by Jim Lobe

Eli and Ali have rendered a great service — and a must-read – by disclosing the contents of a private briefing by Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk on the Iran nuclear negotiations he gave to invited supporters Monday. If any additional evidence were needed to show that Kirk, who [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Jim Lobe

Eli and Ali have rendered a great service — and a must-read – by disclosing the contents of a private briefing by Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk on the Iran nuclear negotiations he gave to invited supporters Monday. If any additional evidence were needed to show that Kirk, who is leading the Republican charge in the Senate to impose new economic sanctions against Iran and thereby scuttle the ongoing Geneva process, serves as Bibi Netanyahu’s biggest advocate in Congress, this article would seem to provide a lot. Just as people used to call my former senator, Henry “Scoop” Jackson “the senator from Boeing,” so it seems that Kirk has made himself the senator from AIPAC.

Kirk, whose voting record on domestic and civil-rights issues suggests that he’s one of the last of a dying breed of “moderate” Republicans, has long carried water for the right-wing leadership of the Israel lobby, spearheading anti-Iran, anti-Palestinian and pro-Israel resolutions and legislation throughout his nearly 15-year career in Congress. His identification with the policies and apocalyptic worldview of Netanyahu and hard-line U.S. neo-conservatives — he has taken to comparing the Obama administration with Neville Chamberlain and the Geneva talks with Munich, respectively — has been a source of some bewilderment to many observers. After all, theologically, he’s offered no obvious signs of Christian Zionism of the kind that believes the the “ingathering” of the Jews in Israel and the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem will trigger the Second Coming of Jesus.

Of course, his claim that he is “totally dedicated to the survival of the State of Israel in the 21st century,” as he put it in his briefing, may be completely sincere, although, like many senior Israeli national-security officials, including Netanyahu’s hawkish former defense minister, Ehud Barak, most analysts find it very difficult to take seriously the notion that Iran, even if it obtains nuclear weapons, represents an “existential” threat to Israel. His strident advocacy for Israel’s positions may also have to do with the fact that he has surrounded himself with staffers who have been associated with AIPAC and with even more hard-line pro-Israel groups, like Daniel Pipes‘ Middle East Forum, as suggested in this post by Annie Robbins published by Mondoweiss last year while Kirk was pushing legislation designed to slash funding for Palestinian refugees even as he was in the relatively early stages of recovery from the devastating stroke that he suffered in early 2012.

Yet another — and by no means inconsistent — explanation may lie in the tangible rewards he has received for his steadfast support for Israel, at least insofar as campaign finance is concerned. If you look at the Center for Responsive Politics’ “opensecrets” website on the biggest recipients of campaign cash from pro-Israel public actions committees — most of them closely associated with AIPAC in one way or another (although the list also includes J Street) — you’ll find that Kirk has been a major — perhaps the biggest — beneficiary of their largesse. In the 2010 election cycle, when Kirk took Obama’s old seat, the otherwise moderate Illinois Republican ran far ahead of the pack, with nearly $640,000 in contributions — more than twice the harvest of the next-ranking recipient, Majority Leader Harry Reid (who, incidentally, bowed to the White House’s wishes by putting off a vote on Kirk’s diplomacy-killing amendment to the defense bill this week but announced Thursday that he was inclined to support it or something like it when the Senate returns from its Thanksgiving recess Dec 9). Here’s the Center’s list of top Congressional recipients of pro-Israel PACs for the 2010 election cycle compiled earlier this year.

Indeed, virtually throughout his Congressional career, Kirk was a clear favorite of the lobby.

Although he didn’t make the top 20 list in 2000, the year he first ran for Congress, he soared to the number 3 spot with nearly $100,000 in pro-Israel PAC contributions in his first re-election campaign in 2002, just behind Nevada’s Shelley Berkeley and former Majority Leader Dick Gephardt. In 2004, he fell to number 4, behind three Democrats, but still garnered $130,000 in contributions. And then, in the 2006 election cycle, he hauled in $315,000 in campaign cash, second only to Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin.

In the 2008 cycle, he reached the pinnacle by topping the House list with a whopping $444,531. That was about two-and-a-half times more than the runner-up, the current majority leader and the only Jewish Republican in the House, Eric Cantor ($172,740). For all 468 Congressional races that year, Sen. Norm Coleman, the sole Jewish Republican senator at the time, was the only candidate who outpaced Kirk, a House member with more or less average seniority. According to the Center’s statistics, in the ten years that Kirk served in the House, he received more money from pro-Israel PACs than any other House member.

And then, of course, he pulled in by far the biggest take ever from these same sources in 2010 when he ran for the Senate.

It seems they’ve been getting their money’s worth.

by Marsha B. Cohen

Appearances to the contrary, the narrative underlying much news coverage of Iran’s recent election is still unfolding. While media attention has been diverted to the George Zimmerman trial domestically and to events in Egypt internationally, efforts to malign Iranian president-elect Hassan Rouhani and to strangle any hopes for [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Marsha B. Cohen

Appearances to the contrary, the narrative underlying much news coverage of Iran’s recent election is still unfolding. While media attention has been diverted to the George Zimmerman trial domestically and to events in Egypt internationally, efforts to malign Iranian president-elect Hassan Rouhani and to strangle any hopes for an improvement in U.S.-Iran relations continue unabated. The vacuum at the highest levels of U.S. foreign policy analysis is being filled by an echo chamber of self-styled and mutually reinforcing “experts”.

