Weekly Reads/Watch:

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported yesterday on a series of viral videos produced by a new organization TheLandOfIsrael.com offering justifications for an Israeli attack on Iran. JTA notes the videos, littered with factual errors, misleading half-truths, and comparisons between Iran and Nazi Germany, have been viewed [...]]]> Republished with the permission of Think Progress

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported yesterday on a series of viral videos produced by a new organization TheLandOfIsrael.com offering justifications for an Israeli attack on Iran. JTA notes the videos, littered with factual errors, misleading half-truths, and comparisons between Iran and Nazi Germany, have been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

Many of the clips in the films, including one of Mitt Romney’s controversial adviser Walid Phares, are drawn from the documentary “Iranium,” a film by the Islamophobic organization Clarion Fund that also pushed a hawkish perspective on Iran.

One of the films, titled “Israel vs. Iran — No Fear,” has to date received more than 2 million views since its release five days ago. In it, the narrator says, “Everyone knows Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, or they have them already.” No credible media accounts or experts claim Iran already has a nuclear weapon, and, while regarding the Iranian program as a potential threat, reported U.S. and Israeli intelligence estimates both conclude that Iran has not decided to build a bomb. “But why isn’t anyone doing what we all know needs to be done?” the film’s narrator goes on.

Watch it:

One of The Land Of Israel .com’s founders, Jeremy Gimpel, told ThinkProgress by phone that the clips were used by permission from the Clarion Fund after they explained they were making videos as a part of a campaign to “assert Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Like Clarion official Alex Traiman, who wrote and directed “Iranium,” Gimpel lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. “I live in Judea,” he said, using the biblical term for a region of the West Bank. “I live in Neve Daniel.” Gimpel and TheLandOfIsrael.com’s co-founder Ari Abromowitz host a radio show on a station run by pro-settler media outlet Arutz Sheva. (Traiman hosted a show on the same station before jumping to the Clarion Fund.)

Asked about numerous factual inaccuracies and misleading points in the two short films, Gimpel — who said an attack on Iran would be “like going to the dentist, and who wants to go to the dentist?” — dismissed the criticisms as “semantics.”

For instance, in the other film “Iran vs. Israel – Back to the Future,” the narrator says Iran “built intercontinental ballistic missiles” (ICBM). While Iran’s focus on improving its mid-range missiles (2,500 km) allows for research that could be used for ICBMs, no reliable reports indicate Iranian development of an ICBM system. Asked about this, Gimpel responded: “I don’t know if there’s a definition on Wikipedia. The point is it’s a threat to Europe and threat to Israel.” Wikipedia in fact defines ICBMs as missiles with a range of greater than 5,500 kilometers. (In an earlier e-mail responding to the absence of credible accusations that Iranian ICBMs exist, Gimpel wrote, “We’ve spoken to experts that say otherwise,” but could not name any such experts by phone.)

Confronted with the differences between stopping and delaying Iranian nuclear progress, Gimpel said he hoped an attack would result in a delay long enough for regime change in Tehran. If that didn’t work, he said, “Israel will do what it has to do. If it means (striking) every five years, they that’s what they’ll do.”

Gimpel rejected the notion that he was building a case for war. “What I’m doing is building a case for peace,” he said. “What I’m saying is that there will never be peace if Iran has a nuclear bomb.” But he rejected a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, declaring, “I think the negotiations are wasting our time.”

The 92nd Street Y and the Clarion Fund are having trouble getting the big names attached to their Iran war mongering panelon Nov. 7. First, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner canceled his appearance on the panel after ThinkProgress called attention to Clarion’s history of [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

The 92nd Street Y and the Clarion Fund are having trouble getting the big names attached to their Iran war mongering panelon Nov. 7. First, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner canceled his appearance on the panel after ThinkProgress called attention to Clarion’s history of promoting anti-Muslim documentaries and the upcoming panel discussion’s role in promoting the organization’s bomb-Iran documentary,Iranium. ThinkProgress can now report that former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, an outspoken proponent of militaryaction against Iran, has dropped off the panel as well.

But Bolton, who even appears in the film to warn about the existential threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, was more concerned with his appearance fee than Clarion Fund’s track record of hyping Islamophobia. A spokesperson at the 92nd St. Y told ThinkProgress:

There were not the funds we originally thought there were to bring John Bolton up. We were very sorry that he couldn’t but that’s what happened.

A source close to John Bolton confirmed that Bolton was not attending the event because of the 92nd St. Y’s inability to pay for his appearance.

