Nasi, NAZI, NASA, NAZA

by Not Sure

2 November 2021

In part, this essay is about a handful of movies that I have not seen, but before I get to those, I will mention a movie I saw. Sexy Beast came out to high acclaim in 2000. It was a crime movie starring Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley, and Ian McShane. It featured Kingsley as a violent psychopath who used a staggering amount of foul language. It won numerous awards and accolades, particularly for Kingsley’s performance. It was the directorial debut for Jonathan Glazer, and for his work, he was awarded a British Independent Film Award.

I have not seen Jonathan Glazer’s second film, Birth, from 2004. This is what Alan Watt said about that movie in a talk from 2011:

“Even Plato said the same thing. He said, if you understand how cultures have been manipulated and dominated in the past, he says, if you know the formulas you can reproduce it again. You can make the public do anything you want. And I believe that’s true. I’ve seen it. I’ve witnessed it in my own lifetime… And they’ve done it very, very well. Because the destruction of the family unit was imperative, to get it all through, across the world. Family units stand together and will stand up against tyranny…This is all strategy. And again, it’s been perfectly documented and it’s been perfectly worked out, in my lifetime…

They’ve even made movies too. Someone told me about a Nicole Kidman movie [Birth] where her husband dies or something and he comes back as a child, and she ends up in the bath with him because he’s the reincarnation of her hubby. Stuff like this, you see. And that was out within a year or two years of that international censorship committee, where they all met together to push the envelope for the next phase…”

Jonathan Glazer’s next film was 10 years in development. It premiered in 2013 and was released in 2014. A listener sent Alan a copy of Under the Skin, but we did not want to watch it, I have yet to watch it and it is not likely I will. It’s described as ‘weird’ and ‘haunting’ and ‘visually and aurally arresting’ and ‘a movie that gets better with each viewing.’ Scarlett Johansson stars as an extraterrestrial who is disguised as a human and travels around Scotland seducing men. The film features Scarlett naked, and there is plenty of full male nudity. According to one review, “It’s a film designed to make the audience feel very, very uncomfortable.”

Ten years later, Glazer released his fourth film, The Zone of Interest, loosely based on a Martin Amos novel, about the real life of Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz and his wife Hedwig who live with their family in the ‘The Zone of Interest’ next to Auschwitz. Amos had fictionalized Höss, but Glazer sought to focus on the real Hösses and to demystify the perpetrators of the Holocaust. The film has received many awards including the Best International Feature Academy Award in 2024. During his acceptance speech at the 96^th Academy Awards on March 10, 2024, Jonathan Glazer said the following:

“All our choices are made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say, 'Look what they did then,' rather 'Look what we do now.' Our film shows where dehumanisation leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October 7^th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization — how do we resist?”

The condemnation of his speech was swift. In an open letter written and published by the Holocaust Survivor’s Foundation, the foundation’s chairman David Schaecter, wrote: “You made a Holocaust movie and won an Oscar. And you are Jewish. Good for you. But it is disgraceful for you to presume to speak for the six million Jews, including one and a half million children, who were murdered solely because of their Jewish identity.”

Schaecter added: “You should be ashamed of yourself for using Auschwitz to criticise Israel. If the creation, existence, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish state equates to ‘occupation’ in your mind, then you obviously learned nothing from your movie.”

By the 19^th of March, more than 1000 Hollywood figures had signed a letter condemning Jonathan Glazer’s speech. A smaller faction rallied to his defense and by the 5^th of April, 151 film industry people had signed a letter in support of Glazer.

“We are Jewish artists, filmmakers, writers and creative professionals who support Jonathan Glazer’s statement from the 2024 Oscars. We were alarmed to see some of our colleagues in the industry mischaracterize and denounce his remarks,” the letter states. “Their attacks on Glazer are a dangerous distraction from Israel’s escalating military campaign which has already killed over 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza and brought hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation. We grieve for all those who have been killed in Palestine and Israel over too many decades, including the 1,200 Israelis killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the 253 hostages taken.”

When I first heard about the documentary film, NAZA, it was in connection to Israeli officials calling for the film’s co-directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, to have their Israeli citizenship revoked. Later, I learned that The Guardian newspaper (described as centre-left) had produced the film. It was very briefly shown at an arthouse cinema in the Dallas, Texas area, and by the time I heard anything about it, it was gone. The Guardian states that they will be streaming it on their website later this month, and I will be on the lookout for it. When watching the trailer, I saw Jonathan Glazer listed as an Executive Producer. Because Glazer has made his career in the world of independently financed features, his Academy Award speech is not predicted to have a negative impact on his career, and at the risk of sounding cynical, perhaps the speech functioned as a successful audition reel for many centre-left opportunities to come.

