Posts by ICBehindtheCurtain

34

Horrible, but didn't make the News

by ICBehindtheCurtain in

hi all, i found this on the net, this is really sad.

i've finally decided that to get the real news about what goes on in the world you have to go outside of the information controlled us news networks.

humiliation and child abuse at israeli checkpointsstrip-searching childrenby alison weir.

ICBehindtheCurtain

I agree Gill, one would think that because of what their own people have gone through, they would be more compassionate towards others, but no, they are no different that those they accuse.

IC

34

Horrible, but didn't make the News

by ICBehindtheCurtain in

hi all, i found this on the net, this is really sad.

i've finally decided that to get the real news about what goes on in the world you have to go outside of the information controlled us news networks.

humiliation and child abuse at israeli checkpointsstrip-searching childrenby alison weir.

Hi all, I found this on the net, this is really sad. I've finally decided that to get the real news about what goes on in the world you have to go outside of the information controlled US news networks.

Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints
Strip-Searching Children
By ALISON WEIR
I sraeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades, some of them American citizens.
While organizations that focus on Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials regularly strip search men and women, If Americans Knew appears to be the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of strip searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have also been strip searching young girls as young as seven and below.
According to interviews with women in the United States, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli border officials periodically force Christian and Muslim females of all ages to remove their clothing and submit to searches. In some cases the children are then "felt" by Israeli officials.
Sometimes mothers and children are strip-searched together, at other times little girls are taken from their parents and strip-searched alone. Women are required to remove sanitary napkins, sometimes with small daughters at their side. Sometimes women are strip searched in the presence of their young sons.
All report deep feelings of humiliation. Many describe weeping at the degradation they felt.
"I remember crying and pleading with my mother," Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad recalls of an experience when she was 12-years-old, hoping that her mother could convince the Israeli official to allow her to keep her undershirt on. But parents are unable to shield their children, El-Haddad and others report.
"They had machine guns," El-Haddad explains. "We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, believes that the intention of the strip searches is to humiliate Palestinians so that they won't return to Palestine.
Oregon attorney Hala Gores remembers being strip-searched at the age of 10. Her family, Palestinian Christians from Nazareth, were leaving Israel because of Israeli discrimination against Christians. Gores has never returned to her family's ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done to her.
The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip-searched.
New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was "seven, eight, nine years old" on family trips to visit her parents' original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.
Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight.
Zayid, a former class president and yearbook editor at New Jersey's Cliffside Park High School known for her irreverent comedy routines and strong personality, describes sobbing uncontrollably. "No one spoke up," she remembers. "There were several women, including the woman who was pushing my wheelchair, none of whom said a word."
When she boarded her flight, Zayid recalls, "The flight attendants looked at me in disgust." She told them what had happened, and the attendants then gave her some of their own clothing to use.
In addition to taking her sanitary napkin, Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is required to take when flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly throughout the 12-hour flight.
Zayid, who founded a program for newly disabled Palestinian youths many of them permanently disabled from attacks by Israeli forces was so depressed by her treatment that she determined never to return. "But that's what they want," she says, "They want us to get to the point where we don't go back." She says that she is already planning to return to her volunteer work in the West Bank.
Israeli practices vary and seem to be applied randomly, from elderly women to small children. In some instances women are taken into a room alone and are left sitting naked for hours. At other times they are strip-searched in groups, their clothes thrown in a pile. When they are finally allowed to get dressed, they describe having to rummage through the heap of clothing, naked and barefoot, to find their own garments.
Jewish Holocaust Survivor
While these policies largely target Palestinian and Palestinian-American women and children, some non-Palestinian Americans also report being subjected to strip searches by Israeli officials.
St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," reports being strip searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally.
The strip searches appear to be illegal under numerous statutes. The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, prohibit: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" and specifically emphasize: "Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour"
Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states: "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy"
In the US, such policies would appear to violate child abuse statutes. The state of Utah, for example, defines Child Abuse as: "Any form of cruelty to a child's physical, moral or mental well-being." The Encarta Encyclopedia defines child abuse as "Intentional acts that result in physical or emotional harm to children."
While the If Americans Knew investigation focused on practices concerning women, many interviewees reported frequent random strip-searching of males as well; including American citizens, children, and the elderly.
While the practice is widely applied, many people find it too humiliating to speak of. One 68-year-old Christian businessman, who had been stripped naked at Ben Gurion airport in 2006 before being allowed to board his flight to return home, had never revealed his experience to his family until he learned of the If Americans Knew investigation. He then explained to his daughter why he had previously told her that he might never return to his original home, now in the state of Israel.
Christians, a thriving community that made up approximately 15 percent of Palestine's population before Zionist immigration and the creation of Israel (Muslims were 80 percent and Jews 5 percent), have now dwindled under Israeli occupation to approximately two percent of the total population.
Israeli spokespeople and sympathizers have bristled in recent months at the title of a book by former President Jimmy Carter, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." In reply, Carter has emphasized that the Israeli "apartheid" he is describing is limited to the West Bank and Gaza. Many analysts have disagreed with Carter, providing evidence of pervasive discrimination within Israel itself. The If Americans Knew finding that Israel has been routinely strip-searching non-Jewish citizens of Israel would also indicate a wider policy of Israeli discrimination.
Since American taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day, the Council for the National Interest, a Washington DC-based lobbying organization, is organizing a campaign to call on Congress to demand that Israel end these policies.
"We are extremely upset to learn that Israel is using American tax money in ways that degrade and humiliate women and children," says CNI President Eugene Bird. "We call on all Americans to help us on this campaign."
The organization urges people to begin contacting their Congressional representatives immediately, and to disseminate the video report by If Americans Knew as widely as possible.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. She can be reached at: [email protected]

