Let's Get Closer To The Arabic Mentality: CAIR Attack On Dr. Daniel Pipes Ludicrous, Given Its Own Refusal To Condemn Hamas

October 27, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - In a major public relation's move, part of its campaign of slander, branding critics of radical Islam as "Islamophobes," and designed to provide counterpoint to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a weeklong national college movement to crystallize opinion on Islamic terrorism, the faux civil rights, Hamas mouthpiece CAIR, mounted an attack on Middle East Forum Director, Dr. Daniel Pipes, an advisor to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign.

The move came in the form of a press release in which CAIR alleges that Pipes supports the Iranian dissident group, MEK, the Mujahedeen E-Khalq.

In order to substantiate such a charge, CAIR deceptively paraphrases content from a Pipes' op-ed which was published by the New York Post op-ed on May 20, 2003, and entitled "Mujahedeen-e Khalq: A Terrorist U.S. Ally?"

CAIR claims:

"A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to drop a campaign advisor who offers rhetorical support to a group designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. government. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Daniel Pipes, who recently signed on to Giuliani's campaign as a foreign policy advisor, is a vocal supporter of the terror group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK)"

What Pipes actually said, in context however is far from a blanket endorsement of the group. His piece takes the form of an intellectual discussion probing the group's nature and possible use as a lever against the Iranian mullocracy. The article also casts the U.S. Department of State in a less-than-appealing light, demonstrating its continuing obtuseness in dealing with the Middle East.

What Dr. Pipes actually said is:

The MEK is not your typical anti-Western group, but an organization with a strong political presence in Western capitals and over 3,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq, singularly dedicated to one goal: overthrowing its "archenemy," the Islamic Republic of Iran. Is the MEK a terrorist group?
No. It used terrorism decades ago, when its members attacked Americans. For the last 15 years, however, the MEK has been organized as an army, and its only violent actions have been directed against the Iranian regime. Unlike Hezbollah (which targets Jewish community centers and shoots rockets into civilian areas), the MEK attacks specific regime targets. Unlike the PLO (whose leaders were terrorists more recently and arguably still are), the MEK really has foresworn this barbaric tactic.
...Policy toward the MEK has long been quietly but intensely and bitterly debated in Washington. To curry favor with Iranian "moderates," the State Department in 1997 designated the group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Although 150 members of Congress publicly opposed this designation, a U.S. court of appeals recently upheld it.
This stark difference of views helps explain Washington's erratic policies of late. On April 15, the U.S. Army signed a cease-fire permitting the MEK to keep its weapons and use them against Iranian regime infiltrators into Iraq. This deal infuriated the State Department, which then convinced the president to undo it, leading to the strange sight of U.S. troops surrounding MEK camps on May 9, disarming its fighters and taking up positions to protect them.
That's a bad idea. Coalition forces are urgently needed to restore order elsewhere in Iraq. And State is dreaming if it thinks the sight of U.S. troops guarding the MEK will mollify Iran's mullahs" [source, http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1100.

In mounting an attack against Pipes, CAIR has three main goals:

1. Since he is such an effective communicator regarding the civilizational threat represented by radical Islam, they seek to demean him and limit his influence via a constant stream of lies, which then are picked up and reverberate within the Islamist/lefty blogosphere. Additionally, since Giuliani has long been keenly aware of the radical Muslim threat, having rejected Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal's blood money attempted donation to New York post 9/11, the effort to damage Pipes was probably also intended to tar New York's former Mayor with the same brush.
2. CAIR is desperate in seeking to deflect the intense bad publicity that has come from it having been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror prosecution and having the founder of its Texas chapter, Ghassan Elashi, already found guilty in the related Infocom terror case.
3. CAIR is trying to create a facade, that it stands against Islamic terror, when its entire history, including its relationship with the American Hamas PR organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine as well as its irrefutable ties to the Holy Land Foundation - having accepted a $5,000 donation from it in 1994 as seed money to found its DC office [see photocopy of wire transfer, image below] - suggests otherwise.

Given the group's attempt to link Pipes with support of the MEK [something which clearly is not indicated by his public statements which simply set forth how the MEK might be employed, specifically as intelligence assets, feet on the ground as to better understand what is going on in Iran, about which Pipes observes, "Western spy agencies are short on "human intelligence" - meaning spies on the ground in Iran...MEK can also supply key information on developments in Iran - where, despite a tendency toward exaggeration, it has had some major scoops. Its information in mid-2002 about Iran's nuclear program, for example, was better than what the International Atomic Energy Agency knew?"] we wondered if this somehow signaled an historic change of mind, a rejection of CAIR's previous policy of refusing to condemn Hamas, specifically and by name as a terrorist organization.

Towards that end on Thursday, October 25, 2007, we attempted to contact several CAIR offices by telephone.

We were unsuccessful in directly reaching any of CAIR's DC office spokespeople, including Ibrahim Hooper and Amina Rubin, and did not leave a message, since numerous previous messages have never been returned. When contacted, the Sacramento, California CAIR office suggested that we call the Sunnyvale/Santa Clara branch, which we did.

When that office's spokesman was placed on the line, we asked him if CAIR was now willing to "condemn Hamas, specifically and by name as a terrorist organization" he repeatedly refused, though we gave him numerous opportunities to answer in the affirmative. All that he would say is that CAIR condemns "all terrorism," a familiar and specious ploy, since the group has traditionally alleged that Israel's campaign to suppress the Intifada, is terrorism:

"Israel is killing civilians and inflicting massive humanitarian suffering on both the Palestinian and Lebanese populations in order to achieve a political goal, which clearly fits the definition of state terrorism," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.
Awad said that more Americans are realizing that Israel is a strategic liability, not an asset to the United States, as outlined in a recent Harvard University report." [source, http://www.cairchicago.org/actionalerts.php?file=aa_israeli_attacks07132006]

It seems clear that CAIR's game plan vis-a-vis its groundless attack on Dr. Pipes is cut from the same cloth as is its attack on Robert Spencer, a noted authority on radical Islam and a key speaker during Islamo Fascism Awareness Week.

CAIR's vicious campaign of character assassination against Pipes, alleging he supports terror, inelegantly attempting to link him to the MEK while the organization itself repeatedly and steadfastly refuses to condemn Hamas, is just another demonstration of the danger the group poses via its bully-boy policy of intimidation. Rather than serving - as CAIR's leaders mistakenly believe - to blunt the increasing criticism the group is receiving, such Gestapo-like tactics abundantly demonstrate the group's Islamo Fascistic agenda, even to the degree of employing Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels' technique of the "big-lie."

The group's MO in this and related matters is morally reprehensible and has no place in reasonable public debate...but since when has CAIR been interested in anything aside from being in the vanguard of radical Islam's stealth jihad in America?

http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=cairpipes10.26.07.htm