I would like to point out what can only be called an egregious mistranslation on the part of MEMRI with respect to the words of one of the children who were featured as a caller on the show this story reports on. I call it that and not simply a mistake, because a MEMRI spokesperson appeared on CNN to confirm his organization standing by its translation "word for word" and "according to the syntax" even though it is easy for an organization that employs Arabic translators to actually see how wrong the translations that were produced at first are.

The transcript claims that "Sanabel", the little girl caller of the show, responds with "I will shoot" to the host's question "Sanabel, what will you do for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque?"

As a matter of fact, and as can be seen in the video, it is the clown in the ridiculous Mickey Mouse like suit that says that and even makes the gesture of carrying a weapon.

The little girl Sanabel does however respond, but MEMRI omits her response. The little girl actually said in Arabic "bedi arsem soora", which means "I will draw a picture."

So this girl says she wants to draw a picture, and MEMRI transforms that to "I will shoot."

The second example is the most outrageous one, where MEMRI translates the little girl Sanabel's response to the question "we got that, what else?" as saying "We will annihilate the jews." This is outrageously wrong and completely invented.

The girl can be clearly heard saying in Arabic "betokhoona el yahood", which means "the Jews shoot us."

The word "betokh-oo-na" can be broken down part by part and explained easily as follows:

betokh: the verb "shoots"
oo: the 3rd person plural subject pronoun meaning "they". It becomes "they shoot".
na: the 1st person plural object pronoun meaning "we". It becomes "they shoot us"

Having pointed that out, what the producers of this show are doing is morally outrageous. Instead of giving their children viewers the joy of watching child TV characters and enjoying that aspect of childhood, they are depriving them of that just as the Israeli occupation is depriving them from other aspects of normal childhood development. Both are equally wrong here.

It does appear, unfortunately, that MEMRI was less than careful with this translation. The commenter is right about that. Unfortunately, what's left even after the errors is bad enough, even the bits the commenter mentions but tries to mitigate by rhetorical slight of hand, and no one has challenged the PMW entry ( http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/010465.shtml ) -- all bad enough, which the commenter, to his credit, acknowledges.

The commenter's post particularly falls apart, however, in trying to create an equivalence between Hamas's child abuse and Israel's "occupation", something a lazy CNN report did (something unfortunately facilitated by MEMRI's report) as well. This is the "there's blame all around, it's all so complicated" meme. The Hamas that abuses children in this way is the same Hamas causing whatever hardships the children in Gaza experience at the hands of Israelis. I will be posting a bit more on this, probably tomorrow.

Anonymous makes a good point. The Islamofascist Education System doesn't educate but Indoctrinates, Brainwashes young children, to be the next generation of hate filled robots to die for the political views of adults.

Did Yassir Arafat own child go to school in "palestine"? No. Arafats wife and child lived in France up until a few years ago. Now they live in Tunisia - NOT in "palestine".

Yassir and Suha didn't want their own child to be brainwashed in the sick way other peoples children are brainwashed.

The Islamofascist government of so-called "palestine" teaches hate, racism, genocide, fascism just as nazitional Socialist indoctrinated the "shitler youth".

I'm confused. Glenn Beck has a tape in which he talks to a MEMRI spokesman who is defending their translation.

Is this another latter-day attempt to obfuscate a disgusting situation by blaming MEMRI? Several - SEVERAL bureaus checked that tape for accuracy. There were similar screeches of denial about Ahmadijenad's genocidal threats against Israel and even Reuters had to publish comments on their website that although the statements may not have been colloquially equivalent the meaning was clear.

Thus with the mouse. If a word or phrase was mistranslated then MEMRI should come forth and clear it up. But it doesn't change the overall thrust of the mouse tape which was evil pure and simple.

Moreover that's just one example among so many.

And, like Solomon, I reject the attempt at moral equivalence. "The occupation" exists because of the violence. Statehood could have been a reality decades ago, there didn't need to be a civil war nor a "nakba", there would have been no occupation if Khartoum had resulted in anything but denial of Israel's very right to exist, and so forth down to the second intifada.

The violence exists - and has existed - for decades and decades and decades - at least in part and maybe primarily because of hatred, bigotry and xenophobia.

