by Eli Clifton & Jim Lobe

The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is having a rough six months. Last year, ECI and its chairman, Republican operative Bill Kristol, did all it could to portray Barack Obama as insufficiently supportive of Israel. The group’s efforts and considerable spending on television ad-buys did little [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Eli Clifton & Jim Lobe

The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is having a rough six months. Last year, ECI and its chairman, Republican operative Bill Kristol, did all it could to portray Barack Obama as insufficiently supportive of Israel. The group’s efforts and considerable spending on television ad-buys did little to sway Jewish voters, 69% of whom voted for Obama.

Hot off their election losses, the group then sunk several hundred thousand dollars into a campaign to derail Obama’s nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to head up the Pentagon. The campaign failed, and Hagel, despite being labeled “not a responsible option” in full-page newspaper ads bought by ECI, was sworn in as Secretary of Defense at the end of February.

Having thus shown themselves to be at best in the mainstream of an increasingly extremist and partisan Republican Party and lacking a scintilla of evidence that they represent the views of a majority of Jewish Americans, the group today took issue with a letter from the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), signed by 100 prominent Jewish Americans, calling on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “work closely with Secretary of State John Kerry to devise pragmatic initiatives, consistent with Israel’s security needs, which would represent Israel’s readiness to make painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace.”

Signatories included well-known donors to Jewish and Israeli charities and foundations, such as Charles Bronfman, Danny Abraham, Lester Crown, and Stanley Gold; former U.S. Defense Undersecretary Dov Zakheim; former Rep. Mel Levine, former AIPAC executive director Tom Dine; Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt; the current and immediate past presidents of United Reform Judaism; Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson; the former chairman of of the United Jewish Appeal, Marvin Lender; former chairman of the Jewish Agency, Richard Pearlstone; and the director of the influential Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Rabbi David Saperstein, among others.

The ECI blasted the IPF in its own letter to Netanyahu, which was signed by its three board members — Kristol, Gary Bauer, and ”Bad Rachel” Abrams – its executive director, Noah Pollak, and “adviser” Michael Goldfarb. The five signatories assured the Israeli leader that the IPF signatories — whom they call “oracles of bad advice” — “don’t speak for us or for a majority of Americans.”

We not only question the wisdom of their advice, we question their standing to issue such an admonition to a democratically-elected (sic) prime minister whose job is not to assuage the political longings of 100 American Jews, but to represent — and ensure the security of — the Israeli people.

The ECI letter goes on to assure Netanyahu that its five signers “affirm the words of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who recently asked an American Jewish audience to ‘respect the decisions made by the world’s most resilient democracy.’”

“We, too, have strong opinions on the peace process — but one thing we never presume to do is instruct our friends in Israel on the level of danger to which they should expose themselves.”

The letter concludes:

We trust, of course, that you are under no misapprehensions about any of this. But we felt it important that you heard from a mainstream voice in addition to the predictable calls from a certain cast of American activists for more Israeli concessions.

Indeed, there is little to reason to doubt that ECI’s board members, one of whom called on Palestinians to be thrown into the sea “to float there, food for sharks, stargazers and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose,” have “strong opinions about the peace process” or that they are strong supporters of Netanyahu (although, as individuals, they have offered no end of advice to other Israeli Prime Ministers, such as Ehud Olmert.)

But, as their short list of signatures suggests, US Jews, in any event, don’t agree with ECI’s extremist views.

The American Jewish Committee’s 2012 poll of Jewish public opinion found only 4.5% of Jewish voters listed US-Israel relations as their most important issue in November’s 2012 presidential election. A November 6, 2012 J Street poll found that 73% of Jewish voters agreed with Obama’s President’s policies in the Arab-Israeli conflict, while 76% supported the US playing an active role in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict “if it meant the United States putting forth a peace plan that proposes borders and security arrangements between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Such an agreement may well run afoul of Oren’s directive that Jewish Americans “respect” Israel’s decisions or ECI’s suggestion that it is inappropriate for American Jews “to demand ‘painful territorial sacrifices’ of Israelis.”

