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Réalité-EU: Front group for the Washington-based Israel Project?
Tom Mills and David Miller, 30 October 2009 [print_link]
Spinwatch has uncovered evidence that an apparently London based organisation offering expertise on Iran to journalists and politicians is a covert propaganda operation run by a pro-Israel organisation in the United States.
The organisation, which is called Réalité-EU, has direct connections to The Israel Project, a hard-line pro-Israel organisation based in Washington DC. Both Réalité-EU and The Israel Project also appear to be connected to a Jewish organisation – B’nai B’rith International, which is also active in pro-Israel campaigning.
Réalité-EU was at one time linked to the former Shadow Security Minister Patrick Mercer, raising further concerns about the Conservative MP’s links to individuals and groups involved in exaggerating and even fabricating domestic and international threats for personal and political ends. These activities have previously been reported by Spinwatch as well as other sources.
Réalité-EU has claimed to be based at offices in London, but e-mails received from the organisation were sent from a mail server registered to the Washington offices of B’nai B’rith International.[1] An expert from Réalité-EU who spoke to Spinwatch denied ‘any connection whatsoever’ with B’nai B’rith.
Asked whether Réalité-EU receives any funding or direct support from the pro-Israel pressure group, the expert replied, ‘Definitely not,’ but added, ‘I’m not at all involved in any development [i.e. funding] questions so I really don’t know exactly who the individuals are and where they come from.’[2]
Spinwatch’s questions about the backers of Réalité-EU were then referred to the group’s Communication Associate Gerlinde Gerber. She subsequently sent an e-mail stating that Réalité-EU receives funds from ‘different individuals from all over the world,’ who ‘are especially concerned about the growing threat of extremism in Europe and the Middle East.’[3]
When Ms Gerber was confronted with evidence directly linking Réalité-EU with B’nai B’rith she said that her organisation rents ‘services and space on their server for cost saving reasons,’ but that it had no ‘ideological or other connection to B’nai B’rith’. She also stated that the expert Spinwatch had spoken had no knowledge of this arrangement.[4]
Spinwatch then discovered that the London phone number for Réalité-EU redirected to a voicemail at the offices of The Israel Project in Washington, an organisation that also uses the B’nai B’rith mail server. Ms Gerber did not reply to further questions about Réalité-EU’s relationship with The Israel Project or to a query as to where Réalité-EU is registered given that there is no trace of the organisation in the UK at Companies House or the Charity Commission.
B’nai B’rith International and The Israel Project were also asked to comment on whether they have any relationship with Réalité-EU but failed to respond.
History
B’nai B’rith International is one of a number of well-funded organisations which lobby in support of Israel.[5] It was not originally a Zionist organisation and in its early years was officially neutral on the issue. It was set up in New York over a hundred years before the establishment of the State of Israel and was originally focused on providing welfare to newly arriving Jewish immigrants.
In 1913 it founded the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith[6] to record incidents of anti-Semitism and campaign for greater protection for Jewish people. The League subsequently became independent of its parent organisation and, now known simply as the Anti-Defamation League or ADL, it has become notorious for its campaigns of harassment against critics of Israel. Amongst its targets was Noam Chomsky, who has noted ‘They try to label any criticism as anti-Semitic… in the last 40 years it’s become a Stalinist-style organization dedicated to supporting anything Israel does and to destroying all opposition to Israeli policies.’[7]
In addition ADL has been repeatedly accused of broadening its activities from defending against what it claims is ‘anti-Semitism’ to actually spying on the left, including allegedly working with the South African apartheid regime, spying on anti-apartheid groups, a wide range of left and human rights organisations and even on HIV/AIDS activsts.[8]
ADL and The Israel Project are ideologically aligned but are also linked by personnel. For example Laura Kam, a ‘senior adviser’ for The Israel Project worked for seventeen years as co-director of ADL’s Israel office.[9] Hamodie Abu Nadda, an ‘Arabic associate’ at The Israel Project, also worked for ADL. The Israel Project also works with ADL, for example, as members of the Israel on Campus Coalition.[10]
Like the ADL, B’nai B’rith has also become a passionate advocate for Israel. Its website boasts of an ‘unrivalled record of service and commitment to the Jewish state.’ [11] This record has included using its presence at the UN and other international bodies to lobby against criticism of Israel, as well as the provision of material assistance to the Israel Defence Forces.[12]
During Israel’s latest attack on Gaza – described by one Israeli commentator as ‘a massive and unfettered assault, with no proportion to the amount of casualties’[13] – B’nai B’rith’s President visited Israel as part of a ‘solidarity mission’.[14] When Israel subsequently came under intense criticism for violations of human rights and international humanitarian law during its assault, B’nai B’rith, despite its history as a humanitarian organisation, jumped to Israel’s defence.