Glazer said he was shocked into silence when he saw NAZA, and there was no question that he would get involved. The documentary dealt with similar themes to his 2023 film, The Zone of Interest. “Both films deal with dehumanisation,” Glazer said. “And how we get to where we do as a species by othering and dehumanising, and what that then leads to.” According to The Guardian, “Israeli government officials have attempted to discredit NAZA’s content, while far-right activists have threatened to hunt down the directors.

The Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has said they will use “every tool at our disposal” against the film, while the military has issued a 10-page response to NAZA, which was based on interviews with more than 100 sources with knowledge of the military systems used in the war.

Demonstrators have gathered outside the home of Szor’s parents, demanding that she face the death penalty, and a mural depicting the filmmakers through the sights of a gun appeared in the Israeli city of Ashdod.”

Jonathan Glazer speaks of othering, and what is particularly troubling is that outraged critics reject the legitimacy of comparing the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, or Gazans in particular, to the Nazi treatment of Jews.

In 1978, Vanessa Redgrave had already been at the center of a controversy prior to her acceptance speech at the Academy Awards, because she had befriended some Palestinian students, and provided narration for a documentary, The Palestinian, which she also produced. At her acceptance speech, she spoke about, “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behaviour is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.” Her speech was misconstrued; she said she spoke of the Jewish Defense League rather than any larger group.

The far-right Jewish Defense League was founded by American Israeli Meir Kahane in 1968 for the purpose of fighting antisemitism by whatever means necessary. Meir Kahane was born in Brooklyn to an established rabbinic family whose father was a strong supporter of Revisionist Zionism, which is a territorially maximalist movement, seeking expansion and a Jewish majority on both sides of the Jordan River. His father was a rabbi and head of the Rabbinical Board of Flatbush. Leading Zionists, Eri Jabotinsky and Peter Bergson were frequent guests in his father’s home. Meir Kahane’s story has lots of side roads to wander. As a rabbi in Queens, New York, he prepared Arlo Guthrie for his bar mitzvah. He infiltrated the John Birch Society on behalf of the FBI, and while living a double life separate from husband/father/rabbi, he promised 21-year-old Gloria Jean D'Argenio that he would marry her. In a letter she received two days before their planned marriage in 1966, he wrote that the relationship was over; he was returning to his wife and family. Gloria Jean, pregnant with his child, jumped off the Queensboro Bridge and died of her injuries the next day.

Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) attended meetings of the Jewish Defense League and had several conversations with the rabbi, of whom he spoke highly. “He's a really sincere guy. He's really put it all together.” he told Time magazine in 1971. He later downplayed the extent of his contact with Kahane.

Everything about Meir Kahane’s life reads like it comes from an opera sung by a cantor. Meir Kahane was convicted of terrorism in 1971 and given a suspended sentence, emigrated to Israel where he founded the ultra-nationalist, religious Zionist party Kach, which existed from 1971 to 1994 and still influences far-right political groups in Israel. In 1990, he was gunned down in the second-floor lecture hall at Manhattan’s New York Marriot Eastside by El Sayyid Nosair, having just delivered a lecture to a group of Jews encouraging them to emigrate to Israel ‘before it’s too late.’ If you’re interested, investigate El Sayyid Nosair’s connections to Osama bin Laden and the bombing of the World Trade Center.

I only stumbled on the infamous Meir because of his brother, Rabbi Nachman Kahana. Nachman Kahana is the spiritual leader of Hazon Yichezkeil which is a member synagogue of Young Israel, an organization founded in 1912 whose goal was to make Orthodox Judaism more relevant to Americanized Jews. It continues to promote Orthodox involvement including support of Israel and Zionism. He also founded the Institute for Talmudic Commentaries. Rabbi Kahana has been involved in controversial attempts to revive the Sanhedrin, attempts which are considered fringe by mainstream Orthodox Jews, Haredi or ultra-Orthodox, and the secular Israeli press.

In ancient Israel, there were Rabbinate Courts known as the lesser and the Great Sanhedrin. ‘Sanhedrin’ is a borrowed word from Greek, synedrion or synhedrion, meaning ‘assembly’ or ‘gathering’ or ‘sitting together.’ A lesser Sanhedrin was composed of 23 rabbinical judges who sat as a tribunal in each city. There was only one Great Sanhedrin composed of 71 judges, which functioned like a Supreme Court and was presided over by the Nasi, which literally means ‘prince’ [of the Sanhedrin] and is sometimes translated ‘president.’ In the Second Temple period, the Sanhedrin convened at the Temple in Jerusalem in a building called The Hall of Hewn Stones. The Sanhedrin was not used for rituals, as any place used for rituals was forbidden from using hewn stones. “Various reasons have been given for the prohibition, among them: the purpose of the Temple is peace, while iron implements are used in war; the Temple lengthens human life while iron shortens it; the hewing of stones is an invitation to carving images in them, violating the prohibition against idolatry; and the sword references the earthly power of Esau, not the spiritual power of Jacob/Israel.” Drawings of The Hall of Hewn Stones from the 19^th century show a tessellated floor of black and white stones, like a chessboard or checkerboard.