Thus, it seems safe to conclude that the views of IPF’s signatories are much closer to those of most US Jews than to ECI’s and its five signatories.

As for ECI’s claim that it speaks for “a majority of Americans,” that, too, seems in question. Nearly two-thirds of respondents (65%) in the latest of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’s quadrennial series of surveys, released last September, said they believed that Washington should not side with either party in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. That finding was broadly consistent with previous polling on the same or similar questions over many years.

After a speech on Friday by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that implored Israel to make moves to thaw its cool relations with strategic partners and overcome its growing isolation, neoconservative commentators went bananas. Former Bush Mideast hand Elliott Abrams, speaking with neocon Washington Post [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

After a speech on Friday by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that implored Israel to make moves to thaw its cool relations with strategic partners and overcome its growing isolation, neoconservative commentators went bananas. Former Bush Mideast hand Elliott Abrams, speaking with neocon Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin, wondered, “Does anyone wonder why Israelis don’t trust this administration to guard their security?” (In September, Abram’s himself said it was “true” that Israel and the U.S. enjoy “the best military-to-military relationship ever.”)

The most overblown response, though, came from right-wing don Bill Kristol. Speaking through a press release from the far-right-wing pressure group he heads, the Emergency Committee for Israel, Kristol attacked President Obama’s comments last weekend to Jewish donors that his administration’s security cooperation with Israel had reached new heights in the partnership. Kristol said:

Nobody believes President Obama when he claims, as he did last week, that he “has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” That’s because he hasn’t — and because President Obama and his administration keeps acting to weaken the security of the state of Israel.

The problem with Kristol’s statement, and one he seems to willfully ignore, is that there are at least a few people who don’t hold his stated opinion about the Obama administration’s work on Israel’s security, among them Israel’s leaders.

In a speech delivered to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) national convention in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called American security cooperation with Israel during the Obama administration “unprecedented”:

Yesterday President Obama spoke about his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security. He rightly said that our security cooperation is unprecedented. He spoke of that commitment not just in front of AIPAC. He spoke about it in two speeches heard throughout the Arab world. And he has backed those words with deeds.

In September, Netanyahu personally thanked Obama in a speech for his attentiveness and support in resolving a crisis when demonstrators overtook Israel’s embassy in Cairo.

The various U.S. security commitments to Israel are legion. In the same speech Kristol criticized, Panetta announced that “the U.S. armed forces and the [Israel Defense Forces] will conduct the largest joint exercises in the history of that partnership.” This spring, Israel used an expanded aid package from the Obama administration to develop the Iron Dome missile defense system that protects citizens of southern Israel from rocket attacks with a 93 percent success rate. And the U.S. has worked closely with Israel in slowing Iran’s nuclear progress, even reportedly partnering up to create the Stuxnet virus that hampered Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and selling Israel bunk-busing bombs. All the work has included unflinching diplomatic support for Israel in international fora.

In August, former Israeli prime minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he could “hardly remember a better period of support, American support and cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now.” Last month, Barak said Obama is an “extremely strong supporter of Israel in regard to its security” and that his administration was “excelling in this.” He added: “I don’t think that anyone can raise any question mark about the devotion of this president to the security of Israel.” Maybe someone should tell Bill Kristol.

-about Commentary

Though I don’t subscribe to Commentary, I read its “Contentions” blog daily. “Opinion”? Definitely. “American intellectual life”? Keep dreaming.

I certainly don’t respect any intellectuals who can’t realize that journalism requires some basic disclosures. This is [...]]]>

“COMMENTARY is America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life.”

-about Commentary

Though I don’t subscribe to Commentary, I read its “Contentions” blog daily. “Opinion”? Definitely. “American intellectual life”? Keep dreaming.

I certainly don’t respect any intellectuals who can’t realize that journalism requires some basic disclosures. This is not about a list of Commentary‘s top private donors (though I’d love to have a look). It’s a matter of simple journalistic ethics, which might be too much for the flagship neoconservative rag.

