Posted on 08/14/2002 10:57:37 PM PDT by Stultis
World dispatch
The emails also go to politicians and academics, as well as to lots of other journalists. The stories they contain are usually interesting.
Whenever I get an email from the institute, several of my Guardian colleagues receive one too and regularly forward their copies to me - sometimes with a note suggesting that I might like to check out the story and write about it.
If the note happens to come from a more senior colleague, I'm left feeling that I really ought to write about it. One example last week was a couple of paragraphs translated by the institute, in which a former doctor in the Iraqi army claimed that Saddam Hussein had personally given orders to amputate the ears of military deserters.
The organisation that makes these translations and sends them out is the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), based in Washington but with recently-opened offices in London, Berlin and Jerusalem.
Its work is subsidised by US taxpayers because as an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit" organisation, it has tax-deductible status under American law.
Memri's purpose, according to its website, is to bridge the language gap between the west - where few speak Arabic - and the Middle East, by "providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media".
Despite these high-minded statements, several things make me uneasy whenever I'm asked to look at a story circulated by Memri. First of all, it's a rather mysterious organisation. Its website does not give the names of any people to contact, not even an office address.
The reason for this secrecy, according to a former employee, is that "they don't want suicide bombers walking through the door on Monday morning" (Washington Times, June 20).
This strikes me as a somewhat over-the-top precaution for an institute that simply wants to break down east-west language barriers.
The second thing that makes me uneasy is that the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel. I am not alone in this unease.
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Washington Times: "Memri's intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible."
Memri might, of course, argue that it is seeking to encourage moderation by highlighting the blatant examples of intolerance and extremism. But if so, one would expect it - for the sake of non-partisanship - t o publicise extremist articles in the Hebrew media too.
Although Memri claims that it does provide translations from Hebrew media, I can't recall receiving any.
Evidence from Memri's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status. Besides supporting liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market, the institute also emphasises "the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel".
That is what its website used to say, but the words about Zionism have now been deleted. The original page, however, can still be found in internet archives.
The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.
Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.
Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri's website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.
Among the other three, one served in the Israeli army's Northern Command Ordnance Corps, one has an academic background, and the sixth is a former stand-up comedian.
Col Carmon's co-founder at Memri is Meyrav Wurmser, who is also director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, which bills itself as "America's premier source of applied research on enduring policy challenges".
The ubiquitous Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's defence policy board, recently joined Hudson's board of trustees.
Ms Wurmser is the author of an academic paper entitled Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism? in which she argues that leftwing Israeli intellectuals pose "more than a passing threat" to the state of Israel, undermining its soul and reducing its will for self-defence.
In addition, Ms Wurmser is a highly qualified, internationally recognised, inspiring and knowledgeable speaker on the Middle East whose presence would make any "event, radio or television show a unique one" - according to Benador Associates, a public relations company which touts her services.
Nobody, so far as I know, disputes the general accuracy of Memri's translations but there are other reasons to be concerned about its output.
The email it circulated last week about Saddam Hussein ordering people's ears to be cut off was an extract from a longer article in the pan-Arab newspaper, al-Hayat, by Adil Awadh who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of it.
It was the sort of tale about Iraqi brutality that newspapers would happily reprint without checking, especially in the current atmosphere of war fever. It may well be true, but it needs to be treated with a little circumspection.
Mr Awadh is not exactly an independent figure. He is, or at least was, a member of the Iraqi National Accord, an exiled Iraqi opposition group backed by the US - and neither al-Hayat nor Memri mentioned this.
Also, Mr Awadh's allegation first came to light some four years ago, when he had a strong personal reason for making it. According to a Washington Post report in 1998, the amputation claim formed part of his application for political asylum in the United States.
At the time, he was one of six Iraqis under arrest in the US as suspected terrorists or Iraqi intelligence agents, and he was trying to show that the Americans had made a mistake.
Earlier this year, Memri scored two significant propaganda successes against Saudi Arabia. The first was its translation of an article from al-Riyadh newspaper in which a columnist wrote that Jews use the blood of Christian or Muslim children in pastries for the Purim religious festival.
