D.C. magazine hawks 'Intifada Boy' pins

While an influential Washington foreign-policy magazine claims to provide "balanced" coverage of the Mideast, its parent company sells Palestinian "solidarity items" celebrating the "Intifada," the bloody anti-Israel uprising led by Hamas terrorists.

The items, which include key chains, pins and T-shirts, also depict the state of Israel wiped off the map.

The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs – a slick, 100-page monthly magazine – is published by the American Educational Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit group, "to disseminate information and promote understanding of Middle Eastern people and cultures," according to AET's tax filings.

Critics say the periodical is a shill for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and the radical Muslim Brotherhood, whose stated goals are to destroy Israel and America.

They say WRMEA routinely runs stories sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, while championing Muslim Brotherhood front groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is linked to its website.

Its current issue, for example, includes features titled "Death of a Myth: Israel's Support of a Two-State Solution" and "Israel's New Right-Wing Government." It also includes an article slamming FBI "agent provocateurs" and the bureau's use of undercover informants in U.S. mosques to identify terrorists – something CAIR has made an issue of recently.

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WRMEA's bias runs much deeper, however. A WND investigation into the financial operations of its publisher AET – which receives U.S. government grant money – reveals a seething anti-Israeli and anti-American bias.

To help "support Palestinians" and the magazine, which has a print run of 25,000 copies each month, AET hawks "solidarity items" through a subsidiary called the Palestinian Arts & Crafts Trust.

PACT's products include:

• Key chains in the shape of Israel inscribed with the word PALESTINE.
  
  
• T-shirts emblazoned with "Divest from Israel."
  
  
• Pins glorifying Palestinian terrorists brandishing AK-47s.
  
  
• Pins celebrating Intifada terrorists – including an "Intifada Boy."
  
  
• Buttons with the slogan, "END THE OCCUPATION: INTIFADA."
  
  
• Pins comparing Israeli "occupation" to South African apartheid.
  
  
• Pins equating "Zionism" and "Racism."

It could not be immediately determined how much of the proceeds from the sale of the "solidarity" items go to support Palestinians and the magazine.

AET collects nearly $1 million in annual revenues, with direct public support from unidentified private contributors accounting for roughly half of the total, according to its IRS filings, which are redacted to shield donors.

In 2006, AET received a $43,000 federal grant from the USDA.

WRMEA has a large readership in the Middle East, and many of its stories are republished in the Arab press. They're also republished in Muslim Brotherhood organs in the U.S. such as "Islamic Horizons."

Domestically, WRMEA maintains an influential circle of readers in Washington, including some 130 journalists, policymakers and lobbyists who have signed up for its e-mail and fax alerts. "Bring along a copy of the Washington Report when you lobby," WRMEA's website recommends.

The magazine was founded by Richard H. Curtiss, an Islamic apologist and ex-diplomat who co-founded the American-Arab Affairs Council, which is now the Middle East Policy Council – an influential Washington mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia heavily funded by the Saudi government.

Curtiss is listed as secretary of AET in its tax filings. He has written glowingly of CAIR, including bylining a long profile of its founder Omar Ahmad, now an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing case in U.S. history.

His daughter, Delinda Curtiss Hanley, is executive director of AET and news editor of WRMEA. She previously worked as a consultant for the government of Oman and as a teacher for several years in Saudi Arabia.

WRMEA has a bimonthly sister publication, The Link, which is equally anti-Israel. CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad has contributed articles to The Link. It is published by the Americans for Middle East Understanding, another nonprofit organization that shares staff with AET.

One of its national advisers is former congressman Paul Findley, a notorious Saudi apologist and Israel critic. Findley co-founded the Council for the National Interest with Richard Curtiss to fight "the Zionist lobby," and he also serves on AET's Foreign Policy Committee.

AET sells Findley's book, "Silent No More: Confronting America's False Images of Islam," on its website. In the book, Findley lionizes several American Muslim leaders recently convicted of terrorism, including Abdurahman Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian.

WRMEA has championed al-Arian as a martyr and victim of overzealous prosecutors, even though he confessed to providing material support to Palestinian terrorists.

WND has learned that the magazine employed al-Arian's daughter, Laila al-Arian, as a staff member.

Findley also has traveled with CAIR executives to the Middle East on fundraising trips. He has helped them solicit money from the Saudi and UAE governments for a $50 million endowment to fund a new CAIR building and propaganda campaign. U.S. prosecutors have identified CAIR as a collaborator in a criminal conspiracy to bankroll Hamas terrorists.

AET's website says it provides "the American public with balanced and accurate information concerning U.S. relations with Middle Eastern states."

But its publications portray Israel as a brutal occupier and Hamas as a heroic liberator fighting for the freedom of an oppressed people – even though Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of Israel and death to Jews.

"Read the Hamas charter," Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently opined. "It is not some uplifting cry of a downtrodden people seeking its freedom, but a repellant anti-Semitic screed."

A tour of WRMEA's website confirms its militantly anti-Israeli agenda. It advocates U.S. divestment from Israel and the delisting of Hamas as a terrorist organization, along with the lifting of sanctions against the terror group.

In soliciting donations and subscriptions from the Muslim and Arab community, the magazine boasts that it can:

• "Identify and profile neocons in and out of the U.S. government."
  
  
• "Track cumulative U.S. aid to Israel."
  
  
• "End the Islamophobic undercurrent in the West."
  
  
• "Keep track of AIPAC," the pro-Israel lobby group.

"Please help this magazine survive to show the next administration what changes will bring real peace and justice to this world," the website says, while directing visitors to purchase either a subscription or "a solidarity item," referring to the Hamas Intifada curios and trinkets, or both.

The magazine even points out that it provided a professional camera to a pro-Hamas photographer "after his was stolen when he was beaten by (the Israeli army) on the first day of the al-Aqsa intifada."

AET in May launched a blatantly one-side ad campaign to influence U.S. policy talks concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The ads feature Hamas propaganda about Israeli attacks on "ambulances in the occupied territories" and Palestinian homes "demolished" by Israeli armed forces, forcing nearly 12,000 "innocent people" to go homeless. Palestinian acts of terrorism and terrorists are not mentioned in any of the ads.

WRMEA lists several Islamic "charitable organizations" on its website and provides links for making donations to them.

Some of the charities, such as LIFE for Relief and Development, have been raided by the FBI on suspicions of funneling money to Hamas and other terrorist groups. WRMEA also lists West Bank and Gaza Strip charities suspected by the Israeli government of fronting for Hamas.

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