The postcard-esque Mediterranean Sea view from investigative
journalist Aaron Klein’s upper-floor Tel Aviv apartment is breathtaking. It’s
perhaps fitting that Klein’s floor-to-ceiling windows face the sea to the west,
as his main focus these days isn’t Israel and the Middle East, but the US. Klein
is a one-man media powerhouse; he hosts his own radio talk-show, serves as a
print and Internet news reporter, and is a New York Times best-selling
author.
In fact, Klein’s fifth book, which is set for release this
August, is centered on the upcoming presidential elections in the US. Never one
to shy away from searching for the truth even if it involves ruffling feathers
along the way, his new book is titled Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for
Four More Years Exposed.
Klein admits that the goal of his latest work is
“to defeat President Obama, and stop the so-called [extreme left-wing]
progressive movement and its followers from taking over the US.” Klein says that
his thorough research for the book, which contains over 2,000 footnotes,
“uncovers Obama’s blueprint for the [radical] transformation of the United
States over the course of his second term in office.”
While some might
rationalize that Klein is at a disadvantage delving into US politics from 5,000
miles away, he feels just the opposite. “I have a major advantage being
in Israel,” he says. “For example when a child is raised in a
dysfunctional household, sometimes he doesn’t realize the reality of the
situation until he leaves and takes a look at things from the outside. Being
here in Israel I have the advantage of exploring US politics with a proper
perspective, where I can see things far more clearly.”
As proof of that
advantage, Klein, who moved to Israel in 2004, says that while covering the 2008
US presidential elections, his research, conducted from the other side of the
globe into then presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s past “revealed Obama’s ties
with radical groups that sought the downfall of the US government.”
One
such group, says Klein, “included the ‘Weathermen’ terror organization led by
Bill Ayers.” The group claimed responsibility for numerous and sometimes deadly
bombings against US government installations during the 1960s and 1970s,
expressing their disapproval of the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War.
Klein says that his research into Obama’s close ties to Ayers along with a
connection both men have to Columbia Professor Rashid Ismail Khalidi, who Klein
has reported as having expressed support for Palestinian terrorism, “exploded
into one of the biggest issues in the election.”
Another major election
controversy as a result of Klein’s reporting was a radio interview he conducted
with Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef in which Yousef reveals that Hamas was openly
endorsing Obama’s candidacy. As a result of Klein’s shocking interview
Republican candidate John McCain cited the Hamas endorsement numerous times in
an attempt to delegitimize his opponent’s credibility.
Klein, who is now
32 years old, caught the journalism bug as an undergraduate biology major at New
York’s Yeshiva University (YU). His intention was to study medicine, but as a
student during the height of the second intifada in 2001, he became frustrated
with “the media’s biased news coverage of the Middle East.” He says that
“I felt I could create change by going into journalism, particularly reporting
on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
He discovered the true power of the
pen during his senior year while serving as the editor-in-chief of the YU
official student newspaper, The Commentator. “Before I took it over,”
Klein says, referring to the newspaper, “it was a glorified synagogue
newsletter. But afterwards, we started to do some serious investigative
journalism.”
Not everyone on the YU faculty was pleased, especially after
an article Klein published questioned whether an $8 million gift to the school
was being used for its intended purpose.
Following that exposé and
several other investigative pieces in which the integrity of specific decisions
made by the institution was questioned, Klein was alerted that his newspapers
had been disappearing from their displays. An undercover video recorded by
students proved that the school’s maintenance staff had been confiscating the
issues of the newspapers which featured the controversial articles.
Klein
says that maintenance admitted off the record that they were ordered to remove
the papers by upper-echelon university staff members. After threatening to
launch a lawsuit against the university for violating the newspaper’s first
amendment rights (significantly for $8 million), Klein was compensated
financially for the missing newspapers.
While he admits with a laugh that
because of his run-ins with the YU administration he has yet to receive even one
piece of alumni mail, the incident, which made headlines on the front page of
the New York Times Metro section and other prominent publications, solidified
his decision to drop medicine and pursue hard-hitting journalism.
So when
he wasn’t covering campus controversies, Klein focused on learning about and
reporting on the threats of Islamic terrorism against Western
civilization. In fact, he says that “before the September 11 attacks on
America most Americans didn’t know who Osama bin Laden even was, but [through my
research] I was convinced that we needed to pay attention to Islamic terror
groups, specifically al-Qaida, since it seemed there was going to be an attack
on American soil.”
