PLA Breaks with Oslo Accords...

[cknoch]

...The latest Palestinian Authority Textbook Calls for Jihad and Martyrdom on a level that was banned by the Oslo Accords. While Israel continues to violate this as well, this development shows a renewed commitment to indoctrinate another generation with hate speech and a fixation on Jihad (or as the textbook puts it "Just War" undertaken by Muslims).

Reactions? Questions? Comments?

Translation Source:
http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SR2203

[ZenLefty]

1. Hi cknoch

Couple things:

Discussion of Isreal/Palestine affairs is restricted to the I/P forum, and is not allowed in LBN.

Also, when posting in LBN, please use the article's actual title as the title of your post.

Thanks.

ZenLefty
DU Moderator

[Westegg]

2. Jihad and Martyrdom

My comment is pretty simple, I guess: I'm so sick of Jihad and Martyrdom. Sick of them not as merely "Middle Eastern Islamic" concepts, mind you---for they exist in all lands, in one form or another, in every corner of this little orb we float around on, here in the vast cosmos. I'm so sick of hate and intolerance, ON ALL SIDES, EVERYWHERE ON EARTH. Will this madness never end? I mean, of course it will, someday. Someday the sun is going to expand, blow off its outer layers, and roast this solar system to a cinder. But until then...There must be a solution. We're all humans. We're supposed to be so damn smart. So let's find one.

As John Lydon once aptly sang, "Anger is an energy." Hate, however, is not an energy.

[critchmj]

3. My reaction is "Oh no! Not Again."

MEMRI is not the most reliable source for interpretation and translations. Some say it's actually run by the Mossad, but in any event, it is as reliable as DEBKA, who has been dropped from several right-wing web "Newspapers."

"Selective Memri

Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems

Monday August 12, 2002

For some time now, I have been receiving small gifts from a generous institute in the United States. The gifts are high-quality translations of articles from Arabic newspapers which the institute sends to me by email every few days, entirely free-of-charge.
The emails also go to politicians and academics, as well as to lots of other journalists. The stories they contain are usually interesting.

Whenever I get an email from the institute, several of my Guardian colleagues receive one too and regularly forward their copies to me - sometimes with a note suggesting that I might like to check out the story and write about it.

If the note happens to come from a more senior colleague, I'm left feeling that I really ought to write about it. One example last week was a couple of paragraphs translated by the institute, in which a former doctor in the Iraqi army claimed that Saddam Hussein had personally given orders to amputate the ears of military deserters.

The organisation that makes these translations and sends them out is the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), based in Washington but with recently-opened offices in London, Berlin and Jerusalem.

Its work is subsidised by US taxpayers because as an "independent, non-partisan, non-profit" organisation, it has tax-deductible status under American law.

Memri's purpose, according to its website, is to bridge the language gap between the west - where few speak Arabic - and the Middle East, by "providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media".

Despite these high-minded statements, several things make me uneasy whenever I'm asked to look at a story circulated by Memri. First of all, it's a rather mysterious organisation. Its website does not give the names of any people to contact, not even an office address.

The reason for this secrecy, according to a former employee, is that "they don't want suicide bombers walking through the door on Monday morning" (Washington Times, June 20).

This strikes me as a somewhat over-the-top precaution for an institute that simply wants to break down east-west language barriers.

The second thing that makes me uneasy is that the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel. I am not alone in this unease.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html