Prostitutes, Kings, and Israel...

Condaleeza Rice came back to Israel recently (after I made some of these observations under eavesdropped conditions) to object to trafficking in women, mostly from Russia. This is the same State Department that supports a police state providing it with intelligence and broad access for its own intelligence agencies. This, courtesy of Israeli government and intelligence from the highest to the most local networked government, community and police participation. Prostitution is 'protected' here in Israel. Not just legal. And there is little incentive otherwise with ultimately mixed objectives of an all-powerful police state and the United States.

I have never consorted with a prostitute, nor intend to start now or in the future. King Solomon said wisely, 'It is not for Kings to give their strength to women.' With 1000 wives and 'maidservants' he would know. From experience, I can say that even one wife, can either bolster a man's 'strength,' or completely undo it.

In Israel I have had occassion to go to Tel Aviv by bus, and walk between the bus station and the city. On at least three occassions now I have been approached by prostitutes, whose eyes are dilated widely, and in broken English gesture and ask if I 'Wanna fuck?' Looking into one woman's eyes with both a sense of compassion and disbelief, she then infomed me, 'Hammeshim, 50 shekels.' I politely declined, wished her well, and felt great concern at being unable to assist her otherwise. And, I feel great concern for Israel, where societal fundamentals are truly worrisome beyond dominant international headlines on violence.

On the currency exchange market, 50 shekels is roughly 12 US dollars.

Almost comically, one Friday Evening Shabbos in Tel Aviv I sat on a bench reading Torah near the beach. Apparently I seated myself half a block from a club that was not open when I sat down. The owners sent several envoys who spent considerable effort trying to convince me to leave unsuccessfully. After they were open a few hours, they eventually paid 300 shekels for me and carried my bag for a hotel room well down the road as I had not made arrangements for a place to stay. I later surmised this was not charity as supposed, but keeping an Orthodox-looking guy reading Torah from scaring off their patrons. In retrospect, it became clear that this dance club was trafficking in Russian girls, and that they were checking with police to determine who I was and what to do, both before and after getting me a hotel room.

We are not just speaking of Tel Aviv. In Jerusalem, some current property owners who fought in previous wars were given their property when taken at that time. Two run a moderatley less expensive hotel in downtown Jerusalem, where from personal experience, the Ministry of the Interior maintains electronic eavesdropping and direct contact with American intelligence. During my stay, verbatim comments from me were all fed back in a loop from the US. As an oleh and a man who has never committed crime, what I have experienced over 1 1/2 years is pure harassment and illegality by both governments. It is completely mortifying. These property informants attract as much attention as they can to maintain government patronage. Patronage, in addition to whatever other payment or continued standing, consists in concession to run sex trade, which was evident around me. Police patronage is the reason prostitution stays legal. There also, I turned down offers of sex-CD's and ignored fleeting introduction to Russian women who appeared to be prostitutes.

Poverty of soul, life, health, and the material overwhelms here, as in much of the world. But this is Israel. Yet, among the Ultra-orthodox in Israel, true a minority, 50% of children live under the poverty line. Among all children -- 30%. Israel has the highest poverty levels among all Western nations. These are symptomatic events and statistics. And, the poverty caused by certain dynamics serve to intensify the dynamic itself.

Prostitution is legal in Israel, which in itself might not be so worrying, if such were a genuine free-market exchange. But, it is not. Biblically, even Tamar acted as the prostitute because she was wronged by Judah. He would have had her put to death until it was uncovered and he acknowledged that he had created the situation.

The same American government that says it wants Israeli Police to address sex trafficking, which has affected primarily slaves made out of poor Russian emigres, is RESPONSIBLE as the patron of these agencies who together have subverted Israeli society with its premium on 'intelligence' and informancy. These seek to undermine individuals and even individual behavior so as to promote government control in every facet of life. Almost everyone in Israel promotes themselves with information, some sell their bodies -- in all such cases they are selling themselves or their neighbor. This has become a society of slavery, driven by dominant interests and the objectives of worldwide intelligence, much of which has nothing at all to do with terrorism in the way it is applied. The same mechanisms and apparatus.

