Selective Memri
Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media institute that
translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems
Monday August 12, 2002
Guardian Unlimited
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. Article continues
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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.
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and
Clarifications column, Wednesday August 21 2002 In an article headed
Atrocity stories regain currency, page 13, August 8, and in an article headed
Selective Memri on the Guardian website, we referred to Dr Adil Awadh, an Iraqi
doctor who alleged that Saddam Hussein had ordered doctors to amputate the ears
of soldiers who deserted. Dr Awadh has asked us to make it
clear that he has no connection with Memri (Middle East Media Research
Institute), and that he did not authorise its translation of parts of an
article by him. He is no longer a member of the Iraqi National Accord (INA). He
is an independent member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). His reference to
orders by Saddam Hussein to cut off the ears of deserters has been supported by
evidence from other sources.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html
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Regards,
Nashid
