Murdochgate, Islamophobia and the killings in Norway
By
SHABANA SYED
RUPERT Murdoch’s New York Post and The Sun newspaper had already announced that it was Islamic terrorists who attacked Norway before it was known that a right-wing Norwegian nationalist with a passion for reading anti-Muslim hating blogs such as Daniel Pipes, Jihad Watch was the person who killed over 90 innocent people.
The media have been at the forefront creating hatred and fear of Muslims. A research project by IERA that looked at “Perceptions about Islam and Muslims” revealed that 63 percent of Britain’s believed that “Muslims are terrorists while 70 percent believed that Muslims preached hatred”.
The media largely owned by Murdoch have been propagating this fear and hatred; one of the most blatant examples of “public mind control” by Murdoch’s news outlets has been the invention of “Islamophobia”.
As the hacking scandal unfolds, Murdoch has already moved into damage limitation mode, apologizing and presenting himself to the British Parliamentary Committee as a doddering forgetful old man not aware of the practices of his company. At the same time he has already started to rebrand himself announcing a new Sunday edition of the Sun newspaper.
The hearing criticized for its weak line of questioning has led critics to fear that eventually there will be a whitewash of the crimes Murdoch’s empire has committed and the unethical culture that had been created by the management at the News of the World will continue as too many figures in government and the police are embroiled in the whole affair.
The fact that Britain’s top anti-terrorism policeman became the second senior officer to quit over the News Corp phone-hacking scandal raises many questions.
Mainly, why would an officer dealing with terrorism issues collude with a group of people with a track record of dabbling in unethical activities which include hacking phones of murdered children and their families, celebrities, politicians and even the royal family.
More importantly should he be dealing with a pro-Israel media company whose ethos is “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but nearly all terrorists are Muslims” therefore guilty through association.
Revelations by The Guardian also highlighted how survivors of the 2005 London bombings have alleged that Scotland Yard “sold” or passed on the confidential contact list of the 7 July victims to reporters working for News International.
Maybe this could explain the ill-judged anti-terror strategy “Prevent” which Mehdi Hasan in The Guardian calls the “conveyor belt theory of radicalization.”
In a climate of knee-jerk government policies and journalism, and at the risk of being labeled a conspiracy theorist, there are many who still want to understand how jihadists fighting in caves could carry out a plot that needed powerful technological and organizational skills to cause the destruction of the Twin Towers, and also why WTC 7 which was not hit collapsed demolition style.
Also if there is a real concern for terrorism why was Anthony John Hill taken to court for making a documentary called “Ripple Effect” which questions the official government narrative for 7/7? Incidentally Hill won the case.
Tony Farrell, a “Principal Intelligence Analyst” who had been working for 12 years for South Yorkshire Police was sacked from his post after he found evidence that there was no Muslim terrorist threat and that 7/7 was “deliberately engineered” to justify British PM Tony Blair standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush in the illegal war in Iraq.
Of course, there has been hardly any coverage of these cases in the mainstream media simply because Murdoch not only controls the world’s largest news organization but also has his own agenda.
It is not difficult to make out his agenda; one just has to watch Fox News. His Fox News Network fabricated lies to promote the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all his media outlets support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and flouting of every international; at the same time it propagates a systematic Islamophobia that continually vilifies Muslims.
Journalist Robert Fisk left The Times newspaper after Murdoch had taken over, saying “he had turned The Times into a tame, pro-Tory, pro-Israeli paper shorn of all editorial independence.”
Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today said that it is not just an issue of phone hacking but a bigger issue of spying for Israel. He writes: “Who is Rupert Murdoch? What he is not is an Australian ‘right-wing’ billionaire. Murdoch, though born in Australia is an Israeli citizen and Jewish. Why is this important? Murdoch is now admitted to have controlled the political systems in Britain and America for two decades. He has had the power to choose national leaders, make policy, and pass laws at will. Where did the power come from? We now know it came from spying, blackmail, bribery and propaganda.”