Creating alliances with foreign governments, in the process Solomon compromised on his leadership of Jewish values. This was the wisest man who ever lived. He wrote perhaps the greatest practical commentary on Torah, Mishleh (Proverbs). He was the leader who built God's Temple. He was commended by God for putting people before wealth and fame. And, then was also granted the latter. Yet, he destroyed the very society he built.

High ethicism suggests we must act justly so as to elevate others. For the state of Israel, this must occur at a policy level. Personal and policy decisions by Kings.

'Much food lies waste in the fallow ground of the poor, because of oppression.' - Solomon.


© 2007 Dean Levinson

Some poetry in the midst of ongoing harassment and surveillance-based torture in Israel.

TO WRITE REQUIRES I USE MY HAND
BUT EVEN MORE, IT UNDERSTAND
THAT THOUGH MY FINGERS DO THEIR PART
THE STROKE OF GENIUS GETS ITS START
BEYOND EVEN MIND OR TIME OR EYES
TO PERCEPTIONS OF A HEART THAT’S WISE

Hand of Genius Dean Levinson © 2006


To Write,
requires use of hand, but
Even more, hand understand
that though the fingers do their part
stroke of genius gets its start
Beyond even mind or time or eyes
to Perceptions Of a Heart that’s wise.

3 Views of Writing Dean Levinson © 2006

Bystanders and Torturers ...

(Again, references from Wikipedia)

'Bystanders resent the tortured because they make them feel guilty and ashamed for having done nothing to prevent the atrocity. The sufferers threaten their sense of security and their much-needed belief in predictability, justice, and the rule of law. The sufferers, on their part, do not believe that it is possible to effectively communicate to outsiders what they have been through...

Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman states:

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perperator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim demands action, engagment, and remembering."

It was long thought that "good" people would not torture and only "bad" ones would, under normal circumstances, However, research over the past 50 years suggests a disquieting alternative point of view, that under the right circumstances and with the appropriate encouragement and setting, most people can be encouraged to actively torture others. '

Why do I care?

My own sons stood by, watching the effects of my being tortured after I took custody at age 12, and by their senior year in high school both began to participate. Any negative indications by one of them from much earlier on were expanded by adults and grotesquely transformed into justifications for communal, family, and government crimes.

These are the sons I have loved and raised, and put first in everything. They learned to read sitting on my lap. I made sure they had every educational opportunity, was proud of them, said so often, and always wanted to spend time with them and see them have every advantage. When my employment and basic privacy was interfered with I still did whatever I could to put them first and ensure their success, eventually reduced to cooking their meals and discussing school and testing vocabulary in between running to the law libraries while under continuing surveillance and harassment.

My sons show the effects of living with me while I was subject to torture, both as victims and as torturers, without a clue as to what to rightly attribute this to. Evidence suggests they committed to US Federal Intelligence Agency commissions in exchange for tuition support to go to college, after having US Federal Intelligence Agencies interfere with our lives for so long, but now also including illegal recruiting and interviewing by the FBI at age 16. I have not heard from them for a long time, and when I have, it has been in humiliating fashion, coordinated by invasions of privacy passed between countries.

This has been a continuing series of frauds and crime not only by their mother, but Dallas Bar attorneys, Harriet Meiers of the Bush Administration (her friend), the US Justice Department, US State Department and others. These are the acts of women in both families. It is Parental Alienation and Malicious Mother syndrome in the extreme case, because of the level of influential contacts by my sons’ mother. A dominant woman who captained every one of her high school sports’ teams, could do no wrong, and expressed anger that her father did not let her mother do whatever she wished, nor did she feel she could. It was a bad marriage, I felt alone through most of it, and still don’t know whether it was the right call to stay married after the first year when I’d had enough, considering she was seeking something as a grounds for divorce later.