A publication cannot have a writer cover a letter from an advocacy organization to a U.S. government official by another contributor to the publication without somehow saying so. This is patently obvious. (I’ll floss here, and say that Ethics was the only class I got honors in at Columbia Journalism School.)

What’s more, not only did Alana Goodman cover the letter by Noah Pollak, on the letterhead of his Emergency Committee for Israel, she didn’t even name him. Pollak, who is the letter’s only signatory, wrote often for Commentary before last summer, when he launched ECI, a right-wing Israel lobby organization. Now he writes less frequently, but has contributed to “Contentions” as recently as Monday, 21 February.

The letter was to Dennis Ross, a senior White House adviser for the Middle East, expressing “surprise” that the official would be speaking at the upcoming conference of the liberal Israel lobby group J Street. Pollak asked Ross to use his speech to counter potential criticisms of Israel from other conference speakers.

As for attributing the letter in her post, Goodman wrote only:

The Emergency Committee for Israel has outlined some of the troublesome statements made by other conference speakers in a letter it sent to Ross today. …

The Emergency Committee for Israel has rightly asked Ross to “seize this moment to explain why the Jewish State is not just one of our closest allies, but a country that fully deserves the admiration and moral support of all Americans.”

Naturally, the post was picked up by the neoconservative Washington Post pundit Jennifer Rubin, who used to work with Pollak at Commentary. Rubin recently traveled on ECI’s dime to Israel and the Occupied Territories (where she made a swell case for the one-state solution). I wouldn’t put Rubin on the hook for having worked with Pollak, but this is where the one-time disclosure gets problematic. How much wining and dining was done on this trip anyway?

Rubin’s bit on the ECI letter, in her morning round-up, was simply this:

Awkward: Middle East adviser Dennis Ross is asked why he’s going to a J Street conference with so many anti-Israel characters.

Ross’s attendance is especially cringe-inducing in light of this: “Four Kadima MKs who accepted an invitation to speak at this weekend’s J Street conference in Washington faced criticism on Wednesday from colleagues in their faction who said they should not be supporting the left-wing American lobby.”

The “awkward” link goes to Alana Goodman’s Commentary post. Why? Surely Rubin has enough of a relationship with Pollak that he forwarded her the letter yesterday when it appeared online. He’s an advocate, and she has an opinion blog at a mainstream outlet, and they just took a long trip overseas together.

The “anti-Israel” comment is a label Rubin has a penchant for slapping on any even mild critic of the Jewish state, so I won’t bother with that. But why would the astute Jennifer Rubin think that it’s “cringe-inducing” that members of Kadima, a center-right Likud spin-off, would have a problem with a liberal lobby group? Isn’t that politics as usual?

Oh yeah, Rubin doesn’t think “liberal Zionism” exists, having declared the term an oxymoron. That’s the kind of rigid ideological neoconservatism I would expect from this triumvirate of Commentary zealots. I don’t know why I’m surprised that the journal has sunk to such low journalistic — let alone intellectual — standards.

But the Israeli side of the story, which bordered on hysterical at times, was picked up by the neoconservative blogosphere in the U.S. and dominated the attention of [...]]]> Ali has an excellent post up about the dangerously provocative Israeli rhetoric surrounding the planned—but now delayed—passage of the Suez Canal by two Iranian naval ships.

But the Israeli side of the story, which bordered on hysterical at times, was picked up by the neoconservative blogosphere in the U.S. and dominated the attention of hawkish blogs over the long holiday weekend.

One highlight was the Emergency Committee for Israel denouncing the Iranian passage in the same breath as condemning the deaths of protesters in Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen at the hands of security forces.

In Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen, regime forces have opened fire on protesters. In Syria, thousands have taken to the streets to protest Bashar Assad’s police state. Meanwhile, Hezbollah makes inroads in Lebanon, and Iran is testing the world’s resolve by sending military vessels through the Suez Canal.

The [UN] Security Council’s response? Instead of demanding peaceful reforms from dictatorial regimes, or warning Iran against its provocations, or emphasizing the need for political and social improvement in the Arab world, it is once again attacking Israel.