A UN Fact Finding Mission recently released a report criticising Israel for human rights violations and war crimes (as well as criticising Hamas for indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel). B’nai B’rith dismissed the report as ‘one-sided’ complaining that it paid ‘scant attention to Hamas’ cynical use of human shields and placement of munitions among the civilian population’.[15]
In fact an entire chapter of the report addressed allegations such as these, but the mission had found no evidence to support the claims. They did however uncover evidence that the IDF had used Palestinian civilians as human shields during its assault.[16]
B’nai B’rith has branches all over the world including in Britain, but its head offices are based at 2020 K Street in Washington D.C.[17] K Street is famous for housing some of the world’s most powerful lobby groups and think-tanks. Other organisations based at number 2020 K Street include the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, the NCSJ (formerly the National Conference on Soviet Jewry) and The Israel Project, which is located on the seventh floor along with B’nai B’rith. The Israel Project was founded in 2002, the same year B’nai B’rith International moved into its K Street office and also shares a mail server with B’nai B’rith.[18]
The Israel Project
As its name suggests, The Israel Project also shares B’nai B’rith’s unwavering ‘commitment to the Jewish state’. Whilst B’nai B’rith still supports religious and social programmes, The Israel Project is exclusively committed to political advocacy. In its 2004/05 tax returns it reported spending $787,038 on polling research and over $1.3 million on public relations; the stated goal of which was to ‘improve US understanding of the vital nature of a strong relationship between Israel and other counties around the world, primarily the US’.[19] A year later its accounts start to report the use of ‘Strategic Communications’.[20]
Originally a term used by the military, Strategic Communications refers to carefully researched and selectively targeted propaganda. The Israel Project states in its accounts that its Strategic Communications involves using ‘sophisticated public opinion research to identify messages, themes and visuals that will bring support to key [Israeli] policies,’ and that it, ‘has trained thousands of influential policy leaders, opinion elites and spokespeople to help strengthen Israel’s image in international media.’[21]
Over the course of the following three years, The Israel Project spent over $2.7 million on ‘Strategic Communications’ and a further $9.8 million on ‘public relations’.[22] It has retained a number of political communications and media companies that conduct telephone polling, run focus groups, and design and place television adverts. Its three main communications consultants are Greeberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Public Opinion Strategies and Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research.
Greeberg Quinlan Rosner calls itself ‘the world’s premium research and strategic consulting firm’. Its political clients are mostly Democrats and other centrist parties around the world, and the firm worked for the Labour Party on its three general elections under Tony Blair.[23] Its clients also include some of the world’s most powerful corporations such as Boeing, BP, Coca-Cola and General Motors.[24]
Public Opinion Strategies on the other hand is a Republican polling firm.[25] It also represents corporate lobby groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce and The National Association of Manufacturers.[26]
Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, perhaps the most significant of the three in terms of devising propaganda, offers clients ‘game-changing messaging solutions’ which it claims are able to ‘generate powerful results in the corporate world’.[27] Its clients also include Boeing, Coca-Cola and General Motors, along with a host of others including American Express, Bear Sterns, Disney, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, McDonalds and Merrill Lynch.
