Accompanying the covert war between Iran and the west is a sideline industry consisting of all manner of spies, exiles, and others with mixed motives regarding this confrontation.  There are supposed Iranian dissidents who’ve escaped, made their way to the west, and been taken into the bosom of the neocon political and media world.  One of these is Amir Abbas Fakhravar.  To hear him tell it, he escaped from an Iranian jail with the help of Richard Perle, who whisked him off to America where he became the darling of the Cheney neocon apparatus.  To hear former jailed Iranian reformers tell it, he was a jailhouse snitch for the regime.

His primary message was promoting regime change, which is why he was so valuable to the hawks seeking to promote war against Iran. While in this country he made common cause with hawks like Michael Ledeen, did interviews with neocon media outlets like the National Review, The Telegraph, and New York Sun, and affiliated with some of the more extreme monarchists among the Iranian exile community. Presidents come and go, and with Barack Obama in power Fakhravar has had to recalibrate his political message.  He still favors regime change, but no longer advocates war (at least not publicly) to achieve this goal.  In an interview with Israeli TV during his first visit to that country, he said that the current round of draconian sanctions were his most favored approach, and not a military strike.

He made sure to tell his Israeli interviewer how much Iranians love Israel, even offered the audience a hearty Shabbat Shalom, and practically blew kisses their way.  You could practically hear all the Israeli Jewish mothers sighing and hoping their daughters might meet such a nice boy to bring home to mamma.  Fakhravar told the newscaster that the current regime governing Iran “is not Iranian.” Undoubtedly, this refers to a weird theory some in the opposition may have attempting to prove the ayatollahs are foreign alien elements imposed on Iran “through invasion.” We’ve seen this tactic of smearing “radical aliens” like Saul Alinksy used in the Republican primary campaign as well. This, unfortunately, is the level of delusion to which some like Fakhravar sink while taking their credulous Israeli viewers along with them.

Who arranged for his Israeli visit?  A slightly mysterious Israeli company, Laurus, founded by former members of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office specializing in national security.  In other words, these are former Israeli security operatives now freelancing for themselves based on their prior contacts in the security apparatus.  All of which means that there are security interests in Israel eager to exploit Fakhravar for their purposes.  In the past in the U.S. those purposes included promoting regime change.  Today, in Israel those purposes are precisely the opposite, at least as far as his Israeli patrons are concerned.  He’s pimping for sanctions.  So the question is who’s paying his way?  I’d guess that it must be elements within the Mossad who are opposed to an Israeli attack. The other question is are the views he’s peddling to the Israeli media sincere or is he talking entirely differently to those he’s briefing in Israel behind closed doors? Frankly, I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw him.

Laura Rozen, back in the days when she was writing challenging reporting for Mother Jones about U.S. policy toward Iran, published an expose about him calling him the “Iranian Chalabi.” All I can say to Israel is caveat emptor. I don’t know what this guy is doing in Israel right now, but whatever it is he’s a fraud and any Israeli, even ones seeking to avert war, are being suckered either knowingly or unknowingly.

Last month, Yossi Melman wrote (this article strangely is no longer directly available on the Haaretz site, but is still accessible through Google cache) in Haaretz that Fakhravar’s December trip to Israel was cancelled because a former IDF officer now living in New York warned security associates he knew in Israel of the Iranian’s dubious past. The next thing I knew he was interviewed on Israeli TV last night.

Not to be outdone by the ludicrous goings-on in Washington DC, where our own Justice Department has tried to turn a drug-dealing, wife abusing, failed businessman into an Iranian Terrorist Mastermind, the Brits are trying to best us.  The Tory government’s recently resigned defense minister, Liam Fox, left in disgrace after he was deeply implicated in a pay for play scandal involving a best friend, Adam Werrity, who jet-setted around the world with Fox and freelanced an independent foreign and defense policy that set official government figures on edge.

Adam Werrity and Liam Fox (R)

I’d followed this scandal peripherally until I started hearing more about Werrity’s doings, and then I really took notice.  Werrity, it appears, held views roughly similar to Michael Ledeen and cultivated wealthy pro-Israel donors who funded his travels to Iran, Israel and other locales where, among other things, he plotted the overthrow of the Iranian regime:

The revelation that the man who had unrestricted access to Mr Fox while he was serving in David Cameron’s Cabinet was at the same time attempting to unseat the Iranian President will fuel alarm in the Foreign Office that he was pursuing a freelance foreign policy and acting as a “rogue operator”.

In order to be a neocon version of James Bond, Werrity required an extensive bankroll to fund his stays at first class luxury hotels.  He found funding to the tune of hundred of thousands of pounds from some of the most well-known Tory and pro-Israel fatcats in Britain including the chair of the UK equivalent of Aipac (called Bicom):

The Finnish billionaire Chaim “Poju” Zabludowicz, who has given the Tories more than £100,000, was also named as a Pargav donor, via his company, Tamares Real Estate. Mr Zabludowicz shares Mr Fox’s pro-Israel opinions and chairs the pro-Israel lobbying group Bicom. He was yesterday said to be “extremely disappointed” to discover the truth about how his money was used.

Another key Werrity donor and central figure in Bicom was Michael Hintze:

Most significant of all was the involvement of Michael Hintze, the billionaire fund manager who has given the Tories more than £1.4m – including individual donations to Mr Fox, George Osborne and Boris Johnson. He had already been brought under scrutiny after it was revealed that Mr Werritty worked from a desk at the offices of Mr Hintze’s hedge fund, CQS – and that Mr Hintze had donated £29,000 to Atlantic Bridge.

