From the outset, it is true, and heartening that the BBC should be neutral and impartial, something we in the US could only dream of when the story or the issue involves Israel and Palestinians.

That said, however, BBC’s attempt to be neutral for refusing to air a humanitarian broadcast renders it “un neutral” pro Israel, against the Palestinians. Because the broadcast is for humanitarian relief, not political relief, it is not on behalf of Hamas, it is on behalf of British and international humanitarian organizations. It appears that the BBC in its attempts to20look “objective” and neutral” have joined the Israeli army propaganda machine.

First, the civilians in Gaza, children and women in particular, whom the humanitarian broadcast was trying to help, were not combatants, or militias or fighters. Those were not member of Hamas, and did not have a say so in the war that was imposed on them by Israel.

The BBC with this action is equating the Israeli army who committed war crimes with the victims it murdered.

White-centric, most of the western media is biased and sees the world through the prism of Western European standards. As for the Palestinian victims, they are not white, they are brown and Muslims. The BBC or the CNN or FOX and the rest of those White World media could care less about the victimization of Palestinians or their mass murder and devastation at the hands of a European implant in the heart of the Arab world.

A VP of international news of a national mainstream media organization have told me, when I discussed with him the nature of his coverage of the war on Gaza, by saying” this is a contentious issue” He was right, giving that no matter how much devastation and destruction Israel can wreck on an entire segment of humanity of 1.5 million people, still this could be debated as to whether those who were killed by Israel deserve to have their story told as victims, or they should be held accountable and treated as equal to their murderer.

American media in general is pro-Israel no matter what Israel do. With the exception of notable few on the regional level particularly Chicago media that I a most familiar with. The Israeli government could count on army of American journalists to do its bidding and justify its crimes no matter how heinous those crimes were.

Israel’s murder of young Palestinian children, bombing their schools and shelters were justified on Fox, ABC and CNN to name a few, as “retaliation” of Hamas firing on Israel. This is illogical logic of course, and renders most of the US and European Media as an Israeli propaganda machines that lack any real credibility when it comes to this conflict. It is like if a distraught parent went to his daughter school, and barricaded himself inside the school which is still full of children, would the US media “understand” or be in favor of the local police department bombing the entire school out and killing all of the students so they can extract the parent who is held up inside of it? According to the way the media covered Israel’s war crimes, the US and European media went along with this logic.

Israel for its part prevented the western media from entering Gaza, specifically so it can control and manage the western coverage of its war that was largely waged on defenseless population.

CNN’s Campbell Brown whose husband if former AIPAC, operative, which is a pro-Israeli lobbying outfit, and Fox news analyst, issued a statement on her show stating that Israel prevented journalists from entering Gaza which was bad for Israel and the journalists. It was clear that the main or perhaps the only concern for Brown was to show Israel side and perspective on the issue. As for Palestinians, they would have to be content with crumbs of coverage which is biased20against them anyway.

Al Jazeera both Arabic and English were the only media organizations (English) present in Gaza with none stop coverage that captivated the entire Arab and Muslim world.

This war will go down, from a media perspective as the war that ended the western media dominance on world stage.

BBC, CNN comparing to Al Jazeera’s global reach look like child play. AlJazeera English and Arabic carried the day from Gaza, and have presence in every corner of the world and can bring the news from anywhere to everywhere without the arrogance and pretentiousness of the national western media.

As for Al Jazeera Arabic, it solidified its place as the number one news organization in the Arab World and proved that it can still be an Arab media organization that covers stories and event about Arabs and wars against them, yet it has the confidence of letting the Israeli leaders speak whatever lie they want to, and say it in cold blood. We saw for example Israel’s president a nd the father of its nuclear bomb, Shimon Perez, who told us in a 45 minutes interview that looked like a documentary into the mind of pathological liar and cold blooded mass murderer that Israelis are “defending themselves against the women and children of Gaza, and they actually “have a loving care” for the Palestinians in Gaza. Israel killed over 1330 Palestinian in Gaza, among hem were 400 children and over 100 women, and destroyed over 20,000 house, several mosques, and the entire civic and service infrastructure of Gaza, and used many banned weapons and ammunitions such as depleted uranium bombs and phosphors bombs, and dropped over 2 million tons of explosive on the hapless open air prison called Gaza.

