NYPD’s Anti-Muslim training Film financed by Israeli non-profit

INN World Report/NYTimes
Michael Powell

Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. ... This is the war you don’t know about.” 

This is the feature-length film titled “The Third Jihad,” paid for by a nonprofit group, which was shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.

In January 2011, when news broke that the department had used the film in training, a top police official denied it, then said it had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times” for a few officers.

A year later, police documents obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Law reveal a different reality: “The Third Jihad,” which includes an interview with Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, was shown, according to internal police reports, “on a continuous loop” for between three months and one year of training. 

During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film. 

News that police trainers showed this film so extensively comes as the department wrestles with its relationship with the city’s large Muslim community. The Police Department offers no apology for aggressively spying on Muslim groups and says it has ferreted out terror plots.

But members of the City Council, civil rights advocates and Muslim leaders say the department, in its zeal, has trampled on civil rights, blurred lines between foreign and domestic spying and sown fear among Muslims. 

“The department’s response was to deny it and to fight our request for information,” said Faiza Patel, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which obtained the release of the documents through a Freedom of Information request. “The police have shown an explosive documentary to its officers and simply stonewalled us.” 

Tom Robbins, a former columnist with The Village Voice, first revealed that the police had screened the film. The Brennan Center then filed its request. 

The 72-minute film was financed by the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit group whose board includes a former Central Intelligence Agency official and a deputy defense secretary for President Ronald Reagan. Its previous documentary attacking Muslims’ “war on the West” attracted support from the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, a major supporter of Israel who has helped reshape the Republican presidential primary by pouring millions of dollars into a so-called super PAC that backs Newt Gingrich. 

Commissioner Kelly is listed on the “Third Jihad” Web site as a “featured interviewee.” Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that filmmakers had lifted the clip from an old interview. The commissioner, Mr. Browne said, has not asked the filmmakers to remove him from its Web site, or to clarify that he had not cooperated with them. 

None of the documents turned over to the Brennan Center make clear which police officials approved the showing of this film during training. Department lawyers blacked out large swaths of these internal memorandums. 

Movie to marshal support for college Israel advocacy

Editor's Note:  No.  This is not "The Onion".  Could this be one of the gems we get from throwing 100 billion dollars towards Israel?  Throw some scratch my way and I'll dress up like Adam Pearlman and say some scary things for Rachel Maddow or Bill O'Reilly to use later.

Jewish Standard
Josh Isackson

“We are in need at Rutgers,” said Raffi Mark, a student and Israel advocate on the New Brunswick campus.

“Crossing the Line: The Intifada Comes to Campus,” a documentary detailing students’ struggles against anti-Semitism, will be screened at the Jewish Community Center of Paramus on Tuesday, Aug. 9. The 39-minute film was produced by Raphael Shore and directed by Wayne Kopping.

The congregation obtained the film with the help of Hasbara Fellowships, an organization that “trains students across the United States in Israel Advocacy,” according to Atara Jacobs, community and public relations coordinator for the organization.

A discussion moderated by Mark, of Wayne, and another Rutgers student, Sam Weiner of Paramus, will be held after the screening.

“When you send kids to college they should know what’s going on, and they should be able to talk about it in an intelligent way,” said Gershon Rosenzweig, chair of the Israel Awareness committee of JCC of Paramus and its past president.

According to the film’s website, campusintifada.com, the documentary “offers a glimpse into the experiences of Jewish college students who are actively involved in the daily struggle of supporting the State of Israel and fighting against biased misinformation both in and out of the classroom.”

The JCCP’s Israel Awareness committee, founded in November, sponsors film screenings, visits of Israeli students to the shul, and discussions, among other cultural events.

Tuesday’s film focuses on the reactions of U.S. college students after Israel’s military movements against Gaza in 2008 and 2009, according to campusintifada.com. It explores Muslim organizations that have ties to American universities. It also highlights pro-Israel student activists and their campus campaigns.

Both Rutgers students plan to draw from their experiences as Israel advocates on campus when they lead the discussion.

Twenty-one-year-old Weiner, a senior, is “heavily involved with the Israel advocacy movement at Rutgers,” he said, and will be vice president of Rutgers Hillel this year. He also participated in Write on for Israel, an advocacy journalism program.

“The war to delegitimize Israel has found a home at Rutgers, and we don’t want this to last for long,” said Weiner. “We’ve had an incredibly successful year at Rutgers dealing with what went on there,” he said.

He refers to such programs as the touring Never Again for Anyone event, sponsored by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and American Muslims for Palestine. The Jan. 29 event at Rutgers, according to Weiner, “linked the actions of the Nazis in Europe to actions taken by Israel in 1948.”

The event featured two Holocaust survivors and two Palestinians. Israel supporters on campus reached out to the greater Jewish community in the area and 300 people turned out to protest it.

The event “crossed over the line into anti-Semitism,” said Mark, 20 years old and a junior at Rutgers. Mark was on the Rutgers Hillel student planning committee for Israel and this year will be the Israel chair of the Rutgers Hillel student board.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, the event was “the latest effort by anti-Israel activists to exploit the sacred memory of the Holocaust for the purpose of painting its victim, the Jewish people, as the ‘new’ oppressor in the form of Israel.”

“The line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is being blurred,” says Hasbara Fellowship’s Jacobs.

The Hasbara program was founded in 2001 conjunction with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Its mission, according to its website, hasbarafellowships.org, is “simple: educate, train, and motivate university students to be passionate, dedicated, and effective pro-Israel advocates on their campuses.”
The program also brings students to Israel. According to its website, Hasbara Fellowships has hosted more than 1,800 students from more than 250 college campuses.