Certain themes and talking points have been constant. They have been crafted and honed by AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which published these talking points 4 days after Rouhani won) and its spin-off think-tank WINEP (the Washington Institute), the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a host of other hawkish think-tanks and advocacy groups such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Heritage Foundation and the Gatestone Institute. Consider some examples:

1) Iranian elections are a farce and a fraud, controlled by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei:

“Make no mistake — the Iranian elections don’t matter. The presidency in Iran is more about style than about substance. Control rests firmly with the Supreme Leader — the “Deputy of the Messiah on Earth” — and he need not submit himself to ordinary mortals for affirmation.” – Michael Rubin, Resident Scholar at AEI, “The Iranian elections don’t matter. Here’s what does.”, May 20

“#Iran announces cleric Hasan Rohani won the presidential election. Rohani, like all 7 candidates, was vetted & approved by the SupremeLeader” – AIPAC, Twitter, June 15

“Rouhani hand picked by the Supreme Leader & Guardian Council. His rec of deception on the nuclear program is clear. http://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB5.pdf …” – Sen. Mark Kirk, Twitter, June 18 (h/t Julian Pecquet, Politico)

“Let’s not forget that those who ran for the presidency, including Rowhani, had to be approved by the ruling mullahs.”- David Harris, Executive Director of the AJC, Press Release, June 16

“This election was an adept maneuver by Iran’s leader, Khamenei, to return control of the system to the clerical establishment. It is, thus, not at all clear that Khamenei chose genuine reform as a policy.” - Meirav Wurmser and David Wurmser, “A Tricky Power Play by the Religious Leaders, New York Times, June 17

“The presidential election didn’t offer much insight into what the Iranian people want. With a reported turnout of 72 percent of the country’s 50 million registered voters, informed sources in Iran charge that the regime exaggerated the actual turnout by a factor of 4 or 5. This election is almost certainly as fraudulent.” - Lee Smith, Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute, The Weekly Standard, “He’s No ‘Moderate’“, June 17

“Indeed, Rohani has close ties to the regime. Unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in power for 24 years, cleared each candidate for the presidency, including Hassan Rouhani. He rejected nearly 99 percent of those who filed to run in the election, including former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Every one of the eight candidates permitted to run was considered loyal to the regime and its interpretation of Islam.” - AIPAC, Memo, June 18

“First, to become a presidential candidate, Rouhani had to pass muster ideologically with Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei and his entourage. Of scores of would-be candidates, only six made it to the ballot. That ought to say something about who Rouhani really is. If his positions deviated all that much from those of the regime, he would have been barred from running.” - David Harris, El Pais, “Iranian Elections”, July 1

2) There are no “good” or “better” candidates in Iranian elections. Candidates who are ideologically driven are messianic madmen; candidates who seem pragmatic are devious and therefore even more dangerous. Rouhani’s election is therefore bad news for the U.S. and Israel because his demeanor and pragmatism will make it harder to demonize Iran:

“…it’s better to have an aggressive Saeed Jalili than a sweet talking Hassan Rouhani, I am, despite myself, rooting for the vile Jalili.”- Daniel Pipes, Blog, June 14

“Now let’s see whether Khamenei allows Rouhani to play rope-a-dope & offer a 20 percent deal. If so, should tie up the West for 12+ months.” - Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the FDD, Twitter, June 15

“With time running out, the Senate should move forward with toughest sanctions possible – rope-a-dope talks not an option. #Iran” – Mark Kirk, Twitter, June 18

“Hassan Rowhani is no moderate or reformer, at least in the American sense of the word. The hardline Guardian Council, which vets candidates in Iran, allowed less than 2 percent of registered candidates to run. Rowhani may have been the most liberal candidate on the ballot, but to call him a moderate would be like calling Attila the Hun a moderate because he reduced prison overcrowding and was, relatively speaking, to the left of Genghis Khan.” – Michael Rubin, National Review Online, “Iran’s Moderate President” June 17

“It would be more than a little surreal to see the new president champion ideas that he’s spent most of his revolutionary life ignoring or crushing. Hope springs eternal, of course, which is one reason why so many Iranians, who have consistently shown their disgust for Khamenei, would vote for such a dubious man.” - Reuel Marc Gerecht, senior fellow at the FDD, New York Times, “Rowhani is a Tool of Iran’s Rulers,” June 17

3) Even the most moderate-seeming Iranian politician has a dark and sinister past waiting to be uncovered. Guilt by association or even speculation will suffice. If all else fails, just make something up:

“Rouhani is a supreme loyalist, and a true believer, who lived in Paris in exile with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and followed him to Iran. He was a political commissar in the regular military, where he purged some of Iran’s finest officers, and a member of the Supreme Defense Council responsible for the continuation of the Iran-Iraq War, at a great cost in Iranian lives, even after all Iranian territories were liberated. He rose to become both Secretary of Iran’s powerful Supreme National Council in 1989, and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, under former Iranian presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his successor Mohammad Khatami.” - Mark Dubowitz, The Atlantic, “Why You Shouldn’t Get Too Excited About Rouhani,” June 17

“Rowhani didn’t really protest the crackdown on the pro-democracy Green Movement in 2009, and was enthusiastic in his praise of the crackdown on pro-democracy Tehran University students in 1999. In all probability, Rowhani supported Rafsanjani’s and Khamenei’s assassination of internal and external dissidents in the 1990s and other terrorist operations in Latin America, Europe and against the United States in Khobar, Saudi Arabia in 1996.” –  Reuel Marc Gerecht, New York Times, “Rowhani is a Tool of Iran’s Rulers,” June 17

“Iranian President-elect Hassan Rowhani was on the special Iranian government committee that plotted the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, according to an indictment by the Argentine government prosecutor investigating the case. The AMIA bombing is considered the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, killing 85 and wounding hundreds more. The Argentine government had accused the Iranian government of planning the attack and Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah of carrying it out. Numerous former and current Iranian officials are wanted by Interpol in connection with the bombing.” - Alana Goodman, Washington Free Beacon, ”New Iranian President Tied to 1994 Bombing“, June 19

