In recent days, the liberal blogosphere has launched a concerted attack against Walid Phares, one of Mitt Romney’s senior Mideast advisers. The likes of Ali Gharib, McKay Coppins, and Adam Serwer think they smell blood because of Phares’s former association with the Lebanese Forces, the de facto army of the Lebanese Christians during the latter half of Lebanon’s civil war. “Top Romney Adviser Tied to Militia That Massacred,” intoned Mother Jones in its headline for Serwer’s piece. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has joined in, with a particularly pathetic letter to the Romney campaign requesting “that Phares be removed” from his advisory position.
The assault on Phares is interesting not just because of the basic ignorance behind its main contentions but also because of its true motives.
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A bit of background first. In the years after the 1967 war, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was expelled from the Jordanian West Bank and harried by Jordanian and Syrian forces all the way into Lebanon, where it eventually plunged the whole country into civil war. Phares was a teenager when the conflict erupted in 1975. In 1979, when he was 22 years old, Phares published the first of his many books, Pluralism in Lebanon, which called for Swiss-style federated autonomy for the country’s various ethnic and confessional communities. Of course, among liberals, an idea like that is a cause célèbre — when it is advanced by people they like — and a “hard-line extremist” product of “hateful ideology” when it comes from someone they disagree with.
By the early 1980s in Lebanon, Phares was already a well-known writer and was routinely invited to give talks and lectures to all kinds of organizations, including the Lebanese Forces, an umbrella organization in which virtually every Lebanese Christian group was represented. Phares had no official position with the Lebanese Forces until 1986, when he joined its 22-member Political Council as representative for the small left-of-center party he and his brother had previously launched. During his short tenure on the Council, he variously handled foreign affairs and diaspora issues. This, however, was enough for the Mother Jones “investigation” to uncover that Phares was a “key player” in a “sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon’s brutal, 15-year civil war.”
The connection to one of the most infamous massacres of the conflict gives the Mother Jones story its hook. On their way to Beirut during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Israelis surrounded two Palestinian refugee camps, at Sabra and Shatila, where PLO terrorists were ensconced. In August of that year, the hugely popular Christian leader Bashir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon — and assassinated three weeks later. Enraged, Phalangist elements of the Lebanese Forces, under intelligence chief Eli Hobeika (later revealed to be in league with the Syrians), asked Israeli permission to enter the camps and hunt down the perpetrators. In the ensuing days, hundreds and possibly thousands of Palestinian refugees were murdered. It was generally understood that the perpetrators were connected to the Lebanese Forces, if only because if you were Christian and you were armed then you were almost certainly with the Lebanese Forces.
The question is whether the war crime of a small rogue group operating clearly outside normal chains of command can be attributed to the organization as a whole. Here the answer is demonstrably “no.” The Lebanese Forces had become the de facto army and political organization of the entire Christian community in Lebanon. It is one thing to link a specific person to a specific massacre, but to discredit someone linked to the Lebanese Forces because of its links to the Sabra and Shatila massacre is to discredit virtually all Christian Lebanese who were prominent during the conflict, even those who rose to the fore years after the massacres. The real target of such an attack is the Christian Lebanese community itself. And let’s note the Left’s rank double standard when it comes to this sort of thing. The Left habitually insists that the United States and Israel recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinians’ elected “representatives,” even if it means legitimizing people who have actually murdered innocent civilians. Mother Jonesdoesn’t even insinuate that Phares was connected to the massacres, or even that he ever picked up a gun. And Phares’s membership on the Political Council of the Lebanese Forces occurred years after the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
The Mother Jones piece posits several other reasons why Phares should be discredited: that he espoused a “hateful” Christian separatist ideology, that he would be representing the interests of foreigners instead of those of the United States, and that his message is anti-Muslim. The first of these is clearly false — Phares is a federalist — but even if it were true, there wouldn’t be anything hateful about it. All of Lebanon’s confessional communities zealously protect their autonomy and political rights — one of them, the Shia Hezbollah, even has its own army. And how are the separatist movements of East Timor and Palestine not equally “hateful?” The second of the contentions comes from Paul Pillar, 20-year veteran of the CIA: “It should raise eyebrows anytime someone in a position to exert behind-the-scenes influence on a U.S. leader has ties to a foreign entity that are strong enough for foreign interests, and not just U.S. interests, to determine the advice being given,” he told the magazine. The warning about representing foreign views is waved about in the Mother Jones article as a kind of dark insinuation without elaboration, and we are left to wonder just what Serwer thinks he’s talking about. But it’s irrelevant in any case. Phares has lived in the United States since 1990. Other than membership in organizations committed to resisting Syria’s and Hezbollah’s domination of Lebanon (fully in line with longstanding U.S. policy) Phares’s career remains what it has always been — that of a major writer and intellectual on Mideast affairs.