The writer, a university teacher, was apparently relying on an anti-semitic myth that dates back to the middle ages. What this demonstrated, more than anything, was the ignorance of many Arabs - even those highly educated - about Judaism and Israel, and their readiness to believe such ridiculous stories.
But Memri claimed al-Riyadh was a Saudi "government newspaper" - in fact it's privately owned - implying that the article had some form of official approval.
Al-Riyadh's editor said he had not seen the article before publication because he had been abroad. He apologised without hesitation and sacked his columnist, but by then the damage had been done.
Memri's next success came a month later when Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London wrote a poem entitled The Martyrs - about a young woman suicide bomber - which was published in al-Hayat newspaper.
Memri sent out translated extracts from the poem, which it described as "praising suicide bombers". Whether that was the poem's real message is a matter of interpretation. It could, perhaps more plausibly, be read as condemning the political ineffectiveness of Arab leaders, but Memri's interpretation was reported, almost without question, by the western media.
These incidents involving Saudi Arabia should not be viewed in isolation. They are part of building a case against the kingdom and persuading the United States to treat it as an enemy, rather than an ally.
It's a campaign that the Israeli government and American neo-conservatives have been pushing since early this year - one aspect of which was the bizarre anti-Saudi briefing at the Pentagon, hosted last month by Richard Perle.
To anyone who reads Arabic newspapers regularly, it should be obvious that the items highlighted by Memri are those that suit its agenda and are not representative of the newspapers' content as a whole.
The danger is that many of the senators, congressmen and "opinion formers" who don't read Arabic but receive Memri's emails may get the idea that these extreme examples are not only truly representative but also reflect the policies of Arab governments.
Memri's Col Carmon seems eager to encourage them in that belief. In Washington last April, in testimony to the House committee on international relations, he portrayed the Arab media as part of a wide-scale system of government-sponsored indoctrination.
"The controlled media of the Arab governments conveys hatred of the west, and in particular, of the United States," he said. "Prior to September 11, one could frequently find articles which openly supported, or even called for, terrorist attacks against the United States ...
"The United States is sometimes compared to Nazi Germany, President Bush to Hitler, Guantanamo to Auschwitz," he said.
In the case of the al-Jazeera satellite channel, he added, "the overwhelming majority of guests and callers are typically anti-American and anti-semitic".
Unfortunately, it is on the basis of such sweeping generalisations that much of American foreign policy is built these days.
As far as relations between the west and the Arab world are concerned, language is a barrier that perpetuates ignorance and can easily foster misunderstanding.
All it takes is a small but active group of Israelis to exploit that barrier for their own ends and start changing western perceptions of Arabs for the worse.
It is not difficult to see what Arabs might do to counter that. A group of Arab media companies could get together and publish translations of articles that more accurately reflect the content of their newspapers.
It would certainly not be beyond their means. But, as usual, they may prefer to sit back and grumble about the machinations of Israeli intelligence veterans.
* Join Middle East editor Brian Whitaker and Washington correspondent Julian Borger at 1pm on Tuesday August 13 for an online chat to discuss the growing threat of a US military attack on Iraq.z
Well, first of all, if a group has tax-deductable status that does NOT mean the group is 'subsidized' by US taxpayers. It means that the group doesn't get taxed like a regular corporation, IOW, it keeps its money and doesn't have a profit after expenses. Its money comes from donations, not neccessarily from the taxpayers.
Hey, Dougie, they also translate articles by moderate, modernist or otherwise anti-islamist Muslims. I bet you don't like that either! Why don't you give up the puerile spin and just tell us how much you love Usama?
Given the patch they have decided to plough, a lot of "not for US" info is available and usually reflects badly on liberal positions regarding the ME.
Well, they DO provide translations. In fact, they are about the ONLY organization which does provide translations of the Arab press without commentary. (At least translations which match the actual words.)
Despite these high-minded statements, several things make me uneasy ... it's a rather mysterious organisation. Its website does not give the names of any people to contact, not even an office address. The reason for this secrecy, according to a former employee, is that "they don't want suicide bombers walking through the door on Monday morning" (Washington Times, June 20).
