Seth Hettena has done some interesting research into Clarion Fund’s 990 report. He’s discovered that a number of the group’s board members have longstanding and deep ties in partisan Republican circles:
Peter Feaman, a Florida trial lawyer. He’s also the author of Wake Up America! about the dangers of fundamentalist Islam. Feaman has been active in GOP political circles. He has run for the Florida house and serves as the Republican state committeeman for Palm Beach County. He was a delegate to the 2008 GOP convention.
Nina Cunningham, founder of Quidlibet, a legal research consulting firm in Illinois. She has given more than $33,000 to GOP candidates and causes in the past three election cycles, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. She is the Illinois State chair of the Republican Jewish Committee’s women’s committee.
I’ve reported previously here on various Republican connections with Clarion Fund:
- the Republican Jewish Coalition mailed free copies of Obsession to every Jewish and Christian clergymember in the U.S.
- Clarion hired Republican consultants to arrange screenings of the film in Arizona and Michigan
- Clarion distributed 28 million copies of Obsession in the weeks prior to the election, after one of Clarion’s websites derided Obama’s national security experience and praised McCain’s.
- Aish HaTorah’s co-founder has extensive business and political ties with Republican national leaders, especially Tom Ridge as well as Ileana Ros Lehtinen and others.
In other words, Clarion Fund is practically a bought and paid for arm of the Jewish wing of the Republican Party. Aish HaTorah, in turn, as Jeffrey Goldberg has noted, is practically an arm of the rightist settler movement. All this leads one to believe that a group of far-right Israeli-American Orthodox Jews have teemed up with Republicans in order to kill two birds with one stone. They can exploit fears of Muslims and Islam to drum up American Jewish support for a pro-settler/pro-Israel political agenda AND flay the Democrats, who allegedly are soft on terror, specifically Muslim terror.
It’s seamy and nasty, but utterly in keeping with the lies and histrionics which characterize the Republican Jewish right and the Orthodox pro-settler right.
Among the dumb concepts that George Bush created (or his speechwriters) was an “Axis of Evil” consisting of three countries. An axis only has two ends, not three. So rhetorically what Bush said seems a mangling of the language. In this post, I originally wanted to include Clarion Fund, Aish HaTorah, the Settler movement, and GOP in my Jewish Axis of Evil. But that was way too many axes, so I had to slim it down to only two.
The main “Axis” powers in World War II were Germany, Italy and Japan. They also had as allies Hungary, Rumanian and Bulgaria, so this “axis” had 3 or more parts too. Richard, I guess they were as dumb as Bush, right?
Richard,
There will be more to come. The 990 is actually a request for an extension stating, “information necessary to prepare a complete and accurate tax form not yet available”.
Darn tootin it’s not complete. There are absolutely no figures given for mailing, unless they mailed out all those copies of “Obsession” for 2600 bucks. Total revenue in, 1,903,000, I don’t think so! UNLESS someone else did the mailing. Question is, who?
WOOPS, my error, that was their 2007 990 filing with note for extension. Sorry.
@bar_kochba132: The two main axis powers were Japan & Germany. Italy was a minor ally & out of the alliance within a yr or 2 of the start of the war. THe other allies were even less important. An axis has 2 points. I’m not saying it’s not common usage to have more than 2 entities associated with an axis. I’m just saying that to me it’s rhetorical/semantic mush.
UPDATE:
“…They can exploit fears of Muslims and Islam to drum up American Jewish support for a pro-settler/pro-Israel political agenda”
Though I understand why Aish HaTorah and the Clarion Fund feel the need to conflate being Pro-Settler with being Pro Israel, I’m not sure I understand why Tikkun Olam feels it necessary to do so.
FROM MR. SILVERSTEIN’S POST:
“Among the dumb concepts that George Bush created (or his speechwriters) was an “Axis of Evil” consisting of three countries. An axis only has two ends, not three. So rhetorically what Bush said seems a mangling of the language”
********************************************
Yes, I have thought a lot about that. I think the idea was to allude to (guilt by association) the “Axis powers” of WWII (the German Nazis and the Italian fascists).
The original 1930’s “axis” was Rome to Berlin. When Japan later joined with Germany and Italy for WWII, they were still referred to as “the Axis powers” even though the axis concept no longer fit (technically). “Axes powers” (the plural of axis) would have made more sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_Powers
PS. – David Frum is credited with creating the “Axis of Evil” (which should have been “Axes of Evil”). All George W. Bush did was “catapult the propaganda”!!!!
@Shoded Yam: “Pro-Israel” is a tricky phrase. It’s so critical that I’ve actually devoted an entire paragraph in my “About” page to how I mean the phrase when I use it. I almost always attach an adjective like “militant” or “rightist” to “pro-Israel” so readers will know that I am not talking about the avg. person who supports Israel (as I do). The Israel lobby as appropriated the phrase “Pro-Israel” which has unfortunately rid it of any useful meaning as far as I’m concerned. I don’t even like saying I’m “pro-Israel” because of the association. Instead, I say I ‘support’ Israel, which essentially means the same thing.
salam aleikum,
I send you a link to a good documental,
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7680p_censoredla-longe-nuit-the-long-nigh_news?subtitle=es
Keep blogggggger
Best!
Mariat
Other available information suggests a more sinister hypothesis:
Aish has received considerable support from all Israeli governments since the 70s.Wall Street executives have paid Aish private tutoring fees that are in the corporate espionage range.Aish’s national and international organization has the appearance of an intelligence gathering and exchange network particularly in the finance industry. (The system is rather like that of Chabad-Lubavitch only more targeted, and the personnel do not stand out quite as much as Chabad shiluchim.)The religious outreach of Aish looks like cover for more nefarious and possibly illegal activities.
Calling Aish haTorah an arm of the right-wing settler movement does not really seem to capture the relationship, and suggests that the settler movement is more distinct from the Israeli government than it really is.
In addition to the last comment, I would say that the symbiotic relationship that exists between Aish Ha Torah and the Israeli gov’t is a paradigm repeated many times over, a fractile of a behaviour pattern representative of the byzantine inner workings of the Israeli political establishment as a whole. Though AIPAC, et al, are usually quite adept at blowing smoke up everybodies ass, for the past year they’ve been hard pressed in spinning the spectacle of this confluence of American Jewish influence peddling and Israeli greed as the corruption of Olmert has been presented play-by-play by the Israeli and international press.
Richard,
I read you’re “About” page. I’d like to apologize for a certain lack of erudition in regards to the my post questioning you’re characterization of “pro-israel”. Point taken.
SY
@Shoded Yam: Not at all. No need to apologize. It’s a perfectly fair and important point to make. The phrase is a very complex & problematic one because of the ways in which it has been misappropriated.