Last week we picked up a report that a Democratic Party-linked thinktank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), had censored from a published article the fact that an Israeli settler was the director of a movie promoting a military strike on Iran.
Well it turns out that Eli Clifton, one of the sharp young reporters whose work was scrubbed of that and other references to Israel and the lobby, published the same information about the director of “Iranium” last October. CAP hasn’t got around to scrubbing this one yet. So read it while you can!
The Clarion Fund, which was profiled in the Center for American Progress’ Islamophobia report, “Fear, Inc.,” distributed the inflammatory anti-Muslim documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West to 28 million swing state voters before the 2008 presidential election. Clarion is closely tied to Aish Hatorah, an evangelist, far-right, Israeli ultra-orthodox organization. [Alex] Traiman, Iranium’s director and the moderator of the panel on which [NYT reporter Ethan] Bronner will appear, has close ties the Israeli far-right and lives in an ideological West Bank settlement.
Oh and here is Clifton’s insight into what is going on:
Iranium, makes the case for attacking Iran and promotes an official U.S. policy of regime change. The film, much like the other documentaries produced by Clarion, portrays a clash of civilizations, promotes the view that Muslims value death over life and suggests that irrational hatred of Israeli and anti-Semitism is the only explanation for the frustration expressed by Muslim countries against the U.S.
And isn’t Clarion the same bunch of charmers who produced the Islamophobic movie that NYPD top brass showed over-and-over-and-over to all the NYPD anti-terrorist cops-on-the-beat?
Phil you must be aware of this one over at Salon by Glenn Greenwald
The predictable aftermath of the anti-CAP smear
I’ve written several times about the coordinated smear campaign to brand writers at the Center for American Progress as “anti-Semites” in order to punish them for defying mandated orthodoxies on Israel and to deter others from doing so. While that smear campaign, having done its job, is now winding down, the predictable effects of it are only beginning: CAP is now censoring those targeted writers, and those who defended them are now being similarly smeared.
First, the self-censorship at CAP: both The Weekly Standard‘s Daniel Halper and Philip Weiss document how a post written by two of the targeted CAP writers, Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton, was censored in important, substantive ways. That post concerned a rabidly anti-Islam film, “The Third Jihad,” that was continuously shown to NYPD officials. Gharib and Clifton sought to investigate the donors behind the film, and wrote the following (emphasis added):
I believe Adelson, the Gingrich backer,is the chief finder of the Clarion fund. Adelson has the zeal of a convert for Jewish causes and is furiously promoting war with Iran.
Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak’s jewsonfirst.org site was the first (early 2007) to get to the bottom of Clarion Fund/Israel/Aish Hatorah/Republican Jewish Coalition/Christian Zionist/Yisrael Beitenu involvement in making and distributing the anti-Muslim DVD Obsession.
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/08a/cufi_obsession.html
CAP can scrub its website all it wants, but it cannot overcome the great and in-depth report that Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak, Eli Clifton, Jane Hunter and Robin Podolsky wrote in November 2008. It’s a report worth keeping around.
http://www.jewsonfirst.org/Obsession/main_singlepage.html
Justin Raimondo’s column this morning on antiwar.com is entitled: “Putting Israel First—The War Party’s Achilles’ heel.”
He clears up where the term “Israel Firster” comes from, and produces proof.