argentina, which murdered thousands of Jews in camps while its soldiers stood in watchtowers guarding the abducted prisoners with their Uzi submachine guns.
According to a freedom of information petition to Israel’s defense ministry from last January (Hebrew: read in full here), Israel also armed Bolivia’s military regimes, knowing that Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie was part of the regime. Legal documents used to convict the head of the junta also showed that Barbie’s death squads used Israeli Uzis.
In the case of Ukraine forces using Israeli weapons are openly stating their support for racist and anti-Semitic ideas, in various publications.
The Azov militia was established in Ukraine following the Russian invasion of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. The militia’s emblems are well-known national socialist ones. Its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias.
Moreover, some of them openly admit they have neo-Nazi sentiments and that they are Holocaust deniers. One militia member said in an interview that he was fighting Russia since Putin was a Jew. An Azov sergeant said that he was a national socialist, although he was not in favor of genocide, and as long as minorities in Ukraine did not demand special rights he would have no problem with them.
Tweet by Ukrainian militia leader meeting with Israelis
The militia’s founder, Andriy Biletsky, who is now a member of Ukraine’s parliament, formerly headed a neo-Nazi group called Patriot of Ukraine, now defunct. Its members comprise the founding core of Azov.
“Our nation’s historic mission at this critical juncture is to lead the final march of the white race towards its survival” Biletsky has said. “This is a march against sub-humans who are led by the Semite race.” According to reports by human rights groups militia members are suspected of war crimes, torture and sexual violence.
In tandem with the rising power of Azov, which has more than 3,000 members, there is a rise in anti-Semitic incidents and attacks against Ukraine’s minorities. Neo-Nazi groups have attacked Jews and Jewish memorial sites across Ukraine, as well as journalists, Roma and members of the LGBT community.
One member of parliament declared, in response to a question about the country’s “Jewish problem”, that “in the government there is non-Ukrainian bloodthis must be addressed.” Last May right-wing groups marched through Odessa, their leaders claiming that the city belongs to Ukrainians, not Jews, and that they would get rid of the latter.
All this is happening as the Ukrainian administration is trying to deny the country’s role in the Holocaust, just as is happening in Poland (now with the support of the Netanyahu government).
These attempts include rewriting the history of World War II and the glorification of Ukraine’s soldiers, using legislation and various publications, as well as concocting stories about Jews who were allies of national Ukrainian forces during the war, whereas in fact Jews had to hide their identity.
In 2015, the Holocaust Museum in Washington denounced Ukrainian legislation which was intended to prevent criticism of collaboration with the Nazis.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the World Jewish Congress condemned the decision to name central boulevards in Kiev after Nazi collaborators. If that weren’t enough, last April there was a march honoring Ukrainian Waffen SS units which massacred thousands of Jews during World War II. In June, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor Anatoli Matios said in an interview that Jews want “to drown Slavs in blood.”
Since the spring of 2015 members of the Azov militia have been part of the regular security forces in Ukraine, a part of the National Guard which is under the country’s ministry of internal affairs. The militia encourages members and supporters to enlist in the army. However, the militia maintains itself as a separate organization.
In December of 2016 Ukraine’s internal affairs minister Arsen Avakov, considered Azov’s patron and a candidate for prime minister, met a Knesset delegation headed by MK David Amsalem, on an official visit to Ukraine.
Avakov has also met Arye Dery, the minister of interior. Avakov appointed Vadym Troyan, a senior Azov commander, as the head of Kiev’s police force. Another militia founder was given a different senior police post. These ties were formed when Avakov was a regional governor, cooperating with the neo-Nazi forces of the Patriot of Ukraine, the forerunner of Azov.
Last January the U.S. Congress prohibited any support for the Ukrainian militia. Since Israel’s defense ministry does not divulge any information on arms exports, particularly not to Ukraine, for fear of Russian wrath, it’s difficult to assess the extent of the ties with Kiev, but these are certainly in place.
The petition, submitted by attorney Itay Mack, contains abundant evidence showing the arming of the Ukrainian regime and its Azov forces.
Thus, for example, Ukrainian soldiers have been seen carrying Israeli-made Tavor rifles in military parades in Kiev. In February 2016 it was revealed that Elbit Systems will be part of a group investing in Ukraine’s defense establishment.
In April 2016 the chief of Ukraine’s air force met a representative of an Israeli defense company to discuss the upgrading of communications systems in that country’s warplanes and helicopters. The Ukrainian company “Fort” got Israel’s approval for making Tavor, Negev and Galil rifles.
In the city of Dnepropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine there is a military training school. Its website indicates that training there is provided former IDF officers and that its instructors were trained by Israelis.
The website has a photo of shooting practice with a Tavor rifle. It notes that the school trains units of the National Guard, whose members include Azov militiamen.
In May 2017 Ukraine’s Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman visited Israel and met with Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to discuss the arming of Ukraine’s military forces.
In December of that year a man claiming to be a former IDF officer was interviewed by Ukrainian media, saying that he had taken part in battles in eastern Ukraine, where he was instructing soldiers. The Azov website also shows militia members using Tavor rifles.
All of this is unambiguous proof that Israel is exporting weapons to Ukraine, knowing that they reach right-wing militias, some members of which are avowed neo-Nazis who enjoy the support of the authorities.
The ministry of defense, as is its wont, refuses to address this issue, responding only in generalities without detailing the considerations underlying its decisions approving arms exports. It seems that in this case the public deserves a more detailed response, as do Ukrainian Jews the Israeli government supposedly claims to protect.
Even if these weapons are currently directed at Russians, one should take into account the reasonable possibility that in the future they will be used to achieve other goals, perhaps aimed at minority groups in the country. It will then be too late to halt the collaboration of the Israeli establishment with the murder of Jews and others. This will be one more chapter in the dismal history of using Israeli firearms in acts such as these.
Ukraine attacks journalists who reported Israeli weapons flow to its neo-Nazi militia
Ukraine’s embassy in Israel attacked Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal by name, along with The Real News and Electronic Intifada, spreading false accusations after they reported on Ukrainian neo-Nazis using Israeli weapons.
Ukraine’s embassy in Israel has attacked Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal by name and indirectly implicated this writer, Grayzone contributor Ben Norton, for reporting on Israel’s arming of Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
While the Ukrainian government has falsely accused us of spreading “fake news,” it has ironically spread fake news itself, incorrectly alleging that Blumenthal has been writing under the pseudonym “John Brown” — based on a “quick search on the internet.”
The Ukrainian government has also denied that Israel has armed Ukraine’s neo-Nazi militia the Azov battalion, even after Azov posted a video on its own YouTube channel showing it using unmistakably Israeli weapons.
On June 10, the Ukrainian embassy in Israel published an open letter to Aluf Benn, the editor-in-chief of the major Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Kiev condemned Haaretz for publishing a June 9 news report titled “Rights Groups Demand Israel Stop Arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine.”
Посол України в Державі Ізраїль 🇺🇦 Геннадій Надоленко спростовує fake news в ізраїльській 🇮🇱 газеті “Haaretz”. The Ambassador of Ukraine 🇺🇦 to the State of Israel 🇮🇱 Hennadii Nadolenko refuted fake news in the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz". pic.twitter.com/hWDTYX455H
The Haaretz article was written by John Brown, a pen name used by an Israeli writer. The piece reported that more than 40 human rights activists filed a petition with Israel’s High Court of Justice calling for an end to Israeli weapons exports to Ukraine.
The article is very similar to a report published on July 4 at The Electronic Intifada. That explosive exposé by journalist Asa Winstanley documented how far-right extremists from the neo-Nazi militia the Azov Battalion have been using Israeli Tavor rifles in the field.
Although the John Brown article in Haaretz repeated many of the same facts cited by Winstanley, Brown had also tweeted on July 3 — before the Electronic Intifada piece was published — that he had been working on a piece about the selling of Israeli weapons to neo-Nazis.
Blumenthal has reported on the plague of neo-fascism and Nazism in post-Maidan Ukraine for years; however, he did not write either of these stories.
Despite a total lack of evidence, Kiev decided to implicate Blumenthal in an intricate conspiracy, by pointing to an interview he conducted with me on June 6 at The Real News Network, in which we discussed how both Israel and the United States have armed neo-Nazis in Ukraine. (This was part of a two-part interview with Blumenthal; the other was on his video report on the US Congress inviting Ukrainian fascist Andriy Parubiy to speak.)
The fact is, John Brown and Max Blumenthal are not the same person. Yet this inscrutable nuance escaped the Ukrainian government, which immediately jumped to conclusions and accused Blumenthal of being the secret writer.
How did Ukraine come to this outlandish conclusion? According to its ambassador to Israel, Hennadii Nadolenko, it conducted a “quick search on the internet.”
In his letter to the Haaretz editor-in-chief, Amb. Nadolenko pointed to the report in the Electronic Intifada (by Winstanley, not Blumenthal), as well as Blumenthal’s interview with me at The Real News.
With his non-existent evidence in hand, Nadolenko concluded, “This suggests that Max Blumenthal is hiding behind the pseudonym of John Brown, attributed to the authorship of the mentioned article republished by ‘Haaretz.’”
Moreover, the Ukrainian embassy’s insistence that “since 2014 there was no weapon supply to Ukraine from Israel, and in particular to Azov battalion, as well as no plans for such cooperation in the foreseeable future” is simply bizarre.
As Asa Winstanley noted in his report at the Electronic Intifada, the Azov battalion itself published a video on its official YouTube channel showing a member using two Israeli Tavor rifles. This is a uniquely Israeli weapon that, with its distinctively thick stock, cannot be confused for any model from any other country.
The language in the Ukrainian embassy’s letter deserves careful examination, as it is in the twisting of language where Kiev attempted to conceal the shocking reality.
Ukraine insisted that “there was no weapon supply to Ukraine from Israel.” But as Winstanley pointed out, “The weapons are assembled in Ukraine, but made under licences from Israel Weapons Industries, approved by the Israeli defence ministry.”
This story is wild: Azov even has a "review" video of two models of Israel's "Tavor" rifles on its Nazi @YouTube channel. The weapons are assembled in Ukraine, but made under licences from Israel Weapons Industries, approved by the Israeli defence ministry. pic.twitter.com/xRfq4mcj8K
Winstanley added, “Israel’s interior minister Aryeh Deri met with Ukrainian interior minister Arsen Avakov last year — Avakov is well known to be the government funder and patron of the neo-Nazi militia Azov.”
Israel's interior minister Aryeh Deri met with Ukrainian interior minister Arsen Avakov last year — Avakov is well known to be the government funder and patron of the neo-Nazi militia Azov. pic.twitter.com/hlGfL8pSAW
“The Ukrainian govt claims that I’m hiding behind the pseudonym ‘John Brown’ to expose how Israel is arming its neo-Nazi Azov Battalion,” Blumenthal tweeted.
“They’re correct that I’m a John Brown fan, but I do all my work exposing the Nazis in their ranks under my own name.”
The Ukrainian govt claims that I’m hiding behind the pseudonym “John Brown” to expose how Israel is arming its neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. They’re correct that I’m a John Brown fan, but I do all my work exposing the Nazis in their ranks under my own name. https://t.co/jdwwQucVwzpic.twitter.com/1yONyu5tFX
Human rights activists are hoping to use the courts to expose Israeli arms exports and security know-how to neo-Nazi militias fighting in Ukraine.
Photo: A soldier of the Azov Battalion mans a heavy machine gun on a patrol near Mariupol, Ukraine. (Carl Ridderstråle/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Is Israel knowingly selling weapons to neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine? A group of Israeli human rights activists filed a petition to the Tel Aviv District Court last June to demand the government halt weapons exports to the country, where armed groups have been engaged in fighting for the past five years.
In response, the state has asked that the court slap a gag order on legal proceedings surrounding the alleged sale of weapons and military knowledge to neo-Nazis fighting in Ukraine, and has requested the court tohold its hearing behind closed doors and present its arguments in an ex parte hearing.
The petition, submitted by attorney Eitay Mack on behalf of 42 activists, demands that the Tel Aviv District Court instruct the Defense Ministry official charged with overseeing security exports to rescind, either tentatively or permanently, the licenses granted for exporting weapons to Ukraine. The activists argue that these weapons serve forces that openly support a neo-Nazi ideology and cite evidence that the far-right Azov Battalion, whose members belong to Ukraine’s armed forces, are using these weapons.
The Azov Battalion was established in Ukraine following the 2014 Russian invasion of the Crimean peninsula. It uses well-known National Socialists symbols, while its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias.
“It is well known that the State of Israel has a special commitment to the global struggle against neo-Nazis and anti-Semitism,” the petition states. “Even if there is any interest in continuing Israeli security exports to Ukraine, the petitioners believe that the State of Israel cannot take the risk that Israeli weapons and training will be used by neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic soldiers.”
The state’s response included affidavits by top Defense Ministry officials, and rejected the petition out of hand, saying the judicial system has no say in matters of security exports. “The decisions regarding security export policy clearly fall under the powers of the executive branch, which are made on the basis of considerations that have to do with national security, foreign relations and international obligations while safeguarding the vital interests of the state,” attorney Sarah Bello from the Tel Aviv District Attorney’s Office wrote in the response.
But what are the vital interests of the state for which it decided to grant arms export licenses that may or may not end up in the hands of neo-Nazi militias? Both the Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry have requested that the court hearing vis-à-vis these interests — or anything else relating to the petition — remain behind closed doors. The state says the reasons for doing so are “clear,” yet it does not go into detail as to why, noting that the court had previously accepted the request for closed-door hearings on matters relating to security exports.
The state further argued that “the State of Israel’s security export policy is subject to constant scrutiny and periodic assessments by the senior echelons of the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in coordination with other relevant bodies.”
In response to the state’s request, the petitioners said that they “oppose a request that hides more than it reveals.” They argued that previous proceedings on the issue of defense exports were held in open court, even if the verdict remained confidential. The petitioners also argued that information that the state wishes to conceal in the gag order is published in the media anyway, and that the state itself repeats said information in non-confidential legal documents.
A soldier with the Azov Battalion seen holding an Israeli-made Tavor rifle.
The petitioners describe a redacted protocol that the state included in its request for a closed-door hearing. According to them, the lines that had been blotted out were “public statements written by the petitioners’ counsel in a petition open to the public, and as stated, the petitioners have repeated them on every possible media platform.”
The state clarified its reason for a closed-door hearing in a response to the petitioners’ response, saying that the petitioners’ arguments will also be prohibited from being aired in public, saying that a public hearing will lead to media exposure that does not fall under the full control of the state.
“The state’s position that prohibiting publication is required also vis-a-vis the petitioners’ arguments as part of the hearing is, inter alia, a result of the lessons of the past in which the arguments made by the petitioners’ counsel were heard in an open-door hearing, and without the respondents being able to openly respond. These were published in the media, which mischaracterized and distorted the state’s position.”
Fitness now more nazi than arming nazis and using them as mercenaries to push textbook fascism on the whole world
According to the state, the petitioners’ refusal to present their arguments in court — during which they would not be allowed to be exposed to the arguments of the other side — is evidence that their “real desire… has to do with the media.” The response did not include any evidence to show that the Israeli media frequently deals with legal proceedings against arms exports and security know-how from Israel to foreign groups who commit war crimes, hold neo-Nazi ideologies, or serve dictatorships.
The Tel Aviv District Court will hear the petition next week on June 26.
This article was first published in Hebrew on The Seventh Eye. Read it here.
“The Seventh Eye is Israel’s only independent media watchdog. Established in 1996, today it publishes daily media reviews, articles, op-eds, and investigative reporting aimed at exposing unacceptable journalistic practices, foreign interests in Israeli media, censorship and self-censorship, discrimination, and racism. The site’s writers follow and document progress in the Israeli media world, from a resurgence of journalists’ unions to exposing hidden ‘advertorial’ content, all with an aim of encouraging independent, fair and unbiased journalism.”
‘Why do you support Nazis in Ukraine,’ Moscow asks Israeli envoy
Tomer Neuberg/Flash90Protesters outside the Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel carry placards depicting Vladimir Putin as Nazi leader Hitler on February 24, 2022.
Moscow repeatedly claimed that its invasion was aimed at ‘denazification’ of the country
Russia on Friday summoned Israel’s Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Ben Zvi to clarify Israel’s position regarding the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov asked Mr Ben Zvi why Israel was expressing support for the “Nazis” in Ukraine, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the “special military operation” would seek the “denazification” of its neighbor.
Moscow repeatedly claimed that its invasion was aimed at “denazification” of the country, whose President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Bogdanov “expressed the hope” that Israel would show understanding towards the reasons for the Moscow military campaign.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “offered Israel’s assistance with any humanitarian aid needed.”
In his first remarks after the assault on Ukraine began, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid condemned Russia’s invasion as “a serious violation of the international order,” but also stressed Israel’s “deep, long-lasting and good relations with Russia and with Ukraine.”
Israel avoids sanctioning oligarchs, 14 private jets arrive from Russia. Putin pal Roman Abramovich's Jet is on its way to Israel. He donated $100 Million to Elad, a settler org responsible for ethnically cleansing 1000s of Palestinians. Netanyahu himself gave him 🇮🇱 citizenship. pic.twitter.com/boW6ipJtzG
Israel cannot be allowed to instrumentalise the Russia-Ukraine conflict in order to consolidate its ‘demographic superiority’ in historic Palestine
Passengers disembark from an airplane carrying Jewish immigrants fleeing the war in Ukraine, upon arrival at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, near Tel Aviv, on 6 March 2022 (AFP)
Before the smoke could lift and the dead of World War I could be buried, the pogroms began.
Jews, wedged in a civil war that swept the Russian empire from 1918, were targeted in no less than 1,000 pogroms. They were blamed for World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. They were accused of hoarding food and wealth. They were harassed and beaten in their homes, sexually assaulted on the streets, and on hundreds of occasions, lined up and done away with.
By 1921, historians estimate that more than 100,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed. The pogroms against Ukraine’s Jewish population had several consequences for Europe and world Jewry.
In his new book, In the Midst of Civilised Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and Onset of the Holocaust, published by Metropolitan Books, Chicago-based historian Jeffrey Veidlinger argues that the feverish violence inflicted upon Jews in Ukraine during the early 1920s set a precedent for the brutality of the years that followed.
The long history of Jewish persecution in Europe notwithstanding, the brazen violence against Jews in the pogroms after World War I was a bellwether for the Holocaust to come two decades later under Nazi Germany. In other words, the state-sanctioned mass murders under Adolf Hitler were primed by several smaller massacres at the hands of ordinary people and the armies fighting the Bolsheviks.
The pogroms against Ukrainian Jews, however, had another knock-on effect.
A Jewish homeland
They nourished the urgency of creating a Jewish homeland, which had become an immense probability following the British takeover of Palestine from the Ottomans during World War I.
