BAGHDAD, August 16 (IslamOnline.net) – An Israeli center said to be specialized in Mid Eastern studies was opened in the occupied Iraqi capital Baghdad, in a provocative move seen by Iraqi academics as the beginning of an Israeli scheme to infiltrate the Iraqi society.
“Israel opened its center on August 1 at a large rented building in Abu Nawaas St. overlooking The Tigris river,” they told IslamOnine.net Friday, August 15.
The sources, who requested anonymity, said the center has already started operation, noting that it was the first Israeli center operating publicly in Baghdad since its downfall on April 9.
The heavily-guarded building, they said, obtained work permits from the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq and the Pentagon.
The Iraqis sources said the center is affiliated to the Washington-based MEMRI (short for the Middle East Media Research Institute), an Israeli association set up five years ago, with offshoots in London, Berlin and West Jerusalem.
“Superficially, the center follows up Arab newspapers in the Arab world and Europe, particularly London, translates key articles into Hebrew, English, German, French and Italian and circulate them among subscribers, not to mention state-run Israelis institutions,” they clarified.
The sources put at 35,000 the number of subscribers, who receive MEMRI’s services on a daily basis, adding that it is a non-profitable organization and employs dozens in its different offshoots.
“MEMRI receives donations from Jewish and Zionist institutions from all over the world,” they averred.
Brian Whitaker, a Guardian writer, has investigated whether the ‘independent’ MEMRI is quite what it seems.
He wrote on August 12, 2002, that MEMRI is “rather a mysterious organization. Its website does not give the names of any people to contact, not even an office address.”
Whitaker attributed “Memri’s air of secrecy” to those who run it, noting that its co-founder, president and registered owner of its website, “is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.”
“Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.”
The Guardian writer said that based on a retrieved now-deleted page from MEMRI’s website archives, he came across the names of six people, “three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.”
He added that another staff “served in the Israeli army’s Northern Command Ordnance Corps.”
According to Whitaker MEMRI’s co-founder is "Meyrav Wurmser, who is also director of the center for Middle East policy at the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute.
He noted, in this respect that the “ubiquitous Richard Perle, (former) chairman of the Pentagon’s defense policy board, recently joined Hudson’s board of trustees.”
Judging from the e-mails he receives from MEMRI, the Guardian writer concluded that “the stories selected by Memri for translation follow a familiar pattern: either they reflect badly on the character of Arabs or they in some way further the political agenda of Israel. I am not alone in this unease.”
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