No one believes the official Arab media, which actually discredits correct news just by carrying it. This is because the readers usually read official news so that they may search for the truth elsewhere. This is while privately-owned media outlets in countries where there is a real margin of freedom, such as Egypt, Lebanon or Kuwait, often abuse the freedom of speech, either by making unsubstantiated accusations or by getting involved in illusory battles. My experience across the east and the west is that journalists do not need to invent or fabricate. There is enough material every day for publishing and for commentary. Everyone makes mistakes, be they in power or outside of it, and all the journalists have to do is make some effort to find what suits them, without the need to tap their imagination or tilt at windmills. I postponed this article twice as I tried to learn whether the Syrian ambassador in London, Samer Khiyami, will attend the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton or not. This is a real story that deserves some commentary. The British Foreign Office disinvited the ambassador because of the events in Syria and the killing of protesters. I absolutely oppose the killing of any protester, and I have stated this in the past and reiterate it here today before I go any further. The popular newspaper the Daily Mail's front page headline was: “fury over wedding invitation to despot's envoy”. The article below it said that Labour MPs were angered by the Syrian ambassador's invitation to the wedding, while former Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were not invited. But those MPs of course did not protest against the invitation of the Israeli ambassador, or the representative of the racist and fascist state that murders women and children. Some comparison: Sami Khiyami is an intellectual and a businessman, who was never a member of the Baath Party. Meanwhile, Blair involved his country in a war waged against Iraq on falsified premises, which led to the death of one million Iraqis and hundreds of British soldiers, and was succeeded by Brown who did not alter the policies of his predecessor. This is with regard to people. With regard to the two countries, I will not defend Syria, but just compare with Britain. I find that what the first is being accused of is no more than one percent of what the second has perpetrated. What is worse than the above is the ‘exposé' that the Guardian came up with, an otherwise liberal and respectable newspaper, regarding the links between a major university and Syria. According to the exposé, the University of St Andrews, where Prince William and Kate Middleton studied, has received more than £100,000 in funding from the Syrian businessman Ayman Asfari with the assistance of Syria's ambassador to the UK, Sami Khiyami. (The wife of Ayman is our sister Sawsan, who runs a charity involved in the education of young children). What is wrong if an ambassador works to assist a center for Syrian studies at a prominent UK university, and with a capable businessman supporting this activity, as long as neither man has any personal stake in the matter? This is unlike what we heard about the London School of Economics (which is a world-renowned business school), which accepted money from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in return for granting him a PhD that was written by someone else on his behalf. The prestigious newspaper the Guardian also mentioned Dr. Fawaz Akhras, the father of Asmaa Akhras, the wife of Dr. Bashar al-Assad. The ‘charge' is that he is the head of the British Syrian Society, which arranges visits for sympathetic politicians to Syria, while its chairman ‘screens' British journalists before they are granted an interview with the president or his wife. I want to understand here, where is the crime in the above? An ambassador seeking to serve his country, a capable businessman donating to a center in which he does not have a personal stake, and a cardiologist who works in the most famous street for doctors in London (Harley Street) trying to improve relations between his two countries, his country of birth and his adopted one. On the other side of the ocean, three Senators, Republican John McCain and Lindsey Graham, as well as ‘independent' senator Joe Lieberman, called on the Obama administration to impose sanctions on Syria and sever the relationship with President Assad. The Republican Party led by George W. Bush and supported by its members in the Congress, both the House and the Senate, planned for a war on falsified premises on Iraq, with the impact we know on Arabs and Muslims and the five thousand American deaths. These Republican have innocent blood on their hands, and the victims are in the hundreds of thousands. And yet, they incite against Syria (Lieberman is a Likudnik who represents Israel in the Senate and is the enemy of Arabs and Muslims). I have run out of space, but I have one more commentary. A Bahraini court sentenced four men to death for killing two policemen. While the Independent and the Financial Times published a professional title for this news story, the Guardian's title for it was “Bahrain Sentences Four Protesters” and in the Times “Bahrain military court sentences protesters to death”, although the rest of the articles in both papers did mention the cause of the sentence. They were sentenced to death for killing two policemen, not because they are dissidents or protesters, as the last two titles suggested. All that Arab journalists have to do is look, and they will find what they are looking for, while I will attack the other side without defending any Arab country. [email protected]