Ukrainian refugees in Israel, the same people who only just escaped war, hunger and foreign occupation today, will transform overnight into settlers and colonisers
The Balfour Declaration of 1917, Sumaya Awad and Annie Levin write in Palestine: A Socialist Introduction (Haymarket Books), was “the first official recognition of the Zionist settlements”. British support for a Jewish homeland precipitated the transfer of thousands of Jewish migrants to British-occupied Palestine.
Between 1921 and 1923, some 40,000 Ukrainian Jews made their way to Palestine as settlers and colonisers.
The arrival of Jewish refugees perpetuated tensions with native Palestinians, who saw their land being ripped out from under their feet. It catalysed a series of skirmishes between the two communities, none better known than the Jaffa riot of 1921, in which 48 Palestinians and 47 Jews were killed.
Zionism, like other settler-colonial projects, was predicated on the dehumanisation of indigenous Palestinians. To the Jews who had fled Ukraine and elsewhere, Palestine was theirs, and therefore empty – and where it was populated by Palestinians, it was bereft of civilisation.
Veidlinger writes that Ukrainian Jews erroneously drew parallels between Palestinian resistance to the colonisation of their homes and the persecution they experienced back in Europe.
“Despite the numerous differences between the riot in Palestine and the pogroms of Ukraine – not the least of which was the high Arab death toll, which signalled a lethal brawl more than a pogrom – the notion that the violence in the Holy Land was just another pogrom established a myth that came to define the right-wing of the Zionist movement,” Veidlinger argues.
With the onset of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and then World War II, Jewish migration to Palestine became ever more “urgent”, even as other countries, such as the US, restricted Jewish immigration.
The Nazis killed an estimated 17 million people, including Jews, Russians, Poles, Roma, gay people, people with disabilities, among others. And even though, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Zionists had cooperated with German Nazis, the Holocaust became the most important attestation of Israel’s legitimacy.
“The Nazis had killed six million Jews, and the Zionist leadership, with [David] Ben-Gurion at its head, saw a unique opportunity to exploit Jewish suffering for the purpose of gaining world sympathy for the establishment of a Jewish homeland,” wrote Australian journalist Anthony Lowenstein.
Jewish Ukrainian refugees 2.0
Within days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, little more than a century after the pogroms in Ukraine, the Israeli government invited Ukrainian Jews to make aliyah, or to fulfil their migration to the Holy Land.
The West is right to hold Moscow to account for its crimes, but what about Israel?
They called it “Operation Israeli Guarantees” (Arvut Yisrael), based on Israel’s Law of Return, which guarantees Jews from any part of the world immediate citizenship based on their religion.
As was the case during World War II, it isn’t just Jews who are facing the calamity of war in eastern Europe. All of Ukraine’s 44 million people are facing an existential threat, as Russian forces invade via ground troops and terrifying air strikes.
Within 12 days, more thantwo million Ukrainians became refugees. “We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home,” said Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration. Likewise, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described the state of Israel as “a refuge for Jews in distress”.
“This is our mission. We will meet this sacred mission this time as well,” Bennett said.
On cue, the World Zionist Organization’s settlement division said it would be building temporary homes for those who chose to make the journey. Likewise, Pnina Tamano-Shata, Israeli’s immigration and absorption minister, said the fate of Jews in Israel and Jews in the diaspora were “intertwined”.
Palestinian children in Gaza lift placards demanding international support for Palestinians against Israel, similar to that shown for Ukrainians against Russia, on 7 March 2022 (AFP)
“When the government decision passes, the members of the settlement division are prepared for its immediate execution,” said Yishai Merling, chairman of the WZO’s settlement division.
He added: “The ongoing fighting in Ukraine and the uncertainty require the State of Israel to prepare in accordance with the absorption of immigrants from Ukraine. Israel needs to take responsibility for the Jewish communities living there. This is what Israel did in the past, and this is what the Jewish state should do today.”
From refugees to settlers
At last count, at least 467 Ukrainian Jews had made the journey to Israel, as their compatriots had done a century ago.
These Ukrainian Jews, escaping war and chaos in Ukraine, will now be given shelter, food and protection, and asked to live on land taken from Palestinians
Estimates vary, but according to several sources, there are around 40,000 people in Ukraine who consider themselves Jewish, including President Volodymyr Zelensky. There may be four times as many with Jewish ancestry and, therefore, eligible for aliyah.
Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said this week that around 100,000 Ukrainian Jews could make their way to the country and become citizens.
Ukrainian Jews, escaping war and chaos in Ukraine, will now be given shelter, food and protection, and asked to live on land taken from Palestinians. Some will eventually live on recently stolen land, known as illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, in violation of international law.
According to the WZO’s settlement division, the new arrivals will be placed in settlements in the occupied Golan Heights, the Negev, Arava, the Valley of Springs, and the Jordan Valley.
Already, families have moved into Nazareth Illit (now Nof Hagalil), on land stolen from the nearby town of Nazareth in the 1950s, as part of a larger attempt to “Judaise” and suppress Palestinian development and growth in the region. At the time, the area was made up predominantly of Palestinians.
A Russian shop is pictured in the Israeli northern town of Nof Hagalil, which will welcome refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, on 6 March 2022 (AFP)
Others will potentially move into previously stolen land built on the villages ethnically cleansed when Israel was created in historic Palestine in 1948. Around 750,000 Palestinians were expelled in 1948 to make way for the state of Israel.
And like their predecessors who arrived a century ago, they will come to imbibe the Zionist belief that the land was empty; that the Palestinians expelled in 1948, around five million of whom are still languishing in refugee camps, or who are living in different parts of the world and unable to return to their homes, or who are living as prisoners in blockaded Gaza, are threats to their existence as Jews.
No humanitarian gesture
In other words, the same people who only just escaped war, hunger and foreign occupation today will transform overnight into settlers and colonisers. They will simply slot into Israel’s system of institutionalised segregation and discrimination, known as apartheid.
Make no mistake: ordinary Ukrainians are paying the price in a war between two frail empires struggling for dominance and relevance.
But even in this moment of global emergency, in which immediate actions must be taken to save civilian lives in Ukraine, there is absolutely no reason that Palestinians should also be made to bear the costs of this conflict.
Absorbing Jews from around the world is not a humanitarian gesture by Israel; it is a strategic policy. It reinforces Israel as a Jewish homeland.
Israel cannot be allowed to instrumentalise the Russia-Ukraine conflict to populate Palestinian land with more Jews, in order to consolidate what Lana Tatour, professor of settler-colonialism and human rights at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, describes as “demographic superiority”.
But then, a century on, who are we even fooling?
Israel has survived and thrived as a settler-colonial state, and built its legitimacy and credibility as a liberal democracy despite its racist policies, because Britain, France and the US in particular have never recognised Palestinians as relevant, or human, in the first place.
“Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said in a March 17, 2022 address in honor of Syrian Teachers’ Day that aired on Al-Ikhbariya TV (Syria) that the West does not have any principles and that it only cares about world domination and material interests. Explaining that the West’s only enemies are those who stand in the way of its interests and that the West and Zionism are not fundamentally opposed to Nazism, Al-Assad gave the example of how Zelensky is a “Zionist Jew,” yet he supports Ukrainian Nazi groups. Al-Assad said that this is ironic considering that “Zionist Israel” claims to cry over the victims of the Holocaust.” – Memri Tv
With the help of Yaacov Apelbaum, from the illustrated Primer, we know that Ukrainian Neo Nazis were at the Capitol on the 6th as well. One noted member of the fascist group who refers to itself as the Zhidobanderites, Sergai Dybynyn, was photographed at the Capitol with the man known as Jacob Anthony Chansley (see above). Sergai was also in the Ukrainian army and is wanted for horrible crimes in his past.
Another member of the Zhidobanderites is a wealthy Ukrainian, Ihor Kolomoyski.
We wrote about Kolomoyski in 2019 related to his connections with Burisma. He’s also a media giant in Ukraine.
The day after the riot at the Capitol the Ukrainians reported that Russia was behind the effort because they supported President Trump. They also proved that they were at the Capitol and were using techniques like Antifa in storming the Capitol. The ‘Russians’ were Ukrainians.
Below is a composite of the events from Apelbaum.
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Right off the bat, as this stuff is self-explanatory:
Bogdan Boutkevitch: “We don’t need to understand the Donbas, we need to understand Ukrainian national interests. Donbas must be exploited as a resource, which it is.” “At least 1.5 million people are superfluous”. “No matter how cruel it may sound, there is a certain category of people who must be exterminated.” From WIKIPEDIA: “According to the interim financial report Hromadske TV was funded in 2013 by the Netherlands Embassy (793,089 Ukrainian hryvnias, -₴-), the US Embassy (399,650 ₴) and by George Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation (247,860).[16] By June 2014 Hromadske TV had received another 558,842₴ from the Government of Canada, 394,181₴ from the Fritt Ord Foundation, 287,898₴ from the Embassy of the United States, Kyiv, 207,402₴ from an auction organized by ‘Dukat’ (the Auction House) and 1,875,180₴ from individual contributors.”
Exactly one year before the Ukraine “invasion”, Grayzone obtained hard evidence that Reuters, BBC, Bellingcat and Zinc acted as intelligence operatives for UK against Russia. I don’t know how such activities are regarded by laws, national or international, but in my books, by common sense criteria, the hostility of their plan is nothing short of war. Same UK intelligence is most likely behind the Bucha false flag one year later.
The Military BioTech Complex and its media extensions deployed everything they could to suppress this story, but their efforts backfired, to an extent. However, it deserves a new life now, I hope my readers will share it. Here’s a video detailing the aftermath of the leak:
The Rothschilds may have sold Reuters, but BBC is still under the Crown veto (yeah, the Queen can veto and censor any of their content, with or without explanations) and the Crown is still under the Rothschilds.
… and when you say “IMF”, you say “The Rothschilds & Proxies”. Most countries have gone through this IMF / World Bank ransacking process that turned them into Rothschild dominions. That’s also why it was so easy for the IMF / WB to align so many countries behind the Scamdemic / Great Reset con job.
Left’s pet Nazis, Jewish-funded Azov Battalion allied Russian Nazis against White Replacement SHARE IT
Below you have the full webinar. These guys are German Jewish Ukraine-fanboy WEF types and they always try to spin the facts they present, but they give out some good stuff in the process and an intelligent and informed listener can weed out the BS and extract more value than I did in my little video edit.
The Ukrainian oligarch whom the Biden administration banned from the United States this month previously had overlapping financial interests with President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, according to government documents and earlier news reports.
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian billionaire known for hardball actions against competing companies, is a former government official in Ukraine and also used to be an owner of one of that nation’s largest financial institutions, PrivatBank.
Last year, under the Trump administration, as the Justice Department investigated Kolomoisky’s U.S. assets, the FBI raided Optima Management Group, a U.S. real estate company that Kolomoisky has a stake in.
The Biden administration has cranked matters up, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken announcing March 6 that the U.S. would freeze Kolomoisky’s U.S. assets and ban him from reentering the country.
Moving against Kolomoisky could indicate the Biden administration won’t take the political risk of interfering in legal matters that could lead back to the younger Biden, said Peter Flaherty, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group.
“The investigation into Kolomoisky proves that the administration isn’t just going to make this [investigation] go away, and that is a good thing,” Flaherty told The Daily Signal in a statement.
Flaherty said it is “almost impossible” to operate in Ukraine’s business environment without the oligarch. Still, Flaherty said, he has not seen evidence that Hunter Biden and Kolomoisky directly met.
“Clearly, their interests overlapped,” Flaherty said. “Even if there was not conspiracy or coordination between the two, Hunter was clearly in Kolomoisky’s web.”
Government records also refer to Kolomoisky as Kolomoyskyy. These records spell his first name as Ihor, but many media reports refer to him as Igor.
Connections at a Glance
Among the indirect connections between Kolomoisky and the younger Biden:
Kolomoisky had a “controlling interest” in Burisma Holdings, the New York Post reported. Burisma employed Hunter Biden as a board member for a widely reported salary of $50,000 per month. Russian media, quoted in State Department emails, referred to Burisma as “part of Kolomoisky’s financial empire.”
Kolomoisky publicly said in 2019 that he refused to cooperate with efforts by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to get his help in investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma—and potentially Joe Biden, multiplenews outlets reported. House Democrats’ impeachment report on Trump also cited the incident in late 2019.
Emails from 2015, published last year by the New York Post, show a Kolomoisky protegecommunicated with Hunter Biden about a meeting between the protege and Joe Biden, then vice president under President Barack Obama.
Court filings from 2019 by a private investigatory firm allege that legally obtained bank records of Hunter Biden show payments to him from the Kolomoisky-owned PrivatBank.
Kolomoisky’s U.S.-based lawyer, Michael Sullivan of the Ashcroft Law Firm, did not respond to phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal about this report.
Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoisky speaks March 2015 during a Ukrainian Football Federation session in Kyiv. (Photo: Vladyslav Musienko/UNIAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Kolomoisky used to run PrivatBank, a major Ukrainian financial institution, which reportedly had a controlling interest in Burisma Holdings, which employed the younger Biden.
Other media outlets have questioned whether PrivatBank had a stake in Burisma.
In 2016, Ukraine nationalized PrivatBank from Kolomoisky and his business partner, Gennadiy Boholiubov.
A U.S. Justice Department civil forfeiture complaint from December said the two men “embezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars.” The complaint, the third filed that year against Kolomoisky’s U.S. associates, alleges that money used by the associates to buy commercial real estate in Cleveland was acquired using funds misappropriated from PrivatBank.
Emails of Interest
Kolomoisky’s financial interests in the United States had a detrimental impact on several American communities, according to a detailed report from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published in September.
After Ukraine took over PrivatBank, Kolomoisky self-exiled in Switzerland and later moved to Israel before returning to Ukraine, according to The New York Times.
State Department emails from 2015 between State Department officials and officials in the office of then-Vice President Biden refer to a Russian media outlet that called Hunter Biden an employee of “Burisma Holdings, part of Kolomoisky’s financial empire.”
The emails were obtained last year by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which investigated Burisma.
Separate emails published in the New York Post in October indicate that Hunter Biden introduced—or wanted to introduce—his father to Burisma’s No. 3 official, Vadym Pozharskyi, whom the newspaper identified as a “fixer” for Kolomoisky.
An email from Pozharskyi to the younger Biden in April 2015 reportedly said: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”
The talk of a meeting between Joe Biden and Pozharskyi occurred before Biden, as vice president, pressured Ukrainian officials with the loss of a $1 billion U.S. loan if they didn’t fire a chief prosecutor who said he was investigating Burisma for corruption.
Kolomoisky’s former bank, PrivatBank, also came up in court filings in a 2019 lawsuit involving Hunter Biden in Arkansas.
D&A Investigations, a private firm, said it legally obtained Hunter Biden’s bank records showing payments from Kolomoisky’s PrivatBank, among others, Fox News reported.
The firm’s court filing says bank records “provide the source and destination bank account numbers of Burisma Holdings Limited, PrivatBank, Bank of China, [Hunter Biden’s] business partners, Rosemont Seneca Bohai,” and others.
Hunter Biden’s legal team denied the unverified claim and decried a “scheme by a nonparty simply to make scandalous allegations in the pending suit to gain media attention without any material or pertinent material.”
Kolomoisky is a citizen of Israel and Cyprus as well as Ukraine. With a net worth of $1.2 billion, he deploys a private army for business interests and also has used the thousands of fighters to go after Russian separatists at war in Ukraine.
In June 2014, someone set a large fire at a Lisichansk refinery owned by Rosneft, a company owned by Russia. Some Russians reportedly suspected that Kolomoisky’s army started the fire to increase his share of the energy market, according to Russian media. No formal charges were brought.
‘Corrupt Acts’
Blinken said the U.S. sanctions reflect Kolomoisky’s tenure in public office in Ukraine.
“In his official capacity as a governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 to 2015, Kolomoyskyy was involved in corrupt acts that undermined rule of law and the Ukrainian public’s faith in their government’s democratic institutions and public processes, including using his political influence and official power for his personal benefit,” the secretary of state said in his March 6 public statement, adding:
While this designation is based on acts during his time in office, I also want to express concern about Kolomoyskyy’s current and ongoing efforts to undermine Ukraine’s democratic processes and institutions, which pose a serious threat to its future.
This designation is made under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2020.
In addition to Ihor Kolomoyskyy, I am publicly designating the following members of Ihor Kolomoyskyy’s immediate family: his wife, Iryna Kolomoyska, his daughter, Angelika Kolomoyska, and his son, Israel Zvi Kolomoyskyy. This action renders Ihor Kolomoyskyy and each of these members of his immediate family ineligible for entry into the United States.
In May 2019, Kolomoisky had his own bombshell for Ukrainian media, months before a U.S. scandal broke that led to Trump’s first impeachment over a phone call with Zelenskyy.
Kolomoisky told Ukrainian media that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman visited him to “demand” that he set up a meeting between Zelenskyy and Giuliani, Trump’s onetime lawyer and a former New York mayor. At the time, the two men worked for Giuliani.
“A big scandal may break out, and not only in Ukraine, but in the United States,” Kolomoisky reportedly said. “That is, it may turn out to be a clear conspiracy against [Joe] Biden.”
Presidential Distance
In a tweet that perhaps didn’t age well, Giuliani went after Kolomoisky and defended Parnas and Fruman, who later were charged with breaking campaign finance laws in the United States.
The incident in which Kolomoisky declined to help Giuliani’s associates also was detailed in the “Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report” issued in December 2019 by Democrats on the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
A law enforcement agency in Latvia launched an investigation into Burisma and $16.6 million allegedly routed to the energy producer through PrivatBank from companies in Belize and the United Kingdom between 2012 and 2015, Just The News reported in September. The Latvian agency is called the Office for the Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity.
Since becoming president Jan. 20, Biden has kept his distance from Ukraine and reportedly has not made a call to Zelenskyy.
In the July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Zelenskyy, the two leaders talked about the fired Ukrainian prosecutor who had been investigating Burisma, and the possible role Joe Biden played in that firing.
They also discussed U.S. security aid to Ukraine. That phone call became the predicate for the Democrat-controlled House to impeach Trump in late 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Republican-controlled Senate acquitted Trump of the charges in early 2020.
“Less well known, but potentially more sinister, are Pozharskyi’s reported ties — by way of his position with Burisma — to Ukraine’s most thuggish billionaire, the larger-than-life Kolomoisky.
In 2015, veteran Russian writer and investigator John Helmer, author of “The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia,” suggested that Zlochevsky and Pozharskyi were front men for Kolomoisky at Burisma.
He is not the type of “businessman” the Bidens would want to be associated with, said one Ukraine expert. In August, the U.S. Justice Department accused Kolomoisky of robbing billions from the PrivatGroup bank he owned and using the many companies he has all over the world, including the U.S., to launder it.
The Bond villain-like Kolomoisky, 57, reportedly kept a live shark in a huge tank in his office to intimidate visitors, and once called the 5-foot-7 Russian President Vladimir Putin a “schizophrenic dwarf.”
