Middle East Media Research Institute

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For the Michigan Electronic Medical Record Initiative see http://www.memri.us/.

The Middle East Media Research Institute, abbreviated MEMRI (Hebrew name המכון לחקר התקשורת המזרח התיכון, abbreviated ממר"י) is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization located in Washington DC, with branch offices in Jerusalem, Berlin, Brussels, Moscow, and London, and a Media Center in Jerusalem. MEMRI provides translations of Arabic, Persian or Farsi, and Hebrew media as well as original analyses of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.

MEMRI was founded in February 1998 by its president Yigal Carmon (יגאל כרמון) a retired colonel in Israeli military intelligence, and the academic Dr. Meyrav Wurmser. The organisation became more prominent after the September 11, 2001 attacks, due to increased Western public interest in Arab and Iranian affairs. At that time, it expanded its staff considerably, setting up new branches abroad in early 2002. More growth and expansion of focus was experienced during the Iraq war, as media activity increased in that area.

MEMRI It is one of the few free sources of English language translations of material published in Arabic and Persian or Farsi. MEMRI publishes their translations, analyses, and in-depth reports on their Web site. They also distribute them, "free of charge, by fax and email" to anyone who asks for them. Originally, they were only provided to "Congresspersons, congressional staffers, policy makers, journalists, academics, and interested parties".

MEMRI is regularly quoted by major American newspapers, including The New York Times, The New Yorker (magazine), the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and European ones including The Guardian and Irish Times. The organization has supporters and detractors in the international press.

Objectives and Projects

MEMRI's About us page states the organization's objectives as follows:

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) 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 was founded in February 1998 to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East"[1]

MEMRIs translated articles, media analyses and "in-depth studies" focus on the following areas:

  • JIHAD AND TERRORISM STUDIES PROJECT "monitors militant-Islamic groups that educate and preach Jihad and martyrdom in mosques, school systems, and in the media," and "sermons and religious rulings (fatwas) and reactions to terrorist attacks both in the U.S. and abroad"
  • U.S. AND THE MIDDLE EAST offers, "translation and analyses of Middle Eastern news events" with potential impact on US foreign policy
  • REFORM IN THE ARAB AND MUSLIM WORLD focuses on, "reform, and the debate surrounding it, within the Middle East and Muslim world" including, Social Reform (women's rights, civil society, educational systems), Political Reform (democracy, rule of law, individual protections, freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly), Religious Reform (reform in Islam, misuse of religion), and Economic reform (free market economy, globalization, and modernization)
  • ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT which "focuses on current developments in the peace-process, as well as its breakdown, and [reviews] the relationship between major Arab nations and Israel.
  • INTER-ARAB RELATIONS which focuses on the decline of pan-Arab nationalism, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and elements of unity and disunity in the Arab world.
  • ECONOMIC STUDIES which covers, "news and comments of an economic nature"
  • ANTISEMITISM DOCUMENTATION PROJECT, which documents, "Arabic newspaper reports, editorials, and other media sources which are primarily based upon antisemitic themes"

At the time of founding in 1998, MEMRI's stated objectives and area of focus were narrower. This summary from their 1998 "About us" Web page describes their objectives and focus as follows, "to study and analyze intellectual developments and politics in the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict, with a particular emphasis on its Israeli-Palestinian dimension." The statement also said that, in its research, MEMRI would be "dedicated to the proposition that the values of liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market are relevant to the Middle East and to United States foreign policy towards the region.[2]

Staff

In its original website of 1998, MEMRI listed 6 staff members: its President and co-founder Yigal Carmon, co-founder Meyrav Wurmser (Executive Director), Aaron Mannes (Director of Research), Yotam Feldner (Director of Media Analysis), Stacey Lakind (Research Associate), and Aluma Solnick (Research Associate). Stacey Lakind left in late 1998, and Aaron Mannes in early 2001; the others were still MEMRI staff as of October 5, 2001, when MEMRI stopped listing its employees on its website. Meyrav Wurmser left in early 2002 to join the Hudson Institute; she was replaced as Executive Director by Steven Stalinsky.

