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Birds of a Feather

Preliminary Remarks  · Introduction  ·  Daniel Pipes  ·  Damage Control  ·  Michael Ledeen  ·  Michael Rubin  ·  Benjamin Netanyahu  ·  Paul Wolfowitz  ·  Aaron David Miller  ·  Peter Brookes  ·  Robert Spencer  ·  David Horowitz  ·  Pamela Geller  ·  Caroline Glick  ·  Conclusion  ·  Footnotes

Neoconservatism — “a complex interlocking professional and family network centered around Jewish publicists and organizers flexibly deployed to recruit the sympathies of both Jews and non-Jews in harnessing the wealth and power of the United States in the service of Israel.” [0]

Preliminary Remarks

Around 2005 the Ayn Rand Institute began making a show of denouncing neoconservatism – by giving talks, publishing articles and eventually promoting a book about its decline and fall and death.  ARI’s concern with neoconservatism’s demise came long after neoconservatives had gained access to government power.  As a political force the neoconservatives go back to the Reagan presidency in the 1980s, they were pushing for U.S. military action in the Middle East in 1996 and became especially visible in the Bush administration beginning in 2000.  After 9/11 neoconservatives came to full flower and were featured in news and editorial media almost daily.  As a practical matter ARI’s criticism came several years too late.

It might be said of ARI “better late than never,” but there is another problem with ARI denouncing neoconservatism:  ARI is in no position to do it with any sincerity.  ARI had published – especially after 9/11 – dozens upon dozens of editorials, press releases and letters to the editor supporting practically the entire neoconservative agenda. Now and then they would criticize the neocons for not being consistent enough, for not being neocon enough, but this was a detail, a disagreement among those having a common cause.

Before 2005 ARI writers totally ignored the leaders of neoconservatism, neither praising nor denouncing them. If we liken the neoconservatives to an army, the officers are men such as Irving Kristol and David Brooks, the “general” (though not all neocons recognize him) Leo Strauss. These, to repeat, ARI ignored before 2005. But all along, before and after 2005, ARI praised the “foot soldiers” – that is, neocons in government and/or in the public eye – men such as Paul Wolfowitz and Daniel Pipes. And it was precisely the neoconservative ideas of these men that ARI praised.

Not all the ideas. For example most neoconservatives oppose Muslim immigration (they usually support other Third World immigration), whereas ARI supports all Third World immigration. In any case ARI promoted most of the neoconservative agenda, and still does. [1]

There are ideas and there are the people who hold them. It is the people aspect we wish to address in this article. Instead of focusing on what ARI says regarding ideas, we focus on whose ideas they are agreeing with. Though it is true that arguing ad hominem – “against the man” – can be a fallacy, when an institution chooses to associate itself with a whole raft of neocons and then denounces neoconservativism it does give one pause.

Introduction

A man is known, so the saying goes, by the company he keeps.  And, we might add, an organization is known by the people it promotes.  Any review of the Ayn Rand Institute must look into Daniel Pipes, for example, with whom ARI writers have shared the podium many times. [2]

Here are over a dozen ARI-promoted events that featured Mr. Pipes:

1.  The Defense of America Lecture Series
March 3 & 25, April 10 & 15,  2003  at the Univ. of Pennsylvania.
Featuring:
  • Daniel Pipes – Middle East Forum, Clarion Fund.
  • Yaron Brook – dual citizen of Israel and the U.S.
  • Gary Hull (a senior writer at ARI from 1997 to 2002).
  • From ARI’s announcement:
    “... a provocative lecture series on the war on Islamic terrorism ... Special focus will be given to why American colleges have become the breeding grounds for rabid anti-American and anti-Israeli movements.
    “Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, is an internationally acclaimed Middle East scholar, prize-winning columnist and author of 10 books on the Middle East and Islam, including his newest book Militant Islam Reaches America.  His talk, ‘The War Against Militant Islam: Are We Winning?’ is on March 25 ... .”
    Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, was scheduled for  “Why We Are Losing the War on Terrorism”  on March 3  and  “The Moral Case for Supporting Israel”  on April 15.
    “Dr. Gary Hull is director of the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace at Duke University and a board member of Campus Watch, which monitors and critiques Middle East studies in North America. His talk,  ‘Twin Towers Destroyed by the Ivory Towers: How America’s Universities Harbor the Ideas That Spread Terrorism,’  will be given on April 10 ... .”
    Campus Watch is part of the Middle East Forum and directed by Daniel Pipes.

    2.  Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons
    April 11, 2006 at the Univ. of Southern California at Los Angeles. [3]
    A panel discussion featuring:
  • Yaron Brook
  • Daniel Pipes
  • From September 2006 through April 2007  ARI’s “About ARI” webpage displayed a group photograph of Daniel Pipes, Edwin Locke, and Yaron Brook at this event.

    3.  The Real Threat and the Right Response
    October 21, 2006 in Boston.
    A series of lectures and panel discussions featuring
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Yaron Brook
  • Flemming Rose
  • Also on that day Mr. Pipes gave a solo lecture “Radical Islam and the War on Terror.”  These events were part of OCON (Objectivist Conferences) 2006, held October 20-22, “The Jihad Against the West.” [3a]

    4.  Totalitarian Islam’s Threat to the West
    April 12, 2007 at the University of California at Los Angeles.
    A panel discussion featuring:
  • Yaron Brook
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Wafa Sultan [4]
    Moderated by Edwin Locke.
  • ARI’s announcement includes brief and uncritical biographies of each panelist. The one for Mr. Pipes reads:
    “Dr. Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. ... He is a columnist for the New York Sun and he appears weekly in Israel’s Jerusalem Post, Italy’s L’Opinione, Spain’s La Razón ... . His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is among the most accessed Internet sources of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam.”

    5.  The Threat of Totalitarian Islam
    April 29, 2008 at the University of California at Berkeley.
    A panel discussion featuring:
  • Yaron Brook
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Victor Davis Hanson – senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
  • This time ARI’s biographical blurb for Mr. Pipes promotes his website with a stronger superlative:
    His Web site, DanielPipes.org, is the single most accessed Internet source of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam.
    Mr. Hanson, besides working at the Hoover Institution, writes for National Review. He promoted the invasion of Iraq by claiming that ancient Greek military leaders would have done the same. At this time he explicitly supports neoconservative policies and uses that adjective to describe them. However he may have seen the error of his ways for these days he supports the best of Trump.

    6.  The Threat of Totalitarian Islam
    May 5, 2008 at New York University.
    A panel discussion featuring:
  • Yaron Brook
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Flemming Rose
  • Again ARI’s biographical blurb for Mr. Pipes is uncritical and promotes his website.

    7.  The Threat of Totalitarian Islam
    May 6, 2008 at Harvard University.
    A panel Q&A featuring:
  • Yaron Brook
  • Daniel Pipes
  • The blurb for Mr. Pipes is uncritical and promotes his website. (Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, was scheduled along with Misters Brook and Pipes but did not appear.)

    8.  Totalitarian Islam and the Threat to Free Speech
    October 23, 2008 at American University, Washington, D.C.
    A panel discussion featuring:
  • Yaron Brook
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Flemming Rose
  • The blurb for Mr. Pipes is uncritical and promotes his website.

    9.  9/11 – a Decade Later: Lessons for the Future
    September 8, 2011 at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
    Panel discussions featuring:
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Peter Brookes – The Heritage Foundation.
  • Efraim Karsh – Middle East Forum. [4a]
  • Michael Rubin – American Enterprise Institute.
  • Clare Lopez – Center for Security Policy, Clarion Fund.
  • Aaron David Miller – Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
  • Walid Phares – Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Ariel Center for Policy Research, Clarion Fund.
  • Diana West – Washington Examiner based syndicated columnist.
  • John Lewis
  • Elan Journo
  • Yaron Brook
  • Not counting the three ARI associates at the end of the list, the others are all neoconservatives, among them representatives of over half a dozen neoconservative think tanks, though perhaps the Woodrow Wilson Center is better described as one-world socialist. The event was funded in part by the Koret Foundation – “staunch champions and allies of Israel” to quote a joint statement by the Koret and Taube Foundations – which besides sponsoring talks by Norman Podhoretz helps finance such neoconservative groups as the Hoover Institution, MEMRI, and the Middle East Forum, especially Campus Watch.

    10.  Islamists Rising in the Middle East: Where Next for America?
    April 11, 2013 at the University of California, Davis.
    Panel discussion featuring:
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Elan Journo
  • Larry Greenfield – American Freedom Alliance, Claremont Institute, Reagan Legacy Foundation, Wexner Foundation.
  • From the blurb:  “Where are things heading in the Israel-Palestinian conflict? What should America’s policy be toward the region, and toward Israel in particular?”  Mr. Greenfield is the author of “Liberal Jews and the Legacy of Neoconservatism” (American Thinker September 27, 2009) where he writes:
    “... neoconservatism should be analyzed and respected on its own merits as a rich and deep contribution to modern conservatism. The case study of neoconservative patriarchs Kristol and Podhoretz inspires celebration and contemplation.”
    and it goes down from there.

    11.  Twenty Years After Oslo: Where Next for U.S. Policy?
    May 29, 2013 at the Microsoft Government Affairs building, Washington, D.C.
    Panel discussion and luncheon featuring:
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Elan Journo
  • Aaron David Miller – Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
  • Jonathan Tobin – senior online editor of Commentary magazine.
  • From the blurb:  “Following the so-called Arab Spring, how should we view the Israel-Palestinian conflict? What should America’s policy be toward the region, and Israel in particular?”  Question: Who pays for the food?  Comment: Don’t confuse the U.S. with America.

    12.  Twenty Years After Oslo, Where Next for U.S. Policy?
    September 10, 2013 at the National Press Club building, Washington, D.C.
    Panel discussion featuring:
  • Yaron Brook
  • Aaron David Miller – Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Jonathan Tobin – senior online editor of Commentary magazine.
  • Elan Journo.
    Moderated by Thomas Bowden.
  • From the blurb:  “Twenty years ago, the American-led “peace process” ignited fervent hopes of Mid-east peace. But that policy collapsed. Peace remains elusive. Why? Now, amid the rise of Islamists, the upheaval in Egypt, the Syrian civil war, and an imminently nuclear-capable Iran, what might it take to achieve peace? ... Registration is required ... . Identification will be required at check in.”  Comment: The U.S. government ought to get out of the Middle East. Israel is no concern of Americans or their government.
    Protests to the contrary, we suspect ARI’s motive for the last two events was to promote a military attack on Syria, then up for vote in Congress, as advocated by other neoconservatives and the Israel lobby.
    ARI’s November 2013 newsletter Impact:  boasted:  “FrontPage Magazine, an online magazine [see David Horowitz below], covered the event and published a write-up of many of the key points.”

    13.  Islamist Censorship: How Does Israel Fare?
    May 3, 2015 at Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, Israel.
    Organized by the Ayn Rand Center Israel.
    A discussion featuring:
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Yaron Brook
  • The blurb says that the Israeli government “has repeatedly cracked down on anti-Islamic and anti-Arab statements” (meaning, presumably, Israel arrests people who criticize Islam or Arabs) and asks if allowing freedom of speech would “establish the country as a land of freedom.”

    14.  (Event at the Middle East Forum)
    July 24, 2018 at an event of the Middle East Forum held “on Capitol Hill” Elan Journo (an Israeli) along with Daniel Pipes began promoting Mr. Journo’s book What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.


    Four more events in which an ARI associate participated along with Mr. Pipes:

    1.  The Future of Israel and the Implications for the West
    November 14, 2008 at the Breakers Hotel, Palm Beach, Florida.
    Part of a larger event sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s “Restoration Weekend 2008” held November 13-16.
    A panel discussion featuring:
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Yaron Brook
  • Caroline Glick – Center for Security Policy.
    With an introduction by Janet Levy of the Horowitz Freedom Center.
  • Neocons love to insert the word “freedom” here and there, window-dressing for the unwary.  See footnote  33  for a photo of Mr. Brook and Misses Glick and Geller at this gathering of neocons.

    2.  Facing Jihad
    December 14, 2008 in Jerusalem, Israel.
    Organized by the Ariel Centre for Policy Review, an Israeli group.
    A series of talks by Arieh Eldad, John Lewis, David Bukay, Itamar Marcus, Shlomo Sharan, Simon Deng, Geert Wilders, Daniel Pipes.
    Each talk was introduced by Robert Spencer.  Mr. Lewis: “A Policy to Defeat Islamic Totalitarianism.”  Mr. Pipes: “Israel and Clear Victory.”  Live Internet coverage was provided by Pamela Geller.

    3.  Islamists Rising in the Middle East: Where next for America?
    April 11, 2013 at the University of California at Davis.
    Organized by the Ayn Rand Society there. A forum featuring Elan Journo, Daniel Pipes, and Larry Greenfield.

