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ICJ Finding Of “Genocide In Gaza”

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The ICJ (International Court of Justice) with 5 of 13 judges being Islamic, found Israel guilty last week of “genocide in Gaza.” This was a travesty of known Iranian bribes moving paid-off South African leaders to make false accusations, and then other Islamists piling on to create a public relations slander-cascade onto Israel.

Some genocide facts for anyone interested.

genocide | ˈjenəˌsīd |

[noun] the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a nation or racial or otherwise legitimately defined group with the aim of entirely erasing that nation or group from existence.

“Genocide” is not “a tragically high civilian casualty ratio” in warfare (and Israel’s ratio is the lowest in the history of urban warfare, per West Point’s professor of Urban Warfare Studies): especially responsive warfare in which a victim (Israel) is warring in response to an Aggressor’s attack, and seeking to remove any ongoing ability to make more such aggressive war.

There is no evidence that Israel has the aim of destroying ANY nation, race, or non-criminal group.

Israel is waging war against Hamas: a criminal, terrorist organization, which attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, committing mass murder, mass-rape, mass-pillaging, and attempted mass-civilian-center destruction by wanton missile barrage – all of which were “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”

Israel is warring with the aim of destroying the organization, Hamas (not all Arabs or Muslims everywhere), just as the WWII Allies warred to destroy Nazism and Nazi Germany – not the entire nation of Germany, nor all Germans everywhere.

Hamas has (a) the genocidal erasure of Israel and all Jews everywhere written into its charter; and (b) committed a military aggression against the Israeli civilian population; (c) and the chartered goal of eventually violently conquering and erasing ALL of non-Islamic humanity. 

  1. The ICJ ordered Israel to act non-genocidally by “opening the Rafah Crossing to allow for the passage of sufficient humanitarian aid from Egypt into Gaza.” BUT …
    1. It is EGYPT who CLOSED the Rafah Crossing! 
    2. It also came to light recently, Hamas-Ruled Gaza and Egypt have a highly developed array of tunnels between Egyptian Sinai and Gaza, and could easily have been using them to pass food, water, medical aid, etc into Gaza at will. Hamas nor Egypt have not, and do not. No Islamic countries have shown any desire to help alleviate suffering in Gaza, because suffering in Gaza helps the Pan-Islamist, Pan-Arabist, and Antisemitic causes.
  2. The ICJ Ordered Israel to cease all military operations in Rafah, based on a report of “massive civilian casualties that would surely follow it; BUT …
    1. Israel’s Army, already setting records for low ratios of civilian casualties from urban warfare actions, conducted an even more-restrained “house-to-house” action in Rafah (risking and costing many more Israeli soldiers’ lives than a broad-scale attack) … and the “report” on which the ICJ based its indictment of Israel has been proven for weeks now (as even the antisemitically dominated UN has admitted) to be inaccurate to the extent that the figures from the Gaza/Hamas sources were shown to be doubled — 
  3. The ICJ Momentum hs coming from South Africa … whose ANC leaders were personally bankrupt UNTIL Islamic power Iran has PAID off their debts and PAID THEM more profits, even while their country falls into the condition of a “failed state.” In short – South Africa is being PAID by Iran to use their podium as a nation to hurt Israel and help Pan-Islamism.
  4. The Sinai-Gaza parity is stunning. Israel gave back Sinai to Egypt in a “land for peace” deal. It turns out. Hamas has been getting military supplies from Egypt with Egypt’s full knowledge, via Hamas tunnels from Sinai into Gaza; just as Gaza was handed over by Israel totally to the Arabs with hope that the Arabs there having 100% control and self-determination would build “The Singapore Of The Middle East.” 
  5. Instead, Gaza elected Hamas (an Islamic genocidal and hegemonist party and organization), as their official government, and set about to build a military based armed to the teeth, and filled with military-use tunnels –– all directly contrary to the terms under which Israel handed Gaza over to them and left.

Israel has NO “genocidal” acts or intentions. 

It is only seeking to exist securely in its own land.

Finally – the highly-abused and misrepresented word, “Zionism” – which a Dartmouth College protester recently defined as “Jews thinking they are the best people on earth, and should rule the world” – actually ONLY means (a) Jews, like any other nation, have the right to self-determination, and (b) Jews have the right to live securely and peacefully in their recovered ancestral homeland, as well as if they are living identifiably Jewish anywhere else in the world.

The Dartmouth student’s definition comes from a fake document of two centuries ago, the antisemitic blood-libel, “The Protocols Of The Learned Elders of Zion” – which alleged falsely to be a record of the meetings of the secret Jewish cabal planning the Jewish takeover of the world.

An Ivy League student in 2024 believing the same blood libel having created the Eastern European pogroms of the 1800’s is a shameful tragedy in American higher – indeed, highest – education.

