This is a guest post by Max Shachtman.
Readers of HP may be familiar with Middle East Monitor Online, the pro-Hamas, pro-silliness website that the Guardian has described as a ‘think tank with Palestinian sympathies.’ It’s run by Dr Daud Abdullah, a proud signatory of the Istanbul Declaration, which states that it is
‘[t]he obligation of the Islamic Nation to regard the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters, claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza, as a declaration of war, a new occupation, sinful aggression, and a clear violation of the sovereignty of the Nation. This must be rejected and fought by all means and ways.’
So if a British naval vessel intercepts a ship importing, say, laser-guided anti-tank missiles to Gaza, that interception must be ‘rejected and fought by all means and ways’, according to Dr Abdullah.
It takes David Duke videos to get Baroness Jenny Tonge to resign from advisory roles in online Islamist organisations but there is ample wiggle room when it comes to invocations of terrorism. Other advisors to MEMO include Lord Ahmed and Tariq Ramadan, who thinks that when a bomb goes off in Jerusalem, a footnote in Derrida can explain why.
MEMO routinely publishes conspiracy theories, racist ‘analysis’ and any old thing that it deems will make jihadists look swell and Israel and the ‘Zionists’ look naughty. It has suggested some interesting true causes for the murder of the Italian ISM activist Vittorio Arrigoni. One contributor, Khalid Amayreh, has written that all Israelis are ‘pathological liars from Eastern Europe’ (no love for Mizrahi migration here) and that Palestine has been ‘violated and raped by Zionist Jews for many years’. Israel, writes Amayreh at MEMO, wants to establish a ‘Hebrew empire’ all over ‘Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, northern Saudi Arabia, northern Egypt and the islands of Crete and Cyprus.’ Zionism as a credo of course is ‘genocidal, racist, rapacious, covetous, and of course utterly mendacious… [it is] a malignant cancer’.
The real shame in this is that, with a few simple copy-edits, Amayreh might have had a proper Comment is Free piece on his hands. Oh well.
However, today comes a particularly effervescent installment at MEMO. Did you know that the wife of the toppled Tunisian ruler Zen El Abedeen Ben Ali is a Mossad agent?
Her former bodyguard has told all in the one place where news value is unassailable:
Abdel Rahman Sobeir also claims that El Trabolsi is a Mossad agent who was involved in several assassinations of Palestinian leaders when they were exiled in Tunisia.
Mr Sobeir revealed this sensitive information on Facebook; he accused Tunisia’s ex-First Couple and their son-in-law Selim Shaiboub, along with a number of senior security chiefs, of criminal activity.
Just think: all that time Yasser Arafat was an indulged guest of the Tunisian government, and dodging Israeli air strikes against him whilst he was jogging, the perfect Zionist wet job was just a state dinner away, with Evelyn Salt herself given pride of place at the table.
My question, though, is this: Why are MEMO following the bodyguards of deposed Arab strongmen on Facebook? Surely this is some covert attempt at restoration. And you know who benefits if that happens.