Assisted by these communications companies, The Israel Project produces documents advising lobbyists and campaigners on their use of language and their framing of arguments. One such document, leaked to the pro-Palestinian group Electronic Intifada in 2003, described in detail how advocates could ‘integrate and leverage history and communication for the benefit of Israel’.[28]
The group’s political advocacy is unabashedly partisan and militaristic. Despite its claim to be working for ‘security and peace,’ Rightweb notes that it, ‘Advocates a number of positions similar to other hard-line and neoconservative groups. It supports the controversial wall along the West Bank, advocates a hard line against Iran, and actively promotes the work of hawkish think tanks and writers.’[29]
In recent years The Israel Project’s carefully crafted multi-million dollar propaganda operation has focused heavily on Iran. In November 2007, it commissioned a focus group to assess public perceptions of the country. According to one participant: ‘The whole basis of the whole thing was, “we’re going to go into Iran and what do we have to do to get you guys to along with it?”’[30]
As the focus group apparently showed, the public were sceptical of the need for more war. This finding has been confirmed more recently in The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary which noted that to the ‘American Left and Center-left’ and to Europeans in general, ‘Warnings about Iran sound uncomfortably too much like President Bush and his call for pre-emption in Iraq.’[31]
The numerous references in that document to European opinion suggest how Réalité-EU might fit into a broader propaganda strategy. Winning over important sections of European opinion is not only useful in itself; it also helps to win over America opinion. Liberals in the US will be more likely to support aggression if it receives some degree of international support, particularly from America’s close allies.
As The Israel Project notes in its 2009 Global Language Dictionary: ‘with the advent of the new administration, Americans and the world are weary of unilateral, America-will-go-it-alone approaches. They are eager to be on the same team as other democratic nations again.’ This pressing need for international legitimacy explains what groups like B’nai B’rith and The Israel Project have to gain from backing an organisation like Réalité-EU.
Similar media strategies
Réalité-EU is directly linked to The Israel Project in that its London phone number redirects to a voicemail number in Washington previously publicly listed as belonging to the Israel Project and both organisations have used the B’nai B’rith mail server. Both their websites offer what they call ‘Backgrounders’ and ‘Expert Sources’ and they seem to be the only two websites that use both terms.
The Israel Project’s European Affairs Web Specialist states that part of her job is identifying European experts on Iran.[32] However, none of The Israel Project’s experts appear to be Europeans or to be based in Europe. Réalité-EU on the other hand directs journalists to eight ‘Expert Sources’, all of whom are European; and apparently independent. Another notable feature is that The Israel Project’s European Affairs Associate states that he organises press events in Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London and Brussels,[33] all cities where Réalité-EU experts have been based.[34]
Whether the eight Réalité-EU experts are themselves aware of Réalité-EU’s connection with The Israel Project and/or B’nai B’rith is not clear, but even if ignorant of it they could probably be relied upon to deliver the right message.
One of the ‘experts’, a French academic and risk consultant called Frédéric Encel,[35] gave what was described as an ‘intensely emotional’ speech at a fundraising event in March this year in which he made reference to the recent bombing of Gaza. Rather than condemning the massacres, Encel argued that, ‘The Hamas party’s way of making things worse to further their own ends has obliged Israel to use its force.’ He added that the IDF conducting its attacks whilst ‘maintaining a control that is rarely seen in other armies.’[36]
Encel’s political views are typical of neoconservatives and the pro-war liberals. He sees himself as defending a Western liberal tradition against a sinister alliance of Islamists and leftists. He says on his official website that he is in favour of a ‘fierce defence of republican values,’ which he considers to be under attack by what he labels as totalitarianism, fascism, radical Islam and Stalinism.[37]
Another of Réalité-EU’s experts, Matthias Küntzel,[38] is a German author and a political scientist best known for his belief that movements like Hamas, Hezbollah, and of course the Islamic Republic of Iran, are essentially anti-Semitic, fascistic movements comparable with the Third Reich.