It can't be too secret if you can do a "whois search." It doesn't take a genius to understand that if MEMRI had a physical 'storefront' or other addresses, they WOULD get bombed. That's perfectly understandable, in a world where pizza parlors and bat mitzvahs get bombed, or where people fly planes full of innocent people into buildings, or attack tourists visiting Egyptian historic sites, or push wheelchair-bound Americans off of cruise ships, or kidnap people and cut their heads off because they were named 'Daniel.' The OPERATIVE QUESTION is, "Are their translations accurate?" If they are, it doesn't matter who translated them, where they are, who funded them or why. These things become a concern if the translations are inaccurate. It is clear they don't translate every article- it is a tiny web site. Their purpose is to shine some light on the roaches.
This strikes me as a somewhat over-the-top precaution for an institute that simply wants to break down east-west language barriers.
It isn't when you see suicide bombers picking targets to maximize the number of Jewish or American casualties. And it isn't considering that in Palestinian enclaves, all it takes to get beaten up or even lynched as a collaborator by a terrorist-supporter is for you to voice opposition to them, or in Arab countries, a simple cross could get you arrested by the religious police. And it doesn't seem over-the-top considering that palestinians have even entered the US to assassinate people opposed to their leadership's agenda.
The second thing that makes me uneasy is that the stories... reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel.
As if your stories don't promote your own agenda? Come now, everyone has an agenda, even if they try to hide it, it is going to be reflected in their writing. Journalists aren't scientists and even scientists sometimes color things to get research grants. This is not unlike how the US media and European media select only stories which make terrorists or liberals look good- one news service even refuses to call terrorists 'terrorists' and tries to associate them with 'fredom fighters' when their tactics and goals are wholly different. I think it is obvious from looking at MEMRI that their purpose is to point out the discrepencies in communication between what Arabs tell eachother in their press verses what they tell us. There is a very distinct difference between what many Arab speakers say in English verses what they say in Arabic. Arafat is notorious for it. We got another dose from some muslim attendees at the WTC memorial services. Say one thing, do another...
Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the Washington Times: "Memri's intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible."
I bet the 'Council on American-Islamic relations' is just pure as the wind-driven snow, too. </sarcasm> MEMRI they have an incredibly EASY job, due to the abundance of suitable material produced not by MEMRI, or by Jews, but by Arabs. The irony is how much of the material comes from state-sponsored or licensed sources. (And I'm not talking about 'nonprofits.') These aren't always the ramblings of free lancers or mere opinionated citizens.
MEMRI might, of course, argue that it is seeking to encourage moderation by highlighting the blatant examples of intolerance and extremism. But if so, one would expect it - for the sake of non-partisanship - t o publicise extremist articles in the Hebrew media too.
They are succeeding in that the arabs know their efforts to woo American public opinion have fallen flat. Not because of MEMRI, but because Arab leaders really don't understand why they are not liked. It is a cultural thing that they will have to grow out of. If the Guardian wants to publish extremist articles in the Hebrew media, it is free to do so to counter MEMRI. You don't need to write a hit piece on MEMRI to complain about 'Hebrew extremists' since there is no shortage of Jews who already do just that. MEMRI doesn't support the worldview of extremist authors by altering material- it merely translates legitimate articles as-is, right from Arab press sources. It works because the TRUTH HURTS. There's also a big difference in that the 'extremist Hebrew' articles are widely acknowledged to be extreme- Israel and Hebrew readers, unlike their Arab counterparts, have ready access to freely published non-government press and can tell the difference and slam the authors. Westerners get to hear all sides of the issue while some Pakistani working in Saudi Arabia has very restricted access to opposition news. The same goes for Iraqis and Iranians, and as we saw with Arafat's threats against western cameramen after 911, we know that Arafat is seeking to control information as well. That's the problem- the Arab world is one of controlled press and cultivated antisemitism and antiamericanism which serves to distract people from the real corruption problems.
Although Memri claims that it does provide translations from Hebrew media, I can't recall receiving any.
