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Home > Flush With Cash, Right-Wing Extremists Train the Future Zealots of
Pro-Israel Campus Activism
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Flush With Cash, Right-Wing Extremists Train the Future Zealots of
Pro-Israel Campus Activism
By Max Blumenthal [1], Julia Carmel [2] / AlterNet [3]
October 2, 2015
The following is part two of a four-part investigation. (Read part one here
[4].)
When David Horowitz appeared [5] in Rancho Palos Verdes, California for his
lavish annual West Coast Retreat on March 6, it less than two months ahead
of the launch of the shadowy Canary Mission website. Speaking before
hundreds of ultra-conservatives, Horowitz set the tone for the weeks to
come: "It's kind of obvious [that] the Jews are the canaries in the mine,"
Horowitz proclaimed. "The canaries were taken by miners, as you know, into
the mines, and when the canary died you knew there was gas in the mine and
you'd better get out. So the Jews are there to identify the threat."
Horowitz described for the assembled activists what he saw as the greatest
threats to Jews. The danger, he said, started with the Muslim Students
Association (MSA), a campus group he described as "a recruitment
organization for the Muslim Brotherhood" with secret ties to Hillary
Clinton's presidential campaign through her aide, Huma Abedin, whom he
called "a Muslim Brotherhood operative." According to Horowitz, the MSA and
another student group composed largely of Arab and Muslim-Americans,
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), were behind a supposed epidemic of
anti-Semitism that had put Jewish college students at risk across America.
Funded to the tune of $10 million by right-wing foundations, the David
Horowitz Freedom Center is a key financial conduit to extreme
anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic organizations. Among those who have
received funding through the Horowitz Freedom Center is Pamela Geller's
American Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller, an aggressively self-promoting
Islamophobic Zionist who was named in a recent FBI report [6]as an
ideological catalyst of far-right extremism, has spent much of this year
waging court battles to allow her to purchase advertisements on public buses
and subways that read, "Islamic Jew Hatred: It's in the Quran." (In order to
keep Geller's "Draw Muhammad" ad campaign out of the city, Washington DC's
Transit Authority banned [7] all political advertising).
More than perhaps any other conservative activist, Horowitz has revived the
tactics most familiar to the late Senator Joseph McCarthy in order to
undermine progressive political movements. "McCarthy was right about the
presence of Communists posing as liberals.virtually all of McCarthy's
victims were Communists (and lied about being Communists)," Horowitz wrote
in "Left Illusions," a book-length defense of McCarthyism. His error-laden
book [8], "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,"
amounts to a blacklist of left-wing and liberal professors who supposedly
"say they want to kill white people," "support Osama bin Laden," "advocate
killing ordinary Americans," and "defend pedophilia," according to Horowitz.
Horowitz's website, Discover The Networks [9], published dossiers of
progressive public figures and linked them to "Jihad" and the Muslim
Brotherhood. His lurid allegations of a dark alliance between American
progressives and radical Islamists have formed the basis for the tactics he
is now using to demonize the Palestine solidarity movement. And his extreme
"Jew Hatred on Campus" initiative has received promotion [10] from Canary
Mission.
Horowitz is a former radical leftist who emerged as a leading conservative
organizer during the Reagan era. A former Stalinist raised without any
connection to Jewish religion by Communist academics blacklisted by
McCarthy, Horowitz became an ardent promoter of the North Korean Communist
regime before turning hard right. His dogmatism was unaffected by his
conversion. His transformation, meanwhile, has been wildly profitable,
earning him millions of dollars from conservative donors including the Koch
brothers. He showed little interest in the Middle East or Israel before the
terrorist attacks of September 11. Afterward, Horowitz likened his deceased
father to Mohammed Atta, one of the suicidal hijackers. In the post-9/11
era, Horowitz has focused his energy on whipping up the conservative
movement with Islamophobia through campus-based initiatives like
"Islamofascism Awareness Week," where he attempted to explain [11] how "the
Left is in league with Islamofascists." His Islamophobia campaigns have
gained him and his groups millions more dollars from right-wing funders,
some of which he funneled [12] to the Dutch neo-fascist politician Geert
Wilders. Despite his self-proclaimed fervent devotion to Israel, Horowitz
has never bothered to visit [13] the country.
Early this year, Horowitz introduced an initiative that would join the smear
tactics that had earned him so much notoriety -- and money -- with the
campaign to crush BDS. Calling it "Jew Hatred on Campus," Horowitz
introduced a project that aimed to blacklist colleges with "the worst
anti-Semitic activity" while painting Students for Justice in Palestine as a
hate group. At the same time, Horowitz's organization plastered campuses
with posters [14] depicting a public execution by Hamas of prisoners accused
of spying for Israel's security services. The posters read: "Students For
Justice in Palestine #JewHaters." (Horowitz only took credit for the
campaign after the posters ignited a furor).
One of Horowitz's chief funders, the Boston-based tech baron Robert
Shillman, also helps bankroll [15] Pamela Geller's Islamophobic poster
campaign and her deliberately provocative road show. A trustee at his alma
mater of Northeastern University, Shillman has attempted to leverage his
multi-million dollar donations to pressure [16] the school into banning its
chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Through his Shillman
Fellowship, he has sponsored the careers of many of the zealots nurtured in
Horowitz's hothouse.
One of the most prolific Shillman-backed writers is Ben Shapiro, a would-be
pundit and founder of the far-right online outlet called Truth Revolt, which
is operated and funded through the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The
website's stated aim is to "unmask leftists in the media for who they are,
destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their
funding bases." It has become a center for attacks on student BDS activists
and liberal pro-Israel students, publishing material by right-wing students
being groomed by the Israel lobby for advocacy careers.
Back in 2003, when he was still a student at UCLA, Shapiro called for the
ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea. "If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to
exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the
Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper," Shapiro wrote.
More recently, Shapiro dedicated a column [17] to a theme he would return to
repeatedly in his tirades against the Black Lives Matter movement: "The
racism of the black community."
While other conservative organizers have attempted to recruit minorities
into the ranks of the Republican Party, Horowitz has instead provided a
sympathetic forum [18] at his FrontPageMag for Jared Taylor, a leading white
nationalist who argues that blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior to
whites. Horowitz has editorialized [19] that African-Americans owe white
America a debt of gratitude for ending slavery and granting them "the most
thoroughly protected rights anywhere." This year, as protests against police
brutality erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, Horowitz declared [20] that
"there's no community in America that's more racist than the black
community."
At his West Coast Retreat last March, Horowitz announced his "guerrilla
campaign" against Palestine solidarity activism on campus. Complaining that
conservatives too often shy from "very dirty warfare," he declared that
"negative advertising works. By focusing the conversation on their
negatives, it takes attention away from ours."
Our request for comment on Horowitz's activity did not receive a response.
An email to Elizabeth Ruiz, David Horowitz Freedom Center's Assistant to the
President, regarding the organization's involvement in Canary Mission was
not returned.
Canary Mission has partly relied on misinformation churned out by the myriad
websites associated with Howoritz's Freedom Center. More importantly,
Horowitz has had a direct hand in backing many of the campus activists
spying on their classmates, labeling them as terrorist sympathizers and
smearing even pro-Israel students who disagree with their slash-and-burn
style as anti-Semites. The Center for Constitutional Rights documented [21]
over 70 accusations of anti-Semitism in 2014 by pro-Israel forces on campus
"based solely on speech critical of Israeli policy."
Grooming the Zealots
The pro-Israel lobby has invested heavily in the career of Daniel Mael
Featured at David Horowitz's West Coast Retreat alongside fellow activists
on a panel titled "The War on Campus" was one of the most assiduously
groomed, reliably confrontational zealots in the country. Daniel Mael, a
recent graduate of Brandeis University, wreaked havoc during his time at the
traditionally Jewish institution. A member of the Jewish fraternity AEPi
[22], Mael provoked highly publicized feuds with college classmates,
aggressively rebuking them for any criticism of Israel's right-wing
government. Heavily funded pro-Israel groups have supported Mael's exploits,
but his smears of fellow Brandeis students were met with scrutiny from the
university's administration. He retaliated by leveling personal accusations
at Brandeis faculty members, receiving reams of positive coverage from
right-wing media.
