Powered By Blogger

Friday, August 31, 2012

Bolivia Denies Bail Jacob Ostreicher

Jacob Ostreicher, a New York businessman, center, arrives to a court to attend his hearing in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Monday, June 11, 2012. (AP Photo)

A Bolivian court denied bail this morning to Jacob Ostreicher, a Borough Park, Brooklyn resident who has been incarcerated without formal charges for more than a year. The bail hearing lasted nine grueling hours and was spread over two days while Jacob’s mother, a Holocaust survivor, sat through the entire process in the Bolivian courtroom along with her daughter, Jacob’s sister, both weeping uncontrollably.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), who continues to advocate for Ostreicher, promised to re-double his efforts to set Jaob Ostreicher free.
“It’s inhumane the way Jacob has been treated,” said Assemblyman Hikind. “His human rights have been continually denied, his health is failing, and his family is suffering from his absence and mistreatment. We have to continue to bring attention to this travesty of justice. We have to demonstrate that Jacob Ostreicher’s life and freedom matter.”
The Assemblyman is organizing thousands of synagogues into action on behalf of Jacob Ostreicher this Shabbos, September 1st (14 Elul), Shabbos Ki Teitzei. Hundreds of thousands of Jews across America are expected to join in prayer and follow-up with calls and letters to elected officials.
The National Council of Young Israel, The Orthodox Union (OU) and The Rabbinical Alliance of America have all agreed to publicize Shabbos Ki Teitzei for Jacob Ostreicher to their rabbis, congregations and affiliates. Rabbis across America will be speaking about Ostreicher in their Sabbath addresses and leading special prayers on his behalf. Following the Sabbath, congregational membership will be encouraged to urge their Congressman to adopt Ostreicher’s cause.
“I believe Jacob Ostreicher is fully innocent of all wrong doings,” said Assemblyman Hikind. “Numerous media reports from WABC’s ‘Nightline’ to The Wall Street Journal concur that Jacob is being used as a political football; his family, needlessly traumatized by this on-going nightmare. And now, as feared, Jacob’s very life may be in danger. I am proud that Jews from across the country and all stripes of orthodoxy will be demonstrating their complete solidarity in this urgent matter. We cannot rest while Jacob is imprisoned.”

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Jewish Student gets his mouth stapled and a nazi Salute in a vicious hate crime on college campus


  • Zach Tennen, 19, beaten unconscious at party close to Michigan State University
  • Teenager said attackers told him they were in the KKK 
  • Zach had surgery to have his jaw wired after vicious assault 
  • Police said assault was 'not likely a hate crime' but refused to elaborate
  • A college student was the victim of an alleged hate crime where he was beaten unconscious and had his mouth stapled while his attackers made anti-Semitic taunts. 
    Zach Tennen, 19, was at a party close to Michigan State University campus in the early hours of Sunday when he was set upon by two men who he said asked if he was Jewish. 
    The attackers, who claimed to be Ku Klux Klan, then raised their arms in a Nazi salute, saying 'Heil Hitler' and began hitting the teenager.
    However East Lansing police said in a statement on Tuesday that the assault was 'not likely a hate crime'.
    Investigators said a potential suspect has been identified. Police did not return calls asking for more details on the attack.
    Zach told Local 4 that while he was passed out, the attackers managed to staple through his gums. 
    He said: 'It was coming up in my two bottom teeth and it started in my gum, so, somehow they managed to staple it.'
    His mother told the Detroit Free Press that around 20 people at the party watched the attack but no one helped her son. He was then thrown out of the party.
    The teenager, of Franklin, Michigan, also has a broken jaw below his bottom teeth which will require being set with wire. 
    His family contacted the Anti-Defamation League, an organization which fights anti-Semitism, on account of the assault. 
    In a statement to MailOnline, ADL Detroit Regional Director Betsy Kellman said: 'We are horrified by this violent assault and allegations that the student may have been viciously attacked because he was Jewish.
    We are confident that the East Lansing Police will thoroughly investigate this deeply troubling case and, given the allegations, treat it as a possible hate crime. We hope the perpetrators will be swiftly brought to justice.'
    Zach, who graduated from Birmingham Groves High School last year and studies journalism at MSU, said he had drank alcohol at the party but only a small amount. 
    After his attackers fled, he called a cab to take him to Lansing Sparrow Hospital.
    The hospital did not call the police but said that it was standard policy to alert authorities if someone reported being a victim of assault. Zach later had surgery at a Detroit hospital to have his jaw wired shut.
    Michigan State's Student Affairs and Services released this statement: 'Michigan State University's Student Affairs and Services office has reached out to the family of the student assaulted in East Lansing to provide the academic and other support the student needs. 
    'MSU will work with the student and his professors to ensure he can fulfill his academic requirements, as we would with any student in need. 
    'As the incident occurred off campus in East Lansing, all questions about the police investigation need to go the East Lansing Police Department.'


