Gatestone Institute

The Gatestone Institute is a New York-based advocacy organization that is tied to neoconservative and other right-wing networks in the United States and Europe.[1] It was chaired by John Bolton until he became national security adviser for President Donald Trump in 2018. Gatestone is a clearinghouse for hawkish right-wing commentaries on national security, the Middle East, and Islam, as well as a convener of high-dollar events on security and energy issues. It is an offshoot of the neoconservative Hudson Institute.

In May 2019, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) characterized Gatestone as one of the leading beneficiaries of a network of over 1,000 “traditional American charities, foundations, and philanthropic institutions [that] are being used to anonymize and funnel money from powerful donors to the Islamophobia Network.” The entire network raised at least an estimated $1.5 billion between 2014 and 2016, of which Gatestone received some $2.2 million. According to CAIR, “many of these anti-Muslim groups, usually considered marginal or fringe, are in fact funded by mainstream American charitable organizations such as Fidelity Charitable Fund, the National Christian Charitable Foundation, and the Jewish Communal Fund.”

CAIR described Gatestone as “a misinformation creation and dissemination group that functions as a clearinghouse for far-right rhetoric on Islam, Muslims, and national security.”[2]

Exemplifying Gatestone’s take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a May 2019 article by Bassam Tawil—whose biography offers only that he is “ a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East”—opines that “far from any ‘deal of the century,’ the Palestinian leaders long ago struck a dirty deal of their own: they put their stock in Israel-hatred rather than in their own people.”[3]

Tawil was discussing a fledgling Palestinian party headed by Ashraf Jabari, a former Palestinian security officer who is known to have a close relationship with prominent Trump administration officials, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and who agrees with the Trump position—espoused often by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—that the immediate priority is economic improvement. Jabari has stated that he does not oppose Israeli efforts to annex the West Bank and has placed no conditions on that acquiescence in his statements.[4]

Also in early 2019, as tensions between the United States and Iran escalated to their highest point in years, Gatestone published a piece by Majid Rafizadeh, a prolific anti-Iran author, framing the history of U.S.-Iran relations as stemming from the 1979 Iran revolution and offering no explanation for why Iranians of that period might have had some grievances against the Shah of Iran and his long-time patrons in Washington.

“But let us get the historical facts straight,” Rafizadeh penned. “Hatred and deep antagonism towards the US, Israel and the Jews are indispensable pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran. When the ruling mullahs came to power in 1979, it was not the US that started the hatred by criticizing or opposing the ruling clerics. In fact, former President Jimmy Carter welcomed the Islamic Republic and viewed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a good religious holy man. … Such amicable behavior and support from the US, however, did not change Tehran’s policies. The Islamic Republic still publicly declared its revolutionary ideals, which, from the outset, included standing against Israel and the US. It was Iran, not the US, that breached international law by carrying out the 1979 US Embassy takeover in Tehran. Iran detained and humiliated 52 Americans and did not release these hostages for 444 days, the longest hostage-taking in modern history. This was the beginning of the journey of hatred.”[5]

In April 2018, soon after John Bolton left Gatestone to assume the post of national security adviser in the Trump administration, NBC News reported on Gatestone’s anti-Muslim activities. They sought to tie Gatestone to Russian anti-Muslim propaganda efforts, reporting that Russian-controlled media had extensively cited Gatestone articles. When given a chance to respond, Gatestone sent NBC links purporting to substantiate their claims. However, according to the report, “One entry flagged as documenting ‘warring Muslim gangs’ in Marseille, France, when translated into English, says only that the city had deployed specialized police officers to a high-crime area, with no mention of warring Muslims.”[6]

Gatestone board member Alan Dershowitz responded to the NBC report, characterizing it as a “McCarthyesque” attack, while describing Gatestone as “refreshingly centrist.” He seemed, however, to undermine his own point by concluding, “Is Gatestone an ‘anti-Muslim think tank’? Or is it an open-minded institute that encourages diverse views on a wide range of pressing subjects? Then you can answer Groucho Marx’s famous rhetorical question: ‘Who are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?’”[7]