Like many neoconservatives, Küntzel claims to have a background on the liberal left – which he now criticises for being unable to provide ‘an even halfway adequate response to the continuing impact of the crimes against the Jews’.[39] Küntzel’s book Jihad and Jew-Hatred was published in English in 2007 and received positive reviews in the neoconservative Weekly Standard and the right-wing Washington Times.[40]
Réalité-EU’s most prominent figure is probably the terrorism expert Claude Moniquet, who is also one of six speakers listed on the ‘Speakers Bureau’ of B’nai B’rith Europe.[41] Moniquet heads a right-wing Brussels based think-tank called the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, an organisation which says it ‘supports the strengthening of the trans-Atlantic ties and the democracies in their struggle against terrorism and other threats.’[42] Moniquet worked for 20 years as a journalist, but sees no shame in admitting that throughout that time he also served as a ‘field operative’ for the French foreign intelligence service.[43]
A shadowy network
Although Réalité-EU is run by Europeans and backed by Americans, its origins at least appear to be British. At the time of its launch, Réalité-EU was closely affiliated with another organisation called International Media Intelligence Analysis (IMIA).[44] IMIA was set up by a British neoconservative called Simon Barrett,[45] who authored the inaugural Réalité-EU press release and was for a time one of its ‘experts’[46] but who has since left the group.[47] At the time of Réalité-EU’s launch an introductory press release written by Barrett stated that Réalité EU would ‘include some of the previous works of IMIA but be greatly expanded.'[48]
Barrett, who is now 34, claims to have worked as an advisor to Patrick Mercer MP when he was the Conservative Party Shadow Homeland Security Minister.[49] Mercer, who now chairs the House of Commons Sub-Committee on Counter-Terrorism, was asked by Spinwatch to confirm Barrett’s advisory role. His office replied that he may have ‘spoken to Simon Barrett’ but he ‘could not be described as an advisor.’[50]
Whatever his exact relationship with Barrett, Mercer has long been associated with the wilder fringes of the anti-terrorism world. It would appear however that his office is now attempting to distance him from his former associates. Another individual who has claimed to have acted as an advisor to Mercer is Dominic Wightman, who, like Barrett, now works with think-tanks on the far right of British politics such as the Centre for Social Cohesion.
Spinwatch recently revealed that either Wightman – or as he alleges, a former colleague who hacked into his email – attempted to fabricate a bogus terrorism plot. An American working in Iraq received an email from Wightman requested that his colleague translate some English text into Arabic and post it on a ‘jihadi noticeboard’.
The text was written as if by someone planning to plant a bomb in an elderly woman’s wheeled-basket and explode it in a supermarket.[51] Wightman is now suspected of involvement in a hate campaign against the blogger Tim Ireland which has including repeated threats of violence and the publishing of his home address on the internet.[52]
Wightman denies any involvement with the campaign, which is led by a group of online vigilantes calling themselves the Cheerleaders, but as the blogger Richard Bartholomew has noted the timing and content of online attack pieces posted by Wightman and the Cheerleaders strongly suggests coordination.[53]
Tim Ireland, the main target of these attacks, had exposed another fake terror threat fabricated by Wightman’s former colleague Glen Jenvey, and Wightman now considers Ireland to a part of an ‘Islamist-Leftist compact’ or ‘Black Red Alliance’.[54]
After weeks of scrutiny by bloggers, Glen Jenvey admitted fabricating a terror threat supposedly targeting Alan Sugar that appeared on the front page of the Sun in January. He too enjoyed a working relationship with Patrick Mercer, which as Tim Ireland has noted, continued for two months after Ireland first produced evidence calling into questioning the Sun’s story.
In March this year one of Mercer’s staff sent an e-mail to a journalist at The People stating: ‘I have been in touch with Mr Jenvey about a number of things but most of all the following, which in my view would combine well to make a very good Sunday story.’[55]
Although there is no evidence that Réalité-EU’s Simon Barrett also fabricated terror plots, early in his career as a terrorism and Middle East expert he commented on similar scare stories in the tabloid press. In one such article the Sunday Express claimed that there was a risk that Muslim women in Europe and North America ‘could be planning to use fake pregnancies’ to hide explosives.
The source for the story was the US based Northeast Intelligence Network, a group of former corporate security figures who have made it their mission to ‘educate’ the American public as to ‘the true nature of the terrorist threats’. The group claimed to have discovered an image of a ‘strap on womb’ on an ‘extremist Islamist website’, but would not reveal where the images were found.[56]
Barrett was quoted by the Sunday Express as saying that ‘terrorists are effectively using our politically correct laws as their cover’. He made a point of linking the scare story to the Palestinians saying: ‘This is unfortunately not in the realms of fantasy as terrorist recruiters within the Palestinian terrorist organisations have exploited young vulnerable women in the past to carry out suicide missions with devastating consequences.[57]
In an earlier article the Sunday Express covered the story of a 19 year old Iraqi man with Down’s syndrome who they alluded had been used unwittingly as a suicide bomber. Patrick Mercer commented that: ‘This shows us exactly the sort of murderous scum with whom we are dealing.’ Barrett added: ‘This is not just happening with Iraqis. Palestinian children have also been educated with hatred to become suicide bombers.’[58] The article referred to Barrett as ‘a spokesman for Terror Aware, a group that monitors the Middle East media’.