I did not deny their mother a divorce. I never denied my sons access to their mother or vice versa. In fact, I encouraged it. I simply insisted that I would fulfill my role as their father, and I could not hide what I was being subject to. Only later did I come to understand these acts were about custody, and my ex-wife’s desire to insist on custody and create a new family, while destroying the parental bond with me, and me personally if need be to achieve this goal.

So much for ‘family law’ and the ‘best interests’ of the child. Apparently, neither feminists nor strident religionists recognize the ‘best interests’ of the child, nor those of society, and are willing to break all laws and bounds in dishonest pursuit of other agenda.

What has been done by these and other parties is criminal and unacceptable, deserving of reversal and restitution.
© Copyright 2006 Dean Levinson

Insights into Psychological Torture ...

A good summation of what has been/is being directed towards myself for a period going back to two years prior to divorce, twelve years ago. Coached by senior lawyers, my ex-wife began this process, widened it with defamations wherever she could, and with unjustifiable attorney assistance elevated it to others at professional and governmental levels of interference. This is the true face of ‘family law’ and the abuse of public governmental institutions and ‘intelligence’ agencies --
© Copyright 2006 Dean Levinson

(from Wikipedia, and the referenced sources):

Torture is the intentional infliction of severe physical or psychological torment as an expression of cruelty, a means of intimidation, deterrent, revenge or punishment, or as a tool for the extraction of information or confessions ... Torture is common in situations where disparities in interpersonal power and control occur... Torture can be both physical and/or psychological. Physical torture is well-known, tends to be brutal, and is hard to hide. Psychological torture is not well-known, tends to be subtle and is much easier to conceal...

Psychological torture is directed at the psyche with calculated violations of psychological needs, along with deep damage to psychological structures and the breakage of beliefs underpinning normal sanity... Because psychological torture needs no physical violence to be effective, it is possible to induce severe psychological pain, sufferring, and trauma with no externally visible effects...

The process of torture is designed to invade and destroy the belief of the subject in their independence as a human being, to destroy presumptions of privacy, intimacy, and inviolability assumed by the subject, and to destroy their unspoken trust that these things can save them. Beyond merely invading the subject's mental, physical independence on a one-to-one level, such acts can be made further damaging via public humiliation, incessant repetition, depersonalization, and [attempts toward inducing] masochistic manipulation...

The CIA, in its "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983"... summed up the theory of coercion thus: " The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavior level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated frustrations."

Psychologically, torture often creates a state where the mind works against the best interests of the individual, due to the [attempted] inducement of such emotions of shame, worthlessness, dependency, and a feeling of a lack of uniqueness... These and other responses can lead to a mutated, fragmented, or discredited personality and belief structure...

Torture can rob the subject of the most basic modes of relating to reality and, thus, can be the equivalent of cognitive death. The self ("I") can be shattered. The tortured often have nothing familiar to hang on to: family, home, personal belongings, loved ones, language, name. They can lose their resilience and sense of freedom. They can feel alienated - unable to communicate, relate, attach…

Psychological pain is pain caused by psychological stress and by psychological trauma ... the practice of torture induces psychological pain through various acts...to achieve a tactical goal … Examples of psychological stress include: ...uncertainty, unfulfilled anticipation, fear for (and of) others and desire for (and of) others. But torture also creates further extremes of dynamic … Some well-known animal experiements performed in the 20th century show that in addition to these, the subject's own strengths and weaknesses can be enhanced by psychological stress to the point … where certain critical faculties in the brain shut down under overload... Torture...shatters deep down narcissistic fantasies of uniqueness, omnipotence, invulnerability, and impenetrability which help sustain personality...

Beatrice Patsalides describes this transmogrification thus in "Ethics of the unspeakable: Torture survivors in psychoanalystic treatment": "As the gap between the 'I' and the 'me' deepens, dissociation and alienation increase. The subject that, under torture, was forced into the position of pure object has lost his or her sense of interiority, intimacy, and privacy..."