Having attacked [23] the authors of this report through social media
postings and online commentaries [24], Mael would not respond [25] to our
questions.
After two years at Washington University, where he played [26] for the
school's baseball team and began participating in pro-Israel activism, Mael
transferred to Brandeis, citing his desire for more "access to more Orthodox
[Jewish] infrastructure," according to the Boston Forward [27]. He
immediately made his presence felt on the traditionally Jewish campus,
siccing himself on students and faculty he considered anti-Israel and
anti-Jewish, including liberal pro-Israel students from the campus wing of J
Street.
Last year, Mael gained access to the archives of "Concerned," a private
listserv that had been set up by Brandeis faculty during the US invasion of
Iraq in 2003. He then provided emailed exchanges between the listserv's
professors to Charles Jacobs, a founder of CAMERA and the Boston-based
Americans for Peace and Tolerance, who promptly accused the faculty members
of "hate speech" and anti-Semitism for their criticisms of Israel. Mael's
friend, a fellow pro-Israel activist named Chloe Valdary, reproduced
carefully selected excerpts from the list at the right-wing Daily Caller
[28], presenting them as evidence of their resentment of "conservatives,
Jews, Christians, and anyone who views America as a force for good in this
world." The salacious reports ultimately prompted Brandeis President
Frederick Lawrence to issue a public letter [29] denouncing the "Concerned"
members.
One of the faculty members targeted by Mael, Brandeis Professor of Computer
Science Harry Mairson, remarked, "I have an odd admiration for Mael, even if
I'm repulsed by his politics. Every college student is looking for their
niche, and he's found his - a youthful, shameless ambition, [pro-Israel
super lawyer Alan] Dershowitz in larval form. He'll probably end up as a big
shot at AIPAC."
According to Aya Abdelaziz, a recent Brandeis graduate who helped lead the
school's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, Mael once attempted to
stage a mock lynching of a mannequin in the center of campus to dramatize
the human rights record of Iran, where gay men have been publicly executed,
and to promote the comparatively gay-friendly atmosphere of Israel. Shocked
classmates told Abdelaziz that before bringing the crane, rope and gay dummy
onto campus, Mael attempted to pressure Brandeis's Muslim Students
Association and the school's LGBT club into endorsing his stunt.
"When the students refused his demands and erupted in outrage about the
hanging, [Mael] went after them personally, confronting them and calling
them anti-Semitic and accusing Jewish students of being self-hating,"
Abdelaziz recalled to us. "It was something few on campus had ever dealt
with before. It was crazy and very hurtful."
Mael's antics were consistent with directives outlined in the David Horowitz
Freedom Center's "Jew Hatred on Campus" guidebook. "To highlight Israel's
comparatively stellar record on human rights," the 35-page pamphlet [30]
reads, "we encourage you to hold a mock hanging, mock stoning or mock
whipping on your campus." The pamphlet assures student agitators, "The
Freedom Center will provide you with the materials to carry out these
protests."
"Mael was involved with painting SJP and everyone involved with us as terror
sympathizers," Abdelaziz said. "He was keeping constant tabs on my Facebook
statuses and profile pictures."
(Full disclosure: One of the writers of this article, Max Blumenthal, had an
encounter with Mael. Blumenthal spoke at Brandeis March 4, 2014, where he
received a warm and respectful reception his book, Goliath: Life and
Loathing in Greater Israel. A few students expressed their differences, but
did so in civil terms, and stayed after the event to debate. At the time,
Mael was away with fellow student activists at AIPAC's annual policy
conference in Washington DC. Before he left town, however, Mael had
plastered the campus with crudely made fliers [31] painting Blumenthal as
"anti-Semitic" and demanding that the school cancel his appearance.)
Mael has hardly limited his antagonism to anti-Zionists, non-Zionists and
BDS campaigners. In fact, he seems to have focused much of his energy on
targeting students involved with J Street U, the campus arm of the liberal
pro-Israel organization, J Street. When he was a student at Washington
University, Mael attacked Elisabeth Housman, a former J Street U National
Co-chair who led Washington University's chapter of the group at the time.
He accused her of "anti-Semitism" simply because she organized a screening
of Five Broken Cameras, an Oscar-nominated documentary that showcases
Palestinian non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
"I always regarded and treated him as a potential ally in my pro-Israel
activism, until he made it clear that he had no interest in working
together, preferring instead to demonize me and my J Street U peers,"
Housman told us. "He works through intimidation and manipulation - to put it
mildly - which just was not conducive to what my peers and I were working to
accomplish in promoting US political leadership to achieve a two-state
solution."
After transferring from Washington University in St. Louis to Brandeis, Mael
continued his ugly confrontations with fellow students, leading to charges
of harassment and negative publicity for the university. In November 2013, a
former Israeli military spokesperson Barak Raz visited Brandeis on a hasbara
tour. During his lecture, Raz claimed [32] that no checkpoints existed in
the West Bank, prompting Eli Philip, an Israeli-American J Street U member,
to protest that Palestinian freedom of movement was routinely obstructed by
checkpoints like Qalandia, which separates the West Bank from occupied East
Jerusalem.
Almost immediately, Philip became the target of Mael's wrath. Mael
excoriated him for airing his disagreements with Israeli policy in public,
accused him of rupturing Jewish unity, and circulated petitions on campus
calling on him to apologize. Philip claimed that Mael routinely sat in the
back of J Street U meetings, feverishly jotting notes for files he kept on
his adversaries. When Philip filed a harassment complaint against Mael with
university administrators, Mael went to the Emergency Committee for Israel,
a pro-Netanyahu lobbying group in Washington funded by the neoconservative
casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The Emergency Committee hired an
attorney at Covington and Burling, a major corporate law firm, to threaten
to sue Brandeis, which intimidated the university into dropping the charges
against Mael. As soon as Mael was in the clear, a neoconservative activist
and Wall Street Journal editorial writer, Sohrab Ahmari, conducted an
interview [33] with him glorifying his bravery for attacking his classmates
and his university. "The problem: Mr. Mael is a pro-Israel man of the right
on a campus increasingly hostile to conservatism and the Jewish state. The
other problem: The Brandeis administration, as at so many colleges, is more
committed to shielding students' political sensitivities from 'harassment'
than challenging their minds."
The following Spring, Mael targeted Talia Lepson, a Jewish student who was
among the leaders of the Brandeis chapter of J Street U. Mael accused Lepson
of berating him at the center of campus, calling him a "shitbag" and
claiming, "Jews hate you." Though Mael's account of the incident remained
unsubstantiated, he quickly relayed his story to his neoconservative allies,
prompting a flurry of articles [34] on right-wing websites [35]accusing
Lepson of harassing and threatening Mael, who was painted as a blameless
honor student and pro-Israel victim-hero. He told the neocon Free Beacon
that Lepson was guilty of "hate speech." The Free Beacon concluded, "The
incident also appears to run against Brandeis's own code of civility."
But was Mael telling the truth? According to four Brandeis students who
stated they had witnessed the incident, his version was a fabrication.
"Talia saw Daniel Mael, said a brief hello to him, and continued walking
towards upper campus, exchanging no further words with or about Mael," the
statement [36] read, signed by the four witnesses who were present during
the alleged incident. "No one else in the group had any interaction with
Mael. Talia never called Mael a 'shit bag,' nor did she say that 'Jews hate
him.' As a witness in the situation, I can unequivocally state that these
assertions have no basis in reality and are fictitious."
Perhaps no incident crystallized the toxic role that Mael played on campus
so much as the campaign he waged against an African-American classmate named
Khadijah Lynch. Lynch had become a regular participant in the Black Lives
Matter protests that erupted nationwide after a spate of police killings of
unarmed black men. In December 2014, after the police officer who had choked
Eric Garner to death in New York City was cleared of all wrongdoing, Lynch's
simmering anger rose to the surface on her personal Twitter account. Later
that month, a mentally deranged African-American man murdered two NYPD
officers in Brooklyn, prompting conservative pundits and politicians to
blame Black Lives Matter protesters, claiming that the movement had
cultivated an atmosphere that endangered cops.