For Arab American and Muslim voters, however, an Obama-Biden ticket seems like good news for they have had to endure a long arduous 8 year journey of the Republican rule of Bush-Cheney administration that wrecked havoc in their personal lives, eroded their civil rights, a futile war in Iraq, and vehemently supporting Israeli’ s occupation and destruction of Palestinian lands and peoples.

Arab and Muslim voters thought in Obama that they were witnessing a candidate with a shot of wining, that he was not part of the pro-Israeli establishment that fills the halls of power in Washington who usually go out of their way to support Israel at expense of Arab and Palestinian rights.

But Arab and Muslims voters did not have wait for too long for their disappointment to arrive when they felt that Obama had increasingly started treating them like a plague avoiding them at all costs so as not to upset the racists and bigots in this country.

In Detroit, last June, Obama’s staff made sure to remove two Muslim American women from the seats behind Obama so as not to “ offend” American voters, as if Muslims voters are not “fully” Americans.

This insult to Muslims is too deep to let it go so easily, it also speaks volumes about the hatred and racism in the American society where Arab and Muslim Americans are usually at the receiving end of its repeated blows, and with no end in sight.

It appears to be that Obama candidacy feels that it has to go along with the racist sentiments against Muslims because, in America today, it is not a bad policy to discriminate against Muslims or disrespect them and demean their faith and value system and there will no political ramifications because of it. Except at the ballot box.

Obama went even further in his attempts to appease the right wing racists by repeatedly denying that he is not a Muslims, and he is not, but why does it being a Muslim or not has to be an issue in a country that the faith of the candidate is besides the point, not the point.

As for the Middle East, Obama’s trip to Israel last month as part of his world tour, was pilgrimage American politicians seemingly had to make in order to garner t he Jewish vote and financial support in this country. There, Obama visited an Israeli Synagogue a Christian Church, and, yet again, he had to show his anti-Muslims credentials by not bothering to visit a Muslim mosque. Therefore, Obama’s message to the Muslim American voters is that, “ I don’t care about you, I don’t care about your issues, and I don’t care about your vote.

Moreover, in Israel, Obama was quick to issue the now classic policy proclamation assuring Israeli politicians that if he was to be elected president he will continue America’s policy of ensuring Israel superiority and domination over the lives of all of its Arab and Muslim neighbors, a policy that defies the logic peace in the region and from the perspective America’s interests in that part of the world, it is an irresponsible policy to say the very least.

Arab and Muslim Americans should return the favor to Obama and give their support to a third candidate who albeit his or her chances of wining is next to impossible, but at least they should not support a candidate who does not care about them or about their issues.

(Ali Alarabi is an awa rd winning journalist and columnist and member of Arab writers group syndicate. You can reach him here.)

For most Americans, Israel is a little country, with an image of being an oasis of democracy and sunshine surrounded by sea of bloodthirsty evil Arabs who are out to squeeze life out of it. If they can.

For this sea of Arabs, however, it is the other way around, ever since Jewish immigrants started coming by the boat load to the shores of Yafa and Haifa of what was then Palestine, Israel has been holding the Arabs by the throat dealing them fantastical defeats humiliating them at every round and at every battle.

The exchange of prisoners and soldiers’ remains between Hezbollah and Israel, last Wednesday though not the first, was by all account the first time ever the entire Arab Nation, from the Atlantic ocean to the Arab Gulf felt a sense of vindication and a measure of justice while the Israeli felt the bitter taste of their own medicine, at least for once.

‘Gone are the days defeats” said the ever popular charismatic Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah to a million plus crowd gathered in Beirut to see the freed prisoners and to tens of millions more of Arabs who watched the beaming Nasrallah hugging=2 0the former prisoners and greet them before he disappeared to give a speech via video conference.

The jubilant Lebanese headed by president Michel Suliman and the entire Lebanese political class gave Samir Kuntar and four other Hezbollah fighters captured by Israel an electrifying heroes welcome.

For the rest of the Arab World, Hezbollah is viewed as a highly efficient organization with a military wing that perhaps, from a military point of view, is the best small fighting force in the world today, can bring them a victory over an enemy that had been the source of their torment for the past 60 years.

What Arabs were witnessing on TV screens, scenes they were unfamiliar with in that for the first time, victory celebrations and the return of their prisoners and the bodies of almost two hundred of former fighters.