The psychologist Shirley Spitz offers this powerful overview of the contradictory nature of torture in a seminar titled "The Psychology of Torture" (1989): "Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is most private with what is most public. Torture entails all the isolation and the extreme solitude of privacy with none of the usual security embodied therein...Torture entails at the same time all the self exposure of the utterly public with none of its possibilities for camaraderie or shared experience..." Torture combines complete humiliating exposure with utter devastating isolation.

The final products and outcome of torture are a scarred and often shattered subject and an empty display of the fiction of power and control. It is about reprogramming the subject to succumb to an alternative exegesis of the world, profferred by the abuser or user. The abused or used also swallows whole and assimilates the torturer's negative view of him and often, as a result, is rendered suicidal, self-destructive, or self-defeating...

Subjects typically oscillate between emotional numbing and highly sensitive arousal...other psychological consequences include cognitive impairment, reduced capacity to learn, memory disorders, sexual dysfunction, social withdrawal...emotional flatness... The sufferer rages at their own suffering...their sense of self-worth and self-esteem are crippled... Torture subjects often suffer from... strong feelings of hate, rage, terror...sorrow...

Inevitably, in the aftermath of torture, its subjects feel helpless and powerless...often exacerbated by the disbelief many torture subjects encounter, especially if they are unable to produce scars, or other "objective" proof of their ordeal …

The Einstein File by Fred Jerome - A Must Read, published 2002

Albert Einstein was harassed and later targeted by the FBI beginning the day he stepped into the US until (after) the day he died.

Over 1800 pages were recovered under the FOIA from the FBI, with at first 25% of the text blacked out. Unsuccessful at destroying the universally popular icon for genius because of his political activism against nuclear proliferation and McCarthyism, after his passing the US government subsequently sanitized his image of politics, seeking to rewrite history.

Hoover had files on almost 10 million Americans. The FBI actively recruited former Nazis into its ranks.

This is an important book. The author himself was son of a man who served three years in prison in Pennsylvania convicted for Communist sympathies during the early Red scare, and in preface recounts FBI agents following his own family during childhood. Well researched with first-hand documentation and evidence.

Wanting more letters to read on Einstein's experience from the Einstein Collection in the National Archive Library in Jerusalem, I was given this book for further background.

© Copyright 2006 Dean Levinson

Game Theory… A topic of interest because of all the games I have been subjected to, and from integrating the concepts in what have become useful tools for maintaining objectivity -- interpersonal transactional analysis, and the perspective of social economics.

Last night I attended a public lecture at Hebrew University given by Robert Aumann, Nobel Prize Winner, and a professor there. The lecture was repetitive – I’d attended it before without realizing at first, and regarding the exact same topic – ‘An Economic Index for Risk’.

Some Observations:

The crowd there including colleagues, students and others weren’t the least bit polite in their questions and comments to him. Perhaps a Nobel Prize doesn’t buy very much these days, at least in Israel, or this is not expected, or, this was deliberately projected as part of the demonstration.

Robert Aumann presented as a humble, polite, and good-humored person, with kippah and lengthy Talmudic beard, and projecting as if absent-minded, and without all the answers, or many.

The topic was simple as might be suited for the general public, but the axioms presented sophomoric and hardly representative of the product of complex thinking. In the model, the strong assumption was that those accepting gambles have the same wealth (and information, security, and other factors built into their decision-making capacity), making the entire Index involved very weak, if not ridiculous. Computer programs utilizing more thorough models already exist for this very thing. And, deliberately poor characteristics were built-in, just to uncover. A range of the kind of math drawn from in game theory was presented through this topic, but simplistically, and not applied in any convincing or particularly useful way.

This presentation was not an accident for a Nobel Prize Winner, nor was it characteristic for him personally. Somehow, it was either an encouragement that you too could win a Nobel Prize if this guy could, as part of a deliberate introduction to the kind of graduate work done there. Or perhaps, as a dissuasion to bother.

More pertinent and disturbing to me however, were the members in attendance, and comments that were made by Aumann and a handful of the others. Many of the people were present in the first lecture also, and sat in the same relative position to me. Certain comments that I made to a couple of those individuals last time, were repeated to me by a neighbor to my left, and in a handful of comments by the participants and Aumann himself. This was more than just a general recruiting forum then. I cannot speak for, or vouch, if there were perhaps other ‘flies’ in the web.

