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September 16th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
What is not in dispute is that the attacks were conducted by followers of
Samuel Mullet, a rival Amish bishop who controlled his breakaway faction
with some decidedly un-Amish tactics, according to courtroom testimony.
Also in no doubt is that the trial is throwing an unprecedented focus on the
traditions and tenets of a reclusive community that eschews most
technological advances of the last 100 years, prizes humility and shies away
from confrontation. It is a spotlight that the Amish find deeply
uncomfortable.
Mr Mullet’s critics claim he was effectively running a cult. The court has
heard testimony, unchallenged by the defence, that he imposed “sexual
counselling” on married women and punished men he deemed sinners by
forcing them to spend several days in a chicken coop.
But it was his fury at a stinging doctrinal rebuke delivered by other bishops,
including Mr Hershberger Sr, that prompted Mr Mullet’s followers to launch
their shearing onslaught, prosecutors claim.
In the process, they cut off not just important symbols for the Amish of their
commitment to God, but also of their cultural identity as they mark their “separateness”
from “the English”, as all non-Amish are known.
Mr Mullet and 15 co-defendants, including six women, from his settlement in
Bergholz in central Ohio are accused of a variety of crimes, including
conspiracy, obstruction and false statements.
But in a landmark approach, prosecutors have also charged them under new
federal hate crimes legislation, arguing that the attacks were religiously
motivated. Not at all, said lawyers for Mr Mullet and his devotees, the
beard-cuttings were acts of compassion intended to show the targets the
error of their ways.
The 16 accused certainly did not look like a gang of hate-fuelled criminals as
they listened intently to witnesses and lawyers for the last three weeks.
Mr Mullet and the other men sported the familiar long moustache-less beards
and pudding-bowl haircuts and the customary garb of home-made trousers held
up by braces over tie-less buttoned-up shirts. The female defendants dressed
just as plainly, covering their hair with caps and wearing long frocks, also
buttoned to the neck, and thick stockings.
Other men, women and teenage boys from Bergholz watched the proceedings from
the gallery and chatted together in the German dialect that all Amish still
use among themselves.
During breaks in proceedings, they sat in the court cafeteria and paid rapt
attention to the daytime chat shows on the television – a device forbidden
at home.
A segment about relationships in which the woman went out to work while the
man stayed at home as a “house husband” – an arrangement that
would be complete anathema in the highly patriarchal Amish society –
prompted awkward giggles from the women and head-shaking from the men.
To an outsider, the courthouse scenes could be a tableau of innocence, an
encounter between the traditional and the modern.
But in his evidence to the court and interview with The Sunday Telegraph,
Mr Hershberger painted a very different picture of a reign of terror by the “Bergholz
boys” in a landscape of green hills dotted by clapboard farmhouses,
barns, cowsheds and silos.
“I don’t even consider these people to be Amish any more,” he said,
speaking accented English with the cadences of southern Germany and
Switzerland from where the Amish emigrated in the 18th century to escape
persecution and poverty.
“Sex, power and money is what Sam Mullet craved. Those are not Amish
qualities. I do pity the boys who follow him, but they wouldn’t accept help
from other Amish when we reached out to them.
“I heard all that nonsense that they were acting out of love when I was
in court. That’s absolutely not the case. They were doing this because Sam
Mullet held a grudge and they wanted to get even. They were driven by hate,
not love.”
At the heart of the feud was a doctrinal dispute over excommunication, known
by the Amish as “shunning”. When one Amish community
excommunicates an individual for not following church teachings, that
decision is respected by other groups.
But in 2006, a specially-appointed group of Amish bishops ruled that Mr Mullet
had been excommunicating followers for non-religious reasons and hence that
those individuals could be accepted into other Amish orders.
Mr Hershberger Sr was one of those who issued a decree that amounted to a
humiliating snub to Mr Mullet’s religious authority and personal prestige.
His anger at the rebuke did not subside over time, prosecutors say.
But when a group of young men knocked at about 8.30pm on his door early last
November, Andy Hershberger had no reason to be suspicious. “I didn’t
recognise them but they said they wanted to talk to my dad. As a bishop, it
was quite usual for him to get visitors at home, even at that hour.
“We made some small talk, but then they said they were from Bergholz and
they were there because we hadn’t accepted Sam Mullet’s shunning. And that’s
when they attacked us.”
It goes against Amish mores to air church rifts with outsiders and for many of
the prosecution witnesses, giving testimony has been a wrenching ordeal.
There was Anna Shrock, 66, who in shaky voice described how she and her
elderly husband were lured to visit Bergholz by adult son. Once there, her
child forcibly cut his father’s beard and hair.
And Barbara Miller, who is Mr Mullet’s sister but had left his community, was
visibly upset as she described how her adult children turned against her,
called her “godless” and sheared off her hair and her husband’s
beard. Giving evidence “is the worst thing I’ve ever done”, she
said.
“It’s not easy for us to discuss these things with others, but in a case
like this, it is the right thing to do,” said Mr Hershberger.
That view was echoed by the shoppers arriving by carriage at a grocery store
in nearby Walnut Creek where horses are tied to the railings in the car park
next to the cars driven by non-Amish.
“It’s a very sad and distressing case for us, but what happened was so
extreme that there was no alternative but the law,” said Ivan Mast as
he helped load bags of apples and pears onto the back of his son-in-law’s
buggy.
Like other Amish, he has been avidly following the details of the trial in the
newspapers, the main source of information for people who are not allowed
televisions or computers.
Those are just two examples of modern technology proscribed by the Amish,
although practices vary from group to group and there are increasing numbers
of exemptions granted for professional or practical reasons.
At the most conservative extreme are groups that do not even allow running
water at home; at the other are a few communities that permit the use of
tractors, although officially only for heavy farm work, not for transport.
The Old Amish Order, the largest group, does not allow any adherents to drive
motor vehicles, electricity at home is frowned upon, but telephones can be
placed in boxes outside the house for purposes such as business or medical
calls. Likewise, mobile devices are allowed for those who must travel for
work.
Myron Miller, a minister and furniture business owner, said that these rules
are laid down to maintain the “separateness” of the Amish from
others. “We do this because we want to remain different and separate,
outside the rest of the world,” he said. “The same is true of our
beards. Yes, they have a spiritual significance. But they are also a sign of
our separateness.”
Unlike other Americans, Amish are allowed to carry driving licences that do
not bear their pictures as photographs are frowned upon because of the
Second Commandment prohibition of graven images.
The licences serve as a form of identification as the Amish do not, of course,
drive. Instead, if they need to travel longer distances, they pay a
non-Amish to drive them.
This is what the “Bergholz boys” did the night on which the
Hershbergers were attacked, after spending the day at a horse auction in
nearby Mount Hope. And this is also what they do each day to get to court in
Cleveland, a two-hour trip in both directions.
A clash of cultures is certainly playing out there. But it is for the jury to
decide this week if that amounts to a religious hate crime, a conviction
that would carry lengthy jail terms for Mr Mullet and his followers.
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