CNN has been particularly outrageous in its coverage of the Israeli actions in Gaza, but it is not the only offender.
There are lessons that news reporters should have learned. They have not been learned. Here is what the last 40 years should have taught them, and us:
1) The Arabs consistently lie. Nasser lied when he told Hussein that Egypt had destroyed Israel's airforce. He lied when later he told Hussein that the Arabs should claim that it was the Americans and British who helped the Israelis and that was why the perfidious Jews managed to succeed.
2) They lie specifically about what they do -- and what they do is too gruesome to discuss -- to captured Israeli soldiers and airmen. In fact, the world knows this perfectly well. Consider, for example how, Kofi Annan, despite his own nauseating behavior toward Israel, when some Israeli soldiers were captured (I can't remember if it was Gilad Shalit by Hamas, or the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizballah), and he said that "he thought they were still alive." Now, if Israel had captured Hamas or Hizballah or PLO or Islamic Jihad soldiers (the different groups to which they belong hardly matters, for they are all prompted by the same texts and tenets and inculcated hatred), or if the Americans had captured, as they have, some Al Qaeda operatives, would anyone have to say "I think they are still alive" or "I hope they are still alive"? Of course not. Because Kofi Annan at that moment betrayed that even he understood the truth. He betrayed the fact that he understood which side was likely to torture or kill those whom they had captured. And that is exactly what happened with the two soldiers seized by Hizballah. When it was time to send the corpses of the soldiers back, it was clear that Hizballah had tortured and mutilated and murdered and then mutilated the bodies some more. In fact, Hizballah merely sent back the ashes, for it didn't want the signs of what it had done to those soldiers to be revealed to the world.
What would Javier Solano, or Kofi Annan, or his successor Ban-Ki Moon, or Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, or any of the same United Nations or European Union galere, prefer to be? Would they choose to be an Arab soldier who was captured by Israel, or would they choose to be an Israeli soldier who was captured by any Arab group you care to name? Let me add another hypothetical question: if given a choice, which would Javier Solano, or Kofi Annan or Ban-Ki Moon or Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, or for that matter Jimmy Carter, prefer to be: an Israeli or even Jewish civilian walking in Gaza or the Arab-occupied parts of the "West Bank," or an Arab walking in Tel Aviv, or Haifa, or Jerusalem?
The unbelievable moral idiocy, and the misstatements that rise to the level of lying, that vraious reporters and news commentators realize they can get away with, and the similar nonsense and lies that continues, and is tolerated by never being unchallenged, in the accounts offered by Arab spokesmen, is astonishing in its scope. CNN and other newsgroups are lying, in fact, whenever they pretend that the Arabs do not have a long history of flat-out lying, and of re-cycling corpses (including the corpses of all those who die natural deaths during any campaign, which deaths are then attributed to the monstrously cruel Israelis), and of course also of settling scores. Think of all the "collaborators" that the Hamas men apparently executed at a hospital. Think of all those Fatah men, or their families, they may also have not thought twice about killing in order to swell the ranks of the "civilians" dead at the hands of the Zionists. And as for outright staging, well -- just look at the Mohammed Al-Dura case, and to get the complete story of that, I recommend the article by James Fallows of The Atlantic.
What happens when the news reports are so obviously biased is that they create in their most intelligent and well-informed viewers a deep skepticism. By now that skepticism has become a deep mistrust. And then there develops, and quite soon, a hatred, a deep and abiding hatred, for the obvious nonsense, and obvious lies, and obvious ripped-out-of-context shallowness of their reports, and of the cruelty, stupidity, and viciousness of all those involved in the effort.
Hello, Hugh.
Sorry, but I cannot agree with the conclusion.
Jacques Ellul made it quite clear that the "intelligentsia" (read leaders) require propaganda to make them look smart (in his book "Propaganda"). It creates anything but "skepticism."
The virtual unanimity of Jew/Israel-hate has shown time and again that this certain statistical aberration is the way of the world.
As is stupid. Remember that 98% of the planet is dumber than the top 2%.
"Moral idiocy" is "believable" and proven daily.
Sadly, the "hatred" remains directed at the victims of the media.
More sadly, it will likely remain so.
Just one look at the world's reaction to the current situation in the Middle East should be proof enough.
The MSM will remain alive, though not well, because of its "obvious nonsense, and obvious lies."
"Cruelty, stupidity and viciousness" are the drugs of choice used by committed morons and hate addicts.
There are a lot of them.
While I mostly agree that the MSM is biased, It's important to be accurate about the facts.
In both cases that Israeli soldiers were returned from Hizolla, the soldiers were killed in an ambush, then the bodies were taken.
I don't know whether the bodies were mutilated, I did not hear any mention of such a claim.
In any case they were not tortured.