Lynch took to Twitter in anger, declaring, "I have no sympathy for the nypd
officers who were murdered today." She added, "lmao, all i just really dont
have sympathy for the cops who were shot. i hate this racist fucking
country."
At the time, Lynch had only 81 Twitter followers. Her comments -- as raw and
impulsive as they were - might easily have passed unnoticed. But to Mael
there was a problem with Lynch that went beyond her remark. She happened to
be the undergraduate representative for Brandeis's African and Afro-American
studies department as well as a student senate candidate backed [37] by the
campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
When Mael took to TruthRevolt [38]to sensationalize Lynch's comments about
the murdered NYPD officers, the story spread rapidly in conservative and
mainstream media. Reports in the Boston Globe [39], Inside Higher Ed [40],
and the usual suspects in right-wing media, including Fox News, which hosted
[41] Mael on air, prompted a wave of denunciations and demands for harsh
punishment. A Facebook Page titled "Expel Khadijah Lynch from Brandeis"
became a repository for right-wing bile. Meanwhile, Lynch's email inbox was
suddenly flooded with threats and racist tirades.
"Fucking nigger bitch," an emailer named Philip Barnett wrote Lynch on
December 21. "I hope you get shot, raped and butchered."
"If you ever get a job I will post your tweets to every public venue
implicating your employer, [y]ou will be a liability and you will be fired."
promised an emailer named Cody G. "If you don't want to stand behind our
police, then feel free to stand in front of them you animal."
"You are just a Hypocrite Racist Bitch!" someone named Marshall Brinson
wrote to Lynch. "Get Out of Our Country!"
Lynch was ultimately forced to resign as the undergraduate representative of
Brandeis's African and Afro-American Studies Department, which issued a
statement distancing itself from her Twitter remarks. She was unwilling to
discuss her interactions with Mael on the record with us, citing her fear of
being targeted all over again. "It's been hard for me to go to class and
continue being a normal student," was all Lynch would say.
"I'll take the white supremacists any day"
Chloe Valdary (R) with anti-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a gala for
the pro-Israel group CAMERA
Seated next to Mael on Horowitz's "Jew Hatred On Campus" panel last March
was another zealous student activist who also represents one of the Israel
lobby's special projects. Chloe Valdary, an African-American Christian
Zionist, has emerged as one of the most vehement -- and heavily promoted --
activists against Palestine solidarity on campus.
A recent graduate of the University of New Orleans, Valdary has received
favorable profiles from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency [42], the
neoconservative Tablet Magazine [43], and the Times of Israel, a digital
news publication that has hosted Canary Mission's paid advertisements on its
site. Although she has remained conspicuously silent about Canary Mission,
Valdary has been involved in similar intimidation campaigns against
academics who have voiced support for Palestinian rights. In the wake of
Canary Mission's public launch this May, Valdary urged her followers to call
for [44] the University of Missouri to cancel an honors course on Zionism,
which was scheduled for the upcoming Fall semester. The call to censor the
course, echoed [45] by Horowitz's FrontPageMag, was based on claims that the
course's prospective instructor, Professor George P. Smith, had been
critical [46] of Israel's occupation in the past. "Settlements undermine
peace process," ran the headline on one of his articles.
Valdary has proven adept at using racial identity politics, making her a key
asset to the almost uniformly white pro-Israel lobby. Her "letter from an
angry black woman" [47] accusing the Students for Justice in Palestine of
having "pilfered" the civil rights struggle for a "repugnant agenda" was
widely disseminated. In the Horowitz-run TruthRevolt, Valdary denounced [48]
the critically acclaimed production at the Metropolitan Opera of John Adams'
"The Death of Leon Klinghoffer," depicting the murder by Palestinian
militants of a disabled Jewish man on a cruise ship in the context of the
Palestinians' grievances, to the lynching of a black man by white
supremacists. And in a video [49] produced by Aish, which appears to play a
direct role in administering Canary Mission, Valdary called Islamic
extremism "the New Racism," casting its most ardent opponents as modern day
MLK's.
During her college years, Valdary received thousands of dollars in funding
from CAMERA, a right-wing advocacy organization that brands itself as a
media watchdog. AIPAC, the political core of the Israel lobby, paid for
Valdary to attend its annual conference in Washington in 2012, and afterward
sent her to Israel on an all-expenses paid tour, which she described [42] as
"life-changing." But even before her visit, Valdary was a hardcore advocate
of what she calls a "Jewish one-state solution" -- of total Jewish dominion
over all of historic Palestine, between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea. She has claimed [50] that Arabs are the real occupiers of
Palestine and that they had historically "subjugated" Jews, who represent
the authentic indigenous people of the region.
Valdary's far right Zionism may be a product of her affiliation with the
Intercontinental Church of God [51], a tiny denomination founded by the late
TV evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong. Max Valdary, Chloe's father, is a
minister [52] in the congregation. On the Jewish holiday of Sukkot this
year, he delivered what he titled "An Uncle Tom Sermon," [53] praising
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom slave character as a model Christian.
"When I read about this man, this Uncle Tom," the elder Valdary proclaimed,
"I don't see weakness, I see strength.for those who call us Uncle Toms, for
those who call us weak, who call us pushovers, they're doing it because they
see Christ in us. Smile! Rejoice!"
Intercontinental Church of God congregants imitate aspects of traditional
Jewish worship and adopt their own biblical-based vision of Jewish history
that bears resemblance to fire and brimstone sermons. "'You are the sons and
daughters of former slaves in Egypt, of warrior poets, and kings who slayed
giants, and queens filled with courage, and prophets and dreamers," Valdary
bellowed out to a rally of 100 or so right-wing Zionists in New York City.
'Rise, Zion, rise!'"
Valdary's mentor, Pastor Dumisani Washington, has delivered anti-Arab
diatribes before mostly white audiences [54] at numerous pro-Israel campus
organizations, including a group within [55] Columbia University's Hillel.
Washington is a pastor of The Congregation of Zion [56], a small evangelical
church inspired by Hebrew Roots theology. This relatively new theological
trend claims that modern Christianity has strayed from its origins in First
Century AD Rome, when Jesus supposedly adhered to traditional Jewish
practices. For her part, Valdary observes the Hebrew calendar, including the
Jewish Sabbath and Jewish holidays, within a distinctly Christian framework.
Her theology emphasizes the importance of a religiously exclusive Jewish
state in all of historic Palestine.
Pastor Washington's organization, the Institute for Black Solidarity with
Israel (IBSI), which has previously employed Valdary, claims its mission is
to "strengthen solidarity with the Jewish state among Black Americans and
other communities of color." Yet IBSI has little record of organizing
outside the mostly white audiences cultivated by top-heavy, pro-Israel
lobbying organizations. Washington also works as the "Diversity Outreach
Coordinator" for Christians United For Israel (CUFI), a Christian Zionist
group founded by the ultra-conservative Republican Pastor John Hagee, who
once hosted a mock slave auction [57] to raise money for evangelical high
school students.
IBSI appears to owe its existence to the need to provide an almost entirely
white, billionaire-backed movement with a veneer of diversity and a dash of
black history. As IBSI's http://www.ibsi-now.org/about.html [58] mission
statement explains, the group aims to "expose the hypocrisy of anti-Israel
Arab Islamists (such as Hamas) who condone and benefit from the trafficking
and sale of African slaves, while feigning solidarity with Black people."
Despite their appeals to fellow African-Americans, Washington and Valdary
are unlikely to win many over with their vehement condemnations of the
black-led protests against police violence. In a video produced by the
right-wing Jewish radio jock Dennis Prager, Valdary proclaimed [59] that the
black protesters at Ferguson and their white progressive allies are a
greater threat to the United States than the Ku Klux Klan. "I'll take the
white supremacists any day [over black rioters]," she declared. "First,
there are very few of them and they have no power. Second, I can easily
prove them wrong. But how do I shake off the condescenders, the
patronizers?"