There is only one group in Gaza having (a) committed actual acts of genocide, (b) having genocide officially included in its organizational chartered goals, (c) have said plainly it will continue massacring every Non-Muslim everywhere and every opportunity it gets until it achieves what its “jihad” (sacred war) wants: an entirely Islamic planet Earth with no Israel, no Jews, “Infidels” (non-Muslims).

“Fight those who disbelieve until there is no more resistance, and all religions are for Allah,” the Quran of Muhammad commands (Quran Al-Anfal 8;10:5:39); meaning, every human alive accepts Muhammad as God’s One, Final Messenger, and his Quran as the definitive revelation of what the Creator wants all humankind to know and do, morally and legally.

Hamas has declared it exists to kill everyone, and every idea, that is not them.

Israel has said, “we just want to be allowed to live in peace and security.”
Israel does not want to conquer anywhere or eliminate anyone.

The ICJ decision is, thus, not “justice” of any kind, nor a “verdict” (speaking of the truth of a matter).

It is Pan-Islamism, Pan-Arabism, and plain old Antisemitism … again.

As Aaron Sorkin so brilliantly wrote a decade ago: “It’s time to suit up, ’cause they’re coming for us now.”

“Never again” is here … again.

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

New York City • 26 May 2024

7 October Endgame Is Upon Us Now

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Sinwar’s Endgame & Israel’s Difficult Choice

“Never give your enemy what he wants. Never give him anything he asks for.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“He (Ishmael and his descendants) will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand will (by self-defensive necessity) be against him.” – Genesis 16:12

“The Islamic Government over Iraq – and ‘the rest.‘” – Translation meaning of “ISIS” or “ISIL” or “DA’ESH” (“the rest” wa-shahb – means “the rest of the entire world.”

 

We are now in the exact “endgame” for which Islamo-fanatics Sinwar and Hamas mass-kidnapped Israelis.

As of early mid-April 2024, the IDF has cleared out most of Hamas from Gaza.

The few remaining brigades of Hamas have retreated into Rafakh in the extreme southwest of Gaza, and the IDF is closing in. The hostages are being held by Hamas specifically to

(a) force Israeli cessation of operations (“cease-fire”), and

(b) to extract an internationally-legally-binding promise from Israel it will not hunt down and execute the leaders/planners of the Hamas 7 October Massacre the way Israel hunted down and executed the PLO leaders and terrorists who kidnapped and murdered the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics forty years ago.

The day after Jewish hope for recovering some of the hostages still held in Gaza forces Israel “cease fire, and to give the above-described binding guarantee to the planners of the deliberate mass-raping, mass-murdering, mass-kidnapping of Israeli civilians, and mass-destruction of their property …

… the psychopathic coward Sinwar emerges from his “Hitler-bunker” and from behind his Israeli hostages and Gazan children he uses for self-protective “human-shields,” and declares “Victory!” 
He then tells every violent Pan-Arabist/Islamist on the planet:

“Our strategy *worked! We  murdered thousands of Jews, raped and kidnapped hundreds of others, and missile showered their country —  and the Jews have given up, and have given the world a guarantee they will never hunt us down and bring us to justice! So … what’s stopping you? Go, mass-murder the Jews everywhere, and just take hostages so you can escape any retribution for it!”

It is fairly certain a plurality, or even a majority of the Israeli hostages in Gaza are, as of 12 April 2024, already dead.

The IDF needs to commit to rescue militarily whomever of the hostages it can, and do a surgical series of military actions closing the net on Sinwar and his fellow Islamo-Nazis, to rid the world of the remaining brigades of Hamas, and destroying or capturing the Hamas High Command, just as did the Allies in World War II. 

Seventy years ago, there were no international pleas for the survival of Hitler, Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels made in the end of World War II. The Allies stated clearly, “Unconditional Surrender” was Nazi Germany’s only choice other than total defeat and capture, with all the destruction going with continued Allied military action against Germany until they were unable to wage war any longer.

We are now *in the exact endgame* Sinwar and his crew planned when they directed their storm-troopers to mass-kidnap Israeli citizens. 

As Sun-Tzu wrote in centuries ago in his “The Art of War” quoted above – “Never give your enemy what he wants. Never give him anything he asks for.”

If Israel is successfully forced by world pressure to give Sinwar and His Hamas Islamo-Nazis the exact prize for which he and they took their hostages – the world opens itself up to unending attacks from Islamic hegemonists (Quran-driven world-conquest fanatics), who now have nothing preventing their use of violence to install an Islamic tyranny over the whole world. By stealing loved-ones from their target nations, and using them to escape justice or retaliation, they can mass-murder, mass-rape, and mass-destroy at will – and survive to do it all again – which Sinwar and his Hamas gangsters have promised they will, every chance they get.

Israel must now make a terrible decision.