There were other cases, such as the lynching of two reservist that took a wrong turn and ended up in Ramala, where numerous atrocities were captured on camera.
I can't even look at television anymore, Hugh. I can't take it for even a spate of 5 seconds. I can't read the newspapers, either. I'm still fantasizing the whole round up the slimebag journos, slather them in molasses and let the fire ants and scorpions work their medicinal wonders on them....after I shoot them in the knee.
Hugh,
Rather than James Fallows's dated Atlantic article, a better analysis of the Mohammed al-Dura blood libel by Charles Enderlin and his Arab stringer would be found at dr Richard Landes's site, www.theaugeanstables.com .
"In both cases that Israeli soldiers were returned from Hizbollah, the soldiers were killed in an ambush, then the bodies were taken.
I don't know whether the bodies were mutilated, I did not hear any mention of such a claim."
-- from a poster above
I have consistently read in many different accounts that the two soldiers were wounded, but clearly alive, and not mortally wounded, when taken. And you know that not the bodies, but only the "remains," were returned. What other explanation would you offer for Hezbollah having turned the bodies into ashes?
As for mutilation accompanying or following upon murder, this is standard Arab practice when the opportunity has arisen. It happened to both Jewish men and women during the 1948-49 war and to Israeli soldiers in subsequent conflicts. It happened, to both Shi'a and Sunnis, by both Sunnis and Shi'a, in Iraq. And of course it happened to the Jewish victims of Muslim terrorists in Nariman House, in Mumbai.
The practice, for example, of cutting off genitalia and stuffing them into the mouths of corpses -- surely you have heard of this being done by the Arabs, or have you not? It's not exactly the kind of thing that appears, for obvious reasons, in the popular press, but it has happened, and not rarely.
Mark,
While I would agree with your assessment of the Landes account it should be noted that there's nothing so convincing to those who refuse to believe anything "racist hatemongers" such as we have to say as the ability to cite a mainstream publication.
The Atlantic is even lefty approved isn't it?
I've even had occasion to quote the(shudder) New Duranty Times.
It is precisely these links and citations that make JW/DW so valuable and why I trust them so.
Freezes that "Yeah, but..." right in their mouths. Delicious,that. Recommend it,highly.
Not to assume anything,we know where that leads(!)but maybe that's why Hugh suggested the Fallows article.Which isn't half bad incidentally.
Just a guess.
The poster above has correctly gauged my calculation.
In Khaled Abou El Fadl's 2006 book, "The Search for Beauty in Islam," he writes a chapter entitled "Muhammad, the Child."
He writes, as fact, "An Israeli sniper moves into position and shoots Muhammad four times and his father eight times. Muhammad first curls in his father's lap, then slumps to the ground, covers his face with those little hands, and dies."
What's that, Arabs lie? Even "the most important intellectual in Islam and Islamic law today?"
http://www.scholarofthehouse.org/abscholofhou.html
Prompted by the posting above, I'll repost a previous article, Scholar of the House Khaled Abou el Fadl:
Devotees of the genre know the pleasure to be derived from reading Hamid Dabashi's eulogy to Edward Said, with its echoes, for the connoisseur, of Dzhambul's 1936 "Song About Stalin" -- the first verse of which you can find, if you wish, in Ogonyok, No. 14, 14 March 1990. The "Song About Stalin" goes thus in rough translation:
Stalin-Sun! For our happiness, may you live [forever] in the Kremlin, We bring offerings to you -- our songs, our hearts, and our flowers. In the whole wide world, on this earthly sphere of Man, No one is more important for All Humanity [or: the Folk} than You.
Now, with those lines dew-fresh in your memory, quickly google “Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said.” You will certainly detect the influence of the "Song About Stalin" on Dabashi’s “Ode to Edward Said” as surely as you would, in “Hyperion,” that of Milton on Keats (two names that naturally come to mind when Said and Dabashi are mentioned).
Why bring up Dabashi on Said yet again? Only because I never dared hope to find something else that would supply the kind and degree of pleasure you obtain from Dabashi’s immortal work. But I have, and it would be churlish not to share it.
Here it is:
www.scholarofthehouse.com
Write that down. E-mail it to your friends. Send it to UCLA law students in the final-weeks-before-exams blend of doldrums and despair. They, while trying to keep straight Future Interests and the Rule in Shelley’s Case, or anticipatory breach and anticipatory repudiation, or to memorize some simple-minded three-or-four part “test” in Constitutional Law that something has to meet for something else to withstand strict scrutiny, would welcome some cheering up.
It is just the thing to post on the Bulletin Board in the lower-level lobby of the designated Washington hotel at the next annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools. What better way to raise the general level of “collegiality” about which so much fuss is made nowadays, and then to have a good laugh? And “collegiality” is so very important, now that the race is never to the mentally swiftest, but to those who can not only churn out articles (plagiarism or triviality or illiteracy be damned), but who can also most enthusiastically engage in mutual backslapping and blurb-swapping, and can attend a “departmental retreat” where everyone can “share experiences” and exchange “thoughts” and “feelings” while “expressing” himself, herself, themselves.