(It’s unclear what the ECI expected of the Security Council, in regards to Iranian ships passing through the Suez Canal.)

The Hudson Institute’s Lee Smith, writing on the Weekly Standard’s blog, opined that the Iranian ships are testing the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

The Iranians are also probing the Egyptian population to see where it stands on resistance—the ships were headed to Syria, another pillar of the resistance bloc lined up against Israel—for in the end the Iranians are testing Cairo’s peace treaty with Jerusalem.

J.E. Dyer admitted, on Commentary’s Contentions blog, that “The ships themselves are hardly impressive: one frigate with old anti-ship missiles and one barely armed replenishment ship,” but that doesn’t slow her down in making some dire warnings.

The important facts are that revolutionary, terror-sponsoring Iran — under U.S., EU, and UN sanctions — feels free to conduct this deployment, and Syria feels free to cooperate in it. Egypt’s interim rulers apparently saw no reason to block the Suez transit, in spite of the Egyptians’ very recent concern over Iranian-backed terrorists and insurgents operating on their territory.

While neocon pundits have been suggesting that Iran’s passage of the Suez Canal is a grave provocation, the fact is this right is guaranteed under the Constantinople Convention, as pointed out by Ali, which states:

The Suez Maritime Canal shall always be free and of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag.

Consequently, the High Contracting Parties agree not in any way to interfere with the free use of the Canal, in time of war as in time of peace.

While the passage of two Iranian ships through the canal is worthy of notice, it certainly isn’t worth testing Egypt’s fragile political climate by suggesting that the Egyptian military junta take action to block passage of the canal. An open Suez Canal, and an Egyptian stewardship of the Canal which observes the Constantinople Convention, has far-reaching military and economic benefits for the U.S. and its allies.

Of more immediate importance, however, is the concern that the Iranian ships may take attention away from an increasingly untenable situation for the Iranian government on the streets of Tehran.

Jacob Heilbrunn, blogging at The National Interest, summarized this point in his post, “Israel’s Moronic Foreign Minister,” in which he criticized Avigdor Lieberman for framing the Iranian passage of the Suez Canal as a national emergency.

It’s clear that the mullahs would love to stage a provocation that would allow them to depict Iran as the victim of hostile foreign powers. It’s obvious that the Iranian leadership, in Brechtian fashion, would love to vote in a new population. Instead, the regime’s legitimacy is almost completely spent.

With neocon blogs having spent the weekend working overtime to hype the threat of the Iranian passage, it looks like Lieberman’s ratcheting up of tensions has taken priority over focusing on the resurgent Iranian Green Movement and the massive political shifts occurring in the Middle East.

Just look at some of the Americans who took [...]]]> If you haven’t already, head over the website of the Nation and read every last word of Matt Duss’s report from Herzliya, the biggest annual Israeli security conference. The event is best known for being where Israeli rightists and U.S. neocons swoon over each other.

Just look at some of the Americans who took the trip this year: Noah Pollak, Jennifer Rubin (whose trip was paid for by Pollak’s organization), Judith Miller, Scooter Libby, Danielle Pletka, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and so on and so on.

Duss tells it better than I could. Marvel at the madness:

To be sure, drumbeating on Iran still dominated the official conference agenda. But, as if to demonstrate that everyone has limited bandwidth for worry, almost every discussion eventually circled back to Egypt. There was growing anxiety that while Israel continued to confront the threat from the East—the growth of a “poisonous crescent” (as one member of the Israeli government put it to me) consisting of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Lebanon—the peace on its western border could no longer simply be taken for granted. Egypt was raining on everything.

The drummers were already going to have trouble keeping the beat in the wake of outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s and Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s recent statements that efforts at sabotage and international sanctions had likely delayed an Iranian nuke for several years. Egypt only made things more complicated. Still, it was odd to hear neoconservative doyenne Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute dismiss as “propaganda” former Mossad head Efraim Halevi’s assertion that “the US and Israel are winning the war against Iran.” “If Iran is losing, I’d like to be that kind of loser,” Pletka said, reminding the audience that, “Khomeini referred to Israel as a one-bomb country.”