Israel must commit itself to military rescue of as many hostages as it can reach, and face the fact that no further negotiations will succeed.

Israel cannot, must not guarantee the survival of the Hamas planners of the 7 October Pogrom. It would doom civilization to an endless “hunting season” – with the prey being first, Israel – then all Jews everywhere – and then, all non-fundamentalist Muslims everywhere.

May Heaven mercifully bring forth an idea for closure that no human mind has yet produced, ending Israel’s and Gaza’s misery created by this psychopathic and stupid group of brutes who hold an ideology the rest of the educated/civilized world has long seen as meritless as its founder Mohammad’s attempt to be declared “The Messiah” by the Jewish leadership in Israel 1200 years ago. When the literate Jewish leaders pointed out to the illiterate maniac that he did not have the credentials to be “The Messiah” he reacted by with violence: it is a matter of historical record that he mass-murdered the entire Jewish population of the Khyber region. When Hamas fanatics attacked Israel last year, many were shouting, “It is a new day of Khyber for the Jews!” Muhammad of Mecca’s followers then and since got the message of his life-example: Islam’s ideas can only be advanced through threats of harm, or mass-murder.

If one’s ideas are across centuries so persistently and obviously seen as bankrupt of merit that no educated soul can be induced to accept them through discourse, and must forced to accept them at sword/gunpoint … it should be high time for any reasonably sane individual to sit back and and admit to oneself, “Since no one sees merit in this ideology, maybe it has no merit.”

Bimhayrah b’yamaynu! (May it be soon, and in our lifetimes!) 

Shabbat shalom.

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

12 April 2024

A New Halloween Essay: Human Lemmingry

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Behavior With No Reason Other Than “Everyone Else Is Doing It”

by Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen ©2022

“The crowd is untruth.” – Søren Kierkegaard 

“You shall not follow a crowd to do wrong.” – Moses, Exodus 23:2

It’s Halloween again. The 31 October 2022 issue of “The New Yorker” magazine shows a pool of very “normal” people in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station – a rather elite environment – walking around “normally,” except for being dressed as witches, warlocks, zombies, and the occasional robot or alien. The humor in this cover art is the highly elite and erudite background of Grand Central Station, a miracle of human engineering and careful contemplation, filled with people acting en masse totally irrationally.

People are doing what everyone else is doing, and dressing as proponents of witchcraft, sorcery, star reading, and necromancy. 

Why are even intelligent, rational people doing this? 

Even many of our fellow-Jews are doing so, despite the Torah’s direct commandments against such things. Why?

Our human genetic hardwiring says these two things very loudly:

Run with the pack, and you’ll survive.

Don’t, and you won’t.

Approve the current “Alpha” and you’ll survive.

Don’t, and you won’t.

These survival-enabling values are embedded in us through the eons of life-form development having led to us existing in our present form.

Lemmings are cute little feral rodents with a hardwired reflex to run wherever the pack is running. While it serves them in some ways, it also leaves them vulnerable to mass-compliance-driven errors like running off a cliff literally “just because everyone else is doing it.” Since they are animals – “bio-machines” without human level understanding and thinking processes – they follow their hardwiring without any contemplative analysis.

We humans also have instinct-level hardwiring.

One of those engrained patterns is crowd-following, for the same reasons lemmings do so.

Even a superlative intellect like Harvard Law School Professor Alan F. Dershowitz admitted in his 1997 book, The Vanishing American Jew, “… I grew up around the (religion-based total separation of) milchigs (dairy) and fleischigs (meat) as Orthodox Jews observe them, and certainly (practiced them) without having the foggiest idea why.”

No level of intellect, capable of extremes of sophisticated analysis, is autoimmune to these autonomic patterns.

The “move when the pack moves” reflex leads us to start running away from danger before we have individually perceived it, merely because our group appears to be fleeing from it. We ask questions later: we run now – with the pack. Ones who survive run first and ask questions later: ones who ask questions before they start moving get eaten by the predator others have perceived and are already fleeing. This is framed in the old joke about the two men in the woods who encounter a carnivorous bear and start running: the one behind shouts to the other ahead, “Do you think you’re really faster than a bear?” The reply shouted back is, “I don’t have to be faster than the bear; just faster than you!” 

However, The Scriptures teach us, “Humankind, without תְּבוּנָה t’vunáh (contemplative understanding) is like the beasts that perish.” Psalm 49:20

What distinguishes us from animals like lemmings is our ability to consider the wisdom, validity, or ethical nature of our choices.
Kierkegaard told us, “the crowd is untruth” because he observed “civilized” human beings driven or released into uncivilized behaviors among crowds – like shouting “Death to the Jews!” in nineteenth century Paris at the trial of Alfred Dreyfus. Not an act a civilized Parisian would undertake while standing alone and distinguishable as an individual: yet, enacted by thousands of Frenchman, Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, and others when embedded in crowds knowing the “alphas” among them thought thusly, and wanted others to do the same: whether the French aristocrat Esterhazy, or the German political madman, Hitler.

