The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported yesterday on a series of viral videos produced by a new organization TheLandOfIsrael.com offering justifications for an Israeli attack on Iran. JTA notes the videos, littered with factual errors, misleading half-truths, and comparisons between Iran and Nazi Germany, have been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

Many of the clips in the films, including one of Mitt Romney’s controversial adviser Walid Phares, are drawn from the documentary “Iranium,” a film by the Islamophobic organization Clarion Fund that also pushed a hawkish perspective on Iran.

One of the films, titled “Israel vs. Iran — No Fear,” has to date received more than 2 million views since its release five days ago. In it, the narrator says, “Everyone knows Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, or they have them already.” No credible media accounts or experts claim Iran already has a nuclear weapon, and, while regarding the Iranian program as a potential threat, reported U.S. and Israeli intelligence estimates both conclude that Iran has not decided to build a bomb. “But why isn’t anyone doing what we all know needs to be done?” the film’s narrator goes on.

Watch it:

One of The Land Of Israel .com’s founders, Jeremy Gimpel, told ThinkProgress by phone that the clips were used by permission from the Clarion Fund after they explained they were making videos as a part of a campaign to “assert Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Like Clarion official Alex Traiman, who wrote and directed “Iranium,” Gimpel lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. “I live in Judea,” he said, using the biblical term for a region of the West Bank. “I live in Neve Daniel.” Gimpel and TheLandOfIsrael.com’s co-founder Ari Abromowitz host a radio show on a station run by pro-settler media outlet Arutz Sheva. (Traiman hosted a show on the same station before jumping to the Clarion Fund.)

Asked about numerous factual inaccuracies and misleading points in the two short films, Gimpel — who said an attack on Iran would be “like going to the dentist, and who wants to go to the dentist?” — dismissed the criticisms as “semantics.”

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The House is expected to vote this week on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a new bill — sponsored by Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) — meant to address cybersecurity threats by improving public-private information sharing capabilities. However, privacy rights groups and activists are criticizing the measure because its vague language could allow private companies to share personal information with government agencies without protections, such as obtaining a warrant.

Last week an Obama administration official denounced any legislation that would “sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security” but today, the White House signaled out CISPA specifically for criticism, the Guardian reports:

Ahead of the bill coming in front of the House of Representatives alongside three other cybersecurity bills, Alec Ross, a senior adviser for innovation to Hillary Clinton, reiterated the administration’s opposition to the proposals in more explicit language than previous White House statements.

“The Obama administration opposes Cispa,” he told the Guardian. “The president has called for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. There is absolutely a need for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation.

“[But] part of what has been communicated to congressional committees is that we want legislation to come with necessary protections for individuals.”

In addition to criticism from the White House, rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation, launched a campaign last week to raise awareness about CISPA’s lack of privacy protection.

But despite the opposition, Rogers told TPM yesterday that the House will most likely pass the bill. “I feel pretty confident that we’ll close out the bill,” he said. “There is a strong chance that the bill will be passed [by the House this] week.”

Rogers said he is open to making changes to the measure to satisfy its critics but claimed that there are “some people who aren’t interested in having any bill happen.”

In 2009, the Obama administration announced that it would try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM) and 4 other co-conspirators in civilian courts in New York City, but the right wing and obstructionists in Congress launched a fearmongering campaign to prevent this from happening. “There is not going to be a trial in New York, I guarantee it,” then House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said at the time. “There is no appetite for the trials in Congress.” Attorney General Eric Holder eventually acquiesced to the pressure and sent the case back to the Pentagon. A military commission trial is set for Guantanamo Bay next month.

But a high-profile terrorism trial is currently taking place in Brooklyn without much fanfare. Authorities arrested three men in 2009 and 2010 accused of plotting to blow up targets on the New York City subway system. While two of the suspects have already pleaded guilty, the trial of the third, Adis Medunjanin, who was arrested in January 2010, began last week. This time though, the right-wing isn’t saying much, NPR reports:

“It’s rather ironic that this case has attracted so little attention,” says Matthew Waxman, a law professor at Columbia University who used to work on detainee affairs for the Bush administration. “This trial has been an occasion for a convention of terrorism suspects.” [...]

What makes the Brooklyn trial of Medunjanin particularly unusual, Waxman of Columbia University says, is the sheer number of convicted terrorists who have shown up in court. He says the testimony, and the way the trial is unfolding, is proof that the criminal justice system can handle terrorism cases — and tough cases with classified material don’t need to be sent to military commissions at Guantanamo.

“In the past, the idea of prosecuting terrorists here in New York has generated huge outcry,” he says. “But this high-profile trial is going on right here.”

Listen to the full NPR report here:

Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that federal officials said the plot was “one of the most serious threats to the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks.”

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The defense industry is known as a major lobbying power in Congress but the industry’s sharp uptick in campaign contributions, the majority of which are designated to Republicans, in the 2012 political cycle indicates that defense contractors are making a strong rightward shift in their political giving.

Defense industry contributions to individual candidates and PACs reached nearly $13 million earlier this month. That number, only $11 million short of the $24 million contributed in the 2008 political cycle, suggests that the defense industry will contribute more in this political cycle than in any previous election. And the increase in funds is matched by a dramatic partisan shift in the industry’s contributions.

In 2008, 51 percent of contributions went to Democrats while 49 percent were designated for Republicans. In 2010, that trend continued with 53 percent going to Democrats and 47 percent to Republicans. But the 2012 cycle appears to mark a shift in partisan bent as a whopping 60 percent of defense industry campaign dollars went to Republican campaigns.

When contacted by Politico, General Dynamic spokesman Kendell Pease explained that the Republican majority in Congress could explain the shift in campaign dollars toward the GOP:

Those are the folks that are here. Those are the folks that are making decisions now, today, and it’s very easy to figure out where they stand on issues that we feel are most important. We continue to support those folks, both House and Senate, who support those issues that we feel are most important.

Indeed, supporting Republicans has paid off. A budget proposal put forward by Mitt Romney would add $100 billion to the Pentagon’s budget by 2016, while imposing cuts on health care for the poor and disabled and reductions in funding for food inspection, border security and education. And a House Republican budget proposal calls for $554 billion in defense spending in 2013, a $29 billion increase over the White House’s proposal.

As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) has found himself the biggest recipient of defense industry dollars, taking in over $393,000 in the 2012 political cycle. The defense industry, apparently eager to repay McKeon for fearlessly defending the defense industry from budget cuts, has extended its largess to his wife, Patricia McKeon, who took in at least $19,200 in defense industry campaign contributions for her California State Assembly campaign (where national defense is not at issue). But McKeon denies the contributions were the result of arm twisting or repayment for his work in protecting the defense budget as budget cuts sweep across Washington. “She’s made lots of friends [in Washington],” McKeon told the Los Angeles Times. “When they found out she was running, they offered to help.”