In Israel the scene was a stark contrast to the victory parades in Lebanon. Israel felt a rude awakening, perhaps for the first time in which Israel does not hold a victory parade after one of its wars. The Israeli leaders felt a specially humiliating defeat in releasing their longest held prize, Samir Kuntar who was sentenced to multiple life times of 542 years, and whose release required the signature and the pardon of Shimon Perez the president of the country and the father of Israel’s nuclear bomb.

What Hezbollah did was remarkable by all accounts. In the year 2000 it succeeded in driving Israel out of Lebanon; it held several prisoners swaps with Israel that resulted in releasing its prisoners and several hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and withstood a relentless s bo mbardment of Beirut in 2006 to force it to give up its Israeli soldiers.

To put this in perspective; Egypt the regional heavy weight and who signed a peace tre aty with Israel in 1979 did not bother to claim or investigate the fate of thousands of its missing soldiers during the past wars with Israel, some of them are still buried in secret cemeteries called the “cemeteries of numbers” because Israel put only numbers on the graves without names or nationality or any other markers.

Jordan is another country that signed a peace treaty with Israel still has 26 of its citizens and soldiers held prisoners in Israeli jails some of them are Jordanian soldiers who were captured in 1967 war. The Jordanian government is still not making any real efforts to get its prisoners release or claim the bodies of its fallen soldiers. Israel is also holding 11500 Palestinian prisoners,one Saudi man, several Syrians and Yemenis and other Arabs in i ts jails .

Lebanon, for its part, the smallest country y bordering Israel, and the weakest one and without a functional army, was able at achieve feats through Hezbollah that no Arab country as powerful as Egypt or as rich as Saudi Arabia was able to achieve.

The message that Hezbollah is sending here is that it liberated its land from the Israeli grip; it got back its prisoners and the remains of their soldiers without dealing directly with Israel or sign a peace treaty with Israel. As far as the other Arab countries that have diplomatic, open and secret ties with Israel, their peace resulted in Israel still occupies Arab lands and continues to hold thousands of Arab prisoners.

The issue of Darfur is a political issue that bids militant groups that use violence to fight a legitimate government over perceived injustices, is not supposed to be resolved through a criminal indictment of a head of state, but rather through political reconciliation between the state and the groups that fight it.

Indeed there are legal questions with the regards to the legality of the indictment and a possible international arrest warrant against President Bashir and whether president Bashir is entitled to an immunity or not. In light of the fact that Sudan is not a signatory to the Roma Statute that established the Criminal Court makes this case a very complicated legal case that opens the question whether this statute can only bind states that are party to it and not others who are not such as the United Sates, and whether the security council resolution 1593 that refers the case to the Court did or can imply the removal of immunity of a sitting head of state or not.

Aside form the humanitarian crises that arose out of this conflict, we must not forget that Sudan, the state, is entitled to preserve its geographical integrity and prevent any party domestic or international from break the country up through armed struggle.

In the United States hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a civil war that commenced by the federal government against one of its regions in order to preserve the unity of the country and prevent its dismemberment. Even today, the United States government or any government for that matter would not let any state or group from simply spilt or breakaway from the country.

International law however, as it appears to be, is there to punish weak and third world countries if they were deemed misbehaving according to standards of Western powers. As this issue demonstrates, International law is there to preserve the interests and the power of big powers against small helpless nations. Sudan is perceived to be not playing by the rules set forth by western powers when it comes to its energy supplies, its stand on the Arab Israeli conflict and its position on Iraq.

Take for example Israel, a country that violates international law by continuing its occupation of Palestinian lands, and other Arab lands for that matter, has unilaterally declared Jerusalem as its capital where international law clearly states that Jerusalem is an occupied city and therefore it is illegal to declare it as an integral part of the state of Israel or change its geography or demographics by building Jewish-only settlements. Furthermore, when it comes to the wall Israel is building on occupied territories, international law sided with the Palestinian legal argument and declared the wall illegal, yet Israel simply ignored it, and no international body and no country is willing to do anything about it.

More, there are legal arguments as well as moral, against those responsible for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a country that did not attack or threatened the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed as result of this war in addition to millions displaced or were made refugees. So, we see that for political considerations, western powers can get away with virtually anything, but poor nations would have to bear the full brunt of the law.

