View allAll Photos Tagged Published
"The Snake Pit" is published in 1946 and becomes a national best-seller. Written by Mary Jane Ward, the book is the account of a woman who goes insane but is later able to get better and return to her husband. The book was later made into a popular movie of the same name.
This excerpt from a book published in 1900 is a product of its times, lacking a balanced historical perspective.
From Then and Now; or, Thirty-Six Years in the Rockies by Robert Vaughn, 1900, pp. 305-328 [public domain] :
GEN. GEORGE A. CUSTER, U. S. A.
The Hero of Little Big Horn
It is plain that Custer laid his plans to win the fight, and at once. From the position in which the dead were found it is also clear that, having found themselves entirely outnumbered and beyond the reach of help, they took position as best they could in a sort of triangle on the rough, hot hill side, and there died in battle. Custer’s brother, Colonel Tom Custer, held one corner of the triangle, and down nearest the river his brother-in-law, Calhoun, another, while the general held the higher ground, so as to see and direct the battle to the end. The men fell almost in line. The officers, Calhoun and Crittenden, fell in their places, as if on parade.
Two years afterwards Robert E. Strahorne, a particular friend of mine, who was all through the campaign with General Crook, sent me the following statement in regard to this Indian war:
“I was, during the trying days of 1876–77, the representative of an Eastern journal and attached to the expeditions which Brigadier General George Crook led against the hostile Sioux and Cheyennes, then commanded by Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Dull Knife and Little Wolf.
“In this campaign we were obliged to go without clothing or bedding, save such as we carried on our backs, and without food, except the scantiest allowance possible of bacon and coffee. In this one point, Crook is without a rival in the regular army; he subjects himself to just the same discomfort and hardships as his men have to endure and cuts loose from his wagon train for weeks and months at a time. His wagons are never allowed to become receptacles of luxuries and toothsome delicacies for himself and officers; they carry only grain, ammunition and the necessary articles of daily food.
“At the engagement on the Rosebud, Montana, June 17, 1876, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull ‘bounced’ Crook with a force of painted and feathered red devils numbering well up307 in the thousands. Poor Custer met his fate at the hands of these same warriors only a week later. Crook’s forces were not much, if any, superior to Custer’s whole command, but he was fortunate in keeping them undivided. He withstood the attack with great skill and courage, although for a while things certainly looked very blue. On this day, a little company of Montana miners, who had been out in the Black Hills prospecting and had joined Crook while on their way back to Montana, did splendid work with their Sharp’s sporting rifles. Crook and Terry, those grand soldiers, after poor Custer’s command had been wiped out, united their forces on the Yellowstone. How Terry then took for his share the task of cleaning out any hostiles to be found north of the Yellowstone, while Crook, like a bull-dog, hung to the trail which led to the south; how he followed it without bedding, without shelter, without food other than horse meat and berries found in captured villages, and in spite of the pitiless rain which beat down upon us (for I was one of those who camped on the trail), day after day, during the entire march from the mouth of Powder river to the Black Hills.
“I could write a book about our trials and tribulations on those marches, and sometime in the future the half-formed fancy of the present moment may take shape. One thing I wish to impress upon the minds of present and future Montanians, and that is the fact that the campaigns of General Crook and brother officers and men in 1876 and 1877 had the positive result of opening to their permanent occupation and use those vast and beautiful regions drained by the Yellowstone, Big Horn, Rosebud, Tongue, Powder, Musselshell and Judith rivers—regions which up that time had swarmed with the most powerful, vindictive and treacherous tribes of savages America has produced. I went into those campaigns knowing little of the regular army, and indeed somewhat308 prejudiced against it; I came out satisfied that the mass of its officers and men, the ‘youngsters’ especially, were brave, intelligent, patriotic, ambitious and courteous—men of whom any country should be proud.
“Closing this reminiscence of an arduous season of toil and danger, I am glad to say that among the lieutenants with whom I faced the red foe, and for whom I formed a great attachment, was the witty, bright and brave Schwatka, whose successes as an Arctic explorer have since made him world famous; Bourke, who besides being an officer of exceptional gallantry and good judgment, has devoted himself, with great patience, to the collection of memoranda upon the manners and customs of the aborigines; Carpenter, noted as an entomologist, and dozens of other officers—Eagan, Charles King, Schuyler, Allison, Chase, Lemley, McKinney (since killed), Delaney, Randall, Sibley, Nickerson, Henry, as brave and intelligent as any men can be—in the army or out of it.
“As Sherman’s army had an important element following and surrounding it—‘the bummers’—so this hard-worked force that Crook commanded had attached to it a force of correspondents whom I compare, and in all kindness, to the ‘bummers’ whom Sherman led to the sea. They were an exceptionally fine lot of men. There was Jack Finerty of the Chicago Times. I have always had a notion that he stepped out from some place in Lever’s novels; he was brave to rashness, and devoted to the interests of his great journal. Joe Wason, of the Alta California and the New York Tribune, always on the skirmish line after ‘pints.’ His red head shone like the danger signal of a freight train, but in spite of his red head he was one of the best fellows I ever knew. T. C. MacMillan of the Chicago Inter Ocean, and J. J. Roche of the New York Herald, both physically weak, but intellectually strong, and so on through the list. Readers of the Boston309 Advertiser, New York Herald and Tribune, Alta California, Philadelphia Press, Washington Star, Denver News, Omaha Republican and Herald, Cheyenne Sun, and other papers represented at various times during that campaign of seventeen months’ duration, never imagined while they were reading our letters at their comfortable breakfast table, and growling at the dashed correspondents because they ‘didn’t make ’em more full,’ that the ‘dashed correspondent,’ dressed in rags, soaked through with rain, and almost crazed with want of food and rest, was writing his letters on a cottonwood chip or a piece of flat stone, and often at the risk of his life from a stray bullet.”
There is now in this state one witness of the Custer battles, who is perhaps the only one living. He is William Jackson, an intelligent and well educated half-breed, who now lives at the Blackfeet reservation sixty-five miles from here.
After a long life as government scout, he has turned his attention to farming and cattle raising, and in this pursuit he has been quite successful. He was in this city a few days ago on his way from Helena, where he had been as a witness in a trial which was held in the United States court. A correspondent of the Anaconda Standard, at this place, had an important interview with Mr. Jackson, which is as follows. He says: “Mitch Bouille, William Cross and myself were acting as guides and scouts for the Custer-Terry expedition against the Sioux and Cheyennes who were under the leadership of the wily old Sitting Bull. The battle, as you know, took place on June 25, 1876. On the morning of that day the troopers had made an early start and we, the scouts, had gone ahead on a reconnoitering expedition. When we returned to report we met the command crossing the divide between the Rosebud and Little Big Horn rivers, General Custer rode at the head of his command, the Seventh Cavalry, and Captains311 French and Benteen and Major Reno were in command of other divisions.
“We had discovered the hostiles camped near the Little Big Horn and about seven miles straight ahead of the soldiers. We so reported to General Custer, and he, calling a halt, summoned the officers under him for a council. The troops were shut out from view on the part of the hostiles by a ridge of land, and it was at the base of this that the council of war was held. It lasted but a few minutes, and Custer’s desire for an immediate engagement carried the day. The soldiers were divided into three battalions. Major Reno with three companies and all of the scouts was to advance rapidly and from a commanding ridge make a charge upon the upper end of the Sioux camp, first gaining a patch of timber about six hundred yards from the enemy. In the meantime General Custer, with five companies, would deploy around the edge of the ridge where they were now halted and attack the lower end of the village and cut off all retreat on the part of the Sioux. Captain Benteen, with four companies, would take up a position on the east bank of the Little Big Horn, overlooking the village and protecting the pack train and baggage.
“As the officers left the council they quickly gave orders to the men, and in an instant all were busy inspecting and loading their pistols and carbines, filling their ammunition belts, tightening saddles and looking to every detail preparatory to the fight. Soon the bugle sounded, ‘Prepare to mount; mount, forward!’ Custer and his men went to the right, Reno to the left, toward the ford of the Little Big Horn. The horses went forward at a sharp trot, and in the moment of waiting on the bank of the stream I looked back and saw Custer with his five companies charging upon the village, Custer fully fifty yards in the lead. That was the last time I ever looked upon that heroic soldier alive or his gallant men. We312 were soon busy in making the ford, which was somewhat difficult, and then we advanced up the ridge, taking the position assigned us at the council. Up to that time there had been no incident of interest. The troops were dismounted and the horses left in the care of every fourth soldier. Everything was ready for the fight to begin and the wait was not long.
“The hostiles had discovered us at once and took the initiative by making a vicious charge up the hill. Their main body gained a vantage ground behind an elevation sufficient to protect them and just in front of our position. As they charged they drove in our skirmish line, which took a position just inside the timber. The fight was furious for a time, the Indians outnumbering Reno’s command at least ten to one. A second charge from the hostiles drove us still higher up the ridge, at least one mile further from the village, and it was in our retreat that we first heard the sounds of firing in the lower end of the village where Custer was engaged. It could not have been very heavy, as he met but few hostiles at the first of the engagement, but it was sufficient to draw the attention of the Indians away from us and turn it upon the unfortunates who were attacking them in the rear. This was between 3 and 4 o’clock in the afternoon and from that time the fighting in the lower end of the Indian camp was hot and heavy. The sound of firing increased steadily until it became a roar, and then it died gradually away until there was only the scattered reports of single shots. All this took place in the space of two hours, and when the June sun set behind the Little Big Horn mountains the Custer command had been entirely wiped out.
“Of course we did not know this at the time, but wondered how the fight had gone. Soon we suspected that something was wrong, for the Indians again turned their attention to313 Reno, and from that time there was no opportunity to think of anything save what we saw going on about us, and in which we were vitally interested, for the onslaughts of the painted warriors became desperate. Inflamed by their success in killing the Custer command, they now determined to sweep away the rest of their enemies, and time and again they charged up the hill to capture Reno. Only the strength of our position prevented our meeting a fate like that of Custer, and it was after dark before the hostiles gave up their attempt to dislodge and slaughter us. My personal interest in the fray was strong. I had been in the skirmish line, and when we were driven back by the hostiles we retreated slowly, protecting the withdrawal of the main body of Reno’s command. In doing this fourteen of us were cut off from the command and had to take to the brush and hide. Before we could conceal ourselves ten of the fourteen had been killed, leaving only Lieutenant Deridio, F. F. Gerard, Tom O’Neal and myself.