“What I’m saying is not propaganda,” Halevi shot back. “The danger is believing the propaganda of others.”

Now that you’ve read the excerpt, go back and read the whole thing. Really. Think about when an Israeli general says, “In the Arab world, there is no room for democracy.” Ask yourself is these are the people we should be listening to about bombing Iran.

Two important talking points are making the rounds today.

First, The Israel Project (TIP) and the Emergency Committee for Israel’s (ECI) Noah Pollak seem to be running [...]]]> The response from hawks in Washington to the unraveling situation for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after nearly thirty years in power has been rather telling.

Two important talking points are making the rounds today.

First, The Israel Project (TIP) and the Emergency Committee for Israel’s (ECI) Noah Pollak seem to be running with the strategy of highlighting the contrast between Tunisia, Lebanon, and Egypt’s instability with Israel’s stable, democratic government.

An Israel Project press release (H/T Justin Elliott) observed:

All this illustrates, perhaps more dramatically than ever before, how different Israel is from all its neighbors. As a lively, boisterous democracy, the events unfolding on Arab streets across the region would be unthinkable in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

TIP concludes:

There are no easy answers to Washington’s dilemma. But the overall lesson is clear. The United States needs more democratic friends in the region. Friends it can rely on. Friends like Israel.

Noah Pollak tweeted:

I hope the “realists” who think the U.S. should end its alliance w/ Israel are learning who is genuinely stable & strong in the ME.

TIP’s condemnation of authoritarian Arab leaders overlooks the fact that a number of them have been backed by the U.S., in no small part due to leaders like Mubarak being willing to make peace with Israel.

While TIP and Pollak prefer to portray the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as having played no role in shaping the region’s political landscape—such an acknowledgment might let the dreaded “linkage” argument out of the box—others, such as The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, are torn between a commitment to liberal democracy and their jobs as hawkish pro-Israel advocates.

At 10:51am, Goldberg decided to run with a linkage-denying argument that “these uprisings are offering proof that Israel isn’t the central Arab preoccupation.”

“Fifty years of peace has meant [the U.S.] propping up dictators for fifty years,” he observed.

He elaborated:

Is that such a bad thing? Friends of mine like Reuel Gerecht believe that Arabs, given their druthers, might choose Islamist governments, and that would be okay, because it’s part of a long-term process of gradual modernization. I’m not so sure. I support democratization, but the democratization we saw in Gaza (courtesy of, among others, Condi Rice) doesn’t seem particularly worth it.

Goldberg’s policy of playing the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Reuel Marc Gerecht off as an expert on Arab streets and a progressive (Gerecht jokes that his own mother thinks he writes too much about bombing Iran) is rather telling of Goldberg’s own beliefs. Even more telling is Goldberg’s torn relationship with democracy when it doesn’t go his, or Israel’s, way.  His argument, it would seem, is that backing strongmen who are friendly—or at least complicit in sealing off Gaza—is more important than human rights or democracy.

By 3:50pm, Goldberg was accepting that Mubarak’s days in power could be limited but was still concerned about what role the Muslim Brotherhood might play.

I’m not downplaying the threat the Muslim Brotherhood poses, to America or to Israel. And I fear for the future of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

The Weekly Standard‘s Thomas Joscelyn voiced similar concerns, suggesting that Mubarak might be the lesser of two evils. He wrote:

Hosni Mubarak’s regime is no friend of freedom, even though it is certainly an ally against al Qaeda.

In all likelihood, an Egypt dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood (if that is how the turmoil plays out) would be neither.

At the end, both of the arguments we’ve seen emerge today—Israel is stable while Arab states can’t maintain stability; backing U.S./Israel-friendly dictators might just be worth it—tells us a lot about the logical contortions required by those who espouse an ideology of linkage-denial, or “reverse linkage.”

