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.

Wiesenfeld, who described Kushner [...]]]> Now that the board of the City University of New York has had time to reconsider, and reverse their ill-fated decision to deny playwright Tony Kushner an honorary degree for his criticism of Israel, attention is shifting to CUNY board member Jeffrey Wiesenfeld who led the charge against Kushner.

Wiesenfeld, who described Kushner as a “Jewish anti-Semite,” might have his own explaining to do about his fundraising for Mishmeret Yesha, an organization which assists settlements in organizing security and whose security chief said, “We don’t want to have anything to do with any organization that employs Arabs,” in a 2008 interview.

A YouTube video of the group’s training can be viewed here:

Wiesenfeld helps fund Mishmeret Yesha through the Israel Independence Fund, where he serves as a director along with CUNY faculty member Judith Friedman Rosen (who also sits on the board of Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum), but their names aren’t listed anywhere on the organization’s website (990 tax filings can be viewed here and here). The website does, however, proudly list Mishmeret Yesha as a recipient of the Fund’s financial support.

Back in 2008, Phil Weiss excerpted from a Jerusalem Post article about Mishmeret Yesha:

[Moshe] Hager-Lau [a rabbi and colonel who chairs "Premilitary Religious Academies" in the West Bank] asked Mishmeret Yesha , an organization that has trained more than 100 rapid response teams throughout Judea and Samaria, to help train the yeshiva students.

Israel Danziger, head of operations at Mishmeret Yesha, said he had been asked by Hager-Lau to put together a general plan for educational institutions that would improve their preparedness to deal with terrorist infiltrations.

Danziger said the plan included an early-warning system; drills that would teach every settlement resident where to go in case of an attack; coordinating and practicing communications between emergency organizations and residents; and conducting periodic mock attacks.

However, one of Mishmeret Yesha’s central security demands is a no-Arab policy.

“We don’t want to have anything to do with any organization that employs Arabs,” said Danziger. “There is no sense in training a rapid response team in a settlement or an institution where you have a bunch of Arabs walking around gathering information.”

While Wiesenfeld might be regretting his decision to accuse Kushner of anti-Semitism, that scandal appears to be in the process of blowing over. But Wiesenfeld’s own apparent connections to bigotry and organizations which actively promote intolerance and racism in Israel and the occupied territories might not go away as easily.

Starting in 2008, we began writing about the films produced and distributed by the mysterious Clarion Fund, as well as questioning the money trail. [...]]]> Salon’s Justin Elliott has new evidence indicating who funded the Clarion Fund’s 2008 distribution of 28-million DVDs of the Islamophobic documentary, Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.

Starting in 2008, we began writing about the films produced and distributed by the mysterious Clarion Fund, as well as questioning the money trail. A new page on their RadicalIslam.org website offers a revealing insight into the organization’s web of connections in the Islamophobia and neoconservative echo chamber.

The Clarion’s website “About Page” lists the organization’s Advisory Board, composed of some of the most high-profile and established propagators of Islamophobic rhetoric.

It includes:

• Frank Gaffney- A prominent neoconservative who has helped found the Center for Security Policy and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Gaffney is an outspoken advocate of battling  “Islamofascism,” which he says is in a “death struggle with us” and is directly or indirectly supported by China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Syria, and Venezuela.

• Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser- Founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and narrator of the Clarion Fund’s Third Jihad documentary. (Back in 2008, I wrote about the similarities between the Third Jihad and the anti-Semitic trope, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.)

• Clare M. Lopez- A  Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy and Executive Director of the Iran Policy Committee. (Our reporting on the Iran Policy Committee can be found here and here.) The Iran Policy Committee has pushed for greater U.S. engagement with Mujahedin-e Khalq, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

• Daniel Pipes- The Director of Middle East Forum and a well known propagator of Islmophobic rhetoric. Pipes has defended the Dutch anti-Muslim politician Geert Wilders, who has been attacked for his inflammatory comments that include referring to Mohammed as a “devil” and demanding that Dutch Muslims “tear out half of the Koran if they wish to stay in the Netherlands.” Pipes called Wilders “a charismatic, savvy, principled and outspoken leader who has rapidly become the most dynamic force in the Netherlands.”

• Dr. Harold Rhode- A foreign affairs specialist who worked in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. According to a Mother Jones  article by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, “Rhode worked with [Douglas Feith] to purge career Defense officials who weren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Paul D. Wolfowitz and Feith wanted.” “Rhode accosted and harangued a visiting senior Arab diplomat, telling him that there would be no ‘bartering in the bazaar anymore…. You’re going to have to sit up and pay attention when we say so.’”

• Ilan Sharon- The Executive Director of Minnesotans Against Terrorism. Clarion describes Sharon as, “A son of Jewish refugees from Libya and Egypt, Sharon lectures frequently on the issue of terrorism, the threat of Radical Islam, and the struggle for Peace in the Middle East. He aided in the production and distribution of Obsession, The Third Jihad, and Iranium.”

• Sarah Stern- The Founder and President of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). In September, 2008,  EMET’s spokesperson confirmed to IPS that the organization organized and oversaw the distribution of  Obsession DVDs.

The Clarion Fund’s advisory board represents a whose-who of the Islamophobia industry and the neoconservative far-right.

Clarion writes that their latest film, Iranium, will:

…[T]target influential U.S. interest groups and policy makers while remaining both straightforward and down-to-earth.  After viewing the film, the general public will be able to understand the critical nature of the threats and encourage a movement aimed at preventing the further advancement of the Iranian regime and its nuclear arsenal.

Given its list of advisers with their long history of propagating Islamophobic rhetoric and advocating for a militant U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, it remains to be seen how the Clarion Fund can present a balanced viewpoint on the complexities of U.S.-Iran relations.