It now has a much larger number of employees ("17, plus translators" in January 2002[3], "over 30" in August 2002 of which 20 translators, current number unknown); citing bomb threats, it provides no information on their identities, beyond stating that they are "of different nationalities" and sometimes including by-lines on reports. Yigal Carmon has stated that "...staff include people of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths and they hold a range of political views".[4]

Staff backgrounds

At the time of MEMRI's founding in 1998, some of its higher-ranking staff were as follows:

Col. (Res.) Yigal Carmon is MEMRI's President. He served in the IDF/Intelligence Branch from 1968 to 1988. From 1977 to 1982 he was the Acting Head of Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria and the Advisor on Arab Affairs to the Civil Administration. Following Col. Carmon's retirement from the IDF he was Advisor to Premiers Shamir and Rabin for Countering Terrorism from 1988 to 1993. In 1991 and 1992 he was a senior member of the Israeli Delegation to peace negotiations with Syria in Madrid and Washington.
Dr. Meyrav Wurmser is MEMRI's Executive Director. She received her Ph.D. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. where she wrote on Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement. She has taught at Johns Hopkins University and the United States Naval Academy. She has written numerous articles about Israel, the Arab World, and Zionism. Her most recent article on the status of women in the Palestinian Authority was published in Middle East Insight. She is also a "Contributing Expert" for The Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR) which was "...established in 1997 as a non-profit, non-partisan organization, committed to stimulating and informing the national and international debates concerning all aspects of security policy - notably those policies which are an outcome of the political process started in Oslo and subsequently called the Peace Process."[5]
Aaron Mannes is MEMRI's Director of Research. In 1997, he earned an MA in Liberal Arts from St. John's College in Annapolis, MD. His undergraduate degree, earned in 1992 from Emerson College in Boston, is a BS in Speech. He has been a stand-up comedian, an Equal Employment Opportunity Investigator, and an Associate Writer for The Hotline.
Yotam Feldner is MEMRI's Director of Media Analysis. He was born in Kibbutz Gazit, Israel and served in the IDF in Military Intelligence where he acquired fluency in Arabic and familiarity with Arab media. He earned a BA in History and English Language and Literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Aluma Solnick is a Research Associate with MEMRI. She was born in Jerusalem and served in the IDF in Military Intelligence. She earned a BA in Arabic Language and the History of the Middle East from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She is presently completing her MA in Arab Language and Literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli is described by the Middle East Review of International Affairs (September 2003) as having "...received his Ph.D. in development planning from the University of Michigan. He has spent most of his professional career at the World Bank. Since his retirement from the bank, he has served as an occasional consultant to both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Dr. Raphaeli joined the Middle Media Research Institute (MEMRI)as a senior analyst in 2001."[6]
Prof. Menahem Milson (Academic Advisor), a professor at Hebrew University, is described by the World Jewish Congress as follows: "Menahem Milson is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been teaching Arabic literature there since 1963. He has also served as head of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature and as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. Professor Milson is the academic advisor of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). He has published extensively on modern Egyptian writers. His book on Egypt's great humanist, Najib Mahfuz - Najib Mahfuz: The Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo - appeared in 1998."

Funders

MEMRI says that it is funded exclusively by private money from some 250 donors, including various foundations. Notable among these is the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, which has donated at least $100,000 dollars[7]. The Harold Grinspoon Foundation notes in its 2005 annual report that it provides funding to MEMRI to support Israel advocacy. [8] And the Koret Foundation, in its spring 2005 quarterly report, notes that it gave $20,000 to MEMRI to support Israel advocacy and education. [9] Smaller funders include the Ronald & Mary Ann Lachman Foundation, which has donated a total of $7,500.[10]

According to GuideStar, a national database of nonprofit organizations, the US branch's total yearly revenue in gifts, grants, and contributions has increased from $506,948 in 1999, to $1,746,393 in 2002, including a jump of almost a million dollars in the fiscal year (July 1 2001 to June 30 2002) of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Criticism

Selectivity

MEMRI states that it aims to reflect "main trends of thought and when possible general public opinion" [11] of the Middle East. Dr. Juan Cole, for example, has accused the institute of "cleverly cherry-pick[ing] the vast Arabic press, which serves 300 million people, for the most extreme and objectionable articles and editorials", selecting the Arabic equivalent of comments on Islam by the likes of Jerry Falwell or Ann Coulter.[12] In regard to this statement, Prof. Marc Lynch added that "it is the near-unanimous consensus of all Arabic-speaking experts on the Middle East that your [MEMRI's] service does exactly what Professor Cole alleges... MEMRI routinely selects articles which show the worst of Arab discourse, even where this represents only a minority of actually expressed opinion, while almost never acknowledging the actual distribution of opinion."[13]

