Aubrey & Joyce Chernick and the Fairbrook Foundation

by Sheila Musaji

A number of individuals have been looking into the money trail behind the Islamophobia industry, and in all too many cases, that trail leads to Joyce and Aubrey Chernick.

Chernick somehow manages to keep a low profile.  It is amazing that someone who has been a major figure in the computer industry doesn’t even have an entry on Wikipedia. 

Max Blumenthal in The Great Islamophobic Crusade noted

Besides providing the initial energy for the Islamophobic crusade, conservative elements from within the pro-Israel lobby bankrolled the network’s apparatus, enabling it to influence the national debate. One philanthropist in particular has provided the beneficence to propel the campaign ahead. He is a little-known Los Angeles-area software security entrepreneur named Aubrey Chernick, who operates out of a security consulting firm blandly named the

National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination (NC4)

. A former trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which has served as a think tank for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a frontline lobbying group for Israel, Chernick is said to be worth $750 million.

Funding Universe has an article with a history of the company that made Chernick’s fortune, the Candle Corporation.  This page includes a biography.  This paragraph is of interest In 2003, Chernick established the National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination (NC4), which the company described as “an organization focused on advancing crisis management and business-continuity readiness through public-private sector collaboration.”

Interestingly, according to a Department of Homeland Security website page,

a Senior Director of NC4 is on the Homeland Security Advisory Council

Membership List:  Richard A. Andrews, Senior Director, Homeland Security Projects National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination

David Horowitz’ Freedom Center

has steered nearly $1 million over the past three years to

Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch

group.  According to Kenneth P. Vogel and Giovanni Russonello in an article on Politico “Horowitz bristled when asked about the source of those funds”.  They did discover, however that

Though it was not listed on the public tax reports filed by Horowitz’s Freedom Center, POLITICO has confirmed that the lion’s share of the $920,000 it provided over the past three years to

Jihad Watch

came from Joyce Chernick, whose husband, Aubrey Chernick, has a net worth of $750 million, as a result of his 2004 sale to IBM of a software company he created, and a security consulting firm he now owns.

A onetime trustee of the hawkish Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Chernick led the effort to pull together $3.5 million in venture capital to start

Pajamas Media

, a conservative blog network that made its name partly with hawkish pro-Israel commentary and of late has kept up a steady stream of anti-mosque postings, including one rebutting attacks by CAIR against Spencer — who Pajamas Media CEO Roger Simon called “one of the ideological point men in the global war on terror.”

The Chernicks did not respond to messages relayed through Horowitz and a spokesman. But according to Horowitz, Joyce Chernick offered four years ago to fund Spencer and Jihad Watch, then functioning as a stand-alone nonprofit, under the Horowitz Center’s organizational umbrella.

Horowitz said Spencer, who is writing a pamphlet on the mosque for the Horowitz Center, is “part of our small but evidently effective family.”

The Freedom Center had a budget of $4.5 million last year, according to its tax filings, of which $290,000 came from the conservative Bradley Foundation, which also gave $75,000 to the Center for Security Policy last year. Horowitz has received an average of $461,000 a year in salary and benefits over the past three years, while Spencer has pulled in an average of $140,000, according to the center’s IRS filings.

But, Horowitz said, “Robert Spencer, David Horowitz, Pam Geller — we don’t do this for the money — we do this because we believe in it.”

The Freedom Center funds the Jihad Watch website and is paying for events promoting Spencer and Geller’s recently released book, but Horowitz said it is not paying for Spencer and Geller’s Sept. 11 protest or the controversial ads they placed on New York City buses, depicting a plane flying toward a burning World Trade Center next to a rendering of the Park51 building.

The ads were placed by a group called the Coalition for the Preservation of Ground Zero for a one-month run starting Aug. 16, at a cost of $8,000, according to New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That coalition, which is separate from Burlingame’s, is a project of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a nonprofit run by Geller and Spencer and incorporated at the same Bedford, N.H., address at which Jihad Watch was first registered in 2005.

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch is the co-founder with Pamela Geller of Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)

which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  This means that if Chernick is supporting Horowitz, who is supporting Spencer - they are supporting a hate group.

Laura Rozen, in another article on Politico adds more information

the Fairbrook Foundation, that shows donations to a wide range of groups, including the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim that funds Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem,

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (Steven Emerson), MEMRI, The Center for Security Policy

, over $900k to the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, $150k to American Jewish Congress, ADL, the Middle East Freedom Forum Fund, another David Horowitz group the

Center for the Study of Popular Culture

, the pro-Israel campus advocacy group Stand With Us; $80k to Gary Bauer’s “American Values,” the pro-Israel media monitoring group

CAMERA

, $150k to the “Council for Democracy and Tolerance” of Alta Loma, CA, which listed as a fellow and senior fellow Nir Boms, a former Vice President of the

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

and a former Israeli embassy official; the group is listed as promoting the “Obsession” video; the former president of the Council, Tashbih Sayyed, a Pakistani-American Shiite journalist who died in 2007, was also an adjunct fellow at the

Hudson Institute

and a member of the Jihad Watch board, both also supported by Chernick’s foundation; the

Council for Secular Humanism

; $80k to a group called “

Defend the West

” whose address is a UPS box in Santa Monica, CA but whose website domain is registered to Nina Cunningham of Quidlibet research and the former chair of the Illinois regional branch of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s National Women’s Committee who is listed on tax forms as a director of the Clarion Fund which funded the distribution of 20 million copies of the “Obsession” DVD; $50k to the Heritage Foundation; $50k to the Hudson Institute; etc. etc.

Similar donations in 2007 and 2006, including $190k in 2007 to the Hudson Institute; $200k in 2006 to the Zionist Organization of America, and $250k to ZOA in 2005; $60k in 2005 to the Central Fund of Israel, a U.S. nonprofit that funds settler security and other programs in Israel, and on whose board (listed in 2008 as vice president) is Itamar Marcus, who heads Palestinian Media Watch; $25k in 2005 to fund projects by

Tariq Ismail at the Council for Secular Humanism

(the funding for Islamic secularism contrasting with the foundation’s generous funding of Jewish religiosity, including Aish HaTorah of Los Angeles); $120k in 2005 to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, on whose board Chernick’s wife Joyce Chernick served.

Richard Silverstein adds more information

According to its 2008 IRS 990 report, among the far-right pro-Israel groups he’s funding are Ateret Cohanim ($30,000), involved in the Judaization of East Jerusalem through “appropriation” of Arab homes; Muslim-basher

Brigitte Gabriel’s American Congress for Truth

($50,000);

Aish HaTorah, funders of the anti-Muslim films Obsessed and Third Jihad

($14,000); the anti-Palestinian media advocacy group MEMRI ($100,000);

American Freedom Alliance

, another Muslim-bashing group, founded by Avi Davis, which defends western civilization from the unwashed hordes ($120,000); Gary Bauer’s American Values ($80,000);

Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture

($160,000); the anti-Arab media advocacy group

CAMERA

($25,000); the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, an Arab-bashing group established by a Pakistani neocon ($160,000);

Defend the West

, yet another Muslim-turncoat group

founded by Ibn Warraq

($130,000); Hudson Institute ($50,000); Heritage Foundation ($50,000); the Jewish neo-con security think tank JINSA ($15,000); the anti-Arab media advocacy group Second Draft ($40,000); Stand With Us ($20,000); and

Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum

($180,000).  In 2005, Chernick gave $60,000 to the Central Fund of Israel, one of the largest pro-settler ‘philanthropic’ advocacy groups.