30-Nov-16: Remind us again just how central the conflict with Israel is to the Arab world

Abbas and the newly energized, broad-shouldered forward-looking PA/Fatah
leadership at its Ramallah conference yesterday [Image Source]

As the news cycle absorbs yesterday's momentous non-changes in the Palestinian Arab world ["Mahmoud Abbas, Re-elected as Fatah Leader, Moves to Solidify Power", New York Times, November 29, 2016], here's a timely reminder from the current issue of The Economist of where the Arab world's problems really lie:

Horrifyingly, although home to only 5% of the world’s population, in 2014 the Arab world accounted for 45% of the world’s terrorism, 68% of its battle-related deaths, 47% of its internally displaced and 58% of its refugees. War not only kills and maims, but destroys vital infrastructure accelerating the disintegration.
The Arab youth population (aged 15-29) numbers 105m and is growing fast, but unemployment, poverty and marginalisation are all growing faster. The youth unemployment rate, at 30%, stands at more than twice the world’s average of 14%. Almost half of young Arab women looking for jobs fail to find them (against a global average of 16%).
Yet governance remains firmly the domain of an often hereditary elite. “Young people are gripped by an inherent sense of discrimination and exclusion,” says the report, highlighting a “weakening [of] their commitment to preserving government institutions.” Many of those in charge do little more than pay lip-service, lumping youth issues in with toothless ministries for sports. “We’re in a much worse shape than before the Arab Spring,” says Ahmed al-Hendawi, a 32-year-old Jordanian and the UN’s envoy for youth... Source: "Another Arab awakening is looming, warns a UN report", The Economist, November 29, 2016

And if anyone out there is still laboring under any illusions about a new and freshly energized PA/Fatah leadership that's going to take initiatives, prepare the Palestinian Arabs for painful compromises and for the challenges of peace and prosperity, give its young people a vision for a future that makes sense and meets their real needs, then reflect for a moment on this observation in that New York Times report:

The conference, Fatah’s first in seven years, comes as the Palestinians face economic troubles, violent clashes among competing clans and the continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Critics complain that Mr. Abbas’s leadership has grown insular and out of touch.... The carefully selected delegates wasted little time in formally re-electing Mr. Abbas as the leader of Fatah, the party that controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. “Everybody voted yes,” a spokesman for Fatah, Mahmoud Abu al-Hija, told reporters who had not been allowed into the conference hall for the decision... [NYT]

Not much room here for optimism - neither for them nor for us.

Now let's remind ourselves of how often political figures, analysts, reporters and editors tell us Israel and the challenge of its conflict with the Palestinian Arabs are at the heart of addressing global terror and the Middle East's (and the world's) problems.

22-Mar-16: Belgium's focus on Europe-based jihad just rose several notches

Candles and flowers are laid in tribute to the victims - outside the
Brussels stock exchange today [Image Source]

Just four days after Friday's arrest of an Islamist terrorist, Saleh Abdeslam, in Brussels, the city has found itself in the midst of serious drama... just as the Belgian government says (but only now admits) it expected.

Two massive explosions - one at the main international airport of Brussels at Zaventem a couple of minutes before 8:00 am, and a third in the Maelbeek subway station in the heart of the city a minute or two after 9:00 am -completely paralyzed the Belgian capital today.

At the time we are writing this, the updated count of losses [quoting "Explosions at Brussels Airport and Subway Kill 34", New York Times, today] is that 34 people are killed - 14 at the airport and 20 in the subway station. Many more are injured in the two attacks: more than 90 at the airport and more than 100 in the subway. Reports speak of children, of amputated limbs, of severe burns, and of the likelihood that the numbers will grow.

In the several hours that have passed since the first reports, the local authorities have gathered enough information to confidently define these as terror attacks. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, whom we mentioned here just a few days ago ["19-Mar-16: An arrest in Belgium sharpens the focus on Europe-based jihad"] spoke earnestly into national television cameras today, calling the attacks “blind, violent and cowardly.”

The impact on Belgium is wide and ongoing.