Werrity was cozy not just with the UK pro-Israel lobby, but with figures likely from the Mossad as well:

Mr Werritty, 33, has been debriefed by MI6 about his travels and is so highly regarded by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad – who thought he was Mr Fox’s chief of staff – that he was able to arrange meetings at the highest levels of the Israeli government, multiple sources have told The IoS.

Werrity brought Fox to a dinner meeting with the British ambassador to Israel during a Herzlyia security conference, at which they met Israeli political figures including likely Mossad operatives.  The Israelis were interested in Werrity’s travels to Iran, where he met with opposition figures and likely plotted his regime change agenda.  All of this, of course, allowed the Iranians to claim, falsely we believed, during the post-election riots that British agents were plotting to overthrow the government.  Turns out it likely was true.  Though the Iranians may not have known that Werrity was doing so unofficially, not on behalf of the British government.  But how can you blame the Iranians for not understanding the difference when it appears neither the Israelis, nor lots of others did either.  In fact, an Israeli is quoted as saying he understood Werrity was Fox’s chief of staff.

Here is what official Britain thought of Werrity’s doings:

One Whitehall source was scathing of Mr Werritty. The source said: “Ask yourself what he was doing there. It’s regime change but only in his own mind. I can’t think of anything more stupid, wandering round Iran flying the British flag. Does he really think the answer to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – which we all want to resolve – is to have a bunch of people encouraging the opposition there in that way? We do have a responsibility to those people, and anything that’s done like that has to have government approval, which he doesn’t seem to have had. It’s ridiculous. You are inviting people to believe you have the Government’s resources behind them, and in fact the opposition is likely to be brutally crushed.

Now, what other foreign intelligence agency is plotting regime change?  The Mossad of course.  So the questions arises–just whose interest was Werrity serving when he engaged in all this razzle dazzle and subterfuge?  He appears to suffer from the same illness that afflicts the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S.  They pursue Israel’s interest to the detriment of the interests of their own country, because they don’t see any difference between the two.  Israel’s interests in their eyes become U.S. or UK interests through some miraculous process of transsubstantiation.  Here is how Craig Murray described the problem:

Not only was Werritty being paid to act as an unofficial part of the Defence Secretary’s entourage, the money was coming from people who may have been ready to promote the interests of certain foreign governments, particularly the United States, Israel and Sri Lanka.

…It is plain as a pikestaff that Fox had retained his effective partnership with Werritty in lobbying activities that not only were concerned with Israel and Sri Lanka, but which actively sought to promote the geo-strategic interests of those countries – for money.

…What really was worrying senior officials in the MOD [Ministry of Defense]and Cabinet  Office was the possibility that Fox could be being used as a ‘useful idiot’ by Mossad, Israel’s far-reaching and extremely effective intelligence service.  Key funding sources for Werritty were from the Israeli lobby and a rather obscure commercial intelligence agency.  Might Mossad be pulling Werritty’s strings, with or without his knowledge?

On Friday, two senior Fleet Street journalists also reported hearing similar concerns from other Whitehall officials about possible Israeli intelligence service involvement with Fox and Werritty.   By working closely with an unofficial aide with extraordinary access but no security vetting and murky funding sources, Fox had potentially compromised national security.  That is the real story here.

Now, the moment so many of you have all been waiting for: the première of Clarion Fund/Aish Hatorah’s latest magnum opus in its epic trilogy of Islamophobia.  Iranium is coming.  It will be premiered (where else) at the Heritage Foundation and introduced by one of the great neocon charlatans, Richard Perle.  It will be screened at New York City AMC Theaters.  Years in the making and with a cast of neocon thousands (well, OK maybe “tens”) and a seeminly unlimited budget (fronted no doubt by far-right Jewish Republican fatcats like Barre Seid who spent $17-million promoting Obsession), Iranium will scare the wits out of you (well, maybe not you) and send you crawling to your local Congress member demanding that they do something, anything about Iran before it’s too late.

Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton actually watched the entire film before Clarion locked down its Vimeo account and made the file private.  Their review is available at Teheran Bureau.  If anyone here has access to the full length version, please let me know.  I think it’s critical that progressives watch this film, blog about it and so steal the thunder from Clarion and the war party advocating attacking Iran.  The more we can tell the world what this film is really about the less people will fall prey to the inevitable propaganda that will pass for objective information about the “Iranian threat.”

Reza Khalili: alleged Iranian double agent and star of 'Iranium' (Reuters)

I’ve been watching video segments consisting of portions of the film and one sticks out like a sore thumb.  It’s video of an interview with an alleged Iranian CIA spy, Reza Khalili (not his real name, nor is anything else about this guy genuine).  The name was familiar to me and then I realized why.  Yossi Melman profiled him in Haaretz.  When I read his piece something about it smelled fishy.  This was confirmed when Prof. Muhammad Sahimi also suspected fraud.  He wrote about the alleged spy:

Even according to him [Khalili], the last time he was with the IRGC [Revolutionary Guards] – if he was – was in late 1980s, twenty-years ago. Things have changed fundamentally. The IRGC has changed, but so also has the society. What relevance his “experience” has to the current state of affairs? None.

The article is also full of inaccuracies…When he was supposedly with the IRGC, there was no nuclear program to speak of; so what does he know? As much as anyone else based on public information.

…This guy, Khalili is not even smart. If he were, he would try to make his case without invoking Israel and the Nazis.  The very fact that he does goes to show that he is associated with lunatics and at best is an opportunist.