But his bloodthirstiness reportedly matched his bravado. He crushed Russian separatists with his own private armies, according to numerous Ukrainian and international media reports, and he allegedly ordered contract killings, including a hit on a Ukrainian lawyer as well as the murders of gang members involved in the hit, the Daily Beast reported.
Some of the allegations surfaced in UK court proceedings in a case ultimately settled out of court, the Telegraph reported.
Kolomoisky has never been charged with murder. He has refuted such allegations and also denied involvement with Burisma. Mike Sullivan, a U.S.-based attorney for Kolomoisky, did not return phone calls or emails from The Post.
He has three nationalities — Ukrainian, Cypriot and Israeli — and is reportedly worth about $1.2 billion. He backed the election last year of Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a TV comedian known for, among other things, playing the piano with his penis.
“Kolomoisky was a known thug in his business practices and his organizing of armed militias,” Russ Bellant, an expert on Ukraine and the author of “Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party,” told The Post.
Bellant, Helmer and writer Richard Smith have said that Kolomoisky’s shady Privat Group may have owned some or part of Burisma, though no one has proven it.
Earlier this year Bellant went so far as to refer to Kolomoisky as the head of Burisma in an essay.
He said he was writing about the Bidens and Ukraine as a way to “unburden myself and tell this to those who care about the election.” – NY Post
Also, keep in mind this quote from the Daily Beast, it will tie into later revelations about media manipulations and psyops:
Last fall, something funny happened in Washington: A pair of American lobbyists put on a fake congressional hearing in the basement of the Capitol, accusing a former Ukrainian central banker of odious corruption. A Ukrainian TV station broadcast the event there, claiming it was evidence that the United States Congress was investigating the accusations (they weren’t). The apparent sponsor of the hearing was a Ukrainian oligarch named Ihor Kolomoisky, whose bank was nationalized by the banker. Kolomoisky, who sicced his own private army on the Russians after they invaded eastern Ukraine, has been accused of sponsoring contract killings.
Zelensky’s offshores, shell companies and connections exposed by Politico UK
A note added to this article years after publication re-frames it as partly satirical. You know, sugar-coating truth-bombs to make them look like kids stuff. But follow the links included, do some research and find out how much of this is factual. READ HERE
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Ukraine can have Nazis, even though its president is Jewish, since, he claims, Adolf Hitler had Jewish ancestry.
“The fact that Zelensky is Jewish does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood,” Lavrov said in an interview with Italian news channel Zona Bianca.
Russia has claimed it aims to “denazify” Ukraine. Russian forces have slaughtered civilians and destroyed cities during their invasion, in what Ukrainian leaders, including Zelensky, have called a genocide and compared to the Holocaust.
In his message, Barabash explains that the injuries he sustained from Russian attacks make it difficult for him to speak, so he asked his comrade to speak on behalf of the Ukrainian Jews holding out at the Azovstal steel mill.
“We have always been united by the history of two horrific tragedies, but now we must continue our struggle, defending our land and our country,” said Barabash.
“As Ukraine never turned its back on the Jewish people, so Israel must now stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukrainians, against Russian invaders, who have brought forth a new tragedy.”
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Sometimes my memes are 3D. And you can own them. Or send them to someone. You can even eat some of them. CLICK HERE
I feel this is not getting the deserved attention and I will rectify the situation. Because, traditionally, drills precede a false flag, which is organized by the same people who did the drill.
The official press release of the event, basically, published yesterday by Reuters and sent out to every mainstream news outlet out there:
EXCLUSIVE IMF, 10 countries simulate cyberattack on global financial system
<<Israel financial-cyber officials take part in a simulation of a major cyber attack on the global financial system with 9 other countries, the World Bank and IMF at the Finance Ministry in Jerusalem.
JERUSALEM, Dec 9 (Reuters) – Israel on Thursday led a 10-country simulation of a major cyberattack on the global financial system in an attempt to increase cooperation that could help to minimise any potential damage to financial markets and banks.
The simulated “war game”, as Israel’s Finance Ministry called it and planned over the past year, evolved over 10 days, with sensitive data emerging on the Dark Web. The simulation also used fake news reports that in the scenario caused chaos in global markets and a run on banks.
The simulation — likely caused by what officials called “sophisticated” players — featured several types of attacks that impacted global foreign exchange and bond markets, liquidity, integrity of data and transactions between importers and exporters.
“These events are creating havoc in the financial markets,” said a narrator of a film shown to the participants as part of the simulation and seen by Reuters.
Israeli government officials said that such threats are possible in the wake of the many high-profile cyberattacks on large companies, and that the only way to contain any damage is through global cooperation since current cyber security is not always strong enough.
“Attackers are 10 steps ahead of the defender,” Micha Weis, financial cyber manager at Israel’s Finance Ministry, told Reuters.
Participants in the initiative, called “Collective Strength”, included treasury officials from Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Thailand, as well as representatives from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements.
The narrator of the film in the simulation said governments were under pressure to clarify the impact of the attack, which was paralysing the global financial system.
“The banks are appealing for emergency liquidity assistance in a multitude of currencies to put a halt to the chaos as counterparties withdraw their funds and limit access to liquidity, leaving the banks in disarray and ruin,” the narrator said.
The participants discussed multilateral policies to respond to the crisis, including a coordinated bank holiday, debt repayment grace periods, SWAP/REPO agreements and coordinated delinking from major currencies.
Rahav Shalom-Revivo, head of Israel’s financial cyber engagements, said international collaboration between finance ministries and international organizations “is key for the resilience of the financial eco-system.”
The simulation was originally scheduled to take place at the Dubai World Expo but it was moved to Jerusalem due to the Omicron variant of COVID-19, with officials participating over video conference.>>
Now please tell me which countries spearheaded restrictions and the Great Reset the most. Australia and Canada belong to the British Crown and need to be assimilated with UK.
And this is the view from Israel, as per Times of Israel:
Israel leads 10-country simulation of major cyberattack on world markets
10-day drill led by Finance Ministry aims to boost international cooperation against hacker threat to global financial systems
An illustrative image of computer popup box screen warning of a system being hacked; hackers, cybersecurity attack. (solarseven; iStock by Getty Images)
Israel led a 10-country, 10-day-long simulation of a major cyberattack on the world’s financial system by “sophisticated” players, with the goal of minimizing the damage to banks and financial markets, the Finance Ministry said on Thursday.
The Finance Ministry led the scenario with help from the Foreign Ministry, and said the “war game” was the first of its kind.
The exercise simulated several scenarios, including sensitive data surfacing on the dark web alongside fake news, leading to global financial chaos.
Participants included representatives from the US, UK, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Thailand, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The Finance Ministry’s chief economist, Shira Greenberg, headed the Israeli team. The exercise was “further evidence of Israel’s global leadership” in the field of financial cyber defense, she said.Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Editionby email and never miss our top storiesNewsletter email addressGET ITBy signing up, you agree to the terms
“The unique and groundbreaking exercise held today showed the importance of coordinated global action by governments together with central banks in the face of financial cyber threats,” Greenberg said.
The simulation “featured several types of attacks that impacted global foreign exchange and bond markets, liquidity, integrity of data and transactions between importers and exporters,” Reuters reported.
Israeli officials said international cooperation was the only way to counter the threat of major cyberattacks.
“Attackers are 10 steps ahead of the defender,” said Micha Weis, financial cyber manager at the Finance Ministry.
In October, the National Cyber Directorate issued a general warning to Israeli businesses to be aware of potential cyberattacks, as the country faced an uptick in hacking attempts.Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speaks at the annual Cyber Week, at Tel Aviv University, on July 21, 2021. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)
The warning came after an Israeli hospital faced a major ransomware cyberattack that crippled systems, and from which it could take several months to recover.
On Wednesday, Israel’s National Insurance Institute said that its website had been hacked, causing it to go offline for several hours.
In July, cybersecurity firm Check Point reported that Israeli institutions are targeted by about twice as many cyberattacks as is average in other countries around the world, particularly the country’s health sector, which experiences an average of 1,443 attacks a week.
The most targeted sectors around the world, including in Israel, are education and research, followed by government and security organizations, and then health institutions, Check Point said.
The report found that, on average, one in every 60 Israeli organizations or firms is targeted every week with ransomware attacks, an increase of 30 percent over the rate in 2020.Hospital staff at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center log patient details with pen and paper, following a ransomware cyberattack, October 13, 2021. (Hillel Yaffe Medical Center)
Last month, the Black Shadow hacking group released what it said was the full database of personal user information from the Atraf website, an Israeli LGBTQ dating service and nightlife index.
The group also uploaded personal medical information for patients of Israel’s Machon Mor medical institute, including medical records of some 290,000 patients.
The two attacks amounted to one of Israel’s largest-ever privacy breaches.
Black Shadow is a group of Iran-linked hackers who use cyberattacks for criminal ends, according to Hebrew media reports.
Very interesting report from ToI, as opposed to Reuters, isn’t it? Now let’s zoom out a little, for more context
The Centre for Cybersecurity is leading the global response to address systemic cybersecurity challenges and improve digital trust.
As technological advances and global interconnectivity accelerate exponentially in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, unprecedented systemic security risks and threats are undermining trust and growth.
The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity is an independent and impartial global platform committed to fostering international dialogues and collaboration between the global cybersecurity community both in the public and private sectors. We bridge the gap between cybersecurity experts and decision makers at the highest levels to reinforce the importance of cybersecurity as a key strategic priority.
Our Community has identified the following three key priorities:
Building Cyber Resilience – enhance cyber resilience by developing and scaling forward-looking solutions and promoting effective practices across digital ecosystems.
Strengthening Global Cooperation – increase global cooperation between public and private stakeholders by fostering a collective response to cybercrime, and jointly addressing key security challenges.
Understanding Future Networks and Technology – identify future cybersecurity challenges and opportunities related to Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies and envision solutions which help build trust.
Among the speakers we also find the CyberPeace Institute, a Geneva-based company that describes itself as “citizens who seek peace and justice in cyberspace,” funded by Microsoft, Facebook, Mastercard, and the Hewlett Foundation.
I’m still feeling I’m looking at pictures from the same wedding party. Can we find more? Aplenty, but let’s zoom out even more:
Remember IMF / Worls Bank are official partners of the World Economic Forum. I didn’t mention them in the headline below, but they are a key factor there too:
On June 28, 2017, The World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) launched specialized bonds aimed at providing financial support to the Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility (PEF), a facility created by the World Bank to channel surge funding to developing countries facing the risk of a pandemic.
“This marks the first time that World Bank bonds are being used to finance efforts against infectious diseases, and the first time that pandemic risk in low-income countries is being transferred to the financial markets.”
FOR MY FINAL BULLETPOINT: WHICH COUNTRY DO YOU THINK IT HAS BEST CYBERATTACK CAPABILITIES, IN TERMS OF KNOW-HOW AND TECHNOLOGY?
Israeli Military trains and ‘privatizes’ some of the world’s best hackers
Where I’m getting at:
We’ve isolated the virus here, in its many variants.
It’s the same small core of culprits running both the defense and the attack, with the same old tactics. They’ve already coopted or allied everyone that could pose a threat, except Iran. Similarly to how Epstein’s customers sit on both benches in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.
I mean, who attacks “the global financial system”, aliens? I know some people who have been attacking it for centuries now. They’re largely the same ones doing this ‘defense’ exercise. Noticed all militaries are ran by “defense” ministries? There’s no Land and Resources Grabbing Ministry or industry.
If you prefer sports analogies better, think all the teams involved in this pandemic / Great Reset were football teams, and this reveals once again the board of the International Football Association that organizes the World Cup. They don’t care that much who wins as long as the show meets the profitability targets and doesn’t threaten their control positions.
They make money off the ‘rivalry’ and the show, not teams.
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No comment, I’m just making sure you get the chance to learn what I’ve learned. Very Important Lists instalment #5
“The Jerusalem Post is proud to present its 2020 list of the 50 Most Influential Jews. Many people influence the world we live in and impact our daily lives. This year, we strived to create a list showcasing the diversity of the Jewish nation while highlighting people from all walks of life – government, art, medicine, literature and science.”
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
Years after publication, a note has been recently added to this article to say it’s entirely satirical. While satirical elements are obvious and the story is packaged in irony, that’s just a decoy and it doesn’t imply it’s all made up, as they wish now to make it look like, knowing they let out too much and Goyim found out. Yeah, they use funny names and all, we can see behind that and there’s an abundance of totally serious and objective reports and public statements to support this scenario, I gathered below just a few examples
Leaked report: Israel acknowledges Jews in fact Khazars; Secret plan for reverse migration to Ukraine
(Our Russian and Ukrainian correspondents Hirsh Ostropoler and I. Z. Grosser-Spass also contributed to this story, delayed due to the crisis over the Crimean referendum.)
Fast-breaking Developments
Followers of Middle Eastern affairs know two things: always expect the unexpected, and never write off Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has more political lives than the proverbial cat.
Only yesterday came news that Syrian rebels plan to give Israel the Golan Heights in exchange for creation of a no-fly zone against the Assad regime. In an even bolder move, it is now revealed, Israel will withdraw its settlers from communities beyond the settlement blocs—and relocate them at least temporarily to Ukraine. Ukraine made this arrangement on the basis of historic ties and in exchange for desperately needed military assistance against Russia. This surprising turn of events had an even more surprising origin: genetics, a field in which Israeli scholars have long excelled.
A Warlike Turkic People—and a Mystery
It is well known that, sometime in the eighth to ninth centuries, the Khazars, a warlike Turkic people, converted to Judaism and ruled over a vast domain in what became southern Russia and Ukraine. What happened to them after the Russians destroyed that empire around the eleventh century has been a mystery. Many have speculated that the Khazars became the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews.The Khazar Empire, from M. J-H. Schnitzler’s map of The Empire of Charlemagne and that of the Arabs, (Strasbourg, 1857)
Arabs have long cited the Khazar hypothesis in attempts to deny a Jewish historical claim to the land of Israel. During the UN debate over Palestine Partition, Chaim Weizmann responded, sarcastically: “lt is very strange. All my life I have been a Jew, felt like a Jew, and I now learn that I am a Khazar.” In a more folksy vein, Prime Minister Golda Meir famously said: “Khazar, Schmazar. There is no Khazar people. I knew no Khazars In Kiev. Or Milwaukee. Show me these Khazars of whom you speak.”a warlike people: Khazar battle axe, c. 7th-9th centuries
Contrarian Hungarian ex-communist and scientist Arthur Koestler brought the Khazar hypothesis to a wider audience with The Thirteenth Tribe (1976), in the hope that disproving a common Jewish “racial” identity would end antisemitism. Clearly, that hope has not been fulfilled. Most recently, left-wing Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People took Koestler’s thesis in a direction he had not intended, arguing that because Jews were a religious community descended from converts they do not constitute a nation or need a state of their own. Scientists, however, dismissed the Khazar hypothesis because the genetic evidence did not add up. Until now. In 2012, Israeli researcher Eran Elhaik published a study claiming to prove that Khazar ancestry is the single largest element in the Ashkenazi gene pool. Sand declared himself vindicated, and progressive organs such as Haaretz and The Forward trumpeted the results.
Israel seems finally to have thrown in the towel. A blue-ribbon team of scholars from leading research institutions and museums has just issued a secret report to the government, acknowledging that European Jews are in fact Khazars. (Whether this would result in yet another proposal to revise the words to “Hatikvah” remains to be seen.) At first sight, this would seem to be the worst possible news, given the Prime Minister’s relentless insistence on the need for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” and the stagnation of the peace talks. But others have underestimated him at their peril. An aide quipped, when life hands you an etrog, you build a sukkah.
Speaking off the record, he explained, “We first thought that admitting we are really Khazars was one way to get around Abbas’s insistence that no Jew can remain in a Palestinian state. Maybe we were grasping at straws. But when he refused to accept that, it forced us to think about more creative solutions. The Ukrainian invitation for the Jews to return was a godsend. Relocating all the settlers within Israel in a short time would be difficult for reasons of logistics and economics. We certainly don’t want another fashlan like the expulsion of the settlers in the Gaza Hitnatkut [disengagement].
“We’re not talking about all the Ashkenazi Jews going back to Ukraine. Obviously that is not practical.
Speaking on deep background, a well-placed source in intelligence circles said: “We’re not talking about all the Ashkenazi Jews going back to Ukraine. Obviously that is not practical. The press as usual exaggerates and sensationalizes; this is why we need military censorship.”
Khazaria 2.0?
All Jews who wish to return would be welcomed back without condition as citizens, the more so if they take part in the promised infusion of massive Israeli military assistance, including troops, equipment, and construction of new bases. If the initial transfer works, other West Bank settlers would be encouraged to relocate to Ukraine, as well. After Ukraine, bolstered by this support, reestablishes control over all its territory, the current Autonomous Republic of Crimea would once again become an autonomous Jewish domain. The small-scale successor to the medieval empire of Khazaria (as the peninsula, too, was once known) would be called, in Yiddish, Chazerai.the Khazar Empire, map of Europe in the Age of Charles the Great, from Karl von Spruner, _Historisch-geographischer Hand-Atlas_ (Gotha, 1854)
the Khazars did not have to live within ‘Auschwitz borders.’”
“As you know,” the spokesman continued, “the Prime Minister has said time and again: we are a proud and ancient people whose history here goes back 4,000 years. The same is true of the Khazars: just back in Europe and not quite as long. But look at the map: the Khazars did not have to live within ‘Auschwitz borders.’”no “Auschwitz borders”: the great extent of the Khazar Empire (pink, at right) is readily apparent in this map of Europe circa 800, by Monin (Paris, 1841). Compare with Charlemagne’s empire (pink, at left)
“As the Prime Minister has said, no one will tell Jews where they may or may not live on the historic territory of their existence as a sovereign people. He is willing to make painful sacrifices for peace, even if that means giving up part of our biblical homeland in Judea and Samaria. But then you have to expect us to exercise our historical rights somewhere else. We decided this will be on the shores of the Black Sea, where we were an autochthonous people for more than 2000 years. Even the great non-Zionist historian Simon Dubnow said we had the right to colonize Crimea. It’s in all the history books. You can look it up.”
Old-New Land?
Black Sea, showing Khazar presence in Crimea and coastal regions: Rigobert Bonne, Imperii Romani Distracta. Pars Orientalis, (Paris, 1780). Note Ukraine and Kiev at upper left. At right: Caspian Sea, also labeled, as was the custom, as the Khazar Sea
“We’d like to think of it as sort of a homeland-away-from-home,” added the anonymous intelligence source. “Or the original one,” he said with a wink. “After all, Herzl wrote about the Old-New Land, didn’t he? And the transition shouldn’t be too difficult for the settlers because, you know, they’ll still get to feel as if they are pioneers: experience danger, construct new housing, carry weapons. The women can continue to wear scarves on their heads, and the food won’t be very different from what they already eat.”