    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194727/Jewish-student-given-Nazi-salute-mouth-stapled-campus-hate-crime.html#ixzz24tAelYiR

  • Crazy Toldos Avraham Rabbi bans Israeli Soldier from davening in Beit Shemesh Shul

    Time to stop funding these crazy lunatics .....
    read this incredible story:

    Ultra Orthodox Jews again attacked an Orthodox Jewish soldier for his crime of joining the Israeli military.

    The Orthodox Jewish IDF soldier was expelled from the Toldos Avraham Yitzchak Synagogue on Monday morning, in a neighborhood in the city of Beit Shemesh, Israel, after appearing for morning services dressed in his army uniform.

    The local news media reported that the soldier came to the Synagogue, located on Chaazon Ish Street, around 10 am, looking to join the morning service there, as the Synagogue offers a late morning prayer session.
    Before entering the synagogue, he sat outside the building. One of the Synagogue members told the soldier to "keep out."

    He explained his warning that since he was wearing the uniform of the "Zionist State Army", he was not allowed entry to the Synagogue, whose members are ardent supporters of an anti-Zionist ideology.
    The soldier, who was surprised by the strong order, obeyed.

    However, a few minutes later, when he discovered that there was another prayer service being held at this late hour, he entered the Synagogue to pray. At this point, he was attacked by a man who
    shouted: "Leave immediately you tainted soul,” as spectators stood by and did not come to the soldier’s aid.

    The soldier, trying to avoid further embarrassment, went outside where he finished the morning prayers.
    Condemnations were quick to come from all over the country for such a gross disrespect of a soldier in uniform. All he did was he wanted to pray to God.

    The soldier, 27, is married and the father of two children.

    Tuesday, August 28, 2012

    The 600 Jewish rabbis that support Obama are "Israel Haters"


    Obama proudly announced the support of more than 600 Jewish rabbis last week. However a closer look at those 600 rabbis reveals that quite a few of them a vehemently opposed to the Jewish state.

    The reason behind Obama’s launch of "Rabbis for Obama” is an initiative to get more Jewish support for the president in the next election.

    What has recently come to light, however, is that the list of more than 600 rabbis, many of whom are Reform, Conservative and female and therefore not considered as rabbis by the Orthodox Jewish community also includes many blatantly anti-Israeli figures, which align with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

    Lynn Gottlieb, for example, met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and sits on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that has been listed as one of the "Top Ten Anti-Israel groups" by the Anti-Defamation League.

    According to the ADL, JVP "Calls for an end of U.S. aid to Israel, accuses Israel of apartheid policies, and supports divestment campaigns against Israel.” Like other Jewish anti-Zionist groups, JVP uses its Jewish identity to protect the anti-Israel accusations of anti-Semitism and provide a greater degree of credibility to their anti-Israel stance. JVP activists regularly attend anti-Israel events with shirts and posters that proudly spread their Jewish identity.