“Iranian president-elect Hasan Rowhani was allegedly involved in plotting the deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, according to the indictment filed in the case. The attack, attributed to Iran and carried out by the terrorist group Hezbollah, killed 85 people and injured hundreds…Rowhani’s name in the indictment was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.” – Yoel Goldman, Times of Israel, “Iran’s President-Elect Implicated in 1994 Argentina Bombing,” June 20

“Rouhani has been an integral part of the post-1979 Iranian system, not a rebellious outsider. As one telling example, he is reported to have been present at a fateful 1993 meeting of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council—he was its secretary at the time—when the decision was made to bomb the AMIA building in central Buenos Aires. That meeting has been documented by the relentless Argentine prosecutor in the case, Alberto Nisman. The actual attack was carried out in July 1994. Eighty-five people were killed and hundreds wounded in one of the deadliest assaults in Latin America in decades. – David Harris, El Pais, “Iranian Elections“, July 1.

[Note: Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor in the AMIA case, informed Times of Israel editor David Horovitz by e-mail on June 24 that Rouhani was not under indictment or accused of any involvement in the AMIA bombing:

"Contrary to recent reports, Hassan Rouhani did not participate in the 1993 Iranian leadership council meeting that authorized the following year’s terrorist attack on the AMIA Buenos Aires Jewish community center building in which 85 people were killed, the Argentinian prosecutor in the case told The Times of Israel...Asked whether his investigations had found any evidence of Rouhani having a role in Iranian-orchestrated terrorism, Nisman replied, 'There is no evidence, according to the AMIA case file, of the involvement of Hassan Rouhani in any terrorist attack."]

4) Nothing can or will change for the better after Rouhani’s election: 

“Rowhani will have little power. Remember that a moderate already served eight years as president and accomplished nothing. Rowhani is clearly loyal to the regime or he wouldn’t have been the only reformist candidate who was approved for the election by the regime.” – Barry Rubin, Rubin Reports, “Reformist Candidate Wins Big in Iran’s Election“, June 15

“The election of Hussein Rowhani instilled hope in the West that Iran may be internally moderate and that an Iranian Gorbachev has been found. It is unlikely, however, that these hopes will be realized.” Meirav and David Wurmser, “A Tricky Power Play by the Religious Leaders“, New York Times, June 17

“What we are likely to see—in a best-case scenario—is a big tent that includes many, though not all, of the revolutionary establishment figures that Rouhani has grown up with. Others who’ve fallen away from Rafsanjani will likely be inside; and the conservative clergy, with its mixed feelings about the supreme leader’s theocratic hubris, may be there, too.  The only ones unlikely to be included are the serious reformers. They will remain unloved and unwanted, though Rouhani may try to cut down on their harassment.” - Reuel Marc Gerecht,  “Meet the New Mullah,” Weekly Standard, July 1

5) Sanctions, sanctions, sanctions! If sanctions are working, more will work even better. If they aren’t, it’s because they aren’t enough. Either way, we need more sanctions with increased and enhanced enforcement:

“The United States must persuade nations still buying Iranian oil to significantly reduce their purchases. Countries that violate U.S. law, including China and Turkey, must face consequences, including sanctioning financial institutions involved in oil purchases. Financial institutions and individuals conducting financial transactions with or providing services to the Central Bank of Iran or other sanctioned banks must be identified and sanctioned. The European Union must be persuaded to stop allowing Iran to conduct transactions in Euros. The United States should consider barring companies or individuals from doing business in the United States if they engage in significant commercial trade with Iran.” AIPAC, Memo, June 18

“As Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, we appreciate your recent imposition of new sanctions and urge you to increase the pressure on Iran in the days ahead. An added positive action would be extending sector-based sanctions on the mining, engineering and construction-based sectors of Iran. We plan to strenthen sanctions with additional legislation approved nanimously by the Committee on Foreign Affairs and now pending in the House of Representatives.” - AIPAC-drafted Letter to President Obama signed by all but one member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, June 28, 2013.

“After July 1, new sanctions will blacklist metals trade with Iran including aluminum, coal, steel, gold, silver and platinum amongst others, and should include alumina.” - Mark Dubowitz, quoted in Reuters, Iran Importing Missile Grade Ore from Germany, France, July 2, 2013

6) Sanctions, although necessary, are insufficient without true threats of force:

“Unless the West is prepared to bring the regime to the brink of economic collapse combined with the credible threat of military force, we are unlikely to break the nuclear will of the regime.” – Mark Dubowitz, “Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Stocks Election to Replace Ahmadinejad with Loyalists,“ Washington Times, May 27

“The United States must maintain a strong physical presence in the Persian Gulf and the broader Middle East as a deterrent to Iran and to give credibility to the president’s statements.” - AIPAC, Memo, June 18

“It’s also certainly worth doing what the Americans did in 2003: Scare the mullahs. After Saddam Hussein went down, the Iranian regime, according to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, stopped experimenting with nuclear triggers and warhead designs. In 2004, Khamenei accepted, even if briefly, Rouhani’s suspension of uranium enrichment. Update the fear: Obama could declare that he intends to attack Iran by air and by sea but that Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards have the power to stop him. He could go to Congress and ask for authorization to strike. And he could tell his senior commanders to stop saying publicly that they neither foresee nor need to plan for another land war in Asia.” - Reuel Marc Gerecht, “Meet the New Mullah,” The Weekly Standard, July 1

“…the United States should hold exercises involving B-2 bombers (which can carry the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP) and should encourage media reports that highlight ongoing military preparations. It should also publicize major milestones in the fielding and deployment of the upgraded version of the MOP, which was developed to deal with Iran’s deep underground uranium-enrichment facility at Fordow.” - Michael Eisenstadt, WINEP Strategic Report 13, “Not by Sanctions Alone“, July 2013

As Rouhani forms his cabinet, perhaps this taxonomy can serve as a useful guide…

Photo Credit: Mona Hoobehfekr

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, [...]]]> via Lobe Log

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.

