CONTENTS
1. "Al-Jazeera is really a Zionist plot"
2. National Geographic "is controlled by Zionists"
3. Malki Roth was no bystander
4. The Schijveschuurder family
"JEWS SPREAD AIDS, AND KILL CHILDREN"
[Note by Tom Gross]
As mentioned in the dispatch last Friday, December 10, titled "Stoned to death in France: Why Europe is starting to lose faith in Islam" under the item about the popularity of Hizbullah's Al Manar television station among French Moslems ("Jews spread AIDS, and kill children"), I now attach two articles concerning Al-Jazeera television and National Geographic magazine.
(I did not send these last week in line with the policy of not sending too many email dispatches in a single week.)
Both these allegations stem from Iran. One might brush them aside as the insignificant rantings of an irrational regime – except Iran, now on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, is likely to be one of the most important global news stories of 2005. Unfortunately, one therefore needs to take seriously the mindset of Iran's official media and ruling elite.
I attach two articles below, from either side of the world: one from The Tehran Times and the other from The Los Angeles Times.
-- Tom Gross
MALKI ROTH WAS NO BYSTANDER.
In the dispatch on Monday (December 13, 2004) titled Hamas art goes on display in Australia, I wrote of the way in which many western media (such as The Guardian) have been calling the victims of bus and cafe bombs "bystanders" rather than the carefully selected targets of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Arnold Roth, a subscriber to this email list, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was murdered in the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria bombing in August 2001, writes:
"Everything in our lives changed forever when Malki, our middle child, a delightful fifteen year old girl with a constant smile on her beautiful face, was killed on 9th August 2001.
She was not caught in the crossfire of some battle. She was not a bystander. She was murdered with fourteen other Israelis [and two Americans] in a restaurant in the middle of the day, in the middle of this city.
The women and children in that pizza restaurant on a hot school-holiday afternoon were the actual target. The terrorists who planned the massacre took their orders from a pediatrician and from a minister of religion in a wheelchair.
They picked their target with exquisite care. The bomber was the son of a land-owning wealthy family. The other gang members were mainly university-educated and well traveled. To call them 'desperate', as many journalists have done, is to completely twist the meaning of the word 'desperate'."
THE SCHIJVESCHUURDER FAMILY
Tom Gross adds:
Arnold Roth's father, who died before Malki was born, grew up in the Auschwitz death camp. Arnold's mother, who is till alive, is also an Auschwitz survivor. Arnold's grandparents were killed by the Nazis.
Among others killed in that Sbarro Pizzeria bombing were five members of the Dutch-born Schijveschuurder family of Holocaust survivors. Among the many funerals I attended as a reporter covering the "Intifada" for British and American newspapers, the Schijveschuurder family funeral was perhaps the most moving.
Leah Schijveschuurder, aged 11, and very badly injured in the attack, insisted on being carried on a stretcher, with breathing tubes in her nose, through a crowd of hundreds of mourners, to attend the funeral of her father, mother and three murdered siblings – aged 2, 4 and 14. Her surviving sister (aged 9) was too injured to attend.
Leah's grandmother, Elisheva, a Dutch-born Auschwitz survivor, who lost her mother, father, sister, and brother in Nazi death camps, said at the funeral: "I vowed to rebuild my family after the war, and I that is what I did. Now for my family, Arafat has finished what Hitler started."
As a reporter, I also attended the funerals of other victims the day after that bomb: of Yocheved Shoshan, aged 10; and of Tamara Shamilashvili, aged 8, from Russia, who was buried alongside her mother, Lily, who was also killed in the blast. Over 1000 Israelis, most of whom did not know Lily, attended the funeral.
Few other Western reporters attended any of these funerals.
Malki Roth died some hours after the blast. She succumbed to severe burns and internal injuries caused by glass, screws and nails embedded in her neck as a result of the bomb, which had been deliberately packed with sharp objects to cause maximum injury to the victims. At the family’s request, Malki's funeral was held in private and reporters were asked not to attend.
As I reported at the time for the New York Daily News, the father of the suicide bomber said he was "very proud" of what his son had done. "My son told me a month ago that he would do it," he added.
After the blast, candies and chocolates were distributed by Yasser Arafat's security forces to children in Palestinian towns and villages.
SUMMARIES
AL QAEDA, AL ZIONIST
The Tehran Times reveals that al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV network that is often sympathetic with Arab suicide bombers, is actually a creation of Zionists, a response to Iranian "president" Mohammad Khatami's so-called Dialogue Among Civilizations initiative.
The Tehran Times writes: "Of course, the Zionists were not pleased at the idea because they believe that increased proximity between the Islamic world and the West is not in their interests. And that is why they founded the Al-Jazeera network to tarnish the image of true Islam."
The Tehran Times then gives its evidence: The map on the Al-Jazeera network changed the name of the Persian Gulf to the unacceptable "Arab Gulf" – an obvious Zionist-created insult to the Iranian nation, says the Teheran Times.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IS CONTROLLED BY ZIONISTS TOO
The Los Angeles Times reports that the Iranian regime has banned the sale of "Zionist" National Geographic publications because of a map that lists "Arabian Gulf" in parentheses after "Persian Gulf."