On this subject, can you tell me any Iranian besides the Mujahadeen e-Khalq, who publicly advocate bombing Iran and who say if the U.S. doesn’t have the nerve they hope Israel will? Can you tell me any Iranian (other than perhaps monarchists living in Beverly Hills) who ape Bibi’s “it’s 1938 and Teheran is Munich” hysteria? Can you tell me any Iranian who complains that the West had a chance to overthrow the Iranian regime last June “without firing a single bullet” and didn’t do it? Do you know an Iranian who believes that among the last remaining signs of the coming of the Iranian messiah that must occur are the “destruction of Israel and bombing of Persian oil fields and European capitals?”

Does this guy pass the smell test?

One of the few honest statements in Melman’s profile is an acknowledgement that Khalili is associated with “conservative right-wing circles in the U.S.” Among other lies or misstatements in Melman’s profile is the claim that Khalili’s alleged mentor Dr. Ali Shariati, was assassinated by the SAVAK (Iran’s Shah-era secret police). Prof. Sahimi correctly notes that Shariati died of a terminal illness and was not killed by anyone. Either Khalili is making up stories and Melman hasn’t done his research or Melman himself is trying to pass off lies as truth.

Melman’s story also claims that Khalili taught Revolutionary Guard personnel how to use computers. In another passage, Khalili notes that his most active period in the Guard was in the “early 1980s.” I myself took a computer science course at Columbia University in 1980 and computers were in their infancy. Microsoft didn’t even begin as a company until 1980 and Windows wasn’t developed until 1985. I am dubious that Khalili taught anyone anywhere computers in the early 1980s.  Another strike against him.

Clarion Fund has also trotted out similar alleged Muslim “turncoats” to people its earlier films, among them the notorious Zuhdi Jasser, the star of Third Jihad.  Before that it was Walid Shoebat, the fake PLO terrorist, and Tawfiq Hamid.  So it’s a common ploy of these people to latch onto sources of dubious repute and hang the weight of their expose on the expertise they bring and the ‘authenticity’ of their inside knowledge of the subject, whether it be the race for the world Muslim Caliphate or Iranian world ‘domination.

Take a look at a few of Khalili’s bedfellows and you’ll get a sense of how trustworthy he is.  Roger Simon of Pajamas Media interviewed him in 2008, claiming the CIA offered an email approving publication of a profile of him (thus giving him the CIA Good Housekeeping seal of approval).  Pat Robertson’s CBN also featured him.

Khalili has even written an “exposé” of his “double-life” working for the CIA while a Revolutionary Guard, A Time to Betray.  It even looks like he hoodwinked as formidable a journalistic figure as the Washington Post’s David Ignatius into reviewing it (and highly favorably I might add).

I invite my readers to peruse other video footage used in Iranium. If you note any similar howlers to this one please let me know. We’ve got to take this propaganda apart line by line if necessary to drain the toxin from the body politic that the film is liable to build up.

Norman Finkelstein coined the phrase the “Holocaust industry” in his book of the same name, to describe the nexus of Jewish groups, lawyers, politicians, and communal leaders who enrich their power and pocketbook by trumpeting the anti-Semitism threat and causing anxiety and paranoia among world Jewry as a result.  As a result of Finkelstein’s acute analysis, he’s earned outrage and scorn from those in the Jewish community who he has skewered.

For the past decade or more, since the 1990s demise of the Communist “menace” and its accompanying gravy train, neocons have turned to terror as their new bogeyman.  A new Terror Industry has sprung up and it is populated with the usual retired generals (William Boykin), former government officials (Bolton, Gaffney), corporate opportunists (Aubrey Chernick), ideologues and intellectual heavy-lifters (Pipes, Horowitz, Podhoretz, Peretz, Kristol).  Just as the Jefferson’s tree of liberty needed to be fed with the blood of tyrants, so the Terror apparatus needs to be fed with new political fodder.

Such is the effort led by Jewish pro-Israel neocons to turn anti-jihadism into the Terror Industry’s new mantra.

There at the creation was Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy.  You’ll recall that Gaffney was a middle-ranking member of Ronald Reagans’ Defense Department.  As early as 1990, Christopher Hitchens, before he became a parody of himself, wrote in his book, How Neo-Conservatives Perish,  about Gaffney’s prescience in grasping at the need for a new source of political power to replace the decline of Communism.  Since then, he’s become one of the go-to guys for all things hawkish, neocon and pro-Israel among policy wonks.

Today, Matt Duss wrote about a report on alleged American Muslim terror threats which was, I’m embarrassed to say, actually endorsed by three members of Congress.  Among them were Her Looniness Michelle Bachman and Peter Hoekstra, former chair of the House Intelligence Committee.  If you want a sense of what the national security agenda of a new Republican House majority would be read the report, Sharia: The Threat To America.

According to it, the new Muslim bogeyman is Shariah, about which the authors in their Times op-ed say:

Today, the United States faces a similarly insidious ideological threat:Shariah, the authoritarian doctrine that animates the Islamists and their jihadism…

Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates…

The other side of the divide is dominated by “Islamists,” who are Muslim supremacists. Like erstwhile proponents of communism and Nazism, these supremacists – some terrorists, others employing stealthier means – seek to impose a global theocratic and authoritarian regime, called a caliphate. On this side of the divide, Shariah is a compulsory system that Muslims are obliged to wage jihad to install and to which the rest of the world is required to submit.