While you would expect the State Department’s decision to de-list the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) would elicit cheers from anti-Iran neo-conservatives, the MEK has, in fact, been one of a number of issue — including former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and [...]]]> via Lobe Log

While you would expect the State Department’s decision to de-list the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) would elicit cheers from anti-Iran neo-conservatives, the MEK has, in fact, been one of a number of issue — including former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and Washington’s engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood — that has been the source of considerable division among the neo-cons.

Strong opposition to de-listing the MEK, let alone providing it with U.S. (or even Israeli) support has been based mostly among those most ardent Iraq hawks closely associated with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), particularly Michael Rubin; Danielle Pletka, and Michael Ledeen, who moved over to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) a couple of years ago and, of all people, should know a con when he sees one. Their opposition is based on the conviction (shared by many critics on the left and among realists or anyone who has ever actually been to Iran) that the MEK is largely hated in Iran itself and thus that any perceived U.S. support for — or complicity with — it will prove entirely counter-productive to their goal of regime change.

Or, as Rubin put it last March:

The problem with those who would embrace the MEK is that it would undercut the chance for regime collapse.

…Iranians living under the regime’s yoke hate the MEK. That is not regime propaganda; it is fact, one to which any honest analyst who has ever visited Iran testify. Ordinary Iranians deeply resent the MEK’s terrorism, which has targeted not only regime officials, but also led to the deaths of scores of civilians. During the Iran-Iraq War — a conflict that decimated cities and led to tens of thousands of civilian deaths — the MEK sided with Saddam Hussein.

…If the MEK is delisted, let the MEK celebrate. But whether listed as a terrorist group or not, it would be wrong and counterproductive to embrace the group unless, of course, the goal of those for officials on the group’s payroll is simply to aid the current regime in its efforts to rally its subjugated masses around the flag.

The last reference, of course, was to the legion of high-profile former Republican and Democratic administration officials and military officers (useful idiots and/or mercenaries, so far as MEK foes are concerned) who have been speaking out in favor of the MEK, most, if not all of them, in return for tens of thousands of dollars paid out by the MEK’s multitudinous front groups and p.r. consultants. (The Washington Post covered a good lot of them last July when the FBI started looking into their lobbying activities.

Pletka, whose blog post this week about Obama “hat[ing] Israel” can only be described as truly bizarre, nonetheless raised some good questions last year about the morality of those who support the MEK and the application of double standards regarding Washington’s enforcement of its terrorism laws:

If this is an enemy/enemy/friend thing, let’s consider whether we wish to replace the creepy, Islamist, dictatorial mullahs with the creepy, Islamist, dictatorial cult. Seems a bad trade to me. The United States should be supporting democracy in Iran, not a one-for-one swap among murderers and thugs.

And here’s another question: Where’s the FBI and the Justice Department? A terrorist group is lobbying in the United States. It’s paying top political fixers to make its case. It’s paying speaking fees to former government officials. Where’s the money from? How’s it being transferred? And would it be okay for Hezbollah to do this? Al Qaeda?

Unfortunately, these arguments didn’t get very far with more prominent associates and colleagues at AEI, although Richard Perle, such as Newt Gingrich, who spoke at a MEK rally in Paris last July (Bowing before a recognized cult leader in a foreign country must be particularly humiliating for someone like Gingrich, but I guess Sheldon Adelson’s $10m didn’t cover all his campaign debts); John Bolton, Allan Gerson, who was one of the MEK’s attorneys; and the former (and mercifully briefly) CIA director under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey. Richard Perle, who appeared at an Iranian-American “charity event” in Virginia in 2004 but then claimed he had no idea that it was a fund-raiser for the MEK has since wisely kept his silence.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the neo-con critics of the MEK sceptics (besides the big-name endorsers noted above) have been, of course, the Iran Policy Committee (IPC) headed by Raymond Tanter, as well as a number of writers and think tankers, including contributors to the Weekly Standard, the National Review, and Commentary (notably Jonathan Tobin), and Daniel Pipes, the director of the Middle East Forum. Unlike the IPC, which has always insisted that the MEK got a bad rap and is truly a deeply pro-American group dedicated to all the principles and values that have made this country great, the latter have basically propounded “the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend” argument disdained by Pletka.

Rubin and Tobin grappled last February on Commentary’s Contentions blog on the practicality of backing the MEK in the wake of reports that Israel had used the MEK to assassinate an Iranian scientist the previous month — reports that, in Tobin’s view, were “difficult to doubt.” Tobin:

The MEK are allies of convenience and, just like many wartime allies in other conflicts, share only a common enemy with Israel. But however nasty they may be, Israel need not blush about using them. For a democracy at war, the only truly immoral thing to do would be to let totalitarian Islamists like those in Tehran triumph.

To which Rubin responded:

Jonathan is correct that Israel cannot ignore the Iranian regime’s genocidal intent, and he is also correct that there is no moral equivalence between alleged Israeli targeting of Iranian nuclear scientists and Iranian assassination attempts upon Israeli diplomats.

…By utilizing the MEK—a group which Iranians view in the same way Americans see John Walker Lindh, the American convicted of aiding the Taliban—the Israelis risk winning some short-term gain at the tremendous expense of rallying Iranians around the regime’s flag. A far better strategy would be to facilitate regime change. Not only would the MEK be incapable of that mission, but involving them even cursorily would set the goal back years.

