Iran likely behind antisemitic ‘mapping’ of American Jews

The Zachor Legal Institute adduced proofs in a report on the Boston Mapping Project that was outed last year.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A legal think tank published a report last week accusing Iran of being behind a map targeting hundreds of American government agencies as well many Jewish individuals and institutions in Massachusetts, in a website that was outed last June.

While the antisemitic angle of the Boston Mapping Project was widely covered at the time, in a 24-page report entitled “The Unseen Threat of the Mapping Project,” the Zachor Legal Institute wrote that the “true goal” of the website may well have been “to map the American security apparatus, and that the targeting of the American Jewish community – while real and troubling – may be a façade to obfuscate this plan.”

Still, the “harmonious encapsulation” of both “the core ideologies of the extreme left and extreme right antisemitism” in its target list of some 200 Jewish groups and their employees was one of the reasons Zachor gave for stating that the project was “the product of a foreign agenda.” The report said it would be “highly irregular” for a single American entity to be able to harmonize the two extremes “to garner support among radical Americans on both sides of the aisle.”

Jewish organizations on the interactive map included offices of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), AIPAC and J Street as well as local Jewish charities, newspapers, and a synagogue network.

The primary reason the report gave for fingering Iran was that out of some 500 targets, just under 300 are American government institutions, law enforcement groups such as the police and local FBI and Secret Service branches, military bases and US government-linked weapons manufacturers, with precise addresses attached.

The website called for all the targets to be “dismantled,” in an implicit encouragement of violent action.

Besides the threats to American agencies that work against Iran and Iranian plots against regime opponents in the U.S., the report points contains other indicators that it adduces to show that “There is considerable evidence that Iranian elements may be involved in creating and promoting”  the mapping project.

One of these indicators is the support it received from Iranian state-owned media. Soon after the website’s launch PressTV endorsed the project and called “to apply this type of mapping around the entire US and elsewhere,” said the report.

The institute was backed Wednesday by Rebekah Koffler, a former analyst at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

“It is my professional assessment that there’s a high probability of Iran’s involvement in this heinous project,” Koffler told Fox News Digital. “The project’s stated goals, antisemitic narrative, and methodology employed to galvanize support from extremist sympathizers, are consistent with the tradecraft of Iranian intelligence tradecraft and Iran’s declared policy to target U.S. persons.”

Moreover, she said, “As recently as last November, Homeland Secretary Mayorkas testified to the Senate that the Islamic Republic could attack the United States ‘with little to no warning.’ FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that Iran posted an escalating threat to the homeland, having become more capable and more aggressive in their harmful and criminal activity.”

Marc Greendorfer, Zachor’s president, backed his organization’s findings.

“There is no logical explanation for why the map was published other than to serve as a kill list for extremists to use when targeting United States’ national security infrastructure and prominent Jews in America,” he said.

“One only needs to look at the increasingly frequent violent attacks against law enforcement, homeland security and Jews in the United States to see that whoever is behind this project is trying to promulgate violence to promote an anti-American agenda. We believe that this has all the hallmarks of Iranian terror.”

The report has been endorsed by 20 pro-Israel organizations, including B’nai Brith, the Middle East Forum, and the Combat Antisemitism Movement.

Zachor is an American advocacy organization focusing on combating BDS and anti-Semitic activity in commercial, university and governmental sectors by using its legal expertise.

AntisemitismBostonIranian threatUS Iran