“Fortunately we were not discovered, and at midnight, after all danger of the enemy was past, we slipped from our covert and made ready to join our command. We stripped the blankets from the bodies of dead Indians, which were plentifully strewn through the timber, and wrapping these about us we filed Indian fashion up the bank of the stream. We did not know just where Reno was camped and our first desire was to get outside of the ‘dead circle,’ or picket line, of the Sioux. We advanced cautiously and making as little noise as possible, but in spite of that we suddenly ran into a body of fifteen Sioux pickets. To hesitate was to be suspected, and suspicion on their part just then meant death to us. We advanced steadily and without exhibiting surprise. We had partly passed the party when one of them demanded who we were. I could speak Sioux as well as my own tongue, and without delay replied ‘Us.’
314 “‘Where are you going?’ was the next question, and my answer to this was, ‘for our horses.’ This satisfied the interrogators, and we had escaped the first danger.
“We had succeeded in crossing the stream and following the trail along the bank, faint in the dim moonlight, when we came to an opening in the dense cottonwoods, and there we ran into a camp of several hundred Indians. Gerard immediately took them to be our men and belonging to Reno’s command. He shouted: ‘Don’t shoot, boys; we are friends.’ The startled Indians cried out: ‘Lay non; wa-see-cha ah-he-pe ah-lo!’ (It is the enemy; the evil bad snows are upon us!) At this I dropped my blanket and ran, getting into the brush and away from the trail. Some one followed me closely, and I made up my mind that if he ever caught me there would be a fight to death between us. I could actually feel the knive thrust between my ribs in my highly excited imagination, and when I reached the river bank I turned to face my pursuer. Then I found that it was none other than Gerard, who had chosen the same path as myself. We waited a minute or two and listened. Then we heard four shots, and we were sure that our companions were lost.
“We waited no longer but plunged into the stream and gained the opposite bank, following it as far as we dared. Dawn was breaking and through the day we lay hidden in the willows, watching the battle which followed between the Indians and Reno’s command. As the sun arose we could see the Indians circling about the camp and occupying every adjacent hill. A scattering fire was maintained until 9 o’clock, when the Indians made a savage assault upon the east side of Reno’s position. The soldiers appeared to be very cool and poured in a murderous fire, which forced the hostiles to fall back with heavy loss. An hour later they made a second desperate charge, and so fierce was this that they actually315 fought with the soldiers over the breastworks, hand to hand. But again the discipline of the soldiers was more than a match for the fanatical frenzy of the Sioux, and they were driven back the second time. The soldiers had lost but few in this conflict, while their savage foes were strewn all over the side of the hill. From that time until noon there was only firing at long range. Then came a third charge, easily repulsed. From that time until 4 o’clock in the afternoon each side rested on its arms. About that hour, sheltered by a hill and not more than one thousand yards distant from the soldiers, the Indians held a council of war. In a few minutes there were evidences of departure in the Indian village, and it was then that the strength of the foe appeared. They could be seen by the thousand, scurrying about through the camp, taking down the lodges, loading the ponies with packs and with travois, and when the baggage train was finally completed, hurrying off to the north under a strong escort of warriors, making for the Big Horn mountains. At sunset all of them had disappeared and we dared venture out from our hiding place.
“Approaching Reno’s position cautiously, for fear of being shot by the sentinels in the darkness, we were fortunate in getting inside the lines in time to meet Major Reno himself with members of his staff. To them I related what we had seen and heard, including the story of the loss of our companions, but before I had finished a challenge was heard, and into the camp came an orderly with Deridio and O’Neal. We were overjoyed, but there was little time for congratulations. Mounted on the best horse remaining in the command—for the long range fighting had killed many of those in the troop—I was sent with dispatches to Generals Custer and Terry.
“Three miles down the Little Big Horn I came upon the battlefield and it was a most grievious sight. Scattered or heaped up on the plain were the bodies of 237 men, every316 one save that of Custer mutilated in the most horrible manner known to the Indian mind. Not one had a vestage of clothing upon it; all had been stripped off and carried away by the exulting fiends. In Custer’s body there were the marks of two bullet wounds, and undoubtedly I was the first man to look upon the terrible sight. It was too much for me and I turned and rode swiftly away down the river, shortly afterward meeting General Terry and his soldiers. To him I gave my dispatches and was immediately sent back to Major Reno with instructions to bury the dead. This was completed about 1 o’clock in the afternoon of the 27th. The wounded in Reno’s command were taken to the mouth of the Big Horn river, and thence conveyed down the Yellowstone on the steamer Far West to Bismarck. The next day we gathered up large quantities of pemmican and other provisions and camp utensils left by the Sioux in their hurried flight, and burned them. Although I was but a youth when this occurred, it made an impression upon my mind that I shall never forget, and the details of those horrible two or three days are as fresh now as they were at the time of occurrence. Five years ago I went over ‘The Custer Battlefield,’ where the soldiers are buried, with Mrs. Eustis, whose son Jack, then a recent graduate from West Point, had been one of the victims under Custer. She had cherished a hope of recovering his bones, but although we had with us a number of Sioux and Cheyennes who had taken part in the fight, and each tried his best to recall all of the fearful scene, we were unable to help her, and she was obliged to return to her Eastern home with frustrated hopes. The incident, however, called up in mind all of the gruesome details of the battlefield as I saw it on that memorable morning, and I shall never care to repeat the experience.”
General Terry, in his official report dated Camp on Little Big Horn, June 27, 1876, noticed the military movement in317 the direction where Custer and his men had fallen, and submitted for the information of the war department the following important explanation:
“At the mouth of the Rosebud I informed General Custer that I should take the supply steamer Far West up the Yellowstone to ferry General Gibbon’s column over the river; that I should personally accompany that column, and that it would in all probability reach the mouth of the Little Big Horn, on the 26th inst. The steamer reached General Gibbon’s troops, near the mouth of the Big Horn, early on the 24th, and at 4 o’clock in the afternoon all his men and animals were across the Yellowstone. At 5 o’clock the column, consisting of five companies of the Seventh Infantry, four companies of the Seventh Cavalry, and a battery of three gatling guns, marched out to and across Tullock’s creek, starting soon after 5 o’clock on the morning of the 25th. The infantry made a march of twenty-two miles over the most difficult country I have ever seen. In order that scouts might be sent into the valley of the Little Big Horn, the cavalry with the battery was then pushed on thirteen or fourteen miles further, reaching camp at midnight. The scouts were sent out at 4:30 on the morning of the 26th. The scouts discovered three Indians, who were at first supposed to be Sioux, but when overtaken they proved to be Crows, who had been with General Custer. They brought the first intelligence of the battle. Their story was not credited. It was supposed that some fighting, perhaps severe fighting, had taken place, but it was not believed that disaster could have overtaken so large a force as twelve companies of cavalry. The infantry, which had broken camp very early, soon came up and the whole column entered and moved up the valley of the Little Big Horn. During the afternoon efforts were made to send scouts to what was supposed to be General Custer’s position, and to318 obtain information of the condition of affairs, but those who were sent out were driven back by parties of Indians, who, in increasing numbers, were seen hovering on General Gibbon’s front. At twenty minutes before 9 o’clock in the evening the infantry had marched between twenty-five and thirty miles; the men were very weary and daylight was falling; the column was, therefore, halted for the night at a point about eleven miles in a straight line above the mouth of the stream. Next morning the movement was resumed, and after a march of nine miles Major Reno’s intrenched position was reached. The withdrawal of the Indians from around Reno’s command, and from the valley, was undoubtedly caused by the appearance of General Gibbon’s troops. Major Reno and Captain Benteen, both of whom are officers of great experience, accustomed to see large masses of mounted men, estimated the number of Indians engaged at not less than twenty-five hundred. Other officers think that the number was greater than this. The village in the valley was about three miles in length and about a mile in width. Besides the lodges proper, a great number of temporary brushwood shelters were found in it, indicating that many men, besides its proper inhabitants, had gathered together there.”
William Sellow, who now lives in Teton county, Montana, also one of the scouts who served under General Custer, contributes the following to the Dupuyer Acantha, July 15, 1899:
“Quite often, especially of recent years, I have seen articles in papers and magazines relating to the actions and motives of General Custer that led up to the massacre of his historic band. Most of these do grievious wrong to the bravest and best officer the United States government ever sent out to fight Indians on the frontier. Books, too, go so far as to call him a suicide and murderer for going at the head of his men into the battle of Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876.
319 “At that time I was in Custer’s employ as a civilian scout, and had known him for a long time. I knew his ways of attacking Indians, and knew his unbounded confidence in his men. I had known him to win Indian fights against greater odds than his last one. For instance, at Wichita, he routed them with a force that numbered ten to one. Had he, in his last fight been supported as he could and should have been, he would have won the day, and then the Sitting Bull war would have ended and not have lasted until it cost much money and many lives. Not until the buffalo were killed and other game became scarce were the Indians satisfied to accept government rations and spend their honeymoon at home. An Indian’s heart is never good until he is hungry and cold.
“Custer has been accused by would-be historians of going contrary to orders in his last campaign, and to refute these charges I write to follow him as far, or farther, than anyone else is truthfully capable of doing. That he did not go contrary to orders in his last movements the captain acting as General Terry’s adjutant at the time, if he is alive, will gladly, doubtless, testify. Unfortunately, I have forgotten his name. He will remember the greater part of the orders.
“After we, the scouts, delivered to Custer his last orders, I know he had no opportunity to receive any more, and as I recount the events as nearly as I can remember them at this length of time, it will be seen that I am correct.
“General Terry started myself and another scout to overtake and join Custer. After leaving the supply train and headquarters on about June 22, 1876, we reached the camp that night and delivered our message. The reader will see that in those stirring times when a scout was given a message it was in duplicate, one for the perusal of the scout and one for the receiver. These precautions were taken for fear one or both might be lost en route. In the first case the open one could be delivered, and in the second the scout might deliver320 the message from memory. I have yet in my possession the extra copy of this message, but unfortunately, it is so old and pocket-worn as to be only partially decipherable. From this, aided by memory, I give the message:
“‘To Lieutenant Colonel Custer, Seventh United States Cavalry:
“‘The brigadier general commanding desires that you proceed up the Rosebud in pursuit of the Indians, whose trail was discovered by Major Reno’s scouts a few days ago. Of course, it is impossible for me to give definite instructions with regard to this movement, and were it not impossible to do so, the department commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy and ability to wish to impose upon you orders that would conflict with your own judgment and which might hamper your actions when nearly in contact with the enemy. I will, however, indicate to you his ideas of what your movements should be and he desires you to conform to them unless your own judgment should give you sufficient reasons for departing from them. He thinks you should proceed up the Rosebud until you ascertain definitely the direction in which the trail above spoken of leads. Should it be found that it turns toward the Little Big Horn he thinks you should still proceed southward as far as the headwaters of Tongue river and then toward the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn, keeping scouts out constantly to your left, so as to prevent the possibility of the escape of the Indians to the south or southeast by passing around your left flank. The column of Colonel Gibbons is now in motion for the mouth of the Big Horn. As soon as it reaches that point it will cross the Yellowstone and move up as far at least as the forks of the Big Horn and the Little Big Horn. Of course, its future will be controlled by circumstances as they exist. But it is hoped that the Indians, if upon the Little Big Horn, may be so nearly enclosed by the two columns that their escape will be impossible.