    During March and April 2010, JVP leaders
    unsuccessfully pushed for the passage of a divestment resolution at the University of California, Berkeley, aimed at companies that do business with Israel.
    Another name on the list, Chava Bahle, a member of "14 Friends of Palestine", an organization that advocated to condemn Israel for the flotilla incident in Gaza in 2010 and falsely accuses Israel of preventing food and medical supplies to Gaza.
    Another name on the list, Aruthur Waskow, is associated with the Council of American Islamic Relations, an organization that is also on the ADL list of the most anti-Israel groups.

    Thursday, August 23, 2012

    Green tea extract 'eradicates skin cancer with no side-effects'


    A chemical found in green tea has been used to treat two types of skin cancer, scientists say.

    The extract is too weak to make an impact when consumed in tea. However, when applied to cancer cells in the lab it made two-thirds of tumours shrink or disappear.
    Scientists at the universities of Strathclyde and Glasgow, who carried out the research, found the extract, known as epigallocatechin gallate (EGCg), had no side-effects on other cells or tissue.
    They created a cell with EGCg and transferrin, a protein that naturally targets and latches on to the surface of cancer cells, and applied it to tumours.
    Tests were done on two types of skin cancer: epidermoid carcinoma which forms scales on the surface of the skin and melanoma which often develops in people who have moles on their skin.
    In both studies, 40 per cent of tumours vanished, while 30 per cent of tumours in carcinoma cases and 20 per cent in melanoma cases shrank. A further 10 per cent of melanoma tumours were stabilised, so did not grow or shrink.
    Around 10,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with melanoma each year, with the majority women, according to the Macmillan Cancer Support charity.
    Anti-cancer properties of EGCg were established in earlier laboratory tests elsewhere. Scientists at other universities around the world have experimented with it to treat prostate cancer and leukaemia.
    Lead researcher Dr Christine Dufes, from the University of Strathclyde, said: 'These are very encouraging results which we hope could pave the way for new and effective cancer treatments.
    'When we used our method, the green tea extract reduced the size of many of the tumours every day, in some cases removing them altogether. By contrast, the extract had no effect at all when it was delivered by other means, as every one of these tumours continued to grow.
    'This research could open doors to new treatments for what is still one of the biggest killer diseases in many countries.'
    The research is published in the medical journal Nanomedicine.


    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2192028/Green-tea-eradicates-skin-cancer.html#ixzz24KSx5Tcd



    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2192028/Green-tea-eradicates-skin-cancer.html#ixzz24KSrPabL

    Bobover parents outraged at Camp Shalva directors! Video!



    PIX 11 tried demanding answers Monday from a food company in Spring Valley, about a registered sex offender who was allowed to deliver orders to a “sleepaway” camp for Orthodox Jewish boys in Sullivan County. 31 year old Yoel Oberlander was arrested August 9th, charged with criminal trespassing, after surveillance cameras showed him going in and out of bunk rooms at Camp Shalva at 5 in the morning on August 8th. Some of the boys said they woke up to a man tickling them. Now, one parent is telling PIX 11 that children received strict orders not to speak about the case. “The kids were warned that morning that they should not be talking to each other about the incident,” the father, who wants to remain anonymous, told PIX. The man said he feared reprisals from the Bobover sect in Borough Park, Brooklyn, which runs the upstate camp. Oberlander was on probation for six years, after a 2002 case involving the sexual abuse of an 11 year old girl. Ben Hirsch, leader of the children's advocacy group, Survivors for Justice, said he notified New York State police 40 hours after the incident, after a parent called him with information appearing on a Yiddish chat site. Hirsch claims the camp's first call was to a criminal defense attorney! When we tried to reach one lawyer representing Camp Shalva Monday, we received no call back. We also tried to call the rabbi in charge of the bunkhouse where the 12 and 13 year old boys were sleeping, but got his voicemail. PIX 11 did manage to get inside the Golden Taste foods warehouse in Spring Valley, which produces appetizers and dips, where Yoel Oberlander works. The staff there was not happy to see us. They repeatedly told us to leave the premises, when we asked if they knew Oberlander was a registered sex offender--and whether he should be delivering food to a children’s camp. Outside Golden Taste Inc, in the parking lot, we noticed Oberlander’s 2007 gray Mazda. People who appear on the New York State Sex Offenders Registry are required to list the car they drive and license plate number. A number of Orthodox men went in and out of the warehouse with cell phones, getting into cars and driving around to see where our news truck was parked--and where we were stationed. An aerial photo of Camp Shalva in Sullivan County shows the delivery area for trucks is very far away from the bunkhouse where the 12 and 13 year old boys were sleeping. The lawyer for the camp told one newspaper there was “not enough time for any molestation to take place.” Parents are still outraged, telling PIX 11 “there’s been no addressing of this issue from a mental health perspective.” Copyright © 2012, WPIX-TV

