Henry Jackson Society Funded by the Islamophobia Industry Must be Stripped of its Charitable Status

The notoriously anti-Muslim, pro-Zionist Henry Jackson Society headed by the virulently bigoted Douglas Murray has hit a spot of bother. The Guardian reports that campaign organisation Spinwatch lodged a complaint about the organisation’s compliance with all-party parliamentary regulations which requires transparency with regards to donors. As it refused to provide the details the agreement for HJS to represent two all-party parliamentary groups, homeland and international security (and you wonder why government officials only ever talk about “Islamist-extremism”), has been terminated.

Why would HJS hide their donors? After all, they are working on policies which are affecting the British public. Of course, they don’t want the public to have too much knowledge of who is really pulling the strings on the discourse around Islam and Muslims because it would reveal their links to overt politics of hate. There are a couple of points I would like to add however, in addition to the revealing Guardian report.

Nina Rosenwald and the Anti-Muslim Industry

The report makes an interesting link between HJS and Nina Rosenwald,

“Another donor is Nina Rosenwald, whose Abstraction Fund donated $10,000 to HJS via a US fundraising arm, the American Friends of the Henry Jackson Society. Rosenwald also finances the US-based rightwing Gatestone Institute which publishes Douglas Murray’s writing alongside Geert Wilders, the founder and leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom who has declared he “hates Islam”.”

It rightly highlights the fact that the Gatestone Institute publishes Geert Wilders’ hate. The organisation also published Robert Spencer’s writings. Reverend Deacon Robert Spencer is a Catholic hate-preacher who has inspired far-right terrorists like Anders Breivik. Douglas Murray, the associate director of HJS in turn has said that,

“In America I respect Robert Spencer, he is a brilliant scholar”

Rosenwald is one of the key figures in the multi-million dollar, neoconservative/Zionist, Islamophobia-whipping industry who has been able to fuse two objectives through her funding, promoting Zionist interests and spreading fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims. A 2011 report by Center for American Progress, Fear Inc, places her family foundation in the “top seven funders of Islamophobia” (p.14). The Council on American-Islamic Relations published another report two years later titled, Legislating Fear, also listed it as one of the groups in the Islamophobia Network’s “outer core” (p.5). Her friends-list reads like a who’s who of extremist neocon, Islamophobia-peddlers with people like the racist Daniel Pipes (who funds seven anti-Muslim groups – Legislating Fear, p.7), “World War IV” advocating Norman Podhoretz and Henry Kissinger. On the connection with Podhoretz, Blumenthal writes,

“Rosenwald counts among her closest friends Norman Podhoretz, the octogenarian neoconservative activist and former Commentary magazine editor who argues that Jewish Democrats are heretics betraying their religious duty to support the Jewish state. Rosenwald, according to one friend, is also close to Podhoretz’s daughter, Ruthie Blum, a right-wing columnist who lives in the illegal West Bank settlement of Har Adar and writes a column forIsrael Hayom, a newspaper published by far-right billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a chief financial supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benajamin Netanyahu. Father and daughter echo the line of Likudnik Greater Israel ideology…”

Rosenwald’s Gatestone Institute was born when she split Hudson New York City from Hudson’s national branch. One of the “experts” found on the Hudson Institute is, Richard Perle, a key architect of the 2003 Iraq war.

The Clarion Project is an anti-Muslim organisation which has been publishing Nazi-esque propaganda and which has been identified as part of the multi-million dollar American Islamophobic Network.  Perle has served as a representative for the Clarion Project and a contact point for interviews for various inflammatory, anti-Muslim videos produced by Clarion. The Clarion Project have also published articles supporting the idea of Islam being the “Trojan Horse” hell-bent on invasion:

“Islam is more than a religion… Since radical Muslims know they can never defeat our military on the battlefield, they devised the strategy of internal subversion… Like the ancient Trojan Horse welcomed within the city’s gates, Islam has entered America disguised as a religion… But its ultimate objective is political: Destroy America and establish an Islamic nation under Sharia Law.”

It has also promoted Quilliam Foundation’s Ghaffar Hussain and the Henry Jackson Society.

Perle penned the neoconservative roadmap, Clean Break: A new Strategy in Securing the Realm for Israeli Likud party prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This document, as well as influencing the removal of Saddam Hussein, outlined the way in which the areas of Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria could be “remade”.

Perle is listed on the HJS website as an international patron.

The HJS’s link with Netanyahu and his party does not end here. According to one source, British journalist and policy analyst Samer Libdeh, the HJS “acts in Britain on behalf of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party”. Of course, it could be the case that some of the donors which HJS do not want disclosed may be right-wing Zionists residing in the Occupied Territories.

Need for Action

I have previously gone into detail as to why I think the Henry Jackson Society needs to be stripped of its “charitable” status. There is nothing charitable about advocating war and promoting Zionist interests alongside anti-Muslim bigotry thinly disguised as “research”.

The least the Muslim minority and the broader British community can do is to use the below links and complain to the Charity Commission with an aim to instantiate a statutory investigation into the HJS to verify it’s compliance with its charitable objects. Given the links of members of HJS with extremist ideologues, perhaps the investigations can be launched under the “extremism” code seemingly introduced for Muslim charities. It shouldn’t be too hard given they are applying it to charities without their knowledge.

Not only will it push for increased transparency in government policy formation, but also test the impartiality of the Charity Commission head, the anti-Muslim, neocon and former member of the HJS, William Shawcross.

Raise your concerns about the links key members of HJS have to extremists and hate-mongers mentioned above to the Charity Commission Complaints Form: Raising concerns about a charity.

Articles which can be additionally cited are as follows:

The Guardian article: “Rightwing think-tank pulls funds for Commons groups after disclosure row”

The original complaint by Hilary Aked and other MPs and responses can be found here.

Analysis of the Henry Jackson Society as a charity (including a brief legal analysis): The Henry Jackson Society – “Political Propaganda Masquerading as Education”