The Weekly Standard has generally avoided the controversy, but last May, Lee Smith, who is also associated with FDD, penned a generally sympathetic article entitled “Terrorists or Fall Guys” in which he quoted, among others, his FDD colleague and AEI alum, Reuel Marc Gerecht, as asserting, “If the PLO can be rehabilitated, so can the MEK.” The article featured at some length statements by Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the retired commandant of the U.S. Army Military Police, whose job was to disarm the MEK after the 2003 invasion and who opposed transferring the MEK from Camp Ashraf to Camp Liberty on the grounds that the Iraqi government would probably hand its members over to Tehran. The final sentence of the piece:

American credibility and prestige are on the line, says Phillips, not only in how we treat people under our protection but also in how we deal with Iran. “We’re afraid of sending the Iranians a strong message and getting them mad. But that’s exactly the message we want to send them.”

That’s apparently Smith’s bottom line on the question.

Pipes, who, unlike almost all other neo-cons, opposes U.S. intervention in Syria, has come out in clear support of the MEK, which, in a 2011 article entitled “Empower Iranians Vs. Tehran,” he called “the most prominent Iranian opposition group.”

He apparently disagrees with Rubin, a long-time senior editor of MEF’s Middle East Quarterly — and someone who has actually spent some time in Iran — about the MEK’s popularity inside Iran, arguing that:

…([J]ust as the MeK’s organizational and leadership skills helped bring down the shah in 1979, these skills can again facilitate regime change. The number of street protestors arrested for association with the MeK points to its role in demonstrations, as do slogans echoing MeK chants, e.g., calling Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei a “henchman,” Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a “dictator,” and shouting “down with the principle of Velayat-e Faqih” (that a religious figure heads the government).

From which we might fairly conclude that Pipes thinks that the MEK organized the Green Movement, or, better yet, that he takes Tehran’s for word it.

In any event, this is where Pipes comes out:

“Following a court-mandated review of the MeK’s terrorist designation, the secretary of tate must soon decide whether to maintain this listing. With one simple signature, the Obama administration can help empower Iranians to seize control over their destiny — and perhaps end the mullahs’ mad nuclear dash.”

Just last week, it came out that The Legal Project, yet another arm in Pipes’ empire, had “coordinated and financed the defense” of Seid Hassan Daioleslam in a defamation lawsuit filed in 2008 by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its president, Trita Parsi. The lawsuit was dismissed earlier this month by Federal District Court Judge John Bates on a summary judgment motion by the defense that the plaintiffs had failed to provide sufficient evidence that Daioleslam’s allegations that NIAC and Parsi were agents of the Iranian regime were malicious; that is, that the defendant knew at the time that he made those accusations that they were untrue. (The judge made no finding as to whether the accusations were in fact true, and you can read NIAC’s reaction here.)

While Diaoleslam has long denied charges by Parsi and others that he is himself associated with the MEK, our own Daniel Luban wrote a series of posts back in 2009 that provided evidence of such a link and of the rather nefarious purposes that Diaoleslam and his editor at the time, Kenneth Timmerman, were entertaining when the article that was the subject of the lawsuit was published. (See here and here for additional background and information.) In the course of his own inquiry, Daniel asked how it was that Diaoleslam, “whose professional activities are mostly limited to writing occasional pieces for obscure right-wing websites, is getting the money to devote himself full-time to research — not to mention how he can afford the likes of Sidley Austin LLP, the white-shoe law firm that is defending him in his lawsuit with NIAC.” So now we have at least a partial answer to that question; Pipes was helping him out. (Incidentally, for those of you who are interested in Obama-hatred and Islamophobia, don’t miss Pipes’ <a href=", whose professional activities are mostly limited to writing occasional pieces for obscure right-wing websites, is getting the money to devote himself full-time to research — not to mention how he can afford the likes of Sidley Austin LLP, the white-shoe law firm that is defending him in his lawsuit with NIAC." So now we have at least a partial answer to that question — Pipes, who believes that the MEK can lead the Iranian masses to overthrow the regime. It may be worth noting that Timmerman, who published Daioleslam's original report on NIAC, appears to believe that the MEK is indeed a terrorist group, as noted in an article he wrote for his Foundation for Democracy in Iran last year.

(Incidentally, for those of you interested in Pipes’ Islamophobia, don’t miss his <a href=”>recent five-part series in the Washington Times on Obama’s alleged early Muslim identity. It amasses an enormous amount of material to prove that Obama “has specifically and repeatedly lied about his Muslim identity” — except that the evidence marshaled by Pipes in support of that conclusion proves no such thing. Indeed, if there were a motion for summary judgment based on Pipes’ evidence, I would imagine that Judge Bates would throw the case out.)

One of the most glaring hypocrisies surrounding the so-called “war on terror” has been the way that mass killings committed by non-Muslims have been treated as functions of mental illness while those committed by Muslims have been treated as functions of ideology. This hypocrisy is made explicit by a pundit [...]]]> via Lobe Log

One of the most glaring hypocrisies surrounding the so-called “war on terror” has been the way that mass killings committed by non-Muslims have been treated as functions of mental illness while those committed by Muslims have been treated as functions of ideology. This hypocrisy is made explicit by a pundit like Marc Thiessen — here as elsewhere emitting right-wing hackery in its purest form — in the wake of last week’s Aurora shooting; Thiessen is keen to insist that James Holmes’s massacre in Aurora is categorically different from Nidal Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood because “[t]he Aurora shooting was a senseless act of violence; Fort Hood was a terrorist attack.” (Never mind that Hasan’s undeniably horrific attack was directed at a military target and thus fit classic definitions of terrorism far less than Holmes’s.) Of course, the dichotomy between insanity and ideology is itself a misleading one: on the one hand, mass-murdering lunatics frequently come up with grand political theories to justify their actions; on the other, even committed ideologues are unlikely to undertake bloody suicide missions if they don’t have a screw or two loose.