    4.  Antisemitism and the Failures to Recognize its Recrudescence
    June 9, 2013 at the Intercontinental Hotel, Los Angeles.
    A panel discussion following the talk
    “Is Eurabia Inevitable”  by Daniel Pipes
    featuring:
  • Elan Journo
  • Michel Gurfinkel – Valeurs Actuelles, Commentary, Weekly Standard.
  • Ronnie Fraser – Academic Friends of Israel.
  • Charles Asher Small – Hoover Institution, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.
    Moderated by Roberta Seid – America Israel Demographic Research Group, StandWithUs.
  • On the first day of the two day event  “Europe’s Last Stand? Debt, Demography and the Abandonment of National Sovereignty”  organized by the American Freedom Alliance.  AFA was founded by Avi Davis, former director at the Streisand Center for Jewish Cultural Arts and at American Associates, Ben-Gurion University. AFA opposes Muslim immigration into Europe and the U.S. but takes no stand on Third World immigration in general. You will look in vain among the 25 speakers at “Europe’s Last Stand” for Peter Brimelow or any other opponent of immigration anarchy. StandWithUs is an international organization fighting boycotts of Israel.

    ... Recrud— what?

    Recrudescence, Froggy.  It means something bad breaking out again after a brief lapse. Just when things seem better, they get worse again.

    ... That’s pretty cruddy all right.

    May I continue, please?  Considering the affiliations of the panelists it looks like the reason they’re against Muslim immigration is that it’s bad for Jews or bad for Israel.

    5.  Oslo @ Twenty:  Cost and Consequences of the Peace Process
    September 29, 2013 in Los Angeles.
    Organized by the American Freedom Alliance and by Speaking for Democracy.
    An international conference featuring two dozen speakers and experts, including:
  • Bret Stephens – The Wall Street Journal.
  • David Suissa – Los Angeles Jewish Journal.
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Aaron David Miller – Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
  • Elan Journo
  • From ARI’s November 2013 newsletter Impact:  “Mr. Journo argued that the Middle East peace process has been one of appeasement, in which America has consistently deserted its ally Israel, and empowered its enemies. In order to ensure long-term security, foreign policy toward the Middle East must be informed by a rational moral code of American self-interest.”
    -oOo-

    In Yaron Brook’s Facebook entry of July 21, 2016 he linked to an article by Mr. Pipes titled  “Why I Just Quit the Republican Party” and quoted the beginning:

    “The Republican Party nominated Donald Trump as its candidate for president of the United States – and I responded [by] ending my 44-year GOP membership. ¶ Here’s why I bailed, quit, and jumped ship: ¶ First, Trump’s boorish, selfish, puerile, and repulsive ...”

    Like Yaron Brook and the other Cultural Leftists Mr. Pipes goes on to call Trump “scary.”  He concludes by, in effect, rooting for Hillary:

    “For the Republican Party to recover its soul, Trump needs to be thumped in November.”

    On Facebook Mr. Brook called the article  “Excellent.”
    -oOo-

    A man needn’t be an Objectivist to have something valuable to contribute to the cause of freedom. Even a liberal can be useful, in a delimited field. (Rand herself quoted Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. with profit in two of her essays, and once even Noam Chomsky.) Sometimes we find the work of a liberal (or whatever) useful in our critique of ARI – of what ARI says and equally important, of what it does not. The liberalism of the liberals whom we promote in this fashion can be ignored. For example Glenn Greenwald (of Salon.com) has written well regarding the growing police state though nominally he is a liberal. Norman Finkelstein has done worthwhile work regarding Israel, it remains valuable even if he says somewhere that he is a liberal.

    As for ARI and the neoconservatives, most of the neoconservative positions are harmful to America and ARI agrees with practically all of them, especially on foreign policy and related domestic policy. You find Daniel Pipes and other neocons lauded again and again, you never find James Bovard even mentioned. (See this website’s  Links  page for why James Bovard is out.)

    Who then is Daniel Pipes?  And who is Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Paul Wolfowitz? — each of whom at one time or another ARI writers have praised, each of whom answers to the name neoconservative, and it being precisely their neoconservative ideas that ARI writers promoted. We begin with Daniel Pipes.

    Daniel Pipes

    Like most political intellectuals he seems never to have held a real job. From 1986 to 1993 he directed something called the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is now president of the Middle East Forum, a self-styled “think tank” – rather propaganda mill – incorporated in 1994. As is usual with Israeliophile organizations the Middle East Forum presents itself to outsiders as promoting American interests.

    It publishes Middle East Quarterly once edited by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute and now by Efraim Karsh, current director of the MEF. Mr. Pipes himself writes a syndicated newspaper column which, according to his website, appears  “in the Jerusalem Post and other newspapers around the globe.”  Apparently the Israeli newspaper is so important it relegates other newspapers to  “other newspapers.” One year the Zionist Organization of America gave him an award for Outstanding Journalism.

    The Middle East Forum, according to its website,  “works to define and promote American interests in the Middle East.”  As we shall see, this illustrates a frequently used technique of Mr. Pipes and other neoconservatives:  take a program steeped in self-sacrifice such as an unjust war or foreign aid to their friends (and your enemies), then wrap it in self-interest for public consumption. They know that the rhetoric of reason, principle, freedom, morality, patriotism, America, self-defense, self-interest ... sells.  And that is all their talk of “American interests” is, rhetoric, window-dressing, a shabby and deceptive excuse for another agenda. To borrow a line from Nietzsche, they disguise their secret tyrant-longings in virtue words.

    ARI writers are no different from the neocons in this regard. Peter Schwartz, for example, was advertised in the last panel discussion above as the author of the book  The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America,  and ARI’s ideal of  “self-interest” is to sacrifice you to Israel  see  This is Our Ally?  on this website. Another example is ARI’s Op-Ed  “Allowing Israel to Destroy the PLO Helps Defend the U.S.” (by Andrew Bernstein, November 8, 2001).

    They use the language of selfishness – without the substance – like an incantation that transforms their desire into yours. The technique, like any other lie, is pragmatic, even as its self-deceptive / lying users denounce pragmatism and praise principle. [5]

    Then ARI accuses the neocons of advocating self-sacrifice. It’s all very confused. The neocons sacrifice Americans to pay for the U.S. military sacrificing Afghans and Iraqis along with U.S. soldiers, and ARI accuses the neocons of self-sacrifice for – we would say – not sacrificing enough Afghans and Iraqis.  The neocon brand of self-sacrifice is well ridiculed by the bumper-sticker:

    Be nice to America
    Or we’ll bring democracy to your country.

    Is Daniel Pipes a neoconservative? He thinks so.  The biographical sketch on his website says  “Mr. Pipes takes pride in having been ...”  and there follows a list among which is:  “deemed the neo-conservative movement’s ‘leading thinker’ by Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper.”

    The hodgepodge that constitutes the notion “neoconservative” makes defining it difficult, but common to all who call themselves neoconservative are, in brief:  big state at home, empire abroad, Israel forever. We will see this in Daniel Pipes as much as in ARI, though ARI is mealy-mouthed about the first two.

    Mr. Pipes was interviewed in March 2006 [6]  three years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, Bush and his neocon advisors saying that otherwise Saddam Hussein would kill us all:


    Q:  Were you in favor of going to war in Iraq, and how do you think it’s progressing or regressing?

    A:  I was in favor.  I continue to be in favor of the campaign to eliminate the rule of Saddam Hussein, with all the dangers to the Iraqis, to the region and to ourselves. ...

    ARI itself focused on the last – and spurious – reason, a danger to America, see  Relentless Propaganda  on this website.  ARI now rejects the first reason, a danger to Iraqis, and insinuates that it had always rejected it.  See however  “Honoring Virtue”  and the 7th footnote to  “What We Owe Our Soldiers”  on this website.  The second reason to eliminate Saddam Hussein, that he was a danger to the region, ARI sometimes paired with the first, saying he was a danger to both Israel and America.

    From the same interview with Mr. Pipes:

    Q:  How do you define your politics?

    A:  Conservative.

    Q:  You’re not one of those neocons who allegedly talked President Bush into going to war in the Middle East?

    A:  I have been called a neoconservative. I don’t exactly know how a neoconservative differs from a conservative.

    That’s his full answer. Besides engaging in disingenuous ignorance he evades the question whether he had lobbied for the war, which of course he had, he was one of the administration’s principal advisors. Later:

    Q:  How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?

    A:  Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing.

    On the cake.

    Mr. Pipes is a fickle friend. During the Iraq-Iran war some years before, he was urging that the U.S. support  Saddam Hussein. In 1987 in the article “Back Iraq” [7]  he wrote that


    “the fall of the existing regime in Iraq would enormously enhance Iranian influence, endanger the supply of oil, threaten pro-American regimes throughout the area, and upset the Arab-Israeli balance.”

    Whatever that is. He then recommends various ways to help Iraq in its war against Iran:

    “The American weapons that Iraq could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines [that is, cluster bombs] and counterartillery radar. ... The United States might also consider upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad ... .”

    Iraq could also be helped, he says, economically:  repayment terms could be eased for U.S. commodity credits and Iraq could be advanced a line of export-import credits, etc.

    “Such measures would assert U.S. confidence in Iraq’s political viability and its ability to repay its debts after the war’s end, and would encourage other countries ... to continue financing Iraqi war efforts.”

    Towards the end he makes clear his motivation for helping Iraq in its war against Iran:

    “Iran ... is more likely [than Iraq] to turn its weapons against Israel.”

    These days Mr. Pipes, like ARI, promotes direct war with Iran.

    Lest there be any doubt that Mr. Pipes regards himself as a neoconservative consider this March 8, 2005 article which (on his website) he titles  “A Neo-Conservative’s Caution.”  He begins by saying that he does not quite know what a neo-conservative is, and continues:


    Journalists use “neo-conservative” to describe me, editors include my writings in a neo-conservative anthology, critics plumb my views for insight into neo-conservative thinking, and event hosts invite me to represent the neo-conservative viewpoint.

    As some of my oldest friends and closest allies are called neo-conservative, I happily accept this appellation. Indeed, it has a certain cachet ...

    I mention all this because neoconservative policies in the Middle East have been looking pretty good the past two months, as Max Boot amplifies in a column titled “Neocons May Get the Last Laugh” ...

    Mr. Pipes then lists several things that look pretty good to Max Boot, says they look good to him too, and goes on to give reasons to be wary none the less. [8]

    Mr. Pipes writes for National Review and is a contributing editor for National Review Online. He is a regular contributor to David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com and to Commentary.  Just look at the company  he  keeps. [9]

    Doubtless as a reward for Mr. Pipes’ promoting the Iraq war, in 2003 President Bush appointed him to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Besides running the Middle East Forum Mr. Pipes is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

    Most Americans felt less safe after 9-11. [10]  Not however Daniel Pipes.  In  “My Gloom: Back to September 10” (New York Sun December 20, 2005; the article he quotes is his “Why this American feels safer” Jerusalem Post October 3, 2001)  he writes:


    “The attacks of September 11, 2001, made me feel more secure, unlike most Americans. Finally, the country is focused on issues that had long worried me.

    “ ‘The FBI is engaged in the largest operation in its history,’ I wrote in late 2001. ... [Lists various federal actions.] ... The newfound alarm is healthy, the sense of solidarity heartening, the resolve encouraging.’ ”

    ARI gave the very same impression.  “We Are All Israelis now” (Op-Ed, Sept. 18, 2001), etc.  and they  reveled  in the comparison.

    “But I agonized whether it would last.  ‘Are Americans truly ready to sacrifice liberties and lives to prosecute seriously the war against militant Islam?  I worry about US constancy and purpose.’

    “And right I was to worry, as the alarm, solidarity, and resolve of late 2001 have plummeted lately, returning us to a roughly pre-September 11 mentality.”

    Among the causes of Mr. Pipes’ agony is that, we would say the Orwellianly named,

    “USA Patriot Act [renewal] is now stalled in the Senate although it originally passed by a 98-1 vote.”

    The man need not have agonized, the Senate eventually passed it again. But he had other concerns and perhaps a hope:

    “And I worry that not even a catastrophic act of terror will return a desensitized West to its post-September 11 alarm, solidarity, and resolve. ... And, even if mass murders do awaken the public, a next round of alertness will presumably be as ephemeral as the last one.”


    The Middle East Forum Education Fund webpage boasts of its successes, among which is:


    “Defeating Charles Freeman:  Steven J. Rosen’s highly influential articles caused Israel-critic Charles Freeman to withdraw his name as head of the National Intelligence Council.”

    An MEF press release (March 10, 2009) refers to “Steve’s stature and credibility.”  He and fellow AIPAC member Keith Weissman later beat an espionage rap.

    The MEF once had a Legal Defense Fund for Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician prosecuted for “hate crime” because his speeches and documentaries offended some Muslims. Whatever Mr. Wilders said about Muslims we support his defense. (He was acquitted June 23, 2011.) But Mr. Pipes defense was unprincipled. He claims to defend freedom of speech yet remains silent while hundreds of other Europeans (and one American) languish in prison for speech offensive to some Jews. As with Mr. Wilders, the content of their remarks is irrelevant to this issue. [11]  The purpose of the MEF’s defense seems to be to oppose Muslim immigration rather than Third World immigration in general.

    Mr. Pipes’ fawning articles in favor of reelecting Bush president in 2004 might have been written (not that they were) by Harry Binswanger or Andrew Bernstein.  (See the 2004 section of  Presidential Elections – Ayn Rand & ARI: 1984-2004  and the end of  Our Bold, Fearless Leader  on this website.)

    Mr. Pipes founded Campus Watch, which he also directs. Campus Watch encourages college students to report professors whose comments the students consider hostile to Israel – in a word, heretics. The Campus Watch website puts it differently:  it seeks to “monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance.” This while it and MEF spread disinformation – lies – promoting Israel.