Jack Shaheen, the author of “Reel Bad Arabs” asks how can one talk of democracy “when the system, on many different levels, is dominated and controlled by the dictates of one small group whose loyalty is to a foreign country?”
One just has to look at the pro-Israel journalists scattered in various newspapers and websites fueling the fires of division.
As the famous ex-Israeli musician-writer Gilad Atzmon highlights: “It is Jewish right-wing pro-war platforms such as Frontpage Magazine, Daniel Pipes, Harry’s Place and others following their example, that consciously, openly, deviously and divisively cultivate a prevalent culture of hate and Islamophobia.”
Murdoch has amassed a media empire; he is aligned to the powerful Jewish lobby in the UK and with AIPAC controls the American Congress.
All of Murdoch’s newspapers (around 175 in 2003) supported the Iraq invasion. He was constantly on the phone to the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the lead-up to the invasion. Many in Blair’s inner circle even called him “the 24th member of the Cabinet.”
Murdoch is said to have personally dictated the policies he expected from David Cameron in return for his electoral support and former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks is said to have met Cameron on 26 different occasions.
At an event held by Conservative Friends of Israel (most of the Conservative Party are members of CFI) Cameron declared himself a Zionist and said in an interview to The Times: “I hope I can say I’m not just a good friend of Israel but I am, as you put it, good for Jews”.
One of the main agendas of Murdoch’s media outlets was to take every opportunity to marginalize Muslims and ensure that they don’t have any political voice. It is now clear that Murdoch took particular interest in destroying any potential Muslim participation in the political process as the case of Mohamed Ali, the CEO of Islam Channel, a popular TV station, reveals.
In 2008 an Australian journalist working for Murdoch was sent post haste to Tunisia to liaise with the now discredited Tunisian regime to fabricate detrimental information linking the CEO of Islam Channel to terrorism. The journalist known for his anti-Muslim stance based his reports on only one fact which was that Mohamed Ali was wanted by the Tunisian government and had been placed on the Interpol’s wanted list.
This fact was not a secret, Britain’s Home Office and everyone knew that anyone who was against the Tunisian government was on that list, and it did not mean one was a criminal or a terrorist. The journalist used fabricated information and continued systematic attacks through The Times newspaper on the reputation and credibility of Mohamed Ali and Islam Channel continually charging him for being anti-Semitic.
Islam Channel was launched in 2004 with Mohamed Ali in charge. Why did Murdoch’s people start a campaign of vilifying him and the Channel in 2008 and not in 2004?
The answer goes back to Murdoch and his agenda. As a “pro-Israeli Zionist or ultra-nationalist extremist” as Gordon Duff calls him, Murdoch supports Israel’s expansionist plans and by creating a climate where Muslims are seen as terrorists, there will be less opposition when Palestinian women and children are killed, and when the West is dragged into wars with Muslim countries. The more you vilify and marginalize Muslims, the less they will have a political voice, and the first step is to destroy the credibility of their leaders.
Islam Channel by 2008 had become influential. It had the largest viewership in Britain and Europe; at the same time its Global Peace and Unity Event in 2008 was attended by nearly 90,000 Muslims; it also had many British MPs and world leaders gathering to discuss and support issues concerning peace and communal harmony.
The Times attack on Mohamed Ali was aimed to discredit him. However, The Times’ reputation is in question now as we know about the phone hacking, bribery and liaising with a corrupt despotic regime to fabricate facts and printing them as “News.”
The only scenario that hopefully will change after Murdochgate is that government legislation and news concerning Muslims should be less a result of knee jerk reaction and more analyses. This campaign of vilification takes humanity out of its discourse and will result in the growth of extremist movements like the EDL and fascists like Geert Wilders who spawn extremism and vigilantism resulting in a killing spree of innocents like the massacre that has just taken place in Norway.
Source:---Arab News