For his part, Washington has repeatedly taken to Twitter to inveigh against
the protests in Ferguson and other cities against police brutality. In one
instance, Washington promoted [60] an editorial published by American
Renaissance, an openly white nationalist [61]organization whose founders
consider blacks to be genetically inferior. "Most blacks are unable to speak
English well," the piece read. "They cannot conjugate verbs.[Blacks] show a
complete lack of empathy and are unable to conceal a morality based on the
satisfaction of immediate, base needs."
When later asked on Twitter why he promoted this racist screed, Washington
deflected the question with personal attacks [62]. Valdary, for her part,
has described [23] an author of this article, Blumenthal, as an anti-Semite
in commentary co-authored by Daniel Mael. She responded to questions about
Canary Mission with deflections [63]. "I am so beyond you," she wrote. Her
Twitter cover features an Israeli soldier holding an automatic rifle above a
caption that reads, "Nice Jewish Boy."
Despite their penchant for embarrassing gaffes, Valdary and Washington
maintain their value to the pro-Israel lobby through their sheer presence.
As Morton Klein, president of the far-right Zionist Organization of America,
said [42] of Valdary to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "Because so many
prominent black leaders are hostile to Israel, it makes it even more
powerful to have someone who's black supporting Israel."
Upon graduating this year, Valdary's pro-Israel fervor was rewarded with an
editorial fellowship, now reporting directly to Bret Stephens, the
editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, who suggested [64]
on the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima that the US
should also nuke Iran. There, she would work alongside WSJ assistant books
editor Jessica Kasmer Jacobs [65], the daughter of Charles Jacobs, who first
promoted Valdary through his pro-Israel outfit.
Mael joined Valdary in New York City, where he went to work for the
Gatestone Institute, a neoconservative online media outfit funded by the
heiress Nina Rosenwald [66] who extensively finances the Islamophobia
industry and serves as a board member [67] at CAMERA.
Meanwhile, another budding activist was dispatched to Boston for a special
project. He was at least as ideologically extreme as Valdary and Mael, and
even more aggressive.
The "Fighting Jew"
Elliot Hamilton has vowed that Palestine solidarity campaigners "will be
faced with the humiliating force that is the pro-Israel community."
On a CAMERA-sponsored trip to Israel this June, a young man named Elliott
Hamilton visited the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. When he came across a
group of parked United Nations peacekeeper vehicles, Hamilton fantasized
about vandalizing them. "Surprised I didn't slash the tires before ditching
[the UN truck]," Hamilton mused [68] on Twitter.
Though not as prominent as Mael and Valdary, who each earned profiles in
pro-Israel publications, Hamilton was at least as belligerent during his
time at Pitzer College in California, from which he recently graduated.
"Canary Mission definitely fits his personality and that of the all the
various organizations he's affiliated with," a former classmate of
Hamilton's told us. "It goes perfectly with his history of trying to
excommunicate people and target pro-Palestine activists." (Hamilton refused
[69]to reply to questions we sent him about Canary Mission. He has an
extensive [70] record [71] of leveling invective against both authors on
Twitter.).
Hamilton has been among the activists featured in Horowitz's "Jew Hatred on
Campus" initiative. At Horowitz's West Coast retreat this year, Hamilton
delivered a frenetic, almost hyper-ventilating performance [72] that blended
denunciations of pro-Palestine evildoers with unsubstantiated tales of
anti-Semitic persecution on American college campuses. As he built his
jeremiad to a shrieking conclusion, the self-styled "Fighting Jew" [73]
demanded an iron fist to hammer what he called "a cancer, festering,
metastasizing on our campus."
"If someone's attacking you, you don't wait for the punch to come to you. If
someone's gonna strike you, you block the strike and then you counter!"
Hamilton boomed. Affecting the menacing tone of a hardboiled action film
vigilante, Hamilton pledged that Students for Justice in Palestine "will be
faced with the humiliating force that is the pro-Israel community."
In the same speech, Hamilton mentioned that he had been consulting with his
"really good friend" Frank Luntz on crafting his language to appeal to
moderates on campus. One of the most widely recognized Republican public
relations consultants and pollsters, Luntz earned renown in 1996 when he
crafted a memo for Newt Gingrich, the Republican speaker of the House,
called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Luntz went on to get
lucrative contracts with Enron, ExxonMobil and, later, the financial
industry, which hired him to help undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement.
He has been a regular presence on Fox News. In 2010, Luntz produced a
116-page manual [74] on hasbara for the The Israel Project. Throughout the
document, Luntz urges activists to lead attacks on their enemies by
"start[ing] with empathy for both sides first," feigning humility and
concern for Palestinian children before attacking opponents as sympathizers
of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Despite his admiration for a self-styled PR wizard like Luntz, Hamilton has
not learned to emulate Luntz's nuance. Hamilton
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-i-am-a-jew/ [75] claims he suffered from
"bullying in Hebrew school" and "the question of identity in an interfaith
family." His sense of Jewish belonging, he says, stabilized only after he
thrust himself into full-time Israel advocacy. At Pitzer College, Hamilton
joined the strongly pro-Israel fraternity AEPi [76]and began gravitating
towards the local chapter of Chabad, a messianic ultra-Orthodox group that
is closely affiliated with the settler movement in the Israeli occupied West
Bank. Hamilton also kept close ties with Armageddon-ready Christian
Zionists. He was filmed cheering on evangelicals as they danced a hora at
the Christians United For Israel summit held in the midst of Israel's war in
Gaza in July 2014.
Back at Pitzer, Hamilton http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-i-left-hillel/
[77] quit Hillel, the leading Jewish organization on American college
campuses, rejecting the group's refusal to boycott liberal Jewish supporters
of Israel. Hamilton founded Claremont Students for Israel, a CAMERA-backed
activist group that was well to the right of the three pre-existing
pro-Israel clubs on campus. And like Mael, he attacked Jewish classmates who
criticized Israel.
According to a former classmate of Hamilton's who spoke to us on condition
of anonymity, Hamilton "has a history of obnoxious ad hominem attacks."
In one instance, Hamilton lashed out at a Jewish classmate who posted on her
Facebook wall a fact sheet on Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza. "Stop being an
anti-Semitic Jew and actually support your people's right to
self-determination instead of acting as an apologist for Jew-hating terror,"
Hamilton demanded. "Try not to be more of a disgrace to the Jewish community
than you have been already."
In April, Hamilton delivered his final address [78] as a campus pro-Israel
advocate. Speaking before an audience convened in partnership [79] between
his Claremont Students for Israel and Horowitz's "Jew Hatred on Campus"
initiative, Hamilton took aim at liberal Jews. "It's the self-proclaimed
liberal zealots who revise Zionism's history in order to fit a ridiculous
narrative that perpetuates Jew-hatred," he proclaimed. 'Even Jews have taken
part in this anti-Zionist blacklist, using their Jewish identity as a
justification for acquiring a moral high ground."
At the end of his speech he triumphantly announced that he had just been
hired by Charles Jacobs, the ultra-Zionist founder of CAMERA and co-founder
with Daniel Pipes of the blacklisting website, Campus Watch.
This May, Hamilton began work at Jacobs' Boston-based lobbying outfit, which
calls itself Americans for Peace and Tolerance. There, he would learn at the
knee of one of the pioneers in blacklisting Palestine solidarity activists,
a figure whose dossiers have formed a substantial part of Canary Mission's
glossary.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for AlterNet, and the award-winning author
of Goliath [80] and Republican Gomorrah [81]. Find him on Twitter at
@MaxBlumenthal [82].
Julia Carmel is a freelance writer. You can find her on Twitter at
@JuliaCarmel_ [83]
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [84]
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Source URL:
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Right-Wing Extremists Train the Future Zealots of Pro-Israel Campus Activism
[85] http://www.alternet.org/
[86] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
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Home > Flush With Cash, Right-Wing Extremists Train the Future Zealots of
Pro-Israel Campus Activism
Flush With Cash, Right-Wing Extremists Train the Future Zealots of
Pro-Israel Campus Activism
By Max Blumenthal [1], Julia Carmel [2] / AlterNet [3]
October 2, 2015
The following is part two of a four-part investigation. (Read part one here
[4].)
