- RFID, an identification device with a radio transmitter
enabling it to be tracked, is becoming a hot issue. Few know that security
services have been using such technologies for years now. I tell more about
that in my book Holygarchy. The tricky part is discovering that an item
has been marked; afterwards it is just a matter of how to use it in a deceptive
way, as I pointed out in Modern Moles.
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- http://geocities.com/schossen/moles.htm
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- However, other forms of marking and tracking citizens
have been used in the State of Israel for decades, and created the highly
discriminating country we see today. The Israeli system is based on the
requirement that all Israeli citizens carry identity cards issued by the
Ministry of Interior.
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- All the identity cards have a field that translates into
English as "Ethnic Group," but which generally refers to the
religion of the individual. The old pharisaic tradition states that in
Judaism's case, the ethnic group and the religion overlap, that it is meaningless
for a Jew to change his religion. This nonsense obliges every citizen recognized
as a Jew to be circumcised without being asked, to marry in a synagogue
if he wishes his marriage to be recognized by the state, and to be buried
in a Jewish cemetery.
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- Following a huge public debate that occurred shortly
before my leaving the country for the last time, I think that explicit
statement was removed from any new identity card. But the records were
still kept by the ministry that chooses your religion according to their
files about your ancestors. The official viewpoint of the minister during
the public debate was that the issue was irrelevant due to their listing.
The records were not kept only within the ministry and in the ethnic group
field, but they were also encoded in the document's number. Document numbers
are like a tattoo on the citizen's hands.
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- My ID number begins with one (1), while that of regular
Israelis my age has a number beginning with two (2), and more often than
not with a three or four following it. My card number is 11166584, and
I always joked that it had the Mark of the Trinity on it, only to be met
with angry, scolding stares. Christianity was a non-topic.
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- The information encoded in the numbers ensured that those
with access only to the number would still be aware of personal details.
For example, when my school published exam results on the faculty board,
the grade appeared next to the corresponding identification number. This
was a process adopted to promise false anonymity. Studying with us was
an Israeli Arab; her grades were easily detected by an identity number
beginning with four and her grades shone in the list as a new sun in the
sky. The professor checking her exam would identify it as belonging to
an Arab, despite the fact that no names appeared on the forms. An ID number
beginning with a three denoted the few students belonging to the massive
Russian immigration from the early nineties.
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- Marking identifying details on individuals is a dreadful
characteristic that Israel shares with horrible regimes from the first
half of the twentieth century in Europe. Once in Israel, the surviving
Jews from Europe adopted the system in a more sophisticated, less evident
way. The victims had become executors; they adopted the same type of ethnic
discrimination. Since, in Israel, the citizen's religion determines his
debts towards and rights from the state, it was a very serious issue. The
offensiveness of the system is more evident and painful: a Druze can choose
not to go to the army, while an Arab is automatically exempted unless he
is a Bedouin; an ultra-orthodox Jew can choose according to his will, while
secular Jews are obliged to serve in the army; his conscience is irrelevant
to the issue. Once, talking about the issue with a self-justifying friend,
my claims were rebuffed; he told me that I could change the Ethnic Group
field in my document if I wished, and then I could marry in whichever temple
I chose. Well, he was right on the technical level, but the process would
take years of painful arguments with the ministry and at its end, my document
number would still identify me according to the whims of an unjust Pharisee
and I still couldn't marry in a civil ceremony.
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- For almost fifty uninterrupted years, the Ministry of
Interior was a bastion of the ultra-orthodox Jews, no matter what was the
leading party in the government. The Israeli government had inherited the
British system, only with a president instead of a king as the symbolic
head of the state. Below him was the prime minister, who was a member of
the parliament, the Knesset. The prime minister needed a majority of the
vote from the parliament to get the job. In practice, despite the changes
of the laws over time, he needed at least sixty-one votes of the one hundred
and twenty members to create a stable government. However, such a coalition
depended on a single vote when the time of hard decisions arrived and often,
that was the reason for new elections. Coalitions of over seventy members
were rare; instability was the norm. Cardinal decisions and new laws needed
to be approved by the parliament; hence, a non-stable coalition wouldn't
allow the government to rule the country. After the defection of a coalition
party or member, minority governments existed for only short periods of
time. They couldn't legislate easily and depended on the cooperation of
opposition members, which cost money. The leading party seldom won sixty
votes in the parliament during the general elections; therefore, coalition
governments were the norm. In the late nineties, an experiment of direct
elections for the prime minister was enacted, but since he still needed
a majority in the parliament to rule, the situation was reversed.
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- Until 1977, the Labor Party was the biggest force in
the parliament; after that the Likud, a revisionist turned neo-conservative
party, became the leading power during most of the time. Beyond the limited
periods when they cooperated, these two parties needed a coalition with
the third biggest force. Due to these circumstances, the ultra-orthodox
rabbinical parties were a growing force for years. There was a cluster
of such pharisaic parties -- their disagreements were a result of ethnic
divisions and personal rivalries between their leaders. Western Ultra-Orthodox
Jews voted for certain countries, while Oriental ones for others, albeit
all of them worshipped the same gold.