That said however,President Bashir should do more to help his country to come out of this ugly war and bring Darfur and its tribes back to the fold of Sudan on equal footing with peaceful resolution to this tragic conflict. But with this indictment, the international community is exasperating the problem and complicates matters even worse especially for all of the innocent victims in Sudan.

According to sources in Iraq, over 260 Palestinian were murdered in Iraq at the hands of Shia government soldiers and religious militias many of those victims were women. Among those killed was Shiekh Tawfiq Abdel Khaliq one of the most respected and honorable local Palestinian Imams, who happened to be traveling to an area of Baghdad and was stopped by a checkpoint manned by government shia soldiers and upon learning that he was a Palestinian, he was killed in cold blood.

Palestinians are being targeted because they are mainstreaming Muslims, they are not Shias and they are not Iraqis. Shia militias, receiving religious blessing from their Ayatollahs and supported by Iran military and financially, are orchestrating a campaign of murder and genocide against the helpless Palestinian refugees.

Shias hold that those Palestinian refugees whose numbers were less than 25000 before the war, were living better than the entire 30 million Iraqis and that they were Saddam’s spoiled cronies and lived better life style, while ordinary Iraqis starved.

The truth however is anything but that. Palestinians never had it better than any average Iraqi, true that under saddam they were not persecuted simply because they kept to themselves, and did not intervene in politics, for they were not Iraqi citizens to begin with despite living there for generations.

Palestinian refugees in Iraq lived in a government built system of buildings, a Ghetto that consists of 16 huge old elongated buildings, each building has 4 entrances, and each entrance has three floors and each floor has 4 apartments. That puts number of apartments in each building to 48 apartments and the grand total of apartments in the whole system would be 768 apartments all belong to the government. By law, Palestinians cannot own a property in Iraq, not today under Shia rule, not under Saddam and not before that.

Despite living in Iraq for generations, the only documentation they had was a government issued ID stamped with the word “ Palestinian” and sometimes issued travel documents if they needed to travel.

Caging the Palestinians in this ghetto, in the Baladiyat area is not an indication of a community that lived the life of riches and leisure while Iraqis starved to death so claim the Shia Iraqis and several of their holy Ayatollahs. The Ghetto consists of small apartments and shacks built in buildings courtyards and on rooftops, in order to accommodate natural growth. Any visitor to the Baladiyat area would not see wide tree-lined boulevards filled with mansions or nice villas for the Palestinians to live in.

The Palestinians true crime is that they are Arabs and more, they are Muslims in a country that has been transformed into an exclusively Shia country and looks more Iranian than Arab.

Iranians in Najaf and Karbala, Basra, and Baghdad already number in the millions according to Iraqi reports. Iranians live in Iraq freely without noticing any difference between Tehran and Baghdad or Karbala or Najaf. Persian has become a dominant language in Basra and other southern cities. Iraqi Shia Arabs feel more kinship and closer to Iran in terms of their religion and belief system than other Arabs.

As for Palestinians, the key to survive and to avoid an agonizing death at the hands Shia death squads is to never show any traces of Palestinian accent for it will for sure make them marked for death. Speaking Arabic in pure Iraqi Baghdadi accent is one way to survive on a day-by-day basis.

Another way to survive is not to venture outside the Ghetto unless it is absolutely necessary. The Ghetto has its own small business, doctors and other basic services needed to maintain a meager but precious existence. The local mosque, however, was not spared from Shia militias attempts to either burn it to the ground or from firing their guns inside it.

But for older Palestinians of the original generation that made Iraq home after 1948, perfecting an Iraqi accent could be a tricky adventure, for they still retain traces of their accents of villages and town in Palestinian cities they fled some sixty years ago such as Haifa, and Yafa. Luckily however, those older Palestinians who speak a Palestinian flavored Iraqi accent can be mistaken of being Iraqis from the northern city of Mosul, a city that looks and feels closer to greater Syria and its accent sounds closer to the Shami Arabic accent.

Most Palestinian professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers and others have managed to leave the country by paying their way out, the same trend goes for Iraqi educated class. Iraq has seen most of its professional class especially doctors and scientists either killed off or fled the country forever.

