A country haunted by demons Y: Transcript: The confrontation with mystics in the program "Politics", 6/3/2007

The coffee that Oded Shahar drank was disgusting, the astrologer admitted to a mistake and the lawyer claimed that the law permits the practice of witchcraft

Below is the transcript of the last item in the Politics program that was broadcast on Tuesday 6/3/2007 on the first channel that dealt with mystics and the question of whether they should show legal responsibility for their promises. One of the participants - your faithful servant, the editor of the site of knowledge, who represented the rational aspect. Also participating in Kafa was reader Sana Koma, astrologer Herzl Lifshitz, journalist Shaul Maizlish, author of the book Practical Acceptance, attorney Assaf Sharaf who faced Sana in court, and Chaim Avraham, the father of the late Bnei Zal who was killed in a kidnapping in 2000 in Lebanon, and for a certain period his condition was not It was known, which gave the mystics an opening to blackmail the family. Discount, Oded Shahar.

Politics studio, 6/3/07 after the program. From the right, Herzl Lafshitz, Avi Blizovsky, Sana Koma and moderator Oded Shahar

Oded Shahar: "When we are in need or just ask questions, we go to mystics, we pay them a lot and then what to do, the predictions don't come true. Hello Sana Koma. You tell fortunes, read coffee and cards
Kome: "True"

Shahar: What is it to see in coffee?
Koma: "As I put the cup of coffee for you, you are currently drinking, not thinking about anything, turn the cup over, and I open the cup for you.

Shahar: And what will you discover?
Kome: What I see?

What is reading in coffee, or cards? what do you see? See a stain of mud from the mud coffee?
"It's not just the coffee, I have my own sense that I see things even without the coffee. I see a human being, I can know many things, but coffee strengthens me. You drink the coffee, turn it over, I see everything."

Shahar (drinks the coffee): "Oh, that was disgusting." Say it's real or it's a money industry, that's fine too.
It's very real, because I've been doing this for 25 years."
Shahar: When did you discover that you had special skills?
Kome: "At the age of 13."
Dawn: How?
Koma: "I am originally a Bedouin, my mother is Jewish. My grandfather was a great rabbi and my grandmother was a famous opener. I've had the sense since I was a child. I wanted to sit by her and watch."

Shahar: "When a person comes to you in need, aren't you afraid to mislead people?"

Koma: "I have never misled people. I always told the whole truth."

Shahar: Did you tell them, I see in the coffee that you're going to die tomorrow?
Koma: "No, you must not say such things because we are not God. If there are disasters that I can prevent through a cup of coffee, I do."

Shahar: "Who is coming to you?
All the celebrities in Israel, all the public figures, all the businessmen, politics. If you come to my house you will get a shock.

who will?
I must not say
Shahar: "You have to come home to see... and what they want to know, will I succeed in the elections, will I be a minister?

Koma: "I have said such things many times."

Shahar: "Hello to my father Blizovsky, you are the editor and owner of the scientist and skeptic sites, at least Sana says that our good guys come to her..."

Blizovsky: "Very simply, you yourself conducted a survey on this program six months ago and it turns out that 56 percent of the public believe in superstitions. Therefore, there are those who provide them with the goods."

Shahar: What, is this exploitation?
Blizovsky: "Exploitation, there are those who may in good faith believe." (I intended to continue - but the amount of believers does not make the mysticism true... but I didn't have time AB)

Shahar: "Why do so many people believe?"

Blizovsky: "If the great men of the nation, instead of going to those people and using their powers, had become rational and promoted science and free thinking in the country, then there would not have been such a large number of people who believed in superstitions."

Oded Shahar: "Herzl Lifshitz, the astrologer, this is about superstitions, isn't it?"

Lifshitz: "Nonsense. This man (Blizovsky) dares a little too much. What does superstition mean? Look, astrology has been around for 5,000 years. Why should we bother with theory, I am reading you predictions that I made on a global scale - peace, the rise of Margaret Thatcher, the opening of the gates of the Soviet Union, I warned Rabin about the murder and Sharon about his health. "

Oded Shahar: "Which means you are serious and not a collection of...."
Lifshitz: "Yes"

Blizovsky: "You also told Legal Alon that he would be prime minister and a week later he passed away. "
Lifshitz: "So once I was wrong, then you found it."

Lifshitz continues and turns to Oded Shahar: "Science says that man uses between eight and ten percent of his brain (an incorrect argument is that he uses all one hundred percent, not all for AB thinking). You too (Lablizovsky). I spoke with a physics lecturer at the Technion and he told me that the brain uses only ten percent, another 40 percent is intuition and the rest is luck. "

Oded Shahar: "Attorney Assaf Sharaf." You go to a mystic and don't succeed, can you sue him?"
Sharaf: "I managed a number of such cases. This is one of the most problematic laws in the law book. The law actually determines if we are talking about a civil lawsuit. I filed a civil lawsuit on the grounds of ushak. In an extreme situation, a person comes to a mystic with a very difficult problem."