321 “‘The department commander desires that, on your way up the Rosebud, you should have your scouts thoroughly examine the upper part of Tullock’s fork, and that you should endeavor to send scouts through to Colonel Gibbon’s command with the result of your examination. The lower part of this will be examined by Colonel Gibbon’s scouts.
“‘The supply steamer will be pushed up the Big Horn as far as the forks of the Big and Little Big Horn, if the river is found navigable that far.
“‘The department commander, who will accompany the column of Colonel Gibbons, desires you to report to him there no later than the expiration of the time for which your troops are rationed, unless in the meantime you receive further orders.’
“After sleeping about two hours that same night we got fresh horses and Custer started us with instructions to go to the east of Tullock’s fork and to follow it down to its mouth at Tullock’s creek and to keep a sharp lookout for any signs of Indians, and to report to him again that night if possible. This we did, seeing nothing but the trail of a small war party going toward the Big Horn.
“We had been rolled up in our blankets but a few hours when Charlie Reynolds and a half-breed Sioux scout, Bill Cross, came in with a report which caused Custer to send for us again. After getting fresh horses we were given a dispatch to carry to Colonel Gibbon’s command. We reached the river, which we crossed by the aid of our horses’ tails with our clothes tied so as to keep them as dry as possible. We reached the command that day. The next morning I was sent back to the supply train, which was still at Powder river, and my companion was sent to join Benteen’s command. He was with the latter during his engagement with the Indians, and he gives Colonel322 Benteen great credit for bravery. The colonel, he says, when the men behind the breastworks ran short of ammunition, with his own hands carried it and threw it over to them, being all the time exposed to the deadly fire of the enemy.
“In twenty-four hours I reached the supply train and was afforded another opportunity to fill up and get some sleep. On the 26th we met a Sioux scout, Bloody Knife, coming in badly scared and he seemed to think that Custer had been killed, although he had not seen him. Another scout, George Mulligan, and myself had been sent out to find Custer.
“We had not gone far when we met Bill Cross and eight Ree Indian scouts. They had a few Sioux ponies which they said they had captured. They told us that Custer and his command were killed, but they did not seem to know much about it. They could not tell us just where the fight took place, hence we took little stock in their story. We learned afterward, however, that when Custer made the charge they gathered up the Sioux horses that had strayed out on the hills, and pulled out for a more healthy climate. Scout Reynolds had the same privilege, but chose to go into the battle, and was afterward found in the same deadly circle with General Custer with many empty shells around them as evidence of a desperate fight.
“Reynolds well knew of Custer’s ability to deal with the Indians against fearful odds, for he had previously fought with him. He also knew the odds he had to face that day, as we spoke of it when we last met and he proved by his actions that he could not have been aware of any wrong-doing on the part of the general when he, of his own free will, followed him that day.
“After leaving Cross and the Ree scouts we met Curley, the Crow Indian scout, who was with Custer at the beginning of the fight. That pock-marked villain and liar, Rain-in-the-Face,323 says Curley is a liar, that he was not there, but I know for a fact that Rain-in-the-Face had never met Curley, nor to the best of my knowledge has he ever seen him since. I have heard Rain talk and he will never get into the happy hunting grounds if veracity is to be his passport.
“When we met Curley he was so badly scared that I doubt if he would have known himself. He had a Sioux medicine or war pony in full paint and feathers, a Sioux blanket and part of a war bonnet that he wore in his escape, and which he got from a dead Sioux medicine man who was killed near him in the first attack. The blanket had some blood on it. His own horse was killed and he appropriated the medicine man’s property, and instead of trying to run the gauntlet he moved along with the enemy, trusting to his disguise to deceive them. When he saw an opportunity he dropped out of his bad company and escaped. When I last saw him with Custer he had his Crow clothes on and had his own pony, and he had no other chance to get the outfit. Had he been a white man he would not have had any chance of escape even with that rig. He does not claim to have tried to fight, but only to escape, and his first account of the affair is no doubt the correct one, as anyone acquainted with the Indians and their mode of fighting will admit its feasibility.
“I understand that there was an ex-soldier at the World’s Fair in Chicago, who posed as a soldier in the Seventh cavalry, who escaped from the fatal field. He was an impostor, for none but Curley left the ground alive. He may have dreamed it and believes in dreams.
“When the Seventh cavalry rode away from Fort Lincoln with the White Horse company, the band belonging to it played one of Custer’s favorites, ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me.’ Ever after that, when I heard the familiar tune on the plains, my mind was carried back to the parting scene at the fort,325 and in the foreground of memory’s picture stands, with tear-dimmed eyes, a sad, brave woman. Well might her heart nigh break, for she knew, as no one else did, that her brave husband was going on an expedition fraught with untold, hidden dangers, and not upon a summer outing.
“Crazy Horse and Goose, each with a band of Cheyennes, fought against Custer. In fact, the former was looked upon as the head war chief, Sitting Bull being more of a medicine man and prophet. The prevalent belief is that Sitting Bull was the worst Indian and head war chief. This is a mistake. There were several worse than he and more treacherous, but as most of them are dead and good Indians, I will not take the trouble to name them or to recount their good (?) deeds. Gall was the head man among those who fought Reno and Benteen, and would have got away with them only for the personal bravery of the latter.
“When General Terry left the field and General Miles took command all Terry’s and Custer’s scouts who were alive went to work for the new commander, except George Mulligan and Jimmy-from-Cork. But there were only five of us left—Bob and Bill Jackson, Vick Smith, Cody and myself. However, Miles re-enforced us with several others.
“Scout Billy Jackson was with Custer on the morning of the 25th, but left before the engagement to join Reno, and knew nothing of the terrible conflict until the next day. On the 27th they came to the battlefield, and Jackson, with four other scouts, identified the remains of General Custer and Scout Reynolds. His report of the battlefield may be vouched for, as he was ever known as a brave, cool, clear-headed and truthful scout, whom General Miles said he could always depend upon. He, too, maintains that Custer did not go contrary to orders.”
327 Custer had divided his force into three parts. Benteen had orders to sweep everything before him to the left, and Reno was to drive right at the enemy. But it seems that neither he nor any other officer who was in this campaign had an idea that the Indian forces were as strong as they proved to be. There were at least eight Indian warriors to one soldier; neither did he know that they were so well supplied with arms and ammunition. Here is where Custer was deceived, or likely he would have kept his men together and won the battle.
On the arrival of General Gibbon the dead were buried and the wounded men of Reno’s and Benteen’s commands were given attention. After Gibbon and his men returned to Fort Shaw, I had an interview with the general and with many of the soldiers who were on the battlefield and assisted in burying the dead. They said that all the men, except Custer, were horribly mutilated and divested of all their clothing.
Again we return to Sitting Bull. Soon after the death of Custer, Sheridan, who was at the head of the war department, called out troops and fought him the balance of the season almost continuously, but the great chief always avoided open battle. In October General Miles drove him across the Missouri river, killing some Indians, capturing two thousand men, women and children, and destroying many of their supplies. The warriors who remained were scattered and discouraged; skulked back into the mountains, while Sitting Bull, with his followers crossed the line into the British possessions. In the meantime Generals Crook and Terry fought and defeated Chief Crazy Horse on the Rosebud towards the close of the year.
To give an idea of the vastness of the country where the hostile Indians had established their camps, I will give the approximate area, which was 125 by 200 miles, or 25,000 square miles. The Yellowstone river is about 350 miles long,328 200 of which was included in this area. The length of Powder river is 150 miles; the Tongue river the same, the Rosebud 125, the Big Horn about of similar length. With all of the tributaries of these rivers, and with the hills and mountain passes, the Indians were familiar; in this respect they had the advantage over the military. To go into details of those campaigns, extending over this great territory—the fearful severity—the long marching for months at a time through an untrodden wilderness, and sometimes a scarcity of food, clothing and bedding—the many battles that were fought, to which I have made no reference; burying the dead and taking care of the wounded—to tell all this would make a book in itself. But one thing I will insert here: That monument in Custer county, which marks the graves of those who have given their lives for this mountain land, and are peacefully sleeping at the base of it, will be kept erect by the Montanians as long as those everlasting peaks which overlook this sacred spot from the mountain tops near by shall remain.
Robert Vaughn.
July 24, 1899.
This is not just any book I am looking at. It is a photo book with write-ups about places in North America to travel with kids. Beyond that it is a book that a photo of MINE has been PUBLISHED! It just arrived this past week.
I must tell you I was blown away when I got the request to be paid to have a photo published in a book. (read my blog entry on it here). In addition to that they were paying me to have the photo in the book! AND... in addition to that they would send me a copy of it when it was in print - so here is my copy, in my hands.
See the next two photos in my stream to see the photo credits... and then too click one more photo further in my stream to see the page in the book with my photo printed on it!
Here is info about the book from an email that was written to me about the book when I was just learing about it. ... in case you are interested in getting a copy: Amazing Places to Take Your Kids in North America will be a large coffee table book that you'll be able to find in places like Wal Mart and on the bargain price bookshelves at places like Barnes & Noble. Travel agencies will also give them away as promotional items. About 10,000 copies will be printed.
This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 24th of February 1916.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images and have any stories or information to add please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
via Best Music Video PromotionBest Music Video Promotion
Chances are you haven’t heard of Lox Chatterbox. There is however, a higher chance that you have heard his music somewhere in mainstream media. When I was asked to review a 4-track demo of an unfamiliar artist’s music, I can say I wasn’t too thrilled in doing so. After listening; however, I was instantly content with researching and finding out what I could about this incredibly talented artist. This I learned:
Lox Chatterbox is the alias given to Morgan Box, the Ex-Frontman for the underground alcoholic ensemble,”40oz. Freaks”. The group lasted from ’04 and mutually split in ’12 – leaving Lox to make his lonesome leap to the world of solo artistry. Although this will be his debut album, Lox Chatterbox has no shortage of heavy-hitters and powerful players on his resume.
He has had many placements with Universal, Angrymob, Megatracks, FirstCom Music, Red Arc and many more of the world’s largest music catalogs and licensing companies. He has music placements for giant companies such as Mountain Dew, E!, TNT, and NBA. He has worked with both mainstream labels from Atlantic, Columbia, and Universal – to Independent artists from Nipsey Hussle, Ya Boy, Afroman, E-40, Copywrite, members from D-12, Living Legends, Hieroglyphics, and tons more. With over 27 published songs already, produced over 100+ songs that have seen iTunes – the list just goes on.
