Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

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Thanks once again to my anonymous researcher who dug up this gold nugget.

I’ve been trying to “follow the money” for the past several weeks behind Clarion Fund’s anti-Muslim documentaries, Obsession and Third Jihad; including tens of millions provided for production and promotion.  Raphael Shore, Clarion Fund boss and also director of Aish HaTorah, refuses to divulge who the sugar daddy is.  Which has left many in the press and blog world to speculate.  Until now our speculation hasn’t been grounded in anything more than suppositions and theories.

But thanks to the big mouth of an extremist evangelical preacher, O’Neal Dozier, we know that none other than an Aish HaTorah donor funded his distribution of 325,000 copies of Obsession, a separate video equating abortion with child sacrifice, and a new magazine, Judeo-Christian View.  All these “goodies” were mailed to every “Judeo-Christian” clergy member in the U.S. (that left out imams, natch).

Now comes word from the good reverend that a donor under the direction of Aish HaTorah not only provided the DVDs, but paid for the mailing costs.  The total I’m guessing would come to around $400,000, which would come on top of the $15-20 million+ Aish previously spent to distribute 28 million copies of Obsession to swing state voters:

The Rev. O’Neal Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., said he mailed 325,000 copies of “Obsession” three weeks ago along with another video “on same-sex marriage and child sacrifice” in the first issue of “The Judeo-Christian View.”

Dozier said he was the “general publisher” but did not pay for the mailing. He refused to name the funder but said that person had been in touch with officials from Aish HaTorah.

All this begs the question: who in Aish has that kind of money?  Clearly, Raphael Shore doesn’t.  But my researcher is holding out for Aish co-founder and billionaire international business consultant, Rabbi Irwin Katsof, as the funder.  Again, this is speculation and we don’t as yet have a smoking gun.  But Katsof is very cozy with Republican leaders like Tom Ridge (who is featured in Third Jihad), John McCain and Joe Lieberman.  I’ve also written that he does a great deal of business in the Ukraine, where McCain campaign manager, Rick Davis, also has business interests.  Thus, he has the motive and certainly the opportunity to engage in this kind of thinly veiled pro-Republican electioneering.  But proving that Katsof did it is another matter.

I want every Jew within the sound of my voice to know that Aish HaTorah can no longer, if it ever could, be considered a group devoted to studying Torah and bringing Jews back to their religion.  Forever more, we must see Aish as a militant group which uses Clarion Fund as a political front since for various reasons, it feels it cannot wear its partisan politics on its sleeve.

Let no Jew be fooled by Aish or Clarion or these films.  Just as Clarion is fake, so are its films fraudulent misrepresentations of Islam.  All this makes Aish a group of fraudsters and dissemblers.  And hey, lest anyone reading this dismiss it as the words of a partisan, I suggest you read Jeffrey Goldberg’s “take down” of Aish and Obsession in the current Atlantic:

Aish HaTorah…is just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today. Its operatives flourish in the radical belt of Jewish settlements just south of Nablus, in the northern West Bank, and their outposts across the world propagandize on behalf of a particularly sterile, sexist and revanchist brand of Judaism. Which is amusing, of course, because “Obsession” is meant to expose a particularly sterile, sexist and racist brand of Islam.

Whatever anyone says about my politics, Goldberg has unimpeachable pro-Israel credentials.  If you don’t like what I’m saying here go argue with him.