    Campus Watch helped destroy Norman Finkelstein’s academic career while being quite happy with Alan Dershowitz – the Harvard professor infamous for the idea of “torture warrants” (not to mention plagiarism in his book The Case for Israel) – and reprinting his articles.

    Ironically considering that Campus Watch is part of it, Campus Watch says any existence of an unorganized Israel lobby is a contradiction in terms and “paranoia.”

    Alex Epstein, then at ARI, wrote a thoroughly positive review of Campus Watch in The Intellectual Activist December 2002. It is, he says,  “run by Middle East expert Daniel Pipes”  and  “a great act of justice.”  We shall see an example of Mr. Pipes’ expertise in a moment.

    ARI allowed Campus Watch to reprint its Op-Eds “Censorship on Campus?” by Onkar Ghate (September 4, 2002) and “Why Do They Hate Us?” by Robert Tracinski (October 1, 2001). [12]

    We would have no objection to a “Campus Watch” that was truthful and that focused on anti-American professors, which would include both Islamist and Zionist professors. [13]

    In 2000 the Middle East Forum convened the “Lebanon Study Group,” co-chaired by Daniel Pipes and Ziad Abdelnour, president of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon. They entitled the resulting report (May 2000)  “Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role?”  In effect it called for the United States to invade both countries. It called for the U.S. to force Syria from Lebanon, claimed Syria had “weapons-of-mass-destruction” and called for their destruction before it’s too late:


    “... the United States has entered a new era of undisputed military supremacy with an appreciable drop in human losses on the battlefield. ... This opens the door to ... act for Lebanon’s endangered freedoms and pluralism. ... this opportunity may not wait, for as weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities spread, the risks of such action will rapidly grow.”

    And of course you and your self-interest gets hauled in as window-dressing. For example:

    “... Syrian rule in Lebanon stands in direct opposition to American ideals ...”

    Among those who signed the report, besides Misters Pipes and Abdelnour, were Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, Michael Rubin, David Wurmser and Frank Gaffney. [14]

    Mr. Pipes is a member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), closely allied with AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. If WINEP’s propaganda – that propping up Israel is in America’s interest – were not bad enough, according to an FBI whistleblower two of its other members, David and Alan Makovsky, passed classified U.S. nuclear technology to Israel, Turkey and Pakistan. Mr. Pipes has yet to demand that the FBI act on its own files about it. [15]

    The Middle East Forum website quotes the Wall Street Journal calling Mr. Pipes an “authoritative commentator on the Middle East.” ARI agrees (see above). You have to wonder though. Mr. Pipes was one of the first to praise Joan Peters’ book From Time Immemorial, which purported to prove that the land now claimed by Israel contained practically no Arabs when the influx of Jews began, and that today almost all Palestinians calling themselves refugees from Israel (or their descendents) are actually immigrants from the surrounding area (or their descendents). The book was a 600 page hoax, a fraud replete with footnotes to nowhere. This is well known and non-controversial. Yehoshua Porath, an Israeli historian (and Likud Party member, so any prejudice would be in the same direction as Mr. Pipes), called the book  “sheer forgery.” [17]  Yet Mr. Pipes wrote in a glowing review that


    Ms. Peters’  “historical detective work has produced startling results which should materially influence the future course of the debate about the Palestinian problem.” [18]


    The following two items are selected from an ongoing entry in Daniel Pipes’ blog entitled  “Caught My Eye – Noteworthy Quotes”:


    “Benjamin Balant [sic Balint, of the Hudson Institute]:  Neoconservatism ‘represents the culmination of the fitful love affair between America and its Jews.’ (In a review of Nathan Abrams, ‘Commentary Magazine, 1945-1959,’ in The Weekly Standard, December 11, 2006)”

    “Jonathan S. Tobin [executive editor of Commentary Magazine]:  ‘the day when soccer hooliganism is rampant in the United States will be the moment when Jews will no longer be safe here.’ (‘I Don’t Care About the World Cup!’ The Jewish Exponent, June 8, 2006)”

    Apparently that last is not supposed to be paranoia.

    In a Commentary book review (July/August 2007) of a biography of the U.S. diplomat and historian George Kennan, Mr. Pipes agrees with the book’s author that Kennan “held anti-Semitic views” (quoting Mr. Pipes) in part because “[h]e opposed Washington’s prompt recognition of Israel in 1948.”

    Mr. Pipes allowed himself to be featured in the video  Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West  which showed film clips of Arabs interspersed with old film clips of Adolf Hitler. It was produced and distributed – some 28 million copies right before the 2004 election, most given away free – by The Clarion Fund, which in turn is associated with and probably financed by Aish HaTorah, an Israeli organization. [19]  Also featured were two evangelicals, plus Alan Dershowitz and Caroline Glick, famous for her own video, the satire We Con the World.

    Early in the video Daniel Pipes is shown saying:  “I would estimate that some ten to fifteen percent ... of Muslims worldwide support militant Islam. That is not to say that only ten to fifteen percent are anti-American or anti-Zionist, no, that’s much larger.”  A revealing conjunction of classes, that, as if  “American”  and  “Zionist”  occupy the same place in Mr. Pipes’ mind.

    In a speech elsewhere Mr. Pipes worries about a fifth column of Zionist le— or rather Islamist led immigrants. [20]

    In 2008 (at least) he was one of the leaders of Jerusalem Summit, an Israel-based advocacy group that brings together Evangelical Christians, neoconservatives, and pro-Israel figures.

    In “Israel’s Best Weapon?” (New York Post July 15, 2003) he wrote that “... other than the Israel Defense Forces, America’s Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.”

    The Capitalism Magazine website is not run by ARI but ARI allows it to reprint its articles. Sometimes an ARI writer will publish there instead of on ARI’s website. At the start of the Iraq War, Capitalism Magazine started a website called “Israel is Moral” with the domain name israelismoral.com, now defunct. Interspersed among ARI articles such as  “We Are Either With Israel, Or We Are With the Terrorists” (April 1, 2002)  you could find many by Daniel Pipes, we counted over forty. Judging from the content for the most part these articles could have come from ARI. [21]

    Edward Cline, a former ARI guest writer, quoted Daniel Pipes with unqualified approval in several Capitalism Magazine articles. [22]  The Objective Standard, besides advertising Mr. Pipes’ ARI panel appearances, has referenced several of his articles with unqualified approval.

    Damage Control

    By 2005 damage control was in order at ARI regarding the similarity of its propaganda to that of the neoconservatives, especially, perhaps, after the start of ARI Watch in July 2005 pointing it out.

    To that end The Objective Standard (Fall 2006) managed to publish a 14,000 word article,  “The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism” by Bradley Thompson,  denouncing neoconservatives  without once mentioning Israel.

    Anyone who has studied the work of Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthammer, Norman Podhoretz, David Horowitz, et al knows that Israel worship is a sine qua non of the neoconservative, without which there is no neoconservative. [23]  And to repeat what cannot be repeated enough, neoconservatives present this worship as American self-interest, claiming that America and Israel share the same values and the same enemies. (The latter of course becomes self-fulfilling when Israel drops U.S. provided bombs on Israel’s enemies.)

    Besides Israel, Mr. Thompson neglects to mention Daniel Pipes and other “foot-soldier” neocons. He does consider the more seminal neocons such as Irving Kristol and David Brooks, whom you might call officers, and their intellectual general, Leo Strauss. Mr. Thompson analyzes, and well, the upper ranks of the neoconservative army – but he never considers the foot-soldiers. Neocon principles are bad, but most of their practical actions, their particularly neocon actions, get a free pass.

    Besides Israel and the foot-soldier neocons, you will look in vain for any mention of Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran in Mr. Thompson’s article. You have to wonder if his neoconservatives live on a hitherto undiscovered planet.

    Mr. Thompson turned this TOS article into a book (with a chapter by Yaron Brook, chapter eight):  Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, released May 2010. [24]

    That ARI writers would denounce Leo Strauss, is so ... Straussian.

    More damage control came in the Summer 2007 issue of The Objective Standard:  “Neoconservative Foreign Policy: An Autopsy”  by Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein. The authors denounce neoconservative foreign policy while pretending they had not been supporting it all along.

    Even as they denounce it, though, they cannot help promoting a key neoconservative link-up, when they refer to  “an Islamic totalitarian movement openly committed to achieving Islamic world domination, including the destruction of Israel and America.”  Neocons frequently conjoin Israel and America, and when referring to the Middle East use the adjective “totalitarian,” suggesting that we are allied with Israel against Stalin and Hitler.

    Then in 2009 came the book  Winning the Unwinnable War: America’s Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism  edited by Elan Journo and featuring chapters by him, Yaron Brook and Alex Epstein. The book’s website displays a positive review by Daniel Pipes and the back cover quotes him praising the book. Craig Biddle’s interview of all three authors was published in The Objective Standard Fall 2009:  “America’s Self-Crippled Foreign Policy.”  The authors distance themselves from neoconservatism by redefining it, then knocking down the straw-man they created. Consider the following by Alex Epstein (we add numbers for future reference):

    (1) A neoconservative foreign policy  “lead[s] to a failure to defeat the enemy” and “endless welfare wars.”  (2) It rejects “a self-interested approach to foreign policy.” It fails “to consider the possibility of a self-assertive America that the tin-pot terrorist sponsors of the world would be terrified of angering.”  (3) It “more or less, take[s] for granted the ‘Just War Theory’ framework for evaluating when and how to go to war, a framework that ... renders victory impossible.”

    There are three propositions. The first is true, though not in the way Mr. Epstein intends.  A  neoconservative / ARI  foreign policy fails to even address the real enemy, namely our own government as it showers foreign aid on Middle East governments, mostly dictatorships, then bombs on their civilians (frequently via Israel), then foreign aid on the new governments. This is a policy of endless war.

    As for Mr. Epstein’s second proposition, when an ARI writer refers to “a self-interested foreign policy” he means, as argued in other ARI Watch articles, self-sacrifice to Israel, and by “self-assertion” he means invading Israel’s enemies.  Neocons use the very same code phrases.  Neocons always dish up their wars as in your self-interest.  Neocon writing is replete with “American interests,” “national interest,” “self-defense,” “our self-interest,” “the defense of America,” etc. – enough to make an authentic egoist sick.

    By broadcasting the same “selfishness” as the neocons ARI has set back the spread of Ayn Rand’s ethics by many years.

    Perhaps one day a philosopher will write a book called  The Subversion of Selfishness: How Ayn Rand’s Ethics Got Twisted Into Its Exact Opposite. It would expose the  ARI / neocon  masquerade in philosophical detail:  how they couch altruism in the words of self-interest, either in self-deception or Straussian lies for the masses.

    Analogous to mystics and quacks trying to describe what they do in scientific terms, the folks at ARI try to put their desires in terms of your egoism.

    As for Mr. Epstein’s third and last proposition, it is absurd. Nobody but an ARI writer would characterize neoconservatism as advocating “Just War Theory,” something in fact most neoconservatives explicitly reject. [25]

    We now consider some other neocons whose neoconservative ideas various ARI writers have promoted at one time or another.

    Michael Ledeen

    Michael Ledeen, like Daniel Pipes, is a contributing editor for National Review Online and writes for the Weekly Standard. Mr. Ledeen is an explicit and unabashed follower of Leo Strauss, about which see  Ayn Rand and the Noble Lie  on this website. [26]

    Mr. Ledeen was one of the many neocons who got into the Whitehouse on the coattails of Ronald Reagan in 1980. During Reagan’s administration he advised the State Department, the Department of Defense and the National Security Administration. During the recent Bush administration he was an advisor of Karl Rove.

    For twenty years he was the Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank, and now has the same title at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, another neocon outfit. (The technique behind the label “Freedom Scholar” is the same used by the Corpo Party in Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here. Sling around American sounding language for the purpose of destroying America.)

    Mr. Ledeen is on the Board of Advisors to the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

    Robert Tracinski, senior fellow at ARI at the time, wrote a positive review of Mr. Ledeen’s book  The War Against the Terror Masters  calling for a war against Iran:  “Unmasking the Terror Masters”  The Intellectual Activist  January 2003.

    In the same issue of The Intellectual Activist you find the transcript of a long and friendly interview with Mr. Ledeen entitled:  “Revolt Against Theocracy.”

    One fact Mr. Tracinski never brings up:  Michael Ledeen was Oliver North’s Iran-contra liaison with the Israelis. (More about Iran-contra can be found on ARI Watch’s  Links  page.)

    A few years earlier (1999) Mr. Ledeen had written the book  Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago.  A few quotes from his account of Machiavelli follow.


    “In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to ‘enter into evil’.” (p. 79)

    Machiavelli “recognizes the reality that there are times when a leader must accept dreadful responsibility in serving the common good.” And after giving a ridiculous example: “History abounds with examples of good actions furthering the cause of evil ... .” (93-94, quoted in National Review, not in criticism but for the edification of its readers)

    In Machiavelli’s, and Ledeen’s, defense it might be contended that we are dealing with a Christian inversion of authentic good and evil, that the good and evil above are reversed. This might apply to some of Ledeen’s examples but not, to mention one example he gives, to the government lying to the public.