How could you not be at least somewhat impressed? Lox Chatterbox is making an enormous splash into an over-crowded and under-experienced pool of mediocre artists. Far above his competitors, Lox will continue to prove his worthiness of your attention from the moment he is heard- as he did for me. His production is a feat in itself, and would easily be one of the most innovative and intriguing beat-makers I’ve had the pleasure of listening to.
His beats are a mix of anthem-like melodies, dreamlike synths, concrete drums, bone-shifting bass, and just some of the cleanest arrangements of electro/rap beats a mind could imagine. Far beyond my descriptive abilities to give any form of justice to. His voice is extremely intriguing, and instantly taunts you to envision the source. He has a very relatable, playful charisma that almost makes you feel as if you personally meet him through his words.
The songs I am referring to are “Batshit Bananas”, “That Life”, “Never Sleep”, and “Trippin” – the four songs that were given to me for review. The skin of the meat is that, Lox Chatterbox may not be a name you’re familiar with, but it is one that I can see resonating very strongly when this richly talented artist gets that well deserving moment of exposure.
-Talia Karlaap
Artists Page Link – bit.ly/18OC21N
© sergione infuso - all rights reserved
follow me on www.sergione.info
You may not modify, publish or use any files on
this page without written permission and consent.
-----------------------------
Tre napoletani, ritagliando il tempo fra concerti, università e viaggi a Londra, si inseriscono nella scena musicale milanese a partire dal gennaio 2010. Stash Fiordispino alla voce e chitarra, Alessandro Fiordispino alla batteria e Alessandro Tammaro al basso si fondono nei The Kolors, diventando subito dopo pochi mesi la resident band dello storico locale milanese “Le Scimmie”. Suonano così tutte le sere per un anno intero, stando attenti a cogliere le espressioni degli spettatori e a creare una forte stima e alchimia reciproca tra la band ed il pubblico presente. Il sound è molto variegato: qualcuno sentirà del funky, qualcuno noterà l’influenza french-electro, qualcuno ricorderà le melodie 80′s, qualcuno più giovane si accorgerà che hanno mangiato dischi di Strokes, Arctic Monkeys e Franz Ferdinand. Dimenticarsi delle metriche, dei generi e delle tecniche per creare un linguaggio nuovo che arriva agli occhi e alle orecchie di tutti: questi sono i The Kolors.
© sergione infuso - all rights reserved
follow me on www.sergione.info
You may not modify, publish or use any files on
this page without written permission and consent.
-----------------------------
Wizard Productions srl, La Contrada - Teatro Stabile di Trieste, Joye Entertainment e Karl Sydow in associazione con Lionsgate e Magic Hour Productions presentano Dirty Dancing di Eleanor Bergstein
Il debutto assoluto italiano di “Dirty Dancing - The Classic Story On Stage” è previsto a Milano il 9 ottobre al Barclays Teatro Nazionale con repliche fino al 28 dicembre 2014.
Un concentrato di romanticismo, sensualità e musiche travolgenti.
“Dirty Dancing - The Classic Story On Stage” è la fedele trasposizione teatrale dell’omonimo successo cinematografico, e racconta l’inaspettato incontro tra la giovane Baby Houseman e l’affascinante maestro di ballo Johnny Castle nel resort per famiglie “Da Kellerman”.
Una romantica storia d’amore sbocciata nella tipica atmosfera estiva di un villaggio turistico, raccontata da musiche indimenticabili e balli sensuali.
La ricerca del cast da parte del team creativo inglese, affiancato da quello italiano, e con la supervisione di Eleanor Bergstein, si è conclusa dopo oltre tre mesi di lavoro, durante i quali sono state raccolte più di 1000 candidature. Saranno Sara Santostasi nel ruolo di Frances “Baby” Houseman e Gabrio Gentilini nel ruolo di Johnny Castle, a guidare il cast italiano composto da: Federica Capra (Penny Johnson), Simone Pieroni (Dr. Jake Houseman), Mimmo Chianese (Max Kellerman), Irene Urciuoli (Lisa Houseman), Natalia Magni (Marjorie Houseman), Rodolfo Ciulla (Neil Kellerman), Marco Stabile (Billy Kostecki, Renato Cortesi (Mr. Schumacher), Russell Russell (Tito Suarez), Giuseppe Verzicco (ensemble/Robbie Gould), Ilaria De Angelis (ensemble/Elizabeth), Pasquale Girone (ensemble/Jordan), Chiara Rosignoli (ensemble/Vivian Pressman), Aldo Esposito (ensemble/Moe Pressman), Lucia Blanco (ensemble), José Antonio Dominguez (ensemble), Sara Marinaccio (ensemble), Giusy Messina (ensemble), Paky Vicenti (ensemble), Azzurra Adinolfi (swing) e Thomas Signorelli (swing/dance captain).
Un’orchestra di otto elementi suonerà dal vivo le celebri musiche dello spettacolo “(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life”, vincitrice di un Premio Oscar e di un Golden Globe, è solo uno dei successi che compongono la straordinaria colonna sonora, che comprende hit internazionali come “Hungry Eyes”, “Do You Love Me?” e “Hey! Baby”. Rispetto alla versione inglese, nell’adattamento italiano verranno tradotti solo i dialoghi, mentre le canzoni resteranno in lingua originale.
© sergione infuso - all rights reserved
follow me on www.sergione.info
You may not modify, publish or use any files on
this page without written permission and consent.
-----------------------------
Opening-act dei Metallica l’8 maggio 2019 all’Ippodromo SNAI di San Siro al Milano Summer Festival, i Ghost.
Lars Ulrich ha spiegato a Kerrang! come mai i Metallica hanno scelto Ghost e Bokassa come support act per il tour europeo:
- “I Bokassa sono fottutamente grandiosi. Le canzoni che scrivono, tutta la loro energia e le vibrazioni che emanano sono una boccata d’aria fresca. Quando ho ascoltato la loro musica per la prima volta un anno fa, sono andato fuori di testa! Poterli presentare a un pubblico più vasto è una cosa super cool!”.
- “Per me, Tobias (Forge, il frontman dei Ghost) è un tipo fantastico. Mi piace molto la sua energia e stare accanto a lui. Tutti nella nostra band sono grandi fan dei Ghost e sembra che anche i nostri supporter li amino. Quando scegliamo i gruppi spalla, cerchiamo sempre persone che ci piacciono e con cui andiamo d’accordo. Non vediamo l’ora di essere in tour con loro."
I Ghost, precedentemente conosciuti come Ghost B.C. negli Stati Uniti, sono un gruppo musicale heavy metal svedese, formatosi a Linköping nel 2006.[4] Il loro primo album, Opus Eponymous, pubblicato nel 2010, è stato nominato al Grammis, contribuendo ad incrementare la loro popolarità.[5] Il secondo album Infestissumam, che è stato pubblicato nel 2013, ha vinto il Grammis Award nel 2014 per il Miglior Album Hard Rock/Metal.[6] Il terzo album in studio, Meliora, è stato pubblicato nel 2015 ed è subito diventato l'album più venduto in Svezia. Il singolo Cirice, tratto da Meliora, ha vinto il Grammy Award nel 2016 per la Migliore interpretazione metal. Nel 2018 pubblicano il loro quarto album, Prequelle.
L'immagine della band è totalmente incentrata su un look eccentrico e di ispirazione ecclesiastica, che prevede sei musicisti dal volto coperto di cui cinque denominati Nameless Ghouls, capeggiati dal cantate denominato Papa Emeritus (vero nome Tobias Forge), che ad ogni album abdica e viene sostituito, secondo la band, da un Papa più giovane.
Nel 2017 cinque membri del gruppo si sono rivelati al pubblico e quattro di loro hanno citato in causa Tobias Forge, il Papa Emeritus, svelando anche la sua identità.
Cardinal Copia (Tobias Forge) – voce
Nameless Ghoul Aether (Ben Christo) – chitarra ritmica
Nameless Ghoul Alpha (Chris Catalyst) – chitarra solista
Nameless Ghoul Water (Per "Sodomizer" Eriksson) – basso
Nameless Ghoul Air (Zac Baird) – tastiera
Nameless Ghoul Earth (Jan Vincent-Velazco) – batteria
Papa Nihil – saxophone
LEGAL NOTICE • This work is a copyrighted protected image © Bernard Egger :: rumoto images | All Rights Reserved |
no release | no flickr API | None of my works, no part of this photostream may be published, copied, reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior express permission of Bernard Egger.
📷 licence:
Please contact me to buy the rights to use and publish this photo, to obtain a license or to get a version in higher resolution. more...
Todos los Derechos Reservados • Tous droits réservés • Todos os Direitos Reservados • Все права защищены • Tutti i diritti riservati
📷 photographer: Bernard Egger :: rumoto images
event: 2009 Mille Miglia, Passo della Raticosa IT
© Veronica Mitchell
Published in: Community Eye Health Journal Vol. 31 No. 102 2018 www.cehjournal.org
© sergione infuso - all rights reserved
follow me on www.sergione.info
You may not modify, publish or use any files on
this page without written permission and consent.
-----------------------------
Il gruppo di Oklahoma City The Flaming Lips arriva il 30 gennaio 2017 all’Alcatraz di Milano per presentare l’album «Oczy Mlody» e le canzoni del loro repertorio.
La formazione capitanata dalla carismatica figura di Wayne Coyne ha attualmente all’attivo 17 album in studio e innumerevoli collaborazioni, anche in ambito extramusicale: è di pochi mesi fa la notizia della collaborazione con la Few Spirits per il lancio sul mercato del Brainville Rye Whiskey, uno speciale distillato firmato dalla band che sarà disponibile sul mercato americano dal prossimo ottobre.
Oltre a questi bizzarri progetti paralleli, The Flaming Lips sono famosi per le loro live performance, caratterizzate da costumi e scenografie particolari, palloni gonfiabili, marionette, proiezioni video, giochi di luci, teste giganti, confetti e soprattutto quello che è ormai da anni il loro marchio di fabbrica: una palla di plastica trasparente dentro la quale Wayne Coyne attraversa il pubblico in sala. Tutti questi dettagli rendono i loro concerti assolutamente imperdibili, e nel 2002 hanno portato Q Magazine a inserirli nella lista “50 Bands to See Before You Die”.
L’ultima fatica di The Flaming Lips è “Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz”, 23 pezzi sperimentali scritti insieme alla giovane popstar e resi disponibili in streaming online. L’album è stato descritto da Coyne come una combinazione tra Pink Floyd, Porthishead e una rivisitazione della visione pop della Cyrus. Secondo indiscrezioni, la band sarebbe ora al lavoro su un nuovo album.