Every year, as Hallowe’en approaches, I look at the human lemmingry all around me in action: my Jewish people doing what everyone else is doing, with no idea why they are doing it; and most importantly to me, directly defying the Torah of Israel to do so, as casually as if they were turning on a lightbulb.

The faith laws of Israel (Deuteronomy 18:10-12) forbid us from any sorcery or necromancy, which are respectively attempts to manipulate reality using spiritistic tools, and attempted communication with the dead.  The only valid spiritual tool to change reality is prayer: we ask The Most High, and He replies yes, no, or wait. We seek The Most High, his breadcrumb trail of validated “revelation” we call “The Scriptures,” or the tools of truth seeking involving seeking expert advice, the advice of elders or more experienced persons, and disciplined thought. 

Every October 31st in western culture, the entire culture celebrates the dark side of spirituality. Sorcerers and witches, magic, necromancy: the works. Everything we’ve been told to eschew, not only by action, but association. What kind of person would dress up as Dahmer, Bundy, or Gacy? We don’t dress up as sociopaths or Nazis “for fun” or “cosplay.” Or – do we?

This pattern is as bizarre as we Jews ending the Yom Kippur fast with a lobster dinner.

If you’d do the latter, why do you bother doing the former?

Oxymoronicity abounds: sane, rational conduct disappears. 

Why?

Run with the pack, and you’ll survive.

Approve the current “Alpha,” and you’ve survive.

Pause to consider, and you may become a meal for a predator, or be caught up in a tornado, flash-flood, forest-fire, or some other natural danger from which you’d have escaped if you had just started running when everyone else did, in the direction they ran, and the moment they started running.

For some, life has a momentum that simply excludes contemplation. My parents did it – I grew up doing it: so, my kids’ll do it. Many a terrorist inherited his or her belief in this way: and look where that can tragically lead. Emerson’s “examined life” is not only worth living – it can save countless lives as well.

Scripture enjoins us to use the human and humanizing quality of t’vunah rather than react by mere reflex:

Proverbs 15:28 The heart of the righteous ponders how (correctly) to answer/react.

James 1:19 This you know, my beloved brethren; that everyone must be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger (or any emotion-driven or reflex-driven choice).”

I have heard many allegedly God-revering, Scripture-adhering folks justify their family’s Halloween participation with:

“I don’t want to deprive my kids.”

My “rabbi” reply? “Your kids have Purim! They can dress up to their heart’s content, for good reasons! And not in profane or dark-magic evocative garb! Your kids need you to be parents, not pals! To role-model Isaiah 8:20 to them in ‘real world’ situations.”

“My kids will be stigmatized” or “I’ll be ostracized at work, if they know we / I take the Bible so literally.”

My “rabbi” reply? “So, by this formula, if you are pressed to be less than honest at work because ‘everyone else is doing it for the team:’ will you avoid being ostracized by discarding Biblical values and your very honor?

As stated clearly in our Torah …

Deuteronomy 18:10 There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, 11 or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. 12 For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord.

and

“You shall not follow a crowd to do wrong.” – Exodus 23:2

As for the excuse, “Oh, I don’t practice those things: I just dress up like other people who do, one day year, for fun …”

If you saw someone at a party dressed up as a Nazi Gestapo officer, would the following excuse placate your outrage?  “Oh, I don’t really believe in Nazism! I just dress up like a Nazi one day a year … for fun. And because everyone else is dressing up. See – look at Mao Tse-Tung over there sipping his Pumpkin Martini. Lighten up!”

The police ethic, “Broken Windows,” seems to me to apply here. Get reaction to small breaches right, and the big crimes are less often likely to shipwreck anyone.

If you go irrational on things appearing trivial, you prime the pump for errors on the big stuff.  “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.” Luke 16:10

There are moments when “not going with the flow” is not only the best choice: morally, it is the only ethical choice.

And – humankind is depending on us to get these things right. (Exodus 19:6)

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

31 October 2022

OPEN LETTER TO David Chernoff After His Heart-Attack

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David Chernoff Had A Heart-Attack

How It Feels To Hear Your Worst Enemy On Earth Almost Died

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“There is no time limit on justice.” – Robert Delaughter,  Prosecutor who hunted down and convicted Byron De LaBequith, murderer of Medgar Evers, decades after the crime.

“For justice, not vengeance.” – Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi Hunter accused of being vengefully unwilling to just “let anything go” and just “let the past stay in the past.”

 

David,

I recently heard from a mutual acquaintance that you had a major heart-attack in September.

You essentially died on the way to the hospital – but placing a stent brought you back.

Having heard of your recent near-death experience, I write this in hope of literally saving your soul, and un-poisoning an international Jewish revisionist Movement you and your close-crew in the Finkelstein Cover-Up have been morally toxifying for the last two decades.