Today, Palestinians numbers in Iraq had shrunk into 14000 thousands, almost half of what it was before the war. 2000 thousands of those are living in camp of Al-Waleed camp in the desert between Iraq, Jordan and Syria. No Arab country is willing to admit those hapless refugees or assist them. They are stranded in the desert under the care of UN higher commission for refugees and an Italian humanitarian agency, which work to arrange medical treatment for sick Palestinian children and place them along with their families in European countries that are willing to take them. Another 300 Palestinian refugees were taken in by Syria and placed in the middle of the desert in camp in the Hasakah province. Brazil had already accepted some of those refugees, and Chile also agreed to take a number of them. The only Arab country agreed to accept the Palestinian refugees is Sudan.

For Palestinians, to live in the Arab world, is to live a schizophrenic life style. Palestinians have to get accustomed to Arab governments and leaders rhetoric and speeches with words like “We support our Palestinian brothers” “ Israel is the enemy” long live free Arab Palestine” and death to Israel” the reality for Palestinians however is that they are the only ones who are doing the dying, thrown in the middle of desert, thrown in Arab government jails, getting killed, burnt to death, or hacked to pieces by the same “ brothers” who were chanting long live Palestine in the yesteryear.

Even Iranian president Ahmadi Najad whose militant pronouncements against Israel threatening her of death and destructions, rings hollow giving that only Palestinians are being killed and destroyed with his money and weapons on his behalf at the hands of his henchmen and subordinates in Iraq.

For those Palestinians in Iraq, life has been suspended and can only resume in another, more peaceful land.

Borrowing a passage from the Quran Mr. Hadlak titled his rampage against the Palestinians “Fight/kill them and Allah shall torture them through your hands.”

Not only did the writer twisted and corrupted the Quranic verse to serve his twisted purposes but he did not leave a rock unturned without hurling insults and accusations against the entire Palestinian people calling for their mass murder and torture and their total destruction.

Much of Hadlak rampage does not make any sense however. His arguments were very incoherent and flat out false and lack any sense of historical accuracy or sound logic, and neither supported by any facts. His facts are, in fact, non-existence and more, his entire piece has nothing to do with Lebanon or the crises brewing there, but rather it was an anti-Palestinian murderous manifesto.

He for example claim that “The majority of the 30,000 Palestinian refugees in the Nahr el-bared camp are terrorists.”

Every time Hadlak uttered the word “Palestinian” he made sure to precede it with several adjectives such as “terrorists, lowly, backstabbers, hateful, untrustworthy” in order to drive home his point that the entire Palestinian people are the lowliest creatures on this earth and they deserve nothing but to be “killed, tortured and “their heads chopped off.”

He claims that the Palestinian refugees are traitors to the Lebanese government, and traits such treason, backstabbing are inherent in them and that the Lebanese government, according to him, provides food, shelter, safety, comfort, security and leisurely life style for those refugees.

Therefore and because of Palestinian “terrorism” he calls on the Lebanese army to “chase them down (the Palestinians) cut them down, kill them down, and chop their heads off.”

“Oh heroic Lebanese army, attack the Palestinian terrorists who follow the orders of Baath and Persian terrorism ,chase them down, cut them down, be severe on them and teach them a lesson they shall not forget (Fight/kill them and Allah shall torture them through your hands, embarrassing them, rendering you victorious over them thus quenching the chests of the believers – the Quran).”

The truth is that the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live in poverty stricken camps, squalid conditions of open sewers and no running water system and a Palestinian refugee cannot bring in a bag of cement to the camp to fix his home if it needs t be fixed. On top of that the Lebanese law forbids Palestinians to hold over 70 jobs and profession.

However, not only did the entire Lebanese political class as well as all of the mainline Palestinian organizations inside or outside the camp say that the Palestinians and the refugees had nothing to do with Fatah-Islam. This piece of crucial information was conspicuously absent and did not register in the blood thirsty and twisted mind of Mr. Hadlak.

I am surprised (or maybe I shouldn’t be) that such writings are considered “mainstream” in the Kuwaiti press. And if may venture to say that I have not heard even the staunchest Israeli extremist racist had ever said such murderous words comparable to what Hadlak had to say. Moreover, what Hadlak said of the Palestinian people in his recent and older columns are worst than what Hitler and the Nazis had said of the Jews.

The level of rhetoric of Hadlak and other Kuwaiti extremists such as another Alwatan columnist Fuad Hashem, would make Hitler sounds more like mother Teresa.