Obviously Bolton is free to charge a speaking fee, but given his dire warnings about Iran’s nuclear program and his prominent role in Iranium, it’s interesting that he would only appear at the event if his speaking fee was paid. In Iranium Bolton warns:

I think Iran has as a long-term objective dominance within the Islamic world and dominance in the Middle East as well as becoming a great power internationally. [...]

All American administrations have consistently said that they find [that] Iran pursuing nuclear weapons is unacceptable. But unfortunately, unacceptable turns out to really mean unacceptable. Since the various U.S. governments have not taken adequate steps to prevent Iran from achieving that unacceptable result.

Watch a Clarion Fund compilation of Bolton’s comments in Iranium:

Given Bolton’s prominent role in the film and his regular calls for harsher policies to confront Iran, it’s surprising that the matter of an appearance fee has led him to cancel an opportunity to promote Iranium and warn the country — the event will be simulcast in over 20 locations across the U.S. — about what he believes to be an existential threat. But apparently for Bolton, a notorious proponent of military action and use of force, the lack of a satisfactory speaking fee trumps the importance of warning the country about the threat of a nuclear Iran.

As more information emerges about Mitt Romney’s foreign policy adviser Walid Phares, Romney’s campaign, no doubt, will face increasing scrutiny over their decision to hire the outspoken anti-Muslim advocate. But potentially even more concerning than Phares’ ties to the anti-Muslim far-right in the U.S. are [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

As more information emerges about Mitt Romney’s foreign policy adviser Walid Phares, Romney’s campaign, no doubt, will face increasing scrutiny over their decision to hire the outspoken anti-Muslim advocate. But potentially even more concerning than Phares’ ties to the anti-Muslim far-right in the U.S. are the allegations — outlined in Adam Serwer’s profile of Phares — that the now-Romney adviser was one of the chief ideologists in the Lebanese Forces, a Lebanese Christian militia that committed atrocities during Lebanon’s civil war.

How Romney and his campaign will respond to the newly publicized facts that one of their top foreign policy advisers — indeed a former associate of Phares’ told Serwer that Romney “promised Phares a high-ranking White House job helping craft U.S. policy in the Middle East” — used Christian-sectarian ideology to justify the mass slaughter during the Lebanese civil war.

But Romney has called for the firing of public officials for far less than participating in war atrocities.

Romney said he would fire Obama adviser David Plouffe for comments saying Americans won’t vote based based on the employment rate. Romney said:

If David Plouffe were working for me, I would fire him and then he could experience firsthand the pain of unemployment,”

Romney called upon his GOP rival, Gov. Rick Perry, to “repudiate” anti-Mormon comments made by Perry supporter Dr. Robert Jeffress.

And in a September GOP debate, Romney said that if president he would fire Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for his failure to resuscitate the U.S. economy. Romney said:

I’d be looking for somebody new. I think Ben Bernanke has overinflated the amount of currency that he’s created. QE 2 did not work, it did not get Americans back to work, it did not get the economy going again … We’re growing now at 1 to 1 and a half percent.

Romney and his campaign have a precedent of considering disagreements over monetary policy and electoral policy to be fire-able offenses. And expressing intolerant sentiments about Mormonism is worthy of “repudiation.”

The Romney campaign appears to accept Phares’ public association with the Islamophobic Clarion Fund and anti-Muslim blogger Robert Spencer. But given Romney’s record of calling for the firing of individuals for far less than ties to a violent militia, will he apply the same standard to Walid Phares?

The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bronner, has stirred up controversy over recent speaking engagements. But an announcement on the 92nd St. Y’s website shows that Bronner is now scheduled to appear on a panel hosted by the Clarion Fund, an Islamophobic [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bronner, has stirred up controversy over recent speaking engagements. But an announcement on the 92nd St. Y’s website shows that Bronner is now scheduled to appear on a panel hosted by the Clarion Fund, an Islamophobic organization, to discuss the “threat of a nuclear Iran.”

The invitation, as it appears on the Clarion Fund’s website, reads:

On Monday, November 7, 2011, at 7:30 PM, the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, NY will host a panel discussion about the threat of a nuclear Iran, interspersed with clips from the award-winning documentary Iranium. The panel will be moderated by the film’s director, Alex Traiman, and will be simultaneously broadcasted in over 20 communities throughout the U.S. (details below).

Panelists include:

John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The New York Times
Nazie Eftekhari, Director, Iran Democratic Union
Richard Green, Executive Director, Clarion Fund
Richard Perle, former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Bush administration

Click HERE for details and to order tickets.

