Year: 2020

Never Forget: The Seminal Avishai Raviv Episode!

Recalling the Cemetery Swearing-In Ceremony Staged by Avishai Raviv

Friday, October 30, 2020

The website of Israel’s Media Watch from when I was Director is down but seems at least this post about that infamous swearing-in ceremony staged by agent provocateur Avishai Raviv can still be found.

The following text appeared in IINS News Service, November 1997 / Cheshvan 5758. As a public service, we bring to your attention its content.
“Declassified Shamgar Report (*) on Avishai Raviv”
November 13, 1997 – 13 Cheshvan 5757
Special Report -092sr
The following is a translation of the recently declassified portion of the Shamgar Commission’s report (*) into the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.
Chapter four (page 28) of the released material deals with Avishai Raviv.
**********************************************************
Chapter IV – Avishai Raviv was connected to the security services (General Security Service (GSS/Shin-Bet)) since December 1987. Not only were criminal charges not filed against him, he was informed that criminal charges were pushed off. The response of his superiors was that his results outweighed damages from his actions, which for the most part were not active participation in lawbreaking but failure to report such illegal activities. GSS officials had no doubt that he would repeat his [illegal] actions.
Raviv was also involved in the 1990 campaign to erase road signs leading to Arab areas. He was involved with the establishment of the Zionist Fascist Youth organization and a key player in the establishment of the militant “Eyal” organization. The “Eyal” organization, in actuality, was only able to exist because Raviv and Israel’s television stations publicized it.
1. In 1991, a racist letter sent to the Druze head of the Student Society of Tel-Aviv University was publicized by Israel TV.
2. Raviv assaulted Hadash (left-wing) MK Tamar Gozansky.
3. He incited a juvenile to attack Faisal Husseini. In connection with this attack, a false report was filed with Raviv’s superiors.
[Not from the Shamgar Report] – Note: On September 21, 1995, Israel’s government-run Channel One Television aired the swearing-in ceremony of Eyal members, who were seen holding a Bible and a handgun. This infamous TV footage created a national stir and increased the ongoing campaign to besmirch Israel’s nationalistic (right-wing) camp.Staged Eyal ceremonyStaged Eyal swearing-in ceremony by GSS agent provocateur Avishai Raviv. Pictures published in newspaper Makor Rishon 31.10.97 (Many Thanks)..
The staged swearing with a Bible and a gun, in Mount Herzl cemetery !! (Thanks to Makor Rishon from 5.12.1997)
Staged Eyal ceremony by Avishai RavivPictures published in newspaper Makor Rishon 31.10.97 (Many Thanks).
Following the airing of the Eyal swearing-in ceremony, “Israel’s Media Watch” sent a letter to Tzvi Lidar, the spokesman for Channel One Television. Media Watch asked if the TV Authority was certain the ceremony aired on TV was indeed, factual. The first response to the Media Watch letter stated that the question was unworthy of a response. Media Watch followed up with another letter, to which Lidar responded insisting the film footage was authentic, factual and worthy of being aired on national television. [end of note]
…[Shamgar Report Page continued- page 28] …Channel One Television aired the swearing in ceremony, which was obviously staged. Anyone who was present to see it had to have known it was a staged affair.
A7The following text appeared in Arutz 7 News Service, Friday, November 14, 1997 / Cheshvan 14, 5758. As a public service, we bring to your attention its content.
STILL NO ACTION ON COMPLAINT AGAINST TV
“Israel’s Media Watch” has demanded that Israel Television director Yair Stern clarify whether he actually investigated its complaints regarding the staged swearing-in ceremony of Eyal members.
Israel Television broadcast the ceremony in a major item several weeks before the assassination. Media Watch then wrote to Israel Television spokesman Tzvi Lidar, asking him whether the authenticity of the event had been checked in advance, “because the broadcast gives the impression of being staged.”
Lidar responded, “I don’t know what your impression is based on.” Media Watch wrote again, “Please answer whether the authenticity was investigated.” This time, Lidar answered, “Yes, it was checked, and found to be factual and worthy of being broadcast.”
As mentioned, Media Watch is waiting to hear whether the “check” was actually carried out. Media Watch later filed a complaint with the police against the television for broadcasting a staged event as authentic.
The State Attorney’s Office has not yet decided whether to begin a criminal investigation, despite repeated inquiries into the matter by Media Watch.
The organization believes that the complaint will now be taken more seriously, in light of the Shamgar Commission (*) findings released yesterday. The findings state, “Raviv continued his connections with the media in order to present Eyal as an existing body, and he received the help of the television in that it broadcast the swearing-in ceremony; [this] was nothing more than a fake, which anyone who was there most certainly noticed.”
(*) The Shamgar Commission has investigated the assassination of former prime-minister of Israel Mr. Yitshak Rabin (za”l). Nowadays, (November 13, 1997 – 13 Cheshvan 5757) a declassified secret part of the commision report about Secret Service agent provocateur Avishai Raviv has been published.
Israel’s Media Watch is a non-partisan advocacy group concerned with the ethical and professional standards of the media in Israel.