A veteran Middle East journalist said: “It’s problematic, but in a perverse way, brilliant. In one fell swoop, Bibi has managed to confound friend and foe alike. He’s put the ball back in the Palestinians’ court and relieved the pressure from the Americans without actually making any real concessions. Meanwhile, by lining up with the Syrian rebels and Ukraine, as well as Georgia and Azerbaijan, he compensates for the loss of the Turkish alliance and puts pressure on both Assad and Iran. And the new Cypriot-Israeli gas deal props up Ukraine and weakens the economic leverage of both the Russians and the Gulf oil states. Just brilliant.”
Reactions from around the world
Given the confluence of the weekend and the Purim and Saint Patrick’s Day holidays, reporters scrambled to get responses. Reactions from around the world trickled in.
• Members of the YESHA Council of settlers, some of them evidently the worse for wear after too much festival slivovitz, were caught completely off-guard. Always wary of Netanyahu, whom they regard as a slick opportunist rather than reliable ideological ally, they refused to comment until they had further assessed the situation.
Most of the hastily offered reactions fell into the predictable categories.
• Right-wing antisemitic groups pounced on the story as vindication of their conspiracy theories, claiming that this was the culmination of the Jews’ centuries-old plan to avenge the defeat of Khazaria by the Russians in the Middle Ages, a reprise of Israel’s support for Georgia in 2008. “Jews have memories as long as their noses,” one declared.
a continuum of conquest and cruelty?
• From Ramallah, a Fatah spokesman said the offer was a start but did not go nearly far enough toward satisfying Palestinian demands. Holding up an image of a Khazar warrior from an archaeological artifact, he explained:
There is a continuum of conquest and cruelty. It’s very simple, genetics does not lie. We see the results today: the Zionist regime and brutal Occupation Forces are descended from warlike barbarians. Palestinians are descended from peaceful pastoralists, in fact, from the ancient Israelites that you have falsely claimed as your ancestors. By the way, it is not true, however, that your ancestors ever had a temple in Jerusalem.Then: Khazarian barbarian. Warrior with prisoner, image from archaeological object. [source: Wikimedia Commons]Now: Israeli border policeman with Palestinian protester [source: Amnesty International]
• The famously reliable unofficial intelligence website DAFTKAfile admitted:
Boy, are our faces red. We were caught flat-footed and thought that the return to Spain and Portugal was the real story. Obviously, that was an impeccably planned and clever feint to distract attention from the coming revolution in Ukraine. Nicely played, Mossad.
• Prolific blogger Richard Sliverstein, whose knowledge of Jewish culture and uncanny ability to ferret out military secrets regularly provoke astonishment even among his critics, commented:
Frankly, I’m surprised that my Mossad sources did not get this story to me first. But I’ve been up against a deadline for an essay on the kabbalistic significance of sesame seeds, the main ingredient in hummus, so I haven’t caught up on my email. But, do I feel vindicated? Well, yes, but it’s scant satisfaction. I’ve been saying for years that the Jews are descended from Mongol-Tatar Khazars, but it has barely made a dent in the propaganda armor of these Zionist hasbaroid dolts.
• An official of a leading human-rights NGO said:
Evacuating illegal settlements must be a part of any peace deal, but first forcing settlers to leave Palestine and then resettling them in Ukraine may be a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. We’ll see what the ICC has to say about this. And if they think they can be even more trigger-happy in Ukraine than the West Bank, they have another thing coming.
• Ultra-Ultra-Orthodox spokesman Menuchem Yontef (formerly of Inowraclaw) welcomed the news:
We reject the Zionist state, which is illegitimate until Mashiach comes. We don’t care where we live as long as we can study the Torah and obey its commandments in full. However, we refuse to serve in the military there as well as here. And—we also want subsidies. That is G-d’s will.
We applaud this consistency of principle. If only all Jews would think like Menuchem Yontef—in fact, I’d like to call them “Menuchem Yontef Jews”: “M. Y. Jews,” for short—then antisemitism would disappear and members of all three Abrahamic faiths would again live together peacefully here as they did before the advent of Zionism. The nation-state is a relic of the nineteenth century, which has caused untold suffering. The most urgent task for world peace is the immediate creation of a free and sovereign Palestine.
• Noted academic and theorist Judith Buntler mused:
It may seem like a paradox to establish alterity or ‘interruption’ at the heart of ethical relations. But to know that we have first to consider what such terms mean. One might argue that the distinctive trait of Khazarian identity is that it is interrupted by alterity, that the relation to the gentile defines not only its diasporic situation, but one of its most fundamental ethical relations. Although such a statement may well be true (meaning that it belongs to a set of statements that are true), it manages to reserve alterity as a predicate of a prior subject. The relation to alterity becomes one predicate of ‘being Khazarian.’ It is quite another thing to understand that very relationship as challenging the idea of ‘Khazarian’ as a static sort of being, one that is adequately described as a subject. . . . coexistence projects can only begin with the dismantling of political Zionism.
not the “two-state solution” they expected?
• Anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) leader Ali Abubinomial put it more simply. Pounding his desk, he fumed, “So, Israel and Khazaria? This is what the Zionists mean by a ‘two-state solution’?! Do the math! Has no one read my book?”
• Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) called an emergency meeting to establish ties with the Pecheneg Liberation Organization (PLO), saying, “Pechenegs should not pay the price for European antisemitism.” The new solidarity group, “Students for Pechenegs in Ukraine” (SPUK), proclaimed as its motto: “From the Black to the Caspian Sea, We’re Gonna Find Somebody to Free!”
• For his part, peace activist and former East Jerusalem administrator Myron Benvenuti responded with equanimity: “I’ve got nothing to worry about: I’m Sephardic and my family has lived here for centuries. Anyway, if I have to go somewhere else, it’s going to be Spain, not Ukraine: more sunshine, less gunfire.”
The consensus of the broad majority of “Middle Israel,” which feels that Netanyahu is not doing enough for peace but also questions the sincerity of the Palestinians, is skeptical and despairing. One woman said, in frustration: We all long for an agreement but just cannot see how to achieve it. For now, all we can see is this Chazerai.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Wald is a professor at Hampshire College, where he teaches modern European cultural history, including the history of antisemitism and fascism, and the history of the book.
The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews, who come most recently from Europe, has largely been shrouded in mystery. But a new study suggests that at least their maternal lineage may derive largely from Europe.
Though the finding may seem intuitive, it contradicts the notion that European Jews mostly descend from people who left Israel and the Middle East around 2,000 years ago. Instead, a substantial proportion of the population originates from local Europeans who converted to Judaism, said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield in England.
Tangled legacy
Little is known about the history of Ashkenazi Jews before they were expelled from the Mediterranean and settled in what is now Poland around the 12th century. On average, all Ashkenazi Jews are genetically as closely related to each other as fourth or fifth cousins, said Dr. Harry Ostrer, a pathology, pediatrics and genetics professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and the author of “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People” (Oxford University Press, 2012).
But depending on whether the lineage gets traced through maternal or paternal DNA or through the rest of the genome, researchers got very different answers for whether Ashkenazi originally came from Europe or the Near East.
Past research found that 50 percent to 80 percent of DNA from the Ashkenazi Y chromosome, which is used to trace the male lineage, originated in the Near East, Richards said. That supported a story wherein Jews came from Israel and largely eschewed intermarriage when they settled in Europe. [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds]
But historical documents tell a slightly different tale. Based on accounts such as those of Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, by the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70, as many as 6 million Jews were living in the Roman Empire, but outside Israel, mainly in Italy and Southern Europe. In contrast, only about 500,000 lived in Judea, said Ostrer, who was not involved in the new study.
“The major Jewish communities were outside Judea,” Ostrer told LiveScience.
Maternal DNA
Richards and his colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA, which is contained in the cytoplasm of the egg and passed down only from the mother, from more than 3,500 people throughout the Near East, the Caucusus and Europe, including Ashkenazi Jews.
The team found that four founders were responsible for 40 percent of Ashkenazi mitochondrial DNA, and that all of these founders originated in Europe. The majority of the remaining people could be traced to other European lineages.
All told, more than 80 percent of the maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews could be traced to Europe, with only a few lineages originating in the Near East.
Virtually none came from the North Caucasus, located along the border between Europe and Asia between the Black and Caspian seas.
The finding should thoroughly debunk one of the most questionable, but still tenacious, hypotheses: that most Ashkenazi Jews can trace their roots to the mysterious Khazar Kingdom that flourished during the ninth century in the region between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, Richards and Ostrer said.
The genetics suggest many of the founding Ashkenazi women were actually converts from local European populations.
“The simplest explanation was that it was mainly women who converted and they married with men who’d come from the Near East,” Richards told LiveScience.
Another possibility is that Jews actively converted both men and women among local populations at this time, although researchers would need more detailed study of paternal lineages to test that hypothesis, Richards said.
Study Traces Ashkenazi Roots to European Women Who Probably Converted to Judaism
The genetic analysis traced the lineage of many Ashkenazi Jews to four maternal founders in Europe.
Most Ashkenazi Jews are descendants of European women who converted to Judaism, possibly around the time of the early Roman empire, concludes a new genetic study that casts doubt on many prevailing theories about the origins of Ashkenazim.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, analyzed samples of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down only from the mother, taken from more than 3,500 people throughout the Near East, the Caucasus and Europe, including Ashkenazi Jews. The researchers found that more than 80 percent of the maternal lineages of Ashkenazi Jews could be traced to indigenous Europeans, with four maternal founders responsible for 40 percent. Although Jewish men may have migrated into Europe from Israel around 2,000 years ago, they brought few or no wives with them, according to the researchers, who suggest that the men married and converted European women, first along the Mediterranean and later in western and central Europe… – Haaretz
Jews behind Russia-Ukraine war to form new Jewish state – Islamic scholar
According to MEMRI, Mraweh Nassar said that the West has forsaken the Jews because the Zionist project will fail in two years.
The Jews are the ones behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and their goal is to create a new Jewish state to replace the failing Zionist project of Israel, Palestinian Islamic scholar Mraweh Nassar has claimed, as reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Nassar, whom MEMRI identified as the secretary-general of the Jerusalem Committee of the International Union of Muslims Scholars, made his claims on March 22 while speaking with Channel 9, an Arabic-language TV station in Turkey that the media watchdog says is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to Nassar, the traditional allies of the Jews – the US and the West – have realized that Israel will “come to an end” within just two years, which has caused them to forsake it.
Consequently, his theory goes, the Jewish state has found new allies in Russia and China with a new goal: creating a Jewish state in Ukraine.
This, in turn, will be supported by claims that Ukraine is the true home of the Jews, who will even declare that biblical Jerusalem, along with the First and Second Temples, were actually located within Ukraine all along, MEMRI quoted Nassar as saying.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a news conference for foreign media in Kyiv, Ukraine March 12, 2022. (credit: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS)
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing since February 24. According to Moscow’s official statements on the matter, the war, which they have dubbed a “special military operation,” was launched to protect Russian speakers and “denazify” Ukraine. However, most international observers point to a number of other reasons, such as a desire to prevent Ukraine from joining the West, specifically the European Union and NATO.
The invasion has caused widespread devastation and destruction throughout the country, and both Ukrainian civilians and Russian troops have suffered significant casualties.
But it seems that, according to Nassar, this is to be expected.
“The [Israelis] understand nothing but force,” he told Channel 9, according to MEMRI. “If the security of their state depends on aligning with Russia, or at least being neutral, they will do this even if it means sacrificing the [Ukrainian] Jews.”
This sacrifice of Ukrainian Jewry would include Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, all of whom are Jewish.
But would the Jews really sacrifice other Jews for this goal? According to MEMRI, Nasser clearly believes this to be the case, noting that the Jews have done this before, following the “false Holocaust.”
“Even in the false Holocaust, there is a book written by a Jew which asks ‘Who killed the Jews?’ They were offered to take the Jews for five dollars each,” Nassar said, according to MEMRI.
“They took one look, saw that most of them were old, and said: ‘We don’t want them.’ A Jew wrote this book and said: ‘We killed the Jews’ – that is what he means – ‘because we refused to accept 100,000 or 200,000 Jews who were in Germany in exchange for a handful of dollars.’ They only wanted young people; they did not want the old.”
Why would that have happened? Nassar asks as much and gives an explanation, albeit one that is debunked by nearly all understandings and records of the Holocaust, World War II and world history in general.
“Why did the Holocaust really happen? Leave aside everything that is being said. During World War II, some of the Jews joined the Americans and the West, and others joined Germany. They said: ‘If the Germans win, we are with Germany, and if the West wins, we are with the West,’” Nassar explained, according to MEMRI. “Hitler found out that there were [Jewish] spies, so he killed some of them. It was not hundreds of thousands like they say. These are all lies.”
WHY WOULD Israel turn to Russia and China?
If you ask most experts, they would say that Israel has done no such thing and that support for the Jewish state among its Western allies remains strong.
But if you ask Nassar, according to MEMRI, that is far from the case, and Israel has turned to the East because “America has forsaken them.”
“[The US] told them in short: Your [Zionist] project is a failure and you are bound to come to an end – if not this year, then the next,” the scholar explained, according to the research institute. “The Americans understand that they are supporting a failed project, so [the Israelis] are looking for an alternative, which can be Russia or [China].”
While the West may think Israel is doomed to fall within the next two years, according to Nassar, what does Israel, or at least the Israeli political echelon, think? As far as Nassar is concerned, according to MEMRI, they are very much aware.
Avigdor Liberman and Benjamin Netanyahu (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
“Even the Jews themselves, including [Finance Minister Avigdor] Liberman and [opposition leader Benjamin] Netanyahu, are now convinced that Palestine cannot be the state for the Jews. So they started saying that Holy Jerusalem is in Ukraine and not in Palestine. Ukraine is now the candidate to become the future Jewish state,” MEMRI quoted Nassar as saying.
“Perhaps one of the reasons they instigated this war was to empty out Ukraine, so they [Israel] would not destroy their relations with Russia or [China] over a handful of Jews. As far as they were concerned, those [Ukrainian] Jews can go to Hell.”
But why Ukraine, of all places? Other places in the world have larger Jewish populations, even though Ukraine has one of the largest. Nassar has an explanation: There already is a Jewish state there.
“The whole world knows about the Jewish state in eastern Ukraine,” he stated, according to the media watchdog. “I remembered that there were 43,000 [Jews] there, but now they say 200,000.”
Where are these numbers coming from?
Ukraine’s Jewish community is estimated to be at most 200,000, according to the criteria of being eligible to immigrate to Israel via the Law of Return, as noted by data from Prof. Sergio Della Pergoala of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 2018 World Jewish Population report.
In terms of those who identify themselves as Jews, however, Ukraine has only around 50,000 – the 12th largest such community in the Diaspora – while the Ukrainian government has said there were more than 106,000 Jews in the country.
Are the Jews concentrated in eastern Ukraine, as Nassar suggested?
The locality in Ukraine most identified with Jews is Uman, home to the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov and a major Jewish pilgrimage site. But Uman itself doesn’t have the largest Jewish population.
JEWISH PILGRIMS pray at the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman during the celebration of Rosh Hashanah in September 2017. (credit: VALENTYN OGIRENKO/REUTERS)
Estimates point to most Ukrainian Jews living in four large cities, with about half of them in the capital Kyiv. The other major cities are Dnipro, Odesa and Kharkiv. But Dnipro, like Uman, is located in central Ukraine while Odesa is more to the south. Kharkiv, however, is located in eastern Ukraine and is the country’s second-largest city.
So is that what Nassar is referring to?
“It is an independent state, and they did not want to spread the word about it, so they would not be told to go there rather than come to Palestine,” Nassar said, according to MEMRI, ruling out Kharkiv, which is not an independent state, nor has it ever been.
Regardless, the invasion of Ukraine has been much slower than many expected, especially the Russians, with logistical issues and Ukrainian resistance keeping Russian troops from making significant progress. Some, specifically Nassar and people with similar views and opinions, might assume that this was also part of a nefarious Jewish plot.
If that is the case, however, where will the Jews go should Russia’s invasion fail and this supposed new Jewish state is no longer possible?
According to MEMRI, Nassar claims to have an answer.
“They are now saying that the Temple and biblical Jerusalem are located in Ukraine and not in Palestine. If this does not work, tomorrow they might say that they are in the Netherlands.”
The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses
The question of Jewish ancestry has been the subject of controversy for over two centuries and has yet to be resolved. The “Rhineland hypothesis” depicts Eastern European Jews as a “population isolate” that emerged from a small group of German Jews who migrated eastward and expanded rapidly. Alternatively, the “Khazarian hypothesis” suggests that Eastern European Jews descended from the Khazars, an amalgam of Turkic clans that settled the Caucasus in the early centuries CE and converted to Judaism in the 8th century. Mesopotamian and Greco–Roman Jews continuously reinforced the Judaized empire until the 13th century. Following the collapse of their empire, the Judeo–Khazars fled to Eastern Europe. The rise of European Jewry is therefore explained by the contribution of the Judeo–Khazars. Thus far, however, the Khazars’ contribution has been estimated only empirically, as the absence of genome-wide data from Caucasus populations precluded testing the Khazarian hypothesis. Recent sequencing of modern Caucasus populations prompted us to revisit the Khazarian hypothesis and compare it with the Rhineland hypothesis. We applied a wide range of population genetic analyses to compare these two hypotheses. Our findings support the Khazarian hypothesis and portray the European Jewish genome as a mosaic of Near Eastern-Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, thereby consolidating previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry. We further describe a major difference among Caucasus populations explained by the early presence of Judeans in the Southern and Central Caucasus. Our results have important implications for the demographic forces that shaped the genetic diversity in the Caucasus and for medical studies.
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
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Patriot or not, during an Info War and in an “attention economy”, intellectual laziness is treason and lack of attention is bankruptcy. And that’s exactly why Murica has just fell. It’s incredibly ignorant to say stuff like “US Government is printing money like crazy”. The Rothschilds are. The Government is just borrowing their fiat currency at interest. Why? Because the Rothschilds have a hand in everything, everyone, everywhere. A crisis is not a crisis, but a bait allowing the Rothschilds to switch some of the values other people have created. It’s them shaking the tree, harvesting, and maybe doing some ritual sacrifice on the side. If you think someone can become a US president without their approval, I have news for you: .
JUST A FEW KEY POINTS
“In 1987 Donald Trump purchased his first casino interests when he acquired 93% of the shares in Resorts International. Resorts International has a sordid history which began in the early 1950’s when it evolved from a CIA and Mossad front company which had been established for the purpose of money laundering the profits from drug trafficking, gambling, and other illegal activities. On October 30, 1978, The Spotlight newspaper reported that the principle investors of Resorts International were Meyer Lansky, Tibor Rosenbaum, William Mellon Hitchcock, David Rockefeller, and one Baron Edmond de Rothschild.”
An inquiry into the background of flamboyant American entrepreneur Donald J. Trump provides some surprising insights into Trump’s path to power and influence, for the fact is that Trump’s rise to stardom came as a direct consequence of his having functioned as hardly more than a colorful front man for some very wealthy behind-the-scenes sponsors.