We are the first to deplore this in the West. Look at Europe, look at the US where hate crimes, sometimes including hate speech, can incur extra penalties because we are so painfully aware of the dread consequences of bias. Yet people are unable somehow to connect the dots in 1920's Mandate Palestine. We are unable to see that the position of religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East led directly to their extinction in many cases and in the case of "people of the book", to their situation as vulnerable second class citizens and sometimes to far worse.

Why is this? Why can't Westerners, especially proPalestinians and those who are doing their best to demonize Israel, unable to look honestly at the way "the other" is treated in the Middle East? We only see how bad the West is in this regard. The UN itself focuses primarily on - Israel - regardless of how bad conditions are for tens of millions of people around the world.

There is something very wrong with this picture. And it's leading no place good.

The demonisation of Jews by Muslims parallels the demonization of Jews by the nazis of pre WW2 Europe.

The constant descriptions of Jews, not just Israelis, as murderers, thieves, occupiers, rapists, leads to one inescapable conclusion.

How can you stop murderers, thieves, occupiers, rapists? Death.

The president of the Islamofascist Regime of iran has stated his goals of wiping Israel off the map. The UN of course, hijacked as 4 planes were hijacked on 9/11, says nothing.

Last summers Israel / Hezbullah war was a preliminary battle. This June will mark the 40th anniversary of the 6-Day War. I hope Israel is ready for whatever happens.

I hope the US is ready for whatever happens.

I would tell Arab/Muslim governments that if the US or India (which almost had a nuclear war with Pakistan over Kashmir) or Israel suffer a WMD attack, the cities of Mecca, Medina, Qom would be obliterated - for starters.

The Arabs/Muslims tell the world they crave death, do they crave the destruction of Mecca and the Kabbah that would result if we are attacked with WMDs?

Funny that in 1999, some people were worried about some fundamentalist Christians doing something horrible to start a Millenium War that would have the Messiah return.

Funny that they shouldn't have worried about Christians but rather Muslims who want their 12th Imam to return.

The big Nakbah (Arabic for Catastrophe) is that the Israelis are not the unarmed Jews of WW2 Europe.

Sophia, I watched the Glenn Beck radio interview with who I believe was said to be the president of MEMRI (please correct me if I'm wrong). The MEMRI person's argument was regarding the order of the words. I am a native speaker of Arabic from Jordan and our dialect can be called the closest to the Palestinians since half of Jordan's population is of Palestinian origins.

Arabic grammar, which I am sure the MEMRI person speaking with Beck on the phone is as good at as a 5th grader in Jordan, can't be applied to the girl's syntax in its formal sense, simply because the girl was not speaking formal Arabic. What she said translates word for word to "they will shoot us the Jews". Meaning she duplicated the subject of the verb, like when somebody exclaims informally "he's killing me the idiot!" and I often say that when I'm hearing Glenn Beck speak :)

Regarding the issue of moral equivalence between the suffering of Palestinian children at the hands of the current Palestinian government on one hand and the Israeli one on the other, you are wrong. The fact is that there should be no value put on suffering. One man's suffering cannot be greater than another man's suffering, and in this conflict, the Palestinian children suffer equally the same from both sides. The only remaining question is which side should be held more accountable and it is here that I argue that Israel is definitely to be held more accountable since it is the country that holds all the playing cards in hand. Consider the cases of child fatalities on the Palestinian side and the documentary record will immediately show the Israeli occupation forces responsible for hundreds of child deaths in Gaza during the years of the second intifada. In one instance, a Palestinian child was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper while she sat in class. In 2006, around 700 children were arrested by the Israeli forces and dozens of them were held on administrative detention without charge or trial. Israeli forces have used Palestinian children as human shields as well, one of the most recent cases documented on video by a human rights activist which led to an official police investigation. If it weren't for the damning video evidence, the response would to that case would have been the same given to all other cases; denial. There is absolutely no doubt that these violations and others have been committed and in many cases justified by Israel's forces in its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

