Did you know that a group of individuals has been distributing a free DVD during this election season claiming the Muslim world is out to destroy America? Neither did I, until I read this:
WASHINGTON – A group of hardline United States neo-conservatives and former Israeli diplomats were behind the controversial, allegedly Islamaphobic DVD which was recently distributed in US swing states ahead of November’s presidential elections.
The 60-minute movie,Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West , was an initiative of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), but produced by the Clarion Fund, an organization described as a “front” for Israeli group Aish Hatorah.
Some 28 million copies of Obsession are currently being inserted in newspapers and delivered by mail in key electoral swing states – such as Michigan, Ohio and Florida which, according to recent polling, could go either way.
Twenty-Eight Million copies of a DVD full of of hateful propaganda is a lot. Can you imagine the cost to produce and pay newspapers to distribute these DVDs to their customers, or the the cost to direct mail them to people? It isn’t cheap, my friends.
Morgenstern [spokesperson for EMET, one of the groups distributing the DVD] also declined to reveal the cost of the DVD distribution, but did say, “It cost a great deal – it’s a multi-million-dollar effort.” Outside experts have estimated the cost of the operation at between US$15 million and $50 million.
Of course, the title of this nasty piece of work itself is beyond irony. Obsession is an apt term for a group of people who don’t care if they bankrupt the United States of America, don’t care if the price of oil hits $200 a barrel because of the wars they favor, and who really don’t give a flying fig about how many of our sons and daughters die in those wars, nor about the many more millions of innocent people living in the Middle East who will be killed, wounded or made homeless if America escalates its “war on terror” to even greater heights under a McCain administration. So who is really obsessed? This crap is so obvious that even some cash strapped US newspapers have rejected the siren call of money and refused to distribute the DVD, a rare ethical stance indeed for anyone in the corporate media to take.
… Obsession … explicitly compares the threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s – at least two major metropolitan newspapers refused to run the movie because of its perceived bias.
“Despite the perilous state of American newspapers, the St Louis Post-Dispatch advertising department took an ethical stand and refused to distribute the DVD of a film that for two years has troubled American Muslims,” Tim Townsend, a reporter at Missouri’s most influential newspaper wrote this month.
Unfortunately, the New York Times, that bastion of “liberal terrorist sympathizers” was not one of those newspapers, They alone distributed 145,000 copies of this DVD. I guess ethics isn’t their strong suit when it comes to demonizing Muslims, but then we’ve known that since Judy Miller catapulted the propaganda on behalf of her friends Dick “Big Time War Criminal” Cheney and Scooter “Aspen Trees” Libby.
So who is behind this massive effort to scare people into voting for the most likely candidate to start more wars in the Muslim world (uh, that would be you Johnny “POW” McCain)? Let’s take a look. Here’s a bit of info on who’s behind the Clarion Fund:
Clarion Fund was founded by the writer and executive produce of Obsession, Israeli-Canadian Raphael Shore. The group also runs the website Radicalislam.org — an educational site which implores its readers to “take action against radical Islam” by exploring its resources under four headings: “fueling terror,” “Sharia law,” “vote 2008,” and “radical Islam overview.”
Because of Clarion Fund’s non-profit, tax-exempt status, it is not permitted to sway voters in a partisan manner. But Radicalislam.org reportedly was, until it was recently pointed out in the media, carrying an article that explicitly endorsed Sen. John McCain.
And here’s what we know about Clarion’s partner in hate slime, The Endowment for Middle East Truth or EMET:
EMET, according to a recent press release, is “a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to policy research and analysis on democracy and the Middle East.” According to filings made in compliance with the organization’s tax-exempt status, “The organization hosts seminars, debates and educational films featuring Middle East experts in order to educate policymakers and the public at large on the common threats facing Israel and the United States.”
Morgenstern [a former press officer for the Israeli Embassy in Washington] said EMET was “partnered with the Clarion Fund” on what he called the “Obsession Project” which he identified as “an initiative of EMET”. He declined to name the project’s donors – a spokesman for the Clarion Fund, Gregory Ross, also refused to name the fund’s donors, whose identities remain a mystery. […]
EMET opposes any land concessions to Palestinians and takes other hardline positions identified with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and the ”Settler Lobby” there. EMET’s website says, “We regard ourselves as ‘intellectual revolutionaries’.”
