MEMRI, the Middle East Media & Research Institute (http://www.memri.org/ ) is a very potent participation in the internet anti-terrorism information war and the war of ideas. In a nutshell, MEMRI produces English translations of Arabic and Farsi newspaper-columns, speeches, articles and TV shows, usually opinions. The speeches, articles and TV shows are almost always strongly anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, anti-West, anti-Christian (Crusaders!!!), anti-American and other subjects along these very same lines. The authors are primarily based in the Middle East, stretching from Algeria to Pakistan, Turkey to Sudan. The newspaper coverage mostly relates to the tabloid media, opposition papers, Islamist newspapers etc.
The primary cause of its popularity is that it sheds light on Arabic and Iranian thought, which would otherwise not be available to the generally English dominated think tanks, newspapers and interested parties of this side of the war on terror. As we also well know, the local English language press in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa region) is usually elitist, tightly government controlled and the tenor of those newspapers and TV series is much more subdued and liberal than some of the other woollier and foaming tabloids. Another aspect, which is usually ignored or not considered, is the Friday sermon in the mosques. Friday prayers are the most important ones of the week and over the years; I have observed a definitive rise in incidents following Friday prayers where the Friday sermon was particularly vituperative. Rest of the day, it’s less in intensity. Many of these sermons are carried live on TV, many of them either state sponsored as in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and most other MENA states, or they belong to opposition parties such as with Hamas in Lebanon and Palestine.
What MEMRI does is to have a team of researchers, analysts and translators who monitor the publications and speeches, turn them into English language translations and squirt them out into the internet ether as well as updating their website. Their website is quite popular as evidenced by its google page rank of 7/10 (BBC is 9/10, Al-Jazeera is 7/10 ) and immediately after publication, a whole host of other mailing lists, websites, media organisations and think tanks pick them up to further propagate the translations. In many cases, I have observed a reaction from the governments to questions raised by the international press (based upon MEMRI’s translations) to their government spokesmen. Sometimes the reaction is adverse (nudge nudge, its freedom of speech etc. etc.) or its positive (thunderous denunciations of the beards).
As you can appreciate, this does not go down very well at all. Mainly speaking, it does not matter at all to the original authors, who don’t give two hoots to what the western press, opinion makers or western governments say or do about their utterances. After all, their audience or constituency are their local readers or local mosque worshippers, and THEY do not give a toss either. But the main impact of this is not locally in the MENA countries, but in the MENA country intelligentsia, the media, and the government. The major criticisms of MEMRI are therefore on these pages rather than deep down where the local original speech/article was written.
The first complaint is that it is a Jewish owned organisation. Obviously, the whole host of anti-Semitic rhetoric is levelled against this type of operation. A further criticism comes from the fact that some of the founders and staff actually worked in Israeli organisations, governmental and/or military. It is claimed that MEMRI is biased for Israel and anti-Arab, anti-Muslim etc. It is true that MEMRI rarely, if at all, comments on Israeli publications and some of the hot-headed speeches from some of the rabid wing of Israeli politics.
The second complaint against MEMRI is that it is not balanced. That in itself is a fair point, with almost all the translations homing into the foaming speeches and articles emanating from the MENA media. But then, MEMRI never claimed to present a fair, balanced and objective viewpoint. On the other hand, show me one media site immune to criticism on this point? Even the BBC, the famed fair, objective and balanced media in the world, is frequently attacked for being biased, tilting once towards this side or that, and definitely not balanced. The BBC is even attacked by the ruling parties in the United Kingdom, and it is routinely attacked in the USA for being the publicly financed bogeyman, overrun with liberal thoughts and deeds. Slightly down the scale is the NPR (National Public Radio) in the USA, which is again publicly funded. Take a gander at any other public institution, whether you are talking about the NY Times, the Washington Post, Fox News, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Sueddeutsche, Le Monde, Liberation’, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP (Agence Française de PresseThe Times, The Telegraph, Guardian, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, or Shimbun Konkan or Asahi. So if one draws a continuum between left leaning to right leaning, MEMRI definitely belongs to the right, but then there is never anything right in the middle.
