Israel Matzav

Council for the whose? national interest

Boker Tov Boulder reports on an organization calling itself the "Council for the National Interest," which placed a full page ad in the New York Times on Christmas Eve that asked "Is Bethlehem dying?"

A backgrounder at the ADL tells us that

The Council for the National Interest (CNI) is an anti-Israel organization which is opposed to U.S. aid to Israel and disseminates demonizing propaganda about Israel to academics, politicians, and other audiences.

In a December 2006 solicitation letter, CNI stated that "despite Congress's repeated attempts to characterize Hamas as an anti-Christian terrorist organization, the fact is that Hamas has just announced that they will give [money] for Bethlehem's Christmas celebration." It followed similar statements in support of the Palestinian terror organization and several meetings in the Middle East earlier in 2006 between CNI representatives and key leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, including Khaled Mishal and Hassan Nasrallah, as well as Syrian president Bashar Assad.

CNI has run inflammatory anti-Israel ads in major national newspapers since 2002. In an ad that it published in the New York Times on November 5, 2006, it blamed Israel for the war in Iraq and accused the "Israel Lobby" of trying to of push the U.S. into a new military confrontation with Iran. The ad included a cartoon in which the "Israel Lobby" is depicted as a crooked used cars salesman and the U.S. as its gullible customer....

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:34 AM