WikiLeaks Arabia: An idea whose time has come

“In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that 'only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.'

We agree."

From www.wikileaks.org home page

WikiLeaks has jumped into the news with its mammoth release of secret US documents which has been widely condemned. Why? It may be temporarily embarrassing for US security agencies, but the Wikileaks approach could cause much good if applied universally. Indeed, there is plenty of information that is openly and legally available which never gets reported. WikiLeaks could extend its operations to this information, lower its risk profile, and still do the world a huge favour.

According to Wikipedia, no relation to WikiLeaks, Abu Nidal (Arabic: أبو نضال) (May 1937 - August 16, 2002), born Sabri Khalil al-Banna (Arabic: صبري خليل البنا), was the founder of the Fatah Revolutionary Council (Arabic: فتح المجلس الثوري). The Council was more commonly eponymously known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO). At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, Arabic for "father of [the] struggle, "was widely regarded as the most ruthless operative in the Palestinian political leadership". - The ANO was a leading part of the secular, far left, Arab rejectionist front, so called because they rejected every single proposal for a peaceful settlement with Israel. ANO was formed in 1974 following a rift between Abu Nidal and Yasser Arafat’s party, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO).

Abu Nidal is credited (if that’s the right adjective) with ordering attacks in up to 20 countries, killing, injuring or orphaning over 900 people. Abu Nidal’s most gruesome slaughter took place at the El Al ticket desks at Rome and Vienna airports in the winter of 1985. Abu Nidal’s terrorists pumped countless rounds of automatic fire at everyone who was close to those desks. In all, 18 lives were lost on the day and a further 120 maimed requiring hospitalisation.

A year later the ANO was at it again, this time his barbarians hijacked Pan Am flight 73 in Karachi en route from Bombay to New York City. The aircraft had 389 passengers and crew on board. Passengers were held captive for 16 hours after which the terrorists tossed grenades amongst the seated, bewildered and frightened passengers. Luckily someone managed to prop open the emergency door allowing all but 16 of the hostages to escape. A further 100 were maimed or disabled. At least another four died subsequently of their injuries.

Abu Nidal died in Baghdad on 16 August 2002. Saddam Hussein’s government claimed he committed suicide. Palestinian sources however are convinced that Saddam’s henchmen were responsible.

In any event, the world slept better that night.

But Abu Nidal’s legacy, the Fatah Revolutionary Council, lives on and remains focused on the annihilation of the Jewish state. And it’s that Council that met last week in the Arab settlement of Ramallah, on the disputed West Bank.

That the Council met is not the issue. That its meeting was misreported by some media outlets, including AFP - and not reported at all by many, is a travesty.

And that its outcomes were ignored comprehensively by the mainstream media and publically by diplomats worldwide is proof if any was needed, of the vital and democratic service Julian Assange’s Wikileaks has provided to date with respect to United States and which Assange should extend to the political tinderbox which is the Middle East.

The meeting of the Fifth Fatah Revolutionary Council - began with participants giving special honour to Amin al-Hindi. He was one of the masterminds of the slaughter of 11 Israeli athletes at 1972 Munich Olympics. Al-Hindi died in August this year. What followed at the 120 member Council meeting was an honest and robust discussion which unmasked the true feelings of the so-called “pro Western moderate wing” of Palestinian society.

After two days of meetings, Fatah, which makes up the key plank in the West Bank’s Palestinian “government” - as opposed to the rival Hamas “government” in Gaza, - issued a ear screeching “no” to compromise (with Israel presumably, as it couldn’t bring itself to utter the name), diluting what little hope there was for negotiating with the Middle East’s singular democracy .

The Council:

1. rejected recognition of “the so-called Jewish state” ;

2. reaffirmed the “right of return” of Arabs to pre 1967 borders, which if implemented would facilitate the demographic if not the physical liquidation of a Jewish majority in the Jewish homeland;

3. vetoed any land swap whatsoever with Israel as part of a peace agreement. Even large communities holding 80% of the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria (areas known more commonly as the “West Bank’) on no more than 5% of the area must removed root and branch;

This is not exactly the picture of Palestinian “peace seekers” we receive daily from the mainstream media now is it?

Oh, and US understandings, starting in the December 2000 with the so called “Clinton parameters” and continuing with former US President George W. Bush’s declaration that any permanent peace deal would have to reflect the West Bank’s demographic realities, were jettisoned. Less like throwing out the baby with the bathwater and more like killing the baby and then pretending it drowned.

When it comes to the Middle East, where news reporters and editors fail to give the proper space to revelations of Arab extremism and intransigence, they help perpetuate prejudices against Israel. For instance, it’s fair to say that while anti Semitic attacks say in the United Kingdom would exist in the absence of any media, a media that distorts the truth and saddles blame on one party alone for any breakdown in the “peace process” has a great deal to answer for.

Not only is skewed journalism deceitful of a profession and misleads those who rely on it, such misreporting only advances the cause for war as it misapplies blame by ignoring the facts. Facts imperative to grasp if both parties to the conflict are to sense the international community will not settle for double speak and ethnocentric paranoia. The fact that the Palestinian “politicians” rarely take even their own citizens into their confidence is also deplorable. WikiLeaks for instance revealed that Israel tried to coordinate its anti-terror offensive in Gaza (Operation Cast Lead) with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

Naturally, as the PA kept this fact concealed from their “electorate”, the PA can do little else but deny WikiLeaks’ claims. So long as Palestinians from President Abbas down to the proverbial olive grower refuse to accept a legitimate Jewish state in the Middle East where Judaism is the prevailing religion, not unlike the position of the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece - the Palestinians will not put away their suicide belts in favour of walking on the path to peace.

The Middle East is a region littered with corrupt autocracies, human rights abusers and pockmarked with states that support terrorism (such as Syria) and pseudo states (e.g. Gaza) that practice rocket launching on Israeli civilians.

Reporting by most media outlets generally of the news but in particular news from the Middle East is blurred too often by editorial or managerial biases and self-serving agendas. Or worse still, publications that rely on the likes of Agence France Presse to spoon feed them, often don’t run key matters because they are simply not alerted to them.

Take WikiLeaks’ revelation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most favoured plan for the West Bank is an Israeli exit. Given the relentless demonisation and delegitimisation of the Jewish state by many media outlets, who would have thought that was “hardline” Netanyahu’s view?

Given the state of the mainstream media’s inability or unwillingness to distinguish between news and views, and between what transpired and what they wish would transpire, the public will remain poorly served. Until the day comes, when the mainstream media will report about the Middle East without fear and opine without favour, there will most certainly be a place on many iPads for an organisation solely devoted to dumping all the facts online, howsoever gathered and allowing the felafels to fall where they may.

Julian Assange can inject transparency into Middle East politics by doing the job expected of big media players like CNN, Al-Jazeera, ABC, Fairfax and the Guardian by dedicating a site solely to telling the citizens of the Middle East just what their leaders are really saying when CNN’s and Al-Jazeera’s microphones aren’t rammed down their throats. And telling us in the West, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

WikiLeaks Arabia your time has come.