The People Behind ‘Keep Israel Safe’ and ‘Stop Iran Now’

The Weekly Standard’s blog has been the go-to source for those of us who follow the various astroturf groups springing up to hype the looming Iranian nuclear threat.

First, there was the end-of-April launch of Keep Israel Safe.  Keep Israel Safe is a joint project of Tom Rose, the former publisher of The Jerusalem Post and current contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, and Gary Bauer, a major player in the Christian right, long-time Kristol buddy, and charter member of The Project For a New American Century.

During his tenure at the The Jerusalem Post, Rose gained notoriety for pushing the paper’s editorial stance hard to the right and alienating his staff.

After Rose was fired from the paper in 2004, Bret Stephens, a former editor in chief at the Post and current Wall Street Journal columnist and editorial board member, wrote:

So many of us have been waiting for this day, and fighting for it, that we may be forgiven for thinking that Tom’s departure brings our problems to an end. It does not. It will be some time before we can undo the damage he wrought: To our finances, to our reputation, to our business relationships, to our morale, to the quality of our editorial product …. What we can say is that, with Tom gone, we can begin to address our problems in a rational and purposeful way.

Rose responded with a $2 million defamation lawsuit against Stephens. The case was dismissed by the trial judge, whose disposition was upheld by the appeals court.

Rose is also a right-wing radio talk show host who also founded America’s Voices for Israel, “… a US based not-for-profit organization that brings American radio and television talk show hosts broadcast [sic] their programs live from Israel for a week,” according to his agent’s website.

On Tuesday, The Weekly Standard’s blog was at it again, pushing the freshly minted Stop Iran Now, complete with its first (and perhaps only) ad.

Of course, that insufficiently bellicose presidents, particularly Democrats, should be compared to Neville Chamberlain has, over the past 40 years or so, become a neo-conservative cliche, but that didn’t stop the folks at Stop Iran Now from running it yet again (and again and again and again ad Hitlerum).  If Obama doesn’t “stop Iran now,” then he obviously will be responsible for a world war and a new Holocaust.

So who is Stop Iran Now?  It is a project of Citizens United, a conservative group which appears to specialize in producing documentaries and was immortalized earlier in January by the Supreme Court’s extremely controversial 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling that the First Amendment permits corporations to fund independent political broadcasts in elections to federal office.

The group’s list of productions includes: Nine Days That Changed The World; Generation Zero; Rediscovering God In America II; Perfect Valor; Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous With Destiny; We Have The Power; The Path to 9/11; Hype: The Obama Effect; Hillary: The Movie; Gingrich: Rediscovering God In America; Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration; ACLU: At War With America; Broken Promises: The UN at 60; and Celsius 41.11: The Truth Behind the Lies of Farenheit 9/11.

It’s clear that Stop Iran Now is the latest in a long series of politically motivated campaigns produced by Citizens United.

Director of Citizens United, David Bossie, has an impressive history of far-right partisanship and a bad habit of crossing the line into unethical territory.

In 1992, CBS News reported that Bossie harassed the family of a young woman in Arkansas, Susann Coleman, in an attempt to prove that she had committed suicide as a result of an affair with Bill Clinton.

Bossie was subsequently hired as an investigator by Sen. Lauch Faircloth and then by Rep. Dan Burton during the Whitewater hearings, but his willingness to cut corners resulted in his firing by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, which is saying something.

SourceWatch writes:

“Bossie was fired from his job as an investigator working for Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) on the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee in 1998″[11] while “investigating ClintonGore campaign finances.”[12] According to a May 7, 1998, front-page article published by the Washington Post,[13] Bossie was fired “after overseeing the release of recordings of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s phone conversations with [imprisoned] Whitewater figure Webster L. Hubbell. The tapes were edited to create the impression that Clinton was involved in billing irregularities at the Arkansas law firm where she and Hubbell worked.”[14]

While The Weekly Standard keeps promoting groups like Keep Israel Safe and Stop Iran Now as grassroots movements, they appear instead to be the organizational expressions of fiercely partisan individuals with substantial means at their disposal (like Kristol himself). And they are trying hard to move the United States closer to war with Iran.

Eli Clifton

Eli Clifton reports on money in politics and US foreign policy. He is a co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Eli previously reported for the American Independent News Network, ThinkProgress, and Inter Press Service.

SHOW 26 COMMENTS

26 Comments

  1. “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

    — Bertrand Russell

    These lunatics don’t give a crap that their position is illogical, immoral and illegal, they have a sick blood lust, they love the fact they have been responsible for millions of deaths since 2001, and they want more, they are psycopaths. How else can one explain the flawed logic they use in their arguments:

    “If Obama doesn’t “stop Iran now,” then he obviously will be responsible for a world war and a new Holocaust.”

    So how do you stop Iran? Bombing them and causing…a world war and a new Holocaust, this time Muslims.

    These people are mentally ill and seriously so.

  2. Israel can be safe with friendly relations which don,t harm common man. Israelis are their own enemy killing, foltering, occupying and settelments.
    If they change their mind set then muslims will forget all the atrocities committed by Jews. I know the safety of Israel is due to conflict otherwisehey will fight each other but time is changing rapidly.

  3. Yeah Hitler was a great man who was saving Germany from the evil communists.

  4. The stop Iran now ads are irresponsible. It assumes that if Chamberlain had not given into Hitler, this would have stopped Hitler. Britain and France were quite unprepared for war at the time, Chamberlain did buy a years time to rearm. Chamberlain’s giving in to Hitler was not responsible for WWII, that would parobably have happened anyway. Pat Buchanan makes the case that had Britain not supported Hitler’s request, which all considered reasonable at the time, for the Polish corridor, then Hitler’s attention woud have been centered on the east and Russia. But that is conjecture, what is fact is the way Germany was treated after WWI and this is what enabled the rise of Hitler. Then too, we appeased Communist Russia several times. We did not go to war over the Berlin Blockade, we did not go to war when Russia retook Hungary. Should we have used those occasions to “stop Communist Russia now?” We didn’t and look how well that turned out for us. These people who want another war are insane.

  5. America is the greatest occupied terriroty, unless it gets liberation, Palestanians cannot. By the way, Iran never attacked any country in 500 years. Its nuclear program is the most transparent in the history of mankind. The president of Iran never said Israel will be wiped out, he however said, Zionists will be wiped out. Tell me one week, just one, where Israeli leaders did not threaten to attack Iran. Not one week. Who are saying all options are on the table. Not Iran. My friends, everything was cruising according to the plan. Zionists were about to go to moon. Then the curve took place. They found Iran and its proxies challenging the atrocities of Israel from nowhere. All the master plan of 200 years seems to be shattering. What happened? The dream of taking over the planet on the platter is crumbled. The defeat in Lebanon in 2006, complimented by American defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan is the turning point. Wheels are turning. The days of nuclear age, the age of fighter planes are gone. Assymetrical warefare has removed all the military superiority. That is the problem.

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