• From various reports, we see that Brussels' public transport system is shut down and the entire city is in a kind of lock-down state with residents being told to “stay where you are”, evidently via a government-authorized Twitter message. 
• Eurostar canceled all trains between Brussels and London. Thalys high-speed trains linking dozens of cities in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands were suspended [NY Times]
• Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo has said Belgians should avoid making calls so that the city’s mobile network would not be as saturated as they evidently are, and to communicate via online messages instead. 
• Belgium's federal prosecutor, Frédéric Van Leeuw, says border controls have been strengthened and extra police officers had been mobilized. 
• Belgium’s official terror threat status was raised from three to four - the highest possible value. 
• Telegraph UK reports that the Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders expressed a concern that additional parties responsible for the killings today are still at large. 

There are, predictably, ripple effects that have not yet run their course.

• All flights into and out of the airport were cancelled right after the attack. An El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Brussels was diverted to another airport in mid-flight. 
• Staff at Belgium's nuclear power stations have been asked to leave the sites "for their own safety" [Telegraph UK today]. It appears, according to the same source, that several people "were recently caught using a hidden camera to monitor movements at the home of a leading Belgium nuclear research executive. The development suggested that terrorists were preparing to kidnap him in order to gain access to nuclear materials or to get into a power plant." There's another concern: "The explosion of a radioactive so-called dirty bomb is one of the chief fears of the security services and was thought to be a little outlandish until the discovery in Belgium."
• President Barack Obama said this afternoon: "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." His Secretary of State, John Kerry, has told Belgium via his spokesperson on Twitter: "We are ready to support the investigation as appropriate." And "The United States stands with the people of Belgium." Donald Trump has said today that France and Belgium and other parts of Europe are "literally disintegrating". He predicts "many more" attacks. "In my opinion this is just the beginning, it's going to get worse and worse," he told Fox News. He reiterated his pledge to shut down America's border to Muslims "until we figure out what is going on... There's something going on. They're not assimilating into society, and there's something different," he said. "It's not our fault, it's their fault," he added, referring to Muslims." [Telegraph UK, today]
• Mr Trump placed some of the blame for the attacks on "no-go zones" in France and Belgium where, he said, police are afraid to enter
• France's president Francois Hollande said the Brussels savagery struck at "the whole of Europe" [AFP, today]. In a NY Times report, he says "Through the Brussels attacks, it is the whole of Europe that is hit". France ordered 1,600 additional police officers to patrol its borders, train stations, airports and ports. The Eiffel Tower will be lit with the colors of Belgium’s flag tonight.
• Pope Francis expressed his condolences [AFP]. The attacks, he said, are "blind violence, which causes so much suffering".

A handful of observations now about the way parts of the media are dealing with the harsh realities:

• Over at the BBC where using the word "terror" in news reports of jihadist barbarism of the sort that plagues our lives here is strictly controlled and mostly avoided [see "7-Aug-13: Political prisoners, political media"], it appears to have been a tumultuous day. Their lead story this morning appeared around 9:00 am London time under the heading "Brussels Zaventem airport and metro explosions 'kill at least 13'" [archived here], and had no mention of the word "terror". We and others noticed and criticized via Twitter which normally has little effect. Today however, some two hours later and with no fanfare or explanation, the same article (with the same URL) was given a new headline: "Brussels explosions: Many dead in airport and metro terror attacks" [archived here]. Fittingly, it calls the attacks terror - as it should.
• And confronted with the hideous horror of the pitiless bombings of ordinary people traveling places, a reporter ("mostly", he says) for The Times of London and The Economist tweets: "One of the ugliest rituals after any attack in Europe is the chorus of "we told you so!" from the Israeli right." That struck us as repugnant. We tweeted back: "That's the most serious fallout? For us, slavish avoidance of word "terror" in some news channels is both uglier and harmful". It fell on deaf ears, of course.
• And from the New York Times today, this cause-and-effect sound-bite:
  Few countries have been more vulnerable [in the wake of the huge influx of "undocumented migrants" as the New York Times delicately calls them] than Belgium. It has an especially high proportion of citizens who have traveled to Iraq, insular Muslim communities that have helped shield jihadists, and security services that have had persistent problems conducting effective counter-terrorism operations... 

A difficult day, and not yet ended.