    “Good religion teaches men that politics is the most important enterprise in the eyes of God. Like Moses, Machiavelli wants the law of his state to be seen, and therefore obeyed, as divinely ordered. The combination of fear of God and fear of punishment ... provides the necessary discipline for good government.” (p. 117-118)

    “American evangelical Christianity is the sort of ‘good religion’ Machiavelli calls for.” (p. 159)

    “Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader—a dictator—willing to use those dreaded ‘extraordinary measures, which few know how, or are willing, to employ.’ ” (p. 173)

    Machiavelli’s “call for a brief period of iron rule is a choice of the lesser of two evils: if the corruption continued, a real tyranny would be just a matter of time ..., whereas freedom can be preserved if a good man can be found to put the state back in order. Just as it is sometimes necessary temporarily to resort to evil actions to achieve worthy objectives, so a period of dictatorship is sometimes the only hope for freedom.” (p. 174)

    Considering Mr. Ledeen’s corrupt past, what he refers to as “corruption” may well be your freedom. You can be sure he doesn’t have you or me in mind for the benevolent dictator, someone of his own ilk is the man for the job. Not that iron rule by a neocon would be real tyranny or last very long. One fine day the neocon state shall wither away and we’ll all be free. I’m being sarcastic. [27]

    He has claimed that his book merely describes Machiavelli’s ideas, not his own, which makes his title kind of hard to explain.

    These days Mr. Ledeen denies having urged the Iraq invasion, but the record belies his denial.

    There’s lots more at  The History Commons. [28]  The man is a complete fruitcake, yet he is part of the  “establishment.”

    Michael Rubin

    Like Mr. Ledeen, Michael Rubin is both an intellectual and a government functionary – the same type of intellectual performing the same sort of function.

    He was staff assistant on Iran and Iraq in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans 2002-2004, which included the run-up to the Iraq War. He was political adviser for Baghdad’s Coalition Provisional Authority 2003-2004. He edited the Middle East Quarterly 2004-2009.

    Currently he lectures at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Civil-Military Relations. He is a Middle East scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank, and writes for  National Review  and  Commentary.

    He helped write propaganda targeted at Iraqis for the Lincoln Group (LG), part of the Pentagon’s “psychological operations,” after LG won one of three such contracts together totaling 300 million dollars over five years. Like Mr. Ledeen, who performed similar work, he denies any association with LG. After saying he helped LG: “I am not nor have I been an employee of the Lincoln Group. I do not receive a salary from them.” – which dodges the question whether he received money from them for his help.

    He is a former Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) which, to repeat, is closely allied with AIPAC.

    Mr. Rubin was the lead writer for “Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development,” a report published in 2008 by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Participants in the report included Dennis Ross, Henry Sokolski, Michael Makovsky (former Pentagon aide to Douglas Feith), Stephen Rademaker (of the State Department and whose wife works at the American Enterprise Institute), and Kenneth Weinstein (CEO of the Hudson Institute).

    In 2006 National Review sponsored the event “Last Chance for Iraq?: a symposium on the war” featuring Misters Rubin and Ledeen among other neoconservative luminaries.

    The following is from Mr. Rubin’s review of the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Middle East Quarterly (Spring 2007).  Referring to Chandrasekaran:


    “... he writes that the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] hired ... the 28-year-old daughter of ‘neoconservative’ Michael Ledeen, to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though, [Chandrasekaran] says, she had no background in accounting. But [she] did have a background in accounting and a master’s in business administration. She did not, however, manage the budget but rather executed it, handling issues such as payroll.”

    And that’s all Mr. Rubin has to say about Ledeen’s daughter executing $13 billion.

    In his 19 May 2004 contribution to National Review Online  titled  “You Must be Likud!”  sub-titled  “Anti-Jewish rhetoric infects the West”  he wrote:


    “Several scholars have addressed the creeping anti-Semitism in the current discourse. Max Boot ... published an excellent essay in the January/February 2004 edition of Foreign Policy in which he called ... ‘a malicious myth’ ... that neoconservatives were ‘Jews who serve the interests of Israel.’ ... If neocons were agents of Likud, they would have advocated an invasion not of Iraq or Afghanistan but of Iran, which Israel considers to be the biggest threat to its own security.”

    The accusation of anti-Semitism isn’t worth denying. Mr. Rubin’s argument about Iran, were it valid, implies that neocons did not advocate the invasion of Iran. But of course they did (and do).

    In 2004 Mr. Rubin wrote a National Security Presidential Directive arguing for the invasion of Iran, which came to light after Larry Franklin was arrested for passing it on to AIPAC. Years later Mr. Rubin abandoned that idea. His article “Iran: The Case for ‘Regime Change’ ” (April 2010 issue of Commentary) instead urges that the U.S. military embargo gas and kerosene, that the U.S. outlaw dealings with Iran’s central bank, that the U.S. jam Iran government communications, that the U.S. finance and provide rebels with alternate methods of communication, that the U.S. finance and direct propaganda in Iran on “themes revolving around regime change,” and that the U.S. give foreign aid to Iranian rebels – all so that ultimately Iran may be “at peace with itself and its neighbors.” You may not care but you’ll pay for it anyway – a fact he left out mentioning.

    He helped plan the 2007 “surge” (of U.S. troops) in Iraq.

    He was among Giuliani’s foreign policy advisors during Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign.

    Benjamin Netanyahu

    Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister of Israel and chairman of the Likud Party.  He has always been a favorite of Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthammer and other neoconservatives so it is no surprise that ARI writers admire him too. For example Leonard Peikoff, in “Israel’s — and America’s — Fundamental Choice” (The Intellectual Activist, June 1996), wrote that the only practical policy of the Israeli government rests upon
    “the courage to act on moral principles. ¶ This was the quality exhibited by the Israeli populace when it recently elected Benjamin Netanyahu prime minister.”
    After arguing the point Mr. Peikoff concludes:
    “When the Israelis elected Mr. Netanyahu, they chose principle over appeasement. We can only hope that our own government will show the same intellectual courage.”

    In “The Death of the Bush Doctrine” by Robert Tracinski (The Intellectual Activist, May 2002) you read that the Bush Doctrine:


    “has served as a rallying point for the better elements on the American right, and for the best American liberals.

    “The Bush Doctrine has already served as a powerful instrument for Israel’s public relations effort in America. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s former Prime Minister and the best mind in Israeli politics, has been drafted by Ariel Sharon’s government to be the ‘great explainer,’ the spokesman for Israeli policy in America. When Netanyahu delivered a brilliant speech to the Senate on April 10, he ...”

    Etc.

    For a long time Andrew Bernstein’s website featured two “guest essays” by Netanyahu. The title of the second was  “The Case for Toppling Saddam: The longer America waits, the more dangerous he becomes” (September 20, 2002).  Apparently Mr. Bernstein first posted these articles during ARI’s run up to the Iraq invasion (again see  Relentless Propaganda  on this website).

    ARI has allowed Netanyahu to reprint several of its Op-Eds on his earlier website  netanyahu.org (now defunct).  Alex Epstein sent him a letter dated June 8, 2006, published there, praising him for things he had said on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. Netanyahu’s website also advertised books by Alan Dershowitz – fitting company for an ARI writer.

    Netanyahu once commissioned the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies – a U.S. neoconservative propaganda mill – to write a report on future Israeli foreign policy. To that end the Institute created the  “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000.”  In 1996 it produced the report  “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.”  The gist of it is that Israel should forego future U.S. economic aid (not however returning any past economic aid, or forgoing any future military aid) so that it will have a freer hand to invade Iraq, Iran and Syria. It was signed by among others Richard Perle and David Wurmser both of the American Enterprise Institute, and Douglas Feith of the Hudson Institute.

    Paul Wolfowitz

    When Paul Wolfowitz was 14 he lived in Israel for a year while his father was a visiting professor at the University of Haifa. His sister emigrated to Israel and lives there today. He was a Ph.D. student of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago. He became Deputy Defense Secretary under the recent President Bush and a major architect of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Before the Iraq invasion in 2003 he pushed demonstrably false reports about Iraq’s weapons and intentions. [29]

    In 1998, three years before 9/11, Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy drafted a letter to the president urging him to attack Iraq. (This letter paralleled the efforts of another neoconservative group, the Project for the New American Century.) Among the signatories was Paul Wolfowitz, along with Michael Ledeen, Elliott Abrams, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Joshua Muravchik, David Wurmser and others.

    Leonard Peikoff quoted Mr. Wolfowitz’s plea to “end states who sponsor terrorism” in “Fifty Years of Appeasement Led to Black Tuesday” (ARI Op-Ed, Sept. 12, 2001), which he later expanded into “It Is Time to Declare War (ad in the Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2001), and republished as “End States Who Sponsor Terrorism” (ad in the New York Times, Oct. 2, 2001):

    “In the excellent words of Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, we must ‘end states who sponsor terrorism.’.”
    Mr. Peikoff had in mind Iran, not Iraq. However invading Iraq was no problem for Yaron Brook – nor, despite protests to the contrary, for Mr. Peikoff (he ultimately controls ARI) – just so the military gets their foot well in the door of the Middle East. [30]

    During ARI’s run-up to the Iraq invasion Alex Epstein wrote  “The Epistemology of Preemption” (The Intellectual Activist November 2002).  There he criticizes Mr. Wolfowitz for, in effect, not being neoconservative enough regarding preemption. This is just like ARI, using big philosophical words to justify pure thuggery. [31]

    Harry Binswanger, in “Soft-Line Ideologues Revisited: Foreign-Policy Soft-Liners are Pragmatists” (Capitalism Magazine January 17, 2004), approves of part of a Wall Street Journal editorial, the part saying it is  “the hard-liners, like Paul Wolfowitz” who are the authentic “realists.”

    As with the actions of other what we call foot soldier neoconservatives, the only thing ARI has ever criticized about Wolfowitz is that he is not neoconservative enough.

    Aaron David Miller

    Like practically all these characters Mr. Miller seems never to have held a real job. After receiving a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic and Middle East History he joined the State Department. There he stayed for 25 years (1978-2003) as a Middle East negotiator and an adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs.

    Currently he is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Unlike the neoconservative think tanks to which most of the other birds here belong (Hoover, Heritage, Middle East Forum, American Enterprise, Center for Security Policy), this think tank is better described as one-world socialist.

    Mr. Miller is also on the advisory council of the Israel Policy Forum based in New York City, according to them an “organization that is committed to a strong and enduring U.S.-Israel relationship and to advancing the shared interests of the United States and the State of Israel.”

    Mr. Miller writes mealy-mouthed articles about Israel and the Middle East, ultimately all pro-Israel. They frequently appear in Foreign Policy, other outlets include The Jewish Daily Forward and The Jewish Week, in which last he is also frequently quoted by other writers. He’s more forthright than the usual Israel promoter about Israel’s influence on U.S. foreign policy.

    The following is from the MondoWeiss review of Mr. Miller’s recent autobiographical book The Much Too Promised Land:


    “He is a reasonable guy who acknowledges his own bias – that he didn’t believe in a Palestinian state till ’88, that he grew up in a rich Cleveland real estate family that gave so much to Israel he was going to Passover with Israeli Prime Ministers.”
    ....

    “... though he has tried mightily and honorably as a policy guy to see things from the other side [he] doesn’t really break through.”

    Peter Brookes

    Mr. Brookes’ former employers include the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was once assistant to the Secretary of Defense. He’s a former associate professor at the Joint Military Intelligence College. In the presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004 he advised Bush and Cheney on foreign policy.

    Mr. Brookes has also worked in the so-called private defense industry, and intelligence industry – apparently there is such a thing.

    Currently he is senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a neoconservative think tank. Very neoconservative. For example a Heritage Foundation senior manager, David Addington (vice president, domestic & economic policy), was one of several lawyers in the Bush Administration who helped paint over government torture a gloss of legality.

    He writes at National Review Online. In “The Fight over CIA Interrogations” (August 25, 2009) he takes care to call torture “interrogation” and torturers “intelligence professionals.” These professionals, he says, “represent our first line of defense.” A legal enquiry into their tactics will have a “chilling effect” on their work “in the field.” Which would be unfortunate because, he says, torture – I meant to type interrogation – is necessary for defense. Thus Mr. Brookes disagrees with more civilized men such as Major Matthew Alexander, who cracked the Zarqawi network, and many others with firsthand knowledge of (torture free) interrogation.

    Robert Spencer

    ARI featured Robert Spencer at the 2006 Objectivist Conference in Boston, at the October 2009 “The Jihad Against the West” event in Boston, and at the November 17, 2009 panel discussion “The Jihad Still Threatens America” along with Elan Journo at New York University.  ARI seems to have distanced itself from him since then.

    Mr. Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of David Horowitz’s Freedom Center.

    On December, 14 2008 the Ariel Centre for Policy Review, an Israeli group, organized the conference “Facing Jihad” held in Jerusalem. Among the speakers and their talks were:

  • John Lewis — “A Policy to Defeat Islamic Totalitarianism.”
  • Daniel Pipes — “Israel and Clear Victory.”
  • Each speaker at the Facing Jihad conference was introduced by Robert Spencer. Pamela Geller (see below) was allowed to video-stream the conference live on her website at the time, “Atlas Shrugs.”

    Mr. Spencer was co-author with Pamela Geller of The Post-American Presidency (2010).