    Sunday, August 19, 2012

    Saudi Cleric slams Jews for using human blood for Passover. Video



    According to a transcript released by MEMRI, a Saudi cleric said during a interview that
    the Jews believe they have the right to kill anyone who does not adhere to their religion.

    This is written in the Talmud and some of their holy books, he said.

    It is well known that Jews celebrate several holidays, one of which is
    Passover, or the Feast Of Matzos. The Saudi Cleric said that he once read about a doctor who was working in a laboratory. This doctor lived with a Jewish family.

    One day,they said: "We want blood, human blood." He was confused. He had no idea what this was all about. Of course, he could not betray his work ethic, so, he began to investigate, and realized that the Jews were making matzos with human blood.

    They eat it, believing it brings them closer to their false god, Yahweh. This caused a scandal. The same would happen in Damascus. As you know, Naguib Al-Kilani wrote a book entitled The blood for matzos in Zion.

    This is the best story he wrote. We discuss what would happen in the Jewish quarter of Damascus or elsewhere.

    They attract a child to sacrifice in the religious rite performed during that holiday, the cleric said.



    Rabbis from Kiryat Sefer ban electric razors!


    Men residing in the charedi town of Kiryat Sefer have been prohibited by local rabbis from using electric razors to remove their facial hair
    .net News reports (http://bit.ly/OqPmMx) that the use of electric razors has been banned because the device pulls the facial hair out by the roots, in violation of halacha. The rabbis have ordered that a refund be given to any customer who purchased a “non-kosher” electric razor from a store which chose to sell the razors despite the ban.
    Local barbershops have received a list of prohibited haircuts, and the town court has ordered all barbers to review the Jewish laws relating to shaving. The rabbis indicated that only barbers who are deemed knowledgeable about the Jewish laws of shaving will be certified as “kosher.”