Regarding the occupation, I am sad to say that your theory that occupation is the result of violence has been put to rest for decades thanks to none other than the Israelis themselves. Immediately after the Arab lands were seized in the 1967 war which Israel won, settlements were being erected on that land, against international law. The purpose of occupying that land was the settling of Jews on that land because it was considered part of the Jewish holy land, the historical homeland of the Jews that they have an eternal right to. Yitshak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, Rabin, Nitenyahu, all these Israeli prime ministers had absolutely no problem in making their wishes to see the Jewish people settled permanently in what is called "establishing of facts on the ground", on the occupied territories. If the purpose of the occupation was truly only security driven, it would be illogical to install the population you're trying to protect on that land that contains the security threat you are trying to contain. As a matter of fact, Israel provided (and still does so) incentives to its citizens to move to the illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Therefore, it is really hard today to convince anyone who is well informed of the historical and documentary record on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict that the only reason for occupation was the security of the people of Israel. The primary reason was the settlement of Jews on that land, something which international law clearly rules as illegal.

Nice try, but no cigar.

I watched Beck's radio vid, and he described how many levels it went thru - even the Arabic desk, before it got on the air.

--

As to international law, there is no 1 international government to apply said law, it's agreements of doing biz.

It's also european law and I'm not a European, to nuts to them.

Notice how the anonymous Jordanian poster consistently uses the term "Jews" when discussing the settlement of the disputed territories rather than the more accurate "Israelis". The rational on his/her part, it would appear, is to paint the "occupation" as the outgrowth of "Jewish Supremacy" rather than as a controversial and (in my opinion) failed Israeli policy. This is how the really smart anit-semites spread their malice: by eliding the difference between Jews in general and Israelis and/or specific Israeli governmental acts.

On a related note, I have always wondered why those of us Jews who were savagely expelled from our native, Arab-colonized lands in the 1940's and 50's never turn the "occupation" meme back on those who murdered, assaulted, and stole our property from us. Certainly the Arabs and their Western enablers have no squeemishness about hurling the word "occupation" around to describe far less flagrant violations against native populations.

I agree with "Anonymous" from Jordan that you can't quantify or qualify human suffering: it's all bad.

However - there's a clear, direct line from incitement to real violence especially in cases where it is deliberate, endemic and part of a child's upbringing.

Sir or Madam, why can't you see this? Why can't you look back into fairly recent Middle Eastern history or even next door, into Iraq, and see where religious bigotry leads? What about the treatment of minorities throughtout the Middle East? How many religious and/or ethnic minorities have simply become extinct or run away? There have been massacres of people in the hundreds of thousands, there is an ongoing genocide in Darfur - the spectacle in Iraq is horrifying - don't you think systemic bigotry and fear of "the different" needs to be addressed?

We see what's published in papers throughout the Middle East - the antisemitic cartoons, the TV shows featuring bloodthirsty "Jews" - it is appalling! That stuff is straight out of Nazi Germany, direct from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," which I understand people there really believe is true! That astonishes me. This is the 21st century!

Be honest: isn't there any relationship between the indoctrination of children, dissemination of bigoted propaganda, and violent death?

Israel doesn't "hold all the cards". That too is a myth. Israel is a tiny sliver of land in the midst of the Arab world, an absolutely enormous area which is rich in resources, money, space and people. Jordan is 3 times the size of Israel and has fewer people! Most of the world's oil reserves are held by Arab states!

The Jewish population, since the term "Jew" is used, is about 14 million globally, which is two million short of the 1930's population. Why do you think there are so few of us? Because we "run the world"? Because "Israel holds all the cards"?

That's baloney.

And since this is becoming and maybe always was a religious war, I will mention there are more than 1.4 BILLION Muslims on this planet, many of whom apparently have a problem with a self-determining Jewish state of any size anywhere on territory considered Muslim (by Muslims). The PLO was formed BEFORE the 1967 war and its goal was clear.

Meanwhile, the idea that "Israel holds all the cards" is also assuming that Palestinians have absolutely no free will in this situation and I think that's untrue. There were and are choices to be made but at almost every step along the way the choice has been war. And that goes back to the 1920's, even earlier.

Nowhere do I see any respect whatsoever for the fact that Jews have lived continuously in Israel, in spite of the diaspora following the Bar Kochba rebellion, for at least 3400 years. They lived in ancient Jewish cities like Hebron, in Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank - and in East Jerusalem, until they were ethnically cleansed by Jordan in the wake of the 1948 war.

