The Overcriminalization of America: Are We All Criminals Now?

…by Jonas E. Alexis and John W. Whitehead

Jonas E. Alexis

Back in 2012, Gordon Duff stated:

“Slowly, every police department in the United States, at the behest of the Department of Homeland Security [DHS], is being trained by Israeli groups. As part of this training, there is an increased move to use of military uniforms, armored vehicles, heavy weapons, illegal surveillance, lying to the people, press and courts and systematic interference in the electoral system…”

That was not hocus pocus at all. The statement was confirmed by hard evidence, which clearly indicated that “police brutality” was a direct result of Israeli infiltration in the United States. Listen to the Boston Globe back in 2011:

“Police chiefs from Newton, Framingham, and Belmont headed off last weekend for a weeklong counterterrorism seminar in Israel, funded by the Anti-Defamation League. They are joining a dozen other senior law enforcement officials from the Northeast to network and get first-hand advice from Israeli security experts.”[1]

The Jerusalem Post confirmed the report.[2] JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, admitted in the same year that “top level American police chiefs, sheriffs, and senior federal agents” were indeed trained in Israel.

Two years later, Israel National News again concurred that “A delegation of law enforcement executives from the United States” was trained in Israel. The Times of Israel confirmed the report.[3]

We were also told that the Israeli army “trained London Police in tactics and strategy during Gaza crisis” in 2014.[4]

Even during the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, Max Blumenthal himself admitted that the US police force and other officials were trained in Israel. Blumenthal called the plan the “Israelification of America.” The Jewish Virtual Library had an article entitled “U.S.-Israel Strategic Cooperation: Joint Police & Law Enforcement Training.” We learned:

“With the United States on constant terror alert since the events of September 11, 2001, American police and law enforcement officials are taking advantage of Israel’s expertise in various facets of counter-terrorism and first response to better protect the American people.

“In 2002, Los Angeles Police Department detective Ralph Morten visited Israel to receive training and advice on preparing security arrangements for large public gatherings. From lessons learned on his trip, Det. Morten prepared a new Homicide Bomber Prevention Protocol and was better able to secure the Academy Awards presentation.

“In January 2003, thirty-three senior U.S. law enforcement officials – from Washington, Chicago, Kansas City, Boston and Philadelphia – traveled to Israel to attend a meeting on “Law Enforcement in the Era of Global Terror.”  The workshops helped build skills in identifying terrorist cells, enlisting public support for the fight against terrorism and coping with the aftermath of a terrorist attack…

“In September 2013, a special team of bomb squad members from cities along the U.S.-Mexico border traveled to Israel in an effort to improve techniques and tactics for dealing with illegal immigration and IED attacks.”

The Jerusalem Post again agreed with the report.[5] Obviously this was and still is an intolerable situation. We all know by now that Israel has spread covert and terrorist activities in much of the West and the Middle East.[6] For example, the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was a member of a terrorist organization called the Stern Gang—the same terrorist organization that was largely responsible for the assassination of Lord Moyne, a British Resident Minister in the Middle East. That took place in 1944.[7]

The fundamental question is this: Why have our domestic police departments been brainwashed in Israel? Didn’t Abu Ghraib teach us anything? Didn’t British journalist Robert Fisk write that “Abu Ghraib torture trail leads to Israel”?[8] Did anyone enjoy sodomy at that place? How about raping boys in the same madhouse in front of their mothers?[9] How about “a uniformed soldier receiving oral sex from a female prisoner, a government contractor engag[ing] in an act of sodomy with a male prisoner and scenes of forced masturbation, forced exhibition, and penetration involving phosphorous sticks and brooms”?[10]

If those acts were morally repugnant, why again are we sending elected officials to be trained in a foreign land which has caused nothing but misery in the United States? More importantly, how would the Founding Fathers of America respond to this pernicious enterprise? Didn’t they unanimously declare that America should never be involved in foreign entanglements?

After more than three years of political manipulation and covert warfare, what has been the result of all the training in Israel? Peace and harmony? Or chaos in major centers in America? What do we see in places like Dallas, Ferguson, Baltimore, etc.? Isn’t the Israeli regime actually killing two birds with one stone here? Aren’t they dividing and subjugating people in America through covert means? Aren’t they implicitly repeating what people like Louis Wirth did in major cities in America?[11]

We are not proposing violent reactions. What we are proposing is the antithesis of violence. Our view is that the US and Israeli governments must act according to reason and the moral law and political order, not according to the dictates of essentially Talmudic dogmas,[12] which are essentially anti-Logos and anti-Western. But it seems that the Israeli regime has already “Guantanamo-like facilities” in the United States.

