According to a story coming out of Iraq, Christians have been saved from ISIS by Jewish donations:
Carlos Barbar will never forget the moment he was saved from execution in the “Valley of Death” near Mosul, Iraq. On August 6, 2014, ISIS took control of his village Batnaya. The neighbors managed to flee, but Carlos’ father wasn’t able to walk and the family didn’t have a car. The ISIS terrorists demanded that they decide whether to convert to Islam, pay huge fines or leave. Carlos asked his brother to leave, while he stayed behind to protect his parents.
One of the ISIS terrorists ripped the cross from his neck, threw it on the floor and demanded that he step on it. “I told him, ‘I’ll put my foot on your neck, but never on the cross. I have my God and he’s also your God,'” Carlos recalls.
The barrel of a rifle landed on his head and he collapsed. When he woke up, he discovered that he was hanging from the ceiling by one leg. “They immersed my head in dirty water, beat me with a stick full of nails, tied me with wire and put salt on my wounds,” he remembers and shudders. “I screamed in pain, they demanded that I promise to convert to Islam, but I said that I would be happy to die like a proud Christian.”
He was brought to trial before an ISIS leader in the region who sentenced him to execution by firing squad. Six ISIS men took him to the “Valley of Death,” the execution point. They blindfolded him and cocked their Kalashnikov rifles.
But then, suddenly, the group’s commander’s cell phone rang. On the other side of line was the man who had sentenced him to death. “Leave him and return immediately,” he instructed. They dropped him to the ground, left the site and he lost consciousness. When he awoke, everything around him was white: “I thought I was in heaven. But then I saw a nurse and she told me: ‘You’re in a medical clinic in a church in Baghdad.'”
Carlos fled from Iraq and didn’t return. Today, in a rented apartment in Amman, he’s waiting for a response to his asylum applications, which he filed to Canada, Australia, and the US. His mother joined him, and they’re paying for rent and food with the money they received for her jewelry. The money is running out.
Like Carlos, there are 12,000 Christian refugees living in Amman, Jordan’s capital, who fled from Iraq. Jordan is indeed one of the only countries that has agreed to accept them, but they can’t work and they live in abject poverty. Many of them suffered torture, lost relatives, and saw death stare them in the face.
This is also the case for Yitzhak Bahanam, a resident of the Christian village Bartella. In 2010, members of Al Qaeda kidnapped him because his brother was a soldier in the Iraqi army. He was beaten and thrown into a small, dark and filthy pit. “You’ll never leave here alive,” they told him before they closed and locked the cage with an iron door. They didn’t leave him food or water.
Miraculously, three days later, a group of American and Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers received a report about him, came to the site, and rescued him.
The rescue was recorded on video and Isaac shows it to everyone as proof of the hell he experienced. In the video, you can see him being pulled out of the ground, handcuffed and trembling. He asks for a cigarette, lights it and cries. (source)
Note the points in bold that I highlighted.
“Carlos Barbar”
I’m sure there is some man name “Carlos” who was born in the Levant. I have yet to meet him, and never have I met a man with this name from the Middle East, let alone that region.
“Barbar” is also a curious name. It would mean “Berber,” suggesting he is from northern Africa. It is even more curious that the name would appear in the Levant, because the name would be itself an insult leveled by Persians against Arabs. People don’t take last names as insults, and if he really was from northern Africa, it would be very unlikely he would be a Christian.
“Yitzhak Banaham”
I’m sure there are Arabs and other Middle Eastern people named “Yitzhak.” However, I have yet to meet one. The only people I have ever met with the name “Yitzhak” are Jews, because “Yitzhak” is a Hebrew form of the name “Isaac.” I have known Arabs and Middle Eastern people with the equivalent name, “Ishaq.”
“Banaham” is a name that is absolutely not Arabic at all. The closest potential relation it may have would be Turkish based on the sound and pronunciation, but this would be unlikely. The name shows up in Australia and parts of South Asia before at all in the Middle East. While it is true it could be a name such as “bin Aham” or “bin Aiham”, such as the historical figure Jabalah ibn Al-Aiham, there is no clear answer about the origins of this name.
