The Jihadi Babies Story

Jihadi Babies

by digby


Fox is breathlessly reporting this story about ISIS creating Jihadi babies on every one of its shows. I searched for a legitimate news story about it and only came up with this little blurb from The Week.

"Sister's Role in Jihad," a guide for mothers raising jihadi babies, has surfaced online. It appears to be an indoctrination handbook that instructs mothers in the best methods to raise an extremist child.

The U.S-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) published the book "ahead of a new report condemning how children are being indoctrinated into radical Islam," the Daily Mail reports. According to the Mail, the book advises that children be trained to play with toy guns, shown jihadi websites, read jihadi bedtime stories, and encouraged to participate in sports such as darts to improve their aim. It bans singing, dancing, and most sports, and features images of young boys holding guns, Islamic banners, even a severed head.

The guide was posted anonymously on a file-sharing site and its authors are unknown, though according to the Mail, "it is thought to be used by ISIS and other terror groups."

Imagine my surprise to see that this lurid "revelation" is being disseminated by the propaganda outfit known as MEMRI.

If you don't know MEMRI, this report from the Center for American Progress lays out the case:

The Middle East Media and Research Institute is a Middle Eastern press-monitoring agency created by former members of Israeli Defense Forces that supplies translations relied upon by many members of the Islamophobia network. The translation service was created in February 1998 as an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization “to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East.”

MEMRI offers research on media in the Arab world, which those in the Islamophobia network depend on to make the case that Islam is inherently violent and promotes extremism. Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer hails MEMRI as “a goldmine of translated material from the Arabic speaking world which really gives one some amazing insights into what our opponents in the war on terror are thinking.”

Frank Gaffney at the Center for Security Policy calls MEMRI “indispensable” and relies on its translations to exaggerate the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islam’s infiltration of America.

And the antiMuslim grassroots organization ACT! for America uses a MEMRI-supplied video of a Muslim woman being stoned in Sudan as evidence of the brutality of Sharia law.
The Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes also relies on MEMRI for his propaganda,as does Steve Emerson, executive director of The Investigative Project, who also serves as a director at MEMRI.

Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik cited MEMRI 16 times in his manifesto.

MEMRI was founded by Israeli-born, American academic Meyrav Wurmser, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Col. Yigal Carmon, who spent more than 20 years in the Israeli intelligence and served as a terrorism adviser to two of Israel’s prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin. Wurmser co-authored the 1996 report, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” prepared for then-incoming Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
which suggested reshaping Israel’s strategic environment in the Middle East by abandoning the traditional “land for peace” negotiations with Palestinians and proposing the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

MEMRI is respected in some circles for its work to combat hate language and anti-Semitism,10 but it is also criticized for its selective translations. The institute contends that it highlights moderate Muslim voices on its Reform blog. Yet MEMRI’s selective translations of Arab media fan the flames of Islamophobia. MEMRI’s editorial bias in its selection of media sources creates the impression that Arab media is full of anti-Western bias and urges Muslims in the West to commit acts of violence and terrorism.

One case in point: A sample of the videos on the front page of MEMRITV.org’s “Islamists in the West” section shows 19 new videos with topics ranging from “Belgian Islamist Abou Imran, of Shariah Belgium: We Will Conquer the White House, Europe Will Be Dominated by Islam” to “American Jihadist Operating From Somalia, Abu Mansour Al-Amriki, Calls to Attack America, in Two New Jihadi Songs – ‘Send Me A Cruise,’ and ‘Make Jihad with Me.’” Problem is, of the
19 videos—including the two listed above—list “The Internet” as the source, instead of any verifiable news source.

Or consider George Washington University Professor Marc Lynch’s response to MEMRI’s 2004 report that Osama bin Laden promised to only attack American states that voted for George W. Bush. Lynch wrote that “MEMRI is cherry-picking a couple of statements on fringe websites to support its own, highly partisan, interpretation. Actually, to be totally clear, they are relying on ONE statement on ONE radical website, which could have been posted by ANYBODY.”

Indeed, MEMRI is plagued by accusations that it selectively translates television news clips from the Muslim world. Former CIA case officer Vince Cannistraro has said that “they (MEMRI) are selective and act as propagandists for their political point of view, which is the extreme right of Likud.” Laila Lalami, writing in The Nation, states that MEMRI “consistently picks the most violent, hateful rubbish it can find, translates it and distributes it in e-mail newsletters to media and members of Congress in Washington.”

Most disturbingly, the translations found in the inflammatory, antiMuslim documentary “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” were provided by MEMRI. The film’s website also features MEMRI as a resource under the link for “Radical Islam and Terrorism Today,” which demonstrates once again how important MEMRI’s translations are for Islamophobic propaganda in the United States. The Clarion Fund was responsible for producing and disseminating the anti-Muslim movie to 28 battleground states in 2008.

It's impossible to know where this "report" really comes from. And for the moment it seems to be confined to the fever swamps of the right wing. But let's just say that when babies become the focus it's time for your skeptical antennae to be deployed. I'm sure you all recall this:

Every big media event needs what journalists and flacks alike refer to as "the hook." An ideal hook becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy, evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In the case of the Gulf War, the "hook" was invented by Hill & Knowlton. In style, substance and mode of delivery, it bore an uncanny resemblance to England's World War I hearings that accused German soldiers of killing babies.

On October 10, 1990, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held a hearing on Capitol Hill which provided the first opportunity for formal presentations of Iraqi human rights violations. Outwardly, the hearing resembled an official congressional proceeding, but appearances were deceiving. In reality, the Human Rights Caucus, chaired by California Democrat Tom Lantos and Illinois Republican John Porter, was simply an association of politicians. Lantos and Porter were also co-chairs of the Congressional Human Rights Foundation, a legally separate entity that occupied free office space valued at $3,000 a year in Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC office. Notwithstanding its congressional trappings, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus served as another Hill & Knowlton front group, which -- like all front groups -- used a noble-sounding name to disguise its true purpose.

Only a few astute observers noticed the hypocrisy in Hill & Knowlton's use of the term "human rights." One of those observers was John MacArthur, author of The Second Front, which remains the best book written about the manipulation of the news media during the Gulf War. In the fall of 1990, MacArthur reported, Hill & Knowlton's Washington switchboard was simultaneously fielding calls for the Human Rights Foundation and for "government representatives of Indonesia, another H&K client. Like H&K client Turkey, Indonesia is a practitioner of naked aggression, having seized ... the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975. Since the annexation of East Timor, the Indonesian government has killed, by conservative estimate, about 100,000 inhabitants of the region."

MacArthur also noticed another telling detail about the October 1990 hearings: "The Human Rights Caucus is not a committee of congress, and therefore it is unencumbered by the legal accouterments that would make a witness hesitate before he or she lied. ... Lying under oath in front of a congressional committee is a crime; lying from under the cover of anonymity to a caucus is merely public relations."

[T]he most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where ... babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.

If you click on the Fox News link at the beginning of this post you can see this jihadi baby story in all its glory, including alleged pictures of a 2 year old posed with a gun. It's not enough that ISIS decapitates western journalists and aid workers or engages in mass murder. Now it is attacking the very foundation of civilization by interfering in the relationship between mother and baby and teaching an entire generation to be monsters.

It could be true. But considering the history of the group that allegedly found it --- and the history of "baby propaganda" --- it's fair to question if they might just be fibbing a bit. It's what they do.


And I won't even mention this other little issue of weapons in the hands of babies. The jihadi pot meets the All-American kettle before they even leave the playpen these days.

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