For these ideologues, Shariah is not a private matter. They see the West as an infidel enemy to be conquered, not a culture and civilization to be embraced or at least tolerated. It is impossible, they maintain, for alternative legal systems and forms of government like ours to coexist peacefully with the end-state they seek.

…we need to come to grips with Shariah. Whether pursued through violent jihad or the stealthier techniques the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” or dawa (the call to Islam), Shariah rejects fundamental premises of constitutional governance and American society…

Here’s the money quote:

Shariah adherents – including a network of Muslim Brotherhood-connected organizations operating in the United States – are seriously pursuing civilization jihad in this country. Their agenda is about power, not faith…

…The endgame of Islamist ideology is the same whether pursued by terrorists or nonviolent activists: to extort American society into Sharia compliance.

The Sharia Report was sponsored by Gaffney’s CSP, and written by three former Cold Warriors turned anti-jihadis, among them James Woolsey and the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy.  In the Washington Times where he celebrated the release of the report he had the temerity to say that among the Muslims Pres. Obama invites to the White House for Iftar dinners might be members of Al Qaeda.  He’s also notorious for claiming that Pres. Obama “might” still be a Muslim.  He also claims that the current administration has “communicated submission” to America’s enemies.

Duss in his post, has identified an old familiar Jewish extremist face peeking out of the CSP woodwork, its general counsel, David Yerushalmi (ne Beychok).  When last seen in this blog, he had been banished by, of all people, Daniel Pipes for embarrassing the group, Stop the Madrassa (where he also was general counsel), with his ultra-extremist beliefs.  That group was the catalyst for the anti-Muslim backlash that led New York’s mayor and schools chancellor to demand the resignation of Debbie Almontaser, the founding principal of the Muslim charter school, the Khalil Gibran Academy.  She has successfully sued the city under an EEOC suit.

Though trained as a lawyer, Yerushalmi earns his living from the Terror Industry and its new anti-jihadi adjunct.  He has reportedly become Frank Gaffney’s “rabbi” when it comes to the study of Islamism and jihadism.  But where has Yerushalmi learned about Islam?  Does he have a graduate degree, even from as slanted a source as Bernard Lewis?  No.  Did he study Islam with any noted scholars (even non-Muslim)?  Doubtful.  What Yerushalmi has are some half-baked notions he’s either read in a book or developed out of his own paranoiac imagination about the Muslim menace.

Among Yerushalmi’s more wacky views: American Muslims should be confined to concentration camps for the threat they pose of overthrowing the government.  This is a quotation from his website:

The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation.

He and his anti-jihadi Gauleiter, Dave Gaubatz, orchestrated a “sting” against D.C. area local mosques by posing as worshippers and seeking to “out” the imams for their alleged support of jihad and terror.  You’ll recall this is the same Gaubatz whose son posed as an intern while working at CAIR and stole internal organizational documents which dad was hoping would prove CAIR’s commitment to a Sharia overthrow of the U.S. government.  Daddy G. just accepted a legal ruling that he must return the documents which his son had stolen.

Returning to the other Dave (Yerushalmi), giving the vote to African-Americans was a foolish idea.  He calls this “raw” or “liberal democracy” and he’s agin’ it.  Doesn’t think much of Abe Lincoln, either.  Says the Founding Fathers opposed democracy as well.  He may be one of the few Jewish white supremacists around.  He calls Bill O’Reilly a “secular progressive” and of Sean Hannity, he says he ”participates in the destruction of America’s national existence.”

He’s apparently learned a lesson or two about keeping his outlandish views under wraps because his website, SANEWorks (Society of Americans for National Existence), used to be publicly accessible and now is only available to those who pony up the $2,000 subscription fee.

At the press conference which featured the announcement of report, Matt questioned Gaffney about the origin of the notions of Islam found in it.  The former secured a damaging admission from the anti-jihadi wonk:

Noting some of the report’s broad and controversial claims about Islamic law, such as that all Muslims are duty-bound to wage jihad against unbelievers, I asked Gaffney how many actual Muslims or Islamic scholars he and his group had consulted with in writing the report. He could not name any, though he noted that he had consulted with various Muslims “over the years.”

So there you have it. A report on the threat posed by Islamic law to the United States, one of whose leaders admits to having started studying Islam only three years ago, whose authors admit consulting with no actual Muslims, produced by a think tank that has previously claimed that key members of the Obama administration are part of the Iran Lobby.

In short, this is all nonsense.  But it is very dangerous nonsense.  It is nonsense that could easily lead us into war with Iran. And that would be for starters.  These ghoulish hatemongers propose a holy war against 1.4-billion people.  They would have our country in a perpetual state of conflict, a latter-day anti-Muslim Sparta.  As for me, I prefer to be Athens any day.

We must say no to the Terror Industry and their anti-Muslim ideologues.  If they are ascendant in the national political debate, it means the destruction of everything many of us hold dear about this country.  And we’ll say Dick Cheney was a piker by comparison.

I’m pissed.  Royally so.  If Phil Weiss, Stephen Walt, Glenn Greenwald, Jim Lobe and a whole host of others can be smeared by Tabloid (er, Tablet) Magazine as anti-Israel agents of influence, why was I left out?  Does it mean I’m not important enough?  Or not anti-Israel enough?  Or not eloquent enough?