Well, go to the Israeli press and you will find that they often provide their own translations. If they don't, take a copy to your nearby jewish friends and they can translate it for you too. The last time I checked MEMRI it was still building its web site and the material there was limited- at the time mostly to Islamicist cartoons which are certainly worse than anything I've seen in any of my papers. Perhaps if you can find a Jewish extremist who denies his extremism like the Governments funding the Arab press deny theirs, you might have a case- just publish any Hebrew articles that say "Israelis should strap bombs on their kids and send them into palestine to blow up busses," or any that say the "palestinians mix Jewish blood into pastries so the Muslims can break their fast after Ramadan." Even if one published such a thing they would be slammmed by other Hebrew and English press outlets and would be so outnumbered that they would be known for what they were. Indeed, the whole world would come down on the authors like a ton of bricks. But when the Arab press does it, we hear nothing but excuses- not criticism. The Guardian squeals about detainees in earmuffs and blindfolds and Eurosnot press screams 'torture!' but looks the other way if the person being tortured is a Jew having his throat cut or Americans being incinerated. The US is told to 'understand' the Arab viewpoint but no one demands that the Arabs understand ours. The US and Israel are told to worry about the civil rights of captured terrorists while no one says a thing about a captured American being executed on the battlefield, or about captured IDF soldiers being tortured. No one even mentions Kuwaitis who have been taken into Iraq and never returned- oh, no... we hear only about how mean American and Israel are and how we don't 'understand.'
Evidence from Memri's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status. Besides supporting liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market, the institute also emphasises "the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel".
First you try to slam MEMRI for 'not being what they advertise,' then you admit they said quite clearly what they are about. If they support freedoms and accurately translate articles, what is your complaint? How come we only hear 'Islam is the Religion of Peace,' or 'Islam is a peaceful religion' in UK or US press but never hear anyone say the same for Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity or any religion but Islam? How come 'zionism' is bad but 'palestinian fascism' is 'good?'
That is what its website used to say, but the words about Zionism have now been deleted. The original page, however, can still be found in internet archives.
Print it out and frame it. No doubt you claim to be unbiased too but only a fool would think that any press source is unbiased. I can't find the archived web page for Dan Rather, for example- you know the one that I'm thinking of- the one where he admits to being a communist and supporter of Fidel Castro. Somehow I think he has never bothered to advertise it. I'm also still waiting to see the Reuters web page where they admit they are anti-American and pro-terrorist.
The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon. Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.
I don't care if he is Richard Nixon or HIllary Clinton- are the articles MEMRI posts translated accurately or not?
Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri's website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.
Are the articles translated accurately or not?
Among the other three, one served in the Israeli army's Northern Command Ordnance Corps, one has an academic background, and the sixth is a former stand-up comedian.
Oh God- not a comedian! Well, take a look at US news... you will see editorials by Admiral Moorer, or articles and videos by others who were once in the military, intel or in government like Gertz, or Ollie North. But these are real opinion pieces. The MEMRI people aren't even going that far- they are doing nothing more than printing Arab news, much of it from governments which do not have 'opposition press' or 'opposition parties.' They are not writing their own op-ed pieces, though they certainly could do so.
Col Carmon's co-founder at Memri is Meyrav Wurmser, who is also director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, which bills itself as "America's premier source of applied research on enduring policy challenges".
Are the articles accurately translated or not?
The ubiquitous Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's defence policy board, recently joined Hudson's board of trustees.
Good for him, it's about time we start publishing what Arabs read every day. Lord knows the Arab press doesn't provide translations- for the obvious reasons.
Ms Wurmser is the author of an academic paper entitled Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism? in which she argues that leftwing Israeli intellectuals pose "more than a passing threat" to the state of Israel, undermining its soul and reducing its will for self-defence.
She's absolutely right about that! They do a number on the US, too. Leftwingers are the same folks who gave us socialism and communism, the most murderous political forces in world history.
In addition, Ms Wurmser...
She's got to be more interesting than Zogby or the anti-Israeli slimeballs I've been seeing on my TV since 9/11 claiming that Arafat is not a terrorist.
Nobody, so far as I know, disputes the general accuracy of Memri's translations but there are other reasons to be concerned about its output.
Ah. I see that the translations ARE accurate. I thought I wouldn hilight this since this is indeed the only thing that matters.
The email it circulated last week about Saddam Hussein ordering people's ears to be cut off was an extract from a longer article in the pan-Arab newspaper, al-Hayat, by Adil Awadh who claimed to have first-hand knowledge of it.
