Obsession<\/i>, the Islamophobic video that has been distributed via newspaper inserts to some 28 million households in key swing states this fall, is getting some overdue negative attention from the mainstream media at last. The Washington Post <\/em>carried an article about the video Sunday<\/a> that made it clear that the mass distribution was intended to influence the election in the Republicans\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 favor. And Monday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Atlantic <\/em>online blog post by Jeffrey Goldberg, entitled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Jewish Extremists Behind Obsession<\/i><\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was particularly notable. <\/p>\n He casts a remarkably negative light on Aish HaTorah, the Israeli organization whose U.S.-based officials, in Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153are up to their chins in this project.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (I think IPS was the first news source to point out the connection between Aish and Obsession<\/i> in an article published back in March, 2007<\/a>, although more has since come out, including a recent IPS update<\/a> in September which noted other Israeli connections to the video and its distribution.) <\/p>\n I especially appreciated Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s identification of the Jerusalem Post<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Caroline Glick<\/a> as one of his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153favorite hysterics\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I posted<\/a> on one of her fulminations last June \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and as those behind the project as representing the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lunatic fringe.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In addition to Glick, who also heads the Middle East program at Frank Gaffney\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Center for Security Policy<\/a>, Goldberg would presumably apply that description to Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson who played prominent roles in the video. It was Goldberg, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), who wrote that passionate indictment<\/a>, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAmerica Problem\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the Washington Post<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Outlook section last May of the major national Jewish organizations, particularly the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and AIPAC, for confusing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pro-Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with being pro-settler in their advocacy efforts. <\/p>\n Of course, the producer\/distributor of Obsession<\/i> was the still-mysterious Clarion Fund, which has just released a sequel, The Third Jihad<\/i> about which my colleague Eli Clifton posted earlier this month<\/a>. The new video, originally intended for distribution before next week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s election, according to the Post<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s article, suffered production delays (hence, the distribution of Obsession<\/i> instead). <\/p>\n While I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t yet seen it, I understand that it features commentary by Clifford May of the Likudnik Foundation for the Defense of Democracy<\/a> and, more prominently, Princeton historian and neo-con icon Bernard Lewis<\/a>, who, according to various accounts, helped persuade Dick Cheney, among others, that the Iraq invasion would be a very good thing for all concerned. It was also Lewis who on August 8, 2006, predicted on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal <\/em>that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would very possibly launch an attack on Israel exactly two weeks later, on August 22, to mark \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe farthest mosque,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back. This [date],\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he went on, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Goldberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hysterics\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the lunatic fringe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d come to mind.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, it was just six months later that, with Cheney in attendance, Lewis delivered the American Enterprise Institute\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (AEI) annual Irving Kristol Lecture \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in which he warned that militant Islam was launching its third attempt to conquer Europe and the West through \u00e2\u20ac\u0153terror and migration.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And it was presumably after that that he sat down for a long interview with the Islamophobic makers of Obsession<\/i> and The Third Jihad<\/i>.<\/p>\n