Special Announcement: Because of Rosh Hashana (the New Year) next week, the JAHG-USA Newsletter will be postponed until the following week (on October 11, G-d willing), right before Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). May you be "signed and sealed" (in the heavenly judgment) for a good year!

"Issues of World War III" Survey

Last week's question, "What should the US do about Usama bin Laden?", sparked a stronger response than usual. And almost every single answer called for finding and destroying the governments that sponsor terrorism — although there was some divergence of opinion as to which governments those might be. The only other answer was an "other," which seemed to imply that it's possible to find and neutralize bin Laden directly. Here are some excerpts of relevant comments by our readers:

• "Yes, destroy all terrorists and their governments, period. Bush needs to follow thru. That includes Iran."
• "Destroy the ones who put Osama bin Laden on the pedestal and those who are the enemy of both Israel and the USA. Rise early in the morning to kill those coming to kill you...."
• "We already know where he (bin Laden) is, we always have, bin Laden and his family have been in collusion with the Bush family for years. It's all just a big front show for the public that doesn't know what's really going on."

Factual Background:
Usama bin Laden and his organization have been known to western intelligence since the early 1990s, but the references to a group known as "al Qaeda" do not date back, so far as we can determine, before 1998. It was not until after the 9/11/01 attacks on the US that the names "bin Laden" and "al Qaeda" ("the Base") became household terms. At that time, "al Qaeda" was vaguely described as a small group of perhaps a few hundred terrorists; within weeks, the descriptions by the media and the Bush Administration had grown fancifully into a massive organization of thousands or tens of thousands of highly trained, sophisticated "super fighters." In the months following the Afghan war, the notion of "al Qaeda" further mushroomed into a supposedly worldwide super organization of lurking tentacles, invisible, autonomous cells, and an arsenal of men and technologies that would rival the villains of the most elaborate James Bond movies.

The "al Qaeda" legend became so grotesque and impossibly absurd that it has turned into something of a joke in the Middle East, where people are very familiar with such well-known, established terrorist groups as the PLO, Islamic Jihad, Hezballah, the Amal Militia, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), and many others — but no one there has ever heard of an "al Qaeda."

The reason is apparently very simple: The organization "al Qaeda" does not exist, and never has. To this day, the most authoritative study of bin Laden's career is Bodansky's 1999 book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America. Bodansky reveals that the name "al Qaeda" was nothing more than a code name briefly used in the 1990s to refer to a network of bank accounts. Yes, that's right — bank accounts.

Bin Laden, as it turns out, has never headed any terrorist group of his own, nor does he have the skills, knowledge, or experience to do so. He is a banker and a smuggler, and that's how he assists other terrorist groups. He has worked for Soviet intelligence, generally operating under the control of their subsidiary Iranian intelligence (which is headed by a KGB agent in Tehran). Bin Laden was assigned by his Soviet Russian (and Iranian) masters to work for a time out of Communist Sudan, then in Communist Afghanistan. His job is to smuggle terrorists (members of other groups such as the PLO) across national borders without detection, providing them fake ID papers and other necessities; he also moves large sums of money internationally to finance terrorist operations, using a complicated network of bank accounts and services to launder and hide the transfers. But none of the terrorist activities themselves are under bin Laden's control; at most, he has only served as a consulting advisor to the Hezballah International, an umbrella group coordinating various Marxist revolutionaries under Iranian (and Soviet Russian) supervision.

All of this suddenly clarifies why bin Laden can't be found. Assuming he was even in Afghanistan at the time US forces attacked (which is actually quite unlikely), he was certainly able to slip out of the country with ease — either directly into the Soviet Union (i.e., Soviet Uzbekistan or Soviet Tajikistan) on the northern Afghan border, or into Communist-controlled Iran on the western border. Even US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted that possibility at the time, but later let it drop in favor of ongoing operations along the Pakistani border to the east of Afghanistan (the one area bin Laden certainly never would have gone!). Bin Laden is today probably staying in either Iran or Soviet Russia, helping provide logistical support for Soviet-run terrorism from there.

This also helps identify the governments sponsoring terrorism, because now we can see who are the terrorists. We are not dealing with some mysterious, undefinable "al Qaeda" network; our enemies are the same Communist terrorist groups who have been fighting us for decades, including the PLO and its subgroups, its close allies (Hezballah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PKK, etc.), and certain other Marxist, anti-religious groups — all working together with Communist groups throughout the world, such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), and many others.

Indeed, on the morning of 9/11, it was precisely two of these better-known groups that openly boasted and took credit for the attack: The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), an overtly Marxist, anti-Islamic PLO member group; and the Islamic Jihad, a close ally funded and coordinated by the PLO. The notion of "al Qaeda" was nothing more than a smoke screen used by President Bush — who enthusiastically funds and supports the PLO and its "Palestinian Authority," and who brazenly calls for a PLO state (something even Clinton never dared do) — to divert American anger away from the PLO. But disrupting bin Laden's operations could also interfere with PLO logistics, and so Bush hasn't been very enthusiastic about actually capturing bin Laden, either; in fact, months before the 9/11 attacks, Bush was quietly pushing to drop the earlier hunt for bin Laden, even against conservative pressure.

(As an aside, bin Laden himself never did take credit for the 9/11 attacks; he merely released a video weeks afterward, giving suggestive hints to tantalize America, presumably on orders from his Soviet masters.)