    David Horowitz

    David Horowitz is a mixed bag. He began in the New Left and as far as Israel is concerned, including promoting U.S. wars, ended in the New Right. However, being against unrestricted immigration he is not a typical neoconservative. As Robert Lynd would do with G. K. Chesterton we would split him in two, the neocon half and his better half.

    Second Renaissance Books (which became Ayn Rand Bookstore then the Ayn Rand Institute eStore) carried his book  Radical Son  in 1998.  Around that time he was a guest on Leonard Peikoff’s radio show. When Mr. Peikoff told him that in Ayn Rand’s philosophy morality was absolute, objective and not a matter of opinion, Mr. Horowitz replied that in that case Ayn Rand was the same as Stalin.

    He is correct about some things. College faculties are rife with Marxists. Sometimes he can properly construe “anti-American” when his Israel worship is not in gear.  Black-on-white crime is under-reported in the media (practically all, not just most, violent crimes where criminal and victim are strangers – “stranger violent crime” – are committed by non-whites).

    But David Horowitz’s concern for freedom goes only so far. He never criticizes the so-called Patriot Act, government institutionalized torture, bombing Israel’s enemies – all the typically neocon goals. He mixes Israel worship with a few good points, but the Israel worship is the main point.

    He runs the website FrontPageMag.com and an organization called “Freedom Center” yet if there is anything on his website about private property you must need special glasses to see it. Viewing the website just now (a day in July 2010) almost all the articles listed on the introductory page were about Jews and Muslims. For example:

    “Defending the Jewish State”
    “Europe’s War on the Jews”
    “The Music World Goes Anti-Israel”
    Prominently displayed is an advertisement for the pamphlet  Obama and the War Against the Jews  by Mr. Horowitz and Jacob Laksin, which says:
    “The Freedom Center has been fighting on Israel’s side for over 20 years. And now, as the crisis deepens with Obama’s intensifying hostility ...”
    but why read further. Yet more foreign aid, the Gaza flotilla non-response, 150 million dollars for a shrine to Israel’s religion, etc. – if this is hostility the pamphlet authors have an exaggerated idea of friendliness. Clearly the “freedom” in “Freedom Center” has little to do with defending your property rights.

    Especially disgusting on the FrontPageMag website was an article about Meg Ryan, and you needn’t care for Ms. Ryan’s politics to be disgusted:  “America’s Sweetheart Meg Ryan: Anti-Semite or Useful Idiot?”  — an exercise in venom, starting with the title (Ms. Ryan graduated from ingénue rôles long ago). The text begins: “Meg Ryan’s decision not to grace the Jerusalem Film Festival with her presence this month ...” and goes down from there: barefaced lies about Israel and Gaza, digs at Ms. Ryan, all dripping with self-righteous nastiness.

    At first glance the only thing worth agreeing with on the FrontPageMag introductory webpage were a few articles against unrestricted immigration, atypical for a neocon outlet.  (Its opposition to unrestricted immigration is spotty, though. For example, Mr. Horowitz dropped and denounced their best writer on the subject, Lawrence Auster.)  To repeat, there seemed to be nothing in defense of private property, though Mr. Horowitz was supposed to have ended his leftist ways after being “mugged by reality.” [32]  Some days (the content changes almost daily) the right-hand side of the webpage looks like something out of the National Enquirer.

    FrontPageMag frequently mentions Daniel Pipes, agreeably, and he is a regular contributor.

    Each fall, since 2005, the Freedom Center has held “David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend” lasting several days at the Breakers Hotel, Palm Beach, Florida. Past speakers have included Yaron Brook, Michael Ledeen, Pastor John Hagee, John Yoo (infamous for a federal torture memo), Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes, Caroline Glick, Max Boot ... a veritable Who’s Who of neocons. [33]

    Peeking at the website again in November 2013, the focus hasn’t changed. You can buy the book Why Israel is the Victim co-authored by Mr. Horowitz. A $20 donation gets you a T-shirt featuring the Israeli flag emblazoned across the front captioned “I Stand With Israel.” Another peek in June 2016 showed a large ad reading (original all in caps) “Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus” which when clicked objected to criticism of Israel.

    In the months before the 2012 presidential election Sarah Palin was shaping up to be the neocons’ candidate of choice. Mr. Horowitz defended her in various blog entries until she dropped out of the race. [34]  Ron Paul, on the other hand, was anathema to Mr. Horowitz. In an interview posted on FrontPageMag March 5, 2007:

    “Ron Paul – the only Libertarian in Congress – is a disgrace. He has waged a war against America’s war on terror, in lockstep with the left, and against the state of Israel, the frontline democracy in this war.”
    On Glenn Beck television show November 13, 2007 Mr. Horowitz insinuated that Ron Paul is “totally in bed with the Islamofascists.” [35]  Mr. Horowitz wrote in his blog of September 14, 2009 and headed “Glenn Beck Is On Our Side”:
    “Ron Paul is a crackpot, a conspiracy nut and a public menace. His crank views of the economy have a lot of Republicans snookered enough to ignore the fact that he is an anti-Semite and an America-hater — fundamentally at odds with America’s role in the world as the guardian of freedom.”

    Mid February 2011 Ron Paul tried to build support for an amendment to the 2011 funding bill that would end all foreign aid to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Pakistan. In response Horowitz wrote a blog entry February 17, 2011 entitled  “Ron Paul Is A Vicious Anti-Semite and Anti-American and Conservatives Need To Wash Their Hands of Him.” [36]

    The main page of ARI’s now defunct ARC website once linked to FrontPageMag, specifically to a page featuring an excerpt of an off-the-cuff interview with Ayn Rand showing her unwittingly repeating the Joan Peters hoax. Also on the page was an advertisement for Horowitz’s book A Point in Time: The Search for Redemption in This Life and the Next, which according to the neoconservative Norman Podhoretz is “as moving as it is profound.”

    ... WAUGH !

    Froggy, you’re the only one I know who can wail sarcastically.

    Mr. Horowitz’s blog entry “Irving Kristol” on September 18, 2009, the day of Mr. Kristol’s death, reveals his roots. Wholly uncritical, it reads in part (one typo, “writng,” is corrected here):

    “The conservative movement has lost one of its wisest, most astute and most interesting thinkers – a man who built important institutions of the movement in addition to writing some of its most astute texts. ... I miss him as a guide and I miss him as a friend. He lived a long and fruitful life, and that’s all we can really wish for ourselves.”
    Some fruit.

    Speaking of neconservative leaders dying off, when Charles Krauthammer (neoconservatism is “a governing ideology whose time has come”) died, Yaron Brook tweeted a link to a hagiographic obituary on Commentary Magazine’s website subtitled “A life well lived.”

    Pamela Geller

    Pamela Geller once ran a blog she called “Atlas Shrugs,” a takeoff on the title of Ayn Rand’s famous novel.  She claimed her blog  “is, and its purpose is, clearly defined by Rand’s philosophy,”  and she goes on to quote a line from the novel about not sanctioning evil. [37]  In February 2015 she moved her blog to another address and renamed it the Geller Report.

    According to Ms. Geller’s earlier website, Robert Spencer, director of David Horowitz’s Jihad Watch (see above), once referred to her as “intelligent, beautiful” and “a dynamo of energy and a paragon of courage and fearlessness.”  Robert Tracinski says this paragon is a  “brash New Yorker and an irrepressible firebrand.”  Caroline Glick calls her “an intrepid blogger.”

    Of John Hagee, the televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel, Ms. Geller once wrote (emphasis hers): “love that man.”

    On June 3, 2010 Ms. Geller began a thread on “Atlas Shrugs” entitled “We Con the World” – a reference to Caroline Glick’s satirical music video about the Gaza flotilla raid a few days before:

    [link to video]
    From Caroline Glick and that cutting edge, creative troupe at Latma.  You have to love these beautiful souls – the whole world is on a goose-stepping Nazi march and these delicious souls satirize the savages and the useful idiots whose necks would be sawed off  first.
    Perhaps Ms. Geller meant to type “through” instead of “off.”  In any case “everyone but us are Nazis” (paraphrasing) illustrates the psychopathology of the Israel worshipper. The rest insinuates a false dichotomy: Either you support Israel or you support Muslims. But you can oppose both – and the worst in each case plumbs the depths. Furthermore, even if the flotilla passengers were misguided they weren’t savages.

    Here are two complete paragraphs from Ms. Geller’s “Atlas Shrugs” blog entry of February 24, 2010, about Muslim immigration to Europe (bolding removed, the extended ellipses hers):

    “Here is more on the Jews fleeing Europe (Sweden and Paris, for example) that I have been covering.  Israel is essential.  And I pray dearly that in the ungodly event that Tehran or its jihadi proxies (Hez’ballah, Hamas etc) target Israel with a nuke, that she retaliate with everything she has at Tehran, Mecca, and Medina ...............
    “Not to mention Europe.  They exterminated all their Jews, but that wasn’t enough. Those monsters then went on to import the next generation of Jew killers.”
    She goes on to criticize Muslim immigration to Europe because Muslims hate Jews.

    One can agree that Europe’s policy of unrestricted immigration is a big mistake, but as a reaction to that mistake isn’t nuking Europe kind of, oh I don’t know, extreme? [37a]

    In her article “Pardon Pollard” published on “The American Thinker” website (22 December 2010) she says releasing Pollard would not only be “a simple act of justice ... but also an act of mercy. This is a matter of saving a life, a Jewish life – the life of a man worth saving.” She goes on to call his sentence “Pure antisemitism” and argues Pollard’s innocence as follows:  “... let’s be frank, shall we? If Israel really wanted to spy on the United States, it wouldn’t use a Jewish guy.” That’s her complete argument.

    Obama pardoned Jonathan Pollard in November 2015. Following the suggestion of various Israeli intellectuals to Jews in general she made no public comment.

    In a bookstore talk broadcast on C-span’s Book TV (first aired August 7, 2010) Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer promoted their book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America.  Obama is indeed anti-American but Ms. Geller and Mr. Spencer twist opposition to Obama, that is pro-Americanism, into Zionism and American empire. Ms. Geller does this while throwing in Objectivist phrases ex cathedra, thought turned into boilerplate, at one point in the Q&A even quoting John Galt’s credo about not living for others, even as she would sacrifice you to her personal cause.

    After the introduction by the bookstore proprietor Ms. Geller begins by saying that her and Mr. Spencer’s book was released just that week, and that the subtitle, “The Obama Administration’s War on America,” was accurate: Obama does not want America to be a superpower and moral authority in the world. After throwing a sop to  individual rights  she elaborates:

    “He’s warring against our allies and aligning with our enemies. He’s warring against Israel. ... [She goes on to mention Honduras and Eastern Europe.] Of course most critically is Israel. Now why is Israel most critical? Israel is most critical because Israel is in the hottest point in the world. Israel is a ... tiny, thriving, magnificent democracy, surrounded by enormous Muslim lands. ... [Talks of Islamic “anti-semitism” and “Jew-hatred.”  Speaking ...] as an American, Israel is our key strategic ally in the area, our best friend. I can assure you you haven’t a clue how much she absorbs in terror and Islamic activity, how much she fends off, and if she wasn’t there how evil would be unleashed across the world.”
    — sounding much like ARI,  see  This Is Our Ally  on this website.

    About 14 minutes into the lecture:
    “America, in her eternal hopefulness and optimism, elected Barak Hussein Obama to close the book on race in America. Really. To show like, look ... it doesn’t matter.”
    Ms. Geller fools only herself. Obama won because Americans were fed up with Bush, his associates, and especially neoconservative nutballs like, well, like Ms. Geller. So many stayed home on voting day, leaving non-whites to tip the balance in favor of Obama.

    Who best embodies the antidote to Obama? About four minutes into the Q&A:
    “If you’ve been reading me for five years you know I’m old reliable. You know I am. You know I’m accurate. Now of course I’m vilified and demonized by the, by, by, by the Left. Because this is what they do. They eliminate – Alinsky – the effective voices. Look what they did to Sarah Palin. Wha—  look what they did to Sarah Palin. What’s with Sarah Palin? I mean what’s wrong with this woman? I mean she’s everything, she’s all that and a bag o’ chips. She’s not from the Bush dynasty, she’s not from the Clinton dynasty, she came up the hard way. Anybody who’s a mommy and knows what it is to have five kids – or not – one, you know, uh I’m just saying, five kids, was PTA, you know, workin’ it, bakin’ those cookies. City Hall, you know with the City Hall, was governor. You know, took on Oil and Gas. Took on her own party, left, because she wouldn’t play the game. Has a gorgeous record. And what issues do they have with this woman? What issues do they have? That her daughter uh loved a bad boy? Is that what we’re talking about here? I don’t know many girls who haven’t loved a bad boy, and if you haven’t loved a bad boy you haven’t lived, OK? Bu- bu- bu-bu-but really what do they have on her? But they they make her out to be such, I mean the worst of the worst, even yesterday they were makin’ fun of Snooki, whatever that’s about. And they like I betcha they do that in Wassila. I mean it’s a contempt for the common man ... the regular guy ... the regular mo—”

    Atlas Shrugs?  Can you imagine Ayn Rand tolerating this nitwit for even ten seconds?

    Ms. Geller’s support for Palin began to fall off two years later and ended comletely when Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president. On her blog dated January 21, 2016 Ms. Geller calls Palin “a huge disappointment” and “a phony.”