For www.scholarofthehouse.com is the work of “Friends and Supporters” of Khaled Abu El Fadl. Like hagiographers of the Middle Ages producing the “Vita morte e miracoli” of a favorite saint, these magnificent friends choose to remain self-effacingly anonymous. Khaled Abu El Fadl would be the first to deplore anything that smacked of self-promotion, and certainly would have no reason to know who is behind this site dedicated so effusively to him. He may not even know that the site exists. Under these circumstances, one should be grateful to those friends and supporters for managing to ferret out so much about and by Khaled Abou El Fadl, for the permanent edification of so many.
The “Friends and Supporters” explain that the website is "dedicated to the thought and scholarship of the distinguished Islamic scholar, jurist and professor of law, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, the most important intellectual in Islam and Islamic law today."
The domain name “scholarofthehouse” is also explained:
"We chose to name the site "Scholar of the House" as tribute to Dr. Abou El Fadl's having earned this high academic distinction early in his scholarly career while at Yale University….We felt it [the website name] a fitting title and name for an organization dedicated to Dr. Abou El Fadl's distinguished work. For more information on other related efforts, please e-mail us."
This “high academic distinction” is received by a dozen or more undergraduates each year at Yale for getting good grades, and allows those undergraduates to continue to pay tuition in their final year but exempts them from taking courses, so that they may at long last concentrate on their concentration. When El Fadl was named one of the dozen “scholars of the year” as a junior at Yale, the news traveled to Cairo, and his feat received mention in Al-Ahram.
Khaled Abou El Fadl is simply a specific example of a more general phenomenon: Every Man His Own Hero. In pre-Internet days, hundreds of millions of Chinese (some of them now the proud parents and grandparents of single-minded capitalists) held aloft Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Tens of millions of Russians in bad old Soviet days put Stalin’s “Short Course” on their bookshelves, even though it was hardly the stuff that would qualify, nowadays, for Oprah’s Book Club. In Libya, Khaddafy flogged his “Green Book,” containing the Wisdom of Muammar Khaddafy; once upon a time, thousands read it, for the book was the talk and the toast of the town, if the town was in Tripolitania.
Now, with the Internet, disinterested “Friends and Supporters” of virtually anyone can offer that anyone’s words by way of a Spiritual and All-Purpose Guide to Just About Everything. It is not merely that Everyman can now blog here, and post there, over and over again. Now Everyman Can Appear on the World-Wide Web as The Glorious Helmsman of Humanity, courtesy of his self-effacing “Friends and Supporters.” On the Internet, at a dedicated website, you can be not only King or Queen of the Universe, and not just for a day but from here on out, and from beyond the grave (your website will outlast you). Everyman can now count himself a king of infinite space, even if bound in his own gigabyte nutshell, in mysterious Googlelandia, or of something, somewhere.
In offering so many different aspects of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s Life and Works, www.scholarofthehouse.com is simply ahead of its time. It would be hard to choose which section most impresses. There is the biographical “About Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl.” There is the scholarly “Bibliography of Khaled Abou El Fadl.” There are the epistolary “Letters to Dr. Abou El Fadl.” There is “Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl In the Media.” There are “Unedited Interviews with Khaled Abou El Fadl.” And there is even “Recommended Reading” –“recommended” by none other than Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, some of whose books are among those he finds most recommendable. But that is not cause for carping. It would be silly indeed for someone to write a book that, afterwards, he felt he could not recommend.
Indeed, Khaled Abou El Fadl’s refreshing absence of humility, rightly understood, is truly humble. Was it not Golda Meir who once cut short someone engaging in pro-forma self-deprecation: “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.” Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is “not so humble”; it logically follows that, therefore, he is very likely great.
Not the least of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s services is the list he compiled, available at www.scholarofthehouse.com, of what he calls “The Worst Books About Islam,” books so bad that Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl hopes no one will waste his time even opening one of them. That list includes, among much else, Professor John Wansbrough’s “Qur’anic Studies,” Ibn Warraq’s anthology of scholarly articles “The Quest for the Historical Muhammad,” and Joseph Schacht’s “Introduction to Muhammadan Law.” Wansbrough and Schacht have long been admired by Western scholars of Islam: the first as a pioneer in the study of early Islam and a teacher of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook; the second as one of the most scrupulous and authoritative students of Islamic law in the Western world. But neither Wansbrough nor Schacht was a Muslim. And by now it should be obvious that one cannot rely on any non-Muslim scholar’s supposed “understanding” of Islam, no matter how many languages that scholar may know, or how many decades of tireless and, on the surface, disinterested study he may have devoted to the matter. The simplest of seminarians at Al-Azhar, the most grizzled Afghani poppy farmer, by virtue of being a Muslim, necessarily understands Islam in a way that no non-Muslim, no matter how learned, possibly can.