UPDATE Tuesday March 22, 2016 at 7:30 pm: The Islamic State has claimed the Brussels attacks. The New York Times reports that:

The Islamic State-affiliated news agency has issued a bulletin claiming responsibility for the deadly attacks Tuesday in Brussels. The claim was disseminated on the group’s official channel on Telegram, a social media platform, and picked up by other official ISIS channels on Telegram and on Twitter. “Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the coalition against the Islamic State,” the statement says. “Islamic State fighters opened fire inside the Zaventem airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station.”

14-Sep-06: Manipulating the Media: Frank Exposure, Courtesy of Reuters

How honest, accurate and untainted by ignorance, malice or influence are the news media that tell us what's happening in the world?

Imagine a headline that said: "Zionists Urged to Buy Influence in World Media". Think that might get some attention?

Would a report that quoted a major Jewish leader saying "Jewish tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-semitic attitudes around the world" get reported? Would it be discussed on talk-radio, the Guardian's op-ed page, Malaysia's cartoon pages? Would it be a major story on ABC, BBC, CBC, CNN, Al-Jazeerah?

Now let's stop the speculating. Here's a true story -- only it's about Moslems, about Islamic power and about an authentic, formal, organized bloc of 57 nations that act in unison to control nearly one-third of the votes in the United Nations General Assembly.

Below is the actual, unedited form of yesterday's story as published by Reuters. After you've read through the text, please also read the comments we've added at the end.

Muslims urged to buy influence in world mediaWed Sep 13, 2006 2:12 PM BST

RIYADH (Reuters) - Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in U.S. cities in 2001.

"Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards," OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the gathering in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

"This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide," he said, calling on Muslim countries to set up more channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.

Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The U.S. channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests.

Washington's response to September 11, invading Afghanistan and Iraq and tightening civil freedoms at home as part of a wider "war on terror", has created a widespread feeling among Muslims worldwide that their religion is under attack.

A row earlier this year over Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed deepened the sense of a divide between Islamic culture and the West.

"The fierce attack on Islam in the five years since the September 11 attacks has forced us into a defensive position on our faith and understanding of our tolerant religion," Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki said in a speech.

"Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world," Feki said, citing Israel's recent 34-day war in Lebanon as one issue where Muslims needed to make their views and influence felt.

To this, we'd like to add several comments.

1. About the OIC's Role

We've spoken publicly in the recent past about the Organization of the Islamic Conference (also referred to as the Organization of Islamic Countries.) Apart from hosting the conference described above, the OIC's actions are the main reason why the United Nations has failed, after years of inside efforts, to adopt a convention against terrorism. You can see the background to this in Arnold Roth's speech to the 3rd International Congress of Victims of Terror, reprinted here. The OIC's ability to frustrate all attempts to comprehensively outlaw terrorism constitute a remarkably under-reported, largely-unknown and shameful story.

2. About the Influencers

The way Reuters chooses to describe the influence of Alwaleed bin Talal is odd, to say the least. It says:

"Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp..."

And that's it. No other investments, no other investors. So how minimal is minimal?

Alwaleed bin Talal is surely worthy of a touch more attention than Reuters gives him. In addition to being a member of the Saudi royal family, a nephew of King Abdullah and the the richest Arab in the world with estimated net worth of US $20 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the world's eighth richest person. Wikipedia says: "He has been nicknamed by Time magazine as the Arabian Warren Buffett."

This comment itself is an interesting observation since Alwaleed also holds a vast stake in that same Time magazine, a holding worth a billion dollars or more. This gives him a voice in the affairs of CNN, Time and a long list of other media properties.

His 5% holding in News Corp gives him a stake in the world's largest publisher of news in the English language: 175 papers, plus TV stations, magazines, radio, book publishers and film production studios. He's also invested in the dominant Italian media conglomerate Mediaset, in the Asia-and-Europe-wide TV network SKY and in many other media properties. In addition, a $9 billion stake in Citicorp gives Alwaleed some modest degree of influence in other parts of the global business landscape.

A man who understands what money can buy, Alwaleed donated $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard Universities in 2005. This was the second largest donation that Georgetown has ever received. Its Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (CMCU) is now renamed the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.

