Tag: United States

Meta’s Monopoly Trial Kicks Off

Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp created an illegal monopoly over social networking ~Federal Trade Commission

By Joseph Lord | The Epoch Times

The fate of social media giant Meta, billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s primary company, is on the line as a trial begins in Washington on Monday to determine whether the tech giant is violating antitrust laws.

The Federal Trade Commission, which has spent the past six years investigating Meta, is expected to argue before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg that Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp created an illegal monopoly over social networking.

In the worst-case scenario for Meta, the company could be forced to divest both subsidiaries in a breakup on a scale not seen since the dismantling of AT&T’s telephone empire more than 40 years ago.

Here’s what to know about the most important trial in Meta’s history.

Trial

The case is being held at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse, just a few hundred yards from the U.S. Capitol.

It’s a bench trial, meaning Boasberg alone will decide the outcome, not a jury. That gives the judge extraordinary influence over the future of one of the most powerful companies in the world.

FTC Claims

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation into the company began during President Donald Trump’s first term and was aggressively pursued under President Joe Biden.

The FTC has taken issue with the company’s 2012 purchase of the image-based app Instagram and 2014 purchase of WhatsApp, a messaging platform that’s particularly popular outside of the United States.

During the trial, the FTC is expected to argue that Meta’s purchase of the two platforms was part of a calculated effort to “buy or bury” any potential rivals to Facebook.

In a 2008 email presented by the FTC in a past federal court filing, Zuckerberg wrote, “It is better to buy than compete.”

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has said that his agency is “raring to go” against Meta but also that he’ll follow lawful orders from the president to close the case.

Meta’s Response

Meta has consistently denied the allegations of operating an illegal monopoly and has argued that the FTC’s case is both outdated and out of step with current market realities.

A spokesperson for Meta said in a statement to The Epoch Times that the acquisitions were approved by regulators at the time and that the company has always operated competitively. He cited the presence of competitors such as TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage, and others.

The spokesperson said the lawsuit “defies reality” and that it would send a message that “no deal is ever truly final” if Boasberg sides with the FTC.

The company has also suggested that dismantling its integrated platforms would harm users, who’ve come to rely on interconnected services and shared back-end systems.

Since Trump was elected to a second term, Zuckerberg has visited Mar-a-Lago, ended the company’s controversial fact-checking efforts, rolled back diversity and inclusion programs, and staffed the company with GOP-friendly executives.

The Epoch Times reached out to FTC for further comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

‘Creaking Antitrust Precedents’

Boasberg has heard years of pretrial motions in this case and has made clear he isn’t fully sold on the government’s argument.

He threw out the FTC’s original filing in 2021, citing a lack of clear market definitions. While he allowed the revised case to proceed, he’s continued to express skepticism, warning in recent months that the FTC’s claims “strain this country’s creaking antitrust precedents.”

Antitrust statutory law and litigation are among the most labyrinthine areas of the federal code.

Boasberg has given both sides a chance to make their case in court. Witness lists include Zuckerberg himself, former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and executives from rival platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat.

The trial is expected to last through the summer, with a decision potentially arriving by July.

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(SOURCE)

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3 Arguments For & Against Russia Extending “Energy Ceasefire” With Ukraine

Both scenarios entail considerable risks

Andrew Korybko writes at Substack

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Putin will have the final say on whether Russia extends its 30-day moratorium on strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure that’ll expire on Friday. He also noted that “the moratorium has essentially not been observed by the Ukrainian side”, which is true, but the US hasn’t pressured Ukraine to comply with its part of the agreement. Here are three respective arguments for and against Russia extending its “energy ceasefire” with Ukraine:

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1. Maintain Positive Diplomatic Dynamics With The US

Talks with the US are generally going well so Russia might want to maintain these positive diplomatic dynamics with a view towards making tangible progress on normalizing ties and ending their proxy war. To that end, Putin could once again opt for patience and restraint since the threats posed by Ukraine’s continued violation of their “energy ceasefire” remain manageable, thus enabling Russia to possibly obtain more of its goals through diplomacy than if it reverted to relying solely on military means.

2. Dispel The Neocons’ Claims About Russia’s Intentions

Warmongering forces within the American Establishment and among their media allies have claimed that Russia is untrustworthy, and this perception could be lent false credence if Putin declines to extend the “energy ceasefire”, thus potentially adding unbearable pressure upon Trump to end their talks. The neocon faction might then command more influence over the administration with all that entails for a dangerous escalation with Russia if they then convince Trump to double down on support for Ukraine.