Wayne Coyne – lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, theremin
Michael Ivins – bass, keyboards, backing vocals
Steven Drozd – drums, guitar, keyboards, bass, backing vocals
Derek Brown – guitar, keyboards, percussion, backing vocals
Jake Ingalls – keyboards, guitars
Matt Duckworth – drums, percussion, keyboards
Nick Ley – percussion, drums, samples
This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 7th of October 1915.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
Kamera: Nikon F3 (1989)
Linse: Nikkor-N Auto 24mm f2.8 (1970)
Film: Rollei P&R 640 @ box speed
Kjemi: Rodinal (1:25 / 13:30 min. @ 20°C)
Sunday 24 March 2024: During the years when I had UN-affiliated assignments in the occupied West Bank (2007-2011), this was a sign that I saw time and time again; spraypainted all over Palestinian shops in Hebron. This is a sign of hate - this is the sign of the US Jewish Defense League and the American-born Kach organization.
So today, I will be presenting some excerpts from ‘The False Prophet’, a book by investigative journalist Robert I. Friedman (1950-2002) published in 1990. In his book, Friedman paints a disturbing portrait of American-born mad 'rabbi' Meir Kahane (1932-1990), his life and deeds, his followers and his religious, racist, fascist ideology - Kahanism.
In today's Israel, Kahane's views and ideology have become mainstream and is represented by several political parties in the Israeli government like Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) and the Religious Zionist Party (Tkuma), led by extremist settlers turned politicians like Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir (b. 1976) - the Heinrich Himmler of Israel, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (b. 1980) - the Arthur Seyss-Inquart of Israel; and Minister of Settlements Orit Strook (b. 1960) - truly a real religious nut-job who owes her ministry to her incessant extremism ever since the days of Yamit in Israeli-occupied Egypt and her decades-long jewish supremacist activities in Hebron / Al-Khalil in the occupied West Bank.
[Addendum: After Orit Strook's daughter Shoshana Strook (d. 2026) made a criminal complaint against her parents for sexually abusing her as a child in 2025, Shoshana was found dead in March 2026.]
PROLOGUE - THE FALSE PROPHET
I first met Rabbi Meir Kahane in December 1979, at his Jerusalem headquarters, a cramped, airless office in an upper-class section of the city. He calls it the Museum of the Potential Holocaust. The “museum” was filled with Nazi flags and anti-Semitic literature that he had clipped from American hate-group publications and pasted on display boards. At the time, Kahane was a political pariah. His followers in Israel consisted of no more than a few dozen teenagers who had belonged to the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in America. “Numbers aren’t important,” Kahane told me. “How many Maccabees fought the Greeks?”
While Kahane admitted that his movement in Israel was small, he said that it was growing—especially in Kiryat Arba, the sprawling, ultranationalist Jewish settlement on the West Bank, where he kept a second home, and in the Sephardic slums of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where he was fast becoming a folk hero to youth who were attracted to his fiercely-held, anti-establishment views, as well as to his uncompromising hatred of the Arabs.
It struck me on that first encounter that Kahane was a man obsessed with sex and violence. He chattered incessantly about Arab men sleeping with Jewish women. He claimed, for instance, that English-speaking Arab men often tried to pass themselves off as Jews to unsuspecting American Jewish women studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He had recently spent an entire day, he told me, plastering the university cafeteria and dormitories with flyers that warned coeds to check their dates’ identity cards before jumping into bed with them.
As far as Kahane was concerned, no Jew in Israel, man, woman, or child, was safe as long as there was a single Arab in the country. Just that morning, he told me, he had read a report in the Hebrew press about a Jew who had been pulled from a taxicab and beaten up by a gang of West Bank Arabs. He confided that he would stage a “reprisal mission” on the guilty Arabs’ village the next day. He invited me to come along.
There were ten of Kahane’s followers on the “mission”—three Israelis of Moroccan origin, two recent Russian immigrants, and five Americans; most were in their late teens or early twenties. “We are going to pay the Arabs back for beating up a Jew here yesterday,” said twenty-eight-year-old, Brooklyn-born Chaim Shimon, as Kahane deftly maneuvered his yellow Ford van through Jerusalem traffic. “Arabs often attack Jews in Israel,” he continued, “but Jews are afraid to fight back. The Israeli superman is a media myth. The country needs us to defend them.”
The van stopped in front of an Israeli police roadblock outside Beit Safafa, a prosperous Arab suburb near East Jerusalem. Apparently, the police had been tipped off to Kahane’s plan.
“Go and do what you have to do,” Kahane ordered the young men in the van as he jumped from the driver’s seat. “I’ll deal with this!”
Kahane strode toward the knot of police in riot gear with a clear look of manifest destiny in his eyes. Dressed in a sun-faded green army parka, gray pants, and combat boots, with a yarmulke pinned to his thinning black hair, he was a vision of a modern-day warrior-priest ready for battle. While Kahane engaged the police in a noisy conversation, his “boys” drove through the suburb to look for Arab prey.
After a short drive, the burly young Moroccan driver spotted a lone Arab. The man was perhaps fifty. His face was gnarled and stained copperbrown from years in the sun. The Jews attacked with their fists so swiftly that his black eyes were quiet and unbelieving as he was pummeled to the ground. The group returned quickly to the van.
“It served the bastard right!” Shimon sneered as we drove away. Bearded and wearing a yarmulke, Shimon recalled that he had been riding his bike through Prospect Park in Brooklyn several years earlier when he was jumped by a gang of young Blacks. He was attacked, he said, solely because he was a Jew. A few days later he joined the JDL.
“I wanted to feel proud and unafraid,” he told me. “I had heard of Rabbi Kahane and had read some of his work. I decided to get involved with the JDL—like 'riding shotgun’ in predominantly Black neighborhoods to protect the remaining old Jews. But anti-Semitism in America got too intense. I came to Israel to be with the rabbi and to fulfill the Torah’s commandments.”
The van lurched as it turned the corner. Although it was winter the sun was warm. The driver wound down the window and called out to a group of middle-aged Arab workers lounging against the peeling, whitewashed wall of a cafe.
‘‘Hey, Mohammed,” he barked in Arabic. “I’m horny! Where are all your Arab whores?”
Laughter flickered through the van.
“Arabs try to sleep with Jewish women whenever they can,” Shimon said. “Like Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) said in Soul On Ice, ‘Sleeping with a white woman is the ultimate revolutionary act.’ ”
We drove full circle. Kahane was still at the roadblock arguing with the police. We stopped. The rabbi, who was then forty-seven, and small and thin with a darkly handsome face, stepped into the front seat and sat like a stone icon. As we climbed the highway on our way back to Jerusalem, the only sound in the van was the grinding of gears.
I visited Kahane again the next day, curious to discover if he had read a story in the morning’s newspapers that said the Jew who had been pulled from the cab and beaten up, the one they had staged their assault for, had not been attacked by Arabs, as previously reported, but was actually the victim of a Jewish gangland assault.
Kahane’s eyes twitched. He could barely control what was once a serious childhood stutter.
“I told them to stay in the van and to stay out of trouble,” he muttered. “But some of them are a little crazy. It’s important to have crazies in a mass movement, though. They’ll do anything for you, especially when you’re the first to cross the barricades.”
“But the Arabs were innocent,” I pointed out.
The rabbi was not impressed.
“This time the Arabs didn’t do it,’’ he growled. “But there are hundreds of unreported incidents of Arabs attacking and sexually molesting Jews. And who do you think plants bombs here—the American Boy Scouts? I don’t want to live in a state where I have to worry about being blown up in the back of a bus.’’
“I don’t blame the Arabs for hating us,’’ the rabbi continued, warming to his subject. “This was their land—once! And no matter what the Israeli Left says, you can’t buy Arab love with indoor toilets and good health care. Israeli Arabs and West Bank Arabs identify with the PLO. And they multiply like rabbits. At their rate of growth they will take over the Knesset in twenty-five years. I am not prepared to sacrifice Zionism to democracy. There is only one solution: the Arabs must leave Israel!’’
I squirmed in my seat.
“Of course it’s not nice. Did I say it’s nice? Is it nice when Israel bombs the PLO in Lebanon and kills women and children? We have smart bombs, not nice bombs.”
“How would you implement these ideas if you were the prime minister of Israel?” I asked.
“I’d go to the Arabs and tell them to leave,” he replied. “I’d promise generous compensation. If they refused, I’d forcibly move them out.”
“How could you do that?” I asked. “Midnight deportations in cattle cars?”
“Yes!” he declared.
Thus spoke Meir Kahane—the rabbi who took the concept of the nice Jewish boy and turned it on its head.
[…]
CHAPTER NINE - THE JEWISH IDEA
Meir Kahane had been subject to wild mood swings and crippling bouts of depression since childhood. Now, having been simultaneously rejected by the Israeli electorate and by key JDL members in America, he suffered what some of his closest supporters described as a nervous breakdown. But after briefly disappearing from public view, Kahane reemerged more determined than ever to build a viable political party in Israel.
His manic energy combined with his wounded pride never let him rest. He woke each morning at 4 a.m. to study Torah, prayed and studied again. Then he would go to his office at the Museum of the Potential Holocaust in Jerusalem, returning home around 10 p.m. He was seldom in bed before midnight. “I don’t think he even dreamed at night,” recalled Matt Liebowitz, a young American-born Kach supporter. “Everything he did was geared toward achieving his vision. I think he had such total control over his thoughts that he could even control his subconscious. He believed the Apocalypse was coming, so he was willing to do desperate things.”
Kahane was swept up in a kind of Messianic passion. Jewish destiny, he believed more than ever, was in his hands. Words like apocalypse, redemption, and Messiah took over his political vocabulary. He rationalized his Knesset defeat on the grounds that Jews did not yet understand that he was working from a divine plan. While the JDL in America was supposed to be concerned with helping Jews achieve greater temporal power, in Israel it was rapidly evolving into a fundamentalist cult with Kahane—like some medieval kabbalist—twisting and turning the Torah to explain why expelling the Arabs would usher in the Messiah.
Kahane soon discovered that he did not have a monopoly on fundamentalist fervor. As he turned increasingly to Jewish mysticism for salvation, an earthquake on the Israeli Right shattered the political spectrum. The upheaval was set off by Gush Emunim (the Bloc of Faithful)—a mystical-Messianic movement that would not only radically transform Israeli politics, but would have a profound impact on the Arab-Israeli conflict as well.
[Note: The present-day successor to the Gush Emunim settlement movement goes by the name Nahala and was founded by Daniella Weiss (b. 1945) together with Moshe Levinger (1935-2015) in 2005. You can see Daniella Weiss' presentation of the Nahala settler movement from 2015 on YouTube]
Gush Emunim was based on the teachings of Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891-1982), then the eighty-year-old head of Yeshiva Mercaz Harav in Jerusalem. The son of Rav Avraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), founder of modern Religious Zionism and the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, he had devoted his life to preserving and expounding his father’s teachings—foremost among them that the Jewish return to Israel and the flowering of the land signify the beginning of the Messianic Age. Contending that the Occupied Territories are part of the “holy inheritance” of lands given by God to the Jews as recorded in the Bible, Kook declared that they must be secured and defended at any cost.
