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In Focus – June 5, 2007
Steven Emerson’s disturbing track record
By Ahmed Rehab
Masquerading as an Islam/terrorism expert, Steven Emerson’s apparent lifelong goal is to banish Muslim Americans from American civil life. He recently went after the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); now it is CAIR.
In his latest anti-CAIR attack, Steven Emerson once again unleashes one of his trademark tirades designed to stifle free and open debate (The New Republic Online, 03/28/2008). This time, his wrath is focused against The New York Times. Its crime? Offering two sides of the story in its recent coverage of the "mounting criticism" against the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights organization, CAIR.
Emerson conveniently fails to disclose to his readers that the relentless source of this "mounting criticism" is non-other than Emerson himself and his merry band of collaborators. But like all professional propagandists, Emerson aspires to be detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury.
It should come as no surprise that Emerson bears a severe aversion to common standards of professional journalism like those displayed by Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times. After all, Emerson is not a professional journalist but an agenda-driven demagogue on a mission.
Going many years back, his track record is fraught with well-documented anti-Muslim bias.
Unlike neutral journalists, he is not remotely concerned with facts; rather, he prefers proselytizing his narrow agenda wherever and whenever it is feasible to do so. His modus operandi is not to inform, but to brainwash.
Free speech and open debate provide the most serious obstacles to professional propagandists. It is no wonder then that Emerson balks at the notion that there are two sides to a story; the only noteworthy side, in his view, is his own.
For the Emersons of this world, suspicion raised against Muslims and their organizations is synonymous with a guilty conviction; demonstrating actual wrongdoing is unnecessary overhead. "More than one [government official in Washington] described the standards used by critics to link CAIR to terrorism as akin to McCarthyism, essentially guilt by association," reports MacFarquhar in the said New York Times piece to the obvious chagrin of Emerson who, dismayed with the message, turns his wrath on the messenger.
"Of all the groups, there is probably more suspicion about CAIR, but when you ask people for cold hard facts, you get blank stares," said Michael Rolince, a retired F.B.I. counterterrorism official (The New York Times, March 14, 2007).
In Emerson’s prejudiced world view, anti-Muslim smear campaigns should not be up for scrutiny, they should simply be furthered along by mainstream newspapers like the compliant propaganda outlets he wishes them to be. (I presume Emerson highly approves of The Washington Times.)
It is an unfortunate consequence of post 9/11 life in America, where fear-mongering is a reality, that notorious career Islamophobes, such as the career of this individual, are subjected to little scrutiny and virtually no credibility tests - even as mainstream Muslim leaders with established track records are readily second-guessed.
The irony is that while many of the Muslim organizations that evoke the wrath of henchmen like Emerson offer total transparency, the henchmen themselves flourish in relative obscurity, refusing to publicize their sources of funding and the nature of their operations.
Emerson may counter in typical fashion that CAIR is deflecting accusations by raising concerns about their sources. Not true: CAIR has directly addressed the preposterous accusations in an extensive response document available online at www.cair.com/urbanlegends.pdf.
Emerson will have to try harder to duck the credibility question, which is quite a relevant question for concerned Americans to be asking: Can Steven Emerson and his ilk be trusted as credible sources of information on Islam and Muslims? Who is Steven Emerson?
A self-anointed "terrorism expert" whose rhetoric is characterized by charged terminology and a dislike for open debate, Emerson harbors a longstanding track record of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry.
In March of 1995, Emerson told The Jewish Monthly, "nearly all (emphasis added) of the Islamic organizations in the United States that define themselves as religiously or culturally Muslim in character have, today, been totally captured or dominated by radical fundamentalist elements..."
Ironically, it took Emerson no more than a few days to demonstrate to the world why his credibility and integrity as an "observer of trends" should never be taken for granted - especially when they relate to Muslims.
In April of 1995, Emerson confidently asserted on a live broadcast of CBS News that the Oklahoma City bombing - then breaking news - showed "a Middle Eastern trait" because it was carried out "with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible."
"Oklahoma City, I can tell you, is probably considered one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East" Emerson explained with an enthusiasm bordering on elation.
While Emerson preoccupied himself with indulging his knack for conjecture, real detectives worked calmly and professionally to reveal that, contrary to Emerson’s "expert perceptions," Timothy McVeigh and company were behind the bombings. Emerson’s incompetence was duly exposed; CBS decided not to renew his contract and blacklisted him for five years.
Then again, Emerson’s aversion to facts and affinity for bias are not breaking news.
A New York Times review of Emerson’s 1991 book "Terrorist" said the book was "marred by factual errors . . . and by a pervasive anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias."
His 1994 controversial film "Jihad in America" caused veteran reporter Robert Friedman to accuse Emerson of "creating mass hysteria against American Arabs" (The Nation, 5/15/95).
John F. Sugg, then of the Tampa Bay Weekly Planet, revealed in a 1999 article that Emerson’s priority is "not so much news as it is an unrelenting attack against Arabs and Muslims."