3. Incentivize The US To Finally Apply Pressure On Ukraine

Part of the Russian-US talks concern strategic resource cooperation, which understandably takes a long time to negotiate due to the nitty-gritty details, so maintaining positive diplomatic dynamics in spite of Ukraine’s continued violation of the “energy ceasefire” could raise the odds of a major deal. Should one be clinched, then the US might then be much more incentivized to finally apply pressure on Ukraine, both with regard to respecting this moratorium and conceding to more of Russia’s demands for peace.

1. Show That Putin Won’t Be “Led By The Nose” Again

On the other hand, deciding against extending the “energy ceasefire” that Ukraine never abided by would show Trump that Putin won’t be “led by the nose” again, which refers to how the Russian leader characterized former German Chancellor Merkel’s manipulation of him through the Minsk Accords. Putin could calculate that this would uphold his personal reputation, make Trump respect him more as a leader, and therefore raise the odds of the US pressuring Ukraine to comply with any future deals.

2. “Escalate To De-Escalate” On Better Terms For Russia

By resuming attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, perhaps dramatically so through the use of more hypersonic medium-range Oreshniks, Russia could “escalate to de-escalate” with the intent of achieving better terms for itself through whatever subsequent deals the US might broker with Ukraine. This strategy would amount to giving the US a dose of its own medicine that Biden applied to Russia, but there’s no guarantee that it’ll have the intended effect with the much more differently wired Trump.

3. Decisively Exploit Perceived American Weaknesses

Be that as it may, Putin’s calculation could be that the US has become so weak over the past few months due to Trump’s eagerness to “Pivot (back) to Asia”, the resultant rift that this created with Europe, and his global trade war that Russia would be foolish not to exploit this by pulling out all the stops in Ukraine. This thinking takes for granted that the US couldn’t or wouldn’t rally the West to “escalate to de-escalate” in kind but would meekly withdraw from the conflict instead, which can’t be known for sure.

———-

Both scenarios entail considerable risks, with another extension possibly leading to Trump manipulating Putin just like Merkel did while rejecting an extension could result in a serious Russian-US escalation, though their respective benefits could potentially be the diplomatic or military resolution of this conflict. Putin is very cautious and averse to escalations, however, so he might be inclined to extend Russia’s de facto unilateral compliance with this lopsided “energy ceasefire” unless “hardliners” dissuade him.

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(SOURCE)

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Deportation Case Against Mahmoud Khalil: The Fight for Justice

Intro by 21WIRE

IMAGE: Assistant Chief Immigration Judge based in Louisiana, Jamee E Comans, who ruled on Friday  that  Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of Columbia University with pro-Palestinian views, is eligible for deportation from the United States under a provision of immigration law that permits removal based on perceived threats to foreign policy interests

A provision established during the Trump administration that allows for deportation based on political beliefs is currently being utilized to target a Palestinian activist who has been in ICE custody since March. On Friday, Judge Jamee Comans determined that the government is permitted to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of Columbia University, solely due to his support for Palestine. Jamee E. Comans serves as an Assistant Chief Immigration Judge in Louisiana, having been appointed in January 2023 by the Executive Office for Immigration Review of the U.S. Department of Justice. In her role, she manages immigration cases, including notable instances such as that of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of Columbia University and a pro-Palestinian activist. Prior to her current position, she was designated as an Immigration Judge in 2021 by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

On Friday afternoon, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority shamefully gloated about Judge Comans’ decision”

Shalom Mahmoud!

— House Foreign Affairs Committee Majority (@HouseForeignGOP) April 11, 2025

In her decision, Immigration Judge Jamee Comans referenced a memorandum from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “presumptive and sufficient evidence” to justify removal. This undated memo, which was submitted without any accompanying documentation, claims that Khalil’s beliefs and affiliations are inconsistent with US foreign policy, yet it does not include any accusations of criminal activity and, more importantly, denies the young graduate of his fundamental First Amendment rights.  Khalil’s legal representatives contested the government’s dependence on this memo and requested the opportunity to cross-examine Rubio. However, the court denied both this motion and a petition to dismiss the proceedings. Khalil’s illegal arrest and subsequent deportation signify a troubling intensification of the Trump administration’s attempts to suppress dissenting speech. According to the First Amendment, the federal government lacks the power to deport individuals or annul their residency solely based on their viewpoints.

American civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes has also pointed out the bare lack of evidence presented by the US government regarding the Khalil case – further confirming the obvious political nature of the case against him.

After the immigration judge in Mahmoud Khalil’s case ordered the government to provide evidence to justify deporting him, this is what they filed. I’ve been a lawyer for 14 years, & a criminal defense lawyer for 9 of those years, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Totally… pic.twitter.com/g9hwODQwmX

— Jenin Younes (@JeninYounesEsq) April 10, 2025

Khalil’s legal team is petitioning the New Jersey judge for his release on bail, enabling him to be with his wife, who is expected to give birth to their first child this month. They have until April 23 to submit a request for a waiver…

Document: The Amended Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus and Complaint, filed with the  Southern District of New York by Mahmoud Khalil Legal team 03/13/2025 (Source: American Civil Liberties Union – ACLU)

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IMAGE: Louisiana Judge Jamee Comans, who ruled on Friday that the government can deport Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil (Source: Nationalist News Canada)

Jonah Valdez reports for The Intercept...

Mahmoud Khalil’s Fight Against Deportation

Despite Friday’s immigration court ruling, the legal fight to keep Mahmoud Khalil in the U.S. may stretch months or years.

From a small courtroom in a remote immigration jail in Jena, La., Judge Jamee Comans ruled on Friday that the government can deport Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil based solely on his advocacy for Palestine.

Comans made her decision after weighing a single piece of evidence from the government, submitted in court two days earlier: a 1 ½-page letter written by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which he stated that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Friday’s decision represents a major blow to Khalil and other protesters targeted by the Trump administration. But Khalil’s attorneys promised the fight would continue in the courts.

Two major paths remain open to Khalil: one within the immigration court system and the other in federal district court. Despite Friday’s immigration court decision, Khalil’s attorneys continue to argue in federal district court in New Jersey for his release on free speech grounds. A resolution in the federal case could arrive in a matter of days or weeks. In immigration court, Khalil could apply for asylum, and appeal the ruling before the Board of Immigration Appeals, and could pursue further appeals within the U.S. circuit court processes that could stretch for months, or even years.

Khalil and his attorneys seem committed to such a lengthy fight, in part because they know that the outcome of his case carries major implications for other cases in which the Trump administration is targeting immigrants with arrest and deportation.

“There’s no stopping at Mahmoud Khalil, there’s no stopping at just pro-Palestinian protesters,” said Baher Azmy, a lead attorney in Khalil’s legal team on Friday. “Next, it could be LGBTQI activists under some pretext that that interferes with our foreign relations with Russia, racial justice activists, anyone.”

Path to release 

Separate from Khalil’s fight in the immigration court system is his petition for release, which is playing out in New Jersey’s federal district court. There, Khalil’s attorneys are arguing that his free speech rights are being violated and that he must be released.

That decision will come down to Judge Michael Farbiarz, who inherited the case from New York federal district court, where the petition was originally filed after Khalil’s attorneys successfully fought the government’s push to send the case to Louisiana.

Standing in the way of Farbiarz releasing Khalil is a separate jurisdictional battle. The Trump administration’s attorneys are making the argument that the case belongs only in the immigration courts. Khalil’s attorneys contend that his case is not just about his immigration status, but about his First Amendment rights since the government is targeting his protest activities.

Comans made clear during this week’s hearings in immigration court that she cannot weigh in on issues that have to do with the First Amendment or the Constitution in Khalil’s deportation proceedings. Khalil’s attorneys said this admission should help bolster their argument that the case belongs in district court.

Khalil’s team continues to move with added urgency since his wife, Noor Abdalla, is pregnant with their first child and is due by the end of April. A supporter read a prepared statement by Abdalla at the Louisiana court on Friday, calling the ruling “a devastating blow to our family.” She also said the ruling was “an indictment of our country’s immigration system and does not reflect truth, justice or the will of the American people.”

Regardless of whether Farbiarz orders Khalil’s release, Khalil’s fight against his deportation would continue separately in immigration court. If Khalil is released, however, it would dramatically change the timeline of his immigration court fight.

Immigration cases move much faster for individuals who are detained compared to those who are not in custody, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Counsel who has been watching Khalil’s case closely.

Reichlin-Melnick said that if Khalil remains jailed, his fight against deportation in the immigration system could end late this year or next. But if he were freed, the case could take up to three years before it reaches a conclusion, he said.