Rav Kook and his religious school became the nucleus of Gush Emunim, which was born in 1974 following the Yom Kippur War. It was organized by seven middle-aged students from Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav who sought to Judaize the West Bank.
Jacob Levine, then a forty-one-year-old, soft-spoken, unemployed Talmud student, and one of the movement’s early leaders, believed Zionism had become sterile and self-destructive during the years of Labor Party rule. Gush Emunim, he said, was created as an antidote.
He explained: “There was a lack of clarity in Israel after the ’73 war. The dominant spirit was one of depression. The Labor Party and the country didn’t know what to do about the Arab territories. We stepped into the breach.”
So Gush Emunim began what it regarded as its holy crusade to settle and build up Judea and Samaria, the land of the ancient Hebrews now known as the West Bank. Infused with a selfless dedication and an almost cosmic awareness of self and mission similar to Israel’s early pioneers, Gush Emunim captured the imagination of many war weary Israelis.
Jaded young Sabras who were born long after the pioneering ethos had died and who had never before identified with political Zionism, émigrés from the corrupt and disintegrating Labor Party who were looking for a more meaningful ideology and lifestyle, and Orthodox Jews who decided to keep the promise flocked to Gush Emunim. A handful of new immigrants, mostly Russian and American, also joined the fold. Though Gush Emunim viewed Arabs as intruders in the land of Israel, it had no systematic program to drive them out. Instead, Gush leaders stated that Arabs who were willing to live without political rights in the Jewish state would enjoy a protected minority status similar to the second-class status that Jews historically held in Islamic countries.
Gush Emunim’s West Bank settlement program grew slowly during the years the Labor Party was in power. Labor’s policy was to build settlements in the Jordan Valley for security purposes, while avoiding the occupied areas largely populated by Arabs—these, according to such leaders as Yigal Allon (1918-1980), were to be held as bargaining chips in future peace talks. But as early as 1970, a bitterly divided Labor government allowed a group of ultranationalist Orthodox Jews led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger (1935-2015) to build Kiryat Arba on a hilltop overlooking Hebron, the site of King David’s first throne, and home to 78,000 fiercely nationalist Palestinian Arabs.
Most of the Gush Emunim’s attempts to settle the West Bank during the Labor government era were stopped by the army. Gush members would arrive at a site in a caravan of trailers in the middle of the night without government permission. When the army came to expel the settlers—which it almost invariably did—the right-wing parties would charge the Labor government with betrayal of Israel and compare it to the British Mandate government before Jewish independence. Either way Gush Emunim bested the Labor government.
But when Labor was voted out of office in 1977, and Likud’s Menachem Begin (1913-1992) became prime minister, he organized a right-wing coalition government that was strongly influenced by Gush Emunim. Immediately after his election, Begin journeyed to Elon Moreh, a settlement near Nablus that Gush Emunim had tried and failed seven times to settle extralegally before the Labor government finally gave in. Holding a Torah scroll aloft, Begin vowed that he would establish “many more Elon Morehs.”
Begin, the former commander of the Irgun, which had called for a Jewish state on both banks of the River Jordan, was true to his word. Between 1977 and 1984, successive Likud governments invested more than $1 billion in Jewish West Bank settlements—a huge sum for an economically hard-pressed nation that depends on more than $3 billion in annual aid from America. Today, Gush Emunim is the spearhead of Israel’s West Bank settlement program, which totals more than 150 settlements comprising some 75,000 settlers.
[Note: Number of illegal Israeli settlers in 2024 is more than 800,000!]
Gush Emunim currently boasts important enclaves of support in the right-wing Likud and Tehiya parties, as well as in several of the religious parties. Among its most potent supporters is Ariel Sharon (1928-2014), who through a Gush Emunim real estate front, purchased an apartment in the Muslim quarter of East Jerusalem’s Old Walled City. Sharon moved into the apartment on the first day of Passover in 1988, sparking an Arab riot.
Gush Emunim had everything that Kahane and his movement lacked, observed Professor Ehud Sprinzak, an expert on extremist groups at Hebrew University. It was a cohesive cultural and social entity; it had a skillful, yet modest, collective leadership, as well as an effective membership. A spiritual movement led by the scion of the founder of religious Zionism, Gush Emunim was fully backed by Israel’s leading rabbinical authorities in addition to being very Israeli in character. In contrast to the rather fringe-like nature of Kahane’s mostly American-born followers, Gush Emunim attracted thousands of well-educated, middle-class supporters and settlers, whose outposts in Judea and Samaria soon obliterated the 1949 armistice line that had separated the modern state of Israel from the core areas of the Biblical Hebrew nation.
“In view of the emergence of Gush Emunim and its prestigious and highly publicized activities, Meir Kahane had to reassess his political strategy,’’ said Sprinzak. But in 1974, Kahane was no more capable of joining Gush Emunim than he was Begin’s party or the National Religious Party. So Kahane staked out a position to the right of Gush Emunim. If Gush’s role was to settle and build the land of Israel, then Kahane would concentrate on driving out the Arabs living there. The JDL leader set about subverting Gush Emunim’s declared goal of coexistence with the local Arabs by instigating conflicts between Jewish settlers and the Palestinian Arab population. He purchased an apartment in Kiryat Arba, which became a base for his goon squad’s increasingly violent forays into the Arab West Bank. “They (Gush Emunim) don’t realize what nonsense it is to put a settlement of fifty people in a sea of Arabs,” Kahane told me in 1979. “What do they think they are going to do with those Arabs?”
Since Gush Emunim’s philosophy was firmly rooted in Halacha and the normative Zionist tradition, Kahane countered with his own selective quotes from the Torah and Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940). In a book he published in 1974 called The Jewish Idea, Kahane challenged Gush Emunim’s view that redemption could come with Arabs living in the land of Israel.
According to Kahane’s view, Arabs are more than just a demographic and physical threat. Their presence pollutes the very essence and spirit of Judaism. Therefore, their expulsion is a necessary precondition for redemption. “Zionism, the establishment of the State of Israel, the return of millions of Jews home, the miraculous victories of the few over the many Arabs, the liberation of Judea-Samaria, Gaza and the Golan, the return of Jewish sovereignty over the Holy City and Temple Mount are all parts of the divine pledge and its fulfillment,” wrote Kahane. He argued that Messianic redemption would have taken place if the Israeli government had expelled the Arabs, destroyed the Dome of the Rock Mosque, which was built on top of the ruins of the Second Temple, and annexed Judea and Samaria. “Had we acted without considering the gentile reaction,” Kahane wrote, “without fear of what he may say or do, the Messiah would have come right through the open door and brought us redemption.”
Kahane insists that redemption is guaranteed simply because God picked Jews as his Chosen People. “We are different,” said an article in a JDL publication also called the Jewish Idea. “We are a Chosen One and a Special One; selected for purity and holiness, and to rise above all others and to teach them the truth for purity and holiness that we have been taught. There is no reason or purpose to being a Jew unless there is something intrinsically different about it. No. We are not equal to the Gentiles. We are different. We are higher.”
Gush Emunim also is disdainful of gentiles. Its leaders maintain that Israel will become “a light unto the nations” only after it has attained complete political and spiritual isolation from the rest of mankind. Then, they prophesy, Israel will build its moral and military strength until it is powerful enough to destroy Arab opposition. “We must overcome the goys and dominate the spiritual world,” said Gush activist Jacob Levine as we sat in his apartment with its spectacular eighth-floor view ofJerusalem’s magical countryside.
But even the mystics of Gush Emunim have hard-headed political priorities. Their primary goal has been to confiscate Arab land a dunam at a time—and to build settlements stone by holy stone. They believed that this “divine process” would be far easier to accomplish without deliberately inflaming the local Arabs (not to mention the Zionist Left), who in any case would never be reconciled to their presence in Judea and Samaria.
In response to Gush Emunim’s more pragmatic brand of Messianism, Kahane stepped up his attacks on Arabs, ignoring government pleas that he was undermining Israel’s democratic image.
“The irrational Jew is the rational one,” Kahane once told me. “Democracy and Western humanistic values are foreign implants, which are meaningless to authentic Judaism. The Jewish people didn’t survive for two thousand years by being rational. Had we been rational we would have been done for. We survive because there is a clear promise that the Jewish people will never be destroyed.” So long as Jews fulfill their covenant with God their destiny is assured, said Kahane. Therefore, it makes no difference if America breaks diplomatic relations with Israel for deporting the Arabs. God, not Uncle Sam, will provide, he declared.
If, as a child, Kahane daydreamed about becoming the saviour of his people, he now openly presented himself as a modern day prophet. He claimed to hold the authentic Jewish spark, which had fractured into a million pieces at the Creation. Like his great grandfather who was a kabbalist from Safed, Kahane preached that it is man’s task to recover these sparks and make the world whole again. Kahane claimed that the divine spark was within him and that he could find it in others.
Kahane’s militant Messianism began to affect his relationship with his followers in America. He warned them that American Jews faced the twin perils of assimilation and annihilation if they did not return to Israel. Those who do not melt in America’s melting pot would ultimately melt in America’s ovens, he predicted. He compared the United States to the Weimar Republic, declaring that American Jewry was as blind to its fate as were the German Jews before Hitler took power.
Much of Kahane’s Messianic fury was aimed at America’s 400,000 Orthodox Jews, who, according to Kahane, are worse than blind—they are hypocrites. “The tragedy is that most observant Jews in America are practitioners of Jewish ritual and folklore,” Kahane once told me. “A religious Jew is one who does the really hard mitzvab (commandment), and that’s settling the land. My purpose in life, therefore, is to say the things that no other Jewish leader is saying—that the fate of the Jewish people in the Galut (exile) and in Israel rests upon their being Jewish again. This can only be done in Israel. Only then will God shine his light on Zion.”
He insisted that, just as there cannot be a Jewish state in the Messianic sense unless the Jews return to the land of Israel, a Messianic Jewish state cannot exist with an Arab minority. Jews must be alone in the land to rebuild their moral fiber—which is another reason for this emphasis on Arab deportation, he says.
“I’m not a racist,” he declared. “A racist is a Jew who says Arabs can be equal citizens in a Jewish state.”
[…]
CHAPTER ELEVEN - PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG FANATIC
On a fog-shrouded road between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, two young American supporters of Rabbi Meir Kahane put on their prayer shawls to daven (pray), then pulled ski masks over their faces, slipped on black leather gloves, and loaded a U.S.-made M-16 automatic rifle.