Those beliefs were affirmed when Klein, just a
21-year-old student, took a potentially major risk and spent a weekend with the
al-Qaida affiliated al-Muhajiroun terror organization in London while
researching for an article. Klein, who was only somewhat nervous in the presence
of Islamic terrorists, was “stunned” by how open the group was in expressing its
true agenda: the destruction of the United States and England. He says that
“they were so boastful of their goals, and even though they knew I was a Jew and
the editor of the YU paper, they were thrilled I would share their motivation
with the general public.”
Klein says he discovered from the terrorists
during that unforgettable experience that it is in fact infuriating to them when
“The New York Times [and other mainstream media outlets] describes a [Muslim]
suicide bomber as being poor, or desperate, or acting as a result of [Israel’s]
occupation. They want everyone to know they are driven [to attack] by Allah, in
order to reach [what they believe] is the highest level of his
paradise.”
Klein’s “al-Qaida weekend” was picked up by the Fox News
Channel and he was interviewed on the station’s popular Fox and Friends morning
program.
After graduation Klein was offered a job at the conservative
WorldNetDaily.com news website. He says he was comfortable starting his
professional career with World Net Daily since it was “one of only media outlets
I trusted that would let me report without editorial censorship.”
IN
2004, when then-prime minister Ariel Sharon launched his Gaza disengagement
plan, Klein decided to get on a plane for Israel “to report on the massive
danger which would result because of the plan.” He recalls embedding
himself in Gush Katif and reporting as World Net Daily’s Israel bureau chief
while living under the daily barrage of Kassam rockets.
But unsatisfied
with his reports on terrorism unless hearing directly from the horse’s mouth,
Klein would often make his way into the Palestinian Authority-controlled sections
of Gaza to interview Hamas operatives directly about their goals and
motivation.
He says that at the time “Hamas openly boasted that thanks to
Israel’s planned withdrawal they would one day take control and use Gaza as a
launching pad for rockets in their war against (in their words) the Jewish
state.” While Hamas made their intentions clear, Klein says that his revelations
were “ignored by Israel, and nothing I reported was going to change the minds
[of Israel’s leaders] once their decision was made.”
After the
disengagement he relocated to Tel Aviv and continued to report for World Net
Daily, where his focus gradually shifted from coverage of Israel and the Middle
East to newsworthy items pertaining to American audiences, both on international
and domestic topics. In addition to reporting for World Net Daily he writes for
the New York Jewish Press, and is a frequent guest on cable news channels in the
US, often having to drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for TV appearances, since
that is where most international bureaus are located.
In 2010, WABC radio
in New York offered Klein his own talk-radio show, after hearing him serve as a
regular guest on other prominent radio shows being broadcast from the Jerusalem
Post radio studios as part of the America’s Voices in Israel hasbara (public
diplomacy) initiative.
After only two years, the show, called Aaron Klein
Investigative Radio,” airing on Sundays from 7 to 9 p.m. New York time, has over
one million listeners, and Klein was recently named in Talkers Magazine “Heavy
Hundred” for 2012. The annual award is the most prestigious recognition in the
US talk-radio industry, given to only 100 hosts based on listenership and
influence. Most impressive is the fact that Klein made the list while only
hosting a local show, while other names on the list, including Glenn Beck, Sean
Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, are syndicated across the country.
Ironic yet
again, that one of the top weekend talk-radio shows in the US is actually being
broadcast live from Israel. Klein says that it is somewhat difficult with
the time difference having to go on air from 2 to 4 a.m. Israel time. But it
helps that he has converted a spare bedroom in his apartment into his own small
but technologically advanced radio studio, allowing him not to have to leave the
comfort of home in the middle of the night. Also, most technical aspects of the
show, including patching in on-air guests, callers, and playing intro music, are
handled by the production team in New York.
Klein continues to have
well-known Islamic terrorist leaders as guests on his show on a regular basis.
In response to whether some feel he shouldn’t provide a mouthpiece to groups
like Hamas, he is adamant that “I would never allow them to make any direct
threats. If they would do so, I would cut them off.”
He adds that “I
think I do a much bigger service by informing the American public about the
ultimate goal of terrorism – a planet run by Islamic law. By interviewing
terrorists, I provide the most effective way of getting that message across.”
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