Add hezbollah, Hamas and all other terrorist organizations to CAIR and Mother Jones. They are attacking and campaigning against W. Fares as well.
Anyone has the right to campaign against Fares but not target him because he is against Islamic terrorism!!!
Ignoring terrorism threats just for some cheap elections gain is not how to serve America.
CAIR is an Islamist organization hiding in plain sight in America. They pose as Muslims who have assimilated into Western culture, but it is stealth jihad they are actually practicing. One of the clear evidences of this is how they ruthlessly attack and character assassinate every counter Islamist terrorism expert and voice AND courageous moderate Muslim voices. When will America wake up and see the truth of the matter? It ain't that hard.
They said what they were going to do - I heard and saw the transcripts from the FBI wiretaps of the 1993 Philly meetings from the Holy Land Foundation trial. This series of meetings was their Mein Kamph! External Link
Leave it to Mama Jones to reveal two facts that undermine its narrative:
1) Muslims in the Middle East have killed more Palestinians, in relatively short order, than Israel ever has in 60+ years of conflict;
2) Mr. Phares was on the RIGHT SIDE of a conflict for the freedom of his nation, a freedom still held prisoner to the mullahs in Iran and its puppeteer autocrats in Syria.
That Mother Jones cannot see the sadness of a nation's freedom beholden to an extremist ideology of world-wide caliphate reveals as well how utterly incapable they are of siding with freedom and liberty.
Not surprising, for them of for CAIR. But quite revealing. The political left piggy-backs on this at their own peril, as it will help to show they cannot understand the concept of ordered liberty, even if their lives depended on it, to which, from their cozy, peaceful western confines, there is no threat.
They -- Ms. Jones and her allies in CAIR -- should go live in occupied Lebanon, and see how they enjoy it.
Thank you for telling the readers the truth about Mr. Phares and the ME situation. These days, sources of factual information are hard to find. USA is full of Lebanese Christians who had to escape the oppression in their own country. As a matter of fact, Christians from various islamicized countries (many African nations, Bosnia, etc.) escaped to the West. We do not read this in the American media. Neither is the media reporting on CAIR funding the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, and contributing to its virulently anti-Semitic undertones.
When I manned the oven at a pizza shop one summer while in college, one of the delivery drivers had a huge Cross around his neck, and a very thick accent.
I asked where he was from. "Egypt!" He exclaimed proudly. Naive and confused, I asked, "Well, then what's with the Cross?" He explained that he was a Coptic Christian, and that there were many such believers in Egypt.
"Mostly in jail, I imagine."
That response triggered quite the emotional reaction in him, and me and my other fellow co-workers took great pains to explain to him that the gist of my comment was in solidarity with people jailed for exercising that which I take for granted every day of my life.
Off-the-cuff, apparently I had hit the nail on the head -- that's where most Coptics were, in fact.
While living in NYC some time after, I had several lengthy conversations with Coptics and with Christians of more traditional denominations from the Middle East who were cab drivers. Those are the only cab rides in my life that I wish never ended.
They always expressed that, too. "Too bad we can't keep talking."
"We can! Just shut off the meter!" Oh, well. All good things must end.
I pray, as some celebrate the Druid New Year today, that all exiles from the Middle East one day are able to return peaceably to their homelands, if they wish.
If they wish to stay here, I pray they find my country as hospitable as my relatives did back in the late 19th century.
Mario Loyola's article tells us that the Jihadi propaganda machine is very powerful in this country and its reach goes beyond CAIR, into online "militias" spread through operatives using the web sites of Mother Jones, The New Republic, Salon, the Daily Beast and others. This is penetration at its peak. That's the Muslim Brotherhood operating within the system. How revealing that they are targeting a scholar who pinned their strategies down in his last four books. This has nothing to do with Phares in the 1980s, whose work is all over the Lebanese and Middle Eastern press for the last three decades, nor is it about US Presidential campaigns. It is about Phares taking down their strategies in an academic manner, and the mere idea that he is advising important people, regardless of who it is. CAIR and its online militias attacked Phares last Spring when he was abotu to testify to the Homeland Security Committee in Congress. There was no Presidential campaigns yet. Hence, this is about his books not about his pre immigrant life.
Besides, how ignorant the CAIR mafia is when it comes to Lebanon's extremely complex history. Thery couldn't find one evidence of tghe statements they made because they fabricated the framing themsleves ans tried to find obscure persons to quote. The Jihad against Phares will crumble.
