Tiny think tank gets big press: linguists are creating a stir by translating, accurately, Arabic news stories

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 22, 2002 | by Sean Salai

Founded in 1998 by two Israelis, Meyrav Wurmser and Yigal Carmon, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has emerged from obscurity. "There's a big need to know what's being reported in the Arabic press," says Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI's executive director. "It's more important now than ever before."

MEMRI distributes, via e-mail and fax, translations of comments about America in mainstream Arabic-language papers and in speeches by Muslim leaders. U.S. officials say the translated texts sometimes are unnerving.

"New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was obsessed by his hatred of Arabs even before the terrorist attacks on New York" Hafez Al-Barghouthi, editor of the Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote Oct. 17. "He hides his first name, chosen for him by his Italian father, so as not to remind the Jewish voters of the infamous Rudolph [sic] Hitler."

The organization also posts its translations on its Website (www.memri.org). "The last Arab video we translated covered everything from `how to beat your wife' to teaching young children how to hate Jews and Christians," Stalinsky says. "And that was aired on the MSNBC of the Arab news world."

Ninety-nine U.S. senators cited the institute's translations in an April 25 letter to President George W. Bush. "We are concerned about the vitriolic, hateful and anti-Semitic rhetoric that has been circulating throughout much of the Arab media," they wrote. "That many of these statements originated in the state-controlled media of presumed allies is all the more troubling."

Carmon, the group's president, who served as counterterrorism adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, also testified to Congress that month. "Following Sept. 11, the [Arab] media overwhelmingly approved of the attacks and praised Osama bin Laden," he told the House International Relations subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. "It is worth mentioning that many articles in the Arab media have said that the attacks were the work of the United States government itself and/or a Jewish conspiracy. Recent Gallup polls show a large majority of the Arab world continue to believe it."

Some Islamist groups criticize the institute's work but do not dispute the accuracy of its translations. "It's a free country and they can print what they like," says Ibrahim Hooper of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. "But MEMRI's intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible."

"They obviously have a pro-Israeli agenda" says Raeed Tayeh, spokesman for the American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice. "They're trying to drive a wedge between the Western world and the Muslim world."

Both the American-born Stalinsky and the Romanian-born Carmon deny that MEMRI's translators, most of whom come from the Middle East, select stories biased against Arabic speakers. Alternative news sources are hard to find, they say, because they often are suppressed in Middle Eastern countries.

"We look for everything we can find, and it's very untrue that our goal is simply to highlight Arab anti-Semitism," Stalinsky says. "We have something called the Reform Project, which focuses exclusively on Muslim reformists in the Middle East."

Carmon stresses that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks "didn't come from nowhere" explaining, "The Arab press is indeed immersed in a lot of hatred for America that comes from Islamic religious leaders. But what interests me most is the dissident voices, the moderate voices that are struggling to be heard from the margins of Arabic society. Islam must be reformed, and there are many Muslims out there trying to do it. But the Saudi-financed news media keeps them shut out of the public discourse."