This post is gonna give you a kick, to read the “quality” journalism practiced by Tablet, a project sponsored by NextBook and underwritten, according to a little Jewish birdie who’s a maven about Jewish foundations, by the Avi Chai Foundation.  The latter is a major funder of Birthright Israel.  Besides board member “Big Mameh neocon” Ruth Wisse, the foundation shares two major board members with the Tikvah Fund: Arthur Fried (Avi Chai’s board chair) and Mem Bernstein.  Tikvah, along with Shelly Adelson, funds the Likudist Shalem Center (think-tank home of Michael Oren and Natan Sharansky), Jewish Ideas Daily, an enterprise my little Jewish birdie calls a “neocon shtick dreck,” and Jewish Review of Books, a right-wing rip off of the New York Review of Books.  On Tikvah’s board sits none other than…William Kristol.

The Avi Chai Foundation claims as its spiritual godfather, Rav Avraham Kook, also the spiritual godfather of the Greater Israel movement. The philanthropy notes in its guidelines:

Support will only be given to programs or institutions which express a positive attitude towards the State of Israel

Weekly Standard's Lee Smith, doyenne of Aipac and resident Islamophobe

The slash-and-burn Tablet article is written by Lee Smith who’s written the distinguished Islamophobic title, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations.  He’s the “Middle East correspondent” of, you guessed it, Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard. How’s that for keepin’ it all in the family?

Smith really has his journalistic chops down. Instead of proving his tawdry claim that these Israel-critical bloggers are anti-Israel “agents of influence,” he quotes from their comment threads(!). Talk about guilt by association. Smith, of course, neglects the fact that the Talkbacks of the Israeli online news media are among the most vicious, disgusting, racist and genocidal I’ve ever come across. Does this mean that we should accuse Haaretz, Ynet and Maariv of favoring the views of their readers? If so, where does it end? Should we bring Amos Schocken, Amnon Denker and all the editors of these publications up on charges of racism and incitement?

Smith even quotes neocon fellow-traveler Jeffrey Goldberg–not criticizing substantively anything written by the above-charged suspects; rather the latter notes the noxious e-mails he claims (without providing any proof) he receives from their readers whenever they write attacking his views. Goldberg also delivers a patently offensive and unsupported claims that Stephen Walt’s is a “Jew-baiting blog.” Yes, this is what passes for journalism at Tablet.

The only proof offered by Smith that Walt’s blog is Israel-obsessed is a supposed factoid that two non-Israel-related posts generated 13 and 58 comments and an Israel-related one generated 350. And then this rather remarkable little diatribe:

These numbers suggest that the purpose of Walt’s blog is to act as a magnet for the animus of a readership hostile not only to Israel but also to American figures friendly to Israel, especially American Jews.

Actually these numbers don’t ‘suggest’ anything of the sort. They suggest that the subject of Israel is hotly debated online and that there are many readers with strong opinions about it, both right and left.

Not a word from any of the accused of course. Not even a claim from the author that he attempted to contact them and they refused to cooperate (something that would’ve been wise it appears if Smith had bothered to ask). We’ve all heard of “smash mouth” journalism. This is smash-mouth Jewish journalism. The Avi Chai Foundation should be proud.

To return to the beginning of this post, I’m pissed. Why couldn’t I be included as an anti-Israel “agent of influence?” Why do Weiss, Walt, Greenwald, etc. get all the fun? I even wrote a semi-facetious e mail to Tablet’s editor offering to write anything they wished that might get me included in any future smear job Smith or any of their other writers might wish to write. What does a guy gotta do to get any respect from the neocon Jewish tabloid press around here?

For many years, I’ve touted my virtual Jewish club, the Spinoza Society, a home for Jews whose views are before their time; Jews who espouse ideas considered so outrageous that they’re ostracized by their fellow Jews, who are too callow and too herd-driven to consider the truth that lies within them.  I welcome all of the smeared as honorary members of my club.

Smith also left out some superb Jewish bloggers who deserve his consideration as fonts of ‘anti-Israel hate’ (please note the irony intended by the quotation marks): there’s Larry Derfner at the Jerusalem Post, Brad Burston at Haaretz, Jerry Haber at Magnes Zionist, Paul Woodward at War in Context, Helena Cobban at Just World News, and Matt Duss at Think Progress among others (and sorry if I’ve left you out and you want to be included among the chosen few). Why do they get short shrift? I guess there’s so much anti-Israel blogging going on and so little column inches to expose it. Maybe if Avi Chair coughs up another couple a hundred thou Tablet could create a new column, ‘Israel Hater of the Week’ or something along those lines. It’s a thought.

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It’s not just Israel that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  American Jewish neocons have been proliferating so many hysterically-Islamophobic campaign outfits in the run-up to the midterm elections, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.  There is of course the granddaddy/zaideh of smearmesiters, the Republican Jewish Coalition.   In the 2008 election, the RJC and Aish HaTorah mated (in spirit if not in body) and produced the Clarion Fund, which flacked for John McCain.  Lately it is touting its new hate-Iran film, the third in an anti-Muslim trilogy.  We can expect it to continue the same type of dirty tricks it exploited in the last election, where it spent upwards of $20-million distributing another of its Muslim-hate films to 28-million voters in swing states.

Eli Clifton and I have written about some other anti-Muslim campaign front groups which have proliferated like weeds after a Negev spring flood: Keep Israel Safe was founded by Gary Bauer and Tom Rose, who deserves credit as the Jerusalem Post editor who first moved it to the hard-right political stance it adopted after decades of centrist mediocrity; and Stop Iran Now, an ideologically wholly-owned subsidiary of Citizens United (yes THAT Citizen’s United, whom the Supreme Court offered a green light to spend countless millions smearing Democratic candidates).  The chief champion of all these groups is William Kristol and his Weekly Standard, election central for the Likudist neocon movement.