Around 5:30 on that chilly March morning in 1984, the men watched an Arab bus wind around a steep curve. As it approached, they jumped from a ditch that ran parallel to the road and opened fire on the driver’s window and the bus’s right side. The volley lasted three to four seconds. While nine Arabs lay wounded inside the blood-spattered vehicle, the Jews ran a quarter of a mile to a prearranged spot, where a friend from New York City waited in a Hertz rental car. When the youths were later arrested by the Israeli police, Kahane told a press conference that his followers were “good Jewish boys” and that the machine-gunning was “sanctified by God.”
Kach supporter Matt Liebowitz, a bearded, disarmingly soft- spoken twenty-four-year-old who served twenty-six months in an Israeli prison for the bus attack, epitomizes the kind of American kids who joined the JDL after Kahane wrested control of the organization from Bonnie Pechter.
Liebowitz’s career in “Jewish activism,” which began in Chicago, where he was raised, and led to New York and later to the West Bank of the River Jordan, is similar to the path taken by many young American Jews who get hooked on Meir Kahane’s sinister vision of ridding Israel of its Arabs. “Violence is a tool,” Liebowitz told me during a 1987 interview at a yeshiva in Far Rockaway, Queens where he sometimes studies. “Kahane says violence is not a nice thing, but that it’s sometimes necessary. For me and for others there was a certain mystical attachment to blood and violence. This was the violence that drew us to the JDL and bonded us together in the struggle. . . . Kahane taught us that what we were doing was true and correct according to the Torah.”
Liebowitz was not always interested in the “Jewish struggle.” He was raised in an assimilated, middle-class Jewish home where Judaism had more ritual than meaning. Like many future JDL members, he was embarrassed by his religion. “I had no connection to Judaism,” Liebowitz told me. “When I was a kid I used to hang out in the inner city and saw old Jews harassed by Black gangs. I had a very bad image ofJews—that they were weak, that they were worms.”
Matt was thirteen when his parents divorced. He moved in with his mother, then later with his father, a family therapist in Chicago. Eventually, he returned to his mother’s house because he did not get along with his stepmother. Matt became, according to his mother, “a street child.” Uninterested in school, he began to hang out with white street gangs, she recalled, until he discovered the JDL and found religion. “He just looked for some authority, someone who would tell him how to live, who would tell him what to do, someone who would decide for him what was good and what was bad,” she told the Israeli publication Koteret Rashit when she was in Jerusalem for her son’s trial.
“He was very restless.”
Matt says that he discovered Kahane and the JDL when he read Kahane’s militant manifesto, Never Again. The book’s title, which became the JDL’s rallying cry, was a warning that Jews will never again be led like sheep to the slaughter. The message was meant as much for passive, liberal-minded Jews as it was for gentiles. “I read Never Again and it hit me right in the heart,” said Matt. “I found what I was looking for.” His first illegal act inspired by Kahane’s philosophy, he said, was to place a home-made bomb under the car of Arthur Butz (b. 1933), an engineering professor at Northwestern University. Butz had written a book in 1978 claiming that the Holocaust was the hoax of the twentieth century. “The bomb never went off,” recalled Liebowitz. “I learned how to make it from a book by Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989).”
Liebowitz was soon studying in a yeshiva and working out with members of the small but violent JDL chapter in Chicago. “I started training with sticks, knives, hand-to-hand combat. We were trained by a guy who was a Navy SEAL. ... It was cool for a fourteen-year-old high-school freshman to see Jews do this stuff. Even though most of the JDL members weren’t religious, they put on kippos (skullcaps) whenever they fought anti-Semites. I hung out in neighborhoods where everyone was fighting, so it took a lot to impress me. The JDL really impressed me!”
But Kahane impressed Liebowitz even more than the street fighting. The Pied Piper of confused Jewish youth, Kahane has a knack for convincing youngsters that violence in the name of Greater Israel or Soviet Jewry is heroic in the tradition of the Bible. “I got to know Kahane when he came to Chicago in 1979. I thought he was it. He had unbelievable charisma. I came to him for advice and guidance, and depending on his answer I would have switched schools or made major changes in my life.”
Shortly after meeting Kahane, Matt moved to Israel to be with the fiery rabbi. At the time, Kahane was a political pariah in Israel with no more than a few dozen young followers from the United States. Like many American Jews who arrived in Israel for the first time, Liebowitz was shocked that Israeli Jews bore so little cultural resemblance to the Jews he had left behind. This fast-paced, chaotic, and intense new world on the Mediterranean was both strange and a little frightening. “I am at an ulpan (an intensive, Hebrew-language training institute),” he wrote to his mother soon after arriving in Israel. “ We sing Chanukah songs. . . . I had to leave the room because the songs reminded me of you and I long for you so much. ... I did not realize it would be so difficult.”
There was little time, however, for reflection when one’s days and nights were devoted to Kahane. There were almost daily vigilante attacks against Arabs, Christian missionaries, Black Hebrews, and U.S. diplomats whose cars were firebombed. Once Matt and a compatriot, laden with satchels of explosives, even scaled a wall that encircled the Dome of the Rock Mosque, intending to “purify” the Temple Mount. But the two scurried away when they heard an approaching Israeli army patrol.
Not surprisingly, Matt gained a reputation inside the JDL as one of Kahane’s most dedicated “crazies.” “Kahane was asked by a reporter why he had so many crazies around him,” Liebowitz recalled. “He replied that he needed crazies because they were the first to cross the barricades. Everybody in the JDL joked that I was the crazy Kahane was talking about.”
In 1980, burned out from the frantic militant activity, Liebowitz borrowed money from his mother and returned to Chicago. He jumped from yeshiva to yeshiva before he moved to New York City, where Kahane had reasserted control of the JDL, after successfully crushing Bonnie Pechter. The JDL, which had claimed as many as ten thousand members in 1970, was now a shell of its former self. Without Kahane’s constant guidance and charismatic presence, it foundered, breaking into small, competing factions. Kahane continued to milk the organization for publicity and money for his affiliated party in Israel. By the time Matt arrived in New York, the JDL had just a few dozen hardcore activists in New York and Los Angeles.
During a brief revival in 1981, however, the JDL began a paramilitary training camp in the Catskills, similar to the one that it had run during its heyday a decade earlier. Matt was one of some fifty youths who spent the summer training with automatic weapons and in martial arts. “Matt was a sweet, good- hearted kid,” recalled Gary Moskowitz, a New York City policeman who was the JDL camp karate instructor. “He loved training. He used to run ten miles a day. But he was easily manipulated and extremely prone to violence.”
Liebowitz rose to become the head of JDL security during a period when the organization was implicated in a number of terrorist attacks, including the bombings of Soviet and Arab diplomatic missions in New York and the firebombing of an Arab-owned restaurant in Brooklyn in which a woman was killed. During the summer of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, armed JDL militants raided the Manhattan offices of the November 29th Coalition, a pro-PLO group. A week later, the JDL training loft at the intersection of West 34th Street and Broadway in Manhattan was bombed. A JDL security guard asleep inside narrowly avoided injury. “It was a crazy summer,” Liebowitz recalled.
“The camp produced fifty good, dedicated JDL people who would prowl the streets of New York at night in search of Arab or Russian victims. That summer there were twelve to fifteen bombings. We had an underground bomb lab in a house in Borough Park crammed with explosives, Tommy guns, Uzis. . . . We knew a grand jury was investigating us and that federal indictments were coming down. Then one of our people was arrested in Israel for shooting a West Bank Arab and was convicted and went to prison. We were very bummed out by that.”
As a federal grand jury weighed indictments against a number of JDL militants, about forty suspects, including Liebowitz, suddenly moved to Israel in the winter of 1983. According to a federal law enforcement agent involved in the JDL probe, that effectively stymied the investigation. Weary of police investigations, Liebowitz tried to keep away from Kahane and his followers in Israel. He moved to a military base in the Negev to work as a volunteer. “It is wonderful to be in my country,” he wrote his mother. “There is some poetic justice in this scene of lighting the Chanukah candles in a military base in the Negev. It is a dramatic scene. The sun shines softly and religious soldiers light a large menorah and say prayers. I am home. I have never felt better in my whole life in any other place.”
A few weeks after Liebowitz wrote to his mother, a bomb planted by the PLO in the back of a bus in Jerusalem exploded, killing several passengers, including two young Jewish girls. “I feel as if I had lost my own sister,” he wrote in another letter home. “I can’t stand this. . . . I am very upset. . . .Jews are dying here only because they want to live here. . . . I must see Rabbi Kahane.”
But Liebowitz got mixed signals from Kahane. On one hand, he says, Kahane told him not to do anything illegal and risk going to jail. However, he said Kahane also constantly preached that vengeance is holy. “The bombing of the Jewish bus was like a sign,” Liebowitz told me. “I knew what road I had to take. I swore I was going to avenge Jewish blood.” He says he met four other Kach Party members from the United States who, like him, itched to strike back at the Arabs. Craig Leitner, whose father is a top official with the New York City Board of Education, was responsible for co-planning the attack. Liebowitz went to Kahane for money to finance the operation without telling him what they were planning. “I said, ‘We need money fast,’ ” Liebowitz recalled. “Kahane took $600 from his pocket and gave it to me without asking any questions.”
[Note: These days Craig Leitner goes by the name Aviel Leitner; he is a 'lawyer' and former terrorist member of the JDL and Kach who served 30 months in jail for firebombing the Palestinian newspaper Al-Fajar and being involved in the shooting at an arab bus in Ramallah in 1984, injuring 6-7 Palestinians. Together with his 'lawyer' wife Nitsana Darshan-Leitner (b. 1973) in the Shurat HaDin lawfare organization he is mostly involved with legal matters defending terrorists like for instance Yigal Amir (b. 1970); the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995), and Jonathan Pollard (b. 1954); an American-Israeli civilian-employed US Military intelligence analyst who in 1986 was sentenced to life in imprisonment for spying on the United States of America for the State of Israel.]
Prior to the attack, Leitner wrote to Randy Medoff, the JDL boss in New York, instructing him that when he received a collect phone call from a “Mr. Gray,” it would be a signal to phone the Israeli media with the news that a Jewish terrorist organization had machine-gunned an Arab bus. The Kach kids were arrested minutes after Leitner placed the call to Medoff. Liebowitz claims that he learned during police interrogation that Shin Bet had them under surveillance for twenty-four hours prior to the shooting.
Craig Leitner, who turned state’s witness, not only documented the close links between terrorism, the Kach Party, and Rabbi Kahane, but also told Shin Bet a chilling tale of Ku Klux Klan-style violence. In a signed confession, he told Israeli officials:
One day, toward the end of July 1984, (we) agreed to take some action against the Arabs. About midnight we saw an Arab in his early twenties walking along the Hebron road. . . . I left the car and gave the Arab a blow with my fist and kicked him. . . . He escaped into the night. . . . We drove to Hebron and decided to set fire to Arab cars. We had two plastic bottles filled with gasoline. (We) took the fuel and poured it under a number of cars. We set them on fire, but we didn’t wait to see what happened. There were many dogs around and I was afraid they might wake up the neighbors, or they might bite us and we would get rabies.