John W. Whitehead

Under the blazing Arizona sun stands an encampment of military tents filled with some 2,000 people. They battle the heat by positioning themselves in front of a few large fans, but they are of little use when temperatures reach 145 degrees. Stun fences surround the perimeter, with four Sky Watch Towers bearing down on the occupants. Facial recognition software and K-9 units keep track of the people moving about, longing for their freedom.

For the residents of Tent City Jail, their time behind bars is an exercise in humiliation: they are forced to dress in pink underwear, they “work seven days a week, are fed only twice a day, get no coffee, no cigarettes, no salt, pepper or ketchup and no organized recreation.” They work on chain gangs, and have to pay ten bucks every time they want to see a nurse. This draconian treatment is not reserved for hardened criminals. In fact, most inmates in Tent City are imprisoned for less than a year for minor crimes, or are simply awaiting trial.

It is in this Guantanamo-like facility, surrounded by hardened criminals and subjected to all manners of degradation and hardship that Michael Salman—who was fined more than $12,000 and sentenced to 60 days in jail starting on July 9, 2012, for the so-called “crime” of holding a weekly Bible study in his Phoenix home, allegedly in violation of the city’s building codes—is incarcerated.

What happened to Michael Salman—armed police raids of his property, repeated warnings against holding any form of Bible study at his home, and a court-ordered probation banning him from having any gatherings of more than 12 people at his home—should never have happened in America.

Yet this is the reality that more and more Americans are grappling with in the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with churning out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies. All the while, the life is slowly being choked out of our individual freedoms. The aim, of course, is absolute control by way of thousands of regulations that dictate when, where, how and with whom we live our lives.

Incredibly, Congress has been creating on average 55 new “crimes” per year, bringing the total number of federal crimes on the books to more than 5,000, with as many as 300,000 regulatory crimes. As journalist Radley Balko reports, “that doesn’t include federal regulations, which are increasingly being enforced with criminal, not administrative, penalties. It also doesn’t include the increasing leeway with which prosecutors can enforce broadly written federal conspiracy, racketeering, and money laundering laws. And this is before we even get to the states’ criminal codes.”

In such a society, we are all petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. In fact, Boston lawyer Harvey Silvergate, author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, estimates that the average American now unknowingly commits three felonies a day, thanks to an overabundance of vague laws that render otherwise innocent activity illegal and an inclination on the part of prosecutors to reject the idea that there can’t be a crime without criminal intent.

Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork.

This frightening state of affairs—where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most innocent and inane activities, including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their own property (these are actual cases in the courts right now)—is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization, or the overt proliferation of criminal laws. “Such laws,” notes journalist George Will, “which enable government zealots to accuse almost anyone of committing three felonies in a day, do not just enable government misconduct, they incite prosecutors to intimidate decent people who never had culpable intentions. And to inflict punishments without crimes.”

Michael Salman is merely one more unfortunate soul caught in the government’s cross-hairs, only his so-called crime deserving of prosecution was daring to take part in a time-honored tradition that goes back centuries—gathering with family and friends at home for prayer and worship.

Since 2005, Michael and his wife Suzanne have hosted Bible studies at their Phoenix home for 20-45 family and friends, depending on the day of the week and time. Attendees park their cars on the Salmans’ 4.6-acre property so as not to crowd the street or inconvenience the neighbors. However, after some neighbors complained about the gatherings, city zoning officials started harassing the Salmans, advising them that they were breaking the law because religious activities, even in the home, have to be governed by building codes for churches, rather than residential homes.

Of course, these zoning officials had no problem with group gatherings for family reunions, football parties, Tupperware parties or Boy Scout meetings. In June 2009, nearly a dozen armed police officers, accompanied by city inspectors, raided the Salmans’ property, charging them with 67 code violations that apply to commercial and public buildings, including having no emergency exit signs over the doors, no handicap parking spaces or handicap ramps.

For more than three years, the Salmans attempted to placate city officials, even agreeing to install overhead sprinklers in their converted game room, but when zoning officials started insisting that the Salmans actually install paved roads and curbs on their private property, they said “no more.” That’s when city officials really turned up the heat, sentencing Michael Salman to 60 days in jail, more than $12,000 in fines and a two-year probation.

