The New York Post Sunday, October 22, 2000

Arabic Broadcasts Fan Flames Of Hatred

By Rod Dreher HERE'S a recent example of televangelism, Gaza-style, courtesy of the Palestinian Authority's TV service, which broadcast these words in Arabic nine days ago.

"Oh brother believers, the criminals, the terrorists - are the Jews . . . They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: BFight them: Allah will torture them at your hands . . .'"

The preacher, Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabiya, former acting rector of the Islamic University of Gaza, was just getting started.

"Oh, you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies, for they are allies of one another. Who from among you takes them as allies will indeed be one of them," the sheik continued.

And if you are a Jew, or like unto them?

"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country," he railed. "Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them - and those who stand by them."

You would think such an extraordinary speech put out on a government-owned station, a call to arms demanding mass murder of Jews, Christians and Americans, would have been widely reported in the West.

You would be wrong. A Nexis search finds a mention of the sermon tucked into an Associated Press dispatch and in a story in The Guardian in England.

Those who check in regularly with the Web site of the Middle East Media Research Institute (www. memri.org) could have read an English translation of the sermon's text the very next day, thereby getting important news ignored by Western journalists.

MEMRI is a small, nonprofit organization with offices in Jerusalem and Washington, dedicated to monitoring the Arabic-language media in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and translating important dispatches into English.

Yigal Carmon, a retired top Israeli army counterintelligence officer and fluent Arabic speaker, heads the Jerusalem bureau. He says it's important for Americans to know what is being reported and discussed among the Arabs in their own media.

"There is a huge difference between the words and images conveyed by the Arabs to the West and what they say to their own people," says Carmon, 54, speaking by phone from Jerusalem.

"When you get only what they say to Westerners, it's simply not the whole truth. Sometimes Bnot all the truth' is worse than a lie."

Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes agrees, saying ignorance of the way the Arab world thinks and talks in its popular media aids and abets Americans' tendency to project their own values onto foreign cultures.

"People are mystified by the failure of Camp David, why Yasser Arafat didn't take this extraordinarily generous offer by the Israelis," says Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum.

"Looking at the Arabic press, you see why. The Palestinians were not interested in what Israel was offering. They thought it wholly inadequate."

What's in the Arab media these days that goes unmentioned in our own?

"Right now, there's a sense of excitement that Israel's on the run, that Israel's weak," says Pipes. "That's pervasive in the Arabic press, but unreported in the Western press."

Carmon says many Western media outlets reporting on the region do not have Arabic-speaking correspondents, relying on locally based Arab stringers.

He suggests that these stringers are unlikely to report information, however newsworthy, that could hurt the Palestinian cause.

Given the limits and prejudices of the American media, there is a real need for the kind of work MEMRI does - particularly in this extremely dangerous time. The fledgling organization keeps its hard-working staff of eight going on donations alone.

"We need to be 80, not eight," Carmon says. "Every time these governments are going to do something, they prepare their people through the media. We have the capabilities to monitor media all over the Islamic world, but we don't have the financial resources."

Pity. The service to the truth MEMRI provides is invaluable.

E-mail: dreher@nypost.com

http://www.memri.org/

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), October 27, 2000

Answers

Friday, 27 October, 2000, 16:53 GMT 17:53 UK Four dead in 'day of rage'

Four Palestinians have been killed in new clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank and Gaza, in an upsurge of violence following Friday's weekly Muslim prayers. The violence, which ended a short-lived lull in a month of fighting, flared after Israel tightened security following calls by Palestinian militants for another "day of rage" against Israeli occupation.

Witnesses said one man was killed when troops opened fire on demonstrators throwing stones near the West Bank town of Qalqilya.

Hamas and other militant groups clamoured for more suicide attacks A second was shot dead just outside Tulkarm, while the third was killed in gun battles on the outskirts of Ramallah. A fourth died in the Gaza Strip.

At least 150 people are reported to have been wounded in the clashes.

Witnesses reported that Israeli soldiers had used tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds to control demonstrations by Palestinians.

The latest deaths bring to 136 the number killed, all but of eight them Arabs, during violence which began on 28 September.

There had been indications earlier that the general level of violence was subsiding, with Israeli police easing a ban on men entering the al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem by lowering the age restriction from 45 to 35.

Suicide threat

The militant Islamic group Hamas has called for Palestinians to confront Israeli soldiers and settlers each Friday, immediately after midday prayers.

Israeli troops blocked off the main road where the suicide attack took place Hundreds of Israeli police were deployed near the al-Aqsa mosque for prayers.

Security was also tight in the Gaza Strip following a suicide bomb attack near a military post in which an Israeli soldier was wounded.

Trees have been bulldozed around the army outpost where the bombing took place to remove any cover for further potential attackers.

The militant Islamic Jihad group, which said it carried out the attack, has warned that more will follow.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak says he is continuing efforts to form a government of national unity after four weeks of bloodshed.

Ehud Barak says he will still keep the peace process alive The opposition Likud party says it will not join any administration without a power of veto over the peace process with the Palestinians.

Mr Barak maintains that as long as he remains prime minister he will try to keep the peace process alive.

President Bill Clinton has again spoken by phone to Mr Barak. But there is no sign that the Americans have made any headway in getting the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to meet in Washington for further talks.

But Ariel Sharon, the Likud leader and Mr Barak's most likely coalition partner, remains strongly opposed to any negotiations that would surrender Israeli control over East Jerusalem.

In another development, the human rights organisation Amnesty International has accused both the Israelis and Palestinians of failing to carry out proper investigations into deaths resulting from the violence.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_994000/99484 0.stm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), October 27, 2000.