Everyone knows, of course, about Trump’s gambling operations and of the wide-ranging links of the gambling industry to organized crime. But the story is much bigger than that. In his own memoir, The Art of the Deal, Trump proudly described how in 1987 he bought his first casino interests when he purchased 93% of the voting stock in the Resorts International gambling concern.
What Trump doesn’t tell his readers is what the late Andrew St. George reported in The Spotlight on October 30, 1978 (and in the previous September 25, 1978, issue): Resorts International was established and controlled by front men for the Rockefeller and Rothschild families and their “enforcers” in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its allied intelligence agency, Israel’s Mossad.
What made the report so explosive was that this newspaper pointed out that the illegally rigged casinos were being operated with the collusion of “respectable” politicians, law enforcement officials, Wall Street financiers who floated loans to finance the gambling resorts and the high-profile gambling resort operators themselves.
St. George pointed out that many of these casino resorts run by the mob through a variety of front men have actually been engaged in a de facto partnership with behind-the-scenes mobsters who have assisted the CIA and the Mossad in massive laundering of drug and gambling profits that have been channeled into covert operations of the two allied intelligence agencies. In return, the CIA and the Mossad, using their own influence, have provided “protection” for the illegally fixed gambling operations, preventing law enforcement authorities from cracking down on this corruption.
Where does would-be president Trump fit into the picture? To find the answer, one must turn to the murky origins of Resorts International.
Resorts evolved from a CIA front company set up in the early 1950s by then-CIA director Allen W. Dulles and his close associate, three-term New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, political functionary in the so-called “Rockefeller Republican” wing of the GOP.
The front company in question was the innocuously named Mary Carter Paint Company, which operated a national chain of paint stores but was set up to function as a covert CIA money-laundering operation.
In 1958-59 Dewey and a number of associates used a reported $2 million in CIA funds to buy a controlling interest in the Crosby-Miller Corporation (headed by Dewey friend James Crosby), which was then merged with Mary Carter.
Among other things, the new corporation laundered CIA money for arming the anti-Castro Cuban exiles. The company also launched into lucrative casino gambling enterprises in the Caribbean where the CIA was quite active during that period, having engaged the Lansky crime syndicate in now-thoroughly documented and widely known plots to topple Fidel Castro who had enraged the mob by closing down its Cuban gambling enterprises.
Thus it should be no surprise that in 1963, Alvin I. Malnik, a top henchman of crime syndicate boss Meyer Lansky, was found to be closely connected to the operations of Mary Carter Paint.
In 1963, Mary Carter Paint spun off its paint division and during the next several years began developing its casino operations, particularly in the Bahamas. In 1967-68, Mary Carter Paint officially changed its name to Resorts International and began massive international expansion. The Spotlight determined that several principal investors provided the funds and assets for the venture:
• Meyer Lansky, the acknowledged “chairman of the board” and chief financier of the underworld gambling syndicate, who maintained his own longstanding ties to not only Israel and the Mossad, but also the CIA and the American intelligence community;
• David Rockefeller, head of the Rockefeller financial empire, who provided his family’s clout and CIA and global banking connections to assist in the operation;
• The Investors Overseas Service (IOS), then the world’s largest flight-capital conglomerate, controlling assets worth $2.5 billion.
• Tibor Rosenbaum, who was not only the Mossad’s Swiss-based chief financier behind covert arms deals but also the head of the Banque De Credit Internationale of Geneva, the Lansky syndicate’s chief European money laundry; and
• Baron Edmond de Rothschild of the European banking family and a personal business partner of Rosenbaum in Rosenbaum’s Mossad-related ventures ranging far and wide; and lastly,
• William Mellon Hitchcock, one of the heirs to the Mellon family fortune (one of America’s largest private family fortunes, which, for many years, has also maintained close ties with the CIA).
Resorts International expanded by leaps and bounds and soon became one of the most profitable of all the gambling enterprises, and by 1970 the underworld figures who were running the casinos (in league with their behind-the-scenes partners) began moving to expand casino gambling in the United States.
Mob chief Lansky called a high-level meeting of gambling syndicate figures in Acapulco, Mexico and there the assembled mobsters pinpointed the fading resort of Atlantic City as their first new target. (Prior to that time, of course, the mob had already established Nevada as the only outpost of legalized gambling on U.S. soil.)
In the wake of this meeting, the resources of Resorts International were used (publicly and privately) to begin the lobbying campaign that resulted in the legalizing of gambling in Atlantic City and once the New Jersey legislature opened up the Garden State, Resorts moved in.
In 1987, upon the death of longtime CIA front man James Crosby, the nominal head of Resorts International, up-and-coming young New York real estate tycoon Donald Trump stepped into the picture and bought Crosby’s interest in the gambling empire.
Trump soon became a household name, with his colorful personality and his insistence upon naming a variety of luxury hotels, apartment houses and other commercial ventures after himself. But while the name “Trump” appeared in the headlines, the names of the real movers behind Resorts International remained hidden from public view.
let us continue from where the book left it
After quickly expanding the reach of Resorts International to Atlantic City in the final years of the 1980s, Donald Trump found himself in financial trouble as the real estate market in New York tanked. The three casinos in Atlantic City, like other Trump assets, were under threat from lenders. It was only with the assistance and assurance of Wilbur L. Ross Jr., senior managing director of Rothschild Inc. that Trump was allowed to keep the casinos and rebuild his threatened empire.”
Total Rothschild henchman became Trump’s Commerce Secretary
The same Wilbur L. Ross, still Jacob Rothschild’s right hand man, came out in support of Trump’s nomination in March 2016, also reported by Bloomberg.
Michael Collins Piper, in his book The New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America has done an excellent job of describing the relationship between Donald Trump and Resorts International. The following excerpt sums up the relationship:
“In 1987, upon the death of longtime CIA front man James Crosby, the nominal head of Resorts International, up-and-coming young New York real estate tycoonDonald Trump stepped into the picture and bought Crosby’s interest in the gambling empire.”
“Trump soon became a household name, with hiscolorful personality and his insistence upon naming a variety of luxury hotels, apartment houses andother commercial ventures after himself. But while the name “Trump” appeared in the headlines, the names of the real movers behind Resorts International remained hidden from public view.”
The support of the Rothschild’s would become even more apparent.
After quickly expanding the reach of Resorts International to Atlantic City in the final years of the 1980’s, Donald Trump found himself in financial trouble as the real estate market in New York tanked. The three casinos in Atlantic City, like other Trump assets, were under threat from lenders. It was only with the assistance and assurance of Wilbur L. Ross Jr., senior managing director of Rothschild Inc. that Trump was allowed to keep the casinos and rebuild his threatened empire.
The connection between Baron Edmond de Rothschild, being one of the original principle investors of Resorts International, and Rothschild Inc. allowing Donald Trump to retain “ownership” over the Atlantic City casinos, which saved him from bankruptcy, should not be considered a coincidence.
Donald Trump landed on his feet when ironically the real estate market in New York turned and his wealth increased dramatically once more. From there the Trump Empire continued to roll forward and eventually expanded its brand into the realm of reality television, the newest method of socioeconomic and cultural engineering.
For those wondering, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. spent 24 years at the New York office of Rothschild Inc. In the late 1990’s he started a $200 million fund at Rothschild Inc. to invest in distressed assets. In 2000, on April Fool’s day, Ross raised an additional $450 million to invest in troubled companies. The timing of this strategy could not have been better, as this report from New York Magazine stated:
“The 2000–1 rolling stock-market crash, 9/11, and a globally synchronous recession pushed scores of companies into bankruptcy. New Economy highfliers like Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing went bust. But so did Old Economy stalwarts in industries like steel and textiles—victims of excess capacity, global competition, and generous union contracts.”
Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. is a millionaire investor who spent a quarter century working as a bankruptcy restructuring advisor for Rothschild Investments. In the early 1990s, he helped a struggling casino magnate—Donald Trump, whose Atlantic City properties were bankrupt and whose net worth was estimated at negative $1.4 billion (Trump held that it was positive $1.5 billion)—to hold onto his stake in the Taj Mahal and keep his name on the sign. “The Trump name added value to the casino,” Ross, then senior managing director at Rothschild, told Bloomberg in 1992.
On November 30, 2016, Trump’s transition team confirmed reports that Ross, 79, had been tapped for secretary of commerce. He was confirmed by the Senate on February 27. Ross took on a dizzying array of responsibilities at the Commerce Department, including running the Census Bureau, the National Weather Service and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
His main task is directing trade policy, and on this front he has echoed Trump’s rhetoric, calling for the U.S. to free itself from the “bondage” of unfavorable trade agreements. In a joint op-ed with Trump’s economic policy advisor, Peter Navarro, in July, Ross criticized previous governments on their trade negotiations. “When our politicians and diplomats negotiate trade deals, we lose because they don’t know a good deal from a bad one,” they wrote. The op-ed went on to criticize the Clinton administration and its handling of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
While both are billionaire investors, Ross represents a sharp break from his predecessor, Penny Pritzker, who pushed for the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership and other free trade deals.
Known as the “king of bankruptcy” or, less flattering still, a “vulture investor,” Ross has specialized in buying up distressed assets and turning them around. He left Rothschild in 2000, when the tech crash provided ample buying opportunities, and founded WL Ross & Co. LLC with $440 million in investor funds. He has focused on the Midwest and industrial sectors such as steel, coal, textiles and automotive components. WL Ross & Co. was acquired by Amvescap PLC—now Invesco Ltd.—in 2006.
Although he was once a registered Democrat and supported Jeb Bush at the beginning of the Republican primaries, Ross expressed support for Trump early on, saying in March 2016 he would vote for the party’s nominee. He told CNBC, “You’re going to see a different Donald if and when he becomes the nominee.”
Ross is an avid art collector. He owns 25 works by René Magritte, and his total collection is estimated to be worth $150 million.
Paradise Papers Controversy
In November 2017, German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung dumped over 13 million leaked files, dubbed the Paradise Papers, which disclosed the financial interests of world politicians, leaders and celebrities. Documents showed alleged ties between Ross and Russia.
According to the leaks, Ross had financial ties to shipping firm Navigator Holdings, which earns millions a year shipping oil and gas for Russian firm Sibur. Moscow-based Sibur, is home to two investors sanctioned by the U.S—Gennady Timchenko, and Leonid Mikhelson. Timchenko has been barred from entering the U.S. since 2014 because authorities believed he was linked to a Russian inner circle. Furthermore, President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalo, holds a 3.9% stake in the company.
In the late 1990’s, Ross started a $200 million fund at Rothschild Inc., which specialised in leveraged buyouts of distressed businesses. Wilbur got named the “King of Bankruptcy”. In 2000, he took over the $200 million Rothschild investment fund, with $250 million from investors, and named it WL Ross & Co.
He began scooping up firms in trouble, putting millions into struggling steel, coal and textile companies. In 2006, Ross sold WL Ross & Co. to investment management firm Invesco for about $375 million, but remained its chairman and chief strategy officer.
Ross brought together LTV Steel, Acme Steel and Bethlehem Steel in the early 2000s under the name International Steel Group. In 2005, he sold it for $4.5 billion (now ArcelorMittal), netting $260 million for the investors. His foray into taking over distressed coal companies proved similarly lucrative: Ross made $210 million when he went public with his coal assets, under the banner International Coal Group.
During the recession, Ross took control of troubled banks in England, Greece and Cyprus. He was also part of a group that acquired a 35% stake in the Bank of Ireland during the height of Europe’s 2011 debt crisis. He sold the last of his stake in 2014, nearly tripling his initial investment: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewi…llionaire-pal/
In one of those strange coincidences, Wilbur Ross owns an apartment at River House in New York.
Australian born media mogul, member of the CFR and billionaire Rupert Murdoch has been friends with Baron Jacob Rothschild since the 1960s. Murdoch controls the FOX Broadcasting Company and was (also) schooled at Oxford. Jacob Rothschild served as deputy chairman of Murdoch’s BSkyB Corporation from 2003 to 2007.
Murdoch jointly with Jacob Rothschild invested in a 5.5% stake in Genie, which conducts shale gas and oil exploration in amongst others Colorado and the occupied Golan Heights.
In Kosovo, the International Crisis Group is active; funded by George Soros, Rupert Murdoch, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan – all Rothschild henchmen).
In June 2016, Donald Trump welcomed Rupert Murdoch and his wife Jerry Hall for dinner at his golf course in Scotland.
Rupert Murdoch and his ex-wife, the Chinese born Wendi Deng, are also close to the couple Ivanka and Jared Kushner (advisors to President Trump). See Jared and Rupert.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch
Blackstone Group – BlackRock
Blackstone is one of the (many) investments funds of Jacob Rothschild. The Blackstone Group was founded in 1985 by Peter George Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman.
The CEO of Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman, became an economic adviser to Donald Trump and chairman of Donald’s business advisory council the “Strategic and Policy Forum”.
Stephen Schwarzman and President Trump at a meeting with business leaders at the White House on 3 February 2017.
Ghislaine Maxwell and SA Schwarzman seem to have a real connection
Stephen A. Schwarzman was initiated in Skull & Bones in 1969. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin became a Bonesman in 1985.
In 2015, Jared and brother Josh Kushner, with Ryan Williams (of Blackstone, who became Cadre’s CEO) founded the investment firm Cadre.
Kushner has also partnered with BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. BlackRock was founded in 1988 as part of the Blackstone Group. According to the state media BlackRock is independent from Blackstone since 1995. The founder and CEO of BlackRock is Larry Fink.
The family Trump invests most of their money in BlackRock investment funds.
Soros (together with Goldman Sachs and Peter Thiel) funded the Cadre investment firm, with $250 million in early 2015. Kushner “forgot” to disclose that he is indebted for more than 1 billion dollar from 20 investors, including Blackstone Group, Bank of America, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland.
In 2009, Mnuchin was involved in a group of investors that included George Soros and John Paulson to buy the IndyMac Bank that had been shut down in 2008. After they renamed it OneWest Bank it was sold a few years later with a profit of billions: https://www.thenation.com/article/th…ance-chairman/
Trump didn’t fly Lolita Express that much because he had his own jets. More than one. But first time Ghislaine Maxwell stepped aboard one of them, it wasn’t to party, she was just a child accompanying her father, Jewish mogul and spy Robert Maxwell, to a business meeting with New York developer Donald Trump. It wasn’t a rare occasion that they met.
Both the Clintons and Donald Trump were (are?) good friends with Jeffrey Epstein, who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing underage girls and running a paedophile sex ring. Epstein was convicted to a total of 13 months in jail, for 8 hours per day. Most accounts claim that every Sunday Epstein was locked up the whole day… this means that Epstein was locked up for a total of 56 whole days.
Epstein arranged underage girls for amongst others Prince Andrew. Donald Trump provided his private jet for Prince Andrew to meet with his good friend Epstein. Epstein was also a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, where the underage Virginia Roberts was recruited by another paedophile, the girlfriend of Epstein – Ghislaine Maxwell.
Ghislaine Maxwell is still good friends with Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson (Fergie). See Maxwell and Fergie in New York City on 8 December 2003.
In 1996, Lynn Forester (wife of Evelyn de Rothschild) introduced Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. Epstein quickly introduced Dershowitz to Shimon Peres and Prince Andrew.
In 2008, Alexander Acosta (now Donald’s Secretary of Labor) as US Attorney made the sweet deal with Jeffrey Epstein.
Not only did Epstein receive a very mild sentence, but it also immunised several of the paedophiles that used the “services” of Epstein’s sex ring (which reportedly included Alan Dershowitz).
In 2011, Acosta wrote a letter in which he defended this decision:
Our judgment in this case, based on the evidence that was known at the time, was that it was better to have a billionaire serve time in jail, register as a sex offender and pay his victims restitution than risk a trial with a reduced likelihood of success. I supported that judgment then, and based on the state of the law as it then stood and the evidence known at the time, I would support that judgment again.
In the 2011 letter, Acosta admitted that the work release for 16 hours per day, seemed “highly unusual treatment” that “undermined the purpose of a jail sentence“.
At his senate confirmation hearing, Alexander Acosta described the secret non-prosecution deal with Jeffrey Epstein as “a good thing”.
According to Acosta, Epstein’s attorneys launched “a year-long assault” on prosecutors “more aggressive” than any Acosta had previously encountered. Including following witnesses and discrediting victims by publishing their social media profiles: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/poli…136073328.html
Donald and Jeff with Melania Knauss (later First lady), Epstein’ and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Mar-a-Lago on 12 February 2000 (Trump fans claim that Donald expelled Epstein from the Mar-a-Lago in 1999, they actually fought over a property deal in Palm Beach).
Paris Hilton with Mossad agent, Trump friend, Iran-contra star, Adnan Khashoggi
Adnan Khashoggi and Ivana Trump
Some of the interesting names in the little black book of Jeffrey Epstein… Donald Trump; Ivana Trump; Ivanka Trump; Evelyn de Rothschild; Jessica Rothschild (probably the daughter of Evelyn); Hannah Rothschild (probably the daughter of Jacob); Edouard de Rothschild (probably the son of Guy de Rothschild). David Rockefeller; Peter Soros (nephew of George); Henry A. Kissinger; Rupert Murdoch; White House; Alan Dershowitz; Ehud Barak; Tony Blair; Duke of York (Prince Andrew); Duchess of York (Fergie); Prince Bandar; Michel Prince of Yugoslavia; Princess Olga of Greece; Peter Mandelson; John Paulson; David Koch; and a bunch with the surname Kennedy: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.document…k-redacted.pdf
Ohai, It's Larry Visoski, Jeffrey Epstein's chief pilot, hanging out with @KellyannePolls just before NYE 2016.
— random facts girl 🇺🇸🚜🇺🇦🌻🔪 (@soychicka) July 16, 2019
Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Ehud Barak
Nat Rothschild, Nefer Suvio, Nick Rhodes and Ghislaine Maxwell attend the National Youth Orchestra of The United States of America Reception at the The Royal Albert Hall hosted by Ronald O. Perelman in London. (July 21, 2013 – Source: PacificCoastNews.com)
Russiagate Some people that have followed the “news” on “Russiagate” are sick of it by now… Maybe “Russiagate” is just another invention of the (Rothschild-controlled) media to hide “Rothschildgate”…
Peter Mandelson is a member of the Bilderberg Group and appointed “life peer” by Queen Elizabeth. Mandelson is director of the Russian defence firm Sistema, which supplies Putin’s Russia with early warning missile systems. Oleg Deripaska is CEO of RUSAL, friends with Roman Abramovich and close to Putin. Abramovich is Putin’s close confidant, and a joint shareholder along with the Russian government in Gazprom, Aeroflot, and RUSAL.
With the release of a new book by a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist examining the origins and evolution of Donald Trump’s Republican presidential candidacy, it is worth looking back at his influential older brother Fred Trump, Jr.
Oh, and the time he joined a Jewish fraternity.