This should not be confused with the whole business of “Orientalism.” Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is no Edward Said, who has been receiving so many palpable hits that his likeness is beginning to look like St. Sebastian. Khaled Abou El Fadl realizes that Schacht and Wansbrough and Crone and Luxenberg and Ibn Warraq may well have had nothing to do with the “imperialism project.” He needs, other Muslims need, to find an objection broader and deeper and sturdier now that burnt offerings are no longer made with quite the same frequency at the Temple of Said.
No, Khaled Abou El Fadl’s objection is broader and deeper and much more profound. It is just that non-Muslims obviously cannot be expended to feel, deeply, the profound richness and variety and multiplicity of Islam, and the permanent impossibility of any non-Muslim making any valid generalizations about Islam ever -- or indeed, of saying anything at all about Islam from “the outside,” as richly various and variously rich as Islam is, so different in its theory and practice, depending on the time, depending on the space. There are practically as many Islams as there are Muslims, and non-Muslims – who seem disturbingly confident that they can make pronouncements on matters they know nothing about -- should never forget it. Especially when they are about to say something negative, as they do so often nowadays, simply because they need that old whipping-boy – the Other. Ever since the Communist lead retired, they have been grooming Islam to fill that role.
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl knows that non-Muslims cannot talk about “Islam” because “Islam,” as one thing, does not exist, but only as many things, and only Muslims can talk truthfully, without rancor or hidden agendas, about those things which seem never to overlap or add up to one thing. One particular kind of non-Muslim – the kind that speaks Arabic, and has an Arab name, and calls himself an Arab, but happens to be Christian – may sometimes be exempted from the ban, because the genetic makeup of such people, their DNA, permits a special insight into the nature of Islam. But Schacht, Wansbrough, Snouck Hurgronje and a thousand other scholars did not possess that precious strand of recombinant DNA. The entire corpus of their work, as a result, was fatally vitiated.
Ibn Warraq, whose The Quest for the Historical Muhammad makes the list compiled by Khaled Abou El Fadl of “The Worst Books on Islam,” suffers from a different, equally fatal handicap. Although Ibn Warraq was raised as a Muslim, and began attending a madrasa at the age of 6 (the very age at which, Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl began to attend his own elementary classes in Qur’an at Al-Azhar), Ibn Warraq fell away from Islam, and ultimately renounced it. And now he spends his time writing about Islam, as if he understood it.
But a mysterious phenomenon, of which Muslims have long been aware but which is insufficiently appreciated by non-Muslims, is that of the complete mental disarray, accompanied by severe memory loss, that results from the shock to the apostate’s system. It’s akin to whirling about in a centrifuge in a dark laboratory, with a mad scientist rubbing his gleeful hands as he watches you whirl, and whirl. And the name of that mad scientist is Shaytan -- Satan. Apostasy from Islam is a truly wrenching experience, often proving fatal. For in leaving Islam, one is giving up all chance for Eternal Happiness and throwing away the Total Explanation of the Universe, which gives daily life the only coherence it may be said to possess. Imagine stumbling upon the Secret of the Universe, and failing to recognize it, or picking it up, and then throwing it away. That is what apostates from Islam do.
Naturally there are consequences. Whatever they may once have known, or thought they knew, about Islam before, the very act of apostasy renders them incapable of recalling anything of value about the faith that for so long sustained them. Their apostasy renders them incapable of understanding or speaking about Islam. Their so-called “testimony” about Islam is thus essentially worthless. That is true of Ibn Warraq (at www.secularislam.org) as well as of Ali Sina (at www.faithfreedom.org) and so many others. The minute they became apostates, they no longer knew what they were talking about, when they talked about Islam.
A comparison may be instructive. At www.secularislam.org, Ibn Warraq inflicts his articles on Islam on the entire universe, or at least the universe of those who happen to stumble upon his website, free of charge, there for the taking. At www.scholarofthehouse.com, Khaled Abou El Fadl, or rather his Friends and Supporters, do things differently. Visitors have nothing inflicted on them. Instead, they are politely offered his articles, his lectures, his interviews, all demurely on sale. Only those who demonstrate a real interest, by sending in the appropriate sum, will read or hear in detail what Khaled Abou El Fadl wishes to say on a great many subjects. He does not believe in inflicting his views on the entire world, but on a self-selected group.
Perhaps that marks the difference between a coarse apostate such as Ibn Warraq, with his anthologies of pseudo-scholarship (just look at a list of the “scholarly”contributors to his other books, such as The Origins of the Koran and What the Koran Really Says), and the refined Islamic luminescence that is Khaled Abou El Fadl. He is not only a scholar of the house, but if those website sales hold steady, that house should in due time have many mansions.
