Right Web

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The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is a neoconservative pressure group that was launched in July 2010 to promote militarist, “pro-Israel” U.S. policies. A favored ECI tactic is publishing advertisements that attack politicians who question one-sided U.S. support for Israel. It also publishes open letters to political figures and hosts a website that provides information about political races and pushes aggressive U.S. military policies in the Midde East.

The group, whose campaign to push the United States into war with Iran was highlighted in a March 2012 New York Times article, claims on its website to be "committed to mounting an active defense of the U.S.-Israel relationship by educating the public about the positions of political candidates on this important issue, and by keeping the public informed of the latest developments in both countries.”[1]

ECI’s agenda and modus operandi were on clear public display during the lead-up to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in March 2012. On March 1, ECI ran a full-page ad in the New York Times accusing two liberal organizations—namely, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters—of being “anti-Israel,” highlighting the various Jewish foundations supporting the work of these groups. The ad urged Times readers to “call these foundations and ask them: Why are you funding bigotry and anti-Israel extremism?”[2]

The ad, however, appeared to backfire when many of the people and organizations cited in the ad as critics of the liberal groups protested ECI’s decision to quote them out of context and without permission. Writing in the Forward, “pro-Israel” Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz said the ad “misrepresents the truth,” while Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman told the New Yorker that it was “misleading, distorted, inaccurate.”[3] Additionally, according to Forward, “most of the five Jewish organizations that were named in the ad told the Forward they had hardly been affected, despite ECI publishing their telephone numbers.”[4]

The NYT ad seems to have been part of what the New Yorker termed a “two-pronged maneuver … to intimidate critics of Netanyahu” and “to damage Obama.”[5] The second prong in this effort was the launch of a 30-minute video titled “Daylight: The Story of Obama and Israel,” which attacked President Obama’s treatment of Israel. According to the New Yorker, the video—which showed the president interacting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as well as with Turkish students, saying he wants “to make sure that we end before the call to prayer”—aimed to demonstrate that Obama “is biased against Israel and in favor of the Palestinians” and to insinuate that he may be Muslim.[6]

At roughly the same time as the video release, ECI ads began appearing at bus stops in Washington, D.C., displaying a picture of Obama with the text: “He says a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. Do you believe him? Do they?” Underneath the text were pictures of Ayatollah Khamanei and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[7]

Commenting on the ECI pressure campaign, the New Yorker opined: “The apparent ratcheting tactic failed, judging by President Obama’s speech on Sunday to AIPAC. He described the lengths to which he has gone to satisfy Israel’s needs and requests, as evidence of his unequivocal support, and also said that he would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. But he insisted that he believes ‘an opportunity still remains for diplomacy,’ and made plain that he wouldn’t be pressured into military action at this time, saying that ‘as part of my solemn obligation to the American people, I will only use force when the time and circumstances demand it.’”[8]

According to a March 2012 NYT report about efforts by hawks to push for military action against Iran, "pro-Israel groups on all sides have mobilized to make their views known to the Obama administration and to Congress. But it is the most hawkish voices, like the Emergency Committee’s, that have dominated the debate, and, in the view of some critics, pushed the United States closer to taking military action against Iran and another war in the Middle East."

ECI’s first act after its launch in 2010 was to run a controversial attack ad in July 2010 targeting U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), which insinuated that he supported terrorists.[9] The group followed up this action by sending a public letter in December 2010 to Sens. Charles Schumer and Carl Levin excoriating the two Democratic senators for writing a letter to AIPAC urging the lobby to support the New START agreement between the United States and Russia. ECI claimed that that letter was “a disgrace” that allegedly implied a threat to AIPAC. “We’ve rarely seen Senators stoop to this kind of public bullying. AIPAC ’cannot afford to stand on the sidelines?' What threat do you mean to convey by this statement?” It added, “Is it your position that if the Senate does not ratify START in the lame duck session, Russia will be justified in violating UN sanctions against Iran, or in selling Iran air defense missiles? If not, why do you appear to give the Russian government such a justification? Is that the action of true friends of Israel, or true opponents of a nuclear Iran?”[10]

