Memri and Orientalism posted by bat020

There's been a spat on the Guardian letters page recently over Memri, the Zionist propaganda outfit that masquerades as an "independent" source of translations of Arabic media.

London mayor Ken Livingstone drew attention to Memri's politics and history, which drew a response from one Leon Collins, followed by another letter from Livingstone, followed by William Shawcross defending Memri again today.

What's worth nothing in both of the pro-Memri letters is the thoroughly casual anti-Arab racism on display.

Shawcross says Livingstone should "lament that there is no Arab source of information on the Middle East half as trustworthy" as Memri - the implication being that information from Arabs cannot be trusted.

This resonates with an age-old orientalist canard about the supposed "cultural difference" that prevents Arabs from grasping complicated Western concepts like truth.

Collins is even more explicitly imperialist. "Almost any scholar of Arabic in a Western university will confirm that the translations of Memri are reliable and sound," he says.

Note that the authority for deciding whether translations of Arabic are "reliable and sound" is not Arabic speakers, nor even Arabic scholars, but Arabic scholars in a Western university. "Westerners", it seems, understand Arabic better than Arabs do.