IC

40

JW's participate in Government talks with other religious bodies!

by Atlantis in

(please delete if already posted).

http://www.online.ie/home/news.aspx?newsid=636132 religious bodies in talks with government.

ground-breaking talks between the government and religious bodies began in dublin today.. .

ICBehindtheCurtain

Touche undercover, very well said!!!! I feel the same way, if they came out and openly admitted to the R&F the kind of stuff they are involved in, it would be pretty much OVER for them. So they have to keep the neutrality charade going, pretending to be that which they are absolutely NOT, "God's chosen people" an insane asumption by itself since we are all God's/The Source's people!

15

WTS still an NGO in US?

by ICBehindtheCurtain in

hi all: i came across something very interesting, in looking at this pdf there is a list of ngo's that attended for some conference on anti-semitism and guess who is on there?

if you scroll down you will find that in belgium the wts (under their european christian jehovah's witness umbrella) but if you scroll down to the us section you will find that they show up as the watchtower bible and tract society of pennsylvania, so apparently as of 2005 when this conference was held, they were still an ngo, does anyone else know about this?.

http://osce.usmission.gov/cordoba/cordoba_ngos.pdf.

ICBehindtheCurtain

hi misocup, they supposedly cancelled their NGO status in 2001 as was reported on the british newspaper "The Guardian", but according to this the are still in it. The WTS wrote a letter to some congregations stating that they only joined the UN in order to get a library card which was found out to be a lie, there is extensive information here on JWD about this, you might want to look it up....anyway the UN exposed their lie on their website with a letter posted on there explaining this whole mess.

IC

15

WTS still an NGO in US?

by ICBehindtheCurtain in

hi all: i came across something very interesting, in looking at this pdf there is a list of ngo's that attended for some conference on anti-semitism and guess who is on there?

if you scroll down you will find that in belgium the wts (under their european christian jehovah's witness umbrella) but if you scroll down to the us section you will find that they show up as the watchtower bible and tract society of pennsylvania, so apparently as of 2005 when this conference was held, they were still an ngo, does anyone else know about this?.

http://osce.usmission.gov/cordoba/cordoba_ngos.pdf.

ICBehindtheCurtain

Hi All: I came across something very interesting, in looking at this pdf there is a list of NGO's that attended for some conference on anti-semitism and guess who is on there? If you scroll down you will find that in Belgium the WTS (under their european christian jehovah's witness umbrella) but if you scroll down to the US section you will find that they show up as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, so apparently as of 2005 when this conference was held, they were still an NGO, does anyone else know about this?

http://osce.usmission.gov/Cordoba/Cordoba_NGOs.pdf

IC

20

The Watchtower Society A Strange CultOr A Criminal Organization

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

the watchtower society a strange cultor a criminal organizationlabeling the watchtower society as a criminal organization is debatable.

on the one hand, it has covered up some criminal wrongdoings, but on the.

other hand, many individuals associated with the society believe strongly .

