Re: RE: The Zionists and Torture in Iraq
Sorry but your link is absolutley ridiculous. MEMRI is a zionist website. Here is something about it:
Overview
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) states that it “explores the Middle East through the region's media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.” MEMRI, founded in 1998 as a 501 (c)3 organization, says that its purpose is “to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East.” With branch offices in Berlin, London, and Jerusalem, where MEMRI also maintains its Media Center, MEMRI’s research is translated to English, German, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, and Russian. (1)
The main subjects of its research and translations are the following: jihad and terrorism, U.S. and Middle East, reform in the Arab and Muslim world, Arab-Israeli conflict, inter-Arab relations, economic studies, and Arab anti-Semitism.(2) MEMRI’s slogan, “Bridging the Language Gap Between the Middle East and the West,” does not convey the center’s stridently Zionist and anti-Arab political bias. Until recently MEMRI was more forthcoming about its political orientation in its self-description and staff profiles on its website. Currently it has no information about its staff, board of directors, or funding on its website. 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.” (3) (4)
The two founders, Meyrav Wurmser and Yigal Carmon, are right-wing Zionists. Carmon is the longtime president, while Wurmer left her position as executive director at MEMRI in early 2002 to direct the Center of Middle East Studies at the Hudson Institute. (2) Steven 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. (5) Its staff has increased dramatically since its founding in February 1998, from six to more than thirty. (6)
As an indirect result of the terrorist attacks of September 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 translated articles and commentary by its own staff are routinely cited in national media in the United States, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Analysis by MEMRI staff and officers is frequently published by right-wing and neoconservative media outlets such as National Review, Fox News, Commentary, and the Weekly Standard. It is also a media outlet of choice for such right-wing and Zionist organizations the Center for Security Policy, Middle East Forum, and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Both critics and supporters of MEMRI note its increasing influence in shaping perceptions of the Middle East. Its translations and reports are distributed without charge, according to MEMRI, to “congresspersons, congressional staff, policy makers, journalists, academics, and interested parties.” (6)
Origins, History, and Influence
To understand the political mission, it is helpful to examine the politics and origins of its cofounders Yigal Carmon and Meyrav Wurmser. Carmon is a reserve colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces, having served in the IDF/Intelligence Branch from 1968 to 1988. In that capacity, Carmon, who was born in Romania, was Acting Hear 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. (4)
Wurmser, an Israeli-born analyst of Middle East affairs, received her Ph.D. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where she wrote on Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement. (4) According to Arab Media Watch, Jabotinsky “brokered the marriage between Zionism and fascism.” (3) Wurmser, who has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the United States Naval Academy, and her husband David Wurmser are central figures in the right-wing’s web of Middle East policy institutes. 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." (7) Before joining the Bush II administration as a State Department policy adviser under John Bolton, her husband David Wurmser was an AEI scholar and associate of the Middle East Forum (MEF).
Numerous current or former MEMRI staff are Israelis, including Yotham Feldner, MEMRI’s director of media analysis. (6) 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 staff come to the organization from various Zionist and Israeli organizations, including the World Zionist Organization.
According to one profile of MEMRI, the institute is “one of the few sources of English language translations of material published in Arabic and Persian; it thus provides a view into Arab and Iranian media that is often otherwise unavailable to English speakers that are not literate in those languages. The technical accuracy of its translations is rarely disputed. However, the extent to which its selection is contextual or representative of Arab/Iranian media is very often disputed, particularly in view of its ties with Israel.” (6)
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. (8) (9) (10)
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.” (9) In an article titled “Selective MEMRI,” Brian Whitaker of the Guardian (London) observed: “Evidence from MEMRI's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status.” (11) 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, that “a lot of anti-Israeli sentiment is indeed mixed with anti-Semitic rhetoric imported from the West.” (12)
Although critics are 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 Brian 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?" (13)
At the same time that MEMRI circulates the most inflammatory comments found in the Arab media, its pro-Israel and 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.” (14)
Funding
MEMRI states that it does not accept government funding and that it relies on 250 private donors. (14) Among these private donors is the right-wing Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, which gave MEMRI $100,000 in the 1999-2000 period. (15) Another foundation that supports MEMRI is the Ronald & Mary Ann Lachman Foundation.