Now we have yet another mushroom sprouting after a spring rain: the Emergency Committee for Israel.  The parentage of this cuddly little package is also interesting.  Eli Clifton notes that the group was first promoted during a Campbell Brown CNN interview with Noah Pollak, the group’s executive director.  Brown is married to Dan Senor, a senior Bush apparatchik and likely major player in 2012 Republican election campaigns.

Pollak is a former assistant editor of the Shalem Center’s publication, Azure.  The Center is heavily funded by Las Vegas gambling tycoon, Shelly Adelson, Bibi Netanyahu’s moneyman and funder of the new Israeli daily, Yisrael HaYom (also known unflatteringly as Bibi-ton).  Pollak also contributes regularly to Commentary Magazine, the true zaideh of the Jewish neocon movement.

The Committee’s domain, emergencycommitteeforisrael.com, is registered to Margaret Hoover, granddaughter of Depression-era Pres. Herbert Hoover, and a former high-level Bush operative.  One hopes she will bring better luck to this enterprise than her grandfather brought to the U.S. economy in 1929 & thereafter.  As a consultant for the Republican Israel lobby, she could try a Hoover-era slogan rebutting charges of Israeli starvation of Gaza: “a chicken in every pot.”  Maybe she’ll recommend resolving the Palestinian refugee crisis by creating a series of Hoovervilles.  No wait, that’s how most Palestinians currently live.  She also participated in Rudy Giuliani’s failed presidential campaign, in which Norm Podhoretz was also an advisor who warned Iran was intent on fomenting a world war or something to that effect.  The new group’s board includes…you guessed it…Gary Bauer, William Kristol and Rachel Abrams-Dechter-Podhoretz.

If I were Pollak, I’d keep in mind what happens to mushrooms after the rains dry up: they wither and die just as these pro-Israel hate groups will do after November, and after their donors will have thrown good money after bad in funding these useless vanity campaigns which have absolutely no effect on the Jewish vote, which remains solidly Democratic.  As a test, we’ll watch the Joe Sestak PA. senate race for which the Committee has produced the hysterical campaign ad featured above.

Ben Smith’s reporting on this story for Politico features this incredible quotation from Kristol in which he actually claims that Aipac’s politics are too liberal (a view shared by the way with Shelly Adelson, if you’ve read his devestating New Yorker profile):

“Then there’s AIPAC, which is a wonderful organization, but one that’s very committed to working with the administration, so they pull some punches publicly.”

Kristol also has the chutzpah to claim he’s modeling his effort as a conservative mirror to J Street.  There is of course one major difference between the two: J Street has grassroots support, with tens of thousands of donors and over 100,000 who’ve signed up for its alerts.  The Committee has a bunch of cigar-chomping rich Jewish guys pursuing their political vanity project.

Another curious factoid about Pollak: he’s a moderator of a Porsche car forum (and a member for at least ten years).  That must be where all the lucre Pollak’s earning from Shelly Adelson and his other Jewish neocon fat cat donors is going: into his Porsche collection.  He should keep this concealed from all of his Burlington, VT. neighbors.  That, of course is Bernie Saunders country.  I don’t imagine there are too many Porsches tooling around Burlington’s streets especially not in those harsh New England winters.  I guess it won’t disturb too many of his fellow Jewish neocons that he drives a German car since so many of them are driving Mercedes, BMWs, Audis and the like.

There are additional anti-Iran front groups created by the Jewish community, which seem designed to do Israel’s bidding rather than the Republican Party’s.  Among them is Stand for Freedom in Iran, purportedly a grassroots community coalition which was in truth incorporated by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.  Remember too the 2008 campaign fiasco when the President’s Conference booked Sarah Palin to keynote a UN anti-Iran rally when Ahmadinejad was scheduled to address the world body.  That didn’t go over too well with the Obama campaign and most New York Jews, who detested Palin.

Eli Clifton writes that Clarion Fund‘s new anti-Iran film is to be called (quite creatively) Iranium. I wrote about it a few weeks ago when news of it first surfaced. But now the Aish HaTorah-affiliated Clarion has a website for the film which reveals some interesting and damaging information. A review of the Interviewee page shows many of the usual pro-Israel Islamophobic neocon suspects like James Woolsey, Rachel Ehrenfeld, and Bernard Lewis. There is the requisite retired U.S. general.

Clarion lays out the purpose of the film clearly:

The film will present a wide array of options to combat the threat and will target influential U.S. interest groups and policy makers. 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.

The italicized phrase clearly delineates the goal of the producers as rolling back Iran, which could easily be construed as regime change.  This is no surprise since it is a popular theme among Jewish neocons and their allies.  It is important when the Republican Jewish Coalition begins pimping this film come the fall election campaign, spending millions of dollars on screenings at synagogues and ads in the Jewish Forward, etc. that anyone who considers writing a word about it know that there is a radical military-interventionist message inherent in this film.  And this message is heavily endorsed by Israel’s current right-wing government, which would like nothing more than to see the U.S. either attack Iran or allow Israel to do so on its behalf.

Anyone who has followed Clarion’s previous propaganda ventures, Obsession and Third Jihad, will know that their M.O. is to co-opt a “native” to denounce “radical Islam” in the case of those two films, and Iran in the case of this one.  In the former case, it was rightist Republican Arizona cardiologist Zuhdi Jasser, who performed the requisite role of Muslim-bashing.