When David Horowitz appeared [5] in Rancho Palos Verdes, California for his
lavish annual West Coast Retreat on March 6, it less than two months ahead
of the launch of the shadowy Canary Mission website. Speaking before
hundreds of ultra-conservatives, Horowitz set the tone for the weeks to
come: "It's kind of obvious [that] the Jews are the canaries in the mine,"
Horowitz proclaimed. "The canaries were taken by miners, as you know, into
the mines, and when the canary died you knew there was gas in the mine and
you'd better get out. So the Jews are there to identify the threat."
Horowitz described for the assembled activists what he saw as the greatest
threats to Jews. The danger, he said, started with the Muslim Students
Association (MSA), a campus group he described as "a recruitment
organization for the Muslim Brotherhood" with secret ties to Hillary
Clinton's presidential campaign through her aide, Huma Abedin, whom he
called "a Muslim Brotherhood operative." According to Horowitz, the MSA and
another student group composed largely of Arab and Muslim-Americans,
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), were behind a supposed epidemic of
anti-Semitism that had put Jewish college students at risk across America.
Funded to the tune of $10 million by right-wing foundations, the David
Horowitz Freedom Center is a key financial conduit to extreme
anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic organizations. Among those who have
received funding through the Horowitz Freedom Center is Pamela Geller's
American Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller, an aggressively self-promoting
Islamophobic Zionist who was named in a recent FBI report [6]as an
ideological catalyst of far-right extremism, has spent much of this year
waging court battles to allow her to purchase advertisements on public buses
and subways that read, "Islamic Jew Hatred: It's in the Quran." (In order to
keep Geller's "Draw Muhammad" ad campaign out of the city, Washington DC's
Transit Authority banned [7] all political advertising).
More than perhaps any other conservative activist, Horowitz has revived the
tactics most familiar to the late Senator Joseph McCarthy in order to
undermine progressive political movements. "McCarthy was right about the
presence of Communists posing as liberals.virtually all of McCarthy's
victims were Communists (and lied about being Communists)," Horowitz wrote
in "Left Illusions," a book-length defense of McCarthyism. His error-laden
book [8], "The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America,"
amounts to a blacklist of left-wing and liberal professors who supposedly
"say they want to kill white people," "support Osama bin Laden," "advocate
killing ordinary Americans," and "defend pedophilia," according to Horowitz.
Horowitz's website, Discover The Networks [9], published dossiers of
progressive public figures and linked them to "Jihad" and the Muslim
Brotherhood. His lurid allegations of a dark alliance between American
progressives and radical Islamists have formed the basis for the tactics he
is now using to demonize the Palestine solidarity movement. And his extreme
"Jew Hatred on Campus" initiative has received promotion [10] from Canary
Mission.
Horowitz is a former radical leftist who emerged as a leading conservative
organizer during the Reagan era. A former Stalinist raised without any
connection to Jewish religion by Communist academics blacklisted by
McCarthy, Horowitz became an ardent promoter of the North Korean Communist
regime before turning hard right. His dogmatism was unaffected by his
conversion. His transformation, meanwhile, has been wildly profitable,
earning him millions of dollars from conservative donors including the Koch
brothers. He showed little interest in the Middle East or Israel before the
terrorist attacks of September 11. Afterward, Horowitz likened his deceased
father to Mohammed Atta, one of the suicidal hijackers. In the post-9/11
era, Horowitz has focused his energy on whipping up the conservative
movement with Islamophobia through campus-based initiatives like
"Islamofascism Awareness Week," where he attempted to explain [11] how "the
Left is in league with Islamofascists." His Islamophobia campaigns have
gained him and his groups millions more dollars from right-wing funders,
some of which he funneled [12] to the Dutch neo-fascist politician Geert
Wilders. Despite his self-proclaimed fervent devotion to Israel, Horowitz
has never bothered to visit [13] the country.
Early this year, Horowitz introduced an initiative that would join the smear
tactics that had earned him so much notoriety -- and money -- with the
campaign to crush BDS. Calling it "Jew Hatred on Campus," Horowitz
introduced a project that aimed to blacklist colleges with "the worst
anti-Semitic activity" while painting Students for Justice in Palestine as a
hate group. At the same time, Horowitz's organization plastered campuses
with posters [14] depicting a public execution by Hamas of prisoners accused
of spying for Israel's security services. The posters read: "Students For
Justice in Palestine #JewHaters." (Horowitz only took credit for the
campaign after the posters ignited a furor).
One of Horowitz's chief funders, the Boston-based tech baron Robert
Shillman, also helps bankroll [15] Pamela Geller's Islamophobic poster
campaign and her deliberately provocative road show. A trustee at his alma
mater of Northeastern University, Shillman has attempted to leverage his
multi-million dollar donations to pressure [16] the school into banning its
chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Through his Shillman
Fellowship, he has sponsored the careers of many of the zealots nurtured in
Horowitz's hothouse.
One of the most prolific Shillman-backed writers is Ben Shapiro, a would-be
pundit and founder of the far-right online outlet called Truth Revolt, which
is operated and funded through the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The
website's stated aim is to "unmask leftists in the media for who they are,
destroy their credibility with the American public, and devastate their
funding bases." It has become a center for attacks on student BDS activists
and liberal pro-Israel students, publishing material by right-wing students
being groomed by the Israel lobby for advocacy careers.
Back in 2003, when he was still a student at UCLA, Shapiro called for the
ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea. "If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to
exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the
Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper," Shapiro wrote.
More recently, Shapiro dedicated a column [17] to a theme he would return to
repeatedly in his tirades against the Black Lives Matter movement: "The
racism of the black community."
While other conservative organizers have attempted to recruit minorities
into the ranks of the Republican Party, Horowitz has instead provided a
sympathetic forum [18] at his FrontPageMag for Jared Taylor, a leading white
nationalist who argues that blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior to
whites. Horowitz has editorialized [19] that African-Americans owe white
America a debt of gratitude for ending slavery and granting them "the most
thoroughly protected rights anywhere." This year, as protests against police
brutality erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, Horowitz declared [20] that
"there's no community in America that's more racist than the black
community."
At his West Coast Retreat last March, Horowitz announced his "guerrilla
campaign" against Palestine solidarity activism on campus. Complaining that
conservatives too often shy from "very dirty warfare," he declared that
"negative advertising works. By focusing the conversation on their
negatives, it takes attention away from ours."
Our request for comment on Horowitz's activity did not receive a response.
An email to Elizabeth Ruiz, David Horowitz Freedom Center's Assistant to the
President, regarding the organization's involvement in Canary Mission was
not returned.
Canary Mission has partly relied on misinformation churned out by the myriad
websites associated with Howoritz's Freedom Center. More importantly,
Horowitz has had a direct hand in backing many of the campus activists
spying on their classmates, labeling them as terrorist sympathizers and
smearing even pro-Israel students who disagree with their slash-and-burn
style as anti-Semites. The Center for Constitutional Rights documented [21]
over 70 accusations of anti-Semitism in 2014 by pro-Israel forces on campus
"based solely on speech critical of Israeli policy."
Grooming the Zealots
The pro-Israel lobby has invested heavily in the career of Daniel Mael
Featured at David Horowitz's West Coast Retreat alongside fellow activists
on a panel titled "The War on Campus" was one of the most assiduously
groomed, reliably confrontational zealots in the country. Daniel Mael, a
recent graduate of Brandeis University, wreaked havoc during his time at the
traditionally Jewish institution. A member of the Jewish fraternity AEPi
[22], Mael provoked highly publicized feuds with college classmates,
aggressively rebuking them for any criticism of Israel's right-wing
government. Heavily funded pro-Israel groups have supported Mael's exploits,
but his smears of fellow Brandeis students were met with scrutiny from the
university's administration. He retaliated by leveling personal accusations
at Brandeis faculty members, receiving reams of positive coverage from
right-wing media.