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/memri.php
Rick van Opbergen said:
Sorry but your link is absolutley ridiculous. MEMRI is a zionist website. Here is something about it:
Overview
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) states that it “explores the Middle East through the region's media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.” MEMRI, founded in 1998 as a 501 (c)3 organization, says that its purpose is “to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East.” With branch offices in Berlin, London, and Jerusalem, where MEMRI also maintains its Media Center, MEMRI’s research is translated to English, German, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, and Russian. (1)
The main subjects of its research and translations are the following: jihad and terrorism, U.S. and Middle East, reform in the Arab and Muslim world, Arab-Israeli conflict, inter-Arab relations, economic studies, and Arab anti-Semitism.(2) MEMRI’s slogan, “Bridging the Language Gap Between the Middle East and the West,” does not convey the center’s stridently Zionist and anti-Arab political bias. Until recently MEMRI was more forthcoming about its political orientation in its self-description and staff profiles on its website. Currently it has no information about its staff, board of directors, or funding on its website. 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.” (3) (4)
The two founders, Meyrav Wurmser and Yigal Carmon, are right-wing Zionists. Carmon is the longtime president, while Wurmer left her position as executive director at MEMRI in early 2002 to direct the Center of Middle East Studies at the Hudson Institute. (2) Steven 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. (5) Its staff has increased dramatically since its founding in February 1998, from six to more than thirty. (6)
As an indirect result of the terrorist attacks of September 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 translated articles and commentary by its own staff are routinely cited in national media in the United States, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Analysis by MEMRI staff and officers is frequently published by right-wing and neoconservative media outlets such as National Review, Fox News, Commentary, and the Weekly Standard. It is also a media outlet of choice for such right-wing and Zionist organizations the Center for Security Policy, Middle East Forum, and Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Both critics and supporters of MEMRI note its increasing influence in shaping perceptions of the Middle East. Its translations and reports are distributed without charge, according to MEMRI, to “congresspersons, congressional staff, policy makers, journalists, academics, and interested parties.” (6)
Origins, History, and Influence
To understand the political mission, it is helpful to examine the politics and origins of its cofounders Yigal Carmon and Meyrav Wurmser. Carmon is a reserve colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces, having served in the IDF/Intelligence Branch from 1968 to 1988. In that capacity, Carmon, who was born in Romania, was Acting Hear 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. (4)
Wurmser, an Israeli-born analyst of Middle East affairs, received her Ph.D. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where she wrote on Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement. (4) According to Arab Media Watch, Jabotinsky “brokered the marriage between Zionism and fascism.” (3) Wurmser, who has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the United States Naval Academy, and her husband David Wurmser are central figures in the right-wing’s web of Middle East policy institutes. 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." (7) Before joining the Bush II administration as a State Department policy adviser under John Bolton, her husband David Wurmser was an AEI scholar and associate of the Middle East Forum (MEF).
Numerous current or former MEMRI staff are Israelis, including Yotham Feldner, MEMRI’s director of media analysis. (6) 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 staff come to the organization from various Zionist and Israeli organizations, including the World Zionist Organization.
According to one profile of MEMRI, the institute is “one of the few sources of English language translations of material published in Arabic and Persian; it thus provides a view into Arab and Iranian media that is often otherwise unavailable to English speakers that are not literate in those languages. The technical accuracy of its translations is rarely disputed. However, the extent to which its selection is contextual or representative of Arab/Iranian media is very often disputed, particularly in view of its ties with Israel.” (6)
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. (8) (9) (10)
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.” (9) In an article titled “Selective MEMRI,” Brian Whitaker of the Guardian (London) observed: “Evidence from MEMRI's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status.” (11) 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, that “a lot of anti-Israeli sentiment is indeed mixed with anti-Semitic rhetoric imported from the West.” (12)
Although critics are 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 Brian 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?" (13)
At the same time that MEMRI circulates the most inflammatory comments found in the Arab media, its pro-Israel and 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.” (14)
Funding
MEMRI states that it does not accept government funding and that it relies on 250 private donors. (14) Among these private donors is the right-wing Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, which gave MEMRI $100,000 in the 1999-2000 period. (15) Another foundation that supports MEMRI is the Ronald & Mary Ann Lachman Foundation.
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/org/memri.php