So who are the governments sponsoring terror? As has been public knowledge for over 20 years now, the worldwide terror network is controlled, financed, armed, and assigned missions by the Soviet KGB and its counterparts in Red China. The Communist Bloc uses the Communist regimes in Cuba, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, and other countries as middlemen to provide support and conduct operations. This means that every financial transaction America does with any of those countries provides the ultimate source of economic and technological support for terrorism — including the 9/11 attacks. Deals with Moscow or Beijing only help fuel more terrorism.

Relevant Torah Principles:
1) As noted in past issues, the Noahide commandment of Justice doesn't just allow gentile governments to protect national security, it requires them to do so. This includes any and all efforts to conduct a quickly victorious war against terrorism.

2) It goes without saying that treason — the providing of aid and comfort to the enemy — must be stopped and prosecuted according to the commandment of Justice, whether the treason is committed by ordinary citizens or by the leaders of the land. The US Constitution already contains provisions for this, complete with capital punishment.

Analysis:
The Bush Administration knowingly aids and supports the PLO terrorists, even while they continue their attacks. The President and his advisors ignore the self-proclaimed involvement of the PLO in the 9/11 attacks, and instead send American soldiers on wild goose chases in remote countries where the PLO is not to be found — and even then refuses to allow the troops to fight the Communist enemy, or even to defend themselves with a free hand for victory. Instead, US troops are forced to carry out crippled, ineffective "police actions" against undefined targets on turf they are not allowed to control. And while the troops are being attacked with Soviet- and Red Chinese-made weapons, President Bush continues to provide economic and technological aid to the Soviet and Red Chinese military-industrial complexes that produce those weapons.

Nothing could be a clearer, more explicit definition of treason. The US Constitution clearly empowers Congress under these circumstances to impeach and remove Bush from office, and even to send him to prison or give him the death penalty. The same applies for the other members of the Bush cabinet, past and present (and for the preceding Clinton Administration as well). Furthermore, Congress could easily impose absolute economic sanctions against all Communist regimes, and an excellent place to start is with terminating US funding directly to the terrorist PLO — funding Bush continues ardently to defend and protect against Congressional opposition.

After such measures would be implemented, we could see whether the Communist regimes continue to exist, and whether further war against the weakened Communist Bloc would then be necessary.

And now for this week's survey question:

Only one answer per e-mail address will be accepted; only e-mail addresses on our subscription list are eligible. Please send your input by Tuesday, October 11, 2005, 12pm PST (two weeks from now).

This week's examples:
Rabbi Ezra Schochet, Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad, Los Angeles, CA (for a second time); and
Rabbi Chaim Zev Citron, Congregation Ahavas Yisroel & Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad, Los Angeles, CA

Some weeks ago, we reported that Rabbi Schochet, the dean of a Lubavitch boys' yeshiva, received our Proclamation (declaring the Torah duty for everyone to help defund the PLO) on February 23rd, but that we never heard back from him. Unfortunately, we now have more bad news to report. On August 31st, a JAHG-USA volunteer approached Rabbi Schochet not just once, but twice, trying to persuade him to sign. But Schochet ardently refused, struggling to invent excuses. He tried quibbling with the language of one paragraph; when he realized the volunteer knew the sources well enough not to be fooled, Schochet switched to insisting that we ask some other rabbi instead. When our volunteer cited speeches of the Lubavitcher Rebbe as an answer, Schochet brazenly argued against them and tried to twist the Rebbe's statements upside-down. So now his refusal is absolutely explicit and public.

Sadly, Schochet's terrible example sweeps other, more well-meaning rabbis into his evil. Rabbi Citron, for example, received our Proclamation on March 24th at 9:50am, yet never answered. This was particularly surprising to Boruch Ellison, who has often attended Rabbi Citron's synagogue and knows him well enough to expect better results. Again we tried contacting Rabbi Citron on June 26th, this time by e-mail, but again with no results.

Rabbi Citron runs an independent synagogue, but he also works under Rabbi Schochet as a yeshiva teacher. As if this doesn't box Rabbi Citron in badly enough, the yeshiva is also under the ultimate control of Rabbi Boruch S. Cunin, head Chabad shliach for California — another adamant "refusenik" who opposes the PLO defunding campaign (and, like Schochet, the Rebbe's Noahide campaign, as reviewed at www.noahide.com/cunin.htm). Between Schochet and Cunin, Rabbi Citron has little or no maneuvering room, although we are confident he would otherwise fully acknowledge his responsibility to endorse the PLO-defunding campaign. This is a dark time in which we live, such that the Torah is prostituted to the highest bidder and its true supporters must run and hide.

This week's example:
Rabbi Shmuly Hayes, Chabad of UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

Rabbi Hayes received the Proclamation on the same day as Rabbi Citron (March 24th, at 12:30pm), and also never responded. Thinking he may have forgotten or overlooked this important letter, we re-contacted Rabbi Hayes on June 26th by e-mail. We can happily report that he responded that same day, enthusiastically endorsing our Proclamation and wishing us great success. Rabbi Hayes runs the personal synagogue of Rabbi Boruch S. Cunin (head California shliach) at the University of California, Los Angeles; this may explain his original hesitation. But our e-mail message differed from the original one in that we now listed dozens of other rabbis who had endorsed the Proclamation in the meantime, and this could well have changed Rabbi Hayes' mind.

In any case, Rabbi Hayes became the first of a few California Chabad rabbis to begin endorsing our anti-PLO campaign, possibly opening the door to more defections from underneath Cunin. If the rabbi at Cunin's own synagogue can find the courage to sign, so can many others.

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, the up-to-date status of their responses, and how you can get help the campaign, visit ATTAC Report at http://www.attacreport.com/plo/.

Given the lengthy newsletter this week, we'll postpone publishing more letters until next issue (G-d willing).

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

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