See here, too.
…On November 2, Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein prohibited publication of a summary of a meeting in the office of his predecessor Michael Ben-Yair. The summary, he claimed, would “endanger public security.” Eleven days later, long after the document had been placed on the Internet, the Israeli Supreme Court removed its own gag order, issued at Rubinstein’s request, and sharply reprimanded the Attorney-General for attempting to suppress a document that had no connection to public security.
A brief examination of Rubinstein’s actions and the way the Israeli press covered the issue provides a good case study of the many of the themes we have been developing.
The document in question dealt with a complaint filed by Israel’s Media Watch demanding that the Attorney-General bring criminal proceedings against Eitan Oren, the reporter who filmed the staged swearing-in ceremony of the Eyal organization (see p.8 above). According to the summary, the Attorney-General saw no alternative to prosecuting Oren. He is quoted as saying:
The episode shocked television viewers and caused enormous damage, a virtual public storm. I just don’t see how we can avoid beginning [criminal] proceedings. . . . I don’t see a problem with the evidence. I don’t see any problems in terms of his criminal intent. It is impossible to close the case without public exposure.
Everyone else in the room – State Attorney Edna Arbel, senior prosecutors, and representatives of the GSS – expressed concern that Oren would call Avishai Raviv to the stand, and that the latter would reveal everything connected to his actions as an agent provocateur on behalf of the GSS.
Much of the discussion concerned what grounds could be given for closing the file: “lack of public interest” or “lack of evidence.” The Jerusalem District Attorney argued that the latter ground would be easier to defend if the closure of the file reached the Supreme Court. The meeting ended with Attorney-General Ben-Yair washing his hands of the matter and leaving it up to the State Attorney.
The reason that the Israeli Right was so intent on revealing the document is clear. Since the Rabin assassination, the Right has continuously claimed that the GSS orchestrated a systematic campaign to delegitimize the opposition to Oslo by planting agent provocateurs in their midst to create the impression that the entire Right is composed of violent extremists. It was, for instance, GSS agent Avishai Raviv who held up the famous photomontage of Rabin in an SS uniform at an anti-Oslo rally, and who was Yigal Amir’s closest confidant in the months leading up to the Rabin assassination. For the Right, then, the document seemed to show that the State Attorney’s office was intent on avoiding public discussion of Raviv’s activities and their implications.
Many leading lights in the legal system had their own reasons for not wanting the document released. According to one GSS official present, Dorit Beinisch, former State Attorney and today a justice on the Supreme Court, gave approval for Raviv to engage in activities which would incriminate someone else who would then be arrested.
Even Attorney-General Rubinstein had his reasons for not wanting the document public, though he was not present at the meeting in question. For three and a half years, the State Attorney’s office pushed off inquiries from Israel’s Media Watch as to why no complaint had been filed against Oren with the response that the matter was under investigation. The document showed that response to be a lie: The decision not to prosecute on the grounds of “lack of evidence”‘ was made already nearly four years ago, for reasons having nothing to do with a lack of evidence.
Anyone old enough to remember the Pentagon Papers might have expected the Israeli media to raise a hue and a cry for release of the suppressed document. Far from it. If anything, the media followed the lead of Amnon Avramovits, who attempted to pooh-pooh the document as revealing nothing new. Though the document was easily available on Internet and had surely been read by the vast majority of print and broadcast journalists, few showed any curiosity as to why the Attorney-General was so determined to prevent its publications or what made it so important.
The media completely failed to accurately report the reason for the meeting described in the banned document: the complaint of Israel’s Media Watch to the Attorney-General over the role of IBA reporter Eitan Oren in the staged Eyal induction ceremony. A conspiracy of silence seemed to surround the activities of one of the brotherhood. No one asked why a reporter who played an integral role in the staged Eyal induction ceremony is still on the air.
Even after the Supreme Court allowed publication of the summary of the meeting, the media confined itself to score-keeping of winners and losers in the affair. The underlying issue of the government’s use of agent provocateurs as a means of delegitimizing opposition groups, however, still remained largely undiscussed.
The media showed a studied indifference to a document containing information sure to raise uncomfortable issues. When Israel’s Media Watch called a press conference prior to release of the meeting minutes, not one national paper or TV station sent a reporter, despite the presence at the press conference of Likud’s rising star MK Dr. Yuval Steinitz and one of Israel’s best known attorneys and the bombshell nature of the issue.
Steinitz was plainly stunned by the total boycott, and commented that the press conference reminded him of one called by Jewish refuseniks for the Soviet press under the Communists…