Arriving at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania from a casually Presbyterian family and with time at an Episcopalian boys’ prep school under his belt, Trump Jr. decided to join Sigma Alpha Mu, a historically Jewish fraternity, according to David Cay Johnston’s “The Making of Donald Trump.”
Image by Screenshot/The Epitome Ye…Fred C. Trump Jr.’s yearbook photo in 1960.
Several former fraternity brothers told The New York Times earlier this year that they remembered “Freddy” claiming that his father, real-estate magnate Fred Trump Sr., was actually the Jewish son of German immigrants.
Trump Sr. and Trump Jr., who share the middle name Christ, are not Jewish. But Trump Jr.’s middle name did lead to many jokes among his Jewish fraternity brothers, which Trump Jr. apparently found hilarious.
LATER UPDATE:
Ad released October 2020 by a Trump-supporting super-PAC named American Liberty Fund
“97% of the people I grew up with were Jewish”
President Donald J. Trump, at a luncheon of America First Action, November 12, 2019, at the InterContinental New York Barclay, in Manhattan
Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (YY) Jacobson introducing President Donald J. Trump, at a luncheon of America First Action, November 12, 2019, at the InterContinental New York Barclay, in Manhattan.
“The event, organized by Leizer Schiner, brought together American Jewish donors expressing their gratitude to the President for his unique friendship to Israel and the Jewish people.” – Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (YY) Jacobson
Program: MC of event was Kivi Bernard. US Anthem by Beri Weber. Invocation by Rabbi Yisroel Reisman. Words of introduction by Rabbi YY Jacobson. Address by President Trump.
“After his disastrous marriage, Nat has shunned any long-term commitment, but he has reportedly had flings with Jonathan Aitken’s daughter, Petrina Khashoggi, and Ivanka Trump, and is now seeing 25-year-old Natalie Portman” Dailymail
Ghislaine Maxwell (right) with Abigail Kelm, chief brand officer of Ivanka Trump’s clothes and accessories line, at the Felix Rey Valentine’s Day party at The Core Club in New York City, February 14, 2007.
And I’m still not done here, come back soon from more, this is not even half of what I’m sitting on…
To be continued? Our work and existence, as media and people, is funded solely by our most generous supporters. But we’re not really covering our costs so far, and we’re in dire needs to upgrade our equipment, especially for video production. Help SILVIEW.media survive and grow, please donate here, anything helps. Thank you!
! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them
UPDATE: OUR MAIN CHANNEL JUST GOT DELETED FROM YOUTUBE FOR EXPOSING THESE HISTORICAL FACTS
DANG! FOUND THE RARE VIDEO OF THIS HISTORIC QUOTE!
Chinese communism has one main thing in common with the Bolshevik one: both were installed and supervised by Jews for the most part, with some historical intermittences that were promptly fixed. In fact, most wars, revolutions, health crisis, climate crisis, lead to bigger debts to the Jewish banking oligarchy centered around The Rothschilds / IMF / WB.
Israel Epstein, second from right in front, standing in front of Mao. He later became the minister of appropriations, an extremely powerful position in a practically cashless era. To the right of him is another Jew, also under cover as a journalist
Epstein‘s cover was journalism. His parents were Russian Jews who were imprisoned in Siberia for espionage.
This is Israel Epstein chatting with Chairman Hu, just before his death.
Mao in a high-level meeting with several Jews [Frank Coe, Israel Epstein, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmely, and Solomon Adler]
Mao with Sidney Rittenberg. Wikipedia claims he “observed” the upper levels of Chinese leadership: Sidney Rittenberg (August 14, 1921; Chinese name: Lǐ Dūnbái 李敦白) is an American interpreter and scholar who lived in China from 1944 to 1979. He worked closely with People’s Republic of China (PRC) founder Mao Zedong, military leader Zhu De, statesman Zhou Enlai, and other leaders of the Communist party during the war, and was with these central Communist leaders at Yan’an. He witnessed first-hand much of what occurred at upper levels of the CCP and knew many of its leaders personally. He was the first American citizen to join the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Sidney Rittenberg WPP group and Martin Sorrell Rittenberg’s connections and experience have enabled him to run a successful consultancy business representing some of the world’s biggest brands, such as Intel, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, Hughes Aircraft and Teledesic.
1. Foreign nationals are not allowed to be naturalized as Chinese citizens. How did these Jews magically do it? 2. Rittenberg’s “consultancy business” is in fact one of the largest, or largest, advertising agencies in the world. Was he the actual Chinese minister of propaganda? A note about Mao: He was picked up to play puppet leader with resourced funneled through Yale University (whose symbol has Hebrew on it), in a Skull and Bones type scheme. The location was Yali Highschool in Changsha, Hunan Province – a branch of Yale. Mao was a disturbed young man – a completely controllable, blackmailable puppet for their purposes.
“Rewi Alley,” the man who organized communes in China before Chinese even knew they were to be ruled by Jewish communists (in the 1920’s, well before 1949)
A closer look at Rewi Alley
Rewi schmoozing with the supposedly ultra-powerful Zhou Enlai
Robert Lawrence Kuhn [1], another Jewish investment banker “consultant” to the CCP
Robert Lawrence Kuhn seen talking about who the new Chinese president will be, while Chinese have no clue about it
Sidney Shapiro, Israel Epstein and Chen Bidi getting a birthday party thrown by the politburo
From a Chinese article on the Jewish birthday party: Three CPPCC [politburo] members with foreign origins celebrated their 90th birthday together at Jingfeng Hotel, one of the hotels in Beijing appointed for the NPC and CPPCC sessions, on March 8. Israel Epstein, Sidney Shapiro (Sha Boli) and Chen Bidi were born in Poland, the United States and Canada respectively, and they obtained Chinese nationality in 1957 and 1963. As experts who have long been working in the field of foreign publicity, they witnessed China’s revolution and socialist modernization drive. After retirement, they didn’t stay idle but continued to participate actively in the discussion and management of state affairs. Many NPC deputies and CPPCC members attending the ongoing annual sessions went to their birthday party to express their best wishes.
Sidney Shapiro, politburo member (!). Chinese are allowed to call them foreigners (laowai), but they dare not mention that all of them are Jews
Virginius Frank Coe, Jewish operative in China. From Wikipedia: Blacklisted…Coe sought work abroad, eventually finding…the People’s Republic of China, where he joined a circle of expatriates working with the government. In 1962, he was joined by Solomon Adler in the circle. Coe participated in Mao’s Great Leap Forward, a plan for the rapid industrialization and modernization of China. His works include articles justifying the Rectification campaign.
Israel Epstein, a journalist, author and propagandist for China whose passion for Communism was fueled in long interviews with Mao in the 1940’s and was not dimmed by imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution, died last Thursday at a hospital in Beijing. He was 90.
His death was announced by the official New China News Agency.
Mr. Epstein edited China Today, an English-language Chinese newsmagazine, translated the sayings and writings of Mao and Deng Xiaoping and advised the Chinese government on how to polish its overseas image. He became a Chinese citizen, joined the Communist Party and served on official government and party committees.
He and perhaps a dozen other aging foreign-born residents of Beijing were sometimes seen as the last true believers in a revolution that has sometimes seemed blurred by time’s passage and China’s embrace of free markets and consumerism.
In 1996, The Observer, the London newspaper, said, “Perhaps the most loyal Communists in the country today are foreigners, veteran fellow travelers from a vanished era of idealism.”
Mr. Epstein hung Mao’s portrait on his bedroom wall; knew the American journalist Edgar Snow well enough to help edit his books; was a protégé of the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of China’s first republic; and was able to say the five years he spent in prison on false charges during the Cultural Revolution had helped improve him by shrinking his ego. For decades China’s top leaders visited him on his birthdays.
“My basic ideas have not changed,” he told The Observer. “I see no reason to change them.”
Israel Epstein was born on April 20, 1915, in Warsaw, then under Russian control. His father was imprisoned by the czarist authorities for leading a labor uprising, and his mother was once exiled to Siberia.
“The earliest influence on me came from my socialist parents,” Mr. Epstein said in an interview with China Daily in 2003.
After the outbreak of World War I, his father was sent by his company to Japan to develop business in the Pacific region. As the German Army approached Warsaw, his mother, with him in her arms, fled the city and traveled east to be reunited with her husband. After experiencing anti-Jewish sentiment in several places, they settled in Tianjin in north China. He was then 2.
Mr. Epstein began his career as a journalist at 15, working for the Tianjin-based Peking and Tientsin Times, an English-language newspaper. He covered China’s struggle against Japanese invaders for United Press and other Western news organizations.
In 1941, a short item in The New York Times reported that he had been killed, but it later turned out that he had faked his death to divert the Japanese who were hunting him. He anonymously submerged into a Japanese internment camp for a while.
Mr. Epstein became acquainted with Mr. Snow after his editor assigned him to review one of Mr. Snow’s books, and Mr. Snow showed him his classic “Red Star Over China” before it was published. Mr. Snow reciprocated by reading Mr. Epstein’s unpublished works.
In Hong Kong, Mr. Epstein worked with Soong Ching Ling, Sun Yat-sen’s widow, whom he had met in left-wing political activities in the 1930’s. She arranged for him to visit Mao, Zhou Enlai and their revolutionary comrades at their base in China’s northwest in 1944, and Mr. Epstein said his conversations in a cave with Mao had changed his life.
In 1944, Mr. Epstein visited Britain, then spent the next five years in the United States, where he published “The Unfinished Revolution in China” to good reviews. Other books he wrote were first published in Chinese and included “From Opium War to Liberation” in 1954, “Tibet Transformed” in 1983 and “Woman in World History: Soong Ching Ling” in 1993.
In 1951, Ms. Soong invited him to return to China to edit China Reconstructs, later renamed China Today. He was editor in chief until his retirement at 70, and then editor emeritus.
His five years in prison during the Cultural Revolution, on charges of plotting against Zhou, ended in 1973 with a personal apology from Zhou and a restoration of his exalted position.
His prominence in China was suggested by the annual talks Mao had with him. Deng attended Mr. Epstein’s retirement reception in 1985. On April 17, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, visited him and praised his “special contributions” to China.
Mr. Epstein first wife, Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley, died in 1984. He is survived by his wife, Wan Bi, two children and two stepchildren.
Correction: June 18, 2005, Saturday An obituary on June 2 about Israel Epstein, a Warsaw-born journalist who became a prominent Chinese Communist, referred incorrectly to his marriage to Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley. She was his second wife; his first was Edith Bihovsky Epstein, later Ballin, from whom he was divorced in the early 1940’s.
Sidney Rittenberg died on August 24 of this year, ten days after his 98th birthday. He was probably the most famous American collaborator with the Chinese Communist regime of Mao Zedong (We are not counting Chinese government official, Israel Epstein, as American, although he had his book, The Unfinished Revolution in China, published during the crucial five years in which he lived in the United States). Like Epstein, Rittenberg got long obituaries in The New York Times and The Washington Post. They might not have been as glowing as Epstein’s, but they were far from being as negative as they might have been for this long-term leading turncoat and propagandist for the murderous Mao regime.
He will be buried at the Babaoshan Cemetery for Revolutionaries.
Although the Times seemed to treat him with some approval by headlining its obituary, “Sidney Rittenberg, Idealistic American Aide to Mao Who Evolved to Counsel Capitalists, Dies at 98,” from the perspective of any right-thinking anti-Communist, The Post’s article is much the worse of the two. One sentence in The Post’s obit says it all, “After Mao’s seizure of power in 1949 over the corrupt U.S.-backed Nationalist Party, which enjoyed little support among the population, Mr. Rittenberg was rewarded with appointments at Chinese news and propaganda agencies.”
John F. Kennedy would certainly have taken issue with The Post’s extremely simplistic, pro-Mao, if not to say, pro-Communist view of the loss of China. Alfred Kohlberg, an American businessman with many years of experience with China, would no doubt have said that The Post is just continuing to perpetuate the pro-Communist propaganda with which the American mainstream press was packed in the 1940s.
Soul Mate Rittenberg?
As surprising as it might seem in light of all the anti-Communist writing that I have done, I can easily identify with Rittenberg, although I make no excuses for his actions. We are both Carolinians and we both received some education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My time was spent there getting a Ph.D. in economics after service as an Army lieutenant. Rittenberg entered as a freshman and either attended only briefly before dropping out to become a labor organizer or graduated with a degree in philosophy, depending on whether you believe the Post or the Times obituary. The Times assertion seems to be more plausible, because Rittenberg got the sort of U.S. Army assignment, though a private and not a lieutenant, that would more likely go to a college graduate, as a language specialist, becoming fluent in Chinese and being sent by the Army to China at the close of World War II.
Oh, but Rittenberg was Jewish, you say, and a former member of the American Communist Party. On the latter point, I have certainly never been a Communist Party member, but I can attest to the truth of the old saying that if you’re not a socialist when you’re under thirty you have no heart, and if you are a socialist when you’re over thirty, you have no brain. Chapel Hill was certainly a place to feel right at home as a Leftist when I was there, and it was probably more so when Rittenberg was there at the tail end of the Great Depression. Consider the fact that when I was there the most powerful voices against the Vietnam War, which most of us despised, including virtually every fellow veteran that I encountered, were from the Jewish Left. We looked forward every two weeks to reading I.F. Stone’s newsletter, and Noam Chomsky’s anti-war treatises in the New York Review of Books seemed to be the most persuasive. The first verse of my poem, “A Chomsky Dissenter,” captures my attitude toward the man at the time, and well into the years that I taught economics in college:
In 1970, the very pro-Mao article, “Maoist Economic Development: The New Man in the New China,” by respected mainstream economist, John W. Gurley, was all the rage among us graduate students, even though it was weak in analysis and practically devoid of facts, an ideological screed dressed up in economic jargon which has aged very poorly. About the same time, I also read Jack Belden’s China Shakes the World, and was very favorably impressed, as I see many more recent readers are, too, even years after the horrors inflicted by Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution—admittedly well after the period that Belden reported on—have become known. It’s not at all hard for me to put myself in the young Rittenberg’s shoes and being won over by Mao and his fellow revolutionaries. It’s not like Rittenberg deserted from the Army and went over to the enemy like my very misguided fellow rural Eastern North Carolinian, Charles Robert Jenkins, did in Korea in 1965. Rittenberg stayed in China after his Army tour was over, worked for a time in United Nations famine relief, and then joined up with Mao, becoming a propagandist for him.
But, again, there’s the matter of Rittenberg’s Jewishness. Wouldn’t that have set him apart from me? To the contrary, for a number of reasons; when I was of the same age as he was when he went over to the Reds, it would have probably made me identify with him even more closely. In the first place, the stereotype of white Southerners generally as prejudiced against Jews and non-whites is simply not true. There are lots of relatively broad-minded liberals in the South, and my family liked to count themselves among them. If there is any group of fellow whites that the average Southerner is likely to have some prejudice against, it is Roman Catholics, for doctrinal reasons. That’s because most Southerners are Protestants—Southern Baptists more than any other group, as my family was—and many of them descend directly from religious sects in Europe who were on the Protestant side of the Reformation, when people took those religious differences very seriously. Sunday school instruction in Southern Baptist churches is steeped in Old Testament stories. So was the child’s story Bible from which our second-grade public school teacher read to us regularly, and I imagine that she was hardly unusual as a small-town Southern elementary school teacher.
Although the fundamentalist evangelist Oliver B. Greene was ubiquitous on the radio in the South when I was growing up, I can’t say that he had any influence on me or anyone I knew, but his influence in the region had to have been substantial. Many times, I heard him offer as a “gift” to anyone sending him money a copy of the Scofield Bible. I have never seen a Scofield Bible, and I was well into middle age before I was to learn that it is an annotated work with a very strong Zionist slant.
Harry Golden’s 1955 book is entitled, Jewish Roots in the Carolinas: A Pattern of American Philo-Semitism. I have not read it, but from my own education and experience I can say that the average rural to small-town Southerner, at least at the time that I was growing up, was much more likely to have a positive rather than a negative attitude toward Jews. Most are unlikely to have known any Jews; I know I didn’t. When I thought of Jews, I thought mainly of those Old Testament characters. I didn’t even think of the numerous comedians I saw on television like Sid Caesar, Jack Benny, or Phil Silvers as Jews or of my beloved Mad magazine as a Jewish publication or the popular Tin Pan Alley music composers as Jews. If I had, it would have only made me more philo-Semitic. I think the only person that I ever laid eyes on in person whom I knew to be a Jew was that self-same Harry Golden from Charlotte, who wore his Jewishness on his sleeve. He actually came and gave a talk at our church one Sunday evening. I recall that he was an entertaining and likable-seeming fellow, although I don’t recall what he had to say. Only in researching this article did I learn that Golden was actually originally a New Yorker who ended up making his career in Charlotte, settling in the Southeast probably because he had been sent to the Federal Penitentiary down the road in Atlanta for five years for mail fraud when he was living in New York City. He was a popular celebrity, though, by the time that he was invited to speak at our church.
[…]
This is just an excerpt from Culture Wars Magazine, not the full article. To continue reading, purchase the November, 2019 edition of Culture Wars Magazine.
Lothar von Trotha (3 July 1848 – 31 March 1920) (According to my extensive research this person was more Jewish than not. For now refer to the Wikipedia talk page [before the part where they try to confuse people and make people stop asking hard questions they don’t want people asking.] He will be discussed in more detail in a later article on Africa, along with Robert Rothschild, and many others not listed on this page. For now, please refer to all the other articles on this site for surrounding evidence.)
Map of Eurasia showing the trade network of the Radhanites (in blue), c. 870, as reported in the account of ibn Khordadbeh in the Book of Roads and Kingdoms. Other trade routes of the period shown in purple
The Radhanites (also Radanites, Arabic الرذنية ar-Raðaniyya; Hebrew sing. רדהני Radhani, pl. רדהנים Radhanim) were medieval Jewish merchants. [ . . .] Jewish merchants operated in trade between the Christian and Islamic worlds during the early Middle Ages(approximately 500–1000). Many trade routes previously established under the Roman Empire continued to function during that period – largely through their efforts. Their trade network covered much of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of India and China.
The activities of the Radhanites are documented by ibn Khordadbeh – the postmaster, chief of police (and spymaster) for the province of Jibal, under the AbbasidCaliphal-Mu’tamid – when he wrote Kitab al-Masalik wal-Mamalik (Book of Roads and Kingdoms), in about 870. Ibn Khordadbeh described the Radhanites as sophisticated and multilingual. He outlined four main trade routes utilized by the Radhanites in their journeys; all four began in the Rhone Valley in southern France and terminated on the east coast of China. Radhanites primarily carried commodities that combined small bulk and high demand, including spices, perfumes, jewelry, and silk. They are also described as transporting oils, incense, steel weapons, furs, and slaves.