I had long wondered what my inner reaction would be when or if I ever heard news of your death – or misfortune. How would I react when or if I heard that the person who has done me and mine the worst unjustified harmful evil in our lives has died? I can tell you I found myself genuinely relieved you did not die.

Genuinely relieved.

Relieved because your chances to repent before your death are not gone. (2Peter 3:10)

I was relieved because Revelation 21:8 says, “All (unrepentant) liars go into the lake of fire prepared for the Adversary, and his adherents.”

I was relieved because Ezekiel 3:20 tells us, “When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I place an stumbling stone before him (to break his momentum, so he can repent, but he ignores it) … he shall die in his sin, and his righteous deeds which he has done shall not be remembered.”

I deeply fear you might misinterpret – and thus, misuse, the opportunity God has graciously appeared to extend to you.

“My miraculous survival of this near-death experience is proof that Providence is on my side, and wants me to finish my mission.” So said a certain bygone era’s dictator of a nearly-successful attempt against his life. The way he interpreted his own survival led him to press his war against the world rather than repent of what led to it. The world paid a terrible price for this delusion of approval from On High. From the date of that attempted assassination until the end of the war he was pressing, more people died violently from that date forward until the war’s end than all who had died together in all the years leading up to the failed assassination’s point in time.

That despot did not understand the meaning of the branch of eternity creaking beneath him –– any more than Haman understood the experience of humiliation God put him through as a warning not to proceed with his plans for the Jewish genocide he was preparing. Despots are notorious for misinterpreting the gentle warnings Heaven sends their way. You, David, may be aware of your own despotism and may merely be, or have become, too much of a monster to care about it – and if you are, then no one can do anything for you; but if you are in some manner truly blind; then maybe this note about a possible “wake-up call” from On High might save your soul. With this note, I do my duty, as a Believer (per Ezekiel 3 & 33’s “watchman” provisions), to try.

You and I have not spoken face-to-face since August 1998 –after which meeting I called you to account in due process in the MJAA & IAMCS for your wrongdoings I describe here below. You simply dove underground and hid; and let your circle of sycophants insulate you from accountability for your actions. 

Since March 1999, you and Joe Finkelstein – the person you were abusing your influence to protect from the consequences of his own massively serious sinning – have been fake rabbis – you two stole the last 21 years of your clergy standing by illegitimately fleeing due process in order to avoid the risk of losing your posts when or if found guilty; and Joe had already admitted verbally and in print he was guilty of every crime with which he had been charged. And doing so at my direct expense. Despite Joe’s direct admissions, and his statement in the same confession that my own history was “certainly noble” and I had “been above all, a faithful friend,” and affirming my standing as a Messianic rabbi (the 1Timothy 3 standard, the highest character affirmation possible, which you also affirmed in my two ordinations you signed) –– despite all these witnessed, sworn, signed and sealed facts of written record ––– you abused your singular influence to turn me in a virtual Alfred Dreyfus of the modern Messianic Movement; by which I mean I was falsely defamed to cover for the crimes of high officials – and sent unjustly into social and vocational exile – where I remain to this day, over two decades later.

This situation is not “in the past for me,” any more than Dreyfus’s exile was “in the past” for Dreyfus every day he woke up on Devil’s Island in exile, rather than in his Paris home with his lovely wife and children and his honorable career in normative progress.

Dreyfus awoke every day with the full force of Esterhazy and the high officials of France robbing him in present tense of all of his normative life, his social circle, and the fruits of his honorable vocation; even so for me – I awaken every morning in a wide “scorched earth” life you (and Joe Finkelstein and your brother Joel, and Jamie Cowen (Cohen in Israel) maintain every day with your silent perpetuation of your crimes of perjury and harm-doing from 1999 onward in the Joe Finkelstein Cover Up you fomented  – and perpetuate to the present day.

In sum ––– you are, at this point in your life, as are Joe Finkelstein, Joel Chernoff, Jamie Cowen(now “Cohen” in Israel), and all who knowingly participated in the cover-up ––– an unrepentant extortionist, perjurer, false witness, doer of harm, abuser of office, and slayer of the innocent to cover for the guilty. Such creatures are headed for Hell – not heaven.

 

Scripture teaches us, “To God, the Lord, belong escapes from death.” (Psalm 68:20) I am relatively sure God was “in” your escape from death, but I greatly fear that you will misunderstand the meaning of it ––– and thus, waste the opportunity it gives you.

In the language of the Torah, you have wrongfully “stood against my blood” for the last 21 years in your cover-up of Joe Finkelstein’s years-long swath of sinning including embezzlement of ministry funds, false oaths on his office as an elder, perjury in due process, false witness, malicious harm-doing, and even intentional sadism –– all of which, Finkelstein confessed verbally and in print (see attached annotated photocopy of it here)–– after first trying to lie his way out, and only confessing when surrounded by so much evidence and eyewitness testimony, he could no longer sustain his attempts to lie his way out of it.