These odious Jews are merely returning home. Why is their presence considered so abominable that they must be attacked and terrorized? Why are land sales to Jews a capital crime? Would a Palestinian state incorporate them as full and respected citizens? Or, if the IDF vanished tomorrow, would they be dead meat in a matter of hours?

The deaths of Palestinian women and children are mentioned and they are lamentable. But doesn't the warfare and violence have ANYTHING to do with this? Doesn't the fact that women and children are used as terrorists and couriers, indoctrinated to become suicide bombers, that they're taught Jews are evil and must be killed, that little kids with rocks front men with guns and grenade launchers, have ANYTHING to do with this?

Also, there's another side to the story and that's the fact that the Palestinian Arab population most certainly has gotten at least some (and probably some very significant) benefits from Israeli medicine and educational institutions, and, until the intifada, the economy was one of the fastest growing in the world. Palestinian literacy is relatively high. Ideas about democracy, modernization and the outside world - books, music, culture - are these all a disease to be rejected utterly?

The reduction in infant mortality alone among the Palestinian Arab population should be considered when you're crunching numbers, don't you think?

Or are The Jews simply an unmitigated evil?

Finally, as to the put-down of the MEMRI spokesman: I would venture to guess that the Arab-speaking expertise of MEMRI's staff is way beyond that of a fifth grader. There's no need for the contempt although I'm sure we all appreciate your insights. Perhaps you ought to consider the fact that Arabic is an official language in Israel, and that the majority of Israeli Jews are in fact of Middle Eastern descent and are culturally very close to Arabs. In fact those of us who are close to these roots regret so deeply the gulf between us - it is a source of constant sorrow. Jews and Arabs are brothers, sisters, cousins.

Can't we build some meaningful bridges?

Same Anonymous, why does Suha Arafat, the former first lady of "palestine" NOT live in "palestine"?

Is she too good for "palestine"?

Suha lived in Paris, where the caviar is better than what she can get in "palestine".

Now Suha lives in Tunisia - closer to "palestine" but still far away.

BTW, if the Islamofascist Regime of iran sends missles to Israel, and Israel shoots them down, good luck if you are in Jordan. You'll need it.

Sandy, it doesn't matter how many desks the clip passed by, what matters is the audio and if you find any person who is a native speaker of Arabic around you within your community to listen to it they will tell you that what I'm saying is the truth (try it). To further prove this, I will provide you the Arabic text of what the girl said and what MEMRI claimed:

The girl said "I want to draw a picture"

بدي ارسم صورة

MEMRI's text transcript claims she said "I will shoot" (it was actually the clown who said it). This in Arabic is

حطخ

The girl said "the Jews shoot us"

بيطخونا اليهود

MEMRI translated it to "We will annihilate the Jews", which is

رح نبيد اليهود

The girl said "I will become a martyr", in Arabic

باستشهد

MEMRI translated it as the grammatically wrong (in formal and common Arabic) sentence "I will commit martyrdom", in Arabic (this is not a proper sentence)

رح ارتكب الشهادة

You can take the text I just wrote and go to the nearest college where Arabic is being taught and find an Arabic teacher and ask them to verify this, and have them listen to the audio.

Jonathan, the only reason I talk about Jewish people when mentioning the settlements because the settlements are Jewish only communities and/or communities which Arabs cannot gain and/or have never been granted addmission to. The settlement movement is undeniably a Jewish settlement movement. This is an undeniable fact. My best friend at work happens to be Jewish, and I am not a racist thank you very much.

Dear Sophia, thank you for your long reply. I appreciate you taking the time to reply to someone you don't even know the name of, and I hope you forgive me for that.

Believe me, and I am an Arab Muslim and a pro-Palestinian. My ethnicity, my religion and my political inclination, none of these things conflict with my relentless fight amongst my own people against the sorts of horrible crimes that you mentioned and we all witness being committed in the name of my religion, not yours. I suffer from this twice as much as you do because it is my religion, my culture, that are being tarnished.