    Frum beggar's death still a mystery


    He was a pauper who spent his days begging in front of Brooklyn synagogues — at once memorable and forgettable, like so many other desperate characters on street corners across the city.
    He never met a word he didn’t like, spinning tales of distant relatives who were once great rabbis, debating the merits of one cellphone carrier or another, or weighing the best place to get hot soup in Borough Park.
    He was always a bit odd — the sort of guy who would wear striped pants and a plaid shirt, who dangled a thick stack of identification cards from his neck, ready to show anyone who cared to examine them. Sometimes, he had to be told to shower.
    And he was always grateful for any small act of kindness that would ease the loneliness of the day’s hustle.
    But a few weeks ago, his mood turned dark.
    He grew erratic — pupils big and dark as coal. Friends said he paced wildly as he spoke.
    He was terrified.
    “He said he needed money fast,” said Hollywood agent and longtime friend Fred Wostbrock.
    “He was in a frenzy,” recalled another beggar.
    “He’d say that someone is out to kill him. He said he needed $17,000 right away,” said another friend, Abie Maltz.
    His life was in grave danger, he told anyone who would believe him.
    No one did.
    But on June 28, Howard Frank, 55, was found floating facedown in the Gowanus Canal, amid circumstances as murky as the fetid waters where he took his last breath.
    Frank had a million-dollar secret — and family and friends are now wondering if it was a deadly one.
    It turns out that the disheveled beggar from Brooklyn was sitting on a collection of entertainment-industry photographs that could be worth an estimated $1 million.
    The son of a disabled bookkeeper, Frank dropped out of high school to focus on collecting TV and movie publicity stills, amassing an array rivaled by few and envied by most.
    He grew up in an assortment of Brooklyn neighborhoods, including Bensonhurst, Brownsville and Midwood. The family was forced to move around because their father, Alex, was in between jobs because of his disability, Little’s disease, a form of cerebral palsy.
    He often spoke of his distant cousin, Tzvi Pesach Frank, an influential rabbi, as well as Louis Schurr — Bob Hope’s agent — who was his grandfather’s first cousin.
    Like the stars frozen in time on his photographs, he hoped one day that he too would be famous.
    “He wanted to tell the story about his life and how he was raised. That he came from a respectable family,” said Maltz, a chef at the Nu Cafe in Borough Park, where he said customers are collecting money to engrave a memorial inscription on Frank’s tombstone.
    As a teenager, Frank used a small inheritance to buy out Kier’s Celebrity Photos, a Midtown shop, significantly adding to his stockpile, which he’d sell through the mail and at memorabilia conventions and flea markets around the country.
    “The first photo I bought from him was of Raquel Welch,” said Wostbrock, who first met Frank in 1973. “We became lifelong friends.”
    He was a high-school dropout but had an encyclopedic knowledge of movies and TV shows. He loved Lucy — collecting over 10,000 photos of Lucille Ball — considered in its totality to be the most valuable part of his collection, which would eventually swell to 1 million entertainment photos spanning 1946-1990.
    The value of the collection comes from the sheer volume of photos, as well as the rarity of some of the items, noted Wostbrock. “If you wanted television, my God, Howie had everything,” he said.
    “I don’t know if he knew how to use a washing machine, but he was brilliant in certain things. He was a savant,” Wostbrock said.
    I* recent years, Wostbrock, who represents the likes of Phyllis Diller and Wink Martindale, saw his friend struggle, so he helped out when he could, sending him money on holidays and putting him through a three-week security-guard training program.
    “He would rather buy pictures than eat,” Wostbrock said. “But that’s collecting — it’s obsessive. He loved his photos the way a billionaire loves his artwork on the wall.”
    Wostbrock spoke to Frank a week or so before his death.
    “He wanted me to be his agent to sell his life story,” he recalled.
    To earn a living, Frank leased his photos for one-time use to newspapers and magazines, usually at about $75 a pop. The copies he sold at conventions went for as low as $1.
    But he hated selling them, his brother Robert Frank said. “He would always make 8x10 copies if he had the originals,” he said.
    His expertise led to opportunity: Frank co-authored books, rubbed elbows with celebrities like Barbara Eden and Adam West and became a coveted resource for newspaper and magazines.
    “He had this amazing photo collection with a particular strength in ‘I Love Lucy,’ ” recalled retired People photo editor Ira Berger. “There were a lot of a--holes selling photos, but he was one of the nice guys.”
    Berger did business with Frank for 20 years. “He was an odd duck.”
    He was never diagnosed with a mental disorder — because he never went to see a psychiatrist, said Robert Frank. “He wouldn’t even see a regular doctor.”