    When Trump called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration Ms. Geller, unlike most other neocons, reversed herself and sided with Trump.  Ms. Geller is not an immigration patriot though, she is only anti-Muslim immigration.  Also, she never discusses the role of Jewish groups in promoting Muslim immigration.

    Yaron Brook and Ms. Geller were scheduled to appear together at the Gotham Tea Party meeting of October 30, 2012 in New York City, however Mr. Brook couldn’t make it because hurricane Sandy caused his flight to be cancelled.

    Caroline Glick

    Caroline Glick was born in America and, quoting her website, “made Aliyah” – emigrated to Israel – in 1991.  (Aliyah is Hebrew, phonetically spelled, for “ascendance.”) After serving in the Israeli Defense Forces she eventually became assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Ms. Glick is now a managing editor of Israel’s The Jerusalem Post and a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, a neoconservative group headed by Frank Gaffney in Washington, D.C.

    In 2003 the Israeli newspaper Maariv named her the most prominent woman in Israel. Her other awards include the Outstanding Journalism award from the Zionist Organization of America, the Abramowitz Prize for Media Criticism from Israel Media Watch, and the Guardian of Zion award from Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. Since 2012 she has directed the “Israel Security Project” at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

    She is featured in the video  Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West, produced and distributed by the Clarion Fund and probably financed by the Israeli organization Aish HaTorah. [19 again]

    Ms. Glick has written several articles defending the traitor Jonathan Pollard. For example, in “Pollard’s Freedom and Our Freedom”  (The Jerusalem Post  22 April 2005),  she points out that: “For his contribution to Israel’s security and for his long suffering in prison, Israelis consider Pollard a national hero.”  She says that Israelis ought to help Pollard because:  “However he is viewed, he is one of us and he has been discriminated against and persecuted because he helped us.”  By “us” she means “Jews” and “Israelis” in turn.  She claims that the only people who gained from what she calls Pollard’s “espionage” – actually treason – were Israelis and “anti-Semites who take pleasure in spewing Jewish conspiracy theories ... .”  In other words, Pollard’s critics hate the good for being the good. She denies, by insinuation, that Israelis sold any of what Pollard stole to the Soviet Union.  In what follows “home” means Israel though Pollard has always been a U.S. citizen:

    “If we wish to maintain our integrity as a free people, we can do so only by taking on the task of bringing Pollard home. ... It is time for us to take responsibility for Pollard because his imprisonment paves the road to our servitude.”

    Ms. Glick directed the music video We Con the World  produced by Latma, an Israeli organization, and funded by the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C. The video mocks the passengers of the ship Mavi Marmara, which days before the video’s release had tried to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and was prevented from doing so by Israeli commandos storming the ship. The Israeli government press office distributed a link to the video.

    To appreciate the video’s mockery you need to know what is being mocked, what really happened aboard the Mavi Marmara, but Israel has made that difficult. During the raid the Israelis jammed the ship’s radio signals, preventing any offsite recording. Afterwards they confiscated video recordings made by the passengers. Then the Israelis issued their own videos, incomplete and some faked.

    Passengers claim that when the captain spied the approaching Israeli boats he reversed course, so when the raid began the ship was heading away from Gaza, and that the Israelis boarded with guns firing. What happened that most can agree on is, in a nutshell, as follows. The Israelis were enforcing Israel’s blockade of Gaza. While the ship was in international waters the Israeli commandos first tried to board it from speedboats. When that failed, they flew over in helicopters (ultimately U.S. supplied) and slid down ropes onto the ship’s decks. The passengers had planned to defend the ship in case they were attacked and many were ready with clubs. The Israelis shot into the passengers with 9 mm gunfire.

    About 60 passengers were shot.  9 died on the ship (5 shot in the head and at close range, 6 shot from behind) and one more never came out of a coma and died later. The Israeli commandos threw several injured and dead passengers overboard. Several Israelis were injured by blunt trauma. No Israelis were shot, supporting the passengers’ claim that they had no guns aboard. [38]

    Not exactly material for a parody you might think, but then you might not be into Israel worship.

    The Glick/Latma video shows about ten Israelis, among whom is Ms. Glick, standing in a sound studio pretending to be Muslims aboard the Mavi Marmara. One Israeli wears an outlandish captain’s hat and coat, several wear scarves over head and shoulders. You see individual and group camera shots as all these Israelis sing about Gaza, acting in a clownish mock-serious manner. Interspersed are video snippets, one showing some of the passengers clubbing the invading Israeli commandos. No clips are included of gun wielding Israeli commandos shooting passengers. Here are a few excerpts from the lyrics, about Gaza:

    “There’s [sic] no people dying, so the best that we can do is create the biggest bluff of all.”
    ...
    “We must go on pretending day by day that in Gaza there’s crisis, hunger and plague ...”
    ...
    “We’ll make the world abandon reason, we’ll make them all believe that the Hamas is Momma Theresa. We are peaceful travelers with guns and our own knives. The truth will never find its way to your TV.”
    Etc., all to music taken from a 1985 song called “We are the World.” As a vocal rendition – as a music performance setting aside the subject matter – the video is indescribably repellent.

    The lyrics are less than honest. People in Gaza had indeed died as a result of the blockade. The ship passengers used no guns or knives. No one had said there was a plague in Gaza in the sense of bubonic plague, only in the sense of “a large number of harmful or annoying things.” And contrary to the part about hunger, the purpose of Israel’s blockade of Gaza was to punish its civilians collectively, including with a food shortage. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister at the time, himself snidely remarked:  “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

    In spirit the blockade runners were reminiscent of the phony “civil rights” protesters of the 50s and 60s, but whatever their character the Israeli satire of them is valuable propaganda in reverse. It exposes the Israeli mentality better than any essay possibly could. Israel’s supporters are deaf and blind to just how sick it is.

    On November 17, 2013 Ms. Glick participated in a panel discussion “The Genocidal Axis” at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend, held at the Breakers hotel, Palm Beach, Florida.

    She delivered a brief preliminary talk reeking with self-deception, throughout spitting self-righteousness.  Leftists “want to destroy Jewish power and make us all needy and begging for our very lives ... .”  Actually, Jews as a group are more leftist than non-Jews. For example, 78% of Jewish voters opted for Obama in 2008. Since the end of the 19th century Jews have been the primary intellectual and financial force behind the Left. Ms. Glick’s blanket praise of “the Jews” and her oh the pain, the pain, contradicts many facts of history, such as the mass murder perpetrated by Jewish Bosheviks in the early years of Soviet Russia.

    She says that throughout history there has been a  “genocidal bloodlust against the Jews”  which is  “a rejection of reason. It’s a rejection of individualism, it’s a rejection of responsibility, it’s a rejection of the notion that we have to be good.”  Well, first off, in America there is no genocidal bloodlust, or even dislike, of Jews qua Jews, so why give this talk here?

    If a person goes around with a chip on their shoulder, eventually people without a chip will get annoyed at their foolish behavior. Ms. Glick emigrated to Israel, would that she stayed there.

    ... AUGH !!!  Genocidal bloodlust in the making !

    Furthermore, saying Jews are individualistic, as Ms. Glick does, is by and large the exact opposite of the truth. Again, more often than not Jews seek socialism, as the Soviet Union, Israel, Jewish voting statistics and most Jewish intellectuals attest. And many, perhaps most, are extremely tribe oriented, hyper-ethnocentric. They undermine themselves as individuals in order to support the tribe. Ms. Glick herself is a prime example. Though she preaches the virtue of individualism, she lies to support Pollard because “he is one of us.” Such support may be good for her as an Israeli robot, but not as an honest human being.

    Finally, the good that Ms. Glick regards as “good” needs to be put in quotes because it may not be your idea of good. For example, paying for the upkeep of Israelis.

    More from the mendacious Ms. Glick:

    “The United States, its forefathers, had this idea that was based on the Torah, of rule of law, of limited government, of the responsibility of individuals to make that decision between good and evil, and to choose good, and to have the liberty from government to be able to make that choice.”
    I’ll save you a trip to the dictionary. The Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.  The Israeli view of American History is that America is built on the Old Testament.
    “The whole concept of the modern state was based on the Hebrew Bible and it was transported from the British enlightenment to the new world through the American forefathers.”
    Translation:  Forget about the Ancient Greeks and Christianity. For the Enlightenment, and consequently America, thank the Jews ! [39]

    No talk by a neoconservative would be complete without  Israel-is-America’s-ally:
    “You want a foreign policy that is coherent, that advances American interests?  Then stand with Israel.  You want to figure out how to ensure that America is safe?  Stand with Israel.”
    Ms. Glick cunningly presents her interest as your interest, disguising her agenda in virtue words.  In truth, for America to advance its interests and ensure its safety, better it avoid allying with mendicants, ingrates, spies and assassins.

    Conclusion

    “Guilt by association” means attributing to one person the character of another by virtue of some unessential connection between the two. For example: Dan ate at Joe’s Greasy Spoon. So did Yaron. Dan is a rat, therefore – so the fallacy runs – Yaron must be a rat too.  What we have been considering in this essay is rather different. Dan and Yaron gave half a dozen talks together, all sponsored by Yaron, the two agreed on almost everything each other said, and what they said was peculiar to rats. Yaron, who claims (when not in the company of rats) that rats are the greatest threat to America, has – and indeed he does have – some explaining to do.

    As others have noted, hypocrisy is the most disconcerting thing about official Objectivists – shameless, blithe, monumental hypocrisy.

    Here are two key neoconservative documents. For the most part they might have come from ARI:

    “Ending Syria’s Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role?”
    May 2000
    Prepared by the Middle East Forum’s “Lebanon Study Group.”
    meforum.org/research/lsg.php

    “Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism”
    September 20, 2001
    Prepared by The Project for the New American Century.
    newamericancentury.org/Bushletter.htm

    On the whole:

    Neoconservatives The “Ayn Rand Institute”
    Israel worship  –  Israel worship
    Altruism as self-interest  –  Altruism as self-interest
    Military action in the Middle East  –  Military action in the Middle East
    ... for American self defense  –  ... for American self defense
    Set up foreign democracies (some)  –  Set up foreign republics (spotty)
    ... later denial  –  ... later denial
    Brutal occupation  –  Even more brutal occupation
    Lincoln idolatry  –  Sherman as role model
    WW II the greatest generation  –  WW II the greatest generation
    Third World immigration sans Muslims  –  Third World immigration
    Christophobia  –  Christophobia
    Torture USA  –  Torture USA
    Install a Ukrainian puppet dictatorship  –  Support the Ukrainian puppet dictatorship
    Set up a police state  –  Ignore it until Obama [40]

    Comparing the Ayn Rand Intsitute with the neocons we are reminded of a Stalinist slogan from the time of Soviet Russia:  Diversity in accidental details, conformity in ultimate aim.



    0  Kevin MacDonald in Cultural Insurrections.

    1  Considering the neocons’ voluminous writings it’s no surprise to find disagreement on a few issues and something correct written by some of them.

    For example, Mr. Pipes is right when he says that massive Muslim immigration is harmful to Western culture and should be restricted. (ARI, on the other hand, argues for open immigration, including Muslims, as noted in our text.) Our position is that all Third World immigration should be restricted  see  Immigration Enthusiasts  on this website.

    2  We could have entitled this essay  “Frauds of a Feather Flock Together”  but—

    ... But you aim at a more lofty tone on ARI Watch.

    Froggy, please stay out of the footnotes.  To change the metaphor, we are like the buyer in the fable:
    The Donkey and His Buyer
    Once upon a time long ago a man wished to buy another donkey to add to his stable. Eventually he found a donkey whose owner was willing to sell, and the owner agreed he could try the animal out first before buying. So the man led the donkey home and then into the yard where he kept his donkeys. The new donkey at once joined the donkey who was the most idle and ravenous, turning away from the others. Seeing this, the man led the donkey back to its owner. The owner, surprised at his quick return, asked how he could have made a trial of the donkey in so short a time. The man answered, “There was no need for a trial. He will be just the same as the one he chose for his companion.”
    The moral of the story is—

    ... Let me tell !

    [pause]  All right Froggy, what is the moral of the story ?

    ... The people at ARI are a pack of jackasses !

    Well, no.  The choice of animal was purely fortuitous.

    ... The people at ARI are a pack of animals !

    The moral is not about animals.

    ... People who want to buy an ARI writer should try him out first ?

    Froggy, I don’t think you quite understand. The moral is that you are judged by the people with whom you choose to associate.

    3  ARI’s announcement referred to  “this unflinching discussion, which includes an unveiling of the cartoons ... .”  Cartoons never had it so good.

    3a  All but the first and last events were organized by ARI (the first was sponsored by a Tufts University student club, the last was a Ford Hall Forum lecture):
  • “Israel and the War on Islamic Totalitarianism”  by Yaron Brook.
  • “No Substitute for Victory: Military Offense and the Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism”  by John Lewis.
  • “Muhammad and His Relevance Today”  by Robert Spencer.
  • “Radical Islam and the War on Terror”  by Daniel Pipes.
  • “Jihad Against the West: The Real Threat and the Right Response” – a panel discussion featuring Yaron Brook, Daniel Pipes and Flemming Rose.
  • “Islam and Europe after the Cartoon-Crisis—Clash of Cultures or Coexistence of Civilizations?”  by Flemming Rose.
  • “Defending Freedom: The Principled vs. the Pragmatic Approach”  by Peter Schwartz.
  • “Democracy vs. Victory: Why the ‘Forward Strategy of Freedom’ Had to Fail”  by Yaron Brook at the Ford Hall Forum, October 22.