“This could theoretically, if he is released, not even make it to the circuit courts before Trump finishes out his term,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

Within the Immigration System

As a part of Friday’s ruling, Comans said Khalil has until April 26 to file for relief from deportation. His attorneys said they are considering filing for an asylum claim under the Convention Against Torture law.

Marc Van Der Hout, an attorney leading Khalil’s immigration case, said the government’s targeting of Khalil based on his protesting may end up bolstering his claim for asylum. Such a process would require further hearings.

If Khalil is released, he would be able to file for asylum in immigration court in New York, where he lives. New York immigration courts have a backlog of 100,000 asylum claims despite having only a few hundred judges, said Reichlin-Melnick. Getting to an asylum hearing, a process which he described as “a mini trial” with expert witnesses, could take several years.

If the immigration court rejects Khalil’s asylum claim, his attorneys said they plan to appeal the deportation ruling before the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is made up of immigration judges overseen by the Department of Justice. The appeal process before the board may play out over several months or  several years, depending on whether Khalil is still detained or free, Reichlin-Melnick said.

Before the board, Khalil and his attorneys would likely face stark opposition – case law would not be on his side. The last time the Board of Immigration Appeals saw a case related to the “adverse foreign policy” provision used in Khalil’s case was in 1999. In that case, the board ruled that the Secretary of State had the authority to deport someone under the same provision. But the circumstances were dramatically different. The board was ruling on the deportation of former Mexican attorney general Mario Ruiz Massieu, who had fled Mexico and entered the U.S. on a temporary visa to avoid a slew of criminal charges, including money laundering, embezzlement and torture.

Reichlin-Melnick also pointed out that Khalil, a legal permanent resident, would be able to hold on to his green card throughout the immigration court proceedings. It would only be revoked if the board rules against Khalil and upholds his deportability.

A “Kangaroo Court”

Van Der Hout and Khalil’s legal team said they have little confidence in finding relief in the immigration court system. Comans denied separate motions asking to extend the hearing into next week and a request for more evidence from the Department of Homeland Security. In her ruling, she said she does not have the authority to override Rubio’s letter.

After Friday’s hearing, attorneys for Khalil called the judge’s ruling a “rubber stamp” of the government’s argument. Van Der Hout accused the judge of rushing the matter, giving Khalil’s legal team less than two days to examine evidence from the government before the hearing. He referred to the process as a “kangaroo court.”

Khalil himself said after the ruling that the proceedings had lacked “due process rights and fundamental fairness.”

“This is exactly why the Trump administration has sent me to this court, 1,000 miles away from my family,” he said. 

Van Der Hout further accused the Trump administration of “court shopping,” sending the case into a jurisdiction more favorable to the government.

“They’re putting in their hand-picked people who will rule the way they want them to rule.”

Amid the Trump administration’s mass layoffs across the federal government, the administration fired 20 immigration judges in February, including nine judges from the Board of Immigration Appeals. All of the nine judges fired from the board were appointed by the Biden administration. Recently-fired immigration judges called the moves by Attorney General Pam Bondi politically motivated. The Bush administration carried out a similar tactic in the early 2000s to achieve rulings favorable to the government in immigration court, which officials at the time had denied.

Khalil’s attorneys said Friday that such moves may also play a factor in his case.

“They’re putting in their hand-picked people who will rule the way they want them to rule,” alleged Van Der Hout. “There’s basically going to be no justice in the immigration court system based on what we’re seeing now.”

Although his attorneys have yet to discuss legal strategy beyond an appeal to the immigration board, if the board rules against Khalil and upholds his deportation, his attorneys could continue their fight in the U.S. circuit court of appeals, Reichlin-Melnick said. There, they would be able to pursue their argument that the government is violating Khalil’s constitutional rights.

“This is by no means over yet – there’s a lot that has still yet to happen in this case,” Reichlin-Melnick said. “The decision that he can be deported is not a decision that he will be deported.”

See more news from The Intercept

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Syria’s Terrorist Coup, Israeli Expansion & Zionism’s Christian Purge, Mid East

 The Rice Report with Eric Rice & 21WIRE editor Patrick Henningsen

21WIRE

Watch this extended discussion hitting many of the key geopolitical and financial issues facing the world now including Al-Qaeda’s coup d’etat in Syria, US and Israel’s agenda to purge the Middle East on its once vibrant Christian population – encapsulated in the targeted attack on the ancient Aramaic community of Maaloula in Syria, and the weaponized sectarian chaos engineered by Western governments to deliberately inflame Sunni vs. Shia violence to fracture Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria’s secular and pluralistic societies.