We have many problems that are of our own creation in the Arab and Muslim world. The main reason I believe is incompetence. You talk about the Arab world having a lot of resources. This is true and an evidence of this problem that we have. However I disagree regarding the comparison between Jordan and Israel as Jordan is mostly desert. It is one of the poorest countries in terms of resources and it has been doubly and most recently triply over populated with refugees, and we still don't get anywhere near the foreign free aid that Israel gets. But forget that.

You asked me "why can't you see this? ..." who told you that I don't see it Sophia? The genocide in Darfur, the continuous killings in Iraq, the shame crimes (I refuse to call them honor crimes) against women, the indoctrination of children, the fundamentalist propaganda being preached in mosques, the mass hysteria provoked by something as silly and tasteless as a Danish cartoon.

There is much hypocricy among my own people and I absolutely need no one to point it out for me and I thank God I am one of, not few, but many Arabs and Muslims who see this and address it.

But none of this, none of it negates the simple fact that when it comes to the direct suffering of Palestinians young and old, Israel carries much of the blame, and while I'm not interested in debating that here, my only purpose of coming here was to point out the outrageous mistranslation of this propaganda machine called MEMRI.

It was not enough for MEMRI that the video of this show is already so damning of the TV station that broadcasted it, they [MEMRI] had to also go and mistranslate the little girl caller's words. The girl said she wanted to draw a picture, and MEMRI told you that she wanted to shoot. That girl said nothing of the sort. She said she was going to get shot, and MEMRI told you she wanted to "annihilate the Jews." I guarantee you that girl doesn't even know how to say the verb "annihilate" in Arabic. The girl then says she would die and become a martyr and MEMRI told you she wanted to commit a martyrdom operation (MEMRI's way of saying suicide attack according to their president).

I don't need to argue and debate the entire conflict, I would rather argue with my own people about that, but take my word for it and understand that what I said is the absolute truth and it is not too hard to verify if you exercise the effort.

I hope that you would see the damage organizations like MEMRI are doing to the relationship between East and West. It is so easy for any person who is speaking Arabic to tell that the translation was completely invented, and don't you think that they will be outraged when see people in the West defending that mistranslation endlessly? This doesn't help.

Thank you.

Eddie, if you have the chance to live somewhere else, would you still prefer to live in a place like Palestine the way it is today?

I honestly don't know much about Suha Arafat. I don't know if she thinks she is "too good for Palestine." I honestly don't know what point you're trying to get to, so you might as well just say it.

Regarding Iran, Israel, missile and Jordan. Thank you for your friendly comment. I detect a mocking tone in your words. While mockery might seem harmless, I am sure when missiles do fall and people do die all of a sudden, "harm" no longer becomes the concern, but indifference does, and mockery of and indifference to human suffering are sure to generate more than just disapointment. I'm sure you already know that.

Thank you.

Anonymous Jordanian, I certainly wouldn't want to live in Palestine in its current cannibalistic, sadistic, murderous, inhuman form.

Would you agree that Palestine is worse off today thanks to its new Hamas government?

How many churchs are in Saudi Arabia?

When Jordan had control of East Jerusalem, were Jews permitted to pray at the Western Wall?

Are Muslims permitted to pray the the Waqf controlled Al Aqsa mosque?

Could you explain to non-Muslims why the president of Iran has been making a series of genocidal death threats to Israel? Is he trying to goad Israel, US, UK into attacking Iran? Why?

Do you believe that the Iranian nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes or is it really a WMD program with the goal of nuking Israel?

BTW, have you heard of Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo who has stated that if the US were to suffer a nuke attack, that Mecca should be obliterated, destroyed, in retaliation?

Before the year 2000, people in the West were afraid of Ultra Orthodox, Millenium, End Times, Rapture, Return of Jesus types who would try to start a War to trigger a final War to bring back Jesus?

Thankfully that didn't happen, yet today we see a Muslim/Persian/Islamofascist/Islamosupremecist, 12th Imam, Caliphate, End Times nutjob trying to trigger a final War to bring the 12th Imam.

Can mortals trick/force the Messiah to come on the timetable of mortals? I would think not, but Muslims have been goading the US to attack for many years (USS Cole, Marine barracks in Lebanon, Pan Am 103, plane hijackings, Col. Higgins, Robert Stethem), 9/11 was the final straw.