Bet that article was a hoot.
It was the sort of tale about Iraqi brutality that newspapers would happily reprint without checking, especially in the current atmosphere of war fever. It may well be true, but it needs to be treated with a little circumspection.
Treat it with circumspection then. No one is stopping you... wish you nuts would do the same about reports of the US 'massacering' Afghans or horror of horrors- making Taliban and al Qaeda detainees wear jump suits, shackles, and eat froot loops. If I remember right, your paper was positively shrill about that.
Mr Awadh is not exactly an independent figure. He is, or at least was, a member of the Iraqi National Accord, an exiled Iraqi opposition group backed by the US - and neither al-Hayat nor Memri mentioned this.
No one mentions that Helen Thomas is a life-long democrat, or that Dan Rather is a communist, or that you are a leftist. Go ahead, publish your voting record and party affiliation alongside each article you write or reprint, even if you are not the author- that is what you seem to expect others to do, after all. Instead, the press pretends to be 'uniased' when the average presstitute is a lib- I think in the US the number of DNC voters in the press by far outweighs those on the right. Wasn't that figure of lefties around 80 or 90%? what does a person's political background have to do with a translation- if they dont alter the translation to say something that wasn't in the original? So far your whole argument seems to be 'guilt by association.'
Also, Mr Awadh's allegation first came to light some four years ago, when he had a strong personal reason for making it. According to a Washington Post report in 1998, the amputation claim formed part of his application for political asylum in the United States.
MEMRI just translated the article which had been printed elsewhere. They didn't make a judgement of its veracity. They reported - you decide.
At the time, he was one of six Iraqis under arrest in the US as suspected terrorists or Iraqi intelligence agents, and he was trying to show that the Americans had made a mistake.
Once again, this reflects on him and the original source, not on MEMRI.
Earlier this year, Memri scored two significant propaganda successes against Saudi Arabia. The first was its translation of an article from al-Riyadh newspaper in which a columnist wrote that Jews use the blood of Christian or Muslim children in pastries for the Purim religious festival.
Was the article accurately translated? You know it was.
The writer, a university teacher, was apparently relying on an anti-semitic myth that dates back to the middle ages. What this demonstrated, more than anything, was the ignorance of many Arabs - even those highly educated - about Judaism and Israel, and their readiness to believe such ridiculous stories.
That reflects on the original article and its author. MEMRI merely translated it so we can read some of what Saudi Arabians were reading. If it was an accurate translation, take up your argument with the author who believes it, not with people who are showing us what is being printed in the Arab press.
But Memri claimed al-Riyadh was a Saudi "government newspaper" - in fact it's privately owned - implying that the article had some form of official approval. In Saudi Arabia, NOTHING is printed which would run counter to their government- they are all in effect 'government papers.' They can't be anything else. When a country has no free press, all of its press sources which are not persecuted are a pretty good indicator of what is OK. And a country which doesn't have a free press has taken the responsibility for what is printed in its borders onto its own shoulders and away from its citizens. If you don't believe me, go to Saudi Arabia, print an article advocating Christian worship or Judaism, and pass it around. If you survive with your head I'll buy you a popsicle to cool the sting of the whip marks. MEMRI specified who gave the info. They merely translated it- they didn't claim to have authored it.
Al-Riyadh's editor said he had not seen the article before publication because he had been abroad. He apologised without hesitation and sacked his columnist, but by then the damage had been done.
Too bad. He's the editor, his employees know what is OK with him. Wonder how many other articles Al-Riyadh has published which we should see? I doubt they are any more accurate, don't you? Maybe we can get some old copies since the Intefadal began?
Memri's next success came a month later when Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London wrote a poem entitled The Martyrs - about a young woman suicide bomber - which was published in al-Hayat newspaper.
That was such a sweet poem. Did you read it? Was it not published exactly where MEMRI said it was? Was the tranlation accurate? You know it was.
Memri sent out translated extracts from the poem, which it described as "praising suicide bombers". Whether that was the poem's real message is a matter of interpretation. It could, perhaps more plausibly, be read as condemning the political ineffectiveness of Arab leaders, but Memri's interpretation was reported, almost without question, by the western media.