But this has become a familiar game here in Israel. Now, even in the forum of a lecture on game theory to play it! Indeed repetition serves as means by which superior parties at play maintain an ‘equilibrium’, with all that entails. 'Disturbing' doesn’t even begin to describe the level to which this occurs in Israel. Or, how it has been applied to me here for over one year now. Or as it was applied in the US throughout my ex-wife’s unjustifiable use of inappropriate influential assistance, forcing me to eventually leave the country after a long period of nothing less than psychological torture, and a variety of interferences in serious violation of civil and Constitutional laws. All of this beginning over two years prior to divorce by the encouragement of illegal actions by her friends at the Dallas Bar Association, at taxpayer expense no less, and escalating with time with broad defamation and illegal involvements by friend, Harriet Meiers of the Bush Administration, who my ex-wife cited with me.

Aumann himself would be a highly sought after consultant on the most important matters of Israeli foreign relations, governance and security, regarding models and outcomes affecting strategy. His Nobel speech, clearly reflects American-Israeli political thought, particularly the belief in effective deterent through credible threats. He emphasizes this, and gives the example of the nuclear race as a counter-intuitive peace incentive.

In e-mailing both the Decision Science general office and then Aumann personally over a period of two months, and even calling the general office regarding my interests in game theory and potential PhD work, I received no reply. I was informed before the lecture yesterday at the general office, that Aumann’s secretary would have received my e-mail, and yes, it was odd that I received no reply.

No less, near where I am residing lately, a man presenting as a former senior British diplomat, now working for an Israeli-Palestinian peace-related organization, and who has also played the repetition game with me, mentioned his governance involvement at Hebrew University, and posed comment to me during my unmentioned e-mail writing, suggesting I must have abilities in math. He is aware my real interest is in building International Healthcare for Israel, circles for which I have run into the same networked pattern of effects.

Returning last night off the bus to Ein Kerem, Oren, a ‘Hebrew University student’ who has given me an unsolicited ride twice, and also played the repetition game with me, pulled up just as I stepped off at 12:15 am, and queried me. His comments were that he had taken a course with Aumann (prior comment was he hadn’t) and that Aumann just didn’t lecture well.

There is no place I can go without being subject to this (invasions of privacy, networked repetition, stalking, etc.) – not a residence, a shul, an Ulpan, an employer, the Cinemateque, or anyplace it becomes evident I may frequent or head to. For over one year now. My e-mails read, my phones tapped and used as GPS tracking devices. Intense scrutiny with my every movement tracked, most statements recorded and fed back to me. My valuable or colorful ones -- just plain stolen. Property too. Employment, advancement, and self-promotion blocked or undercut. Private comments passed to parties inappropriately overseas. Negative imposition on my memory, affect and health.

This is not a help, as participants often claim, or legitimate, whether the actions are claimed to be part of Absorption, Security, or whatever the hell, as the infrastructure and resources most certainly are related. This is non-stop psychological ops well beyond moderate, the equivalent to an arrest at-large, an ongoing interrogation, and continuing torture. I don’t care how friendly the tone or big the smiles of those engaged in the abuse.

Moreover, there is an intimate tie to investigative agencies broadly, desire to cover-up what was done to me in the US, and also presently in regard to what is being secreted by/for/about my sons and my ex-wife and US intelligence, avoiding penalties and actions for restitution.

© Copyright 2006 Dean Levinson

Let us hope the end of illegal invasions of personal privacy, and a new fair-dealing among representatives of business, health care and government will be occurring where I am concerned, here in Israel.

© Copyright 2006 Dean Levinson

The latter rain...

Yesterday's special prayer for rain on Shemeni Atzeret was recited throughout Israel, Shemini Atzeret being the last day of Sukkot. This morning in Jerusalem, the very next day, there is rain.