In Syria, the Trump’s administration locked down 25% of the country in 2017 in order to steal Syria’s oil and leverage and regional control. The fall of Syria last December enabled Israel to carry out a strategic land grab of Syria’s Golan Heights and Mt Hermon areas, in order to expand its borders – and also to create a corridor for a future attack on Iran.

Trump’s recent war on Yemen, and threats to annihilate Iran are only inflaming the region even more.

Meanwhile, the central banks in Wall Street, London and Europe are busy upending the global financial system in preparation for their own monetary Great Reset. All this and more.

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Learn more about the Battle of Maloula from Patrick Henningsen’s 2017 on location report HERE

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SUPPORT THIS INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

ALSO JOIN 21WIRE’S TELEGRAM CHANNEL

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ER Editor: This just came out on Twitter/X and has to be done through tweets.

We put out a piece today on the furor over British Steel, and republished a very instructive 17 minute video by Ben Habib himself. He sounded like a man not only in command of the subject and giving a teachable moment to the public, but one who was aligned somehow with Trump. Farage (whom we believe has been 2.0 for a very long time) has clearly had his day; Habib split with Farage’s party last last year.

A reminder of what Habib said over British Steel —

British Steel was never theirs to sell.

Our leaders privatised it, handed it to the CCP, and now pretend to care about sovereignty.

Globalism is killing Britain — and this is how they did it. #TheNewsAtBen pic.twitter.com/V1Gkybr8Ov

— Ben Habib (@BackBrexitBen) April 13, 2025

********

Party link:

ADMIN POST

This is an interesting development.

— Tommy Robinson (@TRobinsonNewEra) April 14, 2025

There is a thread worth looking at within this tweet —

BREAKING: BEN HABIB BECOMES DIRECTOR OF INTEGRITY PARTY

– A new political Party has arrived on the scene.

Lets take a look at its values pic.twitter.com/QqdnAmyOIq

— Basil the Great (@Basil_TGMD) April 14, 2025

A new force in British politics @benhabib6 has become the sole Director of The Integrity Party (@Integrity_pol).

He’s been teasing a new party for months and it looks like we are about to get it according to Companies House filings.

Game on! Where do I sign up?

pic.twitter.com/tw1PJoA7D0

— Wolf (@WorldByWolf) April 14, 2025

Will Habib be teaming up with popular independent Rupert Lowe? —

Ousted Reform MP Rupert Lowe could join breakaway rightwing party

Someone who has done a little digging —

The integrity party registered on November 18th 2024.

On the 28th Novemeber the director Richard John Shaw(resigned on 11th April 2025) did a post on X prasing Ben Habib and saying he should be leader

He also did a post on the 9th of Jan saying who else would be in his dream… pic.twitter.com/WGJiVEpMAv

— Patriots Of Britain (@HoodedClaw1974) April 14, 2025

The Great British Pac. Ten bold aims. Chairman @benhabib6

Number 1, we will ensure that the right vote is not split.

Also Ben Habib
I’ve started a new party, thus splitting the vote.

Integrity my arse. Just another rich politician who wants to play leader. Ego’s galore pic.twitter.com/AVYVW6vF1F

— Patriots Of Britain (@HoodedClaw1974) April 14, 2025

To make sure that this party differs from the @reformparty_uk it has a “Limited” exemption. This means, Section 60 of the Companies Act 2006, it is restricted in what it can do to the point that it only benefits public perception and symbolic alignment.

In short it is nothing… pic.twitter.com/0uJNo8ZUot

— Steve A ReformUK (@SteveAReformUK) April 14, 2025

I think Ben is great, but my test for politicians is what they have to say about people like Tommy Robinson.

Political prisoners who are persecuted for speaking out against the approved narrative, patriots in favour of common sense.

I will wait and see…

— Fr Calvin Robinson (@calvinrobinson) April 14, 2025

Twitter response alternates between the cynical, the pessimistic (he’s splitting the populist right vote) and the optimistic.

************

Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com

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ER Editor: While this is not a new article below by any means, it squares well with one we published this past week by Vanessa Beeley titled —

ISRAEL: Girls Raped in Ritual Ceremonies Reveal the Horrors – Investigative Report

We believe Beeley didn’t recognize the Satanic indicators in her piece, although she did mention them.