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- Since they decided which of the big parties would lead
the government, they could decide which ministries and committees they
would receive. Their main bastions were the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry
of Education, and the head of the Finances Committee in the Parliament.
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- The Ministry of Interior allowed them to make decisions
regarding the religion of a given citizen. It gave them the power to decide
who will go to the army and who not; they were exempted of service but
they could decide for other citizens if they would endanger their lives
or not.
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- The Ministry of Education allowed them to define the
programs of study and to impose their views, especially their interpretation
of the Bible, on all the other citizens. Once they lost this ministry,
they had already indoctrinated the people so hard that nobody questioned
this part of the educational program. The pharisaic doctrines of 'acting
according to personal convenience' and of 'hating the other' had promised
themselves survival for a while longer.
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- However, the Finances Committee was the cherry in their
wedding cake -- it allowed them to give money to the Yeshivot, the Jewish
Religious Colleges. The result was that most ultra-orthodox Jews remained
students in such colleges at age fifty and over; they got an automatic
scholarship and didn't need to show any tangible results. Every few years,
there were scandals regarding lists of false students. The results of the
religious studies were questionable even by their own standards. You won't
kill, said the Bible. It didn't condition the statement, it was clear and
strong as the sun during Jerusalem's summer. Yet, in 1995, a former Yeshiva
student, at the time studying at the religious Bar Ilan University, killed
Prime Minister Rabin with the blessing of his Pharisaic rabbi. He had gone
from one rabbi to another until he found one that agreed that the killing
would save many Jewish lives and thus was justified. A Pharisaic rabbi
gave his blessing to a murder. It was immoral hypocrisy and moral corruption
of the lowest kind by those who pretended to carry morality's flag. I wish
the solution was as simple as saying "Forgive them father, because
they do not know what they are doing. They know pretty well that they
perpetrate an immoral manipulation.
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- In ways of deception, the ultra-orthodox always had more
than enough money for their institutions and they held control over the
most intimate matters of the population. It wasn't just the Yeshivot. Until
a bit after my last exit from the country, ultra-orthodox families
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- received child pensions from the National Insurance much
bigger than everyone else. The pensions were anti-social since the first
two children, the ones who cause most expenses to the family, got only
a tiny recognition from the social services. From the third child, the
pension began to grow exponentially and ultra-orthodox families with nine
or ten children could live out of this money until their last offspring
celebrated eighteen years of age. It was a pseudo-democracy serving the
ideas of a powerful, manipulating, hypocritical minority. "It was
a democratic decision," their leaders always said after having coerced
the leading parties to their last evil machination. The defense of minority
rights wasn't in their definition of democracy, and the country had no
constitution to ensure those or any other rights.
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- A constitution isn't a foolproof mechanism, but it can
be transformed into an important line of defense against judiciary and
executive excesses. Most Israelis ignored why they needed a constitution,
because it wasn't part of the educational process. The Orthodox Jews claimed
that the Old Testament was the only law needed, henceforth (?a law of laws?)
was doubly obsolete; this outrageous claim was widely accepted as a legitimate
one. Maybe the Bible could be used for law, but the point was that the
orthodox weren't basing their lives on it. The modern orthodox and their
rabbis are the political descendants of the scribes, later known as Pharisees
and even later as rabbis. They designed a smart scheme of claiming that
God gave to Moses an oral law besides the written one, the Pentateuch.
There were no signs of that in the Bible, but the people didn't read it
and couldn't refute the conspirators. Following that reasoning, they claimed
the key for the correct interpretation of the Bible was in the oral tradition;
hence, those ignorant of it, meaning the people outside the rabbinical
system, cannot understand the readings. In such a way, and after the final
collapse of the Sadducees with the fall of the second temple, they took
control over the life of the people, from birth, through marriage and until
burial. The problem with the Pharisees' interpretation was its basic principle;
their analysis was based upon self-convenience. They would not hear the
Christian minority message of faith and love described in the New Testament,
which was called a false prophecy by the orthodox rabbis; nor the Muslim
minorities claims about the Koran's laws. Their aim was to create a Pharisaic
Theocratic state, and that target justified everything in their eyes. The
readiness of the wider public to accept such nonsense was the worst result
of the public's cultivated ignorance.
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- The general lack of knowledge of the population in civic
matters was actively supported by the state, through the structuring of
the educational process and the control of the content of civics courses.
Since in Israel there were different streams of schools and high schools,
courses were adapted to each ethnic or religious segment of the society.
Various layers of the population, specifically those attending the Jewish
religious stream, skipped the civic education altogether. From the other
streams, only students aiming for university studies needed to graduate
with a minimal civil studies course, which was transformed into a political
stage for the political stream backing the school. As a rule, the courses
simply described the actual political map and its changes along time, centering
the students' attention on the results of specific elections and skipping
many of the more important issues.