You would not face how wrong you were about Joe – and how wrong a guy he really was.

So, you have blamed me for the last 21 years for the self-admitted horrible sins of someone else – who happened to be a reliable yes-man for you in CBY and the MJAA. You had already publicly declared (referring to your own relationship with God as ‘proof’), that God, Himself, “just keeps affirming Joe” should be your next assistant rabbi: a post concerning which Finkelstein’s recent many years of sinning and unrepentant behavior when caught proved he was not Biblically eligible or qualified to be given.

Having already put your spiritual judgment back then on the line by declaring openly, “God keeps affirming (to you, devotionally) ‘this is the man’ (to replace Jeff Foreman as your assistant rabbi) … you appeared not to have the humility to say a simple, “Oops” and thank God for revealing a disqualified candidate before he was ordained …

… rather, you appeared to decide it was better to kill Finkelstein’s victims socially and vocationally: because, as the Mafia knows, if you kill the witnesses, the prosecution can’t make its case.

It seemed you decided, “I’d rather kill Bruce and Debi than see Joe destroyed by his own sinning.” 

And in August of 1998, in the Sel et Poivre Restaurant on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, just a few blocks from the synagogue I planted here in New York City –– you told me point blank, that unless I told the lies (your rewritten history of Joe’s sinning) you tried to extort me into telling: which were …

– that Joe is someone everyone thinks is a good guy who did nothing seriously wrong.

(Joe’s Confession stood in direct contradiction to the lies you wanted me to tell. Joe’s crimes were literal theft of ministry funds, false oath-making, multiple breaches of contracts, perjury in due process, slander, even sadism! All these were “nothing serious” to you? That,  by itself, brings your ethical sanity into question. And in response to your statement, “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think well of Joe Finkelstein” – And – I offered you names and numbers of people formerly close to Joe who do not think well of him, and you side-stepped it.

and

– You insisted the entire mess Joe’s sinning caused was somehow, in your imagination, my fault: it was “a division” Debi and I caused. You said “there truth” was somehow, “you (Bruce) did it all to yourself.” – with Joe’s written Confession, signed in witness by your own brother Joel long in your hands!

These are sins of extortion, false witness, perjury, and abuse of office, David.

You threatened (and have followed through, doing so) to abuse your singular influence you inherited from your father to make sure my career in the IMJA sphere was ruined. You would “speak up” any time my honorable and honored decades of service were mentioned as a predicate for putting me into MJAA office or service ––– and tell people you “could never put me or Debi on your or any bima  because we were “someone I consider a slanderer of my elders.” Utter nonsense, and delusion.

FYI: “slander” must be falsehoods.  Joe Finkelstein confessed everything of which he was accused by me was 100% true – by Joe’s own admission and your own brother, Joel’s sworn testimony & and signature! I said not one word about Joe Finkelstein that was not confirmed in due process as 100% true.

David – your 1998 attempt to coerce me under threat to tell the lies you wanted published in place of the truth was flat-out  “extortion.”

Outside due process, you threatened me with harm you would inflict by abuse of your influence and offices, if I did not do your will, and speak the lies you had concocted to cover up for Joe Finkelstein, despite being entirely false, totally out of line with the confessed and witnessed facts on record.

Scripture commands us in 1Corinthians 6:8-10 (below) not to associate with, nor even to eat with an unrepentant extortioner, asserting “such do not inherit the kingdom of God.” Unrepentant extortioners and liars “for God” only think they are believers – but they are not. Heaven is not what awaits them in eternity: hell is. (Rev. 21:8)

David – you (and Joe) are still, 21 years later, unrepentant  – exactly opposite to the New Testament standard of repentance given in the example of Zaccheus in Luke 19:8 (admit your crime openly, pay the penalties for the crimes, and make restitution to those you harmed). You and Finkelstein have lived with and off the profits of your sinning for the past 21 years.

1Corinthians 6:8-10 “You yourselves (as professing believers) wrong and commit fraud; and you do this even to your own fellow-believers. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither … revilers (slanderers and libelists), nor extortionists, will inherit the kingdom of God.”

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his eternal soul?” Messiah asked.

I write this Open Letter to point out to you, God seems to have given you a ‘Bonus’ Round: you are still alive.

As I wrote above – I am glad your chances to repent were not ended by your heart-attack in September.

You can still repent – if you do not misinterpret or misuse the opportunity.

The next time around, you may not be so fortunate.

