David Yerushalmi, Architect of
American Law for American Courts

Lori Lowenthal Marcus of Z Street has published in today's Jewish Press a brilliant recap of last night's MPAC teleconference  with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Soros-backed Center for American Progress (CAP): "Southern Poverty Law Center Joining Pro-Hamas, Hezbollah Groups in Blasting "Haters" - Mostly Jews" . The teleconfrence marked a new low in agitprop by Muslim Brotherhood front group MPAC and its 'progressive' allies. As Marcus notes in her article, the focus was on criticizing  largely Jewish counter-Jihadists painting them as racists denying First Amendment guaranteees of 'protected speech'. That  the SPLC which relies heavily on liberal American Jewish contributors, would undertake this dramatic shift toward the support of the 'dark side' of Islamic Jew hatred is troubling. The SPLC has surely lost its moral compass.

Marcus noted that in her opening stanza:

A quick peek at  . . .five supreme evil villains reveals four of the five are Jews, and the fifth works closely with Jews and Jewish organizations.  Those five are Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy; David Yerushalmi (Orthodox Jew) at the Society of Americans for National Existence; Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum; Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America; and Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
 
During the teleconference Wajahat included David Horowitz (yes, another Jew) of the Horowitz Freedom Center in his list of the Network experts.  Horowitz was not surprised that the SPLC was joining with MPAC and CAP to criticize people like him.
 
“The SPLC is the most prominent and active leftwing smear site in America,” Horowitz told The Jewish Press.   He explained that, “like much of the left it has joined the Muslim Brotherhood and its front groups in attacking patriotic Americans who oppose the Islamist oppression of women, gays and other religions and promote jihad against the United States.”

Prominent among these American Jewish counter-jihadist criticized was David Yerushalmi, the architect of the model American Law for American Courts model legislation introduced in more than two dozen states and enacted in four: Arizona, Louisiana, Tennessee and Kansas. 

In many ways, last night's MPAC teleconference call exposed the devolution of the Southern Poverty Law Center from its former civil rights activism into equating Jewish and other counter-Jihadists as equivalent to the KKK. Prominent among the verbal dossier presented by Aajahat Ali of the CAP came straight out their publication, Fear, Inc. that we correctly tagged last summer in an NER article: Fear, Inc.  The Obama Re-election Straetgy for Muslim Votes.

Much of what Ali discussed on the call was simply a repetition of  the Fear, Inc. report. We noted:

 Note what one of the study co-authors, Wahajat Ali says is the agenda of this ‘conspiratorial’ network:

There are five major players who we call the central nervous system of the Islamophobia network. They're primarily responsible for creating the talking points and manufacturing the messages and memes that get distributed and mainstreamed via the network. The second aspect of it is the grass-roots organizations and the religious right. Examples include Act for America, Eagle Forum and Stop Islamization of America. They take these talking points -- such as, "Shariah is a legal-political-military doctrine that will supplant the United States Constitution" -- and promote them. Then these ideas -- such as "Obama may be a Muslim," "Shariah is a threat," "mosques are Trojan Horses" -- are mainstreamed through a media megaphone. That's primarily Fox News but also radio shows like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and websites like WorldNetDaily, FrontPage Magazine and JihadWatch. Finally, we see how these talking points are used by mainstream politicians.

However, as Ed Lasky in an American Thinker article, “The Soros-Supported Center for American Progress Blames Rich Jews for Stoking Islamophobia,”the CAP dossier has a sleazy element of anti-Semitism.

The eight foundations mentioned as funding this effort include, almost exclusively, ones founded and funded by Jewish donors. Lest readers not be aware of this fact, the Center for American Progress lists not only the other beneficiaries of the charities and foundations (most of them having Jewish or Israel in the title) but also goes to the trouble of naming the individuals behind these charities -- not just the donors but also those who serve on the boards.

Why include this additional information except to highlight that Jewish people are behind this effort to "defame" Muslims? By "outing" the people involved, the report endangers them. Furthermore, this "report" relies on the conspiracy and age-old anti-Semitic trope that Jews fan prejudice towards others and promotes divisions for their own nefarious purposes (to support Israel in this case). This mindset is straight out of Mein Kampf.

The report also stokes the view that rich Jews operate behind the scenes and use their wealth to control the media and government policy (politicians are also mentioned as being ensnared in this web).

Ali simply resurrected this trope of flagrant anti-Semitic conspiracy theory libel on last night's MPAC-sponsored call. When Ali cites $40 million in support of counterjihad activities from several foundations, that pales by comparison with what the combinedf SPLC, CAP take was in 2011, well over $66 million.

Note this comment from Steve Emerson, one of those accused of hate rhetoric by Ali on the MPAC teleconference call:

Steve Emerson is one of the “architects” of the Islamophobic Network, according to CAP.  Emerson told The Jewish Press, “that now the SPLC has scurrilously jumped on the ‘Islamophobia industry’ like MPAC and CAP in promoting a totally fabricated conspiracy that alleges a group of ten individuals (yours truly included) colluded for a decade to hypnotize 300 million Americans to be suspicious of Muslims.”
 
In fact, according to Emerson, “the reality is MPAC, SPLC, CAP and also the ADL and ACLU are the true conspiratorialists in promoting the myth of Islamophobia, a term created by radical Islamic groups, together with their handlers like CAP, the SPLC  and the ADL, to silence any criticism of radical Islam.”

Rabbi Jon Hausman and Dr. Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance were quoted by Marcus zeroing in on the SPLC's bizarre policy shift  towards alliance with patently ant-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood rhetoric:

 Rabbi Jon Hausman of Stoughton, Massachusetts signed the letter. Hausman said he could not understand how the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was “founded to combat the worst impulses of hatred is now working with acknowledged purveyors of anti-Semitism, and which believes the State of Israel needs to be dismantled.”
 
Another one of the signers, Charles Jacobs, is a long-time human rights activist who founded the American Anti-Slavery Group in 1994. Jacobs explained that long ago he respected the SPLC, but he learned its true colors when they refused to help his anti-Slavery group nearly fifteen years ago.  At that time, he was “shocked and disappointed.”
 
According to Jacobs, “the SPLC doesn’t really care about human rights.  To be more precise, they only care about human rights violations committed by those in the West.”  Jacobs told The Jewish Press that “the SPLC has abandoned the victims of non-Westerners, such as Black victims of Arabs, and women victimized by Islam, and Christians victimized by Muslim majorities.”

Jim Cavanaugh, a former ATF official involved with the Columbia, Tennessee mosque burning of 2008 posted this comment on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery, Alabama, Hatewatch.in reference to a controversial  counter-terrorism training  program sponsored  in February 2012 by the Rutherford County Sheriff's office :

 "Reject the haters, Sheriff Arnold, and reorganize your training,” he wrote. “Don’t drink from the poison cup of hate, no matter how sweet they tell you it will taste. Leave the hate to the far reaches of the Internet, . . ."

Cavanaugh's statement is ironic given what  SPLC perpetrated with  its Intelligence Director, Heidi Beirich's comments and participation in last night's MPAC teleconference on "The Real World Impact of Hate Rhetoric in America." SPLC has drunk "from the poison cup of hate." Anti-Semitic hate.