ARTICLES IN FULL
AL-JAZEERA'S PSYOPS
Al-Jazeera's Psyops
By Hassan Hanizadeh
The Tehran Times
December 2, 2004
www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=12/2/2004&Cat=14&Num=002
The Al-Jazeera network’s recent insult of the Iranian nation was totally unacceptable.
The Arabic network, which broadcasts its programs from the little Arab country Qatar, has recently posted an insulting cartoon about the Islamic Republic of Iran on its English site.
In the cartoon, a cleric, who is the symbol of the Islamic Republic of Iran, indifferently passes by various scenes of the current problems in the Islamic world, but reacts strongly when he sees that the name of the Persian Gulf has been changed to the unacceptable "Arab Gulf".
Iranian officials made a prompt denunciation of this very amateurish and dishonorable measure, which has its roots in Al-Jazeera officials’ animosity toward Iranians.
The Al-Jazeera network was founded in 1997, ostensibly to create a new movement in the static media of the Arab world, which are mostly government controlled, and was initially welcomed.
Many media experts believed that the new network would create a revolution in the field of information dissemination, particularly in the Arab states on the Persian Gulf.
However, at the same time, rumors arose suggesting that the network was established by U.S. and Israeli agents in order to present a bad image of Islam to the world.
Some regional experts expressed doubts about the allegations though, because the establishment of a media outlet with the aim of promptly informing Arab nations about the latest world news seemed to be a good idea.
But the actions of the network gradually revealed the fact that Al-Jazeera officials, on the orders of Zionist agents, are trying to divide Islamic countries and tarnish the image of Islam.
After Al-Jazeera broadcasted some distorted news reports about Saudi Arabia, tension rose between that country and Qatar, and the two Arab states almost cut off diplomatic relations.
Yet, instead of adopting a defensive stance toward the negative propaganda of the network, Saudi Arabia took an innovative measure and established the Al-Arabiya network to confront Al-Jazeera.
At the beginning of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, Al-Jazeera became the tribune of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorist groups in order to give the world the impression that those terrorists represented real Islam.
In addition, since the occupation of Iraq began, ethnic tension has risen and there have been clashes between Iraqi Sunnis and Shias, partly due to the efforts of Al-Jazeera.
By broadcasting abhorrent scenes of the beheadings of foreign hostages by the criminal agents of the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi terrorist group, the network succeeded in increasing anti-Muslim sentiment throughout the world, particularly in the West.
Following the advice of U.S. and Israeli experts in psychological operations (psyops), Al-Jazeera took actions which gave Westerners a negative image of Islam and Muslims.
In fact, the Al-Jazeera network was founded at exactly the same time when Iranian President Mohammad Khatami introduced his Dialogue Among Civilizations initiative as a logical strategy to bring the West and the Islamic world closer together.
Of course, the Zionists were not pleased at the idea because they believe that increased proximity between the Islamic world and the West is not in their interests. And that is why they founded the Al-Jazeera network to tarnish the image of true Islam.
Now, after seven years, it has become apparent that the real strategy of the network has been to create divisions between Islamic countries, to give the impression that Islam is a threat to the West, to present a negative image of the real Islam to the world, to isolate Muslims residing in the United States and other Western countries, and to create sectarian divisions between Shias and Sunnis in the Middle East.
NATIONAL GEORGAPHIC'S NAME FOR PERSIAN GULF RILES IRANIANS
National Geographic's name for Persian Gulf riles Iranians
The Los Angeles Times
December 2, 2004
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/02/MNGPQA4V7B1.DTL
They were just two small words, a parenthetical aside on a National Geographic map. But that's all it took to get fiercely proud Iranians to rise up this week against what they saw as an attack on their history.
In its latest world atlas, National Geographic added the name "Arabian Gulf" in parentheses beneath "Persian Gulf" on a map to label the body of water that cuts along the coasts of Iran and its Arab neighbors.
The use of "Arabian Gulf," and the implication that Iran may somehow be losing its historical claims to dominance of the ancient seas, pierced the cultural pride that pervades the land once known as Persia. It gave fresh life to the long and often bloody tensions between Iranians and Arabs and added fuel to a widely held Iranian suspicion that Arabs have been quietly lobbying for years to change the name of the gulf.
So keen was the perceived slight that it brought a fleeting unity to Iran's far-flung political spectrum. From the left to the right to the disaffected, Iranians blamed the "Zionists," accused the Arabs and lambasted the Americans.
The government banned National Geographic from selling its publications here or sending journalists into the country.
Even computer techies were stirred to action and pulled off a "Google bomb," manipulating the search engine to obtain a high ranking. Type "Arabian Gulf" on Google, and the first link is to a Web site that announces, "The gulf you are looking for does not exist. Try Persian Gulf."
National Geographic remains unapologetic. The publication recognizes "Persian Gulf" as the primary name, but "we want people searching for 'Arabian Gulf' to be able to find what they're looking for and not confuse it with the nearby Arabian Sea," said Allen Carroll, chief cartographer on the National Geographic Web site.