This one below involving the testimony of New York rabbi Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg came across our path recently, which has been picked up by a lot of Twitter users. As old as the article is, there is no reason to believe that the hideous problem it illustrates has been fixed. The Vice article below focuses more on boys, whereas Beeley’s article identifies girls as the victims. Notice that both Israel and New York are mentioned. It is a problem of culturally-instituted pedophilia using children of all ages.

Does it have Satanic justification? Does this lead to murder and beyond? 

***

Some corroborating reports —

Silence and self-rule: Brooklyn’s Orthodox child abuse cover-up

Brooklyn DA releases names of 46 convicted child sex-abusers who terrorized the Orthodox Jewish community from within

Tweets —

This tweet refers to this story about Chabad Lubavitch in New York from early 2024 — The secret tunnels of Chabad Lubavitch and those ties to pedophilia

Any news about this incident, or has it also already been swept under the rug? pic.twitter.com/4Wj3jcARmz

— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal) March 23, 2025

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg has been reporting for many years on the large number of abuses and rapes of children within ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects. In 2013 he was interviewed about all this. Continue the Thread

— Kees van Biesheuvel (@BiesheuvelVan) January 13, 2024

“Zionists want to rule the earth. To achieve their ends they use black magic on the populace utilizing mass media. They regard satan worship as a means to gain their plans. They want to rule the earth using spectacles for power” ––Saint Paisios of Mount Athos pic.twitter.com/01r0aVMF9c

— A. Westgate (@a_westgate) February 25, 2025

Readers may be interested in this article, taken from the tweet above, indicating that Zionism is Satanic (versus Judaism), which practices child torture, murder and cannibalism. We don’t know about any overlap between Zionist rabbis and rabbis who are ordinarily Judaic in terms of their pedophilic practices. Perhaps there are.

Elder Paisios Against Zionists And Cowardly Orthodox

The Zionists want to rule the earth. To achieve their ends they use black magic and satanism. They regard satan-worship as a means to gain the strength they need to carry out their plans. They want to rule the earth using satanic power. – Saint Paisios

Jewish Rabbis burning the evil Zionist flag. pic.twitter.com/vVziTz9Bah

— Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) April 22, 2024

The Video Netanyahu Doesn’t Want the World to See

Tens of thousands of American anti-Zionist rabbis declared at the Barclays Center that the Israeli government does not represent the Jewish people and is a occupation group. pic.twitter.com/X2GU5xl7xp

— Sprinter Observer (@SprinterObserve) December 25, 2024

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ER: We invite readers to notice the effect this religious culture has on the men in certain families.

The Child-Rape Assembly Line

CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM for VICE

Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg—who is 63 with a long, graying beard—recently sat down with me to explain what he described as a “child-rape assembly line” among sects of fundamentalist Jews. He cleared his throat. “I’m going to be graphic,” he said.

A member of Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidim fundamentalist branch of Orthodox Judaism, Nuchem designs and repairs mikvahs in compliance with Torah Law. The mikvah is a ritual Jewish bathhouse used for purification. Devout Jews are required to cleanse themselves in the mikvah on a variety of occasions: Women must visit following menstruation, and men have to make an appearance before the High Holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Many of the devout also purify themselves before and after the act of sex and before the Sabbath.

On a visit to Jerusalem in 2005, Rabbi Rosenberg entered into a mikvah in one of the holiest neighborhoods in the city, Mea She’arim. “I opened a door that entered into a schvitz,” he told me. “Vapors everywhere, I can barely see. My eyes adjust, and I see an old man, my age, long white beard, a holy-looking man, sitting in the vapors. On his lap, facing away from him, is a boy, maybe seven years old. And the old man is having anal sex with this boy.”

Rabbi Rosenberg paused, gathered himself, and went on: “This boy was speared on the man like an animal, like a pig, and the boy was saying nothing. But on his face—fear. The old man [looked at me] without any fear, as if this was common practice. He didn’t stop. I was so angry, I confronted him. He removed the boy from his penis, and I took the boy aside. I told this man, ‘It’s a sin before God, a mishkovzucher. What are you doing to this boy’s soul? You’re destroying this boy!’ He had a sponge on a stick to clean his back, and he hit me across the face with it. ‘How dare you interrupt me!’ he said. I had heard of these things for a long time, but now I had seen.”