These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Roman, the Frank, Spanish, and Slav languages. They journey from West to East, from East to West, partly on land, partly by sea. They transport from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, brocade, castor, marten and other furs, and swords. They take ship from Firanja (France), on the Western Sea, and make for Farama (Pelusium). There they load their goods on camel-back and go by land to al-Kolzum (Suez), a distance of twenty-five farsakhs. They embark in the East Sea and sail from al-Kolzum to al-Jar and al-Jeddah, then they go to Sind, India, and China. On their return from China they carry back musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other products of the Eastern countries to al-Kolzum and bring them back to Farama, where they again embark on the Western Sea. [ . . . ]
[ . . . ] During the Early Middle Ages the Islamic polities of the Middle East and North Africa and the Christian kingdoms of Europe often banned each other’s merchants from entering their ports. Corsairs of both sides raided the shipping of their adversaries at will. The Radhanites functioned as neutral go-betweens, keeping open the lines of communication and trade between the lands of the old Roman Empire and the Far East. As a result of the revenue they brought, Jewish merchants enjoyed significant privileges under the early Carolingians in France and throughout the Muslim world, a fact that sometimes vexed local Church authorities.
While most trade between Europe and East Asia had historically been conducted via Persian and Central Asian intermediaries, the Radhanites were among the first to establish a trade network that stretched from Western Europe to Eastern Asia. More remarkable still, they engaged in this trade regularly and over an extended period of time, centuries before Marco Polo and ibn Battuta brought their tales of travel in the Orient to the Christians and the Muslims, respectively. Indeed, ibn Battuta is believed to have traveled with the Muslim traders who traveled to the Orient on routes similar to those used by the Radhanites.
[ . . .] Historically, Jewish communities used letters of credit to transport large quantities of money without the risk of theft from at least classical times.This system was developed and put into force on an unprecedented scale by medieval Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites; if so, they may be counted among the precursors to the banks that arose during the late Middle Ages and early modern period.
Some scholars believe that the Radhanites may have played a role in the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. In addition, they may have helped establish Jewish communities at various points along their trade routes, and were probably involved in the early Jewish settlement of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China and India. Much of the Radhanites’ Indian Ocean trade was via coastal cargo ships such as this dhow.
Besides ibn Khordadbeh, the Radhanites are mentioned by name only by a handful of sources. Ibn al-Faqih‘s early 10th century Kitab al-Buldan (“Book of the Countries”) mentions them, but much of ibn al-Faqih’s information was derived from ibn Khordadbeh’s work. Sefer ha-Dinim, a Hebrew account of the travels of Yehuda ben Meir of Mainz, named Przemyśl and Kiev as trading sites along the Radhanite route. In the early 12th century, a French-Jewish trader named Yitzhak Dorbelo wrote that he traveled with Radhanite merchants to Poland.
The fall of the Tang Dynasty of China in 908 and the destruction of the KhazarKhaganate some sixty years later (circa 968–969 AD) led to widespread chaos in Inner Eurasia, the Caucasus and China. Trade routes became unstable and unsafe, a situation exacerbated by Turkic invasions of Persia and the Middle East, and the Silk Road largely collapsed for centuries. This period saw the rise of the mercantileItaliancity-states, especially Genoa, Venice, Pisa, and Amalfi, who viewed the Radhanites as unwanted competitors.
The economy of Europe was profoundly affected by the disappearance of the Radhanites. For example, documentary evidence indicates that many spices in regular use during the early Middle Ages completely disappeared from European tables in the 10th century. Jews had previously, in large parts of Western Europe, enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the spice trade.[17]
Some have speculated that a collection of 11th century Jewish scrolls discovered in a cave in Afghanistan’s Samangan province in 2011 may be a “leftover” of the Rhadanites, who had mostly disappeared by the 11th century.
The Tang dynasty purchased Western slaves from the Radanite Jews. Tang Chinese soldiers and pirates enslaved Koreans, Turks, Persians, Indonesians, and people from Inner Mongolia, central Asia, and northern India.The greatest source of slaves came from southern tribes, including Thais and aboriginals from the southern provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guizhou. Malays, Khmers, Indians, and black Africans were also purchased as slaves in the Tang dynasty.
Many Jewish communities were established in China in the Middle Ages. However, not all left evidence of their existence. The following are those known today: Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Yangzhou, and Ningxia.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), a Ming emperor conferred seven surnames upon the Jews, by which they are identifiable today: Ai (艾), Shi (石), Gao (高), Jin (金), Li (李), Zhang (張), and Zhao (趙); sinofications of the original seven Jewish clan’s family names: Ezra, Shimon, Cohen, Gilbert, Levy, Joshua, and Jonathan, respectively.[18][19] Interestingly, two of these: Jin and Shi are the equivalent of common Jewish names in the west: Gold and Stone.
Robert Hotung (seated, middle, his brother Ho Fook (left, standing) and his maternal half-brother Ho Kum-tong (seated, right)
Bruce’s father, Lee Hoi-chuen, (李海泉) was Han Chinese, and his mother, Grace Ho (何愛瑜), was of Eurasian ancestry. Grace Ho was the adopted daughter of Ho Kom-tong (Ho Gumtong, 何甘棠) and the half-niece of Sir Robert Ho-tung, both notable Hong Kong businessmen and philanthropists.Bruce was the fourth child of five children: Phoebe Lee (李秋源), Agnes Lee (李秋鳳), Peter Lee (李忠琛), and Robert Lee (李振輝).
Grace’s parentage remains unclear. Linda Lee in her 1989 biography The Bruce Lee Story suggests that Grace had a German father and was a Catholic. Bruce Thomas in his influential 1994 biography Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit suggests that Grace had a Chinese mother and a German father. Lee’s relative Eric Peter Ho in his 2010 book Tracing My Children’s Lineage suggests that Grace was born in Shanghai to a Eurasian woman named Cheung King-sin.
Ho Kom-tong (1866–1950) was a younger maternal half-brother of Robert Hotung’s. The son of a Chinese father, he was a prominent businessman and philanthropist who succeeded Ho Fook as Head Compradore at Jardines. He had 12 wives and reportedly more than 30 children, one of whom was Grace Ho Oi-yu (何爱瑜) (b. 1907 d.1996), a Eurasian and an adopted daughter, who went on to become the mother of the famous martial artist and actor Bruce Lee. Ho Kom-Tong’s last mistress was a Eurasian woman by the name of Cheung King-sin (張瓊仙) (b. 1866 d. 1960). Kom Tong Hall, the former Hong Kong residence of Ho Kom-tong, now houses the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Museum.
Solomon Adler (August 6, 1909 — August 4, 1994) was an economist in the U.S. Treasury Department who served as Treasury representative in China during World War II. He was identified by Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley as a Sovietintelligence source and resigned from the Treasury Department in 1950. After several years teaching at Cambridge University in England, he returned to China, where he resided from the 1960s until his death, working as a translator and economic advisor. Beginning in the early 1960s, Adler was also affiliated with the International Liaison Department, an important Chinese Communist Party organ whose functions include foreign intelligence. [. . .] He came to the United States in 1935 to do “research”. In 1936 he was hired at the Works Progress Administration‘s National Research Project, but soon moved to the Treasury Department’s Division of Monetary Research and Statistics, where he worked with Harry Dexter White for the next several years.[. . .] His reports from China to Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. during the war years were widely circulated and played an important role in shaping American wartime economic policy toward China. [. . .] Adler moved to China in the early 1960s, working in the lead group of the team translating Mao Zedong‘s works into English.
In 1939, Whittaker Chambers identified Adler to then-Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle as a member of an underground Communist group in Washington, D.C., the Ware group. Chambers correctly identified Adler as serving in the General Counsel’s Office at the Treasury Department, from which, Chambers said, Adler supplied weekly reports to the American Communist party. In 1945, Elizabeth Bentley identified Adler as a member of the Silvermaster group. A 1948 memo written by Anatoly Gorsky, a former NKVD rezident in Washington D.C., identified Adler as a Soviet agent designated “Sax.” This agent, transliterated “Sachs (Saks)” appears in the Venona decrypts supplying information about the Chinese Communists through both Gorsky and American Communist Party head Earl Browder.
In addition to his contacts with U.S. espionage groups, while serving as Treasury attache in China in 1944, Adler shared a house with Chinese Communist secret agent Chi Ch’ao-ting and State Department officer John Stewart Service, who was arrested the following year in the Amerasia case.
Together with Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and V. Frank Coe, Director of the Treasury’s Division of Monetary Research, Adler strongly opposed a gold loan program of $200 million to help the Nationalist Chinese Government control the inflation that took hold in unoccupied China during World War II. Inflation in China between 1943 and 1945 was more than 1,000% per year, weakening the Nationalist government in China. This inflation helped the Communists eventually come to power in China, and in later years White, Coe, and Adler were accused of having deliberately fostered the Chinese inflation by obstructing the stabilization loan.
A Chinese work published in 1983 stated that from 1963 on Adler worked for China’s International Liaison Department, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party whose functions include foreign intelligence. According to historian R. Bruce Craig, Adler’s apartment in Beijing was provided by the Liaison Department, indicating that the Department was Adler’s work unit.
Israel Epstein, second from right in front, standing in front of Mao. He later became the minister of appropriations, an extremely powerful position in a practically cashless era. To the right of him is another Jew, also under cover as a journalist
This is Israel Epstein chatting with Chairman Hu, just before his death.
Israel Epstein (20 April 1915 – 26 May 2005) was a ‘naturalized’ Chinese journalist and author. He was one of the few foreign-born Chinese citizens of non-Chinese origin to become a member of the Communist Party of China.
Israel Epstein was born on 20 April 1915 in Warsaw to Jewish parents; at the time, Warsaw was under Imperial Russian control (now the capital of Poland). His father had been imprisoned by the authorities of czarist Russia for leading a labor uprising and his mother had been exiled to Siberia. Epstein’s father was sent by his company to Japan after the outbreak of the World War I; when the German Army approached Warsaw, his mother and Epstein fled and joined him in Asia. With his family experiencing ‘anti-Jewish’ sentiment in several places, in 1917, Epstein came to China with his parents at the age of two and they settled in Tianjin (formerly Tientsin) in 1920.
Israel Epstein began to work in journalism at age 15, when he wrote for the Peking and Tientsin Times, an English-language newspaper based in Tianjin. He also covered the Japanese Invasion of China for the United Press and other Western news agencies. In the autumn of 1938, he joined the China Defense League, which had been established by Soong Ching-ling, Sun Yat-sen‘s widow, for the purpose of publicizing and enlisting international support for the Chinese cause. In 1941, he faked news about his own death as a decoy for the Japanese who were trying to arrest him. The misinformation even found its way into a short item printed in the New York Times.
After being assigned to review one of the books of Edgar Snow, Epstein and Snow came to know each other personally and Snow showed him his classic work Red Star Over China before it was published.
In 1934, Epstein married Edith Bihovsky Epstein, later Ballin, from whom he was divorced in the early 1940s. In 1944, Epstein first visited Britain and afterwards went to live in the United States with his second wife Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley for five years. (Elsie Fairfax-Cholmeley may possibly be related to Sybil Cholmondeley, the Rothschild, and / or Sassoon families.)
He worked for Allied Labor News and published his book The Unfinished Revolution in China in 1947. His book was enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times by Owen Lattimoreof Johns Hopkins University. In 1951 Communist defector Elizabeth Bentley testified to the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, “Israel Epstein had been a member of the Russian secret police for many years in China.”
Many years later, his wife, Ms. Cholmeley, would become known to a generation of Chinese-language students in China and around the world as a contributor to one of the most widely used Chinese-English dictionaries published in the PRC. After Ms. Cholmeley’s death in 1984, Epstein married his third wife, Wan Bi.
In 1951, Soong Ching-ling invited him to return to China to edit the magazine China Reconstructs, which was later renamed China Today.He remained editor-in-chief of China Today until his retirement at age 70, and then editor emeritus. During his tenure at China Today, he became a Chinese citizen in 1957 and a member of the Communist Party of China in 1964. In 1955, 1965 and 1976 Epstein visited Tibet, and based on these three visits in 1983 published the book Tibet Transformed.
(According so some sources, Israel Epstein, became the Minister of Appropriations in China, an very powerful position.)
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Jewish investment banker “consultant” to the CCPRobert Lawrence Kuhn seen talking about who the new Chinese president will be
Robert Lawrence Kuhn (born 1944) is a “public intellectual”, international corporate strategist and investment banker. He has a doctorate in brain research and is the author and editor of over 25 books. He is a long-time adviser to China’s leaders and the Chinese government, to multinational corporations on China strategies and transactions, and is a frequent commentator on China politics, economics, business, finance, philosophy and science. He is a columnist for China Daily and South China Morning Post and appears on the BBC, CNN, China Central Television, Bloomberg and other major media. Kuhn is the creator and host of the CCTV News show Closer to China with R.L.Kuhn. Kuhn is the creator, writer and host of the public television series Closer to Truth, which presents scientists and philosophers discussing fundamental issues (cosmos, consciousness, philosophy/religion). His essays are featured on LiveScience.com and Space.com.
CAREER
[ . . . ] During the 1980s, Kuhn represented American and Japanese companies in mergers and acquisitions.
CHINA
Kuhn provided the live commentary on CNN during President Xi Jinping’s policy address in Seattle on September 2, 2015 during Xi’s state visit to the US. Kuhn spoke at the launch ceremony of Xi’s book, entitled Xi Jinping: The Governance of China at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 8, 2014.
Kuhn writes on Xi’s Four Comprehensives political theory of governance, and on understanding the Communist Party of China (CPC).
For the 18th CPC National Congress in Nov. 2012, Kuhn provided commentary for the BBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, CNBC, AP, Reuters, Euronews, etc. He was the featured foreign commentator daily on China Central Television (CCTV News). His essays introduced China’s new leaders and China’s new government and offered personal insights into China’s new leaders, the seven members of the new Standing Committee of the Politburo and “New challenges for new leaders”. It also presents the multiple problems that China’s new government must address. Since 1989, when he was invited to China by the State Science and Technology Commission (under Song Jian), Kuhn has worked with China’s senior leaders and advised the Chinese government on international, policy and business matters.
Kuhn is the author of How China’s Leaders Think: The Inside Story of China’s Past, Current and Future Leaders, featuring exclusive discussions with more than 100 Chinese leaders and officials and introducing China’s next generation of senior leaders.
He wrote The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin. It was the first biography of a living Chinese leader and was a best-seller in China in 2005. Kuhn is co-editor-in-chief of China’s Banking & Financial Markets: The Internal Research Report of the Chinese Government.
Kuhn advises and works with China leaders on special projects. When then-Vice President Xi visited the US in February, 2012, Kuhn advised and gave commentaries and interviews. He advised Zhejiang Province for Zhejiang Party Secretary Xi’s 2006 U.S. visit as well.
He is the host and co-producer of “Closer To China with R.L.Kuhn”, a weekly series on CCTV News that tells the story of China through discussions with China’s thought leaders and decision makers in all sectors.
Kuhn is creator, writer and host of the five-part public television TV series China’s Challenges, co-produced with Shanghai Media Group, which won first prize in China News Award and is presented by PBS SoCaL (2013). The series focuses on critical issues confronting China’s leaders and government (social problems like healthcare, economic transformation and pollution, political reform and transparency, science and innovation, beliefs and values). China’s Challenges II, focusing on the Chinese Dream, was broadcast on PBS stations in 2015 and won an Emmy (Los Angeles, 2016).
BUSINESS AND FINANCE
Kuhn advises multinational companies and executives on China strategies in a variety of sectors, including science and technology, information technology, energy and resources, industrial, media and entertainment, healthcare / medical / pharmaceuticals, consumer products, financial services. He works with major Chinese companies on capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. Kuhn is Senior Adviser to Ernst & Young (Office of the chairman).
He was president and co-owner of The Geneva Companies, the largest mergers and acquisitions firm in the U.S., representing middle-market companies (sold to Citigroup in 2000).
MEDIA AND PUBLICATIONS
Kuhn is the author or editor of 25 books on business strategy/finance and science/philosophy, including Dow-Jones Irwin’s seven-volume Library of Investment Banking. He is a frequent commentator on the BBC (BBC World News / BBC World Service), CNN, Bloomberg, others. Kuhn is a senior international commentator for political, economic, social and business matters on CCTV News.[13][15] He has written for Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes and Chief Executive. Kuhn is a regular columnist for China Daily and South China Morning Post on China politics/economics and international affairs.
He was profiled in Barron’s. He is one of the China Visionaries in the TV series produced for China’s 60th anniversary by Shanghai Media Group (one of two Americans, along with Henry Kissinger) and he was featured on CCTV Channel 1’s Focus Talk. Kuhn created, wrote and presented a six-episode series on Expo 2010 Shanghai, broadcast on CCTV. For the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, Kuhn co-produced (with Shanghai Media Group), wrote and presented a five-episode TV series, China’s Challenges, on China’s key domestic issues and problems that China’s new leaders face. Kuhn was selected by Oriental Outlook magazine (published by Xinhua News Agency) as one of the all-time top-ten influential supporters of China’s ruling party/CPC (the only one living).
Kuhn has written many articles. “Science as Democratizer”, featured in American Scientist magazine, argued how the scientific way of thinking can influence global society. His scientific / philosophical article “Why This Universe? Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations” is published in Skeptic Magazine and “Levels of Nothing” in the Vol. 18.2 2013 issue.
Kuhn’s multimedia essays are on Space.com and LiveScience.com: “Forget Space-Time: Information May Create the Cosmos”, “The Illusion of Time: What’s Real?”, “Is Our Universe a Fake?”, “The Singularity, Virtual Immortality and the Trouble with Consciousness”.
Kuhn’s latest book, edited with John Leslie, is The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All?
Several reviewers argue that Kuhn has obtained privileged access to China’s leaders by refraining from critical comments, producing propaganda instead of serious works of non-fiction. A review in Foreign Affairs said it was actually better understood as an autobiography, presenting an image that China’s leaders want the world to see. Additionally, it said the writing of the book was, beginning in 2001, overseen by a secret state propaganda team.The Asian Review of Books said that the first part of Kuhn’s biography of Jiang was “close to hagiography“. A review on the website of Forbes said his later book, How China’s Leaders Think: The Inside Story of China’s Past, Current and Future Leaders, was equally reluctant to criticize Hu Jintao, the leader who followed Jiang. The reviewer writes: “Kuhn merely repeats what the Communist Party says about itself and accepts its words at face value, taking obsequiousness to new heights.”
Sidney Rittenberg (born August 14, 1921) [ . . . ] lived in China from 1944 to 1980. He worked closely with Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, and other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the war, and was with these central Communist leaders at Yan’an. He witnessed first-hand much of what occurred at upper levels of the CCP and knew many of its leaders personally. Later, he was imprisoned in solitary confinement, twice, for a total of 16 years.He was the first American citizen to join the CCP.
Rittenberg’s connections and experience have enabled him to run a successful consultancy business representing some of the world’s biggest brands, such as Intel, Levi Strauss, Microsoft, Hughes Aircraft and Teledesic.
