Photo Credit: Courtesy Aaron Klein
Aaron Klein

J Street ‘Proud’ Of Its Role In Pushing Iran Deal

The pro-Palestinian lobby group J Street stated that it was “proud” of its role in pushing the controversial Iran nuclear agreement amid reports that it received $576,500 to promote the deal from a group tied to White House efforts to sell the agreement to the public.

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J Street’s financing to push for the deal came from the Ploughshares Fund, a group that advocates a nuclear-free world and was identified earlier this month by the White House as central in helping to market the Iran nuclear deal to the news media.

On Friday, the Associated Press reported that Ploughshares has also funded National Public Radio since 2005, and has provided financing to U.S.-based foreign policy think tanks.

Unmentioned by the AP is that the Ploughshares Fund is financed by billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Soros is also a top donor to J Street.

The involvement of Ploughshares in selling the Iran agreement to the public was revealed in an extensive New York Times Magazine profile of Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes titled, “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru.”

Robert Malley, senior director at the National Security Council, explained the genesis and execution of the marketing plan to sell the Iran deal. Malley said “experts” were utilized to create an “echo chamber” that disseminated administration claims about Iran to “hundreds of often-clueless reporters” in the news media.

Rhodes told writer David Samuels that the marketing strategy took advantage of the “absence of rational discourse” and utilized outside groups, including Ploughshares.

A previous investigation by this reporter showed Ploughshares has partnered with a who’s who of the radical left, including Code Pink, the pro-Palestinian J Street, United for Peace & Justice, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and Demo, a progressive economic advisory group where President Obama’s controversial former green jobs czar, Van Jones, served on the board.

The group says its mission is to support the “smartest minds and most effective organizations to reduce nuclear stockpiles, prevent new nuclear states, and increase global security.”

Ploughshares is in turn financed by Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Buffett Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Another Ploughshares donor is the Tides Foundation, which is one of the largest funders of the radical left. Tides is funded by Soros.

Ploughshares has donated to the Institute for Policy Studies, which calls for massive slashes in the U.S. defense budget. It has also financed the International Crisis Group, a small organization that boasts Soros on its board.

 

EgyptAir Airbus A320’s Prior Stops

The missing the EgyptAir Airbus A320 that disappeared from radar after leaving Greek airspace had made prior stops in the hotspots of Tunisia and Eritrea. Both countries have documented airport security issues.

In an advisory last May, the State Department warned security at the Asmara International Airport in Eritrea can be “unpredictable” and that “airport security lacks technology to detect fraudulent documents.”

Last November, after the midair destruction of a Russian Metrojet over Egypt, the Daily Mail reported British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond expressed concern about security at airports in the Middle East and North Africa.

Among them are the airports in the North African cities of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. “All these countries contain an ISIS presence, though Tunisia – the site of two massacres this year in which 31 Britons were killed – remains the most risky.

“Tunisian authorities have warned further attacks in tourist resorts are highly likely – and by unknown individuals ‘inspired by terrorist groups via social media.’”

Tunisia is a known Islamic State stronghold.  Last November, IS militants took responsibility for the suicide bombing of a presidential guard bus, killing at least 12 troops.  As Reuters reported, more than 3,000 Tunisians are said to be fighting for the Islamic State or other jihadist groups in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

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Aaron Klein is the Jerusalem bureau chief for Breitbart News. Visit the website daily at www.breitbart.com/jerusalem. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 970 AM Radio on Sundays from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern. His website is KleinOnline.com.