Following up on LobeLog’s revelation in September that Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum (MEF) helped support the defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), our former colleague Eli Clifton has published new information about the funders of MEF’s Legal Project – among them, [...]]]>
Following up on LobeLog’s revelation in September that Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum (MEF) helped support the defendant in a defamation lawsuit filed by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), our former colleague Eli Clifton has published new information about the funders of MEF’s Legal Project – among them, the Bradley Foundation, which was named one of the top funders in the Center for American Progress “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” and the San Francisco-based Koret Foundation.
Eli shows that the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin coached the defendant in the case, Seid Hassan Daioleslam, on how to mount an effective attack on NIAC and president Trita Parsi – at one point, advising Daioleslam that anything he wrote for MEF’s “Middle East Quarterly” (of which Rubin was then editor) would have to be “run …past one of our lawyers to make sure that it is written in a way that adheres to libel laws in the United States but, as you know, libel laws in the United States usually allow you to say what you need to say.”
Pipes has also used his MEF to say what he needed to say. Writes Eli:
In recent years, Pipes has written a series of pieces arguing that President Obama “was born and raised a Muslim and retained a Muslim identity until his late 20s.”
“[I]f Obama once was a Muslim, he is now what Islamic law calls a murtadd (apostate), an ex-Muslim converted to another religion who must be executed. Were he elected president of the United States, this status, clearly, would have large potential implications for his relationship with the Muslim world,” wrote Pipes in a January 2008 FrontPageMag column.
Eli’s piece should be read in its entirety but I made a couple of interesting notes. Ironically, Parsi himself was a Bradley Fellow – that is, an indirect beneficiary of the Foundation’s largess. He received a stipend from Bradley as a result of his research work for former neo-con favourite Francis Fukuyama at Johns Hopkins School for International Studies (SAIS). Thus, Bradley helped fund Parsi’s own PhD work, which resulted in his very well-reviewed book on U.S.-Israeli-Iranian relations, “Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States”.
Also, Eli notes that the MEF describes its domestic mission as “combat(ing) lawful Islamism; protects the freed of public speech of anti-Islamist authors, activists, and publishers; and works to improve Middle East studies in North America” — by which I take to mean the group supports Campus Watch to report professors who may at times be critical of Israel for this or that reason. What is interesting about the NIAC lawsuit, however, is that NIAC, insofar as I am aware, is a completely secular organization that has nothing whatever to do with Islamism or the promotion or denigration of any religion.
]]>But I’ve just stumbled upon something long overlooked that raises an even stronger case for the need to assess Ross’ closeness to the neoconservative movement — a group that has led U.S. foreign policy into so many disastrous undertakings, and that stands as the ideological driving force behind the dishonest campaign for war with Iraq and Iran. Now we have to ask: Just how close is Dennis Ross to the neoconservative movement?
According to the journal’s website, Ross, as he sits today in Barack Obama’s National Security Council, is a member of the board of editors of the neoconservative Middle East Quarterly. The Journal, whose editors have included AEI‘s Michael Rubin, Martin Kramer, and Efraim Karsh, is published by arch-hardliner Daniel Pipes; the journal is run out of his Middle East Forum think tank.
According to The Internet Archive’s “Way Back Machine,” which takes snapshots of webpages over time, Ross’ listing on the board of editors started sometime between July 2 and July 12, 2006. By the latter date, Ross’ affiliation is recorded as the Washington Institute for Near East Studies (WINEP), the AIPAC-formed think tank that he played a part in setting up, where he was a scholar. As of April 2008, Ross was still listed at MEQ with the WINEP affiliation.
Along with his membership on the board of the Jewish People’s Policy Institute (JPPI), a Jerusalem think tank, Ross gave up the WINEP gig when he moved to the administration.
But, as of today, he is still listed among the board of editors of MEQ. Interestingly, his affiliation has changed. Ross is now simply listed as:
Dennis Ross
Washington, D.C.
That change suggests that the site has been updated since Ross left WINEP — a departure that coincided with the formal announcement of Ross’ appointment to the Obama administration. This raises the question of why Ross is continuing his institutional affiliation with a bastion of aggressive neoconservatism such as MEQ while serving as a top administration adviser on the Middle East.
On a Middle East Forum blog, Ross’ battles within the administration have been covered by former AIPAC’s administration relations director Steve Rosen, who has never acknowledged the ties between the Forum and the Quarterly or Ross’ role in the latter.
As far as I can tell, flipping through the journal and Middle East Forum’s archives, Ross doesn’t seem to ever have contributed to either, though he was interviewed for MEQ by Pipes and Ross’s former WINEP and (apparently) current MEQ colleague Patrick Clawson.
On the board of editors of MEQ, Ross is joined by Karsh, the editor; Pipes, the publisher; Rubin and Clawson, both senior editors; James Phillips, a fellow at the neoconservative Heritage Foundation; journalist and Hudson Institute fellow Lee Smith; and WINEP executive director Robert Satloff.
As of late Friday afternoon, the NSC and MEQ, both asked for comment, haven’t yet responded. I’ve asked if Ross is paid, and what his responsibilities are or have been. When they respond, I’ll update.
Ross was out of the country today, in Israel, trying to restart peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Iran — also in Ross’s portfolio — met with the P5+1, including the U.S., in Turkey.
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