Rittenberg was born into a Jewish family in Charleston, South Carolina, and lived there until his college studies. After attending Porter Military Academy, he turned down a full scholarship to Princeton University and instead attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in philosophy. While attending Chapel Hill, he became a member of the Dialectic Society and the US Communist Party. In 1942, following the entry of the US into World War II—and after his leaving the Communist Party—Rittenberg joined the Army and was sent to Stanford’s Army Far Eastern Language and Area School to learn Japanese. Rittenberg did not wish to be assigned to study Japanese, and was able to be assigned to learn Chinese instead. This led to his being sent to China in 1944. Rittenberg said that one of the turning points in his life came shortly after he arrived in China. He was sent to bring a $26 check to the family of a girl who was killed by a drunken US soldier. Despite the family’s devastation, they gave Rittenberg $6 for his help. It was at that point that “something inside Sidney Rittenberg shifted.” After the end of the war, he decided to stay in China as part of the United Nations famine relief program. This led to his meeting the leaders of the Communist movement at Yan’an in 1946.
INTERPRETING FOR MAO
Twice, Rittenberg interpreted a message for the United States from Mao Zedong. The message was the same both times. Mao said that after the war was over in China, and after Mao became the leader of the country, he wanted to still have a good relationship with the United States. This was for two reasons: first, because the United States was the only country that could supply him with the money he needed to rebuild the country; second, because Mao did not wish to depend on the Soviets. Both times this message was delivered it was rejected by President Truman. Rittenberg believes that had Truman decided to talk to Mao, both the Korean War and the Vietnam War could possibly have been averted.
The Communist Party leadership sought Rittenberg’s assistance in translating their messages into English, including the writings of Mao. Rittenberg also worked for the Xinhua News Agency and Radio Peking.
“CULTURAL REVOLUTION”
During the Cultural Revolution, Rittenberg was radicalized and in the summer of 1967 headed the “Norman Bethune – Yan’an rebel group”, which had about seventy members. He led political struggles at China Radio International. Han Suyin at that time said that Rittenberg was in complete control of the radio station. On April 8, 1967, the People’s Daily published a long article written by him. On April 10, he represented a faction of foreigners in struggle session against Wang Guangmei at Tsinghua University. He also attacked other foreigners who were living in Beijing at that time, including Ma Haide (George Hatem). Ma Haide had advised Rittenberg not to interfere in Chinese political affairs.
Baron Robert Rothschild (16 December 1911, in Brussels – 3 December 1998, in London) was a Belgian diplomat. He helped to draft the Treaty of Rome of 1957, the foundation of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958.
His father, a businessman of German-Jewish descent, descended from Moses Amschel Bauer, of Frankfurt am Main, whose son Mayer Amschel Rothschild, together with his five sons, founded the Rothschild banking dynasty. Robert decided to become a diplomat. Luckily his father was a friend of Paul Spaak, whose son Paul-Henri Spaak became foreign minister of Belgium in 1936. Robert passed the diplomatic service examination in 1936 and joined the private office of Paul-Henri Spaak in April 1937. [ . . . ]
Robert remained in Lisbon until 1944, when he was sent, at his request to China.He became first secretary at the Belgian embassy in Chungking, the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek‘s government. During the Japanese occupation, there was a lull in the Chinese civil war. The Communists of Mao Zedong even had an envoy in Chungking in the person of Zhou Enlai, whom he grew to like. After the Japanese surrender, he flew to Shanghai, where, in 1946, he was appointed consul general. The Chinese civil war revived and in 1949 the Communists entered Shanghai. Under pressure from the French, who hoped to protect their interests in Indochina, Belgium declined to recognise the People’s Republic of China for the next 20 years. He considered this a political mistake and regretted the failure to comprehend the rivalry between Soviet and Chinese Communism.
In early 1950, he left Shanghai for Washington, D.C. as second counsellor at the Belgian embassy. It was the time of the Korean War and the build-up of NATO and after two years in Washington, Robert went to Paris as a Belgian representative on the council of NATO.
Indian merchant and banker; born at Bagdad Oct., 1792; died at Bombay Nov. 7, 1864. He had a fair knowledge of Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hindustani, but not of English. His father, who was a wealthy Mesopotamian merchant, and who was for many years state treasurer to the Turkish governor of Bagdad, was known as “Nasi [= “Prince”] of the Captivity.” David Sassoon was employed in a banking-house at Bagdad till 1822. After the plague he left Bagdad for Bassora, proceeding thence to Bushire. In 1832 an important commercial engagement caused him to visit Bombay, to which city he subsequently removed with his family. Here he established the house of David Sassoon & Co., with branches at Calcutta, Shanghai, Canton, and Hongkong; and his business, which included a monopoly of the opium-trade, extended as far as Yokohama, Nagasaki, and other cities in Japan. Sassoon attributed his great success to the employment of his sons as his agents and to his strict observance of the law of tithe.
Jacob Henry Schiff (born Jakob Heinrich Schiff; January 10, 1847 – September 25, 1920) was a Jewish-American banker, businessman, and philanthropist. Among many other things, he helped finance the expansion of American railroads and the Japanese military efforts against Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, Schiff migrated to the United States after the American Civil War and joined the firm Kuhn, Loeb & Co. From his base on Wall Street, he was the foremost Jewish leader from 1880 to 1920 in what later became known as the “Schiff era”, grappling with all major Jewish issues and problems of the day, including the plight of Russian Jews under the Tsar, American and international anti-semitism, care of needy Jewish immigrants, and the rise of Zionism. He also became a director of many important corporations, including the National City Bank of New York, Equitable Life Assurance Society, Wells Fargo & Company, and the Union Pacific Railroad. In many of his interests he was associated with E. H. Harriman. [ . . .]
What was perhaps Schiff’s most famous financial action was during the Russo-Japanese War, in 1904 and 1905. Schiff met Takahashi Korekiyo, deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, in Paris in April 1904. He subsequently extended loans to the Empire of Japan in the amount of $200 million (equivalent to $33.1 billion in 2016), through Kuhn, Loeb & Co. These loans were the first major flotation of Japanese bonds on Wall Street, and provided approximately half the funds needed for Japan’s war effort. [ . . . ]
This loan attracted worldwide attention, and had major consequences. Japan won the war, thanks in large part to the purchase of munitions made possible by Schiff’s loan. Some of the Japanese leadership saw this as evidence of the power of Jews all around the world, raised the issue of Jewish loyalties in the Diaspora and as proof of the truth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1905, Japan awarded Schiff the Order of the Sacred Treasure; and in 1907, the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, the second highest of the eight classes of that Order. Schiff was the first foreigner to receive the Order in person from Emperor Meiji in the Imperial Palace.Schiff also had a private audience with King Edward VII of the United Kingdom in 1904.
In addition to his famous loan to Japan, Schiff financed loans to many other nations, including those that would come to comprise the Central Powers. [ . . . ]
Shapiro’s connections with China began during World War II, when he was serving in the United States armed forces. He was chosen to learn Chinese by the United States Army in preparation for a possible American landing in Japanese–occupied China. After attaining a law degree in the US, he went to China, arriving in Shanghai in 1947. There, he met his future wife, an actress named Fengzi (Phoenix), who was a supporter of the Communist Party of China prior to its ascent to power. Beginning in the Cultural Revolution, she spent 10 years under house arrest for her opposition to Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. She later became one of the most prominent drama critics in the People’s Republic. [ . . . ]
For nearly 50 years, he was employed by the state-runForeign Languages Press (FLP) as a translator of works of Chinese literature. He is best known for his highly regarded English version of Outlaws of the Marsh, one of the most important classics of Chinese literature. FLP recently reissued Shapiro’s translation as part of a bilingual collection called Library of Chinese Classics.
Shapiro was also an actor in many Chinese movies, typecast as the American villain.
‘Fulfillment’ of the Jewish ‘ingathering’ ‘prophecy’
“Jewish history in the making”
The Gathering of Israel (Hebrew: קיבוץ גלויות, Kibbutz Galuyot (Biblical: Qibbuṣ Galuyoth), lit. Ingathering of the Exiles, also known as Ingathering of the Jewish diaspora) is the biblical promise of Deuteronomy 30:1-5 given by Moses to the people of Israel prior to their entrance into the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael).
During the days of the Babylonian exile, writings of the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel encouraged the people of Israel with a promise of a future gathering of the exiles to the land of Israel. The continual hope for a return of the Israelite exiles to the land has been in the hearts of Jews ever since the destruction of the Second Temple.
MAIMONIDES CONNECTED ITS MATERIALIZATION WITH THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH.
The gathering of the exiles in the land of Israel, became the core idea of the Zionist Movement and the core idea of Israel’s Scroll of Independence (Megilat Ha’atzmaut), embodied by the idea of going up, Aliyah, since the Holy Land is considered to be spiritually higher than all other land. The immigration of Jews to the land and the State of Israel, the “mass” wave of Aliyot (plural form), has been likened to the Exodus from Egypt.
The Jewish population in Israel comprises all Jewish diaspora communities, including Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Beta Israel, Cochin Jews, Bene Israel, Karaite Jews, and many other groups. The Israeli Jewish community manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions, as well as encompassing the full spectrum of religious observance, from the haredi communities to the hilonim Jewish communities who live a secular lifestyle. Among the Jewish population, over 25% of the schoolchildren and over 35% of all newborns are of mixed ancestry of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi/Mizrahi descent and increases by 0.5% each year. Over 50% of the Jewish population is of at least a partial Sephardi/Mizrahi descent.
Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose. The social experiment in China under Chairman Mao’s leadership is one of the most important and successful in human history.– David Rockefeller
A page from the Talmud, the book consisting of early rabbinical writings that inform the Judaic tradition.P DELISS / GODONG-CORBIS
Jewish visitors to China often receive a snap greeting when they reveal their religion: “Very smart, very clever, and very good at business,” the Chinese person says. Last year’s Google Zeitgeist China rankings listed “why are Jews excellent?” in fourth place in the “why” questions category, just behind “why should I enter the party” and above “why should I get married?” (Google didn’t publish a “why” category in Mandarin this year.) And the apparent affection for Jewishness has led to a surprising trend in publishing over the last few years: books purporting to reveal the business secrets of the Talmud that capitalize on the widespread impression among Chinese that attributes of Judaism lead to success in the financial arts.
Titles such as Crack the Talmud: 101 Jewish Business Rules, The Illustrated Jewish Wisdom Book, and Know All of the Money-Making Stories of the Talmud share the shelves with stories of Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. There’s even a Talmud hotel in Taiwan inspired by “the Talmud’s concept of success” that features a copy of the book Talmud Business Success Bible in every room. With the increasing interest in business education in China, and a rise in sales of self-help literature, the production of business guides to the Talmud has exploded. The guides are like the Chinese equivalents of books such as Sun Tzu and the Art of Business.
Han Bing, the (pseudonymous) author of Crack the Talmud, says a series on the “Jewish Bible” by a prominent publisher made him realize that “ancient Jews and today’s Chinese face a lot of the same problems,” such as immigration and isolation. The business rules he lists include such unsurprising—and universal—exhortations as “tell a customer about defects,” “help more people,” and “a partnership based on emotions is not dependable.” No statistics are available on the sales of this sliver of the book market. But while the guides haven’t reached the heights of books such as Jewish Family Education, which claims to have sold more than 1 million copies, they currently are “very popular” and a “hot topic,” says Wang Jian, associate dean of the Center of Jewish Studies in Shanghai, a research institution that focuses on Jewish culture and history, and Israel. The Talmud “has become a handbook for doing business and seeking fortunes,” Wang says.
The Chinese perception of Jews as expert moneymakers does not have the religion-based antagonism that often accompanies the same stereotype elsewhere in the world, and probably had its start in the mid-19th century, when investors began flocking to China. Many of the first foreign real-estate tycoons, such as Silas Hardoon and the scions of the Sassoon family, were Jewish. Michael Kadoorie—who hails from a wealthy Jewish family that dates its China connection back to 19th-century Shanghai, and who’s made his fortune in power generators and hotels—currently ranks as the richest non-Chinese in greater China, with an estimated net worth of $5 billion.
The admiration for Judaism stems from a history that goes beyond business. About half of the dozen or so Westerners active in Mao Zedong’s China were Jewish, and that also led to increased interest in Jewish culture among Chinese intellectuals, says Xu Xin, professor of Jewish studies at Nanjing University. That’s resulted in mostly glowing portrayals of certain Jewish individuals in the official Chinese press. They included Sidney Rittenberg, the first American citizen to join the Chinese Communist Party, and journalist Israel Epstein, who interviewed Mao at length and whose funeral was attended by China’s President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Rittenberg, who spent 16 years in solitary confinement in China, made the transition from party ideologue to consultant upon his release, and now operates the successful Rittenberg & Associates, which trades off his personal relationships with communist leaders and has advised companies including Microsoft, Hughes Aircraft, and Levi Strauss.
Non-Chinese experts on Judaism are quick to point out that the Talmud is not a business manual. While the Talmud mentions contract law, zoning, and problems involved with charging interest, it’s not a get-rich-quick guide, says Rabbi Eliezer Diamond, associate professor of Talmud and rabbinics at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. “I’ve heard a couple of [Chinese] people say that Jews are smart because of the Talmud. But they don’t seem to know what it is. I think they see it as some sort of secret intelligence book,” added Rabbi Nussin Rodin, a Beijing-based emissary of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “I once got a letter from someone in China saying, I’m very interested in making money so I’d like to know what you teach at your courses about how to make money,” says Diamond. “Of course, there aren’t too many people in the Jewish Theological Seminary pulling in the big bucks.”
The notion of the Talmud as a book full of business secrets for others to search for is not entirely benign. Two of the books feature the quote “No one can defeat the Jews, unless they’ve read our holy book the Talmud” on their cover, spuriously attributed to financier George Soros. “There are anti-Semites throughout the world who will say they want a Jewish lawyer, because Jews are good lawyers,” says Diamond. Han Bing says he has never met a Jew and cautioned NEWSWEEK that he’s not sure if he’s gotten his portrayal right. But he nevertheless states that “Jews understand that money itself is neither good nor bad.” He sees his book as “bringing some light into the dark room of Chinese businesses.” At the same time, he complains that no businessman has ever contacted him to say how the book may have changed him. “There’s just too many of these books out there,” he acknowledges.
At the Harvard of China, something brand nu — a class in Yiddish
At Peking University, students from a variety of majors are learning the alef-beys
Yang Meng’s Yiddish class at Peking University. Courtesy of Yang Meng
Over 30 students gathered for the first Yiddish class at Peking University in Beijing – and, according to its instructor, the first Yiddish class ever taught in China.
On the evening of Sept. 7, enrollees and auditors in majors ranging from psychology, space physics, engineering, law and mathematics, learned the alef-beys and the popular Yiddish song about learning it, “Afn Pripetshik.” Their instructor was Yang Meng, one of only a handful of Chinese academics fluent in the language. She’s also the first we know of to perform a Chinese-Yiddish song.
Yang learned Yiddish as part of her Ph.D. research on the Jewish exile in Shanghai during the Shoah. “Among the scholars of Jewish studies, I happened to know there was no mainland Chinese who spoke Yiddish at the time,” Yang said, “I thought why not give it a try!”
I spoke with Yang over email about how the class is going, the state of Jewish studies in China and why Chinese students may find common ground with Yiddish language and culture.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What would you say is the awareness of Yiddish in China? Is it distinct from the awareness of other modes of Jewish culture and languages?
The overwhelming majority of Chinese have no idea of Yiddish. Even in Peking University, the so-called Chinese Harvard, very few students or faculties ever heard about Yiddish. Some students came to my Yiddish class because they once were my students in my course “Jewish Civilization in a Global Context.”
Most Chinese have very little knowledge about Judaism because it is not part of the education in schools or in universities. Out of 200-plus students of my Jewish civilization course last semester, only five of them ever knew the word “Holocaust,” though they all knew this tragic event. Very few ever heard of Shabbat, let alone Yiddish.
From reading a piece in the Yiddish studies journalIn geveb, I learned there is a Jewish studies program at Nanjing University as well. What is the state of the field of Jewish studies in China overall? And has it changed since you started?
Very few universities or academic institutions in China have Jewish studies programs, e.g., Nanjing University, Shandong University, Henan University, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences, etc. Other universities only have one or two scholars who are doing related research or teaching. As in the city Beijing, where there are almost 100 universities or colleges, my Jewish civilization course is the only Jewish civilization course which is open university-wide.
Yang Meng (by the screen) taught the Alef-beys using a clip from “Schindler’s List.” On the board, “I am from China” is written in English, German and Yiddish, as all three are Germanic languages. Courtesy of Yang Meng
Do you have people to speak Yiddish with in China? Apart from your class?
The only Yiddish-speaking couple I know in Beijing are the rabbi and his wife. So I am trying to make students understand that Yiddish is a key to Jewish culture. This was the Jewish language in the prewar Jewish world, this was the language that has influenced American English and the culture that made an impact on American society after the war, this is the language which today Holocaust survivors speak and the Orthodox community worldwide speak.
Is there anything about Yiddish — either as a language, or in the culture or stories surrounding it — that you feel Chinese students are likely to recognize in their own backgrounds and culture?
As Shanghainese is my mother tongue, I have more feelings for different languages/dialects. Today Shanghainese is also facing a similar situation as Yiddish is and even worse, as there was no such rich literature of Shanghainese as there was in Yiddish. Shanghainese has its unique flavor and it should not just disappear. There are already efforts to revive Shanghainese in Shanghai, e.g., courses on Shanghainese in school in Shanghai. Students coming from all parts of China have dialects from their hometown (their shtetl), and they might sense the meaning of a local language which is closely attached to its people.
Last semester I organized two screenings: “Menashe” and “Unorthodox” and I guided the Chinese students to understand the language and culture in the films. This semester I plan to screen films from Woody Allen and the series “Shtisel.”
Do you think you’ll get the chance to teach Yiddish next semester as well?
Next semester I will lead a seminar on “World Jewish Literature and Art.” I would love to open more on Jewish studies but it is not easy to get approved. I have tried, fought, insisted, persisted. My colleague Professor Zhao Baisheng wrote a very supportive letter for my Yiddish course and finally my Yiddish course got approved after repeated failures. I am very grateful to the Kehillat Beijing and Kehillat Shanghai. Both Jewish communities in China have offered me a lot of help and support on my teaching and I firmly believe it is very meaningful to promote Jewish studies in China and let both Chinese and Jewish civilizations find their ways to know each other.
The students of Yang Meng’s Yiddish class. Photo by Yang Meng
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a news conference for foreign media in Kyiv, Ukraine March 12, 2022. (credit: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS)
Avigdor Liberman and Benjamin Netanyahu (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
JEWISH PILGRIMS pray at the tomb of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman during the celebration of Rosh Hashanah in September 2017. (credit: VALENTYN OGIRENKO/REUTERS)
This is Israel Epstein chatting with Chairman Hu, just before his death.
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