3. How Effective is This Sort of Investment?

Middle East Online quotes Prince Alwaleed himself boasting of its effect:

During last month's street protests in France, the US television network Fox... ran a banner saying Muslim riots. [Alwaleed says:] "I picked up the phone and called Murdoch . . . (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty. Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots."

The Prince is quoted in a Washington Times column explaining that his largesse as aimed at "bridging the understanding between East and West... for peace and tolerance." The columnist, Diana West, observes:

Funny how that bridge goes only one way. We won't ever, for example, see a Saudi prince (or anyone else) plunk down cold cash to expand -- or even establish -- Christian studies in Saudi Arabia, where exercising freedom of a non-Islamic religion is a crime.

We should point out, that in some circles, Alwaleed's holdings are themselves shrouded with question marks. As The Economist said in a penetrating and very readable analysis from 1999: "Anyone who seeks to present Prince Alwaleed as the face of the new Saudi Arabia needs to explain the mystery that lies at the heart of his empire."

Perhaps it's this shroud of uncertainty that renders Reuters so modest in its claims about his influence and that of other Arab and Moslem potentates.

4. About a "New Islamic Media Message That Reaches All Parts of the World"

This isn't the place to repeat what antisemites have said all the way down history: that the Jews control the banks, the media, the movies, the water supply and the rest. The haters will keep saying what haters say, and the rest of us will try to avoid being drawn into an ignorance-laden, prejudiced and pointless debate.

People who want to have influence and advance their private agendas have always had the means available to do this by wealth, by economic power, by war. Alwaleed is no exception and he's not alone in his ambitions, though perhaps exceptionally well-placed to achieve it. But we're dealing here with a different, threatening and more dangerous situation - one that's characterized by a barely-disguised degree of collaboration, co-operation and lofty self-justification.

Alwaleed is not the only player in the creation of a "new Islamic message". The conference that sparked this report is, after all, a global international conference of governments and their ministers. Not just some governments, but governments that have nearly a third of the United Nations in their control. And as we observed above, control is the right word since the fact is they do act in a united, co-ordinated way.

That's one of the reasons the OIC exists.

Ignoring the slightly tortured English of their website, the OIC's secretary-general Ihsanoglu says their efforts are about international co-ordination. He "expressed certainty of the possibility of achieving success and professionalism in joint Islamic information action based on human capabilities and high-level professional capacities of the Islamic world which have proved their merit and competence in the various Islamic media such as TV channels, radio stations, newspapers and websites."

Meanwhile the Saudi Undersecretary for Culture and Information, Dr. Abdullah Al-Jasser, this week "drew attention to the fact that the Islamic world faces today formidable challenges and biased world media actions that have enormously prejudiced Islam and Muslims through news, information and programme manipulations. This urgently necessitates the quick access of Islamic States to the global information society, not only by possessing and utilizing technologies, but also by upgrading content."

The word jihad doesn't appear in the press releases but its spirit seems to be there. As a group speaking with a single voice, the Islamic nations say they're grievously provoked and they absolutely have to fight back. And they see the media as a critical battlefield.

If you're searching for signs of critical self-examination by these states and their reps, don't be too hopeful. When it comes to the overwhelmingly Islamic character of global terrorism, something that troubles most of the world, don't waste your time searching for analysis on the OIC website. It's evidently not a problem of theirs. On the contrary, their pre-occupation as a global group is with rebuffing suggestions of an Islamic connection to terror (the link is to an OIC speech by Malaysia's former prime minister who addressed this theme repeatedly). The terrorism problem is mainly a problem of perceptions in the West, they say, with Islamic states and Moslems among its principal victims. The solution therefore is in changing those Western perceptions.

Are there Arab and Moslem victims of Moslem terror? Of course - vast numbers of them; we know some personally. Does this mean that Islam is unrelated to global terror and its cancerous spread in the past decade? Of course not. Islam is at the very heart of the cancer. It's impossible to comprehend terror without looking closely at the role Moslems play in its growth.

The organized Islamic governments, all 56 of them, are hardly hiding their intentions, leaving the rest of us to wonder how much of an impact their Islamic war against Western perceptions is now, and will be, reflected in the news reporting, analysis and pictures that get to our pages and screens.