Making matters worse, city officials then found Michael guilty of violating his probation by continuing to hold Bible studies on his private property after being ordered not to have more than 12 people gathered on his property at any one time. In addition to increased jail time for Michael and fines, the Salmans will also be subjected to unannounced monthly visits by government inspectors, checking to ensure they do not have more than 12 people in their home at any given time.

The situation in which the Salmans find themselves is not all that unusual. All across the country, in cities, towns and villages of every size imaginable, Americans of all faiths—Christians, Jews, Muslims and so on—gather in their homes for fellowship, prayer and reflection. Yet as communities from New York to California adopt strident zoning codes crafted in such a way as to keep churches, synagogues and mosques at a distance, especially from residential neighborhoods, and discourage religious gatherings, these religious rituals are now being outlawed in America. For example, in an effort to discourage what it referred to as “illegal synagogues,” the Village of Hempstead, N.Y., went so far as to create zoning laws that would make it nearly impossible for Orthodox Jews to hold prayer meetings in their homes.

There was a time in our nation’s history when such an accounting of facts would have sparked immediate outrage. However, having bought into the idea that anything the government says and does is right, even when it is so clearly wrong, many Americans through their own compliance have become unwitting accomplices in the government’s efforts to prosecute otherwise law-abiding citizens for unknowingly violating some statute in its vast trove of laws written by bureaucrats who operate above the law. Yet as Nathan Burney so adeptly points out in his “Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law,” “when crimes are too numerous to count… when you’re punished, not because what you did was wrong, but simply because the law says so… when laws are too vague or overbroad… that’s not justice.”

About John W. Whitehead:  John is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead’s concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, nonprofit civil liberties, and human rights organization whose international headquarters are located in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Deeply committed to protecting the constitutional freedoms of every American and the integral human rights of all people, The Rutherford Institute has emerged as a prominent leader in the national dialogue on civil liberties and human rights and a formidable champion of the Constitution. Whitehead serves as the Institute’s president and spokesperson. Widely recognized as one of the nation’s most vocal and involved civil liberties attorneys, Whitehead’s approach to civil liberties issues has earned him numerous accolades and accomplishments, including the Hungarian Medal of Freedom and the 2010 Milner S. Ball Lifetime Achievement Award for “[his] decades of difficult and important work, as well as [his] impeccable integrity in defending civil liberties for all.”

Whitehead earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Arkansas in 1969 and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1974. He served as an officer in the United States Army from 1969 to 1971.

•  [1] Evan Allen, “Local police chiefs head to Israel for antiterror training,” Boston Globe, October 16, 2011.
• [2] Yaakov Lappin, “US police officials in Israel for counter-terrorism program,” Jerusalem Post, October 31, 2011.
• [3] Spencer Ho, “Israel trains US law-enforcement in counter-terrorism,” Times of Israel, October 8, 2013.
• [4] Johnlee Varghese, “Israeli Army Trained London Police in Tactics and Strategy During Gaza Crisis, Says Report,” International Business Times, December 8, 2014.
• [5] Ben Hartman, “American law enforcement learns anti-terror tactics from Israeli experts,” Jerusalem Post, September 9, 2015.
• [6] See Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009; Gordon Thomas, Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995 and 2015); Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service (New York: HarperCollins, 2014); Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars (New York: Levant Books, 2012 and 2014); for similar studies, see Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
• [7] Julian Ozanne, “Unflinching Supporter of Greater Israel,” Financial Times, June 30, 2012; Pedahzur & Perliger, Jewish Terrorism in Israel, 18-20; see also Joanna Saidel, “Yitzhak Shamir: Why we killed Lord Moyne,” Times of Israel, July 5, 2012.
• [8]  Robert Fisk, “Abu Ghraib Torture Trail Leads to Israel,” Independent, May 26, 2004.
• [9] John Vibes, “Classified Evidence: US Soldiers Raped Boys In Front Of Their Mothers,” Mint Press News, December 19, 2014.
• [10] Scott Horton, “The Bogus Torture Coverup,” Daily Beast, May 29, 2009.
• [11] For a cultural history on this, see E. Michael Jones, The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2004).
• [12] Marissa Newman, “Netanyahu reported to say legal system based on Talmud,” Times of Israel, May 8, 2014.

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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