The child sex abuse crisis in ultra-Orthodox Judaism, like that in the Catholic Church, has produced its share of shocking headlines in recent years. In New York, and in the prominent Orthodox communities of Israel and London, allegations of child molestation and rape have been rampant. The alleged abusers are schoolteachers, rabbis, fathers, uncles—figures of male authority. The victims, like those of Catholic priests, are mostly boys. Rabbi Rosenberg believes around half of young males in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community—the largest in the United States and one of the largest in the world—have been victims of sexual assault perpetrated by their elders. Ben Hirsch, director of Survivors for Justice, a Brooklyn organization that advocates for Orthodox sex abuse victims, thinks the real number is higher. “From anecdotal evidence, we’re looking at over 50 percent. It has almost become a rite of passage.”

Ultra-Orthodox Jews who speak out about these abuses are ruined and condemned to exile by their own community. Dr. Amy Neustein, a nonfundamentalist Orthodox Jewish sociologist and editor of Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities and Child Sex Scandals, told me the story of a series of Hasidic mothers in Brooklyn she got to know who complained that their children were being preyed on by their husbands.

In these cases, the accused men “very quickly and effectively engage the rabbis, the Orthodox politicians, and powerful Orthodox rabbis who donate handsomely to political clubs.” The goal, she told me, is “to excise the mother from the child’s life.” Rabbinical courts cast the mothers aside, and the effects are permanent. The mother is “amputated.” One woman befriended by Dr. Neustein, a music student at a college outside New York, lost contact with all six of her children, including an infant she was breastfeeding at the time of their separation.

ER: Apologies, but photographs from the original article have been removed.

Rabbi Rosenberg inspects a ritual purification bath, known as a mikvah. In 2005, he witnessed a young boy being raped inside a similar bath.

Seven years ago, Rabbi Rosenberg started blogging about sex abuse in his community and opened a New York City hotline to field sex abuse complaints. He has posted appeals on YouTube, appeared on CNN, and given speeches across the US, Canada, Israel, and Australia. Today, he is the lone whistleblower among the Satmar. For this he is reviled, slandered, hated, feared. He receives death threats on a regular basis. In Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers, advertisements taken out by the self-described “great rabbis and rabbinical judges of the city of New York” have denounced him as “a stumbling block for the House of Israel,” “a public rebuker and preacher of ethics” who “persists in his rebelliousness” and whose “voice has been heard among many Jewish families, especially young people in their innocence… drawn to listen to his poisonous and revolting speeches.” Leaflets distributed in Williamsburg and Borough Park, the centers of ultra-Orthodoxy in Brooklyn, display his bearded face over the body of a writhing snake. “Corrupt Informer,” reads one of the leaflets, followed by the declaration that Rabbi Rosenberg’s “name should rot in hell forever. They should cut him off from all four corners of the earth.”

When Rabbi Rosenberg wants to bathe at a mikvah in Brooklyn to purify himself, none will have him. When he wants to go to synagogue, none will have him. “He is finished in the community, butchered,” said a fellow rabbi who would only talk anonymously. “No one will look at him, and those who will talk to him, they can’t let it be known. The pressure in our community, it’s incredible.”

The powerful men—and it is worth noting that this community is regulated by men only—who govern the world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism would rather their adherents be blind in their faith, their eyes closed to the horrors Rabbi Rosenberg is exposing. Like the Catholic establishment, the rabbinate seeks to cover up the crimes, quiet the victims, protect the abusers, and deflect potential criticism of their institutional practices. Those who speak out are vilified, and the faithful learn to shut their mouths. When the father of the seven-year-old boy whom Rabbi Rosenberg rescued from the Jerusalem bathhouse showed up to collect his son, he couldn’t believe his son had been raped. Trembling, terrified, he whisked his son away to get medical help but was still too scared to raise a formal complaint. According to Ben and Survivors for Justice, “The greatest sin is not the abuse, but talking about the abuse. Kids and parents who step forward to complain are crushed.”

As for Rabbi Rosenberg, when he voiced his concerns to the rabbinate in Israel, he was brought up on charges by the mishmeres hatznuis, the archconservative Orthodox “modesty squad,” which regulates, often through threats of violence, proper moral conduct and dress in the relations between men and women. The modesty squad is a sort of Jewish Taliban. According to Rabbi Rosenberg, the rapist he caught in the act was a member of the modesty squad, which charged him with the unconscionable offense of having previously been seen walking down a street in Jerusalem with a married woman. “But it’s OK to molest children,” he adds.