Shemini Atzeret means "the eighth [day] of retention." Chassidic masters explain that the primary purpose of the festival is to retain and "conceive" the spiritual revelations and powers that we are granted during the festivals of the month of Tishrei, so that we could subsequently apply them to our lives throughout the year.

To the many who prayed or understand the custom of this prayer, what was conceived in repentance and celebration has this marvelous and highly favorable sign.

© Copyright 2006 Dean Levinson

More Yichus … Going back farther ...

Dov Levinson, oleh to Israel, is the son of
Jacob Levinson, the son of
Yitzhak Eizik Levinson
(who came to America as a child), the son of
Rabbi Eliyahu Ber Levinson,
(born 1821 in Kreitinga, Lithuania and died 1888 in Kreitinga) the son of
Rabbi Yitzhak Eizik Levinson, the son of
Rabbi Arye Leib Levinson

Rabbi Yitzhak Eizik Levinson, married
Treina Ragoler, the daughter of
Rabbi Eliyahu Ragoler,
(born 1745 in Neustadt-Sugind), the son of
Rabbi Avraham Ragoler,
(born 1722 in Vilna, Lithuania and died 1804 in Neustadt-Schirwindt, Lithuania), the son of
Rabbi Shlomo Zalmen
(born 1695 in Vilna and died 1758 in Vilna, Lithuania), he married Treina of Setz, Byelorussia, and was known as a righteous Rabbi,
humble & honest. He had 5 sons and one daughter, among them Avraham of Eragola, and Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna (perhaps the
most prolific commentator since the Rambam); he was son of
Rabbi Yissakhar Ber, the son of
Rabbi Eliyahu “Khassid”
(died 1710), he married the daughter of Rabbi Moshe Rivkas (a scholar who wrote a commentary and died 1671); he was father to 3
Rabbis, among them Yissakhar Ber; he was son of the very prominent
Rabbi Moshe Kramer
(died 1688), the chief Rabbi of Vilna, the son of
Rabbi David Ashkenazy
(died 1645), the Rosh Yeshiva of Lemberg, Poland, and the son of
Rabbi Mordechai Ashkenazy

Rabbi Moshe Kramer, married
Leiba Heilprin, daughter of
Rabbi Yosef Heilprin, son of
Rabbi Elyakim Getzel Heilprin of Lemberg…

The identity of the wife of Moshe Kramer may be established in that David Ashkenazy’s daughter-in-law is recorded as ‘Lieba, the wife of Moshe ben David. ‘Lieba’ was the name of a daughter of Rabbi Yosef, son of Elyakim Getzel Heilprin of Lemberg. The acceptance of such a match would have reflected the circles of influence involved.

Through the lineage of Rabbi Moshe Kramer and Rabbi Elyakim Getzel Heilprin, my father’s family’s ancestry would continue across futher successive and well-known European Rabbinic families, including the famous medieval Biblical and Talmudic commentator, Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhak, 1040 – 1105), whose work is perhaps the most frequently cited today, appearing yet in modern Chumash.

The uncovering of this history has connected recurrent themes of the Levinson Family history tree as they trace through specific members of the Lithuanian-Polish-Belarussian Jewish Scholarly and Leadership Community, without having been aware previously of where many of these merits arose from in recent generations, and in my personal life:

Scholarship, Piety, High Intelligence, Memorization, Fatherhood, Wisdom Literature, Published Commentary, Administration, Applied Worldly as well as Religious knowledge, Messianism, Aliyah and Zionism. More of the detail, further relatives, their accomplishments, published works and some individual profiles in future posts…

From research by Dean Aaron (Dov) Levinson, performed at the Tel Aviv University Diaspora Center, the Jewish Studies Reading Room at the National Library at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Historical Archives at Yad VaShem and based on past interviews with Jacob Levinson (of blessed memory) and Sophie (Levinson) Lebow Harris. Large portions of material are taken from Eliyahu’s Branches: The Descendants of the Vilna Gaon and His Family.

© Copyright 2006 Dean Levinson