I hope you can find the time to answer some of my questions.

Oh my god, this great moral/political thinker Anonymous Jordanian didn't just use the moronic "my best friend is (Jewish/Black/Asian,) so I can't be a racist" line. Laughable and pathetic.

And sorry--but painting a distinctly Israeli movement as generically Jewish is problematic in the extreme, whatever self-righteous posturing you choose to adopt. I wonder how you would feel about someone calling the Judenrein policies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia "Arab" or "Muslim" by their very nature and not specific to those nations' governments.

"my best friend is (Jewish/Black/Asian,) so I can't be a racist" line. Laughable and pathetic.

With friends like George Soros/Louis FarraKLAN/Pol Pot, who can be racist? ;-)

Why did both of you change my words? Did I say "I can't be a racist" because my best friend is Jewish? I believe I said "and I am not a racist."

Stating that my best friend is Jewish was not for the purpose of proving my claim of not being a racist (which is an accusation that I am innocent of until proven guilty by you by the way). It was only a supportive bit of information.

Interesting, you guys did a good job of changing my words. Do you happen to work for MEMRI by any chance? :D

Hello all,

I want to address these comments primarily to Anonymous, hoping all will understand that this is where we start healing our wounds: by talking to each other.

I can't comment further on the translation because I don't read Arabic although I can understand a bit. I will study.

I do think though that MEMRI is trying to show something real, and that's incitement, all over the Middle East, which is the enemy of us all. We are really all just people but via propaganda we can be made to see each other as frightening apparitions. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - you see a Jew as evil, you try to kill him, he shoots you, obviously he is evil - where does it end? No doubt, we are afraid too and that dehumanizes us as well.

Anonymous says he realizes the problems within his own community far more acutely than we do and I accept that, just as we in the West must live with our own history and our own flaws -

I think for my part I can explain that a lot of Jewish action and reaction is a result of fear. If we could reduce that factor it would go a long way. Without fear the "iron wall" would just dissolve.

People say we should get over the Holocaust already - but how? It's just the worst in a long line of catastrophes and not necessarily the last. The experience in the Middle East has been so bitter - but hopeless? I don't think so -

I do wish there was more interest, among the Jewish community, in the Arab people. There is a very positive sign in that the Sephardic and Mizrachi communities, the Middle Eastern Jews, now mostly in Israel, are beginning to celebrate their roots. For a long time I couldn't find many CD's of our music but now they're blossoming everywhere - incredible music with roots in the ancient Middle East, Andalusia, with echoes even from Central Asia if you listen closely. There are bands in Israel with Israeli and Palestinian and Arab Israeli members. There are great Israeli performers of the oriental dance.

I firmly believe that art and music, poetry and dance, are ways we can find each other. We share so much - history, music, and blood. And we can talk to each other.

For now, maybe that is enough.

But looking longer range, we can start thinking along the lines proposed by Shimon Peres, to create infrastructure, redistribute key resources - like money, like water, that will make the Middle East truly rich and once again truly creative. There is no reason we have to look at Jordan and despair because it seems to be intractable desert. Israel is mostly desert too and it was even worse 100 years ago, but if people think creatively, work with the environment and with each other, we can do a lot!

Pipelines can be built to carry water from regions where it's plentiful, desalinization offers great possibilites, and in fact there are already projects underway - the Red Sea pipeline project for example - but much more needs to be done.

The most important, the first and hardest step, is to envision the possibilities, and not to take "no" for an answer: just because the world looks like a harsh desert that doesn't mean we can't change it. Once in fact the desert was a sea. Now there are commercial fishponds there. People can work wonders if we try!

But we need vision, we need creativity, good will, and regional cooperation. And, we need to truly value ourselves, our plants and animals, and each other.

In fact, we can't afford not to work together because the human population is growing, climate and environmental challenges threaten ever greater desertization, more pollution, greater scarcity: we need innovative and cooperative strategies or we won't survive at all.

Let's give it a try. I am not ready to give up on people or on our planet.

Shalom, friends.

Anonymous Jordanian's Jewish best friend is a member of Neturei Carter.