Having attacked [23] the authors of this report through social media
postings and online commentaries [24], Mael would not respond [25] to our
questions.
After two years at Washington University, where he played [26] for the
school's baseball team and began participating in pro-Israel activism, Mael
transferred to Brandeis, citing his desire for more "access to more Orthodox
[Jewish] infrastructure," according to the Boston Forward [27]. He
immediately made his presence felt on the traditionally Jewish campus,
siccing himself on students and faculty he considered anti-Israel and
anti-Jewish, including liberal pro-Israel students from the campus wing of J
Street.
Last year, Mael gained access to the archives of "Concerned," a private
listserv that had been set up by Brandeis faculty during the US invasion of
Iraq in 2003. He then provided emailed exchanges between the listserv's
professors to Charles Jacobs, a founder of CAMERA and the Boston-based
Americans for Peace and Tolerance, who promptly accused the faculty members
of "hate speech" and anti-Semitism for their criticisms of Israel. Mael's
friend, a fellow pro-Israel activist named Chloe Valdary, reproduced
carefully selected excerpts from the list at the right-wing Daily Caller
[28], presenting them as evidence of their resentment of "conservatives,
Jews, Christians, and anyone who views America as a force for good in this
world." The salacious reports ultimately prompted Brandeis President
Frederick Lawrence to issue a public letter [29] denouncing the "Concerned"
members.
One of the faculty members targeted by Mael, Brandeis Professor of Computer
Science Harry Mairson, remarked, "I have an odd admiration for Mael, even if
I'm repulsed by his politics. Every college student is looking for their
niche, and he's found his - a youthful, shameless ambition, [pro-Israel
super lawyer Alan] Dershowitz in larval form. He'll probably end up as a big
shot at AIPAC."
According to Aya Abdelaziz, a recent Brandeis graduate who helped lead the
school's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, Mael once attempted to
stage a mock lynching of a mannequin in the center of campus to dramatize
the human rights record of Iran, where gay men have been publicly executed,
and to promote the comparatively gay-friendly atmosphere of Israel. Shocked
classmates told Abdelaziz that before bringing the crane, rope and gay dummy
onto campus, Mael attempted to pressure Brandeis's Muslim Students
Association and the school's LGBT club into endorsing his stunt.
"When the students refused his demands and erupted in outrage about the
hanging, [Mael] went after them personally, confronting them and calling
them anti-Semitic and accusing Jewish students of being self-hating,"
Abdelaziz recalled to us. "It was something few on campus had ever dealt
with before. It was crazy and very hurtful."
Mael's antics were consistent with directives outlined in the David Horowitz
Freedom Center's "Jew Hatred on Campus" guidebook. "To highlight Israel's
comparatively stellar record on human rights," the 35-page pamphlet [30]
reads, "we encourage you to hold a mock hanging, mock stoning or mock
whipping on your campus." The pamphlet assures student agitators, "The
Freedom Center will provide you with the materials to carry out these
protests."
"Mael was involved with painting SJP and everyone involved with us as terror
sympathizers," Abdelaziz said. "He was keeping constant tabs on my Facebook
statuses and profile pictures."
(Full disclosure: One of the writers of this article, Max Blumenthal, had an
encounter with Mael. Blumenthal spoke at Brandeis March 4, 2014, where he
received a warm and respectful reception his book, Goliath: Life and
Loathing in Greater Israel. A few students expressed their differences, but
did so in civil terms, and stayed after the event to debate. At the time,
Mael was away with fellow student activists at AIPAC's annual policy
conference in Washington DC. Before he left town, however, Mael had
plastered the campus with crudely made fliers [31] painting Blumenthal as
"anti-Semitic" and demanding that the school cancel his appearance.)
Mael has hardly limited his antagonism to anti-Zionists, non-Zionists and
BDS campaigners. In fact, he seems to have focused much of his energy on
targeting students involved with J Street U, the campus arm of the liberal
pro-Israel organization, J Street. When he was a student at Washington
University, Mael attacked Elisabeth Housman, a former J Street U National
Co-chair who led Washington University's chapter of the group at the time.
He accused her of "anti-Semitism" simply because she organized a screening
of Five Broken Cameras, an Oscar-nominated documentary that showcases
Palestinian non-violent resistance to the Israeli occupation.
"I always regarded and treated him as a potential ally in my pro-Israel
activism, until he made it clear that he had no interest in working
together, preferring instead to demonize me and my J Street U peers,"
Housman told us. "He works through intimidation and manipulation - to put it
mildly - which just was not conducive to what my peers and I were working to
accomplish in promoting US political leadership to achieve a two-state
solution."
After transferring from Washington University in St. Louis to Brandeis, Mael
continued his ugly confrontations with fellow students, leading to charges
of harassment and negative publicity for the university. In November 2013, a
former Israeli military spokesperson Barak Raz visited Brandeis on a hasbara
tour. During his lecture, Raz claimed [32] that no checkpoints existed in
the West Bank, prompting Eli Philip, an Israeli-American J Street U member,
to protest that Palestinian freedom of movement was routinely obstructed by
checkpoints like Qalandia, which separates the West Bank from occupied East
Jerusalem.
Almost immediately, Philip became the target of Mael's wrath. Mael
excoriated him for airing his disagreements with Israeli policy in public,
accused him of rupturing Jewish unity, and circulated petitions on campus
calling on him to apologize. Philip claimed that Mael routinely sat in the
back of J Street U meetings, feverishly jotting notes for files he kept on
his adversaries. When Philip filed a harassment complaint against Mael with
university administrators, Mael went to the Emergency Committee for Israel,
a pro-Netanyahu lobbying group in Washington funded by the neoconservative
casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The Emergency Committee hired an
attorney at Covington and Burling, a major corporate law firm, to threaten
to sue Brandeis, which intimidated the university into dropping the charges
against Mael. As soon as Mael was in the clear, a neoconservative activist
and Wall Street Journal editorial writer, Sohrab Ahmari, conducted an
interview [33] with him glorifying his bravery for attacking his classmates
and his university. "The problem: Mr. Mael is a pro-Israel man of the right
on a campus increasingly hostile to conservatism and the Jewish state. The
other problem: The Brandeis administration, as at so many colleges, is more
committed to shielding students' political sensitivities from 'harassment'
than challenging their minds."
The following Spring, Mael targeted Talia Lepson, a Jewish student who was
among the leaders of the Brandeis chapter of J Street U. Mael accused Lepson
of berating him at the center of campus, calling him a "shitbag" and
claiming, "Jews hate you." Though Mael's account of the incident remained
unsubstantiated, he quickly relayed his story to his neoconservative allies,
prompting a flurry of articles [34] on right-wing websites [35]accusing
Lepson of harassing and threatening Mael, who was painted as a blameless
honor student and pro-Israel victim-hero. He told the neocon Free Beacon
that Lepson was guilty of "hate speech." The Free Beacon concluded, "The
incident also appears to run against Brandeis's own code of civility."
But was Mael telling the truth? According to four Brandeis students who
stated they had witnessed the incident, his version was a fabrication.
"Talia saw Daniel Mael, said a brief hello to him, and continued walking
towards upper campus, exchanging no further words with or about Mael," the
statement [36] read, signed by the four witnesses who were present during
the alleged incident. "No one else in the group had any interaction with
Mael. Talia never called Mael a 'shit bag,' nor did she say that 'Jews hate
him.' As a witness in the situation, I can unequivocally state that these
assertions have no basis in reality and are fictitious."
Perhaps no incident crystallized the toxic role that Mael played on campus
so much as the campaign he waged against an African-American classmate named
Khadijah Lynch. Lynch had become a regular participant in the Black Lives
Matter protests that erupted nationwide after a spate of police killings of
unarmed black men. In December 2014, after the police officer who had choked
Eric Garner to death in New York City was cleared of all wrongdoing, Lynch's
simmering anger rose to the surface on her personal Twitter account. Later
that month, a mentally deranged African-American man murdered two NYPD
officers in Brooklyn, prompting conservative pundits and politicians to
blame Black Lives Matter protesters, claiming that the movement had
cultivated an atmosphere that endangered cops.