Terror Aware was one of a number of alarmist organisations Barrett was involved in prior to launching Réalité-EU. Like one of his other early projects, it appears to be linked to the British record producer Trevor Horn and his wife Jill Sinclair – the owners of SARM Studios. Terror Aware was registered to the address of the SARM Workshop in North-West London. Jill Sinclair, who went into a comma in 2007 after a tragic domestic accident, is described as having been a very vocal supporter of Israel.[59] In 2008 Trevor Horn helped to produce a record called Israel — Home of Hope to coincide with Israel’s 60th anniversary.[60]
Press references to Simon Barrett’s Terror Aware disappeared after a few months, with Barrett instead being referred to as the director of the International Coalition Against Terror. By early 2006 the short-lived International Coalition Against Terror was superseded by International Media Intelligence Analysis (IMIA), which was co owned by Barrett and Jill Sinclair. Like Terror Aware Ltd, IMIA was registered to a business address of SARM Studios, this time at its studio in Notting Hill. There is no evidence to connect Sinclair to Réalité-EU, though in its first year of operations, it gave its contact address as a P.O. Box in the Notting Hill area of London.[61]
IMIA was referred to in some press articles as a London based think-tank, but for the most part it appears to have operated as an e-newsletter service run solely by Barrett. It did however co-host an event in the House of Commons with the Euro-sceptic think-tank Open Europe.[62]
Open Europe has itself received funding from American neoconservatives via the Policy Forum on International Security Affairs, a group headed by Devon Gaffney Cross, a former director of the powerful neoconservative group the Project for the New American Century. Her brother Frank Gaffney was a speaker at an Israel Project press conference in Washington in July 2007 organised to publicise the supposed ‘Iranian threat’.[63]
Open Europe and IMIA’s ‘parliamentary briefing’ that May was billed ‘Iran, Britain and Europe: Post hostage crisis, what can we expect next?’ It was attended by Patrick Mercer and Mark Fitzpatrick of the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies[64] among others.[65] Réalité-EU’s Claude Moniquet also spoke.[66]
Moniquet told the audience that his think-tank had evidence that ‘something is under preparation in Europe,’ and that, ‘Iranian intelligence is working extremely hard to prepare its people and to prepare actions.’ They would he claimed target ‘British citizens on the streets of London, just as they kill British soldiers in the south of Iraq.’[67]
Later that year the United States National Intelligence Estimate concluded that, contrary to the widespread claims, Iran was not developing a nuclear weapons programme. Réalité-EU responded with an Insight entitled, ‘Can U.S. Intelligence be Trusted on Iran?’, which once again conflated the issues of civilian nuclear power and nuclear weapons.[68]
Though Réalité-EU and similar organisations promoting hostility against Iran were apparently unconvinced and undeterred, the National Intelligence Estimate seemed for some time to have abated the march to war. Recently however the frequency and tone of official statements and media reports in Britain and the United States have once again become a cause for grave concern. Those who are unwilling to forget what has happened to the people of Iraq, and the lies and distortions, on which that war was based, cannot help but note worrying parallels with the current political climate.
The UK media critics David Edwards and David Cromwell write: ‘to us it seems like yesterday – the sense of madness is fresh in our minds. When Obama acts the stern father in demanding: “Iran must comply with United Nations resolutions,” he is repeating, with the alteration of but a single letter, the same sentence in the same tone used by George Bush and Tony Blair on Iraq.’[69]
Last month Réalité-EU’s Matthias Küntzel wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, ‘Iran Has No Right to Nuclear Technology’.[70] Although the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty states that signatories have ‘the inalienable right’ to ‘develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes’, Küntzel argued that this right cannot apply to Iran which although it has signed up to the NPT, ‘can by definition not be considered a bona fide signatory’.
