In early March 2007, Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born psychiatrist living in the United States, spoke at the Secular Islam Summit held in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she said: "I don't believe there is any difference between radical Islam and regular Islam." At the summit, Sultan received an award in recognition of her outspoken criticism of some Islamic practices, which first gained her global fame in early 2006 when she debated Ibrahim Al-Khouli on Al Jazeera's weekly discussion program The Opposite Direction. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) quickly translated the interview, which since it appeared on YouTube has reportedly been downloaded more than a million times. During the debate, Sultan said: "Only Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down their churches." Al-Khouli responded to Sultan's criticisms by calling her a "heretic" (see Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2007; and MEMRI Special Dispatch Series, No. 1107, March 7, 2006).
The Al Jazeera translation is an example of the role MEMRI has played in popularizing differing aspects of Islam, with some arguing that because of MEMRI the public has a chance to hear moderate voices in Islam. As one letter writer to Right Web News argued: MEMRI has "opened my eyes to the conflict within Islam regarding modernity vs. tradition; the reformists' calls for democracy in all the Middle East states; the calls for women to be educated, protected from spousal abuse, and obtain equality before the law; the incisive self-criticism regarding the decline of Arab culture and importance; as well as the ugly anti-Semitic news (of which there is no Western counterpart) and the violence of sharia law" (see Right Web News, January 5, 2007).
Others, however, see a darker side to MEMRI's work, arguing that the organization "cherry picks" the items it decides to translate, revealing a clear neoconservative-aligned bias. A case in point came in mid-June 2006, when discussions over the fate of Iran's nuclear program were reaching fever pitch in Washington. MEMRI held an event on Capitol Hill titled "Must See Iran TV II." The event, cosponsored by then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), was aimed at raising congressional awareness of Iran's threatening posture toward the United States and its allies in the Middle East. The MEMRI presentation included translated clips from Iranian television that highlighted "themes associated with Iran's nuclear aspirations, its acquisition of offensive weapons, anti-Americanism, and statements by leading Iranian government officials, including President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," according to an article in the New York Sun written by MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky (June 14, 2006).
Since its founding in 1998 as a 501(c)3 organization, MEMRI has been a key source of information on the Mideast region by providing what it calls "timely translations of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East."
Its efforts, however, have been frequently criticized as providing a biased and distorted version of the region. In an op-ed for the Rocky Mountain News , Rima Barakat, a Denver-based Muslim activist, accused MEMRI of producing "unbalanced propaganda [that is] littered with inflammatory articles aimed to incite hate and bigotry toward any person whom MEMRI considers anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist" (March 27, 2006). MEMRI's bias, claimed Barakat, is also apparent in its translations. In once instance, wrote Barakat, "Halim Barakat (no relation), a professor at Georgetown University, published an article in Al-Hayat Daily of London titled 'The Wild Beast that Zionism Created: Self-Destruction.' By the time MEMRI 'translated' it, the title had been distorted to 'Jews Have Lost Their Humanity.' Barakat objected, 'Every time I wrote Zionism, MEMRI replaced the word by Jew or Judaism. They want to give the impression that I'm not criticizing Israeli policy, but that what I'm saying is anti-Semitic.'"
According to MEMRI—which maintains offices in Washington, Berlin, London, Tokyo, and Jerusalem—its main subjects of interest include jihad and terrorism, U.S. and Mideast politics, reform in the Arab and Muslim world, Arab-Israeli conflict, inter-Arab relations, economic studies, and Arab antisemitism. MEMRI's slogan, "Bridging the Language Gap Between the Middle East and the West," does not convey the institute's stridently pro-Israel and anti-Arab political bias. MEMRI was previously more forthcoming about its political orientation in its self-description and in staff profiles on its website. But its website now offers no information about its staff, board of directors, or funding. Three weeks after September 11, 2001, MEMRI also deleted the following sentence from its "mission statement" on its "About Us" page: "In its research, the institute puts emphasis on the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel." (See MEMRI's "Mission Statement" page in the Web Archive, as well as "Media Myths: The Middle East Media Research Institute Is Objective and Independent," Arab Media Watch, August 19, 2006.)