"He’s made his life’s work discrediting Arab American and Muslim groups," James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, told The Washington Post in 2001.
Smear campaigns are not unusual for Steven Emerson; they seem to be his way of expressing disgruntlement with an opposing view.
"He has been run out of many respectable newsrooms. His response was the smear job. When The Washington Post shunned him, he branded the paper ‘pro-Hamas.’ When the Miami Herald strafed Emerson’s shoddy claims, he wrote the city’s Jewish leaders claiming the paper’s reporter ‘was nothing short of racist,’" Sugg wrote (Alternet, 06/12/2003).
So what explains Emerson’s anti-Muslim and anti-Arab spin?
The Wall Street Journal provided us with one answer 16 years ago: "Mr. Emerson’s prime role is to whitewash Israeli governments and revile their critics," wrote Alexander Cockburn.
For whom does Emerson work? Does he represent the interests of Americans, or the interests of a foreign state at the expense of our nation’s own community relations?
Emerson, who has close ties to the Israeli Mossad according to The Jerusalem Post (9/17/1994), has yet to disclose key facts regarding his activities, including his source of funding. While he criticizes Muslim-American organizations that disclose their operating and financial details, Emerson shrouds his own in guarded secrecy.
Vince Cannistraro, a former Chief of Operations and Analysis at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center said of Emerson’s closest associates Steve Pomerantz, Oliver Revell and Yigal Carmon: "They’re Israeli-funded. How do I know that? Because they tried to recruit me."
Of Emerson himself, Cannistraro says, "Word has got around on what he (Emerson) is, that he’s a paid polemicist, not a journalist" (Weekly Planet, May 1998); he characterizes him as "dishonest" and "Joseph McCarthy-like" (The Forward, 1/26/96).
Journalist Jane Hunter calls Emerson’s brand of journalism "nimble in its treatment of facts, often credulous of intelligence sources, and almost invariably supportive of the Israeli government" (EXTRA!, October/November 1992).
It seems that in his latest attempt at fueling anti-Muslim hysteria, Emerson is banking on America’s short term memory. I am sorry to disappoint him.
[Ahmed Rehab is CAIR-Chicago ‘s Executive Director. Prior to joining CAIR, Ahmed was a freelance speaker, writer, and activist in the fields of interfaith collaboration, education, and community outreach. Ahmed can be reached at director@cairchicago.org.]
http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/15129/135/
In Focus – June 5, 2007
MEMRI is ‘propaganda machine,’ expert says
By Lawrence Swaim
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) provides daily English translations of film and print media stories originating in Arabic, Iranian and Turkish media.
It also furnishes original analysis of cultural, political and religious trends in the Middle East.
It sends its daily postings to every news outlet in the United States and Europe, in addition to politicians and cultural leaders.
And it’s free, which makes it a Godsend for journalists, editors and policy analysts.
But according to its critics, it is also a dangerous, highly sophisticated propaganda operation, disseminating hate and disinformation on an unprecedented worldwide basis.
"They use the same sort of propaganda techniques as the Nazis," Professor Norman G. Finkelstein, a well-known scholar on Israel/Palestine, told InFocus. "They take things out of context in order to do personal and political harm to people they don’t like."
Take the case of Professor Halim Barakat, a novelist and scholar associated with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.
In 2002, he published an article on Zionism in London’s Al-Hayat Daily, but says that in certain instances, MEMRI selectively edited what he wrote.
"I know how to make a distinction between Judaism and Zionism, but they distorted the article," Barakat told InFocus. "They left out certain things and tried to make it look anti-Semitic."
Shortly afterward, Campus Watch, the brainchild of notorious Islamophobe Daniel Pipes, used the allegedly doctored translation in an effort to smear Georgetown University.
Finkelstein, an outspoken critic of Israeli policies and the U.S. pro-Israel lobby, also had a run-in with MEMRI.
In 2006, he gave a TV interview in Lebanon on the way the Nazi Holocaust is used to silence critics of Israel.
Finkelstein later wrote on his Web site: "MEMRI recently posted what it alleged was an interview I did with Lebanese television on the Nazi Holocaust. The MEMRI posting was designed to prove that I was a Holocaust denier."
Far from being a Holocaust denier, Finkelstein’s own parents were Holocaust survivors, a fact he has often spoken about.
But MEMRI was able to create the opposite impression, as Finkelstein demonstrated on his Web site, by editing out large chunks of the actual interview.
When some comments by the moderator were included, it appeared that Finkelstein’s interview was about nitpicking the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust rather than about Israel/Palestine.
MEMRI’s obsessive interest in protecting Israel derives from the people and interests that founded, fund and manage the institute’s international operations.
It was founded in 1998 by Yigal Carmon, a former colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (Intelligence Branch) from 1968 until 1988, acting head of civil administration in the West Bank from 1977 to 1982; and Israeli-born Meyrav Wurmser, an extreme rightwing neoconservative now affiliated with the Hudson Institute.
Meyrav is married to David Wurmser, at one time an American Enterprise Institute "scholar" and then a State Department apparatchik under John Bolton.
