Thanks to Sarah Posner, Justin Elliott and reader John Dickerson for alerting me to a story about those folks who brought you two perfect-storm anti-Muslim films (Obsession and Third Jihad). They plan to do to Iran what they did to Islamism. Note the mushroom-cloud in the film promotion and the claim that Iran will use nuclear weapons to destroy everything we in the west hold dear, including Israel. And like their last electoral effort, this one will be timed to the upcoming November elections.
Last time around, a media expert quoted by Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton estimated that the Obsession DVD distribution cost between $15-50-million. Justin Elliott does his homework and finds that Clarion took in $18-million in 2008 and spent $15-million, most of this on the cost of duplicating the DVD. The Fund’s 990 report doesn’t specify who gave the $18-million, but there are any number of right-wing Jewish Republican fatcats who’d be only too pleased to do so. In the past, several have speculated it might be Sheldon Adelson. But given Clarion Fund is an extension of the far-right pro-settler Aish HaTorah, my money is on a fellow far-right Orthodox donor. Someone like Irving Moskowitz or Rabbi Irwin Katsof, a billionaire co-founder of Aish.
Elliott’s piece gives us an early warning of the shenanigans planned by the Jewish crackpot-right like Clarion and the Republican Jewish Coalition. I like to say that it’s good that they waste their money on such ineffective projects. If they didn’t, they might actually discover an effective way to do damage against the Democrats. Garbage like this won’t. So I say, along with a thankfully retired president, “Bring it on.”
During the last election, much of the Jewish media featured distorted, misleading ads from the Republican Jewish Coalition touting fear of Barack “Hussein” Obama as anti-Israel. No doubt, Clarion’s Jewish Daddy Warbucks will pay for swank ads in the same publications touting the Iran mushroom cloud film. I’d urge them to consider what Clarion Fund is and consider the lies of their previous two films. Jewish Week, The Forward, Haaretz and JTA clearly need revenue in this terrible climate for print media, but do they need it so badly they have to take funds promoting such garbage?
Here are a few choice quotations from the film’s finely calibrated press release:
Since the inception of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran has displayed hatred for the West. Coupled with an extremist and apocalyptic messianic ideology, this regime has terrorized the world at large for over 30 years.
…The film will document…the West’s inability to recognize the true nature of an extremist Islamic Revolutionary regime…
I was just glancing at Clarion’s website, Radical Islam, when I noticed this absolutely hilarious Facebook feed:
Al-Qaida is laying deadly “booby traps” by equipping its female suicide bombers with explosive breast implants [!] that are impossible to be detected at airport security checkpoints…
The source? That impeccable font of anti-jihadi wisdom, Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch! Should we speculate how Orthodox settlers might conceal their explosives should they ever turn to suicide bombing as a tactic for killing Palestinians? Perhaps explosive tallises (which they wear as an undergarment)?
More on the sinister exploding ‘booby-traps’ can be found here:
http://enduringamerica.com/2010/03/27/war-on-terror-alert-exploding-breasts/
Enjoy the comments 🙂
sorry — that was intemperate. Richard, please — can you remove my earlier comment? thanks.
another funny thing on the Clarion website (don’t know if it’s still there, I saw this some time ago) The site had several photos of people dressed like Arabs in crowds in a small town-setting. Every sign and banner that these peasant-Arabs waved was written in impeccable, block-type English: “Death to Jews;” and the like.
How dumb does fanatic Clarion fund think we are?
Isn’t lying an offense against the Ten Commandments?
An enriched Iran sure would be a bummer for those who would like to foist another Shah/SAVAK on Iran, wouldn’t it?
“this regime has terrorized the world at large for over 30 years.”
Huh?! How? By doing what?
The problem is, though, that a whole lot of people will believe this kind of crap. I remember a year or two ago a colleague of mine came to me deeply concerned because she had seen some scary program on the History Channel or somewhere that went on and on about all the weapons and kinds of weapons that Iran possessed. I asked her whether Iran was entitled to have weapons it could use to defend itself if necessary, or whether it was perhaps different from all other countries in this respect. She got my point. Then shortly after that there was a report that Iran had test-fired some missiles, and she came to me deeply concerned because she thought she had heard that Iran had been testing nuclear weapons. Ordinary people are so easy to convince of just about anything.