"In recent years, which prominent civil rights figure took a leading position in protesting US naval testing on Vieques Island in Puerto Rico?" It was Jesse Jackson, as MF (?) correctly answered, although Al Sharpton has also been involved.

Vieques Island, near Puerto Rico's main island, was for 60 years the main live-fire testing and training ground for the US Navy and Marines, described as the US military's best such facility in the Atlantic. Strategically vital not only for America, US bases in Puerto Rico have brought hundreds of millions of dollars annually into the local economy. The loss of such bases would handicap America's military and potentially destabilize Puerto Rico itself — both major goals of the Communists.

Which is the reason that the campaign against the bomb-testing base on Vieques dates back to at least the 1970s, organized and supported by a range of Cuban-controlled terrorist groups such as the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), the Machete-Wielders (Los Macheteros), and others. Also backing the protests have been the May 19th Communist Organization (M-19 CO) of New York and its parent groups, the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee (PFOC) and the Weather Underground Organization (WUO); all these are openly Marxist-Leninist terror groups operating under Cuban control. (Profiles of these groups can be viewed at ATTAC Report, our sister site.)

In the late 1990s, veteran leftist organizer Jesse Jackson lent his hand to the terrorist-organized anti-Vieques protests. Jackson's Marxist ties began with his leading positions in various Communist-front "civil rights" groups. He has supported Communist revolutionaries around the globe, including such sadistic murderers as South Africa's Nelson Mandela (the African National Congress leader who has advocated the torture-murder of blacks), Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide (head of the Lavalas, Cuban-directed terrorists who imitate Mandela's methods in the torture-murder of Haitian blacks), the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and others; Jackson has also personally met with leading Communist dictators, including Assad of Syria and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

It's painfully obvious why Jackson doesn't want the US to maintain its critical bases in Puerto Rico.

And now for this week's contest question:

Be sure to e-mail your name and answer to [address withheld] by Sunday, July 17, 2005, 12pm PST.

This week's example: Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, head of Chabad of the West Coast (California & Nevada), Los Angeles, CA
(Part 1)

Rabbi Cunin has now had innumerable opportunities to endorse our proclamation (calling on all Jews to participate in the campaign to defund the PLO), yet he has ducked out every single time. He knows well, of course, that we have been sending the proclamation to dozens of Chabad representatives under his control — including two of his own sons (Cunin is well known for monitoring every little thing that happens on "his" turf); but we also sent it to him directly by mail (priority mail with delivery confirmation, received on February 23, 2005 at 8:19am), then followed up by e-mail on June 26, added in a phone call to his secretary on July 4, and on July 5 even faxed a copy to his personal assistant, his son-in-law Levi Beidelman (sp.?) (who promised to give it straight to Cunin the next morning).

To top it all off, a JAHG-USA volunteer even presented the proclamation to Cunin in person last week, catching Cunin at a moment when he was not meeting with anyone nor busy with anything in particular — and still Cunin simultaneously (a) feigned ignorance and (b) knowingly refused to deal with this matter of saving lives!

This is hardly Cunin's first time rebelling against the Lubavitcher Rebbe, whom he ardently pretends to follow. In November of 2001, several members of JAHG-USA in the Los Angeles area were involved with the Rebbe's Noachide campaign, in particular a project to teach Christians not to celebrate the X-mas holiday; this is based on clear halachos (religious rules of Judaism) that are binding on all of us today, rules that the Lubavitcher Rebbe taught and promoted repeatedly. Yet, despite the fact that our project was (1) mandated by Jewish law, (2) supported with clear quotations from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Maimonides, and other authoritative sources, (3) pursued according to the Rebbe's explicit instructions for all Jews to act on their own initiative, without consulting higher authorities or asking permission, and (4) operated independently of the Lubavitch organization, Cunin nonetheless flew totally out of control and tried desperately to stop our volunteers from distributing fliers for our project.

On November 18, 2001, Cunin left a panicky, infuriated message on our voice mail demanding that we immediately stop "any activites" we were doing, angrily issuing orders as if we were under his authority and using various techniques for intimidation. Naturally, we neither responded nor paid any attention to his nonsense.

