The Propaganda War 

By Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, Ph.D.
Minaret of Freedom Institute

[The following article is critical of certain elements in the American media for attempting to dismiss the grievances of Muslims against American foreign policy, especially the support of Israel. Because it is important that that such criticism not be mistaken as a legitimization of the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, I take this opportunity to state again what I have made clear in every column since Sept. 11, no grievance, regardless of its legitimacy can justify the targeting of innocent noncombatants and I, like every other responsible Muslim, condemn the attack on America as a violation of Islamic law as well as any other standards of civilized society.]

How quickly the Zionist propaganda machine has been able to do a hairpin turn on the relationship between the World Trade Center bombing and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. On the day of the attacks someone actually floated the rumor that it was Palestinians (the PDFLP to be specific) themselves who had done the evil deed. Now, confronted with the (to them) horrifying reality that the American public is seriously demanding to know why anyone, no matter how evil they may be, would hate us so much as to commit such a horrid act, the chorus of defenders of Israeli apartheid is unanimous in insisting the Palestinian issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the attack on America.

Yet on the day after the attacks, Daniel Pipes (2001) was writing in The Wall Street Journal that the attacks could have been avoided if only the American government had listened to Steven Emerson. Now it just so happens that less than a month before the attacks Pipes and Emerson (2001) had written a prescription to defend America from terrorism in the same newspaper. They urged shutting down the web sites of a variety of organizations supportive of the Palestinian cause. The disgraceful irony is that the F.B.I. did shut down an Islamic-owned company that hosted the web sites of 500 American Muslim organizations (including some that had been targets of Emerson’s McCarthyite accusations of guilt-by-association in the past) only days before the attack. While the resources diverted into that absurd exercise may have been very small, one would have wished that every penny of it could have instead been spent on a meaningful effort to anticipate and prevent what happened a few days later.

On the same day Charles Krauthammer (2001) also included Israel in the gallery of Muslim grievances, but signaled the onset of a switch of gears by insisting that Israel was “the smallest of fish” affronting “radical Islam.” Nonetheless, Fox television insisted on showing a film clip of Palestinians allegedly celebrating the attack over and over again. That the propaganda machine was making a major tactical error only became irrefutably clear when Ariel Sharon’s attempt to equate the attack on innocents in the World Trade Center with the suicide attacks by Palestinians against their occupiers. That was too much even for the American government and prompted a sharp rebuttal from the Bush Administration.

The American people have taken a keen interest in foreign affairs for the first time since Vietnam. As the “Arab street” (i.e.m the grass-roots Arab citizenry) has been out of sync with the Arab governments for years, so now the “American street” is out of sync with the major media. Average Americans seeking the factual answers to the question “Why Would Anyone Want to Hurt Us?” are discussing the relationship of the Palestinian issue to the failure of the Muslim world to understand how wonderful this country really is, but their thoughts only surface in the media itself in rare flashes, like Joe Sobran’s (2001) syndicated Internet column.

Now, suddenly, the attack on America has nothing at all to do with Palestinians. It’s about Iraq, or about troops in Saudi Arabia, or about a hatred for freedom and democracy (!), or modernity, but don’t anyone dare mention Palestine.

Yet how could anyone deny that the Israeli occupation is a main source of Muslim dissatisfaction when even Usama bin Ladin upon whom the Bush Administration lays the responsibility for the attack gave it pride of place in his list of grievances against the United States, not only in his 1998 declaration of war on the United States but in the videotape he gave to al-Jazeera just before the bombing of Afghanistan commenced? The amazing reaction of the United States has been to chastise al-Jazeera for broadcasting the tape and to attempt to prevent the Western media from rebroadcasting it! Their initial excuse for this appalling intervention upon freedom of the press was that al-Jazeera was not giving equal time to the U.S. and Britain, but al-Jazeera eagerly interviewed Tony Blair and I’m certain would eagerly interview George Bush if he offered. Then the new excuse became that bin Ladin speeches may incite new terrorist acts. If this were true it would affirm rather than deny the view that it is the grievances he has articulated that are the motives of the attacks. In any case, America has never in the past been willing to sacrifice freedom of the press to the fear of such a risk. Al-Jazeera is the closest thing to a free press the Arab world has and it’ll take a better excuse than this to tape their mouths without making the West look like flaming hypocrites. (Imagine if the Saudis had tried to excuse their ban on satellite dishes on the grounds that they didn’t want bin Ladin giving the go-ahead signal for another Khobar Towers bombing?)

Why is there this intense effort to disassociate the so-called “Muslim rage” from the plight of the Palestinians, given that, according to a recent Zogby poll, any effect of the recent terrorism on American public opinion was to increase sympathy for Israel (although only to a tiny degree)? The reason for the Zionists’ intense efforts to derail any meaningful discussion of the role that the persecution of the Palestinians plays in provoking violence against America is that they correctly perceive that any such discussion may bring the reality of the un-American nature of the Israeli apartheid system in to focus to the American public and thereby threaten continued American aid to Israel. Dismissing the Palestinian question as irrelevant to the terrorist threat to America is necessary because ignorance of the facts of Israeli history and policies is the lynchpin of American support for Israel. The terrorist acts of Sept. 11, seen out of context, are a plus for Israel. A protracted discussion of the American foreign policy blunders that made it possible is bad news for Israel. As a recent al-Awda (2001) alert emphasizes: “Israel has engaged in a persistent pattern of gross human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It stands in defiance of more than eighty United Nations resolutions. Israel continues to kill innocent civilians, demolish Palestinian homes, build illegal settlements on occupied lands, practice collective punishment and deny refugees their inalienable fundamental human right to return to their homes of origin.” It is to prevent these facts from gaining widespread recognition that the Zionists would like everyone from al-Jazeera to the American on the street to just shut up.

References

al-Awda 2001, “Al-Awda Alert: Write to Media Now,” Press release (Orange, CT: Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, 10/16).

Charles Krauthammer 2001, “To War, Not to Court,” Washington Post (9/12) A29.

Daniel Pipes 2001, “Mistakes Made the Catastrophe Possible.” The Wall Street Journal (9/12) A12.

Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson 2001, “Rolling Back the forces of Terror.” The Wall Street Journal (8/13) A12.

Joe Sobran 2001. “Is It Worth It?” (Vienna: Griffin Internet Syndicate, 9/20) http://www.sobran.com/columns/010920.shtml (accessed 10/16/01).