On Friday, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill) released a statement condemning last week’s “New Horizon” conference in Tehran, which was attended by Western anti-Israel activists, conspiracy theorists and 9/11 “truthers.” According to its itinerary, the conference included sessions titled, “The Gaza War & BDS Movement Strategies against the Zionist Regime,” “The Israeli Lobby vs. the U.S. National Interest (especially as it relates to Middle East Policy)” and “The Mechanisms of Action of the Israeli Lobby and their Effects in Western Capitals.”
The senator’s statement read in part:
The so-called ‘New Horizon’ conference in Tehran proves why the current Iranian regime under President Hassan Rouhani is, at its core, no less extremist and dangerous than the regime under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The conference’s participants promoted anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, and were even greeted on day one by high-ranking Iranian cleric Mohsen Ghomi, a close advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who falsely alleged that “American officials are puppets of the Zionist lobby.”
BuzzFeed names a number of the attendees.
Code Pink chief Medea Benjamin, journalist and former Cambodian genocide denier Gareth Porter, conspiracy journalist and 9/11 truther Wayne Madsen, and PressTV contributor Kevin Barrett are all reportedly at the conference. Other reported attendees include Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, the anti-Semitic French comedian whose performances have been banned in several French jurisdictions, several Holocaust deniers, and former congressman Mark Siljander, who pleaded guilty in 2010 to being an unregistered foreign agent for an Islamic charity that the government said was connected to terrorism.
According to a PressTV article about the conference, the gathering’s “goal is to unveil the secrets behind the dominance of the Zionist lobby over US and EU politics.” The conference’s chairman is Nader Talebzadeh, an Iranian state TV host who previously organized a conference about “Hollywoodism” as a response to the movie “Argo.”
BuzzFeed also observes:
The conference was originally conceived under former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, though Iranian President Hassan Rouhani cancelled the conference in 2013 as part of Iran’s softening toward the West in advance of restarting talks over its nuclear program.
Another speaker at the conference was Steven Sizer, an anti-Israel British cleric. The Community Security Trust (CST), a British Jewish advocacy group, reports that Sizer’s appearance at the conference raises questions about his adherence to a Conciliation Agreement he signed in response to complaints about his anti-Israel activities.
Sizer was one of the evangelical anti-Israel activists mentioned by Luke Moon in The Latest Threat to Evangelical Support for Israel, which appeared in the July 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine.
[Photo: PressTV / DailyMotion ]