But the voice mail message (running time 1:29) can be heard at a page on our site, Noahide.com, where the brief story of the campaign is also given. Listening to it gives one a clearer understanding of how much Cunin believes he has the right to control anything Jewish that happens in California — even to the point of suppressing one of the Rebbe's leading campaigns. It's therefore no surprise that he isn't particularly interested in saving lives in Israel, either.

As a reminder of our obligations to save lives, here's the next halacha from the proclamation:

Proclamation Rule No. 8
One who sees his fellow Jews not carrying out their responsibility of saving lives must speak out and pressure those Jews to do their duty; if another person, despite knowing his responsibility, still refuses to act, "we shame him publicly, publicize his (ongoing) sin, reproach him to his face, and despise and curse him, until he will return to what is proper" (Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Deios 6:8), if this is the only way to make him take proper action. [Additional comment: This halacha, which we are all required to follow, is the reason we are publicly exposing to shame all rabbis who refuse even to lift a finger to stop funding PLO terrorism. Lives are at stake, and there's simply no more time to sit around and treat these renegades as if they were legitimate rabbis or "observant" Jews.]

…AND THE HALL OF FAME
Some Chabad Shluchim Are Helping the JAHG-USA Campaign

This week's example: Rabbi Hillel Laufer, Oholei Torah Yeshiva, Brooklyn, NY

A JAHG-USA representative approached Rabbi Laufer in person on May 26, showing him the proclamation. Without hesitation, Rabbi Laufer signed it on the spot. Several other rabbis were present, and Rabbi Laufer's example helped encourage them to do likewise, as we hope to review in future issues (G-d willing). He did not question the need for this campaign or his responsibility to get others involved. It's a good beginning, and a stark contrast to Cunin, who only discourages others from doing their duty.

What do you think about Jewish leadership on PLO defunding? Send us your comments at [address withheld].

For a complete listing of all rabbis who have received our proclamation, and the up-to-date status of their responses, visit ATTAC Report at http://www.attacreport.com/plo/.

This Week on ATTAC Report

This week's edition of our sister site, ATTAC Report, presents: The hidden public health/CDC agenda behind epidemic scares; profiles of six more groups in the terror network operating in North America; 71 prisons and concentration camps in and around the city of Moscow, including a center for medical experimentation on prisoners.

"...How [do] you think there would be any possibility of enforcing the 7 noahide laws on roughly 6 billion people?" — RM.

Our response: This hostile (and obviously sarcastic) writer, who gives absolutely no indication of his own religion or philosophy (probably for good reason) apparently thinks the entire human race would have difficulty refraining from murder, rape, theft, idolatry, blasphemy, and anarchism — in other words, the main things prohibited by the basic Noachide Laws (again raising the obvious question of the writer's own unstated philosophy).

Of course, there are a number of changes that people will have to make upon becoming Hasidic Gentiles, including dropping false religions and accepting the authority of G-d's Word, both written (as in the Scriptures) and oral (as in the Talmud). But hundreds of millions of people today are already becoming dissatisfied with established religious authorities, switching from one sect to another or even leaving organized religion altogether. As we near the coming of Moshiach and the Redemption, more and more people are sensing something is terribly wrong with their religions and are in the mood to search for new Truth. The Lubavitcher Rebbe emphasized that such symptoms express the fact that the world is now ready for the final and complete Redemption.

There will certainly be some people who don't want truth at all; the Biblical prophets (in Zechariah 14, for example) speak of them destroying themselves in G-d's final judgment. If any semi-corrupt people survive the final War of Gog and Magog, they will easily be brought to the fear of G-d under the new justice system at that time — the last resort for those who need extra persuasion not to be criminals. But the overwhelming majority of the human race will yearn for the Truth and seek it out, as stated in Zechariah 8:22-23, Jeremiah 16:19-21, and elsewhere.

We are today witnessing the most dramatic period of cultural transition in the history of the world, and it's our opportunity to participate in making it happen.

Send your letter to the editor to [address withheld].

Be sure to visit our Web site, Noahide.com.