“Batnaya, Iraq”, home of “Carlos Barbar”
Fun fact- Batnaya was one of the few areas untouched by ISIS during its reign of terror. Wikipedia notes this. Also, the American intervention in Iraq began on August 7, 2014, one day after he said his village was raided- how conincidental.
“Bartella, Iraq”, home of “Yitzhak Banaham”
In his story, he says that the town was attacked by ISIS in 2010, yet ISIS did not attack until 2014. He says that he was liberated by American soldiers and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, but it was the Nineveh Plain Protection Units of Assyrians and the Iraqi Army that liberated the town in 2016.
Nothing in this story makes sense. There is a lack of detail in some parts, and in the areas where there is detail it shows outright lies or highly dubious statements.
Also, where’s the video of “Yitzhak Banaham” being rescued? One would like to see that.
Then there is the main person of the story, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein.
Rabbi Eckstein is known through his commericals for the “International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.” He presents charitable causes that seem good. However, the extremely high “operating costs” and the $1.2 million dollar “salary” that he pays himself are very odd and inconsistent with charity work, as Charisma Magazine notes:
As the head of a nonprofit that is almost entirely supported by donations, what makes Yechiel Eckstein’s compensation noteworthy is its proportion to his organization’s overall income compared to other ministries. While the salary and benefit package of the head of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (ICFJ) is at least five times higher than any other leader of an Israel-related ministry, clocking in at $1.2 million, Eckstein’s compensation is more than double what the president of World Vision—a ministry with a budget 10 times larger—earns.
World Vision’s Richard Stearns earned $456,718 in salary and benefits in 2011, according to the organization’s tax return. But World Vision has a $1 billion annual budget, whereas last year IFCJ’s budget was $113 million.
Meanwhile, Billy Graham, founder of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), earned $228,448 in total compensation in 2011, and his son, Franklin Graham, president of BGEA, earned $115,307. The organization is similar in size to the IFCJ with $92 million in revenues in 2011.
Linda Lampkin, resource director for the Economic Research Institute office in Washington, D.C., calculated the average direct compensation for executive directors at similar-sized religious organizations and found Eckstein’s pay is well above the average, which is $276,807. The computer-generated comparison showed executive directors at organizations with similar-sized budgets—$100-$110 million—earned anywhere from $163,675 to $389,938 annually.
“It is fair to say an executive director at a religious organization who makes nearly $500,000 annually in direct compensation and also has significant other compensation is paid well outside the mean ranges of executive directors at similar organizations with an approximate $100 million to $110 million in revenues,” Lampkin told Charisma. (source)
ICFJ has the signs of a charity scam. A legally structured charity scam, but a scam nonetheless using the monies of well meaning people, mostly evangelical Christians, to fund Rabbi Eckstein’s lifestyle. If the Rabbi would scam well-meaning people donating in the name of Christian charity, it would not be a surprise that he would concoct a questionable story to further his ends.
Fake news stories are not common, as when taken from the perspective of a propagandist, serve to further a particular end. This was the idea behind Operation Mockingbird, that through the systematic manipulation of public media and publications, one could direct the course of society.
In October 2017, we did a story about a British SAS sniper who allegedly killed a member of ISIS seconds before murdering an entire family. The story, as we showed, repeated almost word-for-word in format from August 2015 to June 2017, being republished eleven times with slight changes to give the appearance it was a different story.
This was fake news. The story was a lie, repeated in different ways.
There is a level of trust in all news stories because one simply cannot verify all information. One must necessarily rely on a chain of communication between people, and one must work as diligently as one can to verify that stories provided are correct. This cannot always be done in a complete way, and it is true that some stories which are not true will naturally pass through. However, many stories can be caught if one just takes the time to look into minor details.
In the ancient world, scammers were often times put to death. This is because the crime of the scammer is a violation of public trust. Since all societies are based on a form of mutual trust between parties that likewise serves to keep peace, one who violates the public trust in a blatant, consistent manner for selfish gain is actively rebelling against society and undermining its stability. “They are no different than a rebel or a terrorist, except their violence is done with words against the conscience of one’s fellow man.