Bronner and the 92nd Street Y are free to associate themselves with whatever organization’s they choose. But the fact that the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief is lending his name to a Clarion Fund event, and the promotion of a film which advocates for military action against Iran, raises further questions about Bronner’s growing record of engaging in activities which could produce the appearance of a conflict of interest or undermine the impartiality of his reporting.

The Clarion Fund, which was profiled in the Center for American Progress’ Islamophobia report, “Fear, Inc.,” distributed the inflammatory anti-Muslim documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West to 28 million swing state voters before the 2008 presidential election. Clarion is closely tied to Aish Hatorah, an evangelist, far-right, Israeli ultra-orthodox organization. Traiman, Iranium’s director and the moderator of the panel on which Bronner will appear, has close ties the Israeli far-right and lives in an ideological West Bank settlement.

Iranium, makes the case for attacking Iran and promotes an official U.S. policy of regime change. The film, much like the other documentaries produced by Clarion, portrays a clash of civilizations, promotes the view that Muslims value death over life and suggests that irrational hatred of Israeli and anti-Semitism is the only explanation for the frustration expressed by Muslim countries against the U.S.

Ori Nir, at Americans for Peace Now, has a good analysis of Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who is apparently Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s new national security adviser. Replacing another ultra-hawk, Uzi Arad, Amidror seems to be a big-time hawk on [...]]]> It’s hard to know for sure, but he certainly doesn’t keep pleasant company.

Ori Nir, at Americans for Peace Now, has a good analysis of Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror, who is apparently Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s new national security adviser. Replacing another ultra-hawk, Uzi Arad, Amidror seems to be a big-time hawk on Palestinian issues. But what about Iran?

In Israel, Noam Sheizaf has been addressing this question with a deft touch — there is a split right now in the Israeli security establishment. Sheizaf long ago exploded Jeffrey Goldberg‘s notion of a “consensus,” but the combination of upheaval both in the region and in Bibi’s cabinet are forcing constant re-evaluation.

I saw Amidror speak in December at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ conference on Iran. The hard-line neocon think tank put the aged and bearded reservist general on its ‘bomb Iran’ panel, moderated by FDD honcho Cliff May. The panel featured Goldberg, the disingenuous Reuel Marc Gerecht, and Ken Pollack, the lone dissenter from the notion that a military strike in Iran could achieve any of its ostensible aims. As you can imagine, the panel was a lot of laughs (literally: the transcript lists 28 breaks for “LAUGHTER”).

At the FDD conference, Amidror’s stance on Iran basically boiled down to this: ‘Attacking Iran is a last resort that we will almost definitely have to use, so we are getting ready.’ Here’s his key comments, with my emphasis:

I believe that attacking Iran is a very bad situation, but there is something worse, that Iran will have a nuclear capability.

But we are not running to attack Iran. We want to postpone it as much as possible because we want to give the world, the Americans, everyone who is ready to help, to stop Iran without using military forces.

So it – it is not just an option. We prepare all of this very thoroughly, investing a lot of it, but we are not running to use it and we hope that someone will find another solution.

If you ask me as an expert for assessment that what I did 25 years, what is my assessment, my assessment is it is almost impossible to stop Iran without military force, but we should not run to use it before we be sure 100 percent and more that there is no other alternative.

It seems that, while Amidror pays lip service to the “last resort” of an attack, he is already gearing up to do it.

Amidror seems to have a ridiculously flawed understanding of the concept of “deterrence.” He thinks the Lebanon War in 2006 was a good example of Israel establishing such a deterrence. But, you know, that’s kind of funny, because deterrence is only a useful concept until force is unleashed — Damocles kept his head, after all. Nonetheless, here’s Amidror:

Deterrence includes two elements: the first is the determination to use your capability and the second is to have this capability. I think it was very important that Israel made the decision to go to war and sustained the war for more than a month, despite extensive Hizballah rocket attacks across northern Israel.

The determination of Israel’s government to respond and to retaliate is a very important factor in restoring deterrence. …As a small country, we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of reacting proportionally. Israel’s military action sent a very important message to the people around us.

I wonder what the Israeli hawks and neocon allies would say if you asked them today: “Why are you so worried about the Muslim Brotherhood?” Don’t they remember Lebanon 2006? (I’m sure that they would answer with something akin to the five-year-version of the Ledeen Doctrine.)

