Right Web

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.

Keep Israel Safe is a conservative astroturf group launched in April 2010 by Christian Right leader Gary Bauer and Tom Rose, the former publisher of the right-wing Jerusalem  Post.[1] The group’s sole function as of mid-2010 was to disseminate a petition and produce brief webvideos attacking the Barack Obama administration and other Democratic Party officials for their policies on Iran and Israeli-Palestinian peace, adopting views largely in line with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and U.S. neoconservatives.[2]

Said Bauer in a press release about the group, "President Obama's failure to deal with the growing threat of a nuclear Iran while he makes unreasonable and hostile demands on our stalwart ally Israel is unacceptable. President Obama's policies are making America and Israel less safe and making a Middle Eastern war more likely."[3]

Keep Israel Safe appears to be part of a larger, coordinated effort by hawkish pro-Israel groups in the United States to engender anger among right-wing elements in the United States toward the policies of the Obama administration and its supporters.

The group is strikingly similar to several other groups launched in 2009 and 2010, including Elizabeth Cheney’s Keep America Safe; Stop America Now, a project of Citizens United, the controversial conservative group that was the subject of the Supreme Court’s controversial January 2010  ruling that the First Amendment permits corporations to fund independent political broadcasts in federal elections; and the Emergency Committee for Israel, a group founded by neoconservatives and Christian Right figures, including Bauer, Noah Pollak, and Rachel Abrams. 

Each of these groups has produced webvideos attacking Democratic Party politicians and the Obama administration for their Middle East policies, offering alarmist messages about Iran and the security of Israel and the United States.

The Weekly Standardalso played a role in publicizing all these groups’ work, with Standardfounder and editor William Kristol serving as a principal in two of them (the Emergency Committee for Israel and Keep America Safe).

As Right Web contributors Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib wrote:

Bauer launched his own letterhead/attack-ad organization, Keep Israel Safe, with Weekly Standardcontributing editor Tom Rose. They modeled the group on Cheney’s Keep America Safe (right down to the name) and, as one might expect, the Weekly Standardwas instrumental in the group’s launch, getting an exclusive by “obtain[ing] an advance copy” of the first attack ad on Obama even before the group’s website was up. Keep Israel Safe has since released two more videos distorting Obama’s record and condemning his approach to Middle East peace.[5] Keep Israel Safe’s namesake—Cheney’s Keep America Safe—also focuses on internet videos, creating four original videos since its launch last year.[6]

According to Clifton and Gharib, Keep Israel Safe and its apparently related attack groups reflect a shift in strategy adopted by neoconservatives and other hardline factions in the United States after the election of President Obama. Shut out of major policy-making circles and with many liberal Zionists in the United States increasingly alienated by the policies of the Israel’s Likud-led government, argued the two writers, these hawkish factions shifted to using the internet and YouTube to generate a populist right-wing backlash against the generally realist-driven and dialogue-oriented policies of the Obama administration.[7]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.