  • 4  ARI’s announcement described Wafa Sultan as an “outspoken critic of Islam.” Much of what she says is true, undercut by lies and exaggeration. Consider the following from an admiring article “For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats” in the New York Times  March 11, 2006  by John Broder:
    “... her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.  ‘They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting,  “God is great!” ’  she said.”
    nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html

    That “hundreds” is suspicious on its face. Also suspicious, if she felt so strongly about the murder, is that the article neglects to give the professor’s name. This makes the following worth considering, from an article biased in the opposite direction from the one above, “Wafa Sultan: Reformist or opportunist?” InFocus News (a Muslim newspaper distributed in Southern California) March 3, 2007 by Abdussalam Mohamed:
    “InFocus contacted the University of Aleppo and spoke to Dr. Riyad Asfari, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, who confirmed ... [another expatriate’s] account. ‘Yes, the assassination [of Yusef Al-Yusef] took place off-campus,’ he said. Dr. Asfari was keen to add that no one had ever been killed in a classroom anytime or anywhere at the university.

    “Syrian expatriate Ghada Moezzin [now living in California], who attended the University of Aleppo in 1979 as a sophomore, told InFocus that she never heard of the assassination.  ‘We would’ve known about the killing if it had happened,’ she said. ‘It would have been big news on campus and I do not recall ever hearing about it.’ ”
    infocusnews.net/content/view/4009/135

    Ms. Sultan repeated her story of the assassination in 2010, during an interview with aish.com, a Jewish website. This time she names the victim, but leaves out the “hundreds of bullets.”  Then she says:
    “Of course my account of events has been refuted. Some say it didn’t happen on campus ... . This is the only way these people know how to defend themselves. They have never learned how to challenge, logically, so when something goes against them they say it’s not true ... .”
    aish.com/ci/s/88998187.html

    A weak response, accusing her opponents of what she is doing. The “hundreds of bullets” – an extraordinary detail – is now suspicious by its absence, and logic dictates that she bring forth independent testimony – for an alumnus of the University of Aleppo it should have been easy enough to obtain.

    The same InFocus News article above claims that Wafa Sultan acquired her U.S. citizenship by fraud, that her own account is a lie. (This would be no problem for ARI considering its approval of illegal immigration.) One insinuation in the article is spurious: that just because she has made money from her talks she must be an opportunist.

    To repeat, much of what Wafa Sultan says about Muslims is true. But the evil of the Koran doesn’t make the Talmud any better.

    ARI seems to collect such characters. Yeonmi Park, another immigrant, is scheduled to speak at OCON 2023. One wonders what she does with herself besides speaking about North Korea, and not too truthfully:
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeonmi_Park#Veracity_of_claims

    4a  Efraim Karsh was born and raised in Israel. He reached the rank of Major in the Israeli Defense Forces working as a “research analyst.” He is the current director of the Middle East Forum, superceding Daniel Pipes whose sole title now is president. He founded and edits Israel Affairs, edits the Middle East Forum’s Middle East Quarterly and frequently contributes to Commentary magazine. He is a professor at King’s College, London, his research focusing on the Israel-Arab conflict. He claims that the proto-Israelis did not expel Palestine’s Arabs, rather the Arabs all left voluntarily or were forced out by their Arab leaders.

    5  Of course many acts really are in your self-interest, and there is nothing wrong with pointing it out. Any fallacy is not in the concept of self-interest itself but, as the case may be, in the arguments given in support of something being in your self-interest. Just calling something “in your self-interest” and arguing the point with sophistries and lies, making self-righteous noises, is what we mean by “incantation.”

    6  “Pipes Calls War a Success”
    by Bill Steigerwald  Pittsburgh Tribune-Review April 1, 2006
    danielpipes.org/article/3490
    or
    pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_438935.html

    7  “Back Iraq: Why Iran’s Enemy Should be America’s Friend”
    by Daniel Pipes and Laurie Mylroie  New Republic  April 27, 1987.

    8  Max Boot, by the way, colluded with General David Petraeus in a bit of underhanded press agentry in March 2010.  See
    “Petraeus emails show general scheming with journalist to get out pro-Israel storyline”
    by Philip Weiss, July 2, 2010
    mondoweiss.net/2010/07/petraeus-fed-his-pro-israel-bona-fides-to-a-neocon-writer-including-pathetic-recitation-of-meeting-wiesel.html

    9  For further evidence that Daniel Pipes is a hardcore neocon consider the following from “The Neoconservative Moment” by Francis Fukuyama, The National Interest June 1, 2004:

    “One of Washington’s most exclusive clubs during the 1990s was the annual board dinner of The National Interest. Presided over by founding editor Owen Harries and often kicked off with a presentation by Henry Kissinger, the group included Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Irving, Bea and Bill Kristol, Samuel Huntington, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthammer, Marty Feldstein, Eliot Cohen, Peter Rodman and a host of other conservative thinkers, writers and doers, including just about everyone now characterized as a ‘neoconservative.’ ”


    10  Most Americans both over- and mis-reacted to 9/11. They over-reacted by thinking a terrorist attack by itself could end America. They mis-reacted by directing their concern outside the country. The attack succeeded only because of their own government’s criminal negligence if not outright help, and the attack was made in the first place because their own government chose to muck around – no other phrase describes it better – in the Middle East, including entering Israel’s wars. Subsequently their own government used the attack as a pretext to vastly increase its power over them.

    In the accretion of the police state the Department of Homeland Security proposed a “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” which would, if made law, enable you to use a Federal ID to access all your Internet accounts, doubtless as a prelude to requiring it – coercion being what the government does best. It is the politically connected who want to do this to you, not Islamic terrorists.

    11  Mr. Pipes also supports Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten which in 2005 published silly cartoons poking fun at the Muslim idol Mohammed. We too support Mr. Rose’s exercise of free speech, though his way of doing so was as unintellectual as possible. The Danish government let Mr. Rose alone, but some private Danish Muslims (almost all immigrants) rioted and made death threats against Mr. Rose and the cartoonists. This at the same time one David Irving, who had publicly questioned aspects of the traditional Jewish holocaust account, was arrested by a  Western government,  Austria’s, for his temerity and sentenced to three years in prison !  The two events were comparable in kind if not in degree – the injustice done Mr. Irving was far worse (what he said is not the issue) – yet nothing about it from Mr. Pipes.

    To his credit Flemming Rose has stated that he favors removing all blasphemy laws and laws criminalizing “holocaust denial” (this appropriate conjunction is quoted in “Revisiting the Danish Cartoon Crisis” by Michael Moynihan, Reason Magazine October 1, 2007) – consistency you won’t find in Mr. Pipes.

    The cartoon affair eventually blew over. In an interview in 2007 Mr. Rose said he didn’t feel in any immediate danger and wasn’t getting any information that his newspaper was threatened. About that time Danish and Swedish newspapers published a juvenile cartoon depicting Mohammed as a dog, without incident. Inflation in Mohammed cartoons perhaps.

    12  According to ARI, Middle Easterners hate us because we are more free and prosperous than they are, not because our government drops bombs on them or supports their dictators.

    13  Many professors who promote the Islamic religion are foreigners or immigrants, so simply not allowing them into America in the first place would repair – or would have prevented – the problem substantially.

    14  “Hawking Syria”
    by Jim Lobe, TomPaine.com, April 17 2003
    web.archive.org/web/20040813182735/tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7615

    “Neo-con fingerprints on Syria raid”
    by Jim Lobe, Asia Times Online, October 9, 2003
    atimes.com/atimes/middle_east/ej09ak01.html

    15  The following is from an interview with Sibel Edmonds, a former translator at the FBI, conducted by Philip Giraldi. First some background: Marc Grossman worked at the United States Embassy in Pakistan 1976-1983, was U.S. ambassador to Turkey 1994-1997 and the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs in the State Department 1997-2000. The ISI is Pakistan’s foreign spy agency.

    EDMONDS:  ... Grossman assisted his Turkish and Israeli contacts directly, and he also facilitated access to members of Congress who might be inclined to help for reasons of their own or could be bribed into cooperation. The top person obtaining classified information was Congressman Tom Lantos. A Lantos associate, Alan Makovsky[,] worked very closely with Dr. Sabri Sayari in Georgetown University ... . Lantos would give Makovsky highly classified policy-related documents obtained during defense briefings for passage to Israel because Makovsky was also working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

    GIRALDI:  Makovsky is now working for the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, a pro-Israeli think tank.

    EDMONDS:  Yes. Lantos was at the time probably the most outspoken supporter of Israel in Congress. AIPAC would take out the information from Lantos that was relevant to Israel, and they would give the rest of it to their Turkish associates. The Turks would go through the leftovers, take what they wanted, and then try to sell the rest. If there were something relevant to Pakistan, they would contact the ISI officer at the embassy and say, “We’ve got this and this, let’s sit down and talk.” And then they would sell it to the Pakistanis.

    “Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?”
    by Sibel Edmonds and Philip Giraldi, The American Conservative November 1, 2009
    amconmag.com/article/2009/nov/01/00006
    See also
    “Listening to Sibel Edmonds”
    by Philip Giraldi, AntiWar.com September 24, 2009
    original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/09/23/listening-to-sibel-edmonds

    16  [blank]

    17  New York Times, 22 November 1985.  Porath goes on to unwittingly admit Israeli deceit:  “In Israel ... the book was almost universally dismissed as sheer rubbish, except maybe as a propaganda weapon.”

    See also:
    Book review of  From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine  by Joan Peters
    by Yehoshua Porath, The New York Times Review of Books January 16, 1986
    “Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme nationalists of Zeev Jabotinsky’s Revisionist party ... would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters’s book.”
    nybooks.com/articles/archives/1986/jan/16/mrs-peterss-palestine/?pagination=false

    The Peters hoax was first exposed by Norman Finkelstein. Though we can’t follow Mr. Finkelstein’s nominal liberalism, he is sincerely committed to historical truth – for which he gets smeared by Israel worshippers.

    18  Commentary Magazine, July 1984.  Two years later Mr. Pipes changed his tune a little, calling Peters’ book very poorly crafted, without however rejecting its central thesis.  See the second letter of:
    “In response to ‘Mrs. Peters’s Palestine’ from the January 16, 1986 issue”
    nybooks.com/articles/archives/1986/mar/27/mrs-peterss-palestine-an-exchange/?pagination=false

    19  See footnote 10 of  Presidential Elections – Ayn Rand & ARI: 2004  on this website.

    20  A statement by Mr. Pipes in a speech before the American Gentile Congress on October 21, 2001:

    “I worry very much, from the Gentile point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Jews, because they are so much led by a Zionist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Gentiles.”

    and he later quoted this in an article on FrontPageMag September 7, 2007 and reprinted the article on his website at
    danielpipes.org/4886/cairs-dirty-tricks-against-me
    Except that someone – we can’t imagine who would do such a thing – went and replaced Jews with Gentiles, Muslims with Jews, and Islamists with Zionists, so we must translate:  In a speech before the American Jewish Congress Mr. Pipes said:

    “I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews.”

    And we would add, to all Americans (apparently Mr. Pipes considers his audience). Mr. Pipe has a point though probably he is incapable of fully understanding it. An influential group that sees itself as foreigners first and Americans somewhere down the scale means trouble.

    21  Here is a sample, each article followed by a brief indication of its contents. (Parenthetical remarks are ours.) Again notice that for the most part (“Israel’s Best Weapon?” would be an exception) these articles could have come from ARI (the Capitalism Magazine dates given here follow by some days the dates on Mr. Pipes’ website):
    “Decision Time on Iran”  November 3, 2006
    The U.S. must invade Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.

    “In Iraq, Stay the Course – But Change It”  October 25, 2006
    The U.S. is not obligated to rehabilitate Iraq.

    “Israel: No Longer a Paper Tiger?”  July 18, 2006
    The Arabs think Israel is weak because Israel hasn’t been tough enough.

    “How Israel Can Win”  April 19, 2006
    Israel can and must defeat the Palestinians.

    “Israel’s Substitute for Victory: Managing Conflict Without Resolving It”  March 28, 2006
    The Israelis are affluent and strong due to their own effort. Israeli leftists criticize this.

    “Civil War in Iraq”  March 2, 2006
    Militarily, a civil war in Iraq would be a good thing.

    “Iran’s Mystical Menace: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”  January 15, 2006
    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is among the most dangerous leaders in modern history.

    “Anti-Israel Terror Backfires”  April 28, 2004
    After Israel assassinated two Hamas officials perhaps Palestinians will realize that they must accept the existence of the Jewish state. (Even though Israel refuses to define its borders.)

    “The Roots of Iraq’s Recent Wave of Violence”  April 22, 2004
    Muslims think rule by non-Muslims is blasphemous.

    “A Tale of Two Crypts”  December 22, 2003
    The profound morality of the American-led invasion is symbolized by the fact that innocent Iraqis now move about freely above ground while Saddam and his henchmen slip from one rat hole to another.