Nir has a primer on Amidror’s politics:

Amidror is associated with the ultra-right national-religions party “The Jewish Home.” In 2008, he headed a commission tasked with composing the party’s list for the general elections. The party, which is dominated by former National Religious Party (NRP) politicians, supports a “greater Israel” ideology and is considered the most authentic political representative of the ideological messianic settlers in the West Bank.

He adds that Amidror’s most recent opinion article is headlined: “Security is Preferable to Peace,” as if one has nothing to do with the other.

All of this is no surprise: Amidror is a such a close ally of the religious settler movement that he spoke at a 2006 event supporting one such settlement, Beit El, and its chief accomplishment: the Arutz Sheva conspiracy website. Also speaking at the event was then-Arutz Sheva personality Alex Traiman, a Beit El resident. Traiman wrote and directed Clarion Fund‘s latest propaganda film, “Iranium,” which aims to raise public support for attacking Iran.

So let’s see: Yaakov Amidror is in bed with the uber-hawks at FDD and with the religious settlers at Clarion who are all pushing hard (in concert) for an attack on Iran, and he thinks that a good deterrence policy is to attack. This does not bode well. I’ll toss this to Sheizaf for his informed thoughts…

But if the Iranians were paying attention, they would see that BBC Persian has an excellent report on another piece of [...]]]> Due to recent protests in Iran, authorities are reportedly jamming the BBC Persian satellite broadcast. Iran’s leaders regard the channel as a propaganda outlet for the Brits’ nefarious aim of regime change.

But if the Iranians were paying attention, they would see that BBC Persian has an excellent report on another piece of propaganda: the neoconservative-dominated “Iranium” documentary from the Clarion Fund.

The BBC Persian piece notes that the film’s writer and director, Alex Traiman, is an ideological Israeli settler who lives in the West Bank; it is critical of many of the facts and figures in the film.

The movie’s narrator, Academy Award-winning Iranian actor Shoreh Aghdashloo, answered some tough questions. Aghdashloo said she is against a war — which organizers of a premiere event said was Traiman’s goal — but can tolerate opposing or critical views. She said that some of the comments about “executions” may be exaggerated, but this film reveals the true appearance of the regime.

That tracks closely with Traiman’s own comments. At the Heritage Foundation premiere, the West Bank settler more or less admitted that the movie presents an alarmist account.

Aghdashloo, having admitted some exaggerations, goes on to praise the film as a detailed historical account. The point, she said, is the Iran can’t be trusted with a bomb. “Can you trust a regime that does not respect its own people/children to have such a destructive weapon?” she asks in the interview.

So, if she’s against war, and Iran doesn’t relent in its alleged nuclear weapons program, what does she suggest doing?

This problem is the same one which Clifford May, a star of “Iranium” and the head of the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, faced when quizzed on television about it. May and other neocons call for sanctions and “credible military threats,” though they think neither tack is likely to succeed. Some former Iraq hawks, like Ken Pollack, have softened their stance on Iran — calling for a policy of eventual military containment because launching a war would be disastrous. May, on the other hand, thinks that should pressure fail, bombing would be the next U.S. move.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, another expert from FDD interviewed for “Iranium,” is an unabashed Iran hawk, who manages to squeeze in jokes about how much he has written about advocating an attack on the country.

It seems that, unlike Pollack, some hawks have not learned their lessons from Iraq. This should give pause to Aghdashloo, as she opposes a war. Those who painted a worst-case scenario for Iraq — as “Iranium” does for Iran — were wrong. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. Yet those who ignore these lessons are exactly the people with whom Aghdashloo has joined forces.

Columbia Professor Hamid Dabashi also appeared in the BBC Persian report. While Aghdashloo said she lent her voice to the film to speak the truth, Dabashi claimed that her voice doesn’t give the film any credibility. In fact, he said, her presence in the movie only undermines her own credibility.

More then Aghdashloo, what worries me is how quickly those involved in this film seem to acknowledge and dismiss its exaggerations. The choice to use violent force in international affairs is one of the gravest decisions a government — whether in the U.S. or Israel — can undertake. That these critics of Iran are so sloppy when trying to present the public with a series of casus belli is disconcerting.

At the screening, hosted [...]]]> The Clarion Fund has been careful to promote their latest film, “Iranium,” as an attempt to educate the public and “sound an alarm” about Iran. The film’s director, Alex Traiman, told an audience at the film’s Washington, D.C. premiere that it was designed to further public discourse.

At the screening, hosted by the Heritage Foundation, Traiman said:

We’ve gotta show support for the right side of this debate, which is the Iranians, the Iranians that risked their lives in June 2009 to fight for freedom of speech, to fight for free elections, to fight for democracy. We’ve got to support them. If we would come out with simple statements — in June 2009, if we would have said we support the Iranian people’s rights to free and fair elections, and their rights to protest in the streets, we might have already gotten through these problems.

