FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU Sharon targeted with 'death curse'Extremists used ritual against Rabin, 1 month before he was assassinated
Posted: July 26, 20051:59 p.m. Eastern
By Aaron Klein© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Fringe activists held a midnight kabbalistic ritual in an ancient cemetery calling for angels of death to kill Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and thwart his Gaza withdrawal plan, participants in the ceremony told WND.
The same individuals used the ritual against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin one month before his assassination in 1995.
The activists said they performed a 'Pulsa Dinura' – a kabbalistic ceremony in which God is asked to curse a sinner, usually an enemy of the Jewish people – and prayed for a death curse to be placed on Sharon.
They argued Sharon's Gaza evacuation will "destroy Israel and the Jewish people" and will cause Jewish deaths.
Rabbi Yosef Dayan, one of the leaders of the ceremony, told WND, "I said 10 months ago that I am willing do the Pulsa Dinura if rabbis are going to instruct me to do that. We decided now it is time. Sharon is endangering the entire Jewish population. He is giving land to the enemies who will use it to attack us. He has let them fire on us with bullets and rockets without retaliation because it serves his purposes. He is going to expel my mother-in-law from Gush Katif [Gaza's Jewish communities]."
The Pulsa Dinura was held late Thursday night in an ancient cemetery in the town of Rosh Pina. It was performed by a kabbalist, who recited prayers that were repeated by 20 men, who, in line with kabbalistic tradition, were all over the age of 40, bearded and first purified themselves in a ritual bath.
Describing the ceremony, participant Baruch Ben Yosef, an activist attorney, told WND, "It was done in a beautiful cemetery with a thick forest around it, under a full moon. We performed it near the graveside of Shlomo Ben Yosef [the first Jew to be hanged by the British in Palestine after carrying out a revenge attack on an Arab bus.]
"The actual prayer of the Pulsa Dinura was read by the kabbalist. There was a quorum of people that read back the prayer as he read it. And the hope we expressed is that the angels of Kaballah will remove Sharon from continuing to destroy the Jewish people and the land of Israel."
Dayan said, "We are making what we have done public now because you are not supposed to curse a deaf person. You can't curse someone who doesn't know what you did and can't hear you. Now Sharon will know, and we will have fulfilled our obligation."
Dayan claims he put his life on the line by participating.
"If you curse someone who doesn't deserve it, it will boomerang back at us," he said. "So obviously we are sure what Sharon is doing warrants death.
Fringe activist Michael Ben-Horin, also a participant, told WND, "Sharon cannot be assassinated by a man. He has too many guards and too much security around him. We believe in god, so we are asking god to kill him."
Asked what would be the most appropriate death for Sharon, Ben-Horin replied, "The best thing would be for a Qassam rocket to fall on him like he lets them fall on Jews in Gush Katif. But we'll take what we can get."
Ben-Horin, who, with Dayan, placed a Pulsa Dinura curse on Rabin one month before his assassination, said, "Sharon's death is more important that Rabin's. With Rabin, he was just one man surrounded by many others in power who were pushing for the same capitulation to terror. Here, Sharon is the single man pushing his party and many unwilling people to go along with the evil evacuation plan. Getting rid of Sharon can do the trick."
Dayan told WND he is not inciting anyone to assassinate Sharon.
"We are talking to angels and spirits, not people," he said. "If someone takes the law into his own hand and kills Sharon, it's not my problem."
Participants in the ceremony are not mainstream leaders in the anti-withdrawal campaign, which distanced itself from the Pulsa Dinura. Some participants have previously been accused of serving as provocateurs and damaging the settlement cause.
National Religious Party Chairman Zevulun Orlev said, "I vehemently condemn those who carried out the 'Pulsa Dinura' ceremony against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The 'Pulsa Dinura' prior to Rabin's assassination caused indescribable and irreversible damage to the religious public and the settlement enterprise, and repeating this act would hurt the legitimate struggle against the pullout."
"We have absolutely nothing to do with this craziness," said a leader of the Yesha settlers council. "It's a handful of nut cases who get a lot of publicity and then it serves to discredit us. Some even think they work for the government."
The Pulsa Dinura is not described directly in the Zohar, the main kabbalistic text, and some kabbalists say it is not real. Adherents of Kabbalah independently developed the idea based on obscure references.
According to Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok, a religious leader from the Benei N'vi'im Yeshiva in Chicago, the popular perception of the Pulsa Dinura as a curse is mistaken.
Tzadok writes, "The Pulsa Dinura has wrongfully been associated with a certain school of Kabbalah. It is not a magical formula. Torah and Judaism have no connection to or tolerance of magic in any form. Therefore, the consideration of anything in holy Kabbalah, an integral part of God's Torah from Sinai, to have any ties to magic is a spurious and offensive suggestion.
"The Pulsa Dinura is actually not a 'curse of death' as many mistakenly believe. No rabbi or kabbalist has the right or authority to curse another to death. In accordance to Torah Law, the only way a Jew is put to death is for violation of specific biblical laws and then only after being tried and condemned by a kosher and authoritative Sanhedrin, the likes of which have not existed in Israel and among the Jewish people since the days of the Temple."
