... Daniel Pipes has emerged as the top apologist of the American war on terror especially after Sep. 11.
In principle, Pipes is the director of the Pennsylvania -based think tank, the Middle East Forum (MEF). Established in 1990, the MEF depicts itself as an institution working "to define and promote American interests in the Middle East."
According to its mission statement, the forum also "believes in strong (US) ties with Israel, Turkey, and other democracies as they emerge, seeks a stable supply and a low price of oil and promotes the peaceful settlement of regional and international disputes."
Pipes is known for his 1983 book, In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power, in which he highlights presumable links between Islam and the influence of militant Muslims on agitating anti-Western sentiments.
In 2002, he published a similar book entitled Militant Islam reaches America. But Pipes' activity goes far beyond academic research at MEF as he frequently appears on talk shows, writes Op-Ed columns for several newspaper and websites. He maintains a website. His webmaster, Grayson Levy, is an Israeli resident of the West Bank settlement of Maale Michmas.
Pipes serves on the "Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology" at the Department of Defense. US President George Bush nominated him for the membership of the board of the federal US Institute for Peace, much to the objection of several American Muslim groups.
He recently established Campus Watch which presumably monitors "Middle Eastern studies on campus," and "addresses five problems (namely) analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students," according to the MEF website.
But Campus Watch became a censorship tool for Pipes in which he accuses, frequently in a slanderous manner, faculty and students who withhold perspectives different than his of sympathizing with an anti-American cause. Pipes is also connected to a network of academicians who, hiding behind their think tanks and universities, produce anti-Arab publications. The most prominent of Pipes' Arab associates are Lebanese Ziad Abdel-Nour, Joseph Farah and Faoud Ajami.
Ziad Abdel-Nour heads the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon, which publishes the Middle Eastern Intelligence Bulletin (MEIB) on the web. Pipes serves on MEIB's board.
MEIB has been known for its anti-Syrian rhetoric and accusation of the Lebanese leadership of "collaborating" with the Syrian regime.
Joseph Farah, the editor of the World Net Daily internet news website, is also a Lebanese-American. But Farah's anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric make his readers easily mistake him for a supporter of the Israeli Likud Party.
Another writer of Pipes' favorites is Faoud Ajami, a Lebanese Shiite from the southern town of Arnoun. Over the course of the past two decades, Ajami shifted from a supporter of pan-Arabism to an ardent apologist of the US administration's hawks and neo conservatives