Lynch took to Twitter in anger, declaring, "I have no sympathy for the nypd
officers who were murdered today." She added, "lmao, all i just really dont
have sympathy for the cops who were shot. i hate this racist fucking
country."
At the time, Lynch had only 81 Twitter followers. Her comments -- as raw and
impulsive as they were - might easily have passed unnoticed. But to Mael
there was a problem with Lynch that went beyond her remark. She happened to
be the undergraduate representative for Brandeis's African and Afro-American
studies department as well as a student senate candidate backed [37] by the
campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
When Mael took to TruthRevolt [38]to sensationalize Lynch's comments about
the murdered NYPD officers, the story spread rapidly in conservative and
mainstream media. Reports in the Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. [39],
Inside Higher Ed [40], and the usual suspects in right-wing media, including
Fox News, which hosted [41] Mael on air, prompted a wave of denunciations
and demands for harsh punishment. A Facebook Page titled "Expel Khadijah
Lynch from Brandeis" became a repository for right-wing bile. Meanwhile,
Lynch's email inbox was suddenly flooded with threats and racist tirades.
"Fucking nigger bitch," an emailer named Philip Barnett wrote Lynch on
December 21. "I hope you get shot, raped and butchered."
"If you ever get a job I will post your tweets to every public venue
implicating your employer, [y]ou will be a liability and you will be fired."
promised an emailer named Cody G. "If you don't want to stand behind our
police, then feel free to stand in front of them you animal."
"You are just a Hypocrite Racist Bitch!" someone named Marshall Brinson
wrote to Lynch. "Get Out of Our Country!"
Lynch was ultimately forced to resign as the undergraduate representative of
Brandeis's African and Afro-American Studies Department, which issued a
statement distancing itself from her Twitter remarks. She was unwilling to
discuss her interactions with Mael on the record with us, citing her fear of
being targeted all over again. "It's been hard for me to go to class and
continue being a normal student," was all Lynch would say.
"I'll take the white supremacists any day"
Chloe Valdary (R) with anti-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at a gala for
the pro-Israel group CAMERA
Seated next to Mael on Horowitz's "Jew Hatred On Campus" panel last March
was another zealous student activist who also represents one of the Israel
lobby's special projects. Chloe Valdary, an African-American Christian
Zionist, has emerged as one of the most vehement -- and heavily promoted --
activists against Palestine solidarity on campus.
A recent graduate of the University of New Orleans, Valdary has received
favorable profiles from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency [42], the
neoconservative Tablet Magazine [43], and the Times of Israel, a digital
news publication that has hosted Canary Mission's paid advertisements on its
site. Although she has remained conspicuously silent about Canary Mission,
Valdary has been involved in similar intimidation campaigns against
academics who have voiced support for Palestinian rights. In the wake of
Canary Mission's public launch this May, Valdary urged her followers to call
for [44] the University of Missouri to cancel an honors course on Zionism,
which was scheduled for the upcoming Fall semester. The call to censor the
course, echoed [45] by Horowitz's FrontPageMag, was based on claims that the
course's prospective instructor, Professor George P. Smith, had been
critical [46] of Israel's occupation in the past. "Settlements undermine
peace process," ran the headline on one of his articles.
Valdary has proven adept at using racial identity politics, making her a key
asset to the almost uniformly white pro-Israel lobby. Her "letter from an
angry black woman" [47] accusing the Students for Justice in Palestine of
having "pilfered" the civil rights struggle for a "repugnant agenda" was
widely disseminated. In the Horowitz-run TruthRevolt, Valdary denounced [48]
the critically acclaimed production at the Metropolitan Opera of John Adams'
"The Death of Leon Klinghoffer," depicting the murder by Palestinian
militants of a disabled Jewish man on a cruise ship in the context of the
Palestinians' grievances, to the lynching of a black man by white
supremacists. And in a video [49] produced by Aish, which appears to play a
direct role in administering Canary Mission, Valdary called Islamic
extremism "the New Racism," casting its most ardent opponents as modern day
MLK's.
During her college years, Valdary received thousands of dollars in funding
from CAMERA, a right-wing advocacy organization that brands itself as a
media watchdog. AIPAC, the political core of the Israel lobby, paid for
Valdary to attend its annual conference in Washington in 2012, and afterward
sent her to Israel on an all-expenses paid tour, which she described [42] as
"life-changing." But even before her visit, Valdary was a hardcore advocate
of what she calls a "Jewish one-state solution" -- of total Jewish dominion
over all of historic Palestine, between the Jordan River and the
Mediterranean Sea. She has claimed [50] that Arabs are the real occupiers of
Palestine and that they had historically "subjugated" Jews, who represent
the authentic indigenous people of the region.
Valdary's far right Zionism may be a product of her affiliation with the
Intercontinental Church of God [51], a tiny denomination founded by the late
TV evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong. Max Valdary, Chloe's father, is a
minister [52] in the congregation. On the Jewish holiday of Sukkot this
year, he delivered what he titled "An Uncle Tom Sermon," [53] praising
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom slave character as a model Christian.
"When I read about this man, this Uncle Tom," the elder Valdary proclaimed,
"I don't see weakness, I see strength.for those who call us Uncle Toms, for
those who call us weak, who call us pushovers, they're doing it because they
see Christ in us. Smile! Rejoice!"
Intercontinental Church of God congregants imitate aspects of traditional
Jewish worship and adopt their own biblical-based vision of Jewish history
that bears resemblance to fire and brimstone sermons. "'You are the sons and
daughters of former slaves in Egypt, of warrior poets, and kings who slayed
giants, and queens filled with courage, and prophets and dreamers," Valdary
bellowed out to a rally of 100 or so right-wing Zionists in New York City.
'Rise, Zion, rise!'"
Valdary's mentor, Pastor Dumisani Washington, has delivered anti-Arab
diatribes before mostly white audiences [54] at numerous pro-Israel campus
organizations, including a group within [55] Columbia University's Hillel.
Washington is a pastor of The Congregation of Zion [56], a small evangelical
church inspired by Hebrew Roots theology. This relatively new theological
trend claims that modern Christianity has strayed from its origins in First
Century AD Rome, when Jesus supposedly adhered to traditional Jewish
practices. For her part, Valdary observes the Hebrew calendar, including the
Jewish Sabbath and Jewish holidays, within a distinctly Christian framework.
Her theology emphasizes the importance of a religiously exclusive Jewish
state in all of historic Palestine.
Pastor Washington's organization, the Institute for Black Solidarity with
Israel (IBSI), which has previously employed Valdary, claims its mission is
to "strengthen solidarity with the Jewish state among Black Americans and
other communities of color." Yet IBSI has little record of organizing
outside the mostly white audiences cultivated by top-heavy, pro-Israel
lobbying organizations. Washington also works as the "Diversity Outreach
Coordinator" for Christians United For Israel (CUFI), a Christian Zionist
group founded by the ultra-conservative Republican Pastor John Hagee, who
once hosted a mock slave auction [57] to raise money for evangelical high
school students.
IBSI appears to owe its existence to the need to provide an almost entirely
white, billionaire-backed movement with a veneer of diversity and a dash of
black history. As IBSI's http://www.ibsi-now.org/about.html [58] mission
statement explains, the group aims to "expose the hypocrisy of anti-Israel
Arab Islamists (such as Hamas) who condone and benefit from the trafficking
and sale of African slaves, while feigning solidarity with Black people."
Despite their appeals to fellow African-Americans, Washington and Valdary
are unlikely to win many over with their vehement condemnations of the
black-led protests against police violence. In a video produced by the
right-wing Jewish radio jock Dennis Prager, Valdary proclaimed [59] that the
black protesters at Ferguson and their white progressive allies are a
greater threat to the United States than the Ku Klux Klan. "I'll take the
white supremacists any day [over black rioters]," she declared. "First,
there are very few of them and they have no power. Second, I can easily
prove them wrong. But how do I shake off the condescenders, the
patronizers?"