The basic difference between how Muslim and non-Muslim mass killers are viewed is nowhere more obvious than in the reaction to Anders Behring Breivik’s killing of 77 Norwegians a year ago. Breivik was about as committed an ideologue as one could hope for, as is made clear by his 1500-page manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence. Throughout the sprawling manifesto, Breivik is explicit that he sees himself as representing the militant wing of the broader “anti-jihadist” movement — represented in the U.S. by the writers he most frequently cites, such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, and Daniel Pipes.

Of course, no one suggests that such writers (to which we could add others like Mark Steyn, Frank Gaffney, and Andy McCarthy) would approve of Breivik’s murderous rampage. Yet their sheer refusal to recognize any commonalities between his goals and theirs was quite brazen and frequently led them into outright self-contradiction. Thus we see Mark Steyn, who in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings mocked authorities for stubbornly refusing to take Hasan’s professions of his beliefs at face value…stubbornly refusing to take Breivik’s professions of his beliefs at face value:

It is unclear how seriously this “manifesto” should be taken….As far as we know, not a single Muslim was among the victims. Islamophobia seems an eccentric perspective to apply to this atrocity, and comes close to making the actual dead mere bit players in their own murder.

But of course, Breivik was perfectly explicit that he was targeting the Norwegian elite in the belief that only by doing so could he shock European nationalists into responding to the supposed Islamicization of Europe. Citing Steyn by name on page 338 of the manifesto, Breivik makes clear that he largely agrees with Steyn concerning the existential nature of the Muslim threat to the West, disagreeing with him only in thinking that this Islamicization can be reversed through bold action by European nationalists. Compare Steyn, writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2006 (the piece is no longer online but can be found here):

That’s what the war [against Islamism]‘s about : our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: “Civilizations die from suicide, not murder”–as can be seen throughout much of “the Western world” right now. The progressive agenda–lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism–is collectively the real suicide bomb.

And here’s Breivik, invoking the same tropes in much less elegant prose on page 12 of his manifesto:

As we all know, the root of Europe’s problems is the lack of cultural self-confidence (nationalism)…. Needless to say; the growing numbers of nationalists in W. Europe are systematically being ridiculed, silenced and persecuted by the current cultural Marxist/multiculturalist political establishments. This has been a continuous ongoing process which started in 1945. This irrational fear of nationalistic doctrines is preventing us from stopping our own national/cultural suicide as the Islamic colonization is increasing annually. This book presents the only solutions to our current problems. You cannot defeat Islamisation or halt/reverse the Islamic colonization of Western Europe without first removing the political doctrines manifested through multiculturalism/cultural Marxism.

Breivik’s ramblings about the threat of “multiculturalism/cultural Marxism” are relevant given the recent and rather laughable attempt by Daniel Pipes, another frequently cited source in 2083, to exculpate himself and his allies from their implication in Breivik’s worldview. Pipes — responding to a ThinkProgress graphic detailing Breivik’s reliance on various “anti-jihadist” writers — attempts to show that Breivik could equally be viewed as a leftist given his frequent references to left-wing thinkers like the Frankfurt School and liberal politicians like Barack Obama. Pipes further argues that Breivik, far from agreeing with the likes of him, Spencer, and Geller, “intentionally sought to damage and delegitimize” them by his massacre.

The flaws in Pipes’s apologia are so obvious that it feels almost superfluous to point them out, but here goes. The ThinkProgress graphic listing Breivik’s reliance on the anti-jihadist writers served some purpose in that Breivik was largely agreeing with them (on the alleged Islamic threat to the West, if not necessarily the proposed remedies.) His frequent citations of figures like Marx or Marcuse — or, for that matter, Obama or Blair — are completely irrelevant in this regard since Breivik was listing them as perpetrators or enablers of the Islamic/cultural-Marxist/multiculturalist/environmentalist attack on the West. (The basic incoherence of listing all these currents as if they were the same thing is by no means exclusive to Breivik.)

Similarly, Breivik’s criticisms of anti-jihadist writers that Pipes cites are notable primarily for how limited they are. To take the one example Pipes gives, Breivik writes:

The reason why authors on the Eurabia related issues/Islamisation of Europe — Fjordman, [Robert] Spencer, [Bat] Ye’or, [Andrew] Bostom etc. aren’t actively discussing deportation is because the method is considered too extreme (and thus would damage their reputational shields). . . . If these authors are to [sic] scared to propagate a conservative revolution and armed resistance then other authors will have to.

So, to be clear, Breivik agrees with Pipes’s allies about the threat Muslims pose to the West, and merely disagrees with them about the desirability of mass deportation, revolution, and “armed resistance” to deal with it. This is hardly of a piece with his paranoid rantings against leftism and “cultural Marxism.”

It’s been a bit of a scandal how quickly Breivik has been forgotten, and how easily his ideological inspirations have been able to shrug off his massacre. Like the Aurora shooting, Breivik is a reminder of how pervasive the double standards surrounding “terrorism” remain.

Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.

Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji, WINEP: Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji of the Israel-centric Washington [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.

Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji, WINEP: Patrick Clawson and Mehdi Khalaji of the Israel-centric Washington Institute for Near East Policy (aka Washington Institute or WINEP) argue that Iran may need to be shocked into submission with more crippling measures including a military attack:

Ultimately, changing this mindset may require a profound shock of some sort, be it remarkably tough sanctions, more-complete political isolation, or military action.

While claiming that sanctions alone are not enough, the authors recommend piling more on anyway:

Washington has long advocated sanctions as the key to spurring Iranian compromise, and the announcement of the latest round of financial measures certainly seemed central in getting Iran back to the negotiating table. At the end of the day, however, such measures have not persuaded Tehran to make even the minimum compromises that would be acceptable to the P5+1. Expecting the new sanctions alone to spur Iran toward a more favorable position may therefore be unrealistic — Washington and its allies would be well advised to plan additional sanctions.