Prior to 191 BCE, the Sanhedrin was ruled by a High Priest who was from the direct line descended from Aaron (the elder brother of Moses and the first High Priest of Israel). One version of events tells us that financial mismanagement led to a change from High Priest to Nasi. High Priest Chonyo transferred revenue collection to Yosef ben Toviah who was described as deceitful and cruel and outrage over this led to an overhaul of the system, replacing the High Priest with the Nasi (Prince) as head of the Sanhedrin. In 30 BCE, Hillel the Elder demonstrated his superiority over the sitting Nasi on a question of whether Passover duties could be performed on the sabbath or Shabbat. His argument was so decisive that the sitting Nasi stepped down. This happened during the reign of Herod the Great, when the Romans were using their authority to remove and appoint members of the Sanhedrin. From the time of Hillel the Elder until the end of the Sanhedrin in 425 CE, the Nasi was a hereditary function; all Nasi were direct descendants of Hillel the Elder.

In 33 CE, the Sanhedrin brought Jesus before Pontius Pilate, because they wanted Jesus to be executed, and they no longer had the authority to carry out executions. According to the Talmud, “forty years before the destruction of the [Second] Temple [70 CE], capital punishment ceased in Israel.” In John 18:31, when Pontius Pilate tells the Jewish leaders, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law,” he is indicating that he (and Rome) will not intervene in their internal religious matters. The Jewish leaders reply, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death,” acknowledging that under Roman occupation, only the Roman government held the authority to execute prisoners. The Sanhedrin could determine guilt under Mosaic Law, but they lacked the power to carry out capital punishment. After 70 CE, the Nasi was formally recognized by Rome as the ethnic leader of the Jews, with some judicial and administrative authority such as the ability to collect tax, but real power remained with the Roman procurator. Theodosius II disbanded the Sanhedrin completely in 425 CE.

***

This morning, I saw an old interview that former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie gave earlier this year. He told a story that dated back to 2004, when he was US Attorney for the District of New Jersey. His team investigated Charles Kushner on charges of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. During a family feud over the Kushner Companies, Charles Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce his sister’s husband, William Schulder and secretly videotaped the encounter. Charles mailed the tape to his sister Esther Schulder to silence her after she and William began cooperating with federal investigators. This is how the New Jersey Jewish News described it, “Mr. Kushner’s story is nearly Shakespearean in the intensity and maliciousness of its pursuit of revenge.” According to Wikipedia, “Christie negotiated a plea agreement with Charles Kushner, under which he pleaded guilty to 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison. In December 2020, President Donald Trump pardoned Kushner.” More recently, Trump appointed Charles Kushner as the US Ambassador to France.

***

In conversation with Jackie Patru, recorded in Waiting for the Miracle, part 1, Interview 5, page 47, Jackie asked Alan, “Do you know much about the Nicaea Council?” to which Alan responded, “I know a lot about the word Nicaea. It is a Latinized version of another word; whenever they had councils, they generally gave it that name. You’ll find also that…Nicaea (nasi) is very important to the whole conversation here, because when the Jews came out of captivity in Babylon, they had lost their high priest (the Cohen, the family of Aaron, the hereditary priests). But out with them from Babylon, came a new aristocracy and they formed the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin is actually the Greek word we are given for it. But the Sanhedrin sat in a half-moon council and that was why they were given that term, Sanhedrin. In the middle of the Sanhedrin was the Grand Master, and they called it the Grand Sanhedrin. The term they used for the Grand Master (sitting right in the middle) was Nasa, you’ll find that in your Bible dictionary. Now it could be Nasa or Nasi, it doesn’t matter because they interchange the vowels, there are no vowel points in ancient Aramaic, Egyptian or Chaldean for that matter. They put the points where the vowels should be. This term you’ll find popping up all down through history wherever this particular elite has settled. Therefore, when they had their first council, they called it the Council of Nicaea (or Nasa, it’s the same word).

In Jehovah Nissi, that’s where we’re told Moses put his banner, which had the serpent around it that he made, the brazen serpent. The brazen serpent was a symbol of Isis from Egypt. On either side they had a sort of half-moon shape, and that was the same as the Sanhedrin. It’s the same shape you’ll see as they sit around in the Great Council of the United Nations; they sit in a half-circle, and they are our new high priests.”

