Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum, a member of the presidentially-appointed (temporary) board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a columnist for right-wing newspapers. His father is Richard Pipes.

Basic info

Daniel Pipes is considered to be a neo-conservative and extreme Likudnik Zionist. He is related to the following organizations:

• Middle East Forum — director
• Campus Watch — founder
• Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology.
• Washington Institute for Near East Policy — Associate
• Fulbright Board of Foreign Scholarships — vice chair
• Middle East Intelligence Forum — publisher;.

He is a frequent media commentator on the main network comment neweprogams, where he mostly comments on the Middle East. He has discussed terrorism and Middle East affairs on mainstream US media programs. His columns have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Commentary, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, National Review, New Republic, Policy Review, FrontPage and The Weekly Standard. Several newspapers carry his articles, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Sun, Jerusalem Post and Washington Post.

Education and Career

Pipes received his A.B. (1971) and Ph.D. (1978) from Harvard University, both in history. Pipes speaks French, and reads Arabic and German. He spent six years studying abroad, including three years in Egypt, where his activites included writing a book on colloquial Egyptian Arabic published in 1983. He has been awarded a honorary doctorates from universities in Switzerland and the United States.

He has taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the U.S. Naval War College. He has served in various capacities at the Departments of State and Defense, sits on five editorial boards, has testified before many congressional committees, and has worked on four presidential campaigns.

Statements by Pipes

Radical Islam

Pipes has long expressed concern about the supposed danger of radical Islam to the Western world. In 1985, he wrote in Middle East Insight that "The scope of the radical fundamentalist's ambition poses novel problems; and the intensity of his onslaught against the United States makes solutions urgent." [1]. In the fall 1995 issue of National Interest, he wrote: "Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States." [2] Four months before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Pipes and American investigative journalist Steven Emerson wrote in the Wall Street Journal that al Qaeda was "planning new attacks on the U.S." and that Iranian operatives "helped arrange advanced ... training for al Qaeda personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings." [3]

Zero-sum Arab-Israeli conflict

He wrote in Commentary in April 1990:

"There can be either an Israel or a Palestine, but not both. To think that two states can stably and peacefully coexist in the small territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is to be either naïve or duplicitous. If the last seventy years teach anything, it is that there can be only one state west of the Jordan River. Therefore, to those who ask why the Palestinians must be deprived of a state, the answer is simple: grant them one and you set in motion a chain of events that will lead either to its extinction or the extinction of Israel." [4]

The dangers of occupying Iraq

In April 1991, when a debate was raging about the desirability of a U.S. intervention against the Saddam Hussein regime, Pipes wrote in the Wall Street Journal about the prospect of U.S. forces occupying Iraq, "with Schwartzkopf Pasha ruling from Baghdad": "It sounds romantic, but watch out. Like the Israelis in southern Lebanon nine years ago, American troops would find themselves quickly hated, with Shi'as taking up suicide bombing, Kurds resuming their rebellion, and the Syrian and Iranian governments plotting new ways to sabotage American rule. Staying in place would become too painful, leaving too humiliating." [5]

Arafat's intentions at Oslo

Writing in the Forward within days of the signing of the Oslo Accords, Pipes stated: "Mr. Arafat has merely adopted a flexible approach to fit adverse circumstances, saying whatever needed to be said to survive. The PLO had not a change of heart — merely a change of policy. . . . the deal with Israel represents a lease on life for the PLO, enabling it to stay in business until Israel falters, when it can deal a death blow." [6]

War on terrorism

Pipes has called for a war on Islamic extremism, declaring in one post-Sept. 11 interview, "What we need to do is inspire fear, not affection." Pipes also promotes the support of moderate Muslims against militant islamists. He criticizes organizations such as CAIR for failing to distinguish between moderate Muslims and islamists when labelling him as'islamophobic'. During August recess 2003, President Bush bypassed the Senate and appointed Pipes, over the objections of Democrats and others, to the board of the United States Institute of Peace. The appointment won't be valid until the next Congress is sworn in, which would be January 2005. [7]

What others say

Here is some information/comment about Daniel Pipes

1 Pipes was one of those reviewers who favorably received From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict Over Palestine, a book which was so egregiously wrong that even the Zionist historian Yehoshua Porath had this to say about it:

"I am reluctant to bore the reader and myself with further examples of Mrs. Peters's highly tendentious use—or neglect—of the available source material. ... Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme nationalists ... would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters's book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity that they have been given new life.

("Mrs. Peters's Palestine", New York Review of Books, January 16, 1986).

See Porath's review in the New York Review of Books and the subsequent correspondence between Porath and Pipes which appeared in the same journal.