Shahar: "But Sana didn't bother me, I came to get some advice..."
Sharaf: "You ask a good question, in matters of witchcraft, if Sana believes with all her heart that what she is doing really causes a result that is problematic in the law. But the law is designed to prevent a situation where people take advantage of a person's physical and mental distress and charge him the best of his money while promising answers."

Oded Shahar: "This really connects me to you, Chaim Avraham. You are the father of the late Bnei Zal Makhtofi in 2000. When there was uncertainty about the condition of the late Bnei Zal, did scholars, mystics contact you? "

Avraham: "People from all over the world applied, especially people from Israel. They suggested that they give a forecast, that they say where my son is with his friends, how they can be taken out, etc. And there were also those who gave us so-called accurate predictions, which in the end caused us very serious damage. My wife waited at the window for my son to arrive on some holiday that we were told he would."

Shahar: "Have you considered suing?"
Avraham: "The truth is that I didn't consider suing because dealing with it is very problematic as the attorney said, but what is clear is that these people take a ride on the plight that people are in, and try to satisfy the need that a person wants to know what will happen to him and where his relatives are."

Oded Shahar: "So they are trying to take advantage of your distress?"
Haim Avraham: "Yes, and I think the time has come to enshrine it in the law book in order to prevent such situations, unless it is done voluntarily."

Oded Shahar: "Shaul Mizlish, you are a media person."

Maizlish: "I wrote a book, Practical Kabbalah, it came out in Yedioth Ahronoth, one of the fastest bestsellers that can be and this is also following an experience I had myself. Until then I was very skeptical, I didn't believe in this, but I saw in my mind's eye how Baba Sally, and he really is one of the real ones, and there are also charlatans in this market and in the debate between the two there are people who emotionally exploit people but in this world of loneliness, of alienation, where people are looking for support, They are looking for a shoulder, they have no one to talk to, everything is unknown and everything is vague...

Shahar: "How can you tell the difference between a real person and a charlatan?"

Maizlish: "First of all, every receptionist who gives a receipt is real. But seriously speaking. There are really three or four great rabbis who live in Mt Sha'arim of Purity. They are exactly the antithesis of what the Rambam said for example...

Shahar (Lasana), here he (Chaim Avraham) tells about people who came and offered help when the man was in his worst need..
Koma: "I justify him in many things, but I believe in myself that I know how to open coffee very well, I have never disappointed people and I have never told illusions

Are you afraid of possible lawsuits?
Kome: "No. Because I never hurt people"

Blizovsky: "Do you tell people clear things, or do you say so many things that everyone finds what they want in them?"

Koma: "I am considered the most famous in the whole country."

Mayslish: "Father, it's not science, it's art."

Blizovsky: "All these mystics are salesmen, nothing more than that. Successful salespeople.”

Lifshitz: "Do you remember the late Teddy Levita?" One day he rings me and says that the Bishop of Canterbury wants to know what will become of Terry White and Colonel Higgins. I got their dates of birth. I said that in six months Terry and White will come out alive. Colonel Higgins, if he makes it through February, he comes out alive and in March he was seen hanging from a tree ((((oops, another Lifshitz miss, which he still presents as a success)))). As for Legal Alon, I said in January, February, March, you are in a very bad state of health, so be careful."

Haim Avraham: "I want to connect with what he (Maizlish) said. There were two cases that I experienced of people involved in Judaism and Kabbalah who did tell me the absolutely correct things. "

Oded Shahar: Who for example?

Avraham: "The X-ray, for example. I and Mr. Avitan were at his place. He asked us to open the Zohar book, read the story of the kidnapping in the Zohar book."

Blizovsky: "With interpretation you can find anything in anything."
Oded Shahar: "And he said what?"

Avraham: "Chaim, do you want me to tell the end? I understood the answer from the question and told him no."

Sharaf: "This whole debate was born from the fact that the law has a buyer. The law does not resolve those cases legally. Sana is just like Rav. My client claimed that Rav promised that she would get married within a year and he asked for ten thousand NIS for the promise. Is this rabbi different from Mrs. Sana?"

Oded Shahar: "If you go to the doctor and he tells you take this pill and get well or if you go to the lawyer and he says you will probably win the trial and then you lose the trial. Is this also happening?"
"Yes, but the difference is that in the matter of medicine and law, this is regulated by law. When you come to a lawyer, you know that he works in court. When you go to the doctor, you know that he is following medical science. When you come to a person who introduces himself and in an unnatural way tells you what the future will be, the law does not regulate this issue. The law in its current form only talks about the extreme cases."

Blizovsky: "But they are all charlatans"

The end sign.
Oded Shahar says goodbye and gives credits and then continues: "Sana what did you see? But only if it's good. If it's not good, it will be postponed until tomorrow."
Sana: "I see that you have many, many competitors, many jealous people. You are too stressed lately."
Shahar: "Try hosting a program like this..."
Sana: "We see that the situation worries you, that you need to undergo something, an operation or something that you will come out of and get through it safely. You have amazing parents that you constantly take care of……”

On the same subject: Why do people believe readers of all kinds?