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- The result was a general ignorance of their ignorance
on the matter, so that many Israelis were convinced of the system's justice.
They believed that Democracy is just the rule of the largest group in the
population. This conviction was used by all the mainstream political parties,
but mainly by the Jewish orthodox ones. Orthodox groups presented the general
elections as the total personification of democracy, the ultimate justification
for their discriminating laws. "It's the majority decision,"
they claimed, ignoring basic human rights, ignoring minority rights, ignoring
equality in the eyes of the law, ignoring justice. "We have suffered"
... "We have been persecuted, our system is justified," they
cried, not comprehending that just at that moment they had performed the
very same atrocity to their equals. "We kept Judaism alive through
the centuries, not you," they add in a final, supposedly offensive
note to their Jewish secular counterparts -- as if they had been asked
to do so, as if that was the justification for every wrong they are doing,
as if it was right. Other people in other times and places, searching for
a justification for their well known atrocities against Jews said, "We
were just following orders." Both attitudes were born from a dangerous
authoritarism that ignored basic human rights. Theological claims justifying
discrimination were just crimes, regardless of the direction from which
they came. The God of Justice must be kept blindfolded; the state should
not favor a specific citizen or group of citizens.
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- A more obvious problem was the discrimination due to
the last name origin. Surnames were a recent practice among Jews; therefore,
a European or Oriental ancestry was straight away recognizable and was
a source of discrimination. It was harder for Oriental Jews to get a good
education or good job. The surname's effect on a person's success was immediate
and could be measured even before he opened his mouth -- the slightly different
pronunciation of Hebrew among the groups was only a secondary recognition
mechanism. The solution here was simpler, since the country allowed changing
one's name every seven years, and to do that at the Ministry of Interior
was a matter of minutes. However, the identity card retained the former
surname, therefore to erase any sign of his original surname, a citizen
needed to change it twice. In Israel, Oriental Jews were usually referred
to as the Second Israel.
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- In other places and times, politicians sought to attract
the public to their views of a better future; whether a liberal or a conservative
one, a capitalist or a communist, or another option already tested or not.
They had a vision which they wanted to turn into reality; both Lincoln
and Mao wanted to fulfill their ideals on how their society should look.
However, the main parties in Israel didn't have any views on the shape
of the country's reality; no one of them had a coherent vision of how they
wanted the country's society to look in another fifty years. Social and
economic issues were detached from political life because politicians had
chosen an easier and darker path. Frightening citizens by means of exaggerated
interpretations, they could focus the public attention on places easier
to deal with. Moreover, they became heroes, fighting day and night (the
night part was always emphasized) for the well being of the people against
a usually unseen enemy. Riding on the primordial fears of an ever present
enemy they could ensure few would pay attention to their greed. However,
during the Passover I bought pitas and hummus at Muhammad's grocery store.
Both peoples met together while doing weekend barbeques at Tel Aviv's promenade.
Both peoples just wanted peace and a nice steak -- except for those nasty
vegetarians. Nasty vegetarians? That's exactly the way our politicians
divided and ruled. Nasty vegetarians are a 'ridicule' concept; it was my
mental answer each time I heard a politician attacking fellow humans. Their
deepest fear was personal freedom. Random individual behavior is a way
to create diversity and, despite being the very way to ensure natural success
and survival, it is also the way destroy oligarchies. Frightening.
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- But to exert a truly powerful influence on people, there
is need to use more than frightening news -- the news needs to be put within
a logical context. A powerful myth. We are a chosen Nation aiming to rule
the world by God. This is a good one, and if the complete Bible says otherwise,
well, then we'll teach only certain parts of it and in the way interpreted
by the foreign Pharisaical doctrines in the Talmud. All the other nations
are against us, they fear us and thus they attack us; we have been victims
of the goyim for endless years but now it's our turn. Surprisingly, it
worked with the people who praise themselves for being well-educated.
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- Suppressing individualism in such a way created a very
united society, acting as a single individual to fulfill the targets marked
by the politician's oligarchy. These targets had a strange quality in that
they benefited the politicians economically. Most of the prominent politicians
used government institutions as life-long jobs, from which they served
their other businesses. Many were more than thirty years in the parliament,
which sometimes resembled a geriatric institution. The most prominent example
was Shimon Peres, who had over fifty years of 'experience' in top positions,
and a brother in the construction business who enjoyed far too many government
bids.
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- Extreme nationalism, disguised in this case under a Victim's
Chosen Nation myth, had been always a dangerous thing. It always created
political terrorism toward those strong enough to reject it, to think differently.
If you do not accept our nice myth, then you are a traitor and we do not
need to hear your explanations. Meanwhile, the truth remained hidden: only
by taking care of everyone in society, not the societies defined by imaginary
boundaries, but the general society -- only in such a way, can security
and prosperity for all be provided.
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- http://geocities.com/schossen/rfid.htm
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