#david horowitz

Eli Clifton at The Guardian:

Top Republican donor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass is connected to over $16m in funding to anti-Muslim and pro-Israel groups that have advocated for a US war with Iran and other militaristic policies in the Middle East, according to an investigation by the Guardian and Responsible Statecraft.

Media reports on Yass, the billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, a trading and technology firm, have focused on his outsized role in the Republican party, to which he is now the largest political donor in the 2024 election cycle, contributing more than $46m thus far. Yass has also emerged as the biggest funder of a group targeting progressive representative Summer Lee in her primary race, suggesting an interest in influencing Democratic primary outcomes, not just in boosting Republicans. But little has been reported about his involvement in funding groups advocating a pro-Israel US foreign policy, hawkish US policies in the Middle East and support for theorists whom experts described as extreme anti-Muslim conspiracists.

Leading Yass’s philanthropy in the foreign policy space is $7.9m contributed to Jerusalem Online University between 2014 and 2019 by a grant-making group at which he once served as one of three directors. A Jewish Daily Forward investigation into the group in 2011 found that the website promotes itself as a source of educational materials about the Middle East and Israel, but the website’s actual message is far more biased, the Forward found. “On its website and its promotional materials, Jerusalem Online U hardly portrays itself as a center for neutral academic inquiry,” the Forward wrote. “In fact, it boasts an explicitly pro-Israel mission that seems distinctly at odds with academic principles. In one advertisement for its services, the Jerusalem Online U site’s blog features a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling Congress last May that ‘Israel is what is right’ about the Middle East. The words ‘Be a Part of What’s Right’ appear on screen as he speaks.”

The contributions came from the Claws Foundation, an entity at which Yass served as a director alongside Arthur Dantchik, a co-founder of Susquehanna, and attorney Alan P Dye. Dye did not return calls for comment. The Kids Connect Charitable Fund – which does not list Yass or Dantchik as directors but listed the Claws Foundation as a “related tax-exempt organization” in an IRS filing and was identified as an arm of both men’s philanthropy by Haaretz – contributed another $3.48m to Jerusalem Online University’s parent organization, Imagination Productions. The Claws Foundation also issued a $10,000 grant to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2011 and $35,000 in grants, between 2010 and 2011, to the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim and conspiracy theory-promoting group founded by Frank Gaffney, whom the Southern Policy Law Center describes as “one of America’s most notorious Islamophobes” and the Anti-Defamation League describes as a chief promulgator of the conspiracy theory “that the US government has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and that a number of political figures have actual ties to the group”. The Center for Security Policy vice-president, Clare Lopez, has said: “When Muslims follow their doctrine they become jihadists.”

In 2013 to 2014, the Claws Foundation sent $250,000 to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, another central promoter of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Horowitz, whom the group is named after and who serves as its president, once complained that Muslims were a “protected species in this country” and said he was “wait[ing] for the day when the good Muslims step forward” at a Brooklyn College event in 2011. “The fact Yass is donating to Gaffney and Horowitz’s organizations shows how extreme his politics are,” said Tommy Vietor, former national security council spokesperson under President Obama. “They are beyond Trump. They are OG conspiracy theorists. Gaffney in particular.”

[...] Trump has a track record of shifting positions on Israel and Iran to align with political mega-donors. Only after securing the nomination in 2016 did Trump pivot to more militaristic positions in the Middle East – committing to withdrawing the US from the JCPOA, moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and supporting an unconditionally pro-Israel US approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – positions in lockstep with his biggest political patrons in the general election, the late Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam.

On the first day of his attorney general confirmation hearing, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama vigorously defended his association with David Horowitz, the far-right extremist termed “the godfather of the modern anti-Muslim movement” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) prodded Sessions, who was deemed too racist to serve as a federal judge under former President Ronald Reagan, about his ties to the anti-Muslim activist.

“In 2003, at an event called Restoration Weekend, you gave a speech praising a man named David Horowitz as ‘a man I admire,’” noted Blumenthal at the hearing. “David Horowitz has said, among other things, that ‘all the major Muslim organizations in America are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood’ and ‘80 percent of the mosques are filled with hate against Jews and Americans.’ He’s also made a number of statements against African Americans, as in ‘too many blacks are in prison because too many black commit crimes.’”

Sessions responded by stating that he is not embarrassed by his association with Horowitz and claimed that he is unaware of the comments referenced. “He’s a most brilliant individual and has a remarkable story,” Sessions said of Horowitz, adding: “I don’t believe David Horowitz is a racist or a person that would treat anyone improperly, at least to my knowledge.”

Sessions’ claim that he is unaware of Horowitz’s racist statements is questionable, given his long-term association with the individual and his extremist think tank, the Freedom Center. Sessions participated in Freedom Center events in 2014, 2013, 2010, 2008 and 2003. As the keynote speaker for the Freedom Center’s 2013 West Coast retreat, Sessions personally thanked Horowitz for his "profound contribution to the conservative movement.”

During his confirmation hearing, Sessions praised Horowitz’s “brilliant book,” Radical Son, for outlining his “transformation, having grown up in a, as he describes it, communist family.” Sessions added, “It was a really powerful and moving story of how he moved from the unprincipled, totalitarian radical left to a more traditional American person.”

This statement is in line with Sessions’ longstanding track record of employing red-baiting language to demonize progressive and left social movements. As far back as 1986, Former Justice Department civil rights lawyer J. Gerald Hebert testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Sessions had called the NAACP and ACLU “un-American” and “communist-inspired.”

Sessions has a troubling history of associating with far-right, anti-Muslim think tanks and figures that extends beyond Horowitz. In October 2015, Sessions was granted the “Keeper of the Flame award by the Center for Security Policy (CSP), the think tank that produced the shoddy research behind Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims. CSP is headed by Frank Gaffney, a prominent anti-Muslim activist behind numerous conspiracy theories of a “Muslim Brotherhood” takeover of the U.S. government.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Sessions—along with Trump transition team leader Kris Kobach—regularly attends events hosted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The organization is supported by the Pioneer Fund, which was founded in 1937 by the prominent eugenicist and textile magnate Wickliffe Draper for the purpose of “race betterment.” The SPLC has classified FAIR as a hate group since 2007.

One of the most right-wing members of the Senate, Sessions has a long career track record of opposing civil rights. In the 1984 case now known as the Marion Three, he prosecuted three civil rights workers on baseless charges of voter fraud, and all them were acquitted. More recently, he threw his support behind the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to gut the Voting Rights Act.