Michael Eisenstadt, WINEP: The director of WINEP’s Military and Security Studies Program argues that the US should aggressively harden its stance against Iran by implementing increased pressure tactics and ramping up the military option through posturing and public preparation:

Successful diplomacy may well depend on the administration’s ability to convince Tehran that the price of failed negotiations could be armed conflict. To make this threat credible, Washington must first show Tehran that it is preparing for a possible military confrontation — whether initiated by Iran or a third country — and that it is willing and able to enforce its red lines regarding freedom of navigation in the Gulf and the regime’s nuclear program.

Jamie Fly, Lee Smith and William Kristol, Weekly Standard: While applauding a related bipartisan Senate letter that we noted last week, three of the most ardent neoconservative pushers of the Iraq War urge Congress to “seriously explore” an Authorization of Military Force against Iran:

Stephen Rademaker, one of the witnesses at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on June 20, testified that Iran has not been “sufficiently persuaded that military force really is in prospect should they fail to come to an acceptable agreement to the problem.”

The key to changing that is a serious debate about the military option. But even in the wake of the collapse of the talks, far too many otherwise serious people continue to hold out hope for a negotiated settlement brought about by increased economic pressure. All additional sanctions should be explored and enacted as soon as possible, but what the track record of more than a decade of negotiations with Iran tells us is that this is not a country about to concede. This is not a regime on the ropes or on the cusp of compromise, as many would have us believe.

This is a regime committed to developing nuclear weapons, despite the cost to the Iranian economy and the toll on the Iranian people. Time is running out and the consequences of inaction for the United States, Israel, and the free world will only increase in the weeks and months ahead. It’s time for Congress to seriously explore an Authorization of Military Force to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

Mark Dubowitz, Foreign Policy: The executive director of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies and influential sanctions-pusher Mark Dubowitz argues for more “economic warfare” to “to shake the Islamic Republic to its core” by “blacklisting Iran’s entire energy sector”, extending the sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, targeting other areas of the Iranian economy and:

…if that’s insufficient to get Khamenei to strike a deal — and there is unfortunately no evidence so far that it will — the president needs to unite the country in moving beyond sanctions and preparing for U.S. military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Daniel Pipes, Washington Times: The aftermath of an Israeli attack on Iran wouldn’t be all that bad according to Daniel Pipes. From yesterday’s posting:

Mideast focused pundit Daniel Pipes has positively reviewed a report by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) that discusses “likely” Iranian responses to an Israeli “preventive strike”. Pipes, who in 2010 argued that President Obama should bomb Iran to “to salvage his tottering administration”, repeats Michael Eisenstadt and Michael Knights’ assessment of how Iran would react to an Israeli military attack before concluding that the consequences would be “unpleasant but not cataclysmic, manageable not devastating.” The underlying assumption in Pipes’ article is that Iran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon rather than nuclear weapon capability, which is what the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) and US intelligence agencies have asserted. And according to Pipes’ line of reasoning, the consequences of striking Iran pale in comparison to the only alternative he provides: “apocalyptic Islamists controlling nuclear weapons“.

Emergency Committee for Israel: A news advertisement unleashed this week by the ultra-hawkish letterhead group the Emergency Committee for [...]]]> Lobe Log publishes Hawks on Iran every Friday. Our posts highlight militaristic commentary and confrontational policy recommendations about Iran from a variety of sources including news articles, think tanks and pundits.

Emergency Committee for Israel: A news advertisement unleashed this week by the ultra-hawkish letterhead group the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), which is headed by Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, speaks for itself. “Time to Act” seems like a parody from the Daily Show but the ECI actually wants Americans to see the world through the ultra-paranoid, fact-devoid lens that they’re manufacturing. Eli Clifton provides a backgrounder on what the ECI is really about:

ECI’s reflexive hawkishness stems from its hard-right neoconservative disposition. The organization was even born in the same Washington office as the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), a short-lived right-wing pressure group that pushed for an Iraq invasion. A major player in the Iraq war push, Kristol, for his part, already called for a war with Iran last October.

Robert Wright also discusses ECI’s fanaticism in the Atlantic.

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post: Surprise, surprise. The ECI ad gets a plug from the militantly pro-Israel Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin who regularly agitates for a U.S. war on Iran. Congressional hawks pushing measures that will make those “meaningless talks” between the Iranians and Western countries even less likely to result in a negotiated settlement are also praised by Rubin:

Sitting mutely by on the sidelines while the centrifuges keep spinning in Iran is a dereliction of duty by Congress. Unlike President Obama, however, I think there are lawmakers willing to step up to the plate. History will judge them well.

For more on “Congressional obstructionism” on Iran see Trita Parsi’s recent Op-Ed in the New York Times.

Daniel Pipes, National Review Online: Arch hardliner Daniel Pipes–whose writings were cited 18 times in the “Manifesto” penned by Oslo killer Anders Brevik–criticizes Nicholas Kristof’s observations from his recent trip to Iran. Why? Because Kristof suggests that Iranians are unlikely to welcome a war with open arms:

After providing this information – which tallies with what other travelers to Iran have recounted – Kristof reaches an inexplicable and illogical conclusion: “My guess is that the demise of the system is a matter of time — unless there’s a war between Iran and the West, perhaps ignited by Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. That, I sense, would provoke a nationalist backlash and rescue the ayatollahs.”

Comment: Whence this “sense”? If the Iranian population blames the mullahs for its economic woes today, why not assume it will also blame war on them too?