The abuse and its cover-up are symptoms of wider political dysfunction—or, more precisely, symptoms of socially disastrous political control by religious elites.

“This isn’t a problem about a few aberrant cases or an old-fashioned community reluctant to talk to police about sexual matters,” said Michael Lesher, a practicing Jew who has investigated Orthodox sex abuse and represented abuse victims. “This is about a political economy that links Orthodox Judaism with other fundamentalist creeds and with aspects of right-wing ideologies generally. It’s an economy in which genuine religious values will never really rise to the top, so long as they’re tied to the poisonous priorities that elevate status and power over the basic human needs of the most vulnerable among us.”

Michael, who is completing a book on the topic, noted that the infamous Rabbi Elior Chen, convicted in 2010 in what was arguably Israel’s worst case of serial child abuse, is still defended in public statements by leading ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Among other legal and moral crimes, the rabbi forced his victims to eat feces, claiming that this cruelty was necessary to “purify” the children he abused.

According to Ben, the ultra-Orthodox community has never been as repressive as it is today. The repression, as he describes it, stems from the burden of having too many children. Huge families are encouraged: Every child born to a Hasid is seen as “a finger in the eye of Hitler.” Ben also told me that the average family size among Williamsburg Hasidim is nine, and that some families include more than 15 children.

ER: missing photograph

Mikvah Israel of Boro Park, one of the many mikvahs in Brooklyn that no longer accept Rabbi Rosenberg.

Families saddled with an increasing number of children soon enter into a cycle of poverty. There is simultaneously an extreme separation of the sexes, which is unprecedented in the history of the Hasidim. There is limited general education, to the point that most men in the community are educated only to the third grade, and receive absolutely no sexual education. No secular newspapers are allowed, and internet access is forbidden. “The men in the community are undereducated by design,” Ben said. “You have a community that has been infantilized. They have been trained not to think. It’s a sort of totalitarian control.”

The rabbis, dominating an ignorant and largely poverty-stricken flock, determine the fate of every individual in the community. Nothing is done without the consent of the rabbinical establishment. A man wants to buy a new car—he goes to the rabbi for counsel. A man wants to marry—the rabbi tells him whether or not he should marry a particular bride. As for the women, they don’t get to ask the rabbi anything. Their place is beneath contempt.

Michael told me that current Orthodox leadership, accruing wealth from the tithes of subservient followers, is “drifting to the right, politically as well as religiously.” Many rabbis in New York City have taken up the banner of neoliberalism. “Every English-language Orthodox publication I know embraced Romney during the 2012 elections, decried national health insurance, blamed liberals for bribing the lower classes,” he said. “In Orthodox society, just as in America at large, the financial mismatch between the elite and the rest of us is ominously large.”

Michael also notes that the problem is not confined to the extremists. “The same patterns of victim-blaming, covering up, idealizing the rabbis so that cover-ups aren’t even acknowledged, are found all across the spectrum of Orthodoxy,” he told me. “The Orthodox left was shamefully slow to react to Rabbi Baruch Lanner’s abuse or to the similar case of Rabbi Mordechai Elon.” Rabbi Lanner, a former New Jersey yeshiva high school principal, was found guilty in 2000 of sexually abusing dozens of teenage students over the decades of his tenure. Rabbi Elon, who had publicly denounced homosexuality, was convicted last August on two counts of forcible sexual assault on a male minor, following several years of reports of his abuse of young boys.

“I have children come to me with their parents, and the blood is coming out of the anus,” Rabbi Rosenberg told me when we met. “These are zombies for life. What are we to do?”

This of course is the key question, and no answers are forthcoming. Michael holds out little hope that the situation will change. “If Orthodox institutions continue on their current trajectory,” he said, “I’d say things could get worse before they get better.”

A few weeks after our interview, Rabbi Rosenberg was walking through the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn when an unidentified man rushed up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder, and threw a cup of bleach in his face. He went to the hospital with facial burns and was temporarily blinded. Such is the measure of justice among the Satmar that a once-respected rabbi, now amputated from the community, should find himself chemically burned on a street in a neighborhood considered holy.

Later Rabbi Rosenberg told me a story of being surrounded by young boys in Williamsburg. The boys cursed him, laughed at him, threatened him, and spat at him. He wondered how many of them would end up molested.

Source

Featured image source:

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Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com

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Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.

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Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.