David Horowitz Attacked During Senatorial Witch-Hunt of Jeff Sessions

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Senator Richard Blumenthal trades in malicious slanders easily refuted.

Editors’ note: David Horowitz was used as a pawn today in the senatorial witch-hunt of Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s choice for Attorney General. Senator Richard Blumenthal thoughtlessly passed on malicious slanders against Horowitz from the mis-named “Rights Coalition” led by the leftist Alliance for Justice. Sessions’ attempt at a smear-job backfired when Sessions praised Horowitz’s work and refused Blumenthal’s demand that he disavow Horowitz and the Freedom Center. Instead, Blumenthal helped introduce David Horowitz’s work and the Freedom Center to a new generation of patriots. Below is Horowitz’s refutation of the slanders.

In a press release expressing concern over the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions, the Alliance for Justice has made a series of false and reckless claims against the David Horowitz Freedom Center as a basis for its opposition to the confirmation of Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General of the United States.[1] According to Nan Aron president of the Alliance for Justice and board member Farhana Khera, the David Horowitz Freedom Center is an “anti-Muslim hate group,” at whose events Senator Sessions has spoken and to which he has “deep ties.” These false claims lead them to conclude that, “this raises questions about his judgment and fitness to serve as U.S. Attorney General.”

Senator Sessions is indeed a friend of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, of which I am the founder and ceo, but he has no ties, let alone “deep ties” to our organization. Moreover, the David Horowitz Freedom Center is neither anti-Muslim nor a “hate group.” I have on many occasions publicly stated that the vast majority of Muslims are law-abiding, good people; that the problem is a movement within Islam of Islamic supremacists who seek to impose Islamic law on others by force if necessary. Among the hundreds of thousands of words of mine that have been published on the subject of Islam and the Islamic jihad, there is not a single sentence that can reasonably construed as “anti-Muslim.” Nor has the Alliance for Justice produced one.

The Center event at which Senator Sessions spoke is our annual “Restoration Weekend.” This event has also been addressed by another friend, Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim, and president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy. So much for our anti-Muslim hostility.

The very list of our speakers exposes the defamatory claims of Nan Aron and the Alliance for Justice as malicious fictions. Among the speakers at our events have been Democratic senators Sam Nunn, Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, former Democratic Mayor of Washington DC Adrian Fenty, liberal attorney and women’s rights advocate Gloria Allred, liberal civil rights activist and president of Operation Hope, John Bryant.

The Center’s annual Restoration Weekend at which Senator Sessions spoke has also featured the current Vice-President elect, Mike Pence, and three former attorneys general – John Ashcroft, Michael Mukasey and Ed Meese.

Other Freedom Center speakers have included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, current Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, former Speakers of the House Newt Gingrich and John Boehner, four current members of the Senate Judiciary Committee – Orrin Hatch, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Ted Cruz - and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte.

Our guest speakers have also included the following cabinet members and administration officers:

Karl Rove, presidential adviser
Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense
John Bolton, Ambassador to the UN
Jim Woolsey, former Clinton CIA director
Doug Feith, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Josh Bolten, Bush White House Chief of Staff
Also the following governors:
George W. Bush, Texas
Mike Huckabee, Arkansas
George Allen, Virginia
Mike Pence, Indiana
Haley Barbour, Mississippi
Rick Perry, Texas
Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota
Matt Blunt, Missouri
George Voinovich, Ohio
Sam Brownback, Kansas

It need hardly be said, that the staffs of these distinguished Americans thoroughly vetted our organization and my record, and would never have agreed to these appearances if the David Horowitz Freedom Center was indeed a hate group.

The Alliance for Justice statement adduces two pieces of “evidence” for the Center’s alleged bias 1) an unsubstantiated claim by the highly politicized and thoroughly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center,[2] and 2) the fact that, “the Horowitz Center’s website states that its goal is to combat ‘the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values.’”

To regard this statement as anti-Muslim is to fundamentally misconstrue the term “Islamist,” which is not only not equivalent to “Muslim” but can be diametrically opposed to it. Thus the respected and heavily Democratic Washington Institute has devoted an entire analysis to the use of these terms under the title “Muslims vs. Islamists.”

Conflating anti-Islamist terrorism and anti-Islamist supremacy with hostility to religious Muslims is a technique of the terrorists and their enablers, and should have no place in the campaign of an organization proposing itself as a defender of civil liberties and civil rights.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center deeply regrets that its reputation has been abused in order to be placed in the service of an attempt to block the nomination of one of the most decent, tolerant and courageous Americans ever to hold a senate office. It would be a national tragedy if Jeff Sessions were not to be confirmed as Attorney General of the United States where he will protect the rights of all Americans with a vigor and integrity that has been in short supply for many years.

[1] http://www.afj.org/press-room/press-releases/reaction-senator-sessions-ties-hate-group