Egyptians are taking to the streets because of disgust with the failed economy, corruption, and abuses associated with Hosni Mubarak’s rule. But Mubarak’s ability to maintain a grip on power is directly related to backing from the U.S — a source of foreign aid that is in no small way connected to Egypt’s peace with Israel.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has warped the region’s political landscape and, as hinted at by Goldberg, led the U.S. to back authoritarian rulers. When the only positive thing TIP and Pollak can say about Israel’s role in the situation is that Israel is “stable,” it’s worth examining what cost Israel’s peace with its neighbors–and assistance in maintaining a siege on Gaza–has incurred on the the U.S.’s broader foreign policy interests in the Middle East.

Only 4% of American films are made by women. In Iran it’s 25%.

Pollak tweeted the picture, adding that the ad was “truly outrageous.”

The [...]]]> On December 23, right-wing pro-Israel activist Noah Pollak was wandering through the Athens airport when he snapped a picture of an HSBC advertisement containing this factoid:

Only 4% of American films are made by women. In Iran it’s 25%.

Pollak tweeted the picture, adding that the ad was “truly outrageous.”

The ad was quickly picked up by a writer at the neoconservative flagship Commentary and then by Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin. Since then, Rubin has been on a crusade against HSBC. But her rhetoric against the bank has been over-heated, occasionally veering off towards misrepresentation of facts.

Rubin has come to be known for her dishonesty. When she called blogger and think tanker Steve Clemons an “Israel-basher” recently, he said it was an “insidious character attack,” a “sliming” that insinuated anti-Semitism. She’s left critical context out of stories, and has been caught publishing misleading distortions of answers from an interview with an Obama administration official.

In the case of HSBC, she has relied on an admittedly long list of circumstantial evidence to support her arguments. The problem is not that she raises this evidence to ask questions, but rather that she offers definitive assessments without backing them up.

Take, for example, Rubin’s admission that she had no specific knowledge about HSBC’s operations inside Iran. “It is not clear precisely what business activity HSBC continues to conduct in Iran,” she wrote. “What we do know from SEC filings is that the bank maintains an office in Iran.”

By the end of her article, however, Rubin addressed HSBC’s business in Iran with searing certainty, writing that the bank “continu[es] to do business with a murderous regime.” Nonetheless, the story, built on her own conjecture, was shortened and published in the print edition of the Washington Post. Worst of all: in the shorter version, Rubin’s conjecture was presented as fact.

Rubin did make a case, using many hints of malfeasance — though none provided concrete evidence of either HSBC misconduct or of the bank doing business with the Iranian regime.

The first examples Rubin points to are that the Justice Department initiated an investigation into HSBC and that the bank had hired Deloitte to look into transactions. She went on, in the web version of the article, to mention actions taken by regulators against HSBC:

And the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a “cease and desist” order to HSBC’s North American unit in October, ordering the bank to enhance its risk management procedures.

Rubin didn’t acknowledge that the hiring of Deloitte, according to the Financial Times article she links to, was exactly the result of the very regulatory moves she’s referring to.

The two “cease and desist” orders (contra Rubin, there were two, issued concurrently and in coordination) didn’t actually state a case or present any definitive evidence. Rubin quotes the order (PDF) from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) like this:

Regulators found that the bank’s compliance program was ineffective and created “significant potential” for money laundering and terrorist financing. This opened HSBC to the possibility that it was conducting transactions on behalf of sanctioned entities.

The first sentence here is close: The order says that the bank’s lax risk assessments created “significant potential for unreported money laundering or terrorist financing.” But the second sentence seems to be pure extrapolation on Rubin’s part, though it becomes the crux of her evidence for making the “business with a murderous regime” accusation.

In the print edition of the paper, the accusation went from being extrapolation to fact — that the OCC was making accusations specifically about “sanctioned entities.” The story, on page A15 of the December 27 Post, read, with my emphasis:

And the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a “cease and desist” order to HSBC’s North American unit in October, having found that there was “significant potential” the bank was conducting transactions on behalf of sanctioned entities.

