ZGram - 8/13/2002 - "Selective MEMRI"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

august 13, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Brain-washing at taxpayers' costs - and, no, the title is NOT a 
spelling error by some illiterate punk:

[START]

Selective Memri

Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media institute 
that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems

Monday August 12, 2002

For some time now, I have been receiving small gifts from a generous 
institute in the United States. The gifts are high-quality 
translations of articles from Arabic newspapers which the institute 
sends to me by email every few days, entirely free-of-charge.

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

Email
brian.whitaker@guardian.co.uk

( SOURCE: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html 
)