'Facts are bipartisan," says Middle East Media Research Institute founder and president Yigal Carmon, leaning back in the large chair behind the desk of his Jerusalem office, one of many international branches - among them a bureau in Baghdad.
Carmon, 60, is clearly used to having to reiterate this seeming axiom. Since establishing MEMRI in 1998 to "bridge the language gap between the Middle East and the West," Carmon and his material have been received with a combination of angst and ambivalence on the part of the press and politicians who don't like what they're seeing.
And what they're seeing is what Carmon refers to as the "reality" of the Arab-Muslim world.
How Carmon - who served as a colonel in IDF Intelligence from 1968-88; as acting head of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria and its adviser on Arab affairs from 1977-82; as counterterrorism adviser to prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin from 1988-93; and as a delegate to Israeli peace negotiations with Syria in Madrid and Washington in 1991-92 - presents this "reality" is by monitoring Arabic publications, radio and TV broadcasts and religious sermons. These he translates - himself and with the help of a vast and highly trained staff - into many languages and circulates over the Internet. He also presents his findings to the US Congress and European parliaments.
So widely have these translations and reports been circulated over the past several years that MEMRI has become a household name among members of the media, academia and government, both in Israel and abroad. Which is no wonder, considering the global concern over Islamic terrorism; the controversy over its cause; and the search for a solution to it.
In an hour-long interview with The Jerusalem Post, Carmon paints what could be interpreted as a pessimistic picture or an optimistic one, depending on one's perspective. In a fluid and knowledgeable stream of consciousness, he discusses the concepts of "jihad," "democratization" and "multiculturalism," and protests the "unholy alliance between the Left and the Right who say that Arabs have a different culture which cannot and should not be changed."
What is your assessment of the Iranian threat and the West's response to it?
MEMRI is a research organization that doesn't engage in operational recommendations. Our mission is to present the Middle East reality. In this case, the reality is one of an extremist regime, even harsher than that of [the Ayatollah] Khomeini. After [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad took power, we published a landmark report on him and his spiritual mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, a candidate in the upcoming December elections for the Assembly of Experts. If he succeeds, it will be a disaster. He and Ahmadinejad together constitute a duo which is a danger to the entire world. Ahmadinejad says on TV and to the ayatollahs in his inner circle that martyrdom is what distinguishes man from animal - that if it weren't for martyrdom, we'd all be grass-eating behemoths. And Mesbah Yazdi is even worse.
But Ahmadinejad isn't even religious.
He may not look religious, but deep down he is. There are serious rumors - which MEMRI has yet to verify through direct quotes - according to which Ahmadinejad talks to and receives instructions from the "hidden imam" [the Mahdi, the messiah of the Shi'ite belief, who is to reappear].
If the purpose of your organization is to research the Arab world for Western awareness, why do you need an office in Baghdad?
We need primary sources in Iraq, and since our flagship project is "Reform in the Arab and Muslim World," this direct connection to Iraq - a state that had three democratic elections in a single year - is particularly important.
What other projects are you engaged in?
The other projects we are working on are "Arab Anti-Semitism" and "Jihad and Terrorism Studies." A fourth, related, project is the "Islamist Web Sites Monitor."
Is MEMRI under an American umbrella in Iraq?
No, though we are an American research organization, registered in Washington, with branches in Europe and Asia (Tokyo). The people manning the branches in each country are natives of that country.
But you are an Israeli. Isn't it dangerous for the organization you head to be sitting in Iraq?
Yes it is.
You say you are a research organization. Yet you just finished describing projects with specific agendas. Is that not inherently contradictory? How can one trust the integrity of your research?
The word "agenda" requires clarification. Any time a researcher exposes something hitherto unknown, one could say there is an agenda. Take archeological excavations, for example. When an archeologist uncovers an ancient city, he's got an agenda: to reveal that the city existed. When someone conducts sociological research, he, too, has an agenda. The agenda is first and foremost to reveal a subject that hadn't been revealed before - or bring into focus something that previously had not been in focus. This is a legitimate research agenda. Nor is there a connection between an agenda and the integrity of the research.
Whatever the agenda, the research has to be scientific. If it isn't - if we were trying to prove that some phenomenon existed when it didn't, or vice versa - it wouldn't be an agenda, it would be bias.
Facts are bipartisan. There is no direct line that can be drawn from a certain piece of information to a certain political position. No matter what views a person holds, he needs to be aware of the facts. What he does with them is a different issue.
Can't facts be manipulated? Isn't bias what we accuse our opponents of possessing?
I will answer that by way of a few revealing anecdotes.
In 1994-5, before MEMRI was formally established, I taped TV broadcasts of [Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser] Arafat calling for jihad [holy war].
The reaction to that tape was: "Kill the messenger."
Whose reaction was that?