Both participated in the collective writing of "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," a seminal 1996 neocon document that advocated an end to negotiations with the Palestinians and permanent war against the Arab world.
They also worked with Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, Richard Perle and other rightwing ideologues who promoted and embellished the fiction that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.
MEMRI has offices in Jerusalem, Berlin, London, Washington and Tokyo, and in a 2006 Jerusalem Post interview, Carmon claimed to have one in Iraq.
It translates film and print into English, German, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish and Japanese.
Tax returns for 2004 indicate American funding of between two to three million dollars, much of it from conservative donors and foundations - but those who have followed its far-flung operations suspect much higher expenditures.
Besides Carmon, several MEMRI staffers are former Israeli intelligence specialists. Especially troubling are suspected links between MEMRI and the current Israeli intelligence establishment.
According to a 2005 article in Israel’s Ha’aretz, the Israeli Defense Forces plants fake stories in the Arab media, which it then translates and tries to retail to Israeli journalists. How much of MEMRI is simply an extension of such IDF operations?
The questions raised by the Ha’aretz story caused Proffesor Juan Cole to write, "How much of what we ‘know’ from ‘Arab sources’ about ‘Hizbullah terrorism’ was simply made up by this fantasy factory in Tel Aviv?"
British journalist Brian Whitaker, Middle East editor of the Guardian, dismisses MEMRI as "basically a propaganda machine."
Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, accuses them of "outright distortion," and former CIA case officer Vince Cannistraro has written that "they (MEMRI) are selective and act as propagandists for their political point of view, which is the extreme-right of Likud."
With characteristic bluntness. Norman Finkelstein has written: "MEMRI is a main arm of Israeli propaganda. Although widely used in the mainstream media as a source of information on the Arab world, it is as trustworthy as Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer was on the Jewish world." (Der Sturmer was a rabidly anti-Semitic newspaper, and Streicher a notoriously cruel Nazi.)
In an e-mail to InFocus, Cole characterized MEMRI as "a Right-Zionist propaganda organ, which usually does its propaganda unobtrusively, by being very selective in what it translates."
Indeed , MEMRI appears to view the Arab world as a malevolent, mind-numbing monsters’ ball, populated almost exclusively by fanatics, freaks and fundamentalists.
Every story that could possibly make Middle Eastern people look deranged, hateful or diabolical gets translated; anything that could make them look informed, talented or admirable is ignored.
MEMRI says it covers reformers in the Arabic-speaking world, but longtime observers point out that people who make Islam or Arab culture look attractive rarely get translated, regardless of their position.
Nor does MEMRI feature stories about Palestinian suffering, Israeli dissenters, moderate Islamists, Christians in Arab governments or the growing nonviolent movement against the apartheid wall in the Occupied Territories, especially around Bal’in.
Instead, it promotes highly-edited footage featuring people like Wafa Sultan.
It was MEMRI that translated the sound bites from her famous al-Jazeera debate with Dr. Ibrahim al-Kouly that ended up on YouTube, making her an instant rock star to those who promote an international clash of cultures.
It is said by TV viewers who watched the entire debate that al-Kouly was rather patient with Sultan despite her extreme opinions.
(Among other things, Sultan has declared herself an atheist.) But MEMRI never bothered to translate and promote the whole debate.
MEMRI President Yigal Carmon was contacted to ask why the entire Sultan debate wasn’t translated and circulated, at least in a print version.
"MEMRI couldn’t do the whole interview because of the limitations of our resources," Carmon told InFocus. "And it was just our best judgment of what was fit to translate." He said he thought there was an "almost" complete version in the archives.
InFocus asked Carmon why MEMRI didn’t post more stories about domestic events in Israel and the OTC.
"Eighty percent of such stories are already in English," Carmon said.
Then why not buy a few every week and send them out in order to give a more balanced picture of the Middle East, InFocus asked, "It probably wouldn’t be legal ," he responded.
That brought up the thorny issue of copyright, ownership and power.
Why, Carmon was asked, does MEMRI copyright all the stories it translates, when most stories are written by Arab authors?
"Of course we copyright," Carmon told InFocus. "Once we translate a story into another language, it becomes ours, because it’s our work."
To test this theory in an American context, InFocus contacted The New York Times.
"If you translate copy from the Times, it would still belong to us, because we originated it," said an employee of the Rights and Royalties Department who did not wish to be named.
When war and peace hangs on the translation of a single word or phrase, nuance is everything.
But can we trust the translator?
According its critics, until MEMRI starts translating Hebrew stories about the rightward drift of Israeli society, torture of Palestinians in Israeli jails, the forced exile of Ilan Pappe and Azmi Bishara, and the elevation of the neo-fascist Avigdor Lieberman to deputy prime minister of Israel, they aren’t really covering all Middle Eastern media.
"I think it’s a reliable assumption that anything MEMRI translates from the Middle East is going to be unreliable," Finkelstein said.
http://www.infocusnews.net/content/view/15129/135/
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