One marketing trick of Ibn Warraq, and of other ex-Muslims, is the assumption of an alias, designed to make it seem that they are in some danger. Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, in contrast, does not use an alias despite the “many threats” he has received, and has repeatedly told us about only with great reluctance. He is determined, he says, to continue his heroic refusal to kowtow to the “Wahhabists” who are giving Islam such a bad name in some quarters.
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl has been just as brave in speaking truth to powerful non-Muslims. It was he who fearlessly argued that “Jihad” means “struggle” and not “Holy War,” and that therefore there could not possibly be any kind of “Holy War” in Islam. It was Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl who, just after 9/11, forthrightly expressed his immediate thoughts, which were to worry about harm that might come to Muslims as a result of this attack. That could not have been an easy and popular thing to say in America just after the attacks of 9/11. The cowardly, of course, would only offer some words of sympathy and solidarity with American non-Muslims; Khaled Abou El Fadl was not about to play the taqiyya hypocrite. He is a Muslim, and he worries about his fellow Muslims. Whether dealing with those threatening Wahhabists, or their mirror-image, the threatening Infidels, he will not trim his sails. “Ich kann nicht anders” – “I can do no other” is as much his motto as it is anyone’s.
One question remains. There are so many things on sale at this website devoted to Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl. These include collections of his articles (for $60), and whole series of his recorded lectures on this or that aspect of Islam, which can be ordered on either audiocassette or CD. The first item at the website is “What’s New”: new articles new interviews, new Qur’anic commentaries, brave new books by Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, each with the price helpfully appended.
Should you, for example, want to buy Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s commentary on Surah 103: Al-‘Asr, that will be $8.00; for the same price, you can purchase his discussion of Sura 111: Al-Lahab. A lecture, “Islam and Democracy” goes for $4.00, while an Unedited Interview on “Islamic Democracy” is a bargain at $8.00. Full information about ordering is available at the site. And if you are moved to send a contribution to support those who operate the website in gathering, and posting, and selling Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl’s work, information about how to do that in the most expeditious manner is also conveniently available.
At the website, under the “Scholar of the House” rubric, the “Friends and Supporters” of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl note that “Dr. Abou El Fadl is neither involved in nor responsible for any of the activities related to this website, including the naming of the site, the conducting of any matters of business, or the making of any decisions regarding its policies. Dr. Abou El Fadl does not gain any profit from the sales generated from the website.”
But someone must be making some money from the sale of Dr. Abou El Fadl’s articles, and the 10-part lecture series (on Audiocassettes and CD) on Marriage and Divorce, and on a gallimaufry of taped lectures, interviews, writings, and opinions on this and on that. The halo of the hagiographic sanctifies the brazenly commercial enterprise at this website dedicated so flatteringly, even djambullishly, to the Thought and Greatness of One Man.
This raises an awkward question. Could it be that these “Friends and Supporters” are trying to make money from the genius of Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl while purporting to honor him, and are using the website only to flog his wares? Meanwhile, the trusting and unworldly Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl himself, that “inexhaustible fountain of fertilacious fertility whose rivetting rivulets water the oasis where the roses and bulbuls of Gulistan bloom and twitter both day and night, even in the endless tract-housing wastes of the American intellectual desert,” as Hamid Dabashi might put it, is apparently receiving not a penny for his thoughts – at least not those of his thoughts that are available for sale at www.scholarofthehouse.com.
What kind of “Friends and Supporters” are these, anyway? Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl has a right to know.
[Posted by Hugh at April 5, 2005]
Here's a little more on the BBC, and especially on John Simpson, who for a long time was, and may well still be, head of the foreign affairs coverage of the BBC World Service:
"First a little, thence to more, from past postings on John Simpson, director of the BBC World Service, a man deeply and viciously anti-Israel and slightly less deeply, and only a bit less viciously, anti-American. Note in particular his friendship with Peter Hounam (last noted when he was arrested by the Israelis when he was in their country making as much trouble for them as he could -- see Simpson's glowing review of Hounam's protocolish "Operation Cyanide":
#1.
"The BBC effectively has an Islamic agenda..."-- from a reader
Not so much the BBC, but a number of powerful people at the BBC. The BBC World Service is run by John Simpson, deeply anti-American and anti-Israeli, who in turn reports to the Foreign Office, for the World Service is under its control.