Two weeks ago, EMET sponsored a seminar series on Capitol Hill for the controversial multi-billionaire casino and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is a major donor to right-wing Zionist organizations in the US, such as the far-right lobby group, Freedom’s Watch and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).
RJC efforts to persuade Jewish voters that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is aligned with radical anti-Israel forces in the Islamic world have drawn strong criticism from the mainstream Jewish press.
According to the Asia Times, here’s a list of people associated with EMET in one capacity or another:
The group is headed by Sarah Stern, who began her activism on Israeli issues in opposition to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestinians. She made a career out of her activism in the far-right Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) as its national policy coordinator from 1998 through 2004.
Notable members of the advisory board include prominent hardline neo-conservatives, including former US UN ambassador the late Jeane Kirkpatrick; Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum; and the Hudson Institute’s Meyrav Wurmser – the Israeli-born spouse of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top Middle East adviser, David Wurmser.
Other prominent neo-conservative members of the board include Center for Security Policy (CSP) president Frank Gaffney; former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey; and Heritage Foundation fellows Ariel Cohen and Nina Shea, who has served for years on the quasi-governmental US Commission for International Religious Freedom.
The US-born and educated hardline deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at Gaffney’s CSP, Caroline Glick, is also an adviser. Glick, Pipes and Walid Shoebat, a “reformed” terrorist and EMET adviser, are all featured as experts in Obsession.
Also among the top names of listed advisers to EMET are three Israeli diplomats. Two of them, ambassadors Yossi Ben Aharon and Yoram Ettinger, were among the three Israeli ambassadors whom then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin referred to as “The Three Musketeers” when they lobbied Washington in opposition to the Oslo accords.
Well, that seems pretty clear now, doesn’t it. These groups are run and controlled by a veritable who’s who list of hard right Israeli and American Neoconservatives with a history of promoting war against Israel’s “enemies” in the Middle East. Many of them hold current, or held former, prominent positions in US and Israeli governments, and all are aligned with the most pro-war and far right political factions in both countries. And they just happened to spend millions of dollars distributing an extremely biased and hateful propaganda DVD to millions of American families just in time to attempt to influence the outcome of the US Presidential race.
Does anyone seriously believe that the McCain campaign, run by a former Rove protege, Steve Schmidt, was unaware of this targeted effort in battleground states like Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Missouri to convince people the “filthy wogs” are out to kill us all? Well, certainly not anyone who can keep a straight face while asserting McCain and his minions’ “ignorance” of this effort which, surprise, surprise, came only days before the first debate between McCain and Obama on foreign policy was to be held.
Too bad the Bush administration desire to hand out $700 Billion Dollars of taxpayer monies to Wall Street freaked out McCain so much he is now against holding this debate on foreign policy issues at its regularly scheduled time.
Still, one can easily see the strategery behind this move by these Neocon front groups, even if for once their timing has gone horribly wrong. Simply stated, just days before the debate they have attempted to scare the hell out of people in key states regarding the “Muslim Menace” and then will spin McCain as the only person with the “experience” and “guts” to do what has to be done to make us safe from the Islamic hordes: that is, Kill all the brutes!
CAIR has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission asking them to investigate the actions of the Clarion Fund and any connection it may have with the McCain campaign. However, that’s likely a reaction which is “a day late and a dollar short” as the saying goes. The damage is done. Millions of people will have been exposed to this rancid and bigoted attack on Muslims, and the fear mongering hateful propaganda it tries to pass off as a truthful and unbiased “educational effort.” Hopefully many of them will simply throw it in the garbage where it belongs, but nor all of them will.
John McCain promised us an above board, “high road” campaign, but like everything else he promised that turned out to be just another lie. This is just one more example of his true nature: a lying, scheming, deceitful, ill tempered warmonger who will do or say anything to achieve his ambition to become the next President of these United States. Just like another recent Republican Presidential candidate who lied his way into the White House in order to usurp power under the guise of being a “War President.” Let’s hope that this time the American public won’t make that mistake again. We are in a world of shit already thanks to the misrule and power grabs of the Bush Cheney gang. We don’t need John McCain in the Oval Office to pour more fuel on the flames of the fires they started.