THE RESILIENCE OF HATE
THE RESILIENCE OF HATE
Chicago Tribune: Just in time for the massive television audiences in the monthlong Ramadan festival, Egyptian television is airing a blockbuster 41-part docudrama, based partly on a famous, century-old anti-Semitic tract. One part of the series, about an Egyptian whose ambitions are thwarted by Zionism, is apparently drawn from "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
That's a compilation of anti-Semitic drivel believed to have been created almost a century ago by the secret police in czarist Russia. It has been debunked and discredited for decades, but it still keeps coming back. Hate is like that: resilient.
At a press conference, the series' lead actor and co-writer volunteered that, yes, of course, the "Protocols" were probably bogus. But it didn't matter because in real life, weren't Jews really trying to control the world?
The U.S. State Department criticized the broadcast, saying "we don't think government TV stations should be broadcasting programs that we consider racist or untrue." That kicked up a storm of free publicity for the producers, which apparently delighted them.
Hoary old myth
That Egyptian television would repeat the hoary old myth of Jewish world domination is troubling. But what is more troubling, in some ways, is the new anti-Semitic myths that have gained widespread appeal in the Arab world, including Egypt. A few weeks ago, after the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt C. David Welch gave the Egyptian media and academia a scolding for continuing to circulate the rumor that Jews were responsible for the World Trade Center attacks. "That educated columnists and professors would still doubt who designed and carried out the attacks makes one wonder if they are ill-informed or simply too upset with American policy on other issues to accept the reality on this one," he said.
What happened about the same time should be no surprise. The State Department tried to buy time on Egyptian television and in other Muslim countries to air videos it had created about American Muslims. The main point: America is at war with terrorists, not Muslims. Egypt refused. Government officials say Egypt does not accept paid programming from a foreign country.
The U.S. can't force Egypt to air the videos, of course. And it's easy to see how some Egyptians could view them as American propaganda, portraying this country's treatment of Muslims in the best light. But it's disappointing that a country willing to broadcast debunked lies won't sell a little air time for something that, however else it can be criticized, is not crude hate-mongering.
What, after all, could the harm be in showing the videos? That Egyptians could get a different view of America? Maybe these videos present a rosy view of Muslim life in America. But they also would show the people of Egypt, and of other Muslim countries, American values: free speech, democracy, tolerance.
GOVERNMENT RIGHT TO LOOK AT TRANSFERS
Dallas Morning News: Listen long enough to any tirade against immigrants, and one pet peeve is sure to come up: all the money that foreign workers send to their relatives back home. Certainly, it is the workers' hard-earned money, and they can do with it what they please. That includes sending it to family members back home.
Still, the volume is staggering. Each year, immigrant workers send about $30 billion back to their countries of origin. The preferred mode of transferring the money is not banks but money transmitters. In New York State during the first half of this year, money transfer companies handled about 150,000 transactions a day. Perhaps the most well known of these outfits is Western Union, but there are now countless other companies that will -- for a fee -- help anyone transfer cash to nearly anywhere in the world.
Sender's identification
It is the indiscriminate practices of some of these agencies that are the problem, according to government officials. When wiring funds, these money transmitters had not been required to ask even for the sender's identification. In the age of terrorism, that sort of lax attention to detail is a recipe for disaster. In fact, just a few days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, two of the hijackers moved about $15,000 to an associate in the United Arab Emirates.
And so now the government has begun to impose strict regulations on this once largely unregulated industry. Anyone who sends money overseas is checked against government-compiled terrorist watch lists, and companies must report any cash transfers above $3,000.
Not surprisingly, there are concerns about whether the regulations invade people's privacy or whether Middle Easterners might be singled out for scrutiny. These worries should not be taken lightly. However, neither can the country afford to take lightly the threat of additional terrorists attacks.
Like so many of the reforms that have sprung from the war on terrorism, these matters are best addressed on a case-by-case basis.