I know — I’m getting a bit obsessed with the Middle East lately, but it makes me so crazy that we’re spending billions to help various people kill each other. I don’t support the killing of innocent civilians, but that’s what both the Israelis and the Palestinians are doing. It’s somehow considered less immoral when it’s done with American-made F-16s, tanks, and laser-guided bombs. Israel basically has the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip under 24-hour curfew. Even in the worst days of Northen Ireland, or the depths of the Apartheid regime in South Africa, the oppressor didn’t go that far. And it’s still not making Israel safer.

Here is a column by Yitzhak Frankenthal about the death of his son, a soldier killed by a Palestinian in the Occupied Territories.

My beloved son Arik, my own flesh and blood, was murdered by Palestinians. My tall, blue-eyed, golden-haired son who was always smiling with the innocence of a child and the understanding of an adult. My son. If to hit his killers, innocent Palestinian children and other civilians would have to be killed, I would ask the security forces to wait for another opportunity.

…

I would say to the security forces: do not kill the killer. Rather, bring him before an Israeli court. You are not the judiciary. Your only motivation should not be vengeance, but the prevention of any injury to innocent civilians.

…

My son Arik was murdered when he was a soldier by Palestinian fighters who believed in the ethical basis of their struggle against the occupation. My son Arik was not murdered because he was Jewish but because he is part of the nation that occupies the territory of another. I know these are concepts that are unpalatable, but I must voice them loud and clear, because they come from my heart – the heart of a father whose son did not get to live because his people were blinded with power.

As much as I would like to do so, I cannot say that the Palestinians are to blame for my son’s death. That would be the easy way out, but it is we, Israelis, who are to blame because of the occupation. Anyone who refuses to heed this awful truth will eventually lead to our destruction.

I have heard mention of Memri lately, a group whose purpose, according to its website, is to bridge the language gap between the west – where few speak Arabic – and the Middle East, by “providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media”.

I suspect it’s too good to be true. Their choices of articles are highly selective, and almost always chosen to make Arabs and Muslims look as bad as possible. They have almost no information on their web site about who they are, but Brian Whitaker, a Guardian columnist, used search engine archives to view old pages.

Its work is subsidised by US taxpayers because as an “independent, non-partisan, non-profit” organisation, it has tax-deductible status under American law.

Evidence from Memri’s website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status. Besides supporting liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market, the institute also emphasises “the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel”.

That is what its website used to say, but the words about Zionism have now been deleted. The original page, however, can still be found in