For his part, Washington has repeatedly taken to Twitter to inveigh against
the protests in Ferguson and other cities against police brutality. In one
instance, Washington promoted [60] an editorial published by American
Renaissance, an openly white nationalist [61]organization whose founders
consider blacks to be genetically inferior. "Most blacks are unable to speak
English well," the piece read. "They cannot conjugate verbs.[Blacks] show a
complete lack of empathy and are unable to conceal a morality based on the
satisfaction of immediate, base needs."
When later asked on Twitter why he promoted this racist screed, Washington
deflected the question with personal attacks [62]. Valdary, for her part,
has described [23] an author of this article, Blumenthal, as an anti-Semite
in commentary co-authored by Daniel Mael. She responded to questions about
Canary Mission with deflections [63]. "I am so beyond you," she wrote. Her
Twitter cover features an Israeli soldier holding an automatic rifle above a
caption that reads, "Nice Jewish Boy."
Despite their penchant for embarrassing gaffes, Valdary and Washington
maintain their value to the pro-Israel lobby through their sheer presence.
As Morton Klein, president of the far-right Zionist Organization of America,
said [42] of Valdary to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "Because so many
prominent black leaders are hostile to Israel, it makes it even more
powerful to have someone who's black supporting Israel."
Upon graduating this year, Valdary's pro-Israel fervor was rewarded with an
editorial fellowship, now reporting directly to Bret Stephens, the
editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page, who suggested [64]
on the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima that the US
should also nuke Iran. There, she would work alongside WSJ assistant books
editor Jessica Kasmer Jacobs [65], the daughter of Charles Jacobs, who first
promoted Valdary through his pro-Israel outfit.
Mael joined Valdary in New York City, where he went to work for the
Gatestone Institute, a neoconservative online media outfit funded by the
heiress Nina Rosenwald [66] who extensively finances the Islamophobia
industry and serves as a board member [67] at CAMERA.
Meanwhile, another budding activist was dispatched to Boston for a special
project. He was at least as ideologically extreme as Valdary and Mael, and
even more aggressive.
The "Fighting Jew"
Elliot Hamilton has vowed that Palestine solidarity campaigners "will be
faced with the humiliating force that is the pro-Israel community."
On a CAMERA-sponsored trip to Israel this June, a young man named Elliott
Hamilton visited the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. When he came across a
group of parked United Nations peacekeeper vehicles, Hamilton fantasized
about vandalizing them. "Surprised I didn't slash the tires before ditching
[the UN truck]," Hamilton mused [68] on Twitter.
Though not as prominent as Mael and Valdary, who each earned profiles in
pro-Israel publications, Hamilton was at least as belligerent during his
time at Pitzer College in California, from which he recently graduated.
"Canary Mission definitely fits his personality and that of the all the
various organizations he's affiliated with," a former classmate of
Hamilton's told us. "It goes perfectly with his history of trying to
excommunicate people and target pro-Palestine activists." (Hamilton refused
[69]to reply to questions we sent him about Canary Mission. He has an
extensive [70] record [71] of leveling invective against both authors on
Twitter.).
Hamilton has been among the activists featured in Horowitz's "Jew Hatred on
Campus" initiative. At Horowitz's West Coast retreat this year, Hamilton
delivered a frenetic, almost hyper-ventilating performance [72] that blended
denunciations of pro-Palestine evildoers with unsubstantiated tales of
anti-Semitic persecution on American college campuses. As he built his
jeremiad to a shrieking conclusion, the self-styled "Fighting Jew" [73]
demanded an iron fist to hammer what he called "a cancer, festering,
metastasizing on our campus."
"If someone's attacking you, you don't wait for the punch to come to you. If
someone's gonna strike you, you block the strike and then you counter!"
Hamilton boomed. Affecting the menacing tone of a hardboiled action film
vigilante, Hamilton pledged that Students for Justice in Palestine "will be
faced with the humiliating force that is the pro-Israel community."
In the same speech, Hamilton mentioned that he had been consulting with his
"really good friend" Frank Luntz on crafting his language to appeal to
moderates on campus. One of the most widely recognized Republican public
relations consultants and pollsters, Luntz earned renown in 1996 when he
crafted a memo for Newt Gingrich, the Republican speaker of the House,
called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control." Luntz went on to get
lucrative contracts with Enron, ExxonMobil and, later, the financial
industry, which hired him to help undermine the Occupy Wall Street movement.
He has been a regular presence on Fox News. In 2010, Luntz produced a
116-page manual [74] on hasbara for the The Israel Project. Throughout the
document, Luntz urges activists to lead attacks on their enemies by
"start[ing] with empathy for both sides first," feigning humility and
concern for Palestinian children before attacking opponents as sympathizers
of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Despite his admiration for a self-styled PR wizard like Luntz, Hamilton has
not learned to emulate Luntz's nuance. Hamilton
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-i-am-a-jew/ [75] claims he suffered from
"bullying in Hebrew school" and "the question of identity in an interfaith
family." His sense of Jewish belonging, he says, stabilized only after he
thrust himself into full-time Israel advocacy. At Pitzer College, Hamilton
joined the strongly pro-Israel fraternity AEPi [76]and began gravitating
towards the local chapter of Chabad, a messianic ultra-Orthodox group that
is closely affiliated with the settler movement in the Israeli occupied West
Bank. Hamilton also kept close ties with Armageddon-ready Christian
Zionists. He was filmed cheering on evangelicals as they danced a hora at
the Christians United For Israel summit held in the midst of Israel's war in
Gaza in July 2014.
Back at Pitzer, Hamilton http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-i-left-hillel/
[77] quit Hillel, the leading Jewish organization on American college
campuses, rejecting the group's refusal to boycott liberal Jewish supporters
of Israel. Hamilton founded Claremont Students for Israel, a CAMERA-backed
activist group that was well to the right of the three pre-existing
pro-Israel clubs on campus. And like Mael, he attacked Jewish classmates who
criticized Israel.
According to a former classmate of Hamilton's who spoke to us on condition
of anonymity, Hamilton "has a history of obnoxious ad hominem attacks."
In one instance, Hamilton lashed out at a Jewish classmate who posted on her
Facebook wall a fact sheet on Israel's 2014 assault on Gaza. "Stop being an
anti-Semitic Jew and actually support your people's right to
self-determination instead of acting as an apologist for Jew-hating terror,"
Hamilton demanded. "Try not to be more of a disgrace to the Jewish community
than you have been already."
In April, Hamilton delivered his final address [78] as a campus pro-Israel
advocate. Speaking before an audience convened in partnership [79] between
his Claremont Students for Israel and Horowitz's "Jew Hatred on Campus"
initiative, Hamilton took aim at liberal Jews. "It's the self-proclaimed
liberal zealots who revise Zionism's history in order to fit a ridiculous
narrative that perpetuates Jew-hatred," he proclaimed. 'Even Jews have taken
part in this anti-Zionist blacklist, using their Jewish identity as a
justification for acquiring a moral high ground."
At the end of his speech he triumphantly announced that he had just been
hired by Charles Jacobs, the ultra-Zionist founder of CAMERA and co-founder
with Daniel Pipes of the blacklisting website, Campus Watch.
This May, Hamilton began work at Jacobs' Boston-based lobbying outfit, which
calls itself Americans for Peace and Tolerance. There, he would learn at the
knee of one of the pioneers in blacklisting Palestine solidarity activists,
a figure whose dossiers have formed a substantial part of Canary Mission's
glossary.
Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for AlterNet, and the award-winning author
of Goliath [80] and Republican Gomorrah [81]. Find him on Twitter at
@MaxBlumenthal [82].
Julia Carmel is a freelance writer. You can find her on Twitter at
@JuliaCarmel_ [83]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [84]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[85]
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http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/to-the-claremont-colleges-jewish-community/
[79]
https://www.facebook.com/claremontstudentsforisrael/posts/773296249444509
[80]
http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[81] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[82] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[83] http://twitter.com/JuliaCarmel_
[84] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Flush With Cash,
Right-Wing Extremists Train the Future Zealots of Pro-Israel Campus Activism
[85] http://www.alternet.org/
[86] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B