***

In 2016, Chris Christie sat in a room with Donald Trump and Donald’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as Trump was ‘interviewing’ Christie for a potential appointment. Jared Kushner was loudly telling Donald Trump what a bad person Christie was, voicing numerous objections to the appointment. Christie sat listening and at one point, Trump said to him, “Are you going to sit there and let him talk about you like this?” Christie said, “Yes.” Finally, Christie looked at Jared Kushner and said, “Your father plead guilty to all the charges.” Kushner said, “That’s not the point! This should never have gone to court. It was a matter for the rabbi.”

Donald Trump made the appointment over his son-in-law’s objections and in May of 2016, named Christie to head a transition team in the event of a Trump presidency.

***

Let us consider what Alan told Jackie about interchangeable vowels as we consider what it is that Moses ‘planted.’ Exodus 17:15, “And Moses built an altar and called its name, The Lord is my banner.” In Hebrew, it’s Yahweh‑Nissi (יְהוָה נִסִּי). The word nissi comes from the root n‑s‑h, which can mean “to lift up,” “to bear,” or “to raise as a standard/banner”. By naming the alter Yahweh-Nissi, Moses declares that God is the ultimate banner and the source of the victory over the Amalekites. Joshua led the Israelites in battle, while Moses stood on a hill with ‘the staff of God.’ With his arms held high, Israel’s victory was secured. When his arms grew tired, Aaron (future High Priest) and Hur supported his arms, in which he held the staff, the visible sign of God’s miraculous power.

In the translation for the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament), translators interpreted the root of nissi differently as ‘refuge’ rather than ‘banner.’ “The Lord is my refuge.”

Alan continues (now on page 48) to outline this history and the wordplay of nasa/nissi through the Carolingian and Merovingian dynasties, the Vikings, the Normans, and their landing in Scotland at the place they called Nasa or Nesa (Inverness). In Numbers 21:8, God instructs Moses: “Make a fiery serpent, and put it on a standard (nes), and it shall come about that everyone who is bitten and looks at it will live.” The root word (nes) is used: the serpent is lifted up as a standard/banner.

Jackie said, “So they are big on symbology, aren’t they” and Alan replied, “You better believe it. Nasa not only means the head, it also means the seat, because we are talking about a genetic strain here of intense selective breeding.”

Towards the bottom of page 48, Alan said, “Selective breeding is very important all through all religion. Again, you’ll see they called it in Germany, Nazi, because the name was there before Adolf Hitler came along, so was the party. There is no way you can give ‘Nazi’ to the German Socialist Workers Party. It doesn’t work out. No one has ever explained where ‘Nazi’ comes from, why it was there. But we knew it had to do with race and a purity of race.”

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) was known as the Nazi party. Look at the German for National Socialism, Nationalsozialismus. A more natural acronymn would be Naso.

Lavender is an AI-powered database developed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Unit 8200 to identify and generate kill lists for potential Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operatives in Gaza. The system analyzed surveillance data on Gaza’s population, assigning individuals a suspicion score from 1 to 100 based on behavioral patterns and associations. It flagged approximately 37,000 Palestinians as targets, operating with minimal human oversight. Lavender works with other AI tools including The Gospel, which identified specific buildings and homes for strikes, and Where’s Daddy? which tracked targets’ movements to accurately time bombings. In one bombing using this tech, a man left his cellphone at home with his young daughters who were killed while the father, away from home without his cellphone, was not. “I felt like God” is how Israeli military officers described the intimacy they experienced, according to the documentary NAZA and investigative reports, because they could monitor the private lives of Palestinians in Gaza by tapping into their cellphones.

Nezek Agavi (Hebrew: נזק אגבי) is a military term meaning “collateral damage,” and its acronym is NAZA. Why? Why not NEZA? Or NEKA? Nezek means ‘damage’ and Agavi is ‘incidental.’ I was forced to get a bit obsessive about this and here is what I came up with:

נָזַק	nāzāq	he damaged (pa'al perfect)
נֶזֶק	nézek	damage (noun)

If this internet research can be trusted, then NAZA would work as an acronym to describe what one person did in the past. ‘He caused collateral, (or incidental) damage,’ but acronyms are generally not used in that way. NEZA would be an appropriate acronym for ‘collateral (or incidental) damage.’ From what we know about the interchangeability of vowels and the emphasis on consonants, perhaps there is no difference between NAZA and NEZA. Did it need to be NAZA to rhyme with Gaza? Or does it point back to the ‘new’ aristocracy that came out of Babylon who formed the Sanhedrin?

We’ll save JPL’s Thelema occultist, Jack Parsons, and former Nazi Party member Werner von Braun and their fabulous NASA rockets for another day.

A special thank you to Tartan Tinker/GundG for input on Jehovah Nissi based on their own independent research while translating Waiting for the Miracle into German.