Take it to the Western media- MEMRI merely translated the thing. If it wasn't praising suicide bombers there is certainly no shortage of such praise out there and a Saudi poem condemning suicide bombers really would be news. (But you know it didn't condemn suicide bombers no matter how you translate it, did it? ). Provide us with the 'alternate translation' so we can see if it matches the translation from MEMRI, or see if a miracle occured and it condemned suicide bombing.
These incidents involving Saudi Arabia should not be viewed in isolation. They are part of building a case against the kingdom and persuading the United States to treat it as an enemy, rather than an ally.
Saudi Arabia is neither- it is a primitive monarchy with a royal family that is full of intrigue. Some want US ties, some hate the US. The evil guys are battling for control over the others as we write. Depending on who has control at a given time, the country will behave a certain way. But even if the better ones in the royal family beat the evil ones and get a firm grip on the throne, they must still appease the extremists within Saidi Arabia and so they will still turn a blind eye to much of what its people fund in other countries. They are not sufficiently empowered to disregard extremist Wahhabists outright, nor to clamp down on them when they fund terrorism in Israel or the rest of the world. As a consequence, the US does have to be careful in its dealings. Saudi Arabia is a problem country but I'm not one of the ones who thinks that all Saudis are the root of all evil. I do know Saudi Arabia desperately needs reform but its position with Mecca and Medina inside of its borders means a lot of external extremists in Yemen and Egypt think they have a say in Saudi Arabia.
It's a campaign that the Israeli government and American neo-conservatives have been pushing since early this year - one aspect of which was the bizarre anti-Saudi briefing at the Pentagon, hosted last month by Richard Perle.
True, that was probably a stupid briefing but it isn't like those Pentagon seminars aren't routinely stupid. happen all the time... like sensitivity seminars, it is just one more idiotic seminar for non-warriors to attend and for others to sleep through or avoid. You want to see some silly seminars, go see what other branches of government are meeting with, like calling Hollywood stars to testify before congress, or meeting with the American Muslim COuncil or assorted other think-tanks.
To anyone who reads Arabic newspapers regularly, it should be obvious that the items highlighted by Memri are those that suit its agenda and are not representative of the newspapers' content as a whole.
MEMRI doesn't claim they reprisent the whole paper but I would bet they're not too far from it. that it isn't reprisentative would be obvious if Arab commentators called onto the US talk show circuit didn't frequently sound exactly the same, and if Arab articles here in the US didn't sound the same, and if even lefty non-Arabs didn't sound similar.
Maybe radical Arabs are like left-leaning American jews- hopefully atypical of what is in Israel. the problem is, we aren't hearing many Arabs counter the view.
The danger is that many of the senators, congressmen and "opinion formers" who don't read Arabic but receive Memri's emails may get the idea that these extreme examples are not only truly representative but also reflect the policies of Arab governments.
Well, too bad. But they get subjected to muslim and Arab PAC groups every day and those groups seem to confirm the attitude rather than dispel it. If you want to counter MEMRI, start publishing some of the good stuff from the Arabic papers. Put some commentators on US TV that don't sound half-crazed and don't lie their brains out. Better yet, put them in arafat's area to counter some of his tripe, and maybe suicide bombung wouldn't be a national sport. BUt the problem is Islamic extremism, and this comes from somewhere. If it isn't from the Arab press then it must be from Islam itself, since it knows no national boundaries but crops up wherever Islam and Arabic press can be found or read. Which is it?
Memri's Col Carmon seems eager to encourage them in that belief. In Washington last April, in testimony to the House committee on international relations, he portrayed the Arab media as part of a wide-scale system of government-sponsored indoctrination.
And he appears to be correct. Certainly their governments are doing nothing to counter it. Saudi spokesmen aren't out there telling their citizens that Judaeism is the 'religion of peace.' Sudanese spokesmen aren't telling their people that 'Christianity and animism are the religions of peace.' they are afraid to tell their teeming masses of malcontents anything which might firect criticism towards their government. They prefer it be directed at the Great Satan and the Lesser Satan and the Little Satan.
"The controlled media of the Arab governments conveys hatred of the west, and in particular, of the United States," he said. "Prior to September 11, one could frequently find articles which openly supported, or even called for, terrorist attacks against the United States ...