    “He was very lonely, and he suffered a lot,” said friend Yaakov Shajnfeld, who said Frank refused all government assistance.
    The NYPD says Frank’s death, first reported on the blog Failed Messiah, is not a homicide. Detectives are investigating it as a suicide or an accident.
    But those who knew Frank said he’d never kill himself — and especially not by jumping in a canal.
    “He was deathly afraid of the water. He wouldn’t go near the water,” said Maltz, who echoed that Frank insisted someone was trying to kill him during the two weeks leading up to his death.
    Robert Frank said a detective told him there was water in his brother’s lungs — meaning he was alive when he entered the waterway.
    The city Medical Examiner’s Officer says the cause of death has yet to be determined but did not conduct an autopsy at the family’s request — even though his brother denies ever giving such instructions. Robert Frank claims an Orthodox Jewish group that prepares bodies for burial, Misaskim, put the kibosh on the autopsy, which is against Jewish law in most circumstances. The group did not return a call for comment.
    The Medical Examiner’s Office is relying on NYPD crime-scene photographs and photos and X-rays taken of the body in the morgue, to determine a cause of death, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.
    “The manner of death might be undetermined if there isn’t enough evidence,” she said.
    The lack of an active investigation has chafed family members.
    “Was he pushed?” wondered his brother, who said plenty of people would have a motive to kill his brother.
    “They have made no attempt to speak to any of the acquaintances who saw and spoke to Frank in his last days,” he said.
    Even a high-ranking police official expressed skepticism about what appeared to be a hurried police investigation.
    “How in the world did a body just turn up and they determined it a suicide. Was there a note? The undercurrent here is that everyone is under a tremendous amount of crime [stat] pressure,” the official told The Post.
    “There’s almost like a hidden agenda here: ‘The guy committed suicide. The guy was sick in the head. It’s not a homicide.’ That’s what worries me.”
    Despite his brushes with celebrity, Frank lived on the edge of destitution.
    After 9/11, Frank’s photo-leasing business declined. He started an online enterprise, personalityphotos.com, with a partner but struggled to find a permanent place to live after being evicted from an apartment in Flatbush.
    Frank took odd jobs, even working as a shomer, a guardian of the dead in Jewish tradition, who sits in a morgue with the body until its buried.
    About six years ago, his business partner, Frank Pohole, gave Howard a place to live in his Sunset Park home — which is without heat, electricity and running water, Robert Frank said. Pohole did not comment for this story.
    As he struggled to digitize hundreds of thousands of photos, Frank’s beloved collection became unwieldy — and costly.
    Friends and family say Frank needed the cash to square up years-late storage fees for his massive collection.
    “He was saying that he needed $80,000 to save his life,” recalled Aaron Farrell, saying Frank owed money to someone who was leasing him a warehouse in Bensonhurst.
    But real estate developer Henry Hewes said he’s been paying Frank’s storage bills for the past five years.
    “His agreement with me is that when his collection was sold or when he died, I would be paid,” said Hewes, 62, an Upper East Sider who ran for mayor in 1989 and met Frank through Pohole, with whom he went to graduate school. He said the money amounted to about $70,000. “I wouldn’t say it’s that much money to me.”
    So, who would want to kill Howard Frank?
    “From time to time he would talk about revealing secrets about the Orthodox community,” Hewes recalled. “He told me weeks ago he was going to reveal a big scandal — he never got around to it.”
    In January, Frank told The Post about a Crown Heights synagogue that charged panhandlers $5 for the privilege of begging inside the house of worship.
    “It’s like graft, payola,” he said at the time.
    Worshippers said the policy was in place because beggars were disrupting congregants.
    But Frank refused to pay up, and instead stationed himself outside the synagogue. “It’s embarrassing that you have to beg, and the fact they won’t help you is embarrassing — you’d think your rabbi would help you.”
    Robert Frank thinks his brother may have crossed the “wrong rabbi,” or may have borrowed money from a loan shark in order to own his photos free and clear of Hewes’ generosity.
    Frank’s photos remain in the storage facility, locked until his will is executed. The photos are under the control of Ian Lerner, a cousin, who is the executor of the estate, according to Robert Frank. Ian Lerner did not return a call for comment.
    According to Frank’s will, cousins Seth, Todd and Ian Lerner will inherit his collection — which everyone agreed was as much a part of Howard as an arm or a leg.
    “If he did commit suicide, it was probably because he was losing them,” said Seth Lerner. “He knew something about every photograph. That was . . . his life.”
    Additional reporting by Kathianne Boniello.