Another factor is that the kind of semi-educated young, without any particular skills or training, who are picked up by the BBC. Like hires like. Someone who appeared to believe that Islam exhibited many of the features of Fascism, or who thought, for example, that the cost of Muslim migrants in the Western world or the U.K. was simply too high for the indigenous Infidels to continue to pay, would not be hired by the B.B.C. today or, if hired, promoted. Someone who was seen to read The Telegraph, and not The Guardian or The Independent, someone who did not think that the American government was necessarily entirely of the devil's party, someone who seemed to think that Western civilization might actually exist, and be worth protecting, is unlikely to be hired by the B.B.C. today. It is not only a question of high policies. It is a question of personnel. In this respect the B.B.C. is only a more extreme case of NPR, or for that matter of most academic departments of literature and history.
Think of the mental makeup of America's Bright Young Things. Think of their proud parents, describing those 2-3 month "internships" by which well-off and well-connected young people, go for a few months in Moscow (battered women), or Cambodia (teenage prostitutes), or Darfur (black refugees). They may know not a word of the relevant local language (so just imagine what that means), they arrive to "help" for a few months, and then just as quickly depart (while the real workers stay on and on), and these 2-3-4 month stints presumably give them an "insight" into things and, though they would not recognize it, prove valuable to them, in helping swell their resume and hence their future job prospects, just as the enterprise of colonialism permitted those middle-class British or French or Belgians who went out to the colonies to live lives that, materially, were an improvement on what they would enjoy at home.
The old colonialist has been replaced by the NGO careerist. The propagandist for Empire has been replaced by the propagandist (on the BBC) for Arab imperialism. It has been the most successful and most damaging imperialism in world history. For the Arabs used Islam, a faith concocted to justify and promote Arab conquest, as a vehicle for Arab supremacist ideology. Those conquered by Islam, and forcibly converted (for the need to escape the onerous conditions of dhimmitude certainly constitutes "force"), did not merely convert. They surrendered their own histories, their own pre-Islamic pasts. They assumed Arab names, and false Arab lineages. They took as the models of behavior some Arabs of the 7th century -- the sole models of behavior. It has been an extraordinary phenomenon. No European imperialists came close to such an achievement, whereby those conquered remained unaware of the extent to which their minds and histories had been appropriated -- and permanently.
[Posted by: Hugh at April 28, 2005 10:06 AM]
#2.
"How does your theory about Simpson and the Beeb..."-- from a reader
I present no "theory" about Simpson. He is what he is, deeply anti-Israel, so deeply that it must emerge from that pathological condition which all civilized people have gotten use to detecting.
I will now introduce into evidence Simpson's review of the absurd book by his good friend Peter Hounam. Hounam has been doing what damage he could to the state of Israel for the past 30 years, perhaps most effectively in his encouraging the quasi-demented Mordechai Vanunu in his own revelations; indeed, when last heard from, Hounam had been arrested in Israel for more of the same. Hounam wrote a book about the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, which the Israelis always maintained was an accident, with considerable evidence, and their version of events was completely vindicated not only by the book-length investigation of an American judge, but by the tapes of the pilots' conversations, finally released by the American government a year or two ago.
Nonetheless, it is one of the favorite topics of American and other antisemites. James Akins likes the topic; so do the Saudis and all of their hirelings. And John Simpson and Peter Hounam are fond of it. Hounam even wrote a book, "The Cyanide Conspiracy," which charges that the attack was deliberate, that it was orchestrated from within the American government by pro-Zionist agents, and that it was designed to be a casus belli between America and Egypt. All nonsense, but not for John Simpson.
Here are two reviews of this conspiracy theory deeply antisemitic book by Peter Hounam, for which not only was there not the slightest factual basis for it, but the recent release of the tapes made at the time by the Americans, of the Israeli pilots' conversation, and their analysis, shows clearly, as sane (i.e., non-antisemitic) commentators have shown, that the Israeli version of the incident -- that it was a mistake -- was in fact the real one.
The first review is simply to give a flavor of the book.
The second review -- the one by John Simpson, for years the czar of the BBC World Service, is given so that BBC supporters and detractors alike may get a hint of what John Simpson is all about when it comes to Israel:
Review #1:
OPERATION CYANIDE: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War
III, by Peter Hounam, Vision, a division of Satin Publications, Ltd, London,
2003, $24.95
Since it reviewed A. Jay Cristol's book, THE LIBERTY INCIDENT, in August 2003,
MILITARY HISTORY was bombarded with letters, including some from outraged survivors, insisting that the Israeli attack on their ship on June 8, 1967, was not in error, but deliberate (see letters, P. 8), and demanding that the guilty party confess to the crime. Absent from all such accusations, however, was a substantial explanation of motive: What would make it worth Israel's while to attack a ship -- even a spy ship -- being operated by one of its few supporters in the world?
In OPERATION CYANIDE, Peter Hounam, an investigative reporter for the SUNDAY TIMES and the British Broadcasting System with 30 years' experience, presents the results of his research into the question of "who really dunnit," which evolved into more of what he called a "why dunnit." Hounam structures his book accordingly, as the reader follows him from interview to interview, gathering clues like a detective from testimonies that tend to be scattered, fragmentary, guarded and sometimes almost cryptic. As Hounam "connects the dots," however, the scenario that emerges is fantastic and yet, in view of the United States' rush to war with Iraq in 2003, not entirely implausible.