But, after the New York premiere of the film last night, the reaction from audience members, which was actively encouraged by the moderator of the post-screening’s Q&A, suggested that “Iranium” was an attempt to build support for a military strike on Iran.

The post-screening Q&A, hosted by Traiman and Fuel For Truth’s president Todd Ingwer (see Kiera Feldman and Josh Nathan-Kazis’s exposé on the group), had a strikingly hawkish tone.

Ingwer kicked things off by asking, “What can we do as regular people? What can we do?”

The first person to answer suggested that “we need a tea party,” which was largely met with derisive laughter from the audience.

The second answer was more to the point, it would seem, of what Fuel For Truth and the Clarion Fund were hoping to evoke from the audience.

Audience Member: It’s very serious. We need to strike hard in the heart of Iran and destroy all of its tentacles. Not another word needs to be said. The staggering amount of evidence over thirty years and the lack of action by leadership all over the free world– it’s a disgrace. What are they there for? What is the purpose of the free world? What do we send all these taxes to Washington for? The UN is a pathetic joke.

*audience applause*

Ingwer: I agree with you. And Alex, I think you hit your mark.

Alex Traiman did not indicate that this comment was out of line or missing the “mark” of what his film is trying to convey.

He did, however, do his part to stoke fears and made some rather bizarre claims about Meir Dagan’s and Hillary Clinton’s motivations:

Statements that came out of the mouths of Secretary Clinton as well as even the Israeli outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan which stated that we have in fact set back Iran’s nuclear program three to five years– those statements are extremely dangerous. And I think that those statements are being made to lull the American people as well as the rest of the free world into a sense of security that I don’t think exists.

I raised my hand to ask what information Traiman had access to that would run counter to the messages conveyed by Clinton and Dagan. Furthermore, I would have liked to know why Clinton and Dagan would seek to “lull the American people as well as the rest of the free world” into a false sense of security. Unfortunately, I was not called upon to pose these questions.

May, the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has five other experts who appear in the film, called Iran “radical.” But [...]]]> Cliff May appeared in a five-minute interview on Fox News promoting the fear-mongering settler propaganda movie “Iranium,” a production of the Clarion Fund in which May appears.

May, the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which has five other experts who appear in the film, called Iran “radical.” But May refuses to answer whether he knew that the movie he starred in was written and produced by Alex Traiman, a member of another ideological religious movement: the Israeli settlers in the West Bank. (More below.)

With a history of hawkish pro-Israel advocacy and a past career as the spokesman for the Republican National Committee, we do know that May fits well into the film, which waffles between the usual Clarion Fund calls to action against the Muslim menace and a partisan flair of attacks on Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

May offered hints of hawkishness in his Fox interview, delivering a thinly-veiled call for escalated actions to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

“The Western community needs to make up its mind that this regime must not get nuclear weapons,” May said, “and they must decide to take accelerated steps to achieve that goal.”

When I asked May when he knew — if at all — that Traiman was an ideological Israeli settler, he responded by e-mail, writing:

I hope that people will see the film and decide for themselves what conclusions to draw. I know there are those who would prefer people not see the film – that’s why there were threats against those screening it in Canada – and that’s why there are those who will engage in character assassination against the film-makers.

I explained to May that pointing out Trainman’s status as a West Bank settler only counts as character assassination if you make the value judgement that settlements are bad, and repeated that I was curious about his and FDD’s stance on the illegal Israeli civilan outposts in occupied territory.

Moreover, I made clear to May that my primary question was a factual one about when he knew Traiman lived in a settlement: “Did you know — when solicited to do an interview for, when you did the interview for, and when you promoted “Iranium” — that the film was written and directed by Alex Traiman, an Israeli West Bank settler?”

May replied: “I’ve given you my answer,” and repeated a claim he’d made at FDD’s Iran conference in December that what I do “bears little resemblance to legitimate journalism.” (I hasten to note that, other than that one outburst, May has never been anything but polite. He even answered my questions that same night after the conference for the Foreign Policy piece I wrote about the proceedings.)

I wrote back to May again:

Anytime you want to talk about FDD’s or your personal stance on settlements, I’m happy to do so. Ditto with my specific factual question about the timeframe in which you knew Alex Traiman, Iranium’s writer and director, was an ideological West Bank settler.

My offer, of course, still stands.