[casi] FW: The Region: Iraq, Lies, and Videotape

["Zohar David" <davidz@DELETETHISmofa.gov.il>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Barry Rubin [mailto:meria@mail.biu.ac.il]
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 5:04 AM
To: @ashur.cc.biu.ac.il
Subject: The Region: Iraq, Lies, and Videotape


The Region

By Barry Rubin

        If you want to understand the Middle East, you must pay close
attention to the tremendously important event that took place on April
12, 2003.
         The story is this: U.S. forces captured the Saddam Hussein
International Airport at Baghdad. Iraq's Information Minister Muhammad
Sa'id al-Sahhaf announced that on the night of April 11-12, there would
be a big surprise attack using suicide squads.
        Several hours later, he stated that the Republican Guard had
recaptured the airport, that U.S. "mercenary" forces were on the run,
and that Iraq was generally winning the war. He even promised that in
one hour the government would take foreign journalists on a tour of the
airport to show it was in Iraqi hands.
        No tour took place. Indeed, not only was the airport still held
by the Americans, but there had been no Iraqi attack that night at all!
This amazingly brazen lie seemed like the last gasp of denial from a
regime that was on the verge of being overthrown.
        But that interpretation was dead wrong. This story was not
bizarrely unusual; it was stupefyingly typical of what has been going on
in the Arab world, and not just Iraq, for decades.
        The big lie, the ridiculous exaggeration, and whatever you want
to call it is typical. Time after time, regarding Israel or on other
matters, Western media, governments, academics, and large elements of
public opinion have been accepting such things as accurate or at least
put them on a par with other versions of events.
        Yet now the lesson of the Baghdad airport scam should be learned
once and for all: this is the way things work so very often in the Arab
world.
        This does not mean that most Arabs are happy with this
situation. But there should be no doubt that the distortion of truth is
ongoing and widespread. To watch just about any Arab television network
or read just about any Arab newspaper is to be told that Iraq is winning
the war, that the Iraqi people support Saddam, that allied forces are
committing massive atrocities, and that the attack on Iraq is motivated
by the worst possible motives.
        How can people cope with the world when provided with such false
information? Is it any surprise that anti-Americanism grows and that
moderation or peace is impossible on the basis of such beliefs. It is
laying the basis for still more disasters for the Arabs themselves.
        On April 4, Jihad al-Khazen, former editor of al-Hayat, wrote a
column in that newspaper entitled (in the English version) "American
Fools." To understand the significance of this article one must know
that Khazen is a moderate in the Arab media context. He has lived a long
time in the West and might be expected to be one of those doing the most
to help his readers deal with reality.
        Here is how his column begins: "Members of the Likudist gang
inside the American administration, which Secretary of State Colin
Powell asserted its existence by denying it, have pervaded universities,
research centers and the administration." He explains that this group is
responsible for current U.S. policy and supports the "Nazi" practices of
Israel. As for the war in Iraq, the people see the allied forces as
"invaders" facing widespread resistance even among Shia Iraqis who hate
America more than they hate Saddam. Khazen explains that Israeli agents
tell Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld what to say and describes the
American general picked to run the transitional civil government in Iraq
is "radical Sharonist Likudist."
        If this is what one of the smartest, most rational, familiar
with the West, and relatively moderate Arab writers can say, how can the
Arab world possibly--from the standpoint of its own interests--deal
effectively with the United States in diplomatic terms?
        In addition, there is a great myth that must be exploded: it is
not U.S. policy as such that engenders so much hatred toward the United
States in the Middle East but rather the total misrepresentation of what
that policy is and what the United States actually does.
        But one of the type of people Khazen hates was eliminated this
month. Michael Kelly, the Washington Post columnist, died in an accident
while covering the fighting in Iraq. Dozens of journalists gave tribute
to his personal attributes and wonderful family, both of which are true.
Yet virtually no one pointed out what Michael Kelly actually thought
about the Middle East. He was possibly the most articulate journalist
expressing what I call the alternative view of the region.
        What Khazen and his colleagues do not understand is that their
failure to comprehend-or acknowledge-what is happening in their own
region and their total disinterest in giving a fair assessment of U.S.
policy will do them far more harm than all the alleged Zionist
imperialist gang in the world.

Barry Rubin is Director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Barry Rubin's latest books are:
  --The Tragedy of the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
http://gloria.idc.ac.il/publications/books/tragedy.html
  --With Judy Colp Rubin, Anti-American Terrorism and the Middle East
(Oxford University Press, 2002).
http://gloria.idc.ac.il/publications/books/anti-american_terrorism.html

Forthcoming:
With Judy Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography (Oxford
University Press, 2003).

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