We can discern the source of Hadlak’s extremist views if we substitute the word Lebanon with Kuwait in 1990 during the time of illegal Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Kuwaitis accuse the Palestinians of supporting Saddam’s army during the occupation of Kuwait in 1990/1991, however this is far from the truth.

I spoke with “Abu Ala” a Palestinian who lived in Kuwait for 29 years and owned a sheet metal fabrication factory prior to the Iraqi invasion. Abu Ala’ told me that the Iraqi occupation authorities asked the Palestinian in Kuwait to come out and demonstrate in support of Saddam Hussein. The Palestinians there refused to do so.

One small Iraqi-made Palestinian organization called “Arab liberation Front” did support Saddam forces there because they were for all intents and purposes an Iraqi organization.
This “Arab Liberation front” was an Iraqi funded group made to serve Iraqi propaganda which like other Arab regimes uses the Palestinian cause to legitimize their rule in the eyes of the Arab peoples.

Much of the looting and killing, according to Abu Ala’ who remained there during the occupation and news reports during that time were done by the rag tag Iraqi popular army. And some of the looting of Kuwaitis homes were done by other Kuwaitis who knew that their neighbors had fled the country.

The late Yasser Arafat the object of intense Kuwaiti hatred and smear campaign did not support the occupation of Kuwait; however he did not support an American intervention and war and called for an intra-Arab solution to the crises.
Kuwaitis could never forget this of course and they are holding the entire Palestinian people responsible for the occupation and the destruction and death occurred in their country.

After the liberation of Kuwait by the American forces in 1991, the Kuwaitis turned around and started killing off Palestinians residents randomly, raping Palestinian women, kidnapping small children, raping them and according to stories of survivors of that period those young children ended up as body parts to older Kuwaitis in need of body organs. Abu Ala’ told me of “Abdel Karim” a Palestinian who worked for him at his factory when he came to him distraught and disoriented telling that his 13 years old daughter had disappeared.

Abdel Karim searched for his daughter frantically and never found her.

Over 400,000 thousand Palestinians who lived in Kuwait were expelled in a mass exodus out of that country to live yet another exile in another country.
The Kuwaiti police, army and civilians did all those horrific things with complete sense of righteous vengeance. No international body investigated the Kuwaiti crimes of rape, murder and stealing and looting Palestinian homes and properties.

For Abu Ala’ the invading Iraqi army hauled off his sheet metal factory that had over $ 1.5 million worth of machinery to Iraq. He was left helpless and penniless and had to leave Kuwait fearing for his life soon after.

While the United Nations made reparation and compensation to Kuwait and Kuwaitis after the war, Abu Ala’ saw very little of that money, because his factory was under a Kuwaiti name because Kuwaiti law forbids non-Kuwaitis from owning anything, and properties had to be registered by a surrogate Kuwaiti citizen.

Kuwait which was one of the most progressive Arab countries that had embraced the Palestinians and their organizations and causes physically and financially has been transformed into a bastion of intense anti-Palestinian hatred and animosity and the most Pro-Israeli sentiments in the Arab world.

For Abu Ala’ the irony was that the UN reparation commission had compensated the Kuwaiti surrogate citizen for Abu Ala’s own factory. That Kuwaiti citizen was glad to keep the money Abu Ala’ had to work 29 years of his life in Kuwait to make!

Now a succsful Palestinian-American business man, Abu Ala’ traveled to Kuwait for the first time since he left in 1991 using his American passport, he told me that Kuwait has changed a lot. “It is no longer the country I knew for 29 years.”

“We used to love Kuwait and yearn for those years we lived in there in peace. But this time around I found that the love for Kuwait is no more.”
Abu Ala’ still does not know what happened to Abdel Karim’s daughter and probably no one will ever know.

The controversy was fueled further when CNN decided to yank the video off the air because of major translation errors on part of MEMRI.

First let me just say that I reviewed the Arabic version of the MEMERI clip which looked discontinuous and disjointed because the context of the conversation in the show did not seem to be coherent. However, at the bottom of this page you will find my corrections of MEMERI translation errors.

The inflammatory words MEMRI blasted the US media with were when the young caller “Sanable” was supposed to have said “we will annihilate the Jews” were not even mentioned by the caller or by anyone else in that clip.

Sanable actually said “The Jews are shooting us” which is entirely different word and different meaning and which makes me wonder as to where in the world the words “we will annihilate the Jews come from.”