In reality, neither order mentions Iran or sanctions, let alone lays out any evidence about business with “sanctioned entities.” The OCC order does, however, mention inadequate monitoring of associates of “politically-exposed persons (PEPs),” which usually indicates foreign officials but has been expanded in the OCC order to include “former senior foreign political figures, their families, and their close associates.” But, once again, inadequately monitoring is not the same as “continuing to do business” with someone.

I asked a spokesperson at the OCC if the order implied that HSBC had conducted such business with the Iranian regime. “Under the law, we’re required to make public enforcement orders,” the spokesperson, Kevin Mukri, told me. “But we can’t comment on anything further than that, which puts us in a bind. The order has to be self-explanatory.”

Mukri referred me to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Treasury Department’s liaison to law enforcement, which declined to offer comment for this story.

I asked Mukri if he or, to his knowledge, anyone from OCC had spoken to Rubin on background, or deep background, which would have allowed her to make such accusations without referring to sources. At first, Mukri said that, even if he had spoken to Rubin, he wouldn’t tell me, but then quickly denied having done so or knowing of anyone who had. He explained that speaking about the orders, beyond their content, would be a violation of laws governing the office’s conduct. “It’s something we don’t do as an agency,” he told me. “I’ve been here for 14 years and don’t know anyone who’s done that, ever.”

Rubin also mentions that two members of Congress recently sent letters about regulations relating to sanctions on Iran:

Moreover, Rep. Frank Pallone (D.-N.J.) recently wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calling for increased enforcement of prohibitions on banks and other financial institutions doing business with Iran, and citing HSBC as an example of part of the problem. Rep. Joe Baca (D.-Calif.) sent a similar letter.

I was curious about the mention of HSBC in the letter by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) to Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke, but his office did not supply the text of the letter following repeated inquiries. Pallone does mention HSBC in the press release for the letter.

The link Rubin supplies for the Pallone letter, however, is from Grendel Report, a blog dedicated to “cutting-edge open source information on terrorism and the Islamic threat” (note the absence of the word ‘radical’ there). The Grendel story, in turn, is attributed to Geostrategy-Direct, a newsletter operated by the World Tribune, a website that says it “tend[s] to reinforce the Judeo-Christian values” and brags about a mention from right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh for definitively connecting Iraq and al Qaeda and proving the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. (One must excuse me for being skeptical of these sources.)

The office of Rep. Joe Baca, the other member of Congress mentioned by Rubin, similarly declined to supply me with a copy of his letter, and no press release exists. So Rubin’s word that it was a “similar letter” will have to stand on its own. The reader is unable to know if the letter mentioned HSBC.

In the print edition, however, the two examples are conflated. Baca’s letter is no longer “similar,” but now also definitively cites HSBC:

Two members of Congress have written to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urging stronger controls on back activities citing HSBC as an example.

The online version of the piece by Rubin contained one more distortion. This one came to Rubin via e-mail from former AIPAC spokesperson Josh Block. Block wrote to her that “the regime in Tehran is the leading human rights violator and state sponsor of terror in the world.” The second bit, on terror, is the same pro-forma language that the State Department uses. But the first part — that Iran “is the leading human rights violator… in the world” — is a tough assertion to back up. I e-mailed and called Block several times for comment, suggesting that he soften the statement by saying Iran is ‘one of the leading…’. Block never responded.

The charge, nonetheless, was a particularly troubling one coming from advocates of Israel who constantly say that the Jewish state is being singled out. And even more troubling coming from Block, whose business partner Lanny Davis was, at the time Block made his comment, working for the Ivorian dictator responsible for the killing of more people in post-election violence than Iran’s leaders were during its own election aftermath (according to the UN).

But Rubin’s eagerness to paint all involved with Iran as a force for evil is not surprising. A U.S. attack on Iran has long been a priority for Rubin, who wrote from her former home at Commentary last September that such a move was the “best of disagreeable options.”

What is surprising, though, is that the Washington Post allows reports to go to print with serious allegations that seem to be based on little more than the combination of circumstantial evidence and conjecture.