Caspian Makan: face of a fraud

For Iranium, they have recruited a new “star” of the Green protest movement, Caspian Makan.  If you read his press clippings from publications as august as the Guardian, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this guy was Moussavi and Karroubi’s right-hand man.  Makan claims to have been Neda Soltan’s fiance (not true) and claims to have been with her in her final moments after being fatally shot during the June riots in Teheran (also untrue).  Makan will tell anyone who will listen of the terrible hardships he has suffered both as a heroic partisan of the Green movement and as a refugee who fled on an arduous trek through Kurdish Iran to Turkey and then to exile in Canada.

Last month, this impostor even got an audience (no doubt thanks to his connections with the Clarion folks–what a great coup for their film!) with Israeli President Shimon Peres.  Apparently, the president’s handlers didn’t do their due diligence on this fellow–or else they did and they found him too much of a hasbara gold mine to pass up.  You can read the propaganda clearly articulated in the Jerusalem Post’s dutiful patriotic stengography.

Iason Athanasiadis, has written the definitive expose of Makan, pointing out his tenuous relationship with facts and the truth.  Indeed, Athanasiadis published Makan’s first interview after he escaped from Iran.  As such, this journalist should be accorded some respect in light of his disavowal of the so-called Iranian dissident hero.

It is interesting that when Makan first arrived in the west he was Neda Soltan’s fiance.  Here is how he described her last day in the Guardian interview:

On the day of her death, Caspian was out with his camera in another part of the city. “I was taking pictures of the protests and the protesters that day. It was hard to take pictures as the security guards were beating up protesters. I used my mobile’s camera when I couldn’t use my big camera. It was six to seven in the evening when I started seeing people get shot and injured. I thought of Neda a lot. I was very worried for her. I wanted to call her but the mobile phone system had been disconnected and I couldn’t contact her at all. I didn’t sleep that night. The terrible scenes were going through my head. I was sitting in front of my computer, looking at the photos I had taken. Around six in the morning my mobile rang. It was Neda’s number. But it wasn’t her. It was her sister. She said, ‘Caspian, Neda is gone!’ I didn’t understand what she meant. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me.”

And here is his description of his imprisonment following her death.  Note how it sounds like it comes right from the pages of a Victorian romantic novel:

“They told me they were taking me to Evin prison. They took me to a prison cell. Neda’s grave number was 32. The grave next to that was number 34, my cell’s number. I didn’t want to come back after they took me. I wanted them to kill me as well.”

There was one small problem with all of this.  It wasn’t true, as described by the Turkey-based reporter:

Makan launched into an account of Neda’s final days that was tragic and compelling. Unfortunately, it was also full of lies. The way he told it, Neda — a very politicized young woman — begged him to sally forward into the streets with his camera and document events. He dutifully did so, snapping extraordinary images of Revolutionary Guardsmen hanging off helicopters, mercilessly shooting into the demonstrators.

“Really?” I asked. “That’s funny, I never heard even a claim of helicopter-mounted snipers.”

“Yes, yes,” Makan assured me. “I would show you the evidence but the Islamic Republic confiscated all my archives.”

With Neda dead, Makan started giving interviews to international television channels, achieving the kind of international media profile he had always sought…Clutching a lock of Neda’s hair and a few pictures he snapped of her during their two-month acquaintance, he began a morbid international tour.

His blurb at the Uranium site calls him “her close friend.”  This is closer to the truth of the matter:

Not only was Makan not Neda’s fiance when she died, they were not even romantically linked anymore. Neda left him after a row they had and Caspian was allegedly seeing another girl, with whom he was spotted attending one of the post-election protest marches..

Similarly, Athanasiadis notes that when he had first met Makan some years ago, the latter had claimed to be a photographer but none of the photographers the former queried who would know of his work had ever heard of him.  I note the Uranium site calls Makan “an Iranian documentary filmmaker.”  Dare we ask to see any of his “documentaries?”  Is there even one?

The journalist describes Makan’s harrowing tale of privation during his trek to freedom, but then notes that the smugglers who took their lives in their hands to carry him to safety couldn’t stand the sight of him.  Apparently, he had the nerve to complain about the quality of the accommodations they provided him on his journey!

If the alleged Iranian dissident had a reason for leaving Iran it doesn’t appear to be the one he claims.  Rather, he had gone from being a regime-favored landscape photographer to being out of favor:

As a landscape photographer, he had always depended on the Islamic Republic for commissions (the Ministry of Culture block-bought all 3,000 prints of his book of landscapes from the Caspian Sea, one of the regime’s method for rewarding docile artists). Now, he was out of favor and the Ministry of Culture did not return his calls. So Makan escaped to Turkey.

Makan may have a burning passion, but it is not for Iranian democracy.  Rather it appears to be a passion for the good life and the fruits of success possible in the west:

Makan’s Narcissus complex is clear from the photographs of himself that he posts on Facebook, wearing elaborate suits and ties, driving a Mercedes, or Karate Kid-like in martial arts poses…

Now, in interviews conducted inside gleaming TV studios, he looks smug as a bug in a rug in his brand new suit. Neda must be spinning in her grave.

So much for Iranium’s token Iranian.  I’d say that, in a play on the film’s title that, rather than Iran being radioactive, their Iranian hero is.  It’s somehow fitting that Clarion has turned to a charlatan for affirmation of their anti-Iranian views, since those behind this film are charlatans as well, albeit political ones.