One of the most terrible portraits of human self-deceit and pride is in the biblical Book of Esther, where God puts the evil viceroy (assistant king), Haman, through a tormenting exercise of humbling, as a warning against Haman proceeding in massively evil “business as usual” – but, Haman just didn’t “get it.” Haman goes on unchanged, just as he had been before, and pays the terrible price temporally and eternally for his choice to remain evil in heart and deed.

At the end of Saving Private Ryan, the main character, Captain Miller, dying of his wounds gained by rescuing Private Ryan – whispers the dying admonition to the rescued Ryan, “Earn this.” 

I write this Open Letter to say this to you, David.

Don’t waste this.

Don’t miss this gracious opportunity God has given you.

Yes, repenting will cost you a great deal of prestige.

Admitting the horrific sins you committed against me and mine – just to cover up for a thieving, lying, harm-doing, cowardly sycophant – will likely cost you much of what you have been living for. You will lose face, lose office, lose standing, lose your ability to reap the full enjoyment of your ill-gotten gains (if you actually repent, which includes forsaking your profits and making restitution to those you harmed: see Luke 19:8). 

It will cost you much – but you might just gain back your eternal soul. (Luke 23:40-43)

To the Biblical standard, I have not shunned my Ezekiel 3 & 33 obligation to declare to you the danger I see you are in, and give you clear warning about how you can rescue yourself from it.”

May Heaven grant you the repentance that (truly) leads to eternal life.

Below my signature, I offer you a simple model for genuine repentance. While I confess I have little hope you will repent – I offer it nonetheless.

Your aggrieved brother, still in an unjust Alfred Dreyfus-like exile by your contrivance and doing, some 21 years on into your massively sinful nepotistic cover up,

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

Founding Rabbi & Music Director 1993-present

Congregation Beth El of Manhattan • www.bethelnyc.org

Former Development Chairman, MJAA 1988-1993
Former MJAA Envoy to Israel, South Africa, & Russia for Int’l Outreach Committee 1984-1999
Former Acting Principal & Teacher, Chalutzim Academy of Beth Yeshua 1980-1988
Former Beth Yeshua “Cell Group” Leader/Teacher (2 groups, one local, one outreach)
Former Beth Yeshua “Discipleship” Teacher of New Members
Former Pianist. Composer, Arranger, Producer, Assistant Conductor: Beth Yeshua, choral group, Kol Simcha 1978-1991
Former MJAA Int’l Conference Stage Musicians Chairman: 1982-1997
Former Pianist, Guitarist, Composer, Arranger, Producer: Cohen & Rose 1991-1999
Former Stage Director, Hear O Israel Music Festivals in Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk)
Former IAMCS Yeshiva Instructor of Rabbis in Talmudic Literature
Former MJAA Conference Speaker & Teacher – International and Regional Conferences
Former Adult Yeshiva Co-Director & Teacher: Beth Yeshua
Former Ordained Teaching “Undershepherd/Deacon” in Beth Yeshua of Philadelphia (Martin Chernoff, ordaining)
Former Ordained Rabbi via Beth Yeshua of Philadelphia, (David Chernoff & Board, ordaining)
Former Ordained Rabbi via IAMCS (International Association of Messianic Congregations & Synagogues, ordaining (on which David Chernoff was a swearing signatory)
Person who brought your assistant, John Rose into the faith, and to Beth Yeshua
Person who kept Stan Barry (your niece’s father in law) from leaving you and Beth Yeshua.
And more …

