OAN’s Brooke Mallory
12:28 PM – Sunday, June 11, 2023
Representative Jack Bergman has sounded the national security alarm by requesting that the Justice Department examine the ongoing activities of an anti-American website that is reportedly promoted by Iran’s dictatorship and incites assassination plots against U.S. law enforcement officials and American Jews.
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Bergman (R-Mich.) wrote to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month, and the letter demanded immediate action.
“To protect Americans’ national security interests and religious freedoms, the Justice Department should commission a full investigation into the origins and funding of the Mapping Project, including possible collaboration with the Islamic Republic,” he wrote.
Bergman continued in his letter to Garland, “I write to express my concern that the Islamic Republic of Iran is covertly supporting a purported social justice movement in the United States known as ‘the Mapping Project’ as part of a sophisticated campaign to sew social discord and undermine public faith in American institutions.”
“Launched in 2022, the Mapping Project maintains a website with an interactive map that pinpoints the precise geographic locations of more than 500 civil society, government, national security, religious, and community organizations in the state of Massachusetts that it claims should be ‘dismantled’ for advancing perceived ‘harms’ in the United States and in Israel.”
Bergman also noted, “Among the entities whose precise locations are shared on the Mapping Project website are some 271 police stations – law enforcement is a frequent target for the Mapping Project, which publicly called for the abolition of the Boston Police Department – nine U.S. military bases and installations, and several Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Secret Service offices. Nearly 300 of the approximately 500 organizations mapped by the Mapping Project contribute to the nation’s national security.”
The Republican congressman highlighted the Zachor Legal Institute in his letter because of its March study on the Mapping Project.
He claimed the Zachor report was “endorsed by 17 additional and highly respected American NGOs” and resulted in “finding that Iranian elements are likely involved in the development and promotion of the Mapping Project.”
Bergman’s letter asserted that “The Mapping Project combines elements of far-left extremism with anti-Western and pro-Communist ideologies to demonize and attack organizations not aligned with its profoundly illiberal and un-American worldview. It often uses extremist – and sometimes violent – rhetoric to name and shame organizations that run afoul of its views.”
The Mapping Project is happening at a time when there have been more reported outbreaks of lethal antisemitic attacks in the U.S., “from the mass shootings at Chabad of Poway and Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh to the recent hostage standoff at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas,” stated Bergman.
“On multiple occasions, the Mapping Project was endorsed by Iranian-owned media organization PressTV, which said that the Mapping Project should be expanded to additional states beyond Massachusetts, and by Al Mayadeen, which is affiliated with Hezbollah,” the letter continued.
Iran’s PressTV was sanctioned by the U.S. government and was also reportedly implicated in the torture of a Canadian-Iranian correspondent for Newsweek.
The government has labeled Iran as the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism and named the Lebanese Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization.
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