Some of these efforts, like columnist George Monbiot's attempt to smear good science in the Mexican corn debate (see my column, "Bad Science Never Dies"), can be quite inventive and insidious.
Others, like Brian Whitaker's attempt to impugn MEMRI, are just lame and ineffective.
Pejman recently demonstrated how and why Brian failed so miserably.
Update: HonestReporting, today, chips in with some more damning rebuttal of Whitaker:
In his attack, Whitaker acknowledges that "nobody, so far as I know, disputes the general accuracy of Memri's translations."
So what's the problem?
For starters, Whitaker quotes Ibraham Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who complains that Memri depicts the Muslim world in a bad light. Hardly a valid criticism, considering that Memri merely translates the Arabic media!
Whitaker also denounces Memri for employing three former members of Israeli intelligence. What Whitaker doesn't tell us is that Memri's founder, Colonel Yigal Carmon, and most of his young staff, are on the left wing of the Israeli political spectrum. Carmon was an advisor to the late Yitzhak Rabin and is a supporter of territorial compromise.
Whitaker scoffs at the fact that the names of Memri's staff and office address were removed from their website due to concern of attack by Arab extremists. Whitaker calls this an "over-the-top precaution." One wonders if the Guardian would consider itself "over-the-top" for taking such precautions to protect its own staff from violence.
... Most surprising of all is that while Whitaker spends 1,700 words attacking Memri as a "mysterious organization" and its "air of secrecy," he has forgotten to tell Guardian readers of his own secrets. For in addition to his work as Middle East editor of The Guardian, Whitaker also runs the anti-Israel, website Arab Gateway (http://www.al-bab.com).
Arab Gateway lists viciously anti-Israel "associate sites," such as that of the spuriously-named "Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding" (http://www.caabu.org).
Whitaker's site has pages about non-Arab minorities in the Middle East, such as Berbers and Kurds -- but no page on Jews. The site's section on "maps" lists a "country map of Palestine" (we didn't know Palestine was a country), but upon clicking the link it takes you to a file at the Univ. of Texas archives with a slightly different name: "israel_map.jpg".
See a beaming photo of Whitaker on the "about" page of Arab Gateway at http://www.al-bab.com/arab/about.htm
Sound to us like a conflict of interest.
Comments can be sent to the Guardian:
letters@guardian.co.uk
Editor: simon.waldman@guardian.co.uk
Writer: brian.whitaker@guardian.co.uk
Comments to Whitaker's Arab website can be sent to:
arabgateway@hotmail.com
Thanks to Tom Gross for the above information.
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