In essence, President Lyndon B. Johnson and some key officials, seeing the increasingly Soviet-leaning Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser as a threat, made secret arrangements to help Israel in its coming June offensive with the intention of toppling Nasser. As part of Operation Cyanide, USS LIBERTY was sent to operate off the Sinai coast, where it was to be sunk with all hands by unmarked Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats, after which the United States would blame the attack on Egypt and launch carrier air strikes against Cairo -- with nuclear weapons if necessary. The stubborn refusal of LIBERTY'S crew to die or let their ship sink after 75 minutes of air and sea attack -- in spite of two American carrier sorties to aid her being inexplicably called back -- led to the cancellation of Operation Cyanide, Israel's apology and offer of restitution for a "tragic mistake," the Johnson Administration's swift acceptance of that explanation and an equally quick, reassuring "hot line" telephone call to Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin.
The first book to seriously examine the possible reason behind the attack on USS LIBERTY, OPERATION CYANIDE presents fragmentary evidence to support an extraordinary theory. If, however, the emergence of further evidence proves its premise to be true, one cannot help but wonder if their being set up for destruction by the government they swore to serve, in the interests of starting a nuclear war based on a lie, is the sort of truth that LIBERTY'S bitter survivors were hoping for.
Jon Guttman
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Review #2:
BOOK REVIEW OF "OPERATION CYANIDE"
By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor
This is an extraordinary story, one of the most extraordinary, perhaps, of the entire twentieth century. Suppose, in an attempt to shore up his critically damaged presidency, Lyndon Johnson deliberately engineered an event in which American lives were sacrificed and the United States was brought disturbingly close to an all-out nuclear war with Russia? Suppose this involved a secret agreement between Israel and American intelligence, which resulted in an Israeli attack on an American naval vessel, in the latter stages of the Six-Day War?
It sounds, I know, like one of those depressing conspiracy theories which cluster round every big controversial event from the death of Princess Diana to the attack on the World Trade Centre. People often have problems in handling the banality of truth, and prefer to imagine deeper, darker plots beneath the surface. Yet this book is based on careful, rigorous investigation by a well-known and respected journalist who has meticulously tracked down the people and the documents who have survived from
the event itself: the attack on the USS Liberty, in the eastern Mediterranean in June 1967.
As with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, four years earlier, the official version is even more unlikely than some of the conspiracy theories. In order to believe the hasty, often contradictory account which came out of Washington, you would have to accept all sorts of virtual impossibilities: that Israeli planes and torpedo boats could have mistaken a modern American warship of ten thousand tons for an elderly Egyptian horse transport less than a quarter of its size, come to within fifty feet of it without spotting that it was flying a particularly large American flag, and blazed away at it from close range for forty minutes before realizing what it was they were shooting at. A hasty American enquiry immediately afterwards called it 'a bona fide mistake.' That seems, to say the least, a little implausible.
Yet this is the official version, which stands to this day. Any other version -- that of the Liberty's surviving crew members, for instance -- has been extremely hard to establish because of the intensity of the security blanket which the Israelis and Americans wrapped around the entire incident.
The blanket remains in place to this day, yet this book provides sufficient evidence for any open-minded person to see that something else lies underneath: something very disturbing.
I have found Peter Hounam's research compelling, and the story which unfolds in these pages rivetting. It is time a little daylight was shed on Operation Cyanide. This book does precisely that, and we should be grateful for it.
John Simpson
Paris
October 2002
Do you still think that it is a "theory" about John Simpson, the man who conveys the Foreign Office line, along with a considerable anti-Israel animus, deeply felt, passionately believed, of his own, to everyone (not that everyone needs encouragement -- Judy Swallow doesn't, nor do a good many others on the BBC World Service) at the BBC World Service.
As for the detestable Orla Guerin (married, I think, to a "Palestinian" Arab), she has no business being awarded anything, and has no business being kept on in a job where she can mouth her venomous views, paid for by the hapless license-fee payers of Great Britain, not all of whom can possibly enjoy enduring the requirement that they pay the salary for someone who is as much part of the enemy camp, as Lord Haw-Haw or Tokyo Rose.
[Posted by: Hugh at April 28, 2005 01:36 PM]
Note, please, that were this understood as the kind of war it is, a man like John Simpson would be treated as were Nazi sympathizers during World War II. He would long ago have lost his job, and at the very least be under surveillance. That he helps to mold minds all over the world, at the direction of the Foreign Office, and that he continues to keep a real sense of what Islam is all about from listeners everywhere (even as he endorses, and even accepts and repeats, the most absurd anti-Israel canards, like that of Peter Hounam), gives one pause.