To give Iran the same rights afforded other states under the treaty was according to Küntzel ‘not only politically absurd but also wrong from a purely legal point of view’. This remarkable claim was justified with reference to a comment on world Islamic revolution made by Ayatollah Khomeini around 30 years ago, and to a passage of the Qur’an quoted in Article 151 of Iran’s constitution. Küntzel thus argued that Iran was politically and constitutionally committed to waging war and overturning the international order. That being the case Küntzel conclude: ‘The time for “dialogue as usual” is over’.
NOTES
[1] Réalité-EU, email to Tom Mills, 14 July 2009 20:34; Gerlinde Gerber, Email to Tom Mills, 11 September 2009 16:48. Both emails were sent from the IP address 66.208.24.163, the IP number for mail.bnaibrith.org.
[2] Phone interview, 10 September 2009
[3] Gerlinde Gerber, Email to Tom Mills, 11 September 2009 16:48
[4] Gerlinde Gerber, Email to Tom Mills, 29 October 2009 14:53
[5] Spinprofiles, Israel Lobby Portal
[6] Spinprofiles, Anti-Defamation League
[7]Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB ‘Scholars condemn attack on academic freedom at UC-Santa Barbara’ 28 April 2009
[8] Jeffrey Blankfort, Anne Poirier and Steve Zeltzer, ‘The ADL Spying Case Is Over, But The Struggle Continues’, Counterpunch, 25 February 2002; Robert I. Friedman, The Enemy Within, The Village Voice, 11 May 1993, Vol. XXXVIII No. 19; Abdeen Jabara, (1993) ‘The Anti-Defamation League: Civil Rights and Wrongs’, ”Covert Action”, No. 45, Summer.
[9] The Israel Project, Laura Kam, Senior Advisor
[10] Israel on Campus Coalition ‘Members: ADL’
[11] B’nai B’rith International, ‘B’nai B’rith and Israel’ http://www.bnaibrith.org/165/BBI_and_Israel.cfm
[12] Ibid.
[13] Paul Wood, ‘Analysis: Operation Miscast Lead?’, BBC News Online, 13 March 2009
[14] ‘B’nai B’rith International Leaders on Solidarity Mission to Israel’, Targeted News Service, 12 January 2009
[15] ‘Goldstone Report Presents One-Sided and Incomplete Information’, Targeted News Service, 15 September 2009
[16] Human Rights Council, Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, A/HRC/12/48, 15 September 2009; see Chapters VIII and XIV
[17] Michael Vasquez, ‘A New Address for B’nai B’rith’, Washington Post, 15 June 2002
[18] See Robtex record for mail.bnaibrith.org
[19] The Israel Project, Form 990 (2004), p.2
[20] The Israel Project, Form 990 (2005), p.3
[21] Ibid.
[22] The Israel Project, Form 990 (2005), p.3; Form 990 (2006), p.3; Form 990 (2007), p.3
[23] Greeberg Quinlan Rosner Research, International Campaigns
[24] Greeberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Corporations
[25] Laura Rozen, ‘Focus Grouping War with Iran’, Mother Jones, 19 November 2007
[26] Public Opinion Strategies, Public Affairs Client List
[27] Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research, What We Do
[28] Wexner Analysis: Israeli Communication Priorities 2003
[29] Rightweb, The Israel Project, 26 July 2007
[30] Laura Rozen, ‘Focus Grouping War with Iran’, Mother Jones, 19 November 2007
[31] The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, Newsweek, 9 July 2009
[32] The Israel Project, Julie Hazan [Accessed 30 October 2009]
[33] The Israel Project, Christoph Heil, [Accessed 30 October 2009]
[34] Gerlinde Gerber is from Berlin, Diana Gregor lives in Vienna, Frédéric Encel in Paris, Simon Barrett in London and Claude Moniquet in Brussels.