Brian Whitaker, a former graduate student in Middle Eastern Studies and the Middle East Editor of the British Newspaper, the Guardian, made similar criticisms of MEMRI in his 2002 Guardian article entitled, "Selective MEMRI"[14] MEMRI's rebuttal [15] to that article was later published in the Guardian, as was subsequent email correspondence between Mr. Whitaker and the president of MEMRI[16]. William Rugh, former US ambassador to the UAE and Yemen, described it as follows: "This service does not present a balanced or complete picture of the Arab print media. Its owners are pro-Israeli and anti-Arab. Quotes are selected to portray Arabs as preaching hatred against Jews and westerners, praising violence and refusing any peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue."[17]

MEMRI has made no claim that its translations are a representative selection of Arabic media coverage; its project list gives some idea of what it looks for. It does claim that its critics are playing down the extent to which its coverage is representative; in particular, it suggests that its "Reform Project is devoted solely to finding and amplifying the progressive voices in the Arab world". However, that project itself has come under attack for presenting people considered too "pro-western" by critics. Marc Lynch wrote that MEMRI's translations "...offer a doubly warped perspective on the Arab debates: first, over-emphasizing the presence of radical and noxious voices; and second, over-emphasizing the importance of a small and marginal group of Arabs who share your own prejudices." [18]

Accuracy

Minor criticisms of the accuracy of MEMRI's translations have sometimes been raised; for example, Brian Whitaker, in an email debate with Yigal Carmon, accuses the institute of making "annoying, dishonest little tweaks" in its translations and presentations thereof. More recently, a brief controversy arose when Dr. Juan Cole disputed MEMRI's translation[19] of the 2004 Osama bin Laden video released days before the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election. The video shows Osama saying: "...your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaeda. No. Your security is in your own hands. And every state [wilayah] that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security." MEMRI used the modern standard Arabic definition of "wilayah" as "province or administrative district" to translate "wilayah" as "U.S. state" and suggested that bin Laden was attempting to speak to voters in individual states to influence their choice of candidate. However, Cole claimed that "while [MEMRI] are right to draw attention to the oddness of the diction, their conclusion is impossible". Cole speculated that bin Laden was not using the standard Arabic sense of "wilayah", as in the Arabic name of the United States of America, (الولايات الأمريكية المتح) but rather, either an archaic or a fundamentalists' sense of the word meaning "government", or that he might have lapsed into a local idiom in which "wilayah" might mean "city".[20] Yigal Carmon's article defending the standard translation of the word can be found in this article in the National Review Online. [21]

The MEMRI translation contains a note: "The Islamist website Al-Qal'a explained what this sentence meant: "This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately."[22] Al-Jazeera translated the expression in question as "every state".[23]

Regarding attacks on MEMRI's accuracy, Yigal Carmon stated: "As one who has been invited to give testimony before the US Congress on a number of occasions, I have no need to "impress" them, and certainly no cause to change or embellish evidence."[24]

Claim regarding MEMRI's Political Affiliations

MEMRI describes itself as nonpartisan and independent on their "About us" page. Dr. Juan Cole (who has often questioned the loyalties of several American officials with ties to Israel including Douglas Feith and David Wurmser [25]) accused MEMRI as having strong links to the Likud party in Israel and the Bush-Cheney Administration:

"MEMRI was founded by a retired Israeli colonel from military intelligence, and co-run by Meyrav Wurmser, wife of David Wurmser. David Wurmser is close to the Likud Party in Israel and served in Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, where he helped manufacture the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was linked to al-Qaeda. David Wurmser, who wants to get up American wars against both Iran and Syria, then moved over to Vice President Dick Cheney's rump national security team. MEMRI is funded to the tune of $60 million a year by someone."[26]

Cole also wrote that MEMRI is "a sophisticated anti-Arab propaganda machine" and "is one of a number of public relations campaigns essentially on behalf of the far right-wing Likud Party in Israel"

Wurmser may not have respond to Cole's comments, since she had left MEMRI more than four years earlier.

