CJHSLA Conference Call: Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld And The Saudi Attack On American Free Speech
A couple of hollow, addled academics publish a book about Jewish money corrupting US interests and it's a global firestorm. You can't even sigh in Walt and Mearsheimer's direction without being blasted as a McCarthyist enemy of speech and academic freedom. But authors exposing the Saudi financing of global jihad are having their books destroyed by their own publishers and most media outlets - to say nothing for most academics - could care less. In 2005 Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld published Funding Evil, Updated: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It. She has faced a professional, financial, and sometimes potentially physical threats and harassment. This is an actual journalist who is actually being silenced - but the attention of the ostensible of free speech seems to be directed elsewhere.
Children Of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles put together a conference call with Dr. Ehrenfeld earlier this afternoon. In her book, she had identified Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz as one of the major players in the global financing of jihadism. Bin Mahfouz is a classic Saudi oil sheikh - supported by a functionally bottomless bank account and close ties to the Saudi royal family, he has been able to escape a series of finance-related scandals and investigations by simply buying his way out of them. When Dr. Ehrenfeld went after him, he acted true to type by suing her in England. This was surreal libel tourism. Dr. Ehrenfeld's book was never even marketed in England. Someone coincidentally arranged to have the book shipped to England and then bin Mahfouz's lawyers coincidentally found out about it. This was enough to bring the publication under UK jurisdiction, where jurists have a rather expansive interpretation of what they are empowered to pass judgment on. Since England's libel laws are asinine, Dr. Ehrenfeld would have had to "prove" her allegations in a hostile court by - among other things - revealing her counter-terrorism sources. She declined to do so, and the judge - who we are sure was totally reasonable and not showboating his anti-Americanism in any way - levied a judgment so severe that Dr. Ehrenfeld cannot travel to the UK for fear of arrest.
These are wealthy foreign interests undermining the very few independent researchers who are exposing the ties between Our Friends The Saudis and global jihadism. Real wealthy foreign interests. Not like the ones who exist as scapegoats in the minds of virulent anti-Semites, execrable attention-starved activists, and failed professors. Dr. Ehrenfeld is being destroyed professionally. She needs to travel to research, but - in addition to having the Middle East closed off to her because of the whole Jewish thing - she can't travel to parts of Europe now. Oh - and she's paying her legal expenses, which involve a counter-suit in US courts, herself.
After the jump, how the attack on Dr. Ehrenfeld figures into the larger assault on Americans' right to speak out against jihadism.
Dr. Ehrenfeld is one of the few people who have refused to collapse under bin Mafouz's threats, legal and otherwise (she had one of his goons approach her and tell her that she'd "better take care of herself" - charming). Hot Air commented that "it's difficult to overstate the importance of this story." Much of the rest of the media and publishing industry has been intimidated into silence:
Cambridge Press went so far as to take the surreal step of requesting that libraries around the planet remove their book. This lines up quit nicely with recent trends of preemptive or near-preemptive censorship in the Western media. Journalists and publishers are terrified of even mildly offending Muslims, lest they be subject to the tender protestations of the Religion of Peace's notoriously peaceful Street - or the money of some of those who make it their business to whip that street up into paroxysms of rage.
The near-total absence of support that Dr. Ehrenfeld has received from people who should be standing up for the First Amendment is as sad as it is predictable. She went to a New York federal judge for protection from harassment and threats and was denied remedy (though the decision was so thin that it was firmly overturned on appeal and the case continues). She called the New York chapter of the ACLU. Nada. And most depressingly - and again not unpredictably - she continues to face an almost complete media blackout. The question that came up over and over again on the call is "why isn't anyone talking about this?" This is not the first time that the ostensible defenders of the First Amendment have failed - and failed abjectly - to rise to the defense of a genuine dissident being genuinely intimidated into silence.
References:
* American Center For Democracy
* Funding Evil, Updated: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It by Rachel Ehrenfeld 
* Children Of Jewish Holocaust Survivors Los Angeles
* Hot Air audio: How one wealthy jihad supporter is using UK courts to kill American free speech [Hot Air]
* Washington Post Bows to Their New Islamic Overlords [LGF]
* Attention Authors [1]: Be afraid, very afraid.... especially if you write about the Saudis and their support of terrorism [Lipstadt]
* Protect the American Media … Whether They Deserve It or Not [Andrew C. McCarthy]
Previously:
* Toronto Sun - Previously Unexplored Stupidity As A Justification For Anti-Papal Riots
* Saudi Arabia Identifies True Cause of US-Saudi Tension - Jews
* Saudi Peace Initiative Doesn't Extend To Actually Talking To Jews