Does anyone doubt this? Where do those demonstrations come from where the US flag is burned and the chants of 'death to America' can be heard ? They come from extremists, and the extremists are being organized somehow, just as 1970s extremists were organized here with a willing press. The extremists are being heard but the moderates are not. Perhaps they could let a few of the good ones speak? Would they speak when the religious police might object?
"The United States is sometimes compared to Nazi Germany, President Bush to Hitler, Guantanamo to Auschwitz," he said. In the case of the al-Jazeera satellite channel, he added, "the overwhelming majority of guests and callers are typically anti-American and anti-semitic".
That's true. IT's true when muslims call in to US radio too.
Unfortunately, it is on the basis of such sweeping generalisations that much of American foreign policy is built these days.
You just made a 'sweeping generalization' about American foreign policy, too. The US hasn't invaded Saudi Arabia, so I am curious about how our 'foreign policy' is being shaped when the author of the article at the top of the thread doesn't even know what our policy is. The US and Saudi Arabia are engaged in a deal over Iraq qhich we are not privy to as yet. Let's see where it goes and judge then. If the author means the US should be as enthusiastic about Arafat as the Europeans, he's wrong. MEMRI has nothing to do with that; Arafat does. The palestinian behavior and the involvement of palestinian terrorists here in the US and against our people has everything to do with that.
As far as relations between the west and the Arab world are concerned, language is a barrier that perpetuates ignorance and can easily foster misunderstanding.
Even when some Arabs speak English they don't come across well. Unfortunately, the worst ones are Arab spokesmen and leaders.
All it takes is a small but active group of Israelis to exploit that barrier for their own ends and start changing western perceptions of Arabs for the worse.
Oh boy. Those all-powerful Israelis just whup Arab butt all the time. This is nothing more than a subtle attempt at the old "Jews control the media" complaint so often heard among Arabs and white supremacists. Our perceptions haven't changed- there never was a time when Americans thought highly of suicide bombing or the myriad of other policies we see in the Arab world; it's just that in the last eight years we had a president who was supportive of terrorism and lefty people in Europe took this to mean that Americans were like Clinton. (The European left made one of theose 'sweeping generalizations, I guess.
If the arab world doesn't want people to see them as they are, they should change their own behavior and there would be nothing to criticize. Editors should take control of their publications and keep the wacky stuff in the letters to the editor category rather than give legitimacy to the insane rantings of lunatic extremists. They could publish at least as many truthful articles as they do hate-rants or better yet at least try to be objective. The Arab world could throw out the nutjobs instead of sending them over to FOX or MSNBC to be interviewed, instead of electing them to be leaders of Islamic think-tanks.
It is not difficult to see what Arabs might do to counter that. A group of Arab media companies could get together and publish translations of articles that more accurately reflect the content of their newspapers.
You want the Arab media to do what you criticize MEMRI of doing? The Arab media could, but given that we can catch 'em lying on our own TVs, what makes you think anyone would believe that their translations are accurate when we have prior experience with Arafat and friends or the Taliban? I bet they won't be accurate. Why doesn't the Arab press work harder to counter extremism AT HOME, so the extremists won't be heard but will instead be pushed to the fringes where they belong? The press doesn't do it because Arab countries typically have poor human rights records and no free press. They have government-controlled press, censorship, persecution of non-Islamics, persecution of factions within Islam, persecution of political dissenters. Ask Salman Rushdie. Instead of worrying about how Arabs come off in OUR press, why don't you worry about how they come off in their OWN press? Why do so many Arabs believe the extremists? Could it be because their own governments are so corrupt that they see no opportunity or hope for change and lash out at outsiders because it isn't safe to lash out at the real cause of their woes?
It would certainly not be beyond their means. But, as usual, they may prefer to sit back and grumble about the machinations of Israeli intelligence veterans.
Like you are doing. Why don't you get your articles published in the Arabic press? go for it. Try to change THEIR worldview and THEIR policies.
BTW, it appears that this guy is a typical Brit Arabist; here's his web site: Al-bab.com: AN OPEN DOOR TO THE ARAB WORLD (caps his).
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