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Monday, March 01, 2010

English-language media still silent on Dubai anti-semitism

Earlier today I reported that the Arabic-language Al Khaleej (The Gulf) newspaper quoted the head of the Dubai police as ranting about how "Israelis" have been hated since the time of Pharaoh, how "Israelis" have had mental problems for thousands of years and how UAE authorities will now start looking for Jewish facial features and names to stop them from entering the UAE.

Every single English-language news outlet has been reporting his comments as saying that he was slamming "Israelis," not Jews, and some saying that he would be looking for "Israeli" facial features, not Jewish ones.

The Arabic American paper Al Watan tells it like it is in its headline:
Dubai announces prevent the entry of Israelis and Jews, holders of foreign passports after the assassination of Mabhouh
The Western media is simply not willing to accept that Arab anti-semitism is a regular fact of life, and they work overtime to portray it is simply anti-Zionism. A man that they have been quoting for weeks as their main source for the investigation into the Mabhouh assassination has been revealed to be a conspiracy-theorist nutjob and the English-language media are censoring his comments.

Is it because they do not want the world to believe that Arabs hate Jews, or is it because it would retroactively make their reporting of police work in Dubai look too credulous?