My comment(s) to follow don't necessarily apply to Mother Jones - just to CAIR and the like.
Dont think for a second that CAIR is unaware of it's inconsistencies and the downright inane nature of much of what it says. They are indeed aware of how insipid, factually vacant and dishonest they are. They just don't care. They know that there is a wide swath of the American electorate (including many in office) that will swallow willingly what they have to say. Accusing someone of being in a conspiracy while also being a lunatic conspiracy theorist? No problem, those useful idiots won't pick up on the disconnect. After all, what do liberals love more than a blathering blowhard?
As for MJ, they could very well be unaware of the fact that they are unaware.
I have difficulty taking this article seriously only from the stand point that he attacks logic used by Mother Jones, which is very prevalent on this site.
Many authors who write on NRO take a small section of a group and aggrandize that to the whole. Just see their articles on OWS and its "antisemitism"
Finally we are finding experts that understand the islamic mentality. Shame on CAIR for campaigning against Mr. Phares. Thank you NRO for exposing this. This why you have faithful readers.
So Mother Jones is just following the all too-common left-wing pattern of first defining their agenda and then making sure that the narrative fits, facts be damned. No news there, just the same old, same old.
Out of curiosity, what position does MJ take on Iran's calls for Jewish genocide, or on the current murderous attacks upon minority Christians and the burning of Christian churches in Egypt? Are the editors and writers equally outraged about that, or is there a limit to their views on religious tolerance and equality?
If they plan to continue to be a mouthpiece for CAIR and the other Islamists, perhaps Mother Hussein would be a better moniker.
"to discredit someone linked to the Lebanese Forces because of its links to the Sabra and Shatila massacre is to discredit virtually all Christian Lebanese who were prominent during the conflict, even those who rose to the fore years after the massacres. "
I'm guessing that CAIR doesn't see a problem with this. Nor Mother Jones.
Why does Mr. Loyola infect his rebuttal against specific persons and institutions such Mother Jones magazine, etc. with a bunch of garbage about "liberals" and the "Left"?
If an American believes that his state should have beefed-up regulations governing natural gas fracking, that his state should not criminalize first-trimester abortions or that the Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire, he therefore also is participating in a "jihad" against Mr. Phares or thinks that a proposal for "Swiss-style federated autonomy for [Lebanon's] country’s various ethnic and confessional communities" is "a 'hard-line extremist' product of 'hateful ideology' when it comes from someone [he] disagree[s] with"?
Really? Based on what - Mr. Loyola's belief that his sorority is the Bestest Sorority Ever?
Can't Mr. Loyola demonstrate the intellectual discipline required simply to make his argument without worrying about expanding it to drag in tens of millions of Americans who haven't stated (or may not even have) any of the opinions about Mr. Phares that have been set forth by those whose statements Mr. Loyola has chosen to rebut?
Perhaps he just needs to re-read and to think about this passage from his own column:
"The question is whether the war crime of a small rogue group operating clearly outside normal chains of command can be attributed to the organization as a whole. Here the answer is demonstrably 'no.' ... It is one thing to link a specific person to a specific massacre, but to discredit someone linked to the Lebanese Forces because of its links to the Sabra and Shatila massacre is to discredit virtually all Christian Lebanese who were prominent during the conflict, even those who rose to the fore years after the massacres."
There's a broader (and sound) intellectual and moral principle underlying that statement. Mr. Loyola ought to mull that over a bit.
While I can understand the pure rhetorical concerns with including the term, "left" here, it is, unfortunately, the case that much of the spurious invective towards Jews and Israel today passes by teeth whose owners are "left"(ists) or "liberal" waterboys (waterpersons?) for Salafist ideology.
Your concern with conflation is not adhered to when adding the ad hominem intended sentences about abortion, tax cuts, and fracking. More than a bit of inconsistency here.
The general Liberal's (or soft left) ability to be cowed into either submission or adherence to such vile (and incoherent) beliefs and acts by a "hard left" that it dare not offend is one reason why Loyola's prose does not sound even vaguely dissonant here.
If you are in fact genuinely (as opposed to the usual, dial-it-up, phone-it-in MoveOn / Alinskyite / OWS outrage) annoyed by the inclusion of those terms, I can understand your argument. If you can be an honest broker for enviro issues, higher taxes, and pro-choice sentiments, and still understand and support the argument presented here, then YOUR argument has a least some resonance. If not, then you are not any different from that which is argued here. At the same time, if you have the even the tiniest awareness of the underlying facts involved here, it should be equally understandable that the "useful idiots" and the professional grievance hustlers line up to one side of the line. And unfortunately, that side is the one you are forced to defend.