[35] Neocon Europe, Frédéric Encel
[36] Lucie Optyker and Laurence Borot, ‘Traditional Fundraising Dinner Organized by the Paris Woman’s Division’, Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal, 26 March 2009, accessed 1 October 2009
[37] Frédéric Encel Official Website, accessed 12 September 2009. The original text in French reads: ‘Ainsi, mon engagement actif en faveur d’une âpre défense des valeurs républicaines (à commencer par la laïcité et l’égalité de la femme), accompagne sans l’entraver ni la biaiser mon expertise géopolitique ; le combat contre les totalitarismes, du fascisme à l’islamisme radical en passant par le stalinisme, ne souffre pas de répit…’
[38] Neocon Europe, Matthias Küntzel
[39] Alan Johnson, ‘Islamism, Antisemitism, and the political left. A Democratiya Interview with Matthias Küntzel’, Democratiya no. 13, 25 May 2008
[40] Stephen Schwartz, ‘The Third Jihad: When radical Muslims distort Islam’, Weekly Standard, Volume 013, Issue 31, 28 April 2008; Martin Rubin, ‘When Nazis and Islamic extremists bonded’, Washington Times, 24 February 2008
[41] B’nai B’rith Europe, Speakers Bureau [Accessed 1 October 2009]
[42] European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, ‘About Us’, accessed 1 October 2009
[43] see contributor’s note in Claude Moniquet, ‘American Intelligence’, Wall Street Journal, 13 December 2007 and Claude Moniquet’s CV on the website of the B’nai B’rith Europe which states that he spent ‘twenty years in journalism,’ and that ‘In the same twenty years, I was under contract for a specialized branch of the French Defense Ministry, working on security issues and counter terrorism.’
[44] Neocon Europe, International Media Intelligence Analysis
[45] Neocon Europe, Simon Barrett
[46] Internet Archive, REALITE-EU – Expert Sources, 23 January 2007
[47] Réalité-EU, email to Tom Mills, 14 July 2009 20:34
[48] Réalité-EU Press Release, ‘Réalité: The real story’
[49] Internet Archive, REALITE-EU – Expert Sources, 23 January 2007
[50] Parliamentary Assistant to Patrick Mercer, email to Tom Mills, 15 September 2009 15:24
[51] Tom Mills and David Miller, ‘The British amateur terror trackers: A case study in dubious politics’, Spinwatch, 26 August 2009
[52] Tim Ireland, ‘Dominic Wightman: follow the leader’, Bloggerheads, 1 October 2009; Richard Bartholomew, ‘Tim Ireland Threatened with Violence’, Notes on Religion, 30 September 2009
[53] Richard Bartholomew, ‘Tim Ireland Threatened with Violence’, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, 30 September 2009
[54] Dominic Whiteman, ‘A Message to the Cheerleaders’, Westminster Journal, 30 September 2009
[55] Tim Ireland, ‘Patrick Mercer has some explaining to do’, Bloggerheads, 23 September 2009
[56] Julia Hartley-Brewer, ‘ALERT FOR WOMEN BOMBERS WHO FAKE PREGNANCY’, Sunday Express, 28 August 2005
[57] Ibid.
[58] Tim Shipman, ‘Scum! Iraq bombers use Down’s Syndrome victim’, Sunday Express, 6 February 2005
[59] ‘An “anthem” for Israel from the makers of “Band Aid”‘, Jerusalem Post, 5 April 2008
[60] Candice Krieger, ‘Chief joins Trevor Horn for a kosher Live Aid’, Jewish Chronicle, 18 April 2008
[61] see contact details in Rightweb, ‘Réalité EU’, 31 October 2007
[62] Neocon Europe, Open Europe
[63] Rightweb, ‘Réalité EU’, 31 October 2007
[64] Spinprofiles, International Institute for Strategic Studies
[65] Open Europe, Events, accessed 11 September 2009
[66] Open Europe, Events, accessed 11 September 2009
[67] ‘Iran Drawing Up Plans to Strike European Nuclear Sites, Analyst Says’, Associated Press, 22 May 2007
[68] Réalité-EU, Insights: Can U.S. Intelligence be Trusted on Iran?, 24 September 2007
[69] ‘Iran – The War Dance’, Medialens, 1 October 2009
[70] Matthias Küntzel, ‘Iran Has No Right to Nuclear Technology’, Wall Street Journal, 29 September 2009