History

The Gatestone Institute was founded in 2011 by Nina Rosenwald, an heiress of the Sears Roebuck empire who has been a key philanthropic backer of anti-Muslim groups and individuals in the United States. Illustrating Rosenwald’s background, journalist Lee Fang wrote, “Her foundation has also generously funded far-right voices that have opposed accepting refugees, including Robert Spencer of the blog Jihad Watch; Frank Gaffney, an anti-Muslim activist known for spreading anti-Muslim conspiracies so far-fetched he was banned from CPAC, the popular conservative convention; and Zuhdi Jasser, a controversial Muslim pundit who argued that President Donald Trump has not done enough in vetting Muslim migrants.”[8]

Describing Gatestone’s origins, journalist Max Blumenthal wrote: “Through her affiliation with the Washington-based Hudson Institute, where Norman Podhoretz is an adjunct fellow, Rosenwald established a branch of the think tank in New York City. Operating under the Hudson banner, Rosenwald brought [the controversial anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders] to town in 2008 to warn against the Muslim plot to ‘rule the world by the sword.’ Wilders’s tirade during that visit against the prophet Muhammad, whom he described as ‘a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile,’ was strident even by the standards of the hawkish Hudson Institute. By 2011 … Rosenwald separated Hudson New York City from Hudson’s national branch, changing her organization’s name to the Gatestone Institute.”[9]

Among its activities, the institute holds what it calls “Briefing Council events,” which have included talks by Walid Phares, Charles Krauthammer, Andrew McCarthy, Elliott Abrams, William Kristol, and a host of other well-known right wingers and Gatestone principals.[10] Among its past have been a presentation by Zuhdi Jasser on the “battle for the soul of Islam”; a talk by former CIA director James Woolsey titled “War on America”; a presentation in which Geert Wilders called Islam a “violent ideology that wants to impose Islamic Sharia law on the whole world”;[11] and a 2014 event featuring Woolsey, former General David Petraeus, right-wing videographer James O’Keefe, and a host of conservative activists extolling the virtues of “fracking” for natural gas and oil.[12] A notice on Gatestone’s website, which has since been removed, described the events as “invitation only, exclusively for our members,” with a “minimum donation of $10,000 required for participation.”[13]

Gatestone’s other activities include red-carpet events for personalities like Wilders and policy briefings by sympathetic speakers. The institute has also announced plans to publish books. But the bulk of the organization’s day-to-day output consists of blog posts by Gatestone fellows and likeminded writers offering neoconservative commentary on current events and alarmist dispatches about the spread of Islam. Frequent topics include Israeli security, purported Palestinian malfeasance, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, and the supposed threat of Sharia law in Europe and North America.

Commentaries

Many of Gatestone’s commentaries offer standard neoconservative tropes urging a more forceful and aggressive U.S. foreign policy. An April 2014 offering from Elliott Abrams, for example, complained that the Obama administration’s foreign policy “really is the foreign policy of Belgium: negotiations, negotiations, negotiations. … What is missing in this formulation? In one word: power.” Referring to President Barack Obama and his past affiliations with figures commonly vilified by his Republican critics, Abrams added, “This is the man who learned foreign policy from Rashid Khalidi and William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. The habits [to be broken], as the Administration might see them, are ‘militarism,’ ‘aggression,’ ‘Cold War thinking’ and an alleged effort to dominate the world, ‘Imperialism’—or what many others might call patriotism.”[14] Other Gatestone posts have urged a second military intervention in Libya[15] and inveighed against a diplomatic agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.[16]

Gatestone contributors often espouse views associated with the far right. Posts by Gatestone writers have alleged an impending “Islamic takeover” in the United Kingdom,[17] warned that France is on the verge of “submitting to Islam,”[18] fretted that “Islamic Sharia law could easily become a permanent reality in Spain and across the [European] continent,”[19] and accused the U.S. government of “promoting Islam” in the Czech Republic and other European countries.[20] In a 2014 posting, Gatestone fellow Soeren Kern quoted Geert Wilders’ quip, seemingly approvingly, that “The fewer Moroccans [in the Netherlands], the better.” Kern claimed that “Dutch Moroccan criminals are known to be highly indifferent to sentences in Dutch prisons,” concluding that “it is only the threat of deportation, more than any other measure, that is likely to deter young Moroccans from a life of crime.”[21]