A MESHUMAD ‘Moetzes’ Member of Agudat Yisrael? That Wouldn’t Surprise Me…

The Viznitz tail doctrine. If this is not a cult what is?

R. Mendelle Vizhnitzer proclaims the tail doctrine. The doctrine urges his followers to think of themselves as tails with respect to their rebbe: just as the tail follows the body and cannot sever itself from it, nor control it –so ought a hosid follow his rebbe without any digressions, vacillation, or doubt. He even said the following:

Even if it seems that the Rebbe is transgressing a clear halokhoh from the mishneh beruroh, does not pray in public or not at all, or even if he does things that our forefathers did not do such as igniting a cigar in public or in the midst of a holy discourse –he [the hosid] remains clinging to his holy and pure rebbe… with a fealty of heart and soul, to him and to his pure path.

Believe it or not, in the recent Tail Doctrine campaign R. Mendelle taught his hasidim a new song to be sung before reciting the Psalms and after evening toroh lessons:

“we believe in the holy opinion of the holy Yeshuos Moshe (viz. his father, so named after a book that he composed), namely shvantzonus (the practice of being a tail; tail-ism)”

From The Jewish Worker, here.

re: The Gerrer Imrei Emes’ Letter About Rabbi Kook

I was asked what I meant in the recent article describing “the ויגזול את החנית strategy of Yerushalmi rabbis versus the hot-heads” hinted at in the Imrei Emes’ famous letter.

Rabbi Malinowitz says it best (see the rest here):

RM: Those who quickly made this a case of us against them –would they do so if a chareidi robbed Bank Mizrachi?
Questioner: If a charedi robbed Bank Mizrachi in the name of the Torah, and if R. Kopschitz sat on the dais of a gathering organized by the robber, then I hope so.

RM: R’ Kopschitz is not a kook. Rav Kopschitz was doing what that community does when the kooks get the headlines. They make a harmless asifah about the inyan and rail against it..this marginalizes the kooks within their community even more, and lets steam be let out in a harmless way, and shows that their leaders agree in principle for what is being fought for (that the school should move out). That is how they function. You may not like it, you may want the asifah to be against the violence, you may not like the idea that they are advocating the school’s moving–but that is not the point. This is their way of cooling tempers. (I do not want a discussion about that — I was merely addressing Rav Kopschitz’s intentions, to answer your questions)

Forget U. S. Republicans, and Save Your OWN Republic!

kicking the can down the road

Tuesday, November 03, 2020

There is no need to talk about why you should not vote for the candidate that supports abortion, LGBTetc, higher taxes, green energy and the destruction of the oil industry, BLM and Antifa, the imposition of a “two state solution” = treating Israel like a criminal country, etc. in today’s election. This is aleph beis.  The mistake some people will make is thinking that there are “safe” candidates within the party that supports all that.  Don’t be fooled.

