Arab Press Portrays Sept. 11 Attacks as Part of Jewish Conspiracy

by Gregory Katz
The Dallas Morning News
November 19, 2001

 

The Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were seen in most Western countries as wanton terrorist assaults, but that view does not necessarily prevail in the Arab media, where much of the press has painted a different picture.

The widely accepted belief in the West that the attacks were masterminded by Osama bin Laden has not completely caught hold in many Arab countries, where the mainstream press has often portrayed the attacks as part of a Jewish conspiracy designed to trigger an American attack on Islam.

Readers have been told and re-told, for example, in dozens of Arab papers that Jews working in the World Trade Center received advance warning of the attack and were told to stay away from work on Sept. 11.

Many Arab newspaper columnists and editorial writers have embraced these theories, while others implied that the United States was to blame for the terrorist attacks because of what they view as its past arrogance and its support of Israel. "My analysis is that they tend to be distracting attention away from the crime of the murder of over 3,000 civilians and trying to pin the blame on the U.S. by its failure to do X, Y or Z," said Edward S. Walker, president of the Middle East Institute in Washington and former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. "It's been a very unfortunate approach. To somehow imply that the United States is guilty and that in some way that justifies the attacks is untenable."

Walker said that hostility in the Arab press and on Arab television news broadcasts have made it harder for President Bush and his top aides to explain U.S. actions to readers and viewers in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions.

The American assertion that the U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan is not related to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians holds little currency in Arab countries, where the press has repeatedly tied the two conflicts together _ with America's support of Israel portrayed as the root cause of the troubles.

To try to shape more favorable coverage, the Bush administration has sent Arab-speaking diplomats to the region to be available for press appearances and has worked with the British government to set up press offices in London and Pakistan so that spokesmen are available to the press 24 hours a day. Administration spokesmen have been interviewed on Qatar-based al-Jazeera television, the pre-eminent Arab-language television station.

It is too early to say whether these efforts are working. Experts who monitor the Arab press say reports of the conflict are drenched in anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism that have made it virtually impossible for American officials to explain their view of the war on terrorism.

This conclusion is buttressed by daily translations provided by independent agencies, which focus in many cases on the influence of the Zionist lobby on Washington's policy.

A number of unlikely events have been reported as fact in various Arab newspapers, fueling anti-American sentiment at a sensitive time. It has been reported, for example, that emergency food supplies airdropped by U.S. forces for consumption by civilians in Afghanistan were intentionally poisoned.

When New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani refused to accept a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince for the victims of the World Trade Center attack, because the prince linked the terrorist attacks to Israel's actions in the Middle East, some Arab newspapers responded by calling Giuliani a homosexual controlled by the Zionists.

"If democracy means a governor who is a homosexual in a city in which dance clubs, prostitution, homosexuality and stripping proliferate, the U.S. can keep its democracy," wrote Mahmoud bin Abd Al-Ghani Sabbagh, a columnist for the Saudi paper Al-Riyadh, who mistakenly identified Giuliani as the governor, not the mayor.

There has also been reluctance in the Arab press to accept the American and British view that bin Laden and his al-Qaida network were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Only now, with the release of a number of videotapes by bin Laden in which he implies that he was responsible for the attacks, is this idea starting to be reflected in many influential Arab newspapers, said Jamil Mrowa, editor and publisher of the English-language Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon.

"At first, people said Israeli intelligence agents did it, or the CIA did it, but now no one in the press thinks anymore that bin Laden was not involved," said Mrowa. "For all intents and purposes, he has directly admitted it."

Mrowa said much of the Arab press first responded with jubilation to the attacks _ as if they were divine retribution for America's misdeeds _ but that this reaction has been replaced by apprehension about America's next move.

"It awakened a giant, and what would the giant do?" he said. "There has been a lot of fear and anxiety. So the wind in bin Laden's sails is starting to wane; the giant is now hitting you, people are realizing that his actions lead nowhere. That is the view of the Arab press."

Even with the new information, many in the Arab press _ and members of the intellectual elite in numerous Arab countries _ are not fully convinced that bin Laden is responsible, said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the al-Quds Arabic language newspaper in London.

Atwan said doubts remain because the Arab press in the first ten days after the Sept. 11 attacks spread conspiracy theories in which Israeli intelligence agents were blamed. Many Arab governments gave the press "a green light" to promulgate this version of events because national leaders did not know how to react to the unprecedented attacks.

"We in the Middle East are fond of conspiracy theories, and we dump everything on the Mossad," he said, referring to the Israeli intelligence agency. "We see who has benefited, and we see that Israel has benefited because the Arab image and the Muslim image has been tarnished. So this story that it was the work of Israelis was spreading like fire through hay. It was strongly believed."

He said many governments tried to change their tune ten days after the attacks _ when many Arab countries decided to join the U.S.-led coalition _ but by then it was hard to dispel many of the stories that had been published, including the oft-repeated tale about the 4,000 Jews who did not go to work in the World Trade Center on that day.

"It was too late," he said. "They had been accusing the Jews, the Israelis, and after ten days it was difficult to change that view."

 

(c) 2001, The Dallas Morning News.

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