Kern, who authors the Gatestone Institute’s annual reports on the “Islamization of France,” also took a hyper alarmist tone after the January 2015 attack on the French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo. “The situation is out of control, and it is not reversible.” Kern said of France. “Islam is a permanent part of France now. It is not going away. I think the future looks very bleak.”[22]

Gatestone’s writers take a hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, harshly criticizing Palestinian negotiators and political authorities and offering support to Israel’s right-wing government. When Israel pulled out of U.S.-brokered talks after Hamas and Fatah reached a tentative reconciliation in April 2014, Gatestone contributor Richard Kamp asserted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “had no choice other than to suspend the peace process. … How could he possibly continue to negotiate with an entity that is itself negotiating with a vicious, murderous and unrelenting terrorist group hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and outlawed around the world?”[23]

Observers generally credited an Israeli refusal to release certain Palestinian prisoners as part of an agreed upon prisoner exchange, as well as a general Israeli intransigence of settlement construction and other final-status issues, as major factors in the demise of the talks. But Gatestone writers were adamant that the Palestinian Authority, created by an agreement with Israel, was to blame. “The Palestinian Authority [PA], meant to be the ‘partner’ for peace, seems incapable of giving up on the culture of violence, death and anti-Semitism which has always been its trademark,” claimed Gatestone senior fellow Douglas Murray. Although the PA’s leaders had long recognized Israel’s right to exist, and even though many Israeli coalition partners were openly hostile to the creation of a Palestinian state, Murray claimed that “the PA seems no closer than their forebears were in 1948 to recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.”[24]

After the failure of the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Friends of Israel Initiative member Richard Kempan wrote an op-ed for the Gatestone Institute criticizing efforts to reach a two-state solution. “The stark military reality is that Israel cannot withdraw its forces from the West Bank—either now or at any point in the foreseeable future,” Kemp wrote. “There can be no two state solution and no sovereign Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan, however desirable those things might be.”[25]

Kemp added: “Nor can there be a one-state solution with democratic rights for all because that would spell the end of the one and only democratic and Jewish state and the beginning of a new autocracy and the next exodus of the Jews. For those who do not want that to happen, the harsh reality is continuation of the status quo.”[26]

Gatestone writers have been particularly hostile towards the “Boycott, Divest, and Sanction” (BDS) movement, a nonviolent campaign organized by Palestinian civil society groups and their supporters to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories—in part by urging international cultural figures to refrain from visiting Israel or collaborating with Israeli-financed cultural and academic institutions. In one exceptionally bombastic post, Gatestone senior fellow Denis MacEoin accused BDS campaigners of genocidal ambitions. “This BDS campaign against Israel is dishonest,” he wrote. “It tells less than half of a complex story, borrowing Palestinian lies and fables to bewitch unthinking Westerners whose only formula for peace lies in the destruction of the only national home for the Jews, possibly as well as the post-Nazi destruction of the Jews themselves.” Drawing a straight line from boycott to Holocaust, MacEoin added, “The Nazis invented the Jewish Boycott, and went on from there to the Holocaust.” BDS, he concluded of the nonviolent movement, “supports and rewards whoever works—often through violence—to abolish the state of Israel and then possibly the rest of the Jews.”[27]

In November 2014, Gatestone published an article from Alan Dershowitz arguing for more congressional intervention in the on-going nuclear negotiations with Iran. “Congress plainly has the power to refuse to reduce sanctions and indeed to strengthen them,” Dershowitz stated, echoing comments from a host of other neoconservatives and hardliners. “Congress should demand a role in the ongoing negotiations with Iran.”[28] Many analysts have argued that greater intervention in the talks by Congress, particularly through imposing additional sanctions on Iran, would scuttle the entire negotiating process.[29]

Leadership and Funding

There does not appear to be much information available about the current make up of Gatestone’s governance bodies (as of May 2019). In April 2017, the institute removed its leadership listings from public display. The removal was apparently in response to inquiries from a journalist regarding the addition of prominent neoconservative philanthropist Rebekah Mercer to their board.