2 Here is an extract from an article by Joel Beinin on attempts to silence criticism of Israel in US universities:

"Another effort to police dissent is focused on those who teach Middle East studies on college campuses. Middle East Forum, a think tank run by Daniel Pipes and supportive of the Israeli right wing, has established a Campus Watch website. After failing in his own pursuit of an academic career, Pipes has evidently decided to take revenge on the scholarly community that rejected him. ... Campus Watch notes that "Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve of Middle Eastern Arabs, who have brought their views with them. Membership in the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the main scholarly association, is now 50 percent of Middle Eastern origin." Some Americans have foolishly believed that all U.S. citizens have equal rights regardless of their country of origin and that pointing to peoples' country of origin to discredit them is a form of racism. This too, is outmoded thinking according to Campus Watch. But imagine the uproar that would be created by the suggestion that because Daniel Pipes is Jewish he may be more loyal to Israel than to the United States."

(Joel Beinin, "Who's watching the watchers?", History News Network, September 30, 2002).

3 Here is an extract from another article by Joel Beinin on attempts by those behind the magazine to incite hatred of Arabs and Muslims:

Martin Kramer also edits Middle East Quarterly, the house organ of the Middle East Forum, the neo-conservative think tank directed by Daniel Pipes. Pipes has a long record of attempting to incite Americans against Arabs and Muslims. In 1990 he wrote: 'Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene. All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most'. One recent project of the Middle East Forum is Campus-Watch, a website designed to police dissent on university campuses. Its aim was to 'monitor and gather information on professors who fan the flames of disinformation, incitement, and ignorance.'

(Le Monde Diplomatique, July 2003, page 7 of English edition)

4 Here is what Robert Fisk had to say:

Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer of the Middle East Forum now run a website in the United States to denounce academics who are deemed to have shown "hatred of Israel". One of the eight professors already on this contemptible McCarthyite list -- it is grotesquely called "Campus Watch" -- committed the unpardonable sin of signing a petition in support of the Palestinian scholar Edward Said. Pipes wants students to inform on professors who are guilty of "campus anti-Semitism".

(Robert Fisk, "How to shut up your critics", The Independent, October 21, 2002).

Organizations

Pipes founded the Middle East Forum in 1994. Its stated mission is to “promote American interests” through publications, research, consulting, media outreach, and public education. The Forum publishes two journals, the Middle East Quarterly and the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin and sponsors events in four cities.

The Middle East Forum sparked a controversy in September 2002 by establishing a web site called Campus Watch that claims to identify "five problems: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students" in the teaching of Middle Eastern studies at American universities. Students are encouraged to submit reports regarding teachers, books and curricula. Campus Watch was accused of "McCarthyesque intimidation" against professors expressing criticism of Israel, not only by the listed academics but by more than 100 others who demanded to be listed as well. Campus Watch subsequently removed the "McCarthyite blacklist" from their website. [8] [9] [10]

Publications

• Books concerning Islam
  • Militant Islam Reaches America (2002),
  • The Rushdie Affair (1990)
  • In the Path of God (1983),
  • Slave Soldiers and Islam (1981)
• Books concerning Syria
  • Syria Beyond the Peace Process (1996)
  • Damascus Courts the West (1991)
  • Greater Syria (1990)
• Books concerning other topics
  • The Hidden Hand (1996)
  • The Long Shadow (1989)
  • Miniatures (2003)
  • An Arabist's Guide to Colloquial Egyptian (1983) systematizes the grammar of Arabic as spoken in Egypt.
  • Conspiracy (1997) discusses conspiracy theories in modern European and American politics.

Pipes has also edited two collections of essays, Sandstorm (1993) and Friendly Tyrants (1991). He is the joint author of eleven books.

SourceWatch Resources

• Campus Watch
• Islamic Progress Institute
• Middle East Forum
• Middle East Quarterly (published by the Forum)
• Middle East Intelligence Bulletin (published by the Forum)
• Foreign Policy Research Institute
• The National Interest

External links

• Daniel Pipes’s personal website
• Protests against Pipes' appointment to the USIP
• Los Angeles Times: “A Misdirected Attack”
• Financial Times: Islam's battle with a hostile world
• Pipes the Propagandist
• WHO IS DANIEL PIPES? by CAIR
• Reply to CAIR's Attack on Daniel Pipes Pipes' response
• World Magazine: Truth on Terror
• Robert Blecher, "Free People Will Set the Course of History" Intellectuals, Democracy and American Empire, MERIP, March 2003: "A decade after the 1991 Gulf war, Pipes has radically changed his tune."
• Jonathan Wright, "Bush Annoys U.S. Muslim Group with Pipes Nomination," Reuters, April 7, 2003.
• Bush to Sidestep Muslim Groups, Senate on Scholar, Reuters, 13 August 2003: "Bush's expected recess appointment of Daniel Pipes could spark a backlash from some Muslim Americans and Democrats in Congress, who oppose his nomination to serve on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which was created by Congress to promote peaceful solutions to world conflicts."
• Pipes nomination will cause 'immeasurable damage,' say Muslims, Firas Al-Atraqchi, Yellow Times, 22 August 2003
• Fedwa Wazwaz, "Bush Appointee is a Bigot Disguised as a Scholar", Common Dreams, August 28, 2003; viewed April 16, 2004.

NOTE: Portions of this article are taken from a corresponding article on Wikipedia.