The third complaint against MEMRI is that the articles/speeches are deliberately chosen to be provocative, although this could be contained within the second complaint itself. Many of the articles are indeed hair-raising and make one wish to hide in a hole and pull the hole in behind them. This is natural, for example, if the only perspective that I have on a non-English media is through them, then my entire perspective on the TV Series, articles and tabloid press will be based upon what I can read and hear. And if all I can hear and read are these foaming denunciations of the Zionist crusaders, who are out to get the poor innocent Muslims, and exhortations to kill and commit mayhem, the overriding impression that I will get is that these guys are simply vermin. Obviously, life isn’t that simple, and there must be more balanced viewpoints, but there you have it. We have to work with the information we have. On the other hand, if there are these foaming beards saying these horrifying things, followed by another beard holding a Kalashnikov and a bomb belt, saying the same things just before blowing themselves up inside a London tube, my feelings get reinforced.
The fourth complaint is their selectivity in translations and lack of context. This flows on from the third complaint. For example, there was quite a lot of attention paid to the Egyptian TV series which partially addressed that fascinating forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the fatwa’s of the late Sheik Yassin, spiritual leader of Palestinian Hamas about the female suicide bombers in Israel. The MEMRI translations produced a wave of revulsion and quite animated discussion around the world. Even senior government officials from Germany, UK, USA etc. commented on it (guess what the reaction was? – freedom of speech, quite fascinating how selective this is). What MEMRI didn’t consider was the fact that the Egyptian TV Series as well as the Sheik’s fatwas were criticised in the local press as well of which some was available in English and those provided more than just the partial segments chosen to be translated by MEMRI.
But then, MEMRI is of the same ilk as that of any Internet Service Provider (ISP). An ISP is not responsible for the talk of their subscribers; all they do is provide a service. If you do not like them, you are at liberty to switch. Similarly, I don’t blame them at all; it is like shooting the messenger. Nobody ever has complained about their translations per se’. The actual linguistic basis is never in question, what is said in the original article or speech is faithfully reproduced. MEMRI is not a newspaper or a TV station, it reports on what has already been aired or published.
There have been attempts to counteract MEMRI’s influence, by trying to setup rival organisations with take one of two tacks. The first is to try to translate a wider variety of articles thereby trying to provide a balance in the English reporting of Arabic media such as MEW (Mid East Web). The second is to turn the table by looking at western media and biases against Arabs and/or Muslims such as Arab Media Watch in the UK). Unfortunately, I do not think they have been very active, nor successful, if success is to be defined in terms of changing public and governmental perceptions/opinions. Even worse, they fall into the very open trap by themselves using MEMRI at times and defining themselves by what they are not. Consequently this behaviour actually reinforces MEMRI’s standing and philosophy.
The other problem is that with the readers in the west (such as the anti-war, left/liberal, western Muslim populations) is with their reaction to MEMRI. It is either to ignore the MEMRI output or to trot out with the above-mentioned criticisms. In the first case, it is like a child trying to hide from an imagined monster by shutting its eyes. Just by closing your eyes to it will not mean that the MEMRI impact will go away. If it is the second case, then the criticisms do not really stack up, as there is a relatively long and established tradition of looking at the message first and worrying about the medium second. So even if the liberal intelligentsia is actually against the foaming message, the fact that it has been published by MEMRI means that the reaction is muted or diverted or non-existent.
So all in all, I am afraid MEMRI has to be looked upon with different eyes, one cannot consider it to be a newspaper or TV. Its output cannot be ignored or wished away at all. It is there and frankly, it does bring these thoughts and speeches out in the open. It sheds light on something, which is partially or completely hidden away from the international networked world. The pressure that this form of transparency brings is welcome in the war of ideas. Here’s an idea for the root cause aficionados, the root cause is the original speech and thought, not the media, lets not shoot the messenger. Shooting the messenger won’t stop the message from being sent. Sophocles said: "I well believe it, to unwilling ears; None love the messenger who brings bad news."
All this to be taken with a grain of salt!
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