Close encounters of the fourth type

Avraham Yosef was 25 years old when he died for the first time. "I was an electrician, and I was working in an industrial building when I unplugged the drill I was using, slipped, and got electrocuted," says the now 63-year-old, turning over his hand to reveal the small, rectangular scar on his right palm where the electrical plug struck him.

Thus starts an article with an intriguing headline: Close encounters by Erica Chernofsky. The subsequent events are no less dramatic:

...the voltage was increased to 1000 watts - a quantity the physicians admitted they had never attempted when administering an electric shock to a patient's heart.

Voltage is not measured in watts, it should be stated clearly, not is voltage "a quantity", but all this is in the realm of boring details, so we better proceed with the exciting part.

And then suddenly, while sitting at home one day, Yosef remembered everything, and as his doctors predicted, he would never be the same again.

"When I died, my soul went up," he states calmly from his home in Jerusalem. "There was a room I was standing in, and in front of me was an open door. Everything was white, but not white like the walls, a pure white, a white that we don't have here in this world.

"The doors in front of me opened and I saw a spectacular sight: In front of me was a man sitting on a high chair, two men sat on either side of him, and on either side of me were six other men. They looked like regular people, but were wearing this pure white, with pure white beards and white hair. They had no wrinkles or blemishes on their faces and their eyes were glowing, as if there was fire or light emanating from them. They were all beautiful."

The insistence of the witness on the color white leaves us with only two possible options: a clean room in a semiconductor manufacturer's like Intel or the monthly meeting of the Elders' Council. Since at the time of the incident there was no Intel or other plant in the vicinity, the second option is the only explanation. The lack of wrinkles or blemishes, glowing eyes and the beauty fits the members of the Council as a glove*. As does the following:

The government and regime of Israel is corrupt and must change their ways.

That's true, mate.

Those elected to the Knesset must be chosen according to the rules laid out in the Torah, and not according to money and power.

Let's give it another think, buddy. OK?

If the leaders of Israel don't change their ways, Yosef was warned, just as the Holy Temple was twice destroyed, so too the Zionist state will be destroyed - in 2012.

"A charismatic leader from an Islamic state will gather two million soldiers from all the Islamic countries and they will attack us, killing one-and-a-half million Israelis," Yosef explains in his surprisingly calm voice. "We will launch the atom bomb and kill 10-15 million Arabs in two days, and tens of millions of others will die from radiation poisoning."

More or less matches what you were told during your presence on the Council's meeting. There definitely are some re-arrangements of the current status in the pipeline, however the dates and the details are still being worked out.

But one thing should be clear: all this doesn't have anything to do with the "leaders of Israel". Mere clowns, all of them, so rest assured - you do not have to bother your head about it.

So what do we have here:

• A case of tele-transportation of a person under the guise of a near death experience
• Elders' Council trying to pass a message to the general public via a human medium
• Message gone awry due to the medium being under a major influence of his unfortunate pedigree

The experiment is unclassified by now, but deemed a total failure and any further attempts to convey messages in this manner are discontinued.

(*) The white beards are fake and are just a part of a tradition. The same beards that serve this Santa Santa Claus gescheft are usually purchased.

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