How to Repent

  1. Confess. You have to admit clearly, accurately what you did wrong. No excuses. No justifications. As King David did to Nathan: “I have sinned.” 
  2. Apologize. You must tell the people you harmed you are sorry, and will never repeat this kind of sinning.
  3. Make Restitution: correct the harm you did.
    1. Publish a letter on your website stating “Out of wrongful motives I wrongfully harmed the reputation and career of an innocent man in order to protect one of the people in my close circle from the consequences of his own wrongdoing. I abused my office and influence to exile Rabbi Bruce Cohen (with a broad portfolio of highly respected and impactful MJAA and Beth Yeshua service & responsible offices) and his wife, Debi Cohen (a former YMJA National Officer) from the sphere in which they served with distinction for decades, and rob them of all their social relationships as well: even people who are only in my circle because of Bruce’s influence, I abused my position to exile him from their lives, even as I reaped the benefits of their presence in mine. I r”eturned evil for good” – I smeared Rabbi Bruce as ordained clergy outside the bounds of 1Timothy 5:19-21 and the basics of good brotherhood. I have acted sinfully and shamefully, and I confess and repent of it openly, so any harm done to Bruce’s reputation can be repaired.”
    2. Openly re-enfranchise Use your influence to fix the harm you’ve done. Openly affirm Bruce & Debi Cohen to Beth Yeshua and the MJAA. Take responsibility for 21 years of unjust exile you personally caused, and end it, yourself.
    3. Pay fitting financial damages award for 21 years of vocational deprivation you caused, while you reaped as Bruce & Debi suffered exile, and all the damages that came from it; including loss of income from speaking and concert engagements, book and record sales, and support from admiring observers of the Cohens’ ministries in word and music – and Debi’s in dance; and “punitive” damages for the pain and suffering you and your sadistic underling, Finkelstein, caused the Cohens and their ministry. Own up to the harm you did, and do what you can (like Zaccheus) to repair it, and show your sorrow for lying and criminal harm-doing.
    4. Show appropriate respect for the nature of your crimes by resigning from all leadership posts and retiring from the active rabbinate. According to Scripture and all Jewish theology, a proven perjurer cannot serve again merely as a witness, let alone as a leader of community in righteousness. You and Finkelstein are both totally unfit to be spiritual leaders: your sins are not minor peccadillos, but “lying in wait to do harm” and “(attempting the) slaying of the innocent to protect the guilty.” The bedrock qualification for spiritual leaders is that they be “people of truth.” In light of 21 years of stolen rabbinate based upon lies and unrepented extortion – it is totally implausible for you to act as a leader in righteousness and spirituality. Your (and Finkelstein’s) own criminality has closed that window for you. It is time to step off the stage and own your consequences. Notice, King David did not tell Nathan, “Ok, ok – so I sinned: I admit it. But – you have to make this work out so that I get to keep all my power, wealth, and standing.” That was what King Saul said to Samuel: “Go out with me into the open, and affirm me before The People.” – Samuel’s response was, “The Lord has torn the kingdom from your grasp.” King David admitted his sin, and braced himself for God’s justice – and accepted the sentence God pronounced on him. 
    5. The Zaccheus-model of Repentance in Luke 19 shows us a man who openly admitted his sins, flung his profits from his sinning away (gave 1/2 his goods to the poor on the spot) and promised manifold restitution to everyone he had harmed. David you cannot keep the profits of your sinning and actually repent.
    6. It is better for you to enter eternity less wealthy – than to go to Hell with all your ill-gotten gains enjoyed  by you until your last breath. Remember – you never see the bullet that kills you. You got “a pass” this last close-call with Eternity. There is no guarantee you will keep getting them.

I do sincerely wish for you “the repentance that leads to life.”

May Heaven grant it to you,

Rabbi Bruce L. Cohen

Your wrongful victim these 21+ years 

The AOC/Omar “Concentration Camp” Error

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Dear Blog-Readers,

Summer Greetings. This is a copy of a Letter to The Editor I sent today to The New York Times. They have published every LTTE I’ve sent them across the years. I hope this one might also find its way onto their pages. With hope, – BLC

The AOC/Omar “Concentration Camp” Error

C.M. Blow Missed A Point Rapper “Ice Cube” Got Clearly

This is in reply to C.M. Blow’s 6/23/19 OpEd supporting Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the phrase, “Concentration Camps” to describe American law-enforcement’s containment and processing efforts on illegal-immigration on the American southern border. 
A year or so ago, a well-known Caucasian entertainer made the mistake of using the “N-Word” in his act. The torrent of outrage in response was massive; and then, on a late night talk show, rapper Ice Cube showed himself a statesman. He spoke to the offender in direct-address, and said on the air, “Look – you made a mistake: I forgive you; but, you can’t have that word back. That’s our word now. The history of that word denies you (White) people the right to it anymore.” His point was made – gently, and with profound effectiveness.
 
The history of the phrases, “Concentration Camp” and “Never Again” deny other groups than the Jewish people the moral right to re-task them for their causes. A “Concentration Camp” was a place where Jews were concentrated into one geographic location to make them easier to mass-exterminate by systematically working and starving them to death, and the remainder fed with maximum efficiency into the mass-murder factories gassing them to death and then burning them out of existence.
Hon. Representative Ocasio-Cortez – you made a mistake. 
We forgive you.
But, you can’t have that phrase. That’s our phrase – now and forever.
No one else has the moral right to re-task “concentration camp” unless – God forbid – they are referring to an institution practicing the same kind of intentionally sadistic and murderous behaviors with genocidal goals. Clearly …
… trying however inefficiently to manage the mass-influx of illegal aliens across our southern border is in no way morally parallel to corralling a specific human community for maximally efficient mass-extermination.
Jews – some sixteen million in a world of six billion people, or 0.026 percent of the world’s population – are still the one nation-group ongoingly targeted by much larger constituencies for total annihilation. Jews are, at present, the by-percentage top targets for hate crimes in the entire world; and the climate is worsening in the same manner it did before the Nazi rise to power in Germany less than one lifetime ago. “Concentration Camps” were a tool in the historically most recent, most impactful effort toward the absolute erasure of Jewish people from existence.
Congresswomen Ocasio-Cortez and Omar, and New York Times – please: never again? 
With hope, 
Bruce L. Cohen
Author • Musician • Director • Clergy