But there is an even bigger mistake.  From what I hear and read it is clear to most people in our community that a vote for the D party is a vote against our interests, to the point that people realize that if the Ds are in charge life for us here will not be so good and maybe those aliya plans need to be looked at more realistically and moved up in time.  But if the R’s win, then shalom al yisrael.

The truth is that even with the R’s in charge, we’re just kicking the can down the road. The only difference is the amount of time we have bought for ourselves.

The loonies on the left will not go away if Trump wins any more than they went away after his first victory.  American society will not change for the better overnight.  And in our own communities, between the assimilation rate, the high costs of Jewish life here, the secular values that penetrate our self-imposed ghettos willy-nilly, the lack of true depth in religious fervor and experience, how much longer do you think this can go on?

It’s up to us to use whatever time we have here wisely. To stop building multi-million dollar mansions in chu”l and instead put that $ toward a home in Eretz Yisrael.  To produce graduates from our schools that can speak Ivrit without saying things like “Ani tachas omeid” when they want to say “I understand” (thanks to daughter #3 for that one).  For Rabbis and teachers and of course parents to encourage our kids to build there future elsewhere, even if it means giving up the lucrative career or life in the suburbs — those are not Jewish values last time I checked.

Let’s not wait until fear forces difficult choices upon us.   אמר עולא ייתי ולא איחמיניה וכן אמר [רבה] ייתי ולא איחמיניה

From Divrei Chaim, here.

החידוש של ‘קדושת ציון’ – שא”צ חילונים במערכת המדינית כמין גויים-של-שבת

מתוך פורום קדושת ציון:
כשאנשים שנאמנים לתורה  – עכ”פ במידה מרובה – מפעילים מערכות הקשורות לכלל החיים המדיניים, או עכ”פ משפיעים בהם, ובפרט כשיש ביטוי מעשי לאותה נאמנות, האין אתם רואים זאת כהתקדמות לקראת שלטון התורה?
והנה עוד דוגמה:
מדריך כשרות לעסקים ומוסדות ע”י בית ההוראה לענייני ריבית  (b025015920@gmail.com ) מעמוד 61 – בPDF עמוד 31 – רשימה של עיריות (כולל “חילוניות”), מוסדות המדינה, קופות חולים, חברות חשמל וגז, חברות עסקים מפעלים גמ”חים וכו’, קרנות פנסיה השתלמות וגמל.
(בלי להיכנס לסוגיית היתר עיסקה – עכ”פ למסתייגים אפשר לומר גם בזה, קמעה קמעה.)
תעברו על הרשימה, אני חושב שזה לא פחות ממדהים.
נכון שזה לא נעשה בחקיקה ובכפייה, אבל בעיני, התנהלות של עם ישראל בכיוון של דרך התורה ללא כפייה, משמעותית פי כמה מאשר בצורה של תכתיבים ממשלתיים.
כמובן, הרבה מאוד התקדמות בנושא שלטון התורה תלוי בהתקרבות הציבור לתורה (הרבה יותר מפעלולים פוליטיים), כי למעשה, השלטון במידה מרובה הוא השתקפות של הציבור. ובמילים אחרות, כשיהיו עם ישראל אנשי התורה, השלטון גם יהיה שלטון התורה.
אני חושב שלציבור החרדי, החידוש של קדושת ציון הוא שלא צריכים שהחילונים יישארו חילונים בשביל להפעיל את המערכת המדינית והשלטונית כאיזה “גויים-של-שבת” (כי אסור להפעיל מערכת שלטונית בארץ ישראל לפני בא המשיח, או, רח”ל מהאי דעתא, שאין התורה ושומריה מסוגלים להתמודד התמודדות מעשית עם אתגרי מדינה).