Unlike earlier neoconservative-led endeavors that reached out to hawkish elements in the Democratic Party—like the Project for the New American Century—ECI is a decidedly right-wing affair. ECI board members include William Kristol, editor and founder of the Weekly Standard and cofounder of the Foreign Policy Initiative; Rachel Abrams, wife of notorious Iran-Contra veteran Elliott Abrams; and Gary Bauer, a well-know Christian Zionist who leads the lobby groups American Values and Keep Israel Safe and serves on the executive board of John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel.

ECI’s initial director was Noah Pollak, a neoconservative pundit who has worked for Commentary, the Middle East Forum, and the Sheldon Adelson-supported Shalem Center in Jerusalem.[11] According to one observer, Pollak frequently uses Twitter to make arguments that seem taken from the talking points of the Israeli Defense Forces.[12]

Additional ECI principals have included Michael Goldfarb, a former writer for the Weekly Standard who is vice president of Randy Scheunemann’s Orion Strategies—which apparently initially housed ECI[13]— who serves as an advisor[14]; and Margaret Hoover, a long-standing Republican Party figure who served under Karl Rove in the George W. Bush administration and initially owned the domain name used by ECI’s website. Hoover is the great granddaughter of Herbert Hoover and a right-wing pundit and blogger.[15]

Although ECI’s shared address with Orion Strategies has been confirmed,[16] it is unclear whether the firm, which was recently hired to represent Sarah Palin, is also advising ECI. In an email exchange with Salon’s Justin Elliott, Goldfarb wrote: “I'm on the record as an adviser to ECI and its no secret that I work at Orion, where the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq sign is still proudly displayed on the front of the building. ECI will be opening an office next week, but given the urgency of our cause, getting an office sorted out seemed less pressing than exposing Joe Sestak's anti-Israel record.”[17]

Though the formal connection between these groups is tenuous, it has nonetheless raised concern in the blogosphere. Inter Press Service’s Jim Lobe writes: “So, apart from Goldfarb’s advisory status and a temporary letterhead, there may yet may be no formal connection between ECI and the firm that advises Sarah Palin on ’national and international’ issues — the same firm that acted as one of many of Ahmed Chalabi’s ’useful idiots,’ including Bill Kristol, Elliott Abrams, and Gary Bauer. As Matt Duss at Think Progress suggested this week, with advocates like these, the emergency in Israel that the Emergency Committee was apparently created to address can only become more dire.”[18]

The group first debuted in early July 2010 on CNN, when Campbell Brown (wife of neocon operative Dan Senor of the Foreign Policy Initiative) interviewed Pollak. Asked whether Israel and the United States were on the “same page,” Pollak thought not but added that “there is a developing consensus that something needs to be done and that it would be very, very bad if the Iranians went nuclear.”[19]

In a subsequent interview with the Jerusalem Post, Pollak justified the group’s creation, saying, “We will not rest until there is a pro-Israel group representing every pro-Israel person on earth.”[20]

Asked how ECI differed from other “pro-Israel” groups, Pollak said: “Well, for starters, ECI is pro-Israel. Our purpose is to address three major threats to the U.S.-Israel alliance in the context of the American political debate: the Iranian nuclear program and Iran's sponsorship of terrorist groups; the campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel; and the hostility of the Obama administration to the traditional closeness of the two nations. At bottom, we believe that the turn against Israel is a rejection of America's special role in the world as a defender of liberal democracies. We will do great damage to our own national soul if we allow ourselves to become cynical participants in the international lynching of the Jewish state.”[21]

William Kristol provided a similarly banal reason for the group’s raison d’etre in comments to Politico, saying, “We’re the pro-Israel wing of the pro-Israel community.”[22]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.