Emanuele Ottolenghi, FDD/Commentary: According to former Dick Cheney national security adviser John Hannah, the ultra-hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies and particularly Hannah’s “colleague” and FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz was pivotal in framing the U.S.’s decision to sanction Iran’s central bank. Now that sounds all fine and dandy except for one contradiction that all this exposes. If the FDD’s goal with Iran is regime change as stated here by Dubowitz and Reuel Marc Gerecht and this week by FDD staffer Emanuele Ottolenghi (among other places), then why does the U.S. insist that sanctions are integral to reaching a nuclear deal with Iran? If the sanctions are designed by an organization that is striving for regime change, then what hope can there be in any success through diplomacy? Here’s Ottolenghi:

Trouble is brewing then, and offering a facile compromise on nuclear matters to this regime at this juncture would be a terrible mistake. Sanctions are slowly working – but we should keep using them less to extract an impossible deal and more to undermine the regime in Tehran.

Spencer Ackerman’s reports on Islamophobic training sessions at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have sent the Bureau into damage control mode. On Thursday, the FBI held a conference call with Muslim civil rights groups to apologize for the offensive training materials, which Ackerman has [...]]]> Posted by arrangement with Think Progress

Spencer Ackerman’s reports on Islamophobic training sessions at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have sent the Bureau into damage control mode. On Thursday, the FBI held a conference call with Muslim civil rights groups to apologize for the offensive training materials, which Ackerman has published over the past week.

The FBI has promised a “comprehensive review of all training and reference materials,” but Ackerman, in an article published today, reveals that the work of well-known Islamophobes permeates the FBI’s training culture and the internal reference resources available to FBI agents.

Ackerman reports that the mandatory online orientation material for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), included the following description of Sunni Muslims:

Sunni Muslims have been prolific in spawning numerous and varied fundamentalist extremist terrorist organizations. Sunni core doctrine and end state have remained the same and they continue to strive for Sunni Islamic domination of the world to prove a key Quranic assertion that no system of government or religion on earth can match the Quran’s purity and effectiveness for paving the road to God.

An examination of the FBI’s library in Quantico, which is not open to the public, revealed that the Bureau stocks a wide range of resources on Islam but includes a number of books by well known anti-Islam authors Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer.

Pipes and Spencer are featured prominently in the Center for American Progress’ new report, “Fear, Inc.,” which outlines the small but influential group of individuals and institutions who help promote anti-Muslim hatred in the U.S.

Spencer, who claims that “Islam is not a religion of peace” and has suggested that President Obama may be a Muslim, gained notoriety after it was revealed that Norwegian terrorist Anders Brevik’s manifesto included 162 references to Spencer and his blog Jihad Watch.

Pipes famously observed that “all immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.” He also plays a key role in the Islamophobia echo chamber by repeating the falsehood that Obama is a former Muslim who “practiced Islam.”

The combination of Islamophobic presentation and the FBI’s apparent endorsement of noted anti-Muslim “experts” like Spencer and Pipes raises serious questions about the FBI’s counterterrorism training and the Bureau’s understanding of Muslim Americans.

Earlier this month, the Seattle Times reported on a disastrous presentation by an FBI agent at a community outreach workshop. The failed presentation offers insights into how federal law enforcement officers’ training has seriously hampered their ability to engage with Muslim communities.

The Varet and Rosenwald family’s philanthropy — led by Elizabeth Varet, a director at American Securities Management and a granddaughter of Sears Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald, David Steinmann and Nina Rosenwald — are identified in the Center for American Progress’ new report Fear Inc., as one [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

The Varet and Rosenwald family’s philanthropy — led by Elizabeth Varet, a director at American Securities Management and a granddaughter of Sears Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald, David Steinmann and Nina Rosenwald — are identified in the Center for American Progress’ new report Fear Inc., as one of the top donors to the U.S. Islamophobia network. Their family foundations, the Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund, contributed $2.818 million dollars to organizations which fan the flames of Islamophobia.

The Varet family helps fund: Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism ($10,000); Counterterrorism & Security Education and Research Foundation ($15,000); Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum ($2,320,229.33); Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy ($437,000); the Clarion Fund ($25,000); David Horowitz’s Freedom Center ($11,000) and Brigitte Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth ($125,000).

David Steinmann — also a director at American Securities Management, a trustee for the Anchorage Charitable Fund and president of the William Rosenwald Family Fund, sits as a board member at Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.

Nina Rosenwald, co-chair of the board at American Securities Management and a vice-president at the William Rosenwald Family Fund, is: chairwoman of of the board at the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI); vice president of the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA) and sits on the board of the Hudson Institute. She also serves on the board at the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); Human Rights in China, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and served as a delegate at the 1996 Democratic National Convention.

According to a 2007 New York Jewish Week article, Elizabeth Varet, who chairs the Anchorage Charitable Fund and serves as vice-president at the William Rosenwald Family Fund, gained inspiration for her philanthropy from her father, William Rosenwald, who she says:

…was driven by an empathy for people at risk — people who were suffering — “and a feeling of ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’ And he believed in acting on it.”

Indeed, the Anchorage Fund engages in a broad array of philanthropy to various right-wing institutions such as the: Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD); Hoover Institution; Hudson Institute, America Enterprise Institute; and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Additional board members of the Anchorage Charitable Fund include Michael A. Varet, Sarah R. Varet, David R. Varet, and Joseph R. Varet.

In the 2008 tax year, the Anchorage Fund “suffered a complete loss of its investment through PJ Administrator LLC,” according to its 2008 tax filings. PJ Administrator was a client of Bernie Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2008.

Charitable activity from both Varet related foundations has significantly decreased since 2008 but it’s safe to say that the Islamophobia network described in Fear Inc., wouldn’t have become such a formidable force without the deep-pocketed support of family foundations like the ones operated by the heirs to Julius Rosenwald’s Sears Roebuck fortune.