Several days later in Jerusalem, according to his confession, ‘‘We took some empty bottles and rags, then we went to the Kach office because I knew that Rabbi Kahane had left his car there and a fuel tank was in the back of the car. We made Molotov cocktails and drove to an Arab neighborhood. We threw two Molotovs at one of the Arab houses chosen at random.”
Leitner then contacted an American friend from Kach who lived in the West Bank settlement Beit El. “I knew he spoke Hebrew (Leitner could not) and could be relied upon not to inform the police. I asked him to phone the news media and inform them that the attack in East Jerusalem was carried out by TNT (the name for the Kach terrorist underground in Israel).”
Kahane hired an attorney for his young machine gunners and occasionally visited them in prison. He appointed one of the youths imprisoned with Liebowitz, Yehuda Richter, from Beverly Hills, to be his chief deputy in Kach. Leitner, who somehow managed to flee from Israel, was later arrested by U.S. marshals at the White Plains, New York campus of Pace University Law School, where he was studying. He returned to Israel after lengthy legal maneuvering, served a year in prison, and is once again a law student at Touro College in Manhattan.
Liebowitz now says the machine-gun bus attack was a cathartic experience and that he is grateful that confinement in prison gave him the personal discipline he lacked. After spending more than two years in prison, he returned to the United States in 1986 to promote aliya (immigration to Israel) as an emissary of the Eretz Yisrael Movement, which is affiliated with Gush Emunim. He is currently working for a Manhattan-based security firm. He told me he helped install a security system for the Albanian Mission to the United Nations.
Matt says as soon as he saves enough money he will move to Israel permanently. His wife, Judy, a twenty-three-year-old nurse, would like to live in a quiet Jerusalem neighborhood and raise a family. Matt wants to move to the fiercely nationalist Palestinian West Bank city of Hebron, where ultranationalist Jews have carved a foothold in the heart of the city’s squalid, fly-blown Casbah.
A young man who still values violence, Liebowitz says Kahane’s radical philosophy continues to guide him. “I think the Arabs should be moved out of Israel,” he said, echoing Kahane. “My parents can’t believe that the bus attack had anything to do with ideology. They still think it happened because they got a divorce,” he said, laughing softly.
This is my first picture i have had published and I'm absolutely oven the moon, really, no pun intended.
I can't even begin to explain how happy this has made me, I'm a total amateur, I'm not a professional photographer, i just like to get out there and take some pictures purely as a hobby when I have a spare 5 minutes, i only just bought my first DSLR 2 months before taking this picture on it.
I was paid for the picture, but the money actually means very little, what I'm really ecstatic about is the fact i now have a free copy of a magazine that has one of my pictures in it, money can't buy that.
3 years taking pictures when i could as a hobby and now i have a picture Published, need a say more ? I'm just so happy.
I don't necessarily agree with black & white photos and especially not night photos, but they paid for it, so the can use it how they like.
The original picture is here.
www.flickr.com/photos/55927440@N04/5557354906/
.
.
To view this picture large just press L on your keyboard.
.
**** Disclaimer ****
.
I love long exposures, everything to do with night time, the dark, sunrise and sunset.
I like to take pictures mainly at night , sometimes during the day and in dull and fading light and I will sometimes display the time and date the picture was taken too.
I tend to take pictures of Light trails, Motorway traffic, Street lights, Buildings, Landscapes, Bokeh, Night bokeh and Hexagonal Night Bokeh in England.
All of my pictures are 100% natural and untouched in every way without ever been Photo shopped or altered or messed about with in anyway whatsoever, No multi layered photography, No HDR's and No image manipulation of any kind, all of my pictures look just the way they did when I saw them at the time of taking and I'm VERY PROUD of that.
I don't do any photo processing at all, I don't even own any photo software.
All of my starbursts are all 100% natural without using any filters or anything else, as is all my bokeh, night bokeh and hexagonal night bokeh, its all natural, no funny gimmicks at all.
I don't do anything with my pictures apart from take them and then upload them , 99.99999% of my pictures don't even get cropped , they are all 100% natural and untouched and then uploaded.
All of my pictures are copy right, © All rights reserved, you MAY NOT use any of my pictures without my written consent, you also MAY NOT change, alter, adjust or rearrange my pictures in anyway what so ever.
.
.
© All rights reserved.
If you enjoy taking pictures of Car Light Trails At Night please feel free to join the group.
All of my pictures are copy right, © All rights reserved, you MAY NOT use any of my pictures without my written consent, you also MAY NOT change, alter, adjust or rearrange my pictures in anyway what so ever.
.
.
© All rights reserved.
ACLS Galloway Township celebrated Indie Author Day 2019 on Saturday, October 12 connecting independent (or self-published) authors, libraries and readers. This book-lovers event is held annually throughout the United States and Canada.
The branch held a meet-and-greet for seven local authors, and patrons had the opportunity to ask questions about their writing and publishing experience. It was also the perfect chance to purchase an autographed book to give as a holiday gift and support local artists. Participating authors included Frederick DeFeo, Jr., Christopher DePietro, Nicole Denise Smith, Laura J. Kaighn, Crystal Wesley, Marie L. Carhart and Kerry Gans. Plus one special four-legged guest, Charlotte, wore a pink tutu to also promote her upcoming book, too!
A late 1920s postcard published by J. Beagles & Co Ltd showing the view looking north east from the junction of Cockspur Street and The Mall. From the left, the National Gallery, Nelson's Column, the Coliseum, St. Martin in the Fierlds and Morley's Hotel. The Gyratory system in the square has been in force since April 1926 and buses from Whitehall each carrying an advertisement for a beverage enter Cockspur Street and the one way system. The taxis on the right are waiting in a rank which occupied the centre of the road.
© sergione infuso - all rights reserved
follow me on www.sergione.info
You may not modify, publish or use any files on
this page without written permission and consent.
-----------------------------
Il trio che ha conquistato le platee internazionali, trionfato al Festival di Sanremo, si è aggiudicato il doppio disco di platino per l’album “Sanremo Grande Amore” e ha rappresentato l’Italia all’Eurovision Song Contest 2015
Alla luce dello straordinario successo del tour estivo con 12 sold out già registrati a meno di un mese dalla prima data, nel 2016 i ragazzi de Il Volo saranno protagonisti dei principali palasport con “Il Volo 2016 Live nei Palasport”, il tour con cui il celebre trio porterà la sua musica dal respiro internazionale e le sue straordinarie doti canore nelle più importanti città italiane.
Il singolo “Grande Amore” e l’album “Sanremo Grande Amore” hanno conquistato le charts iTunes dei Paesi eurovisivi. Il grande affetto della gente è stato dimostrato anche dagli ascolti durante l’esibizione del trio nella finale, che risulta essere la più vista della serata. Non solo il pubblico, ma anche la critica musicale si è espressa in suo favore, conferendogli il prestigioso Marcel Besançon Award 2015 della stampa internazionale.
Il Volo è un gruppo musicale italiano costituito da due tenori e un baritono: Piero Barone, Ignazio Boschetto e Gianluca Ginoble.
Sono stati i primi artisti italiani ad aver firmato un contratto diretto con una major statunitense. Interpretano brani perlopiù appartenenti alla tradizione classica italiana e internazionale, con stile e arrangiamenti moderni, e brani pop in chiave classica. Hanno inciso anche brani in lingua spagnola, inglese, francese, tedesca e latina.
Nonostante la giovane età, la carriera de Il Volo, il trio, che ha scalato le classifiche di tutto il mondo, è già costellata di record: sono stati i primi italiani nella storia a sottoscrivere un contratto con una major discografica in USA, unici artisti italiani invitati da Quincy Jones a “We Are The World for Haiti” insieme a 80 star internazionali, un disco di debutto che conquista il platino in Italia ed entra in una sola settimana nella Top10 di “Billboard 200” dedicata agli album più venduti negli Stati Uniti, milioni di copie vendute su scala mondiale, due nomination ai Latin Grammy Awards come “Best new artist” e “Best pop album by a duo or group with vocal”, tournèe e live in tutto il mondo, esibizioni nei più importanti show (“Tonight Show”, “American Idol e “Ellen De Generes Show” per citarne alcuni), numerose collaborazioni con star internazionali (tra cui Barbara Streisand, di cui sono stati Special Guests duettando in 12 date del suo tour nel 2012), vincitori del Latin Billboard Award come “Miglior artista dell’anno Duo/Gruppo interprete di album latino”.
This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 5th of February 1916.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images and have any stories or information to add please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
Call for POSTER Proposals — World’s largest interdisciplinary rehabilitation research event >>> ACRM Annual Conference #ACRM2023
Scientific posters are now ALL DIGITAL
• No more hassles of paper posters
• 35+ PM&R focus areas
• All digital posters — on BIG TVs
• Submit from anywhere in the world; you don’t need to be there in person.
• GET PUBLISHED: Accepted poster proposals are published in the ARCHIVES of PM&R.
• The best posters qualify for awards
• And the opportunity to present in front of the whole ACRM community as a Poster Spotlight
SUBMIT TODAY, PRESENT this FALL:
_________________
ACRM 100th Annual Conference #ACRM2023
Progress in Rehabilitation Research | Translation to Clinical Practice
30 OCT – 2 NOV 2023 // PRE-CON: 28 – 30 OCT
ACRM.org/2023
_________________
WORLDWIDE REACH
AMPLIFY YOUR WORK
ELEVATE & AMPLIFY
UP-LEVEL your work, your career
TAKE YOUR RESEARCH FURTHER
_________________
Every Fall, ACRM holds the largest interdisciplinary rehabilitation research event every: the ACRM Annual Conference :: Progress in Rehabilitation Research :: Translation to Clinical Practice :: ACRMconference.org
For information on exhibiting, sponsoring, and advertising opportunities please contact sales@ACRM.org or phone +1.703.435.5335 or use this form ACRM.org/salesform.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the LOVE of rehabilitation research BE HERE
At #ACRM, all members of the rehabilitation team are warmly welcomed in the spirit of helping to IMPROVE LIVES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACRM: American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine: Improving lives through interdisciplinary rehabilitation research
JOIN Us. Be MOVED.
DISCOVER ACRM Member Benefits
SIGN-UP & receive FREE ACRM eNews: ACRM.org/enews
GET ACTIVE in ACRM & receive the ARCHIVES of PM&R: ACRM.org/join
box ad
All Rights Reserved !!!!!
No parts of this material can be published, copied, downloaded or sold without a permission from me. PLEASE ask me before you post this material in a blog or on your page ! Please respect these rules !!!!
This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 24th of November 1915.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.