In a letter to Cole, Carmon objected to the above statements of Cole's, saying that they went, "beyond what could be considered legitimate criticism, and which in fact qualify as slander and libel." Carmon added that, "while we respect your right to argue the veracity of our translations, you certainly may not fabricate information about our organization." Regarding a Likud-MEMRI relationship, Carmon stated that, "MEMRI is totally unaffiliated with any government, and receives no government funding. While I was formerly an Israeli official (and retired more than a decade ago), I have never been affiliated with the Likud Party, or any other party." Carmon also objected to Cole's, "trying to paint MEMRI in a conspiratorial manner by portraying us as a rich, sinister group, [writing] that "MEMRI is funded to the tune of $60 million a year." This is completely false" Carmon's letter threatened legal action if Cole would not "retract false statements."

Cole posted Carmon's letter on his Blog in an article entitled,"Intimidation by Israeli-Linked Organization Aimed at US Academic". In the post, he suggests that MEMRI was threatening to sue not because they found Cole's remarks libelous, but out of an attempt to silence him using a Strategic lawsuit against public participation. He encouraged his readers to write to MEMRI in protest, saying, "Israeli military intelligence is used to being able to censor the Israeli press and to intimidate journalists, and it is a bit shocking that Carmon should imagine that such intimidation would work in a free society. [27]"

During his dispute with MEMRI, it was revealed that Cole had himself once sent a letter threatening legal action against historian Martin Kramer because Cole felt that Campus Watch (an organization which Kramer was not a part of, but affiliated through the Middle East Forum) was keeping a "dossier" on him, and Cole believed this portrayed him as a supporter of Islamic extremism and constituted "stalking". Kramer made clear his distaste for Carmon's legal threat, but noted that, "...the sad truth is that Cole himself was the first to hurl the threat of a frivolous lawsuit against a website—and with far less justification." [28]

References

  1. ^ MEMRI: About us
  2. ^ MEMRI About from Web Archive
  3. ^ From Their Lips to Our Ears. MEMRI’s translations bridge the gap between the West and the inner worlds of Arab and Islamic countries By David Margolis in Jewish Journal, January 18, 2002
  4. ^ Email debate: Yigal Carmon and Brian Whitaker in Guardian Unlimited
  5. ^ The Ariel Center for Policy Research
  6. ^ MERIA: Nimrod Raphaeli
  7. ^ Media Transparency
  8. ^ Harold Grinspoon Foundation 2002-2004
  9. ^ Koret Foundation: Catalyst Spring 2005
  10. ^ The Ronald and Mary Ann Lachman Foundation
  11. ^ Email debate: Yigal Carmon and Brian Whitaker
  12. ^ Juan Cole's blog
  13. ^ Abu Aardvark a blog by Marc Lynch
  14. ^ Selective Memri by Brian Whitaker at Guardian Unlimited. August 12, 2002
  15. ^ Media organisation rebuts accusations of selective journalism by Yigal Carmon at Guardian Unlimited. August 21, 2002
  16. ^ Email debate: Yigal Carmon and Brian Whitaker
  17. ^ Language matters by Brian Whitaker at Guardian Unlimited. September 28, 2005
  18. ^ Abu Aardvark a blog by Marc Lynch
  19. ^ Osama Bin Laden Tape Threatens U.S. States by Yigal Carmon. November 1, 2004
  20. ^ Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
  21. ^ Osama vs. Bush. Bin Laden tape threatens U.S. States not to vote for Bush at National Review Online. October 31, 2004
  22. ^ Osama Bin Laden Tape Threatens U.S. States by Yigal Carmon. November 1, 2004
  23. ^ Full transcript of bin Ladin's speech at Al-Jazeera. 01 November 2004
  24. ^ Email debate: Yigal Carmon and Brian Whitaker in Guardian Unlimited
  25. ^ Juan Cole and the Decline of Middle Eastern Studies
  26. ^ Bin Laden's Audio: Threat to States? at Juan Cole's blog. November 02, 2004
  27. ^ Intimidation by Israeli-Linked Organization Aimed at US Academic. November 23, 2004
  28. ^ Juan Cole Jogs My MEMRI at "Martin Kramer's Sandstorm" blog

MEMRI Websites

Articles by Yigal Carmon

Articles Supportive of MEMRI

Articles Critical of MEMRI

Debates with Critics

Threatened Lawsuit against Juan Cole

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