If there is any conspiracy, it is one involving rich and powerful Arab interests, who have bought and paid their way into the chanceries, and the minds, of Western leaders everywhere. Sometimes the bribery is clearcut, as with Chirac. Sometimes it comes indirectly, through the promise of business deals (chiefly armaments sales and oil concessions to the oil companies of sufficiently-compliant nations).
Does John Simpson have friends and acquaintances in high places? How could he not? He is in a very high place himself. Is he friendly with Alistair Crooke? With James Akins? With Patrick Seale? Does he get along well with Edward Mortimer, Chief Speechwriter to Kofi Annan, himself the enthusiastic endorser of a book by Lennie Brenner about how Zionists collaborated with Nazis -- as vicious a book as can be imagined, but one that was a positive boon to our Edward (quasi-plantagenet) Mortimer when he went looking for work at the U.N. and, having just come off a stint of Euro-Arab Dialoguish stuff, was the right rat for the right office at the right U.N.
[Posted by: Hugh at April 28, 2005 01:54 PM]
John Simpson should not be running the BBC World Service. In wartime, one incarcerates those who sympathize with the enemy, and who work to undercut one's allies. Israel is a fellow Infidel and ally of all Infidels. Muslim Arabs are the enemy. Simpson, in a well-ordered world, would have, at the very least, his phones tapped, his every move monitored. He is an Agent of Influence -- whether out of conviction or for pay, or the overlapping of the two, doesn't matter. Objectively, John Simpson and the BBC World Service -- like other parts of the BBC but with special venom -- help to promote the apologists for Islam.
They must be exposed, and then must be turned out. The mixture as before will not do."
Hugh's conclusion is solid as houses.
When he says
Clearly he is not referring to the academics or most of the intellectuals.
As it happens, the most intelligent and well informed are actually, especially here in the US, to be found among ordinary working folks.
Now, I'm rather an elitist myself, so it pains me to say that our elites have become useless, suicidal idiots, but such is the case.
I'll add that the newspapers are going broke. That can't be a sign of trust and respect.
When I see this obviously bias reporting that favors the Palestinians, I think we have to remember that the news organizations understand the importance of having "access" to people and locations that are the "hot" topics in the news. Just as the Palestinians know how to be drama queens for the video cameras so as to sway public opinion, the Palestinians/Hamas also very keenly monitor the news stories being reported about them. If they find that a certain reporter, that they gave tours and access to of the "suffering" of the Palestinians, is reporting things that do damage to their propaganda efforts, they will deny the reporter further access to the "hot zones". This reporter will also most likely be risking his life by incurring the wrath of the violence prone Hamas. The media is motivated by "if it bleeds, it leads". The Palestinians are more then happy to oblige this "motivation" and thus the Palestinians and the media form a mutually beneficial alliance that corrupts the news media and makes the likes of CNN and BBC lapdogs of sinister manipulators.
I have to say that I am no fan of Tony Blair but this morning, on the BBC Today programme, he identified the Palestinian problem was largely with Hamas.
He said since Israel gave up the Gaza strip Israel has been targeted by rocket fire and no negotiated settlement has made the slightest difference to the Palestinian attacks.
Blair also said that 1.5 million people are crammed into the Gaza strip which measures only 20-miles by 4-miles making it the most densely populated place on earth. Civilian casualties are therefore impossible to avoid.
Blair, as envoy for the Quartet, sees his main job being to unite the Palestinians and reduce Hamas power. At the present time there is no one to negotiate with that can give assurances for a ceasefire that can be relied upon to hold.
Israel is not the problem in this war and has said many times that they want a negotiated settlement. I am pleased to see that the Israeli governments presentation of their case on TV has much improved. The mumbling old men seem to have gone. I particularly like the women foreign minister who is not afraid to show anger and states the case very clearly.
In defence of the BBC, and again I am no big fan of that institution, they have given better coverage of the Israeli view than previously was the case.
Hugh, our dear Planet Earth is truly honored by the presence of Professor Abou el Fadl. I find him a rather retiring scholar. Humble and modest to a fault, he would never --in the crude Yankee expression-- toot his own horn. He would never create a website devoted to praising Himself in the most fulsome adjectives. Rather, he is a savant to be cherished. That's why I feel deep gratitude to Human Rights Watch for appointing this paragon of decency and spiritual striving [jihad] to their board. This fact should be better known so that everyone could praise HRW for their bold, moral act of appointing this noble victim of Islamophobia to direct and lead action in favor of Human Rights. We all know that Human Rights are of the very essence of Islam. That's why we have the Cairo Islamic Declaration of Human Rights which some say is superior to the old UN Universal Declaration of HR.
May we all worship at the scholar's house.