As of 2019, Gatestone’s president was Nina Rosenwald and it vice presiseent was Naomi H. Perlman. Its board, as of 2017,[30] included The Viscountess Bearsted, Baroness Caroline Cox, Alan Dershowitz, The Lord Finkelstein OBE, Jack Fowler, Robert Immerman, Rebekah Mercer, Lawrence Kadish, Ingebord Rennert (spouse of the controversial junk bond investor Ira Rennert), and Rebecca Sugar. Its European board of governors includes chairman Amir Taheri and Anne-Elisabeth Moutet.[31]

Gatestone’s senior fellows have included Arab Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, European scholars Soeren Kern and Guy Millière, and former Pentagon official Harold Rode, among several others. Amhed Charai, Petra Heidt, Elie Weisel, and former chairman James Woolsey were listed as advisers as of 2017.[32] At one point Gatestone also listed “Fjordman” as a distinguished scholar,[33] using the pseudonym for Peder Jensen, a far-right Norwegian blogger whose writings were featured in the manifesto of mass-murderer Anders Breivik.[34]

Gatestone’s website lists dozens of other contributing authors, including foreign policy hawks like Elliott Abrams, Anne Bayefsky, Kenneth Timmerman, MEMRI president Yigal Carmon, Alan Dershowitz, Steven Emerson, former Pentagon official Doug Feith, neoconservative firebrand David Horowitz, Hudson Institute president Herbert London, the right-wing NGO Monitor, Daniel Pipes, Emergency Committee for Israelspokesman Noah Pollak, former AIPAC director Steven Rosen, American Enterprise Institute fellow Michael Rubin, Natan Sharansky, Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow Lee Smith, and anti-Islamic writer Robert Spencer.[35]

Gatestone reported nearly $2.2 million on its 2017 Form 990.[36]

 

SOURCES 

[1] Max Blumenthal, “The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate,” The Nation, June 13, 2012, http://www.thenation.com/article/168374/sugar-mama-anti-muslim-hate#.

[2] “Hijacked by Hate: American Philanthropy and the Islamophobia Network,” CAIR., May 2019, http://www.islamophobia.org/images/IslamophobiaReport2019/CAIR_Islamophobia_Report_2019_Final_Web.pdf

[3] Bassam Tawil, “Why Palestinians Oppose Economic Prosperity,” Gatestone Institute, May 17, 2019, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14236/palestinians-oppose-economic-prosperity

[4] Adnan Amer, “New Palestinian party has ties to Israel, seeks PLO reform,” Al-Monitor, May 16, 2019, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/05/palestinian-new-party-normalization-israel-fatah.html#ixzz5oJAxTEux

[5] Majid Rafizadeh, “The Iranian Government’s 40 Years of Hatred Towards America,” Gatestone Institute, May 16, 2019, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14235/iran-hatred-america

[6] Heidi Przybyla, “John Bolton presided over anti-Muslim think tank,” NBC News, April 23, 2018, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/john-bolton-chaired-anti-muslim-think-tank-n868171

[7] Alan Dershowitz, “NBC’s McCarthyesque attack on John Bolton and the Gatestone Institute,” Washington Examiner, May 9, 2018, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/alan-dershowitz-nbcs-mccarthyesque-attack-on-john-bolton-and-the-gatestone-institute

[8] Lee Fang, “Her Father Championed Jewish Refugees. She Finances the Anti-Muslim Refugee Movement,” The Intercept, February 17, 2017, https://theintercept.com/2017/02/17/muslim-refugee-rosenwald/

[9] Max Blumenthal, “The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate,” The Nation, June 13, 2012, http://www.thenation.com/article/168374/sugar-mama-anti-muslim-hate#.