Was MEMRI actually playing verbal gymnastics? Yes indeed.

The issue here is not simply some error in the translation of this word or that, but actually making new words up and putting them in the mouth of that child to show defamatory evidence against the Palestinians.

MEMERI which stands for Middle East Media Research Institute was established by former Israeli intelligence agents, the Mossad, to police Arabic media for any evidence of anti-Israeli rhetoric.

Yegal’ head of MEMRI was interviewed on CNN’s Glen Beck on his radio show and assured Beck that he stands by his translation and blasted CNN’s Arabic desk and Octavia Nasr head of the desk for uncovering the forgery by claiming that CNN’s Arabic desk do not know Arabic and they are “hiding” while he is on the other hand out there ready and willing to debate and challenge anyone for his version of the translation.

In my professional opinion, MEMRI’s “translation” is not credible and flat out forgery.

Translation is not simply transferring words from language A to language B, it involves however much more than that. It involves advanced knowledge of the culture, religious references, historical past and political history and knowledge of the subtleties of the language and its usage in different situations by different people.

Here is MEMRI’s transcripts and my corrections are in black letters.

Host Saraa, a young girl: Sanabel, what will you do for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque? How will you sacrifice your soul for the sake of Al-Aqsa? What will you do?

Sanabel, young girl on phone: I will shoot.

( It is rather Mickey’s character speaking the words and hand gestures, “I will shoot” Not Sanable the young girl on the phone)

Farfour, a Mickey Mouse character in a tuxedo: Sanabel, what should we do if we want to liberate…

Sanable: We want to fight. (The word used was we want to resist, not to fight the reference here is to resist the Israeli occupation.

Farfour: We got that. What else?

Saraa: We want to…

Sanabel: We will annihilate the Jews. Actually she is saying: (the Jews are shooting us)

Saraa:We are defending Al-Aqsa with our souls and our blood, aren’t we, Sanabel?

Sanabel: I will commit martyrdom.

Sanabel actually said “I’ll be a martyr” ( as in to die for my country, and the reason for that because from a cultural and Islamic religious point of view and law, to be a martyr, one has to have died defending his family, property, religion and country,although the child does not all of this, however the usage of the Arabic version of the word Martyr, carries in it those references. and not to “commit” the word used in MEMRI translation to indicate action and/or planning. This point was elaborated further by YegaL head of MEMRI on Beck’s show by saying that the child meant “committing suicide bombing.”

Farfour: We’ve said more than once that becoming masters of the world requires the following: First, to be happy with our Arabic language, which once upon a time ruled this world. (Excellency in the world, not Mastery of the world two totally different meanings)

Saraa: Of course.

Farfour: Second… or maybe that’s it?

Adult host: Farfour, I heard you talking in English.

Farfour: Yes. How are you, Saraa? I hope to be good time.

Saraa: What’s with you, Farfour? Why are talking this way? Didn’t we agree to talk in literary Arabic? (Standard Arabic not literary Arabic)

Farfour: But Saraa, this is the language of the advanced world, the language of the world that understands and invents things, isn’t it?

Saraa: No, Farfour, you are wrong, because you don’t know that the Muslims are the basis of civilization. If not for the Muslims, the world wouldn’t have got to where it is today.
[...]

Farfour: My dear youngsters, we’re back. We always miss seeing you on your weekly program “The Pioneers of Tomorrow,” in which we are placing together the cornerstone for the ruling of the world by an Islamic leadership.

In the distant past the Islamic empire was a world power so the allusion was to a world where Muslims were a powerful and advanced nation, hence the references to Arabic language, the advanced western world,excellency in standard Arabic language, Islamic civilization. So clearly the context here was more educational to the children to instill a sense of pride of one’s culture and glorious history. And despite references for “resisting” the occupation, and I’ll die for my country, which in my opinion do not find highly unusual for an occupied and traumatized society such as the Palestinian society. Although it sounds here that Farfour is vowing for Islamic leadership of the world, but he actually was referring to a glorious Islamic past when Arabic was a universal language of medicine, philosophy and sciences.

One cannot be objective and say that this show is a representative of the Palestinian society any more than any right wing televangelist American who calls for dropping a nuclear bomb on the state department or calling for the assassination of a president of another country and say that such outrageous statements are representative of the American people or culture.