[iwar] [fc:Media.that.translates.the.Arabic.newspapers.is.it.quite.what.it.seems.?]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-08-14 06:36:54
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<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4480174,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4480174,00.html>
Selective Memri
Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media institute that
translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems
Monday August 12 2002
The Guardian

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

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited

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