[10] Gatestone Institute, “Briefing Council Events,” http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/events.php.

[11] Max Blumenthal, “The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate,” The Nation, June 13, 2012, http://www.thenation.com/article/168374/sugar-mama-anti-muslim-hate#.

[12] Ben Jacobs, “Petraeus Will Appear at an Event Featuring the ACORN ‘Pimp,’” The Daily Beast, May 2, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/02/petraeus-will-appear-at-an-event-featuring-the-acorn-pimp.html.

[13] Gatestone Institute, “Events for Members,” archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20120324100244/http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/events.php.

[14] Elliott Abrams, “U.S.: The Great Problem That Needs to be Solved,” Gatestone Institute, April 9, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4255/us-foreign-policy-problem.

[15] Anna Mahjar-Barducci, “Libya Urgently in Need of Military Intervention,” Gatestone Institute, April 29, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4289/libya-military-intervention.

[16] Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen, “Iran Deal: Was the West Skinned?” Gatestone Institute, December 4, 2013, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4075/iran-deal.

[17] Soeren Kern, “UK: Probe of Islamic Takeover Plot Widens,” Gatestone Institute, April 17, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4273/uk-islamic-takeover-plot.

[18] Guy Millière, “France Submits to Islam,” Gatestone Institute, May 12, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4306/france-submits-to-islam.

[19] Soeren Kern, “The Islamization of Spanish Jurisprudence:

Spain Submits to ‘Adoption Jihad,’” Gatestone Institute, February 20, 2013, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3595/spain-adoption-islam.

[20] Soeren Kern, “US Government Promoting Islam in Czech Republic,” Gatestone Institute, April 14, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4262/islam-czech-republic.

[21] Soeren Kern, “Who is in More Trouble: Wilders or The Netherlands?” Gatestone Institute, April 24, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4285/geert-wilders-netherlands.

[22] Rowan Scarborough, “Muslims segregated from French society in growing Islamist mini-states,” Washington Times, January 7, 2015, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/7/french-islamist-mini-states-grow-into-problem-out-/#ixzz3OejNHNMs.

[23] Richard Kamp, ” The Fatah-Hamas Agreement,” Gatestone Institute, May 1, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4292/hamas-fatah-agreement.

[24] Douglas Murray, “Who are the Victims and Who Are the Victimizers?” Gatestone Institute, April 23, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4279/victims-victimizers-muslim.

[25] Richard Kemp, “Israel’s Security and Unintended Consequences,” Gatestone Institute, October 23, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4806/israel-security.

[26] Richard Kemp, “Israel’s Security and Unintended Consequences,” Gatestone Institute, October 23, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4806/israel-security.

[27] Denis MacEoin, “BDS Movement: Barbarians Inside the Gates – Part I,” Gatestone Institute, May 7, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4274/bds-movement.

[28] Alan Dershowitz, “Will the newly elected Congress push Obama into being tougher on Iran’s nuclear weapons program?” Gatestone Institute, November 14, 2014, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4883/will-the-newly-elected-congress-push-obama-into.

[29] Eli Clifton, “Beltway Foreign Policy Groups to Congress: Stay Out of the Way on Iran!” LobeLog, October 24, 2014, http://www.lobelog.com/beltway-foreign-policy-groups-to-congress-stay-out-of-the-way-on-iran/.

[30] Gatestone Institute, “About,” Archive.org, April 7, 2017, https://web.archive.org/web/20170409113704/https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/about/

[31] Gatestone Institute, About, http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/about/

[32] Gatestone Institute, “Distinguished Senior Fellows,” http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/experts/.

[33] Gatestone Institute, “About,” archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20130115231434/http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/about/.

[34] Power Base, Peder Jensen profile, http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Fjordman.

[35] Gatestone Institute, “Authors,” http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/authors/.

[36] Guidestar.org, Gatestone Institute 2017 990, https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2017/454/724/2017-454724565-0fc0c3d2-9.pdf