SELECTIVE MEMRI
Brian Whitaker, Guardian (UK), 8/12/02
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html
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...
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 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..."
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...
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