    “The Case for ‘Iraqification’ ”  November 28, 2003
    “... Americans and Britons gave their lives in the spring war less to fix Iraq than to protect their own countries.”

    “Saving Mideast Studies”  October 4, 2003
    Middle East studies run by Islamists are a fraud (as opposed to studies run by Zionists).

    “The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change”  October 3, 2003
    Anti-Islamist Muslims are apologetic and unorganized, they cannot compete with militant Islam’s determination, money and violence. (Some amusement can be had by replacing Islamist with Zionist, Islam with Israel, Muslims with Jews – as in the previous footnote.)

    “Pentagon Jihadis”  October 2, 2003
    Islamists have penetrated U.S. law enforcement and armed forces.

    “The Left Against Israel”  September 17, 2003
    Liberals oppose Israel, conservatives support Israel. “The Middle East has replaced the Soviet Union as the touchstone of politics and ideology.”

    “The Refugee Curse”  August 23, 2003
    Were it not for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency Palestinian refugees would be happy.

    “Israel’s Best Weapon?”  July 19, 2003
    “... other than the Israel Defense Forces, America’s Christian Zionists may be the Jewish state’s ultimate strategic asset.”

    “Iraq’s Weapons and The Road to War”  June 8, 2003
    “What if they [WMD] are never found – does that undercut the rationale for going to war?”  The answer is no.

    “Government for Sale ... to Saudi Arabia?”  December 9, 2002
    “... a problem that needs addressing through congressional legislation; ways to prevent undue Saudi influence through the spread of its money.”

    “Peace in the Middle East: The Only Solution Is Military”  March 22, 2002
    If Israel persists in its present policies it may get closer to victory.

    “ ‘Islamic Americans’ vs. America”  January 17, 2002.


    22  By Edward Cline on Capitalism Magazine:
    “The Stalking Horses of ‘Delegitimization’ ”
    June 10, 2010,  supporting the Gaza flotilla massacre. He quotes with approval both Daniel Pipes and Charles Krauthammer.

    “Of Tom Hanks, the ‘Slaughter House,’ Polar Bears, and Bronx Cheers”
    March 18, 2010,  supporting Israeli “settlers.”

    “How to Keep Your Head While President Bush is Losing His”
    May 8, 2004,  lamenting that sometimes security must be hired when Mr. Pipes gives a talk (no lament for same regarding Norman Finkelstein).


    23  In “What the Heck Is a ‘Neocon’?” (Wall Street Journal December 30, 2002) Max Boot reluctantly acknowledges that  “support for Israel” is a “key tenet of neoconservatism,”  and he refers to Commentary Magazine (published by the American Jewish Committee and very pro-Israel) as  “the neocon bible.”

    About Bradley Thompson’s focused silence regarding Israel and neoconservatism, we are reminded of the first lines of an old poem:

    Oh no — we never speak of her,
    Her name is never heard.


    24  According to the book publisher’s blurb on Amazon.com (accessed July 2010), Bradley Thompson  “actually lived for many years in the Straussian / neoconservative intellectual world. [His book] therefore fits into the ‘breaking ranks’ tradition of scholarly criticism ... .”

    Mr. Thompson’s TOS article was ARI’s first written condemnation of the neocons, but it was preceded by a talk. Yaron Brook gave a lecture at OCON 2005 on July 3 titled  “The Neo-Conservatives—Friends or Foes?”  the theme being that neoconservatives were the greatest threat to America. Though Mr. Brook and the others at ARI had promoted the Iraq War, using the same arguments – every one – that the neocons had used, in this speech he pretends otherwise.

    Mr. Brook repeated his talk as  “Neoconservatives vs. America”  on September 12, 2005. ARI’s advertisement for a video recording begins (our external quotes left off):

    Amid the self-doubt and anti-Americanism paralyzing the nation after 9/11, Neoconservative intellectuals appeared self-confident and pressed for military action. Since then they have become architects of U.S. foreign policy. They support the Bush administration’s campaign to plant “freedom” in the Middle East. To secure our “national interest,” they argue, America must assert its unrivaled military power throughout the world.

    Despite their tough-sounding policies, however, Neoconservatives in fact reject the moral need to pursue only America’s self-interest, and instead urge us to sacrifice ourselves in order to bring “democracy” to the world. While U.S. troops are dying ...

    Etc.  Like the writer really cares, or that neoconservatives are not even now clamoring for invading Iran, which like Mr. Brook they again claim is in “America’s self interest.”

    A comment on the title of Mr. Thompson’s TOS article, “The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism”:  He uses “conservatism” instead of “neo-conservatism” apparently because he thinks that today there is no other kind.  He writes (emphasis his): “... today, it is barely an exaggeration to say that neoconservatism is conservatism.”  Yet some prominent intellectuals today describe themselves as “paleo” conservatives, for example those who write for The American Conservative magazine. Mr. Thompson’s contention is not just an exaggeration, it is plain false. It is ARI’s way of marginalizing more consistent and articulate criticism of neoconservatism than they can offer, being essentially neoconservatives themselves.

    A comment on something odd in Mr. Thompson’s article. Before he dismisses the old style conservatism he cites a famous book by Barry Goldwater, as follows:  “In The Conscience of a Conservative, regarded by many as the political Talmud of conservatism ...”  Talmud?  The natural word of course is “bible” – lowercase – in the sense of  “an authoritative book.”  Have the people at ARI become so neurotic that they fear to use a word if burdened with a Christian association? This is like Israeli elementary schools using arithmetic books with the plus sign replaced by an upside-down “T” so as not to suggest the Cross !  Or is Mr. Thompson engaged here in a bit of boot-licking?

    25  We doubt even Mr. Epstein believes that neoconservatives advocate Just War Theory. In his and Mr. Brook’s earlier article  “ ‘Just War Theory’ vs. American Self-Defense” (The Objective Standard Spring 2006), calling for invading Iran, they never mention neoconservatives. (They do mention religious conservatives.)

    26  ARI Watch’s article on Leo Strauss preceded ARI’s denunciation by about four years, this in spite of ARI having a multi-million dollar budget and a staff of dozens – further evidence that ARI simply is not sincere.

    27  James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Bravo is set in the time and place of the Doges, the Council of Ten and the rest of the totalitarian apparatus of medieval Venice. His theme is that even a good man will be corrupted working in such a system (the particular time and place of course being irrelevant). Another dramatization of the idea that a benevolent ruler necessarily becomes corrupt is Friedrich Schiller’s early play Fiesco or, The Genoese Conspiracy.

    28  “Michael Ledeen”
    The History Commons  website
    historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=michael_ledeen

    29  See Karen Kwiatkowski’s account: 
    ariwatch.com/Links.htm#KarenKwiatkowski

    30  See the section  “Why We Are Losing the War on Terrorism”  in  Relentless Propaganda  on this website.)

    31  Quoting Mr. Epstein quoting Wolfowitz making a show that he hadn’t made up his mind (we leave off our external quote marks):

    “In the end,” explains Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a key advocate of preemption, “it has to come down to a careful weighing of things we can’t know with precision, the costs of action vs. the costs of inaction, the costs of acting now vs. the costs of acting later.”

    Mr. Epstein then disagrees, saying we should always act immediately against the “provably guilty” – insinuating that Iraq was such. He praises Bush for his October 7, 2002 speech outlining the case against Saddam Hussein, and quotes him with approval:  “We cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”  Mr. Epstein slightly misquotes.  The full sentence was  “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof – the smoking gun – that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”  In any case, Bush was a mouthpiece for liars.

    Mr. Epstein, like several other ARI writers, has written in support of Torture USA. See ARI Watch’s review of his  “World Opinion Be Damned!” (ARI Op-Ed June 3, 2004).

    Epistemology is the study of how knowledge – real knowledge – is acquired, a study Mr. Epstein might take up with profit.

    32  The nominal switch from Left to Right had nothing to do with respect for private property. The “reality” that mugged the soon to be neocons was that many leftists retained their affection for the Soviet Union in spite of its antipathy (if only overt) regarding Israel.

    33  Yaron Brook was happy to be photographed with Misses Geller and Glick at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend 2008:
    atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/2008/11/14/brook_geller_glick.jpg
    Getting restored over the weekend isn’t cheap. In 2016 registration cost you $1,750 plus $720 (plus $86 tax) for the hotel, for a total of $2556.

    34  After Palin and Perry dropped out of the race for the 2012 Republican nomination the neocons endorsed variously Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, and finally the winner of the nomination, Romney. ARI’s position was less than forthright. Officially ARI had little to say about this neocon candidate, individual members put on an act that they were reluctant to endorse him but claimed he was the only choice. They ignored and/or trashed Ron Paul as they had done in 2008. See  Yaron Brook vs. Ron Paul  on this website.

    35  The following is from Glenn Beck’s television show of November 13, 2007 featuring David Horowitz.  Background: A Ron Paul support group had recently solicited donations to be given on Guy Fawkes Day, raising over four million dollars in that one day. Ron Paul allows LewRockwell to reprint his editorials. Though LewRockwell may not be our cup of tea, calling it or Ron Paul fascist, Islamo or otherwise, is absurd. Note how Mr. Horowitz makes no distinction between Americans and their government, confusing criticism of the U.S. government with criticism of America:

    We have a lot of people in this country who think that we’re the enemy. ... [Mr. Horowitz then speaks of Leftists, Muslim radicals and recent democratic party leaders]
    ...
    ... There’s a strain of isolationism and anarchy in the American tradition which Ron Paul is tapping into. I think it’s very significant that he [sic] chose Guy Fawkes as an image. There are plenty of unfortunately libertarian websites which are indistinguishable from the anti-American Left these days, LewRockwell.com and others like that. They are totally in bed with the Islamofascists and have turned against this country.

    Once again the American public gets smeared as isolationist. See footnote 1 of  Ayn Rand on World War II

    36  Ron Paul sent a memorandum February 15th 2011 to all House offices entitled  “Stop buying friends overseas, save $6 billion!”  He wrote:  “Borrowing money from China – or printing it out of thin air – to hand out overseas in [an] attempt to purchase friends has been a failing foreign policy, as we see most recently in Egypt ...”

    (Unfortunately he continues:  “... where there is not even a government in place! ... We should seek friendly relations and trade overseas, but we cannot justify lavish gifts to foreign leaders ... We cannot afford to have ‘business as usual’ when we are bankrupt.”
    Whether Egypt has a government or not is irrelevant, and the U.S. bankruptcy emphasis is misplaced. He should have said that even if we could “afford” it, the government shouldn’t take it from us to give to foreign leaders.)


    Horowitz begins his blog response by praising William Buckley, who “drummed the anti-Semites out of the conservative movement, and the movement thrived as a result.”  True, Buckley did help the neocons take over the conservative movement, which apparently is Horowitz’s idea of thriving. Now, Horowitz writes, “the Jew-haters have returned.” He then starts in on Ron Paul, apparently one of them – the Jew-haters that is. In Horowitz’s circle opposing foreign aid to Israel makes you an anti-semite. Note that contrary to Horowitz’s insinuation below, Ron Paul never referred to America or Israel as great or little Satan, those are Horowitz’s phrases. CPAC stands for Conservative Political Action Conference:
    “For years the Texas crackpot, Ron Paul, has been attacking America and Israel as imperialist powers — the Great Satan and the Little Satan, and calling for America’s retreat from the battle against our totalitarian enemies. At the recent CPAC conference Paul’s Jew-hating storm-troopers swarmed the Freedom Center’s table to vent their spleen against Israel as a Nazi state. Now Paul is making a priority of withdrawing aid for Israel ...”
    then the usual boilerplate about Israel being, in the Middle East, the only democracy and America’s only ally.  (Again see  This is Our Ally?  on this website.)

    37  Quoted in
    “ ‘Atlas’, at last, on map”
    by Robert McCain, The Washington Times  October 5, 2007.

    37a  It may be a theme of Jewish culture. Israeli writer Ben-Eliyahu wrote in an op-ed column for Israel National News that when the Messiah comes Israel will reverse the Final Solution and “Twenty to 30 atomic bombs on Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Dresden, Dortmund and so on will assure the job gets done.” (The Times of Israel March 11, 2015)

    38  “Gaza flotilla activists were shot in head at close range”
    by Robert Booth, Guardian.co.uk, 4 June 2010.
    guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/04/gaza-flotilla-activists-autopsy-results
    The operative phrase is  “at close range.”  (The “45 cm” in the text is unscientific. It indicates a precision of five centimeters, about two inches, which here is too small an increment to be measured. In any case even 90 centimeters would be close range.)

    39  Since Ms. Glick and Yaron Brook trash Christianity every chance they get it’s worth saying a little in its defense. Though Christianity is an agglomeration of contradictions its ethics does have some good points. As Ayn Rand once quipped (paraphrasing):  Christ said love your neighbor as yourself. So, you must love yourself; we can argue about your neighbors. Elsewhere she pointed out, what other philosophers have noted, that Christianity’s idea of salvation is personal, and supercedes whatever the State might demand or do. However much this contradicts the rest of the religion, historically Christianity helped foster the idea of individualism.

    The history of Western civilization is wedded to Christianity. Though in reason much of Christianity must be rejected, it contained an element that would trigger its own overhaul under the right conditions.

    40  After over eight years of 9/11 legislation and executive orders and extra-judicial acts ARI finally began protesting a little.