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Israel is a tiny democracy, and a hotbed of innovative entrepreneurship. See Gilder’s The Israel Test and Senor and Singer’s Start-up Nation.

I wish I had posted this entry a year ago–maybe ‘better late than never’. Tiny Israel just wants to be left alone to flourish and innovate; Hamas wants to destroy Israel.

(p. A11) Unfortunately, the tendency of sophisticated observers is to play down what terrorists say they believe. In a phone interview from Washington, Steve Stalinsky, Memri’s executive director, points out that in all the coverage of the war, “we have heard almost nothing about the Hamas ideology. Yeah, sure, sometimes you hear about the Hamas Covenant”—the group’s charter, which spells out its genocidal intentions—“but that’s it, and no one even prints it.”

Memri prints it, and publishes video compilations of Hamas leaders stating their movement’s goal: to build an Islamic caliphate stretching from Palestine across the region and the world. That sounds more like international jihad than Palestinian nationalism.

Headquartered in Washington, Memri monitors and translates TV broadcasts, newspapers, sermons, social-media posts, textbooks and official statements in Arabic, Farsi and several other languages. The work may be drudgery, but it yields a steady stream of articles and viral video clips that condemn the region’s tyrants, terrorists and two-faced intellectuals with their own words.

Memri also documents Gazans’ indoctrination from childhood into a religious ideology that puts them on a war footing. “Their textbooks are our life,” Mr. Carmon says, “but no one paid attention.” Instead, Israeli leaders were convinced that Qatari money and past beatings would deter Hamas.

Mr. Carmon directs me to a recent article in which he writes, “Any Arab who hears American officials say that Qatar is America’s ally would burst into laughter—those clueless Americans, who don’t even know that Qatar is spitting in their face with wild anti-U.S. incitement 24/7 . . . because they only watch the deceptive Al-Jazeera TV in English.” On the Arabic-language channel, he says, Qatari-owned Al Jazeera “is the megaphone of Hamas like it was the megaphone of al Qaeda. Every speech, every statement—everything is aired several times until everybody gets it.”

The article faults the Biden administration for “pleading with Qatar” instead of threatening it: “Just one comment by the U.S. administration that it is considering relocating Al Udeid Air Base from Qatar (without which Qatar will cease to exist within a week) to the UAE will set the Qataris running to bring all the American hostages back home.” Instead, while hostage negotiations stall, the U.S. has quietly agreed to extend its presence at the Qatari base for another decade, according to a Jan. 2 CNN report. Mr. Carmon seems mystified by U.S. weakness. “Since when do experienced American officials conduct negotiations without power pressure on the side?”

. . .

One of Memri’s earliest successes came with Yasser Arafat. By 2002 the Palestinian terrorist leader was used to being feted as a statesman. In a “60 Minutes” interview, however, Arafat was flummoxed when Mike Wallace quoted Memri’s translations of his Arabic speeches: “ ‘Millions of holy warriors are on their way to Jerusalem. Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!’ . . . What does that mean?”

For the full interview see:

Elliot Kaufman, interviewer. “The Weekend Interview; When Terrorists Talk, They Listen.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan. 13, 2024): A11.

(Note: ellipsis between paragraphs, added; ellipsis internal to paragraph, in original.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date January 12, 2024 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

Gilder’s book mentioned above is:

Gilder, George. The Israel Test. Minneapolis, MN: Richard Vigilante Books, 2009.

Senor and Singer’s book mentioned above is:

Senor, Dan, and Saul Singer. Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. revised pb edition ed. New York: Twelve, 2011.