It’s also worth noting that the anti-Muslim right seems to have a special need to embrace such quisling frauds.  Aish HaTorah, with which Clarion is closely affiliated, has adopted another alleged Muslim convert to Judaism, a former druggie calling himself “Mark” (not his original name) Halawa.  I called him the Manchurian Muslim in the post I wrote about him.  Another was Walid Shoebat, the pseudonym of a Palestinian who claimed to be a Muslim-born PLO terrorist who turned against terror, the PLO, and became a Christian evangelical.  Only problem, he was none of the things he claimed to be.

There is also another interesting character appearing in the film.  Harold Rhode is a former colleague of Doug Feith and protegé of Bernard Lewis and Richard Perle.  He worked with Feith and Perle via the infamous Pentagon Office of Net Assessment, where he was responsible for plotting U.S. military strategy in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

He reaffirmed in an interview with the Jerusalem Post the standard lies of Cheney and other neocon warriors that Saddam was in bed with Al Qaeda and thought this was a more effective argument for war than Iraqi WMD (he at least was right on one of those counts).  Here is a sampling of Rhode’s sharp analysis of the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection and by extension all of Islam:

He [Saddam] was clearly involved with these bastards, with al-Qaida and all sorts of other fundamentalists who are out to destroy the West.

Why should Saddam, a secular Sunni, get involved with al-Qaida? What was his motivation?

Let’s say say that everybody here is helping everybody else. I help you in ways that are good for you, and you help me in ways that are good for me. I have a money system that can transfer things; you use it. I need weapons transferred to someone that you have connections with. I’m not your leader, you’re not my leader. It’s mutual. They’re all on the same side here… Look, there were times the KGB and the CIA were on the same side and there are times right now that this country [Israel] and Saudi Arabia are on the same side – that’s until the day Iran is taken care of and then that will end.

If he’s secular, why did he write “Allahu akhbar” in his own blood on the flag, why did he supposedly have a Koran written in his blood? Why? I don’t know what secular means. Secular is a nice Western word. The best way you can put that in Arabic is la diniyah. La means no and diniyah is the law. That means you don’t fear God, you don’t fear judgment day. That means you can kill me or I can kill you and I’m not afraid of what God will say.

I’m ashamed to say that this is a man once employed by the U.S. government as an expert on Islam and the Muslim world.  The fact that he’s starring in a new Clarion fund propaganda extravaganza doesn’t surprise me.  But that he was sitting in a Pentagon office charting U.S. war policy speaks volumes about our utter failure there during the Bush years.

Thanks to Eli Clifton for sharing his background information about Rhode.

Also published at Alternet:

Rudy Giuliani, potential future Republican candidate for governor of New York, keynoted the Stand for Freedom in Iran rally earlier today at the UN.  Like a similar rally last year during the presidential campaign, when the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations invited Sarah Palin to keynote an anti-Iran UN rally, Giuliani confirms that tomorrow’s event, sponsored by the New York Jewish community, represents a hardline neocon agenda.  By announcing Giuliani’s participation less than 24 hours before the event, the rally organizers avoid the cries of political partisanship that would build (which is precisely what happened in Palin’s case) if his invovlement had been announced earlier.

The Stand for Freedom website doesn’t acknowledge that this coalition of New York ethnic, religious and labor groups was organized by the Jewish community (it’s website is registered by the Jewish Community Relations Council).  I wonder whether the non-Jewish groups know that it has been hijacked by a partisan political agenda?  The website doesn’t mention Israel, in whose interests all these events are being planned.  It doesn’t mention that the sole Iranian-American sponsoring group has ties to the Mujahadeen al Khalq, listed as a terror group by the U.S. government.  The People’s Mujahadeen also favors the violent overthrow of the Iranian regime.

Instead, the rally’s stated political agenda appears relatively innocuous, indicating its support for the Iranian reform movement.  The truth is, involvement of hawks like Rudy Giuliani and the Progressive American Iranian Committee will damage the reputation of the reform movement and drive Iranians into the arms of hardliners like Ahmadinejad.

So why would the Jewish community do such a thing?  I believe they not only don’t really care about Iranian reformers, they in fact seek a hardening of U.S. policy toward Iran, leading up to a possible Israeli attack.  So what the Netanyahu government, American neocons, and the Israel lobby ultimately want is regime change by any means necessary.

Yes, sanctions are what they say they want.  But just as with Iraqi sanctions under the Bush administration, they are a means to get to the next level, which is a military solution.  I am sorry to say that the leadership of American Jewry has been co-opted by the Israeli diplomatic corps in this country.  It is carrying water for Israel and doing so in league with the Republican right represented by Giuliani.

American Jews do not share these views.  Our so-called leaders are out of step with their followers.  But the former somehow is given carte-blanche.  That is why we progressive Jewish bloggers do what we do.  We say, No.  You don’t represent us.  You don’t even represent Israel’s real interests.  You represent your own wealthy class interests.  You represent the interests of a right wing Israeli government.  You represent a rush to military action.  We reject this.  We reject you.

Instead we embrace the pragmatists among the Israeli intelligence & political community that endorse diplomatic engagement.  Even Ehud Barak, for what it’s worth, said last week Iran was no existential threat to Israel.  We will make common cause with those in Israel who refuse to drive their nation off the rails by getting into a military adventure that will lead to the same disasters that befell Israel in Lebanon and Gaza.  The difference with Iran though is that it is a country that has means not only to defend itself, but to exact retribution if Israeli bombs should fall on Iranian soil.

In that case, there will be blood: Jewish, Iranian and possibly even American.  Blood that needn’t have been spilled.  I find it hard to believe that Pres. Obama and the international community couldn’t organize to stop this train wreck in the making.  The jury is still out on whether they are prepared to act.