ICBehindtheCurtain

Sammielee24 I loved your post, that pretty much tells it! I personally believe they are a Criminal Organization!

IC

16

JESUS HAS BEEN KING FOR 93 YEARS. SHOULD HE BE IMPEACHED??

by Terry in

according to the faithful and discreet slave writing in the pages of the watchtower magazine:.

jesus set up his (invisible) kingdom in the year 1914.. he (king jesus) had been given the task of directing the evangelical messege which would separate sheeplike people and goatlike people into distinct groups (according to how they responded to the messege they heard.).

okay....how well has jesus lived up to his title and duties of king?.

ICBehindtheCurtain

Terry, that was great! I asked my pioneer mom what exactly has JC been doing up there for close to 100 years, she said "well, he is guiding the preaching work", the thing is..... that the preaching work is CRAP, because she has been pioneering for the last 10 years and has not even brought one person into the Borg!

IC

71

The original sin

by onacruse in

this is a question i've had for a long time.. according to the biblical account, adam and eve's sin was to eat fruit from the forbidden tree.. now, ordinarily, when we get caught doing something "wrong," we try to hide the "offending" member (the child tries to hide his hand that has the 'stolen' cookie; we hurriedly try to pull our pants back on when mom walks in unexpectedly while we're masturbating, etc.)..

so, if the "sin" of adam and eve was eating a forbidden fruit, then why wasn't their first impulse to hide their hands?

or to wipe off their mouths?

ICBehindtheCurtain

Q.Bert, I read your words and get dejavu, I was exactly where you are know not too long ago, until I decided to check the bible out for myself, and learned the truth and the truth has set me free!

Research the Sumerians and their myths, do a search and find out where the Hebrews got YHWH from, find a bible that has the original hebrew words and the translation in english and you will see all the different names they used for what is now translated as God, it's a frightening but amazing journey my freind, but only when you choose to look outside the bible box can you learn the truth.

you can start by checking out this link, the Sumerians however predate the Zoroastrians by a few thousand years.

http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/article/biblicalconnection.htm

IC

33

Well !Well!what have we here ?

by mouthy in

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=araretreat

ICBehindtheCurtain

Thanks Mouthy, that is going to be a great site for those questioning the BS religion. Regarding the apostate comment, we are all apostates everyone, even JW's, let me explain.....Israelites were apostates of the Canaanite and other religions in their time, Christians are apostates of the Jewish religion, Protestants are apostates of the Catholic religion, the Protestants extend to all religions stemming from the Catholic religion, JW's of course are apostates of the Bible Students and they are apostates from the 7th day adventists sooooo......everyone is an apostate!

APOSTATE AND PROUD!!!!!

IC

22

In the end, what will really matter?

by exwitless in

in light of the current deep philosophical discussions whirling around, i thought i would post another topic to ponder.

hillary step motivated me to start this topic by this comment on another thread:.

if there is anything that i have learned in my 500 years of life, is that none of it matters much anyway.. we all end up in some dismal cemetry with drunken kids urinating on our tombstones anyway.

ICBehindtheCurtain

Possibility #1: There is a god, and the bible is more or less right. OK, if I believe this is so, then I will be held accountable to god when I die for my actions as a believer. How do I KNOW there's a god and that the bible is correct? I can have "faith", I can strongly believe it, but how can I KNOW it? I can't. I am limited by my state of being to know for a fact. There are many others of various religions who strongly believe in their way of thinking as much as Christians do, so what makes them any less 'right' than those of a Christian belief system?

Possibility #2: There is no god, and the bible is a book written solely by men, without any actual divine inspiration. How can I KNOW that there isn't a god? How can I know that the bible was just a compilation of man's thoughts and interpretations of circumstances facing the writers? I can't know it, because I can't teleport myself back in time and ask Moses "Did god really say that?" I can read books by others who have deeply researched the subject, where there are as many supporters of the bible's divinity as there are supporters of it's being man-made.

You didn't consider Possibility #3: There is a god/goddess/creator/energy source, but he/she/it did not author the bible, men did that for different reasons, mainly to be able to control the masses. He.she/it does not hold us accountable for anything, because we are just living different experiences in our present bodies, and once this particular life is done, we return to the source and get to try it again if we so choose. He/she/it gave us free will and reason, and all those other qualities which make life a rich and interesting experience. These are just my thoughts.

IC