MEMRI's founders, Meyrav Wurmser and Yigal Carmon, are both hardline pro-Israel ideologues aligned with Israel's Likud party. Carmon is MEMRI's president; Wurmser left her position as executive director in early 2002 to direct the Center of Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute . Stalinsky has been MEMRI's executive director since Wurmser's departure. Oliver Revell serves without compensation as a member of MEMRI's board of directors, together with Carmon and Stalinsky. In 2001, MEMRI operated on a budget approaching $1.8 million, according to its 2001 tax year Form 990.
As an indirect result of 9/11 and the subsequent "war on terrorism" by the Bush administration, MEMRI has gained public prominence as a source of news and analysis about the Muslim world. Its translations and reports are distributed without charge, according to MEMRI, to "congresspersons, congressional staff, policy makers, journalists, academics, and interested parties." Articles translated by MEMRI, as well as commentary by its own staff, are routinely cited in national media outlets in the United States, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Analyses by MEMRI staff and officers are frequently published by right-wing and neoconservative media outlets such as National Review, Fox News, Commentary, and the Weekly Standard. Both critics and supporters of MEMRI note its increasing influence in shaping perceptions of the Middle East.
The background of MEMRI's founders illuminates its political orientation. Yigal Carmon is a reserve colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), having served in the IDF/Intelligence Branch from 1968 to 1988. In that capacity, Carmon, who was born in Romania, was acting head of the civil administration in the West Bank from 1977 to 1982. He served as counterterrorism adviser to premiers Shamir and Menachem Begin from 1988 to 1993. In 1991 and 1992 Carmon was a senior member of the Israeli delegation to peace negotiations with Syria in Madrid and Washington.
Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli-born analyst of Mideast affairs, received her doctorate from George Washington University in Washington, DC, where she wrote on Zeev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement. According to Arab Media Watch , Jabotinsky "brokered the marriage between Zionism and fascism." Wurmser, who has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Naval Academy, is a central figure in the right-wing's web of Middle East policy institutes, as is her husband, David Wurmser. According to the Hudson Institute, "Through her work at MEMRI [she] helped to educate policymakers about the Palestinian Authority two-track approach to 'negotiating peace' with Israel: calling for peace in the English press and with Western policymakers while inciting hatred and violence through official Arab language media." Before joining the George W. Bush administration as a State Department policy adviser under John Bolton, her husband was an American Enterprise Institute scholar and associate of the Middle East Forum.
Some current or former MEMRI staffers or contributors are Israelis, including Yotam Feldner, MEMRI's director of media analysis. Like Carmon, Feldner worked in military intelligence while serving with the Israeli Defense Forces. Another MEMRI staff member, Aluma Solnik, also worked in military intelligence before joining MEMRI. Other MEMRI staffers come to the organization from various Zionist and Israeli organizations, including the World Zionist Organization.
MEMRI, which describes itself as "objective and independent," has gained a reputation for cherry-picking the most virulent, anti-Israel, and anti-U.S. reports and commentary from the Arab media. Brian Whitaker of the Guardian observed: "Evidence from MEMRI's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status" (August 12, 2002). And a former CIA counterintelligence official, Vincent Cannistraro, said that "they [MEMRI] are selective and act as propagandists for their political point of view, which is the extreme-right of Likud ... They simply don't present the whole picture" (quoted in Marc Perelman, "No Longer Obscure, MEMRI Translates the Arab World: But Detractors Say a Right-Wing Agenda Distorts Think-Tank's Service to Journalists," Forward, December 7, 2001). Ali Abunimah, vice president of the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network, cautions that there are sounder voices in the Arab and Muslim communities who try to challenge these kinds of statements, and that some of the language about Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. and Israeli press is equally vile. Yet, he added, "A lot of anti-Israeli sentiment is indeed mixed with anti-Semitic rhetoric imported from the West" (Public Eye, Summer 2002).
Although critics may be more concerned with the selectivity of MEMRI's translations rather than their accuracy, instances of MEMRI's political bias affecting the accuracy of its translations have on occasion been cited. The Guardian's Whitaker took MEMRI's president to task for mistranslating a question that included an implied criticism of Israel. The question was, "How do you deal with the Jews who are besieging Al Aqsa and are scattered around it?" But MEMRI translated this as: "How do you feel about the Jews?" (Guardian, January 28, 2003).
In another case, MEMRI reinterpreted and circulated a 2004 speech by Osama bin Laden in which, according to MEMRI, he threatened to attack individual U.S. states if they voted for George W. Bush. At the end of the speech, bin Laden says, "In conclusion, I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaida. No. Your security is in your own hands. And every state [wilayah] that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security." MEMRI argued that bin Laden's use of the word wilayah signified U.S. states, like New Jersey or New Hampshire. But Juan Cole, University of Michigan professor and noted blogger, had a different interpretation: "Bin Laden says that such a 'state' should not trifle with Muslims' security. He cannot possibly mean that he thinks Rhode Island is in a position to do so. Nor can he be referring to which way a state votes, since he begins by saying that the security of Americans is not in the hands of Bush or Kerry. He has already dismissed them as equivalent and irrelevant, in and of themselves." After observing that MEMRI is closely aligned with the policies of Israel's Likud Party and opining that it "cleverly cherry-picks the vast Arabic press," Cole added: "I am not suggesting that the MEMRI report was an attempt on behalf of the Likud Party to intervene in the U.S. election. I suspect they just didn't think through the issue and depended on a surface reference to modern standard Arabic" (Juancole.com, November 2, 2004).
A few weeks after Cole posted his article about the bin Laden translation, MEMRI's Yigal Carmon wrote a letter to Cole threatening to sue him if he didn't "retract the false statements" Cole had allegedly made in his piece. "If you will not do so," wrote Carmon, "we will be forced to pursue legal action against you personally and against the University of Michigan, which the article identifies you as an employee of. We hope this will not be necessary" (Juancole.com, November 23, 2004). Carmon took issue with Cole's assertion that MEMRI received $60 million a year and with what he interpreted as Cole's arguments that MEMRI was affiliated with the Likud Party and presented a biased picture of the Middle East.
Cole responded publicly, urging Carmon to reveal MEMRI's budget and it funders: "I think [Carmon] would find that in democratic countries, in any case, a dispute over an organization's level of funding would be laughed out of court as a basis for a libel action. In fact, I am giggling as I write this." Regarding Carmon's charge that he unfairly accused the group of cherry-picking the news, he wrote: "On more than one occasion I have seen, say, a bigoted Arabic article translated by MEMRI and when I went to the source on the web, found that it was on the same op-ed page with other, moderate articles arguing for tolerance. These latter were not translated." As for Carmon's last complaint, Cole said: "I did not allege that MEMRI or Col. Carmon are 'affiliated' with the Likud Party. What I said was that MEMRI functions as a PR campaign for Likud Party goals. Col. Carmon and Meyrav Wurmser, who run MEMRI, were both die-hard opponents of the Oslo peace process, and so ipso facto were identified with the Likud rejectionists on that central issue" (Juancole.com, November 23, 2004).
At the same time that MEMRI circulates inflammatory comments found in the Arab media, its hardline, pro-Likud positions are equally evident. Carmon says that MEMRI is eager to highlight the role of the "good guys" in the Middle East—the democrats, or near democrats; the liberals, or near liberals—anyone who evinces the slightest interest in reform. According to an adulatory report on MEMRI in the right-wing magazine National Review, "Independence and objectivity are matters of pride here. Staffers work virtually around the clock, with an almost missionary spirit, feeling that their work is vital, that their moment is now" (May 6, 2002).
According to the National Review, 250 donors—foundations and individuals—fund MEMRI's activities. Among these private donors is the right-wing Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, which gave MEMRI $100,000 from 1999 to 2000. In 2001, the Randolph Foundation gave MEMRI $100,000, and in 2004 the John M. Olin Foundation gave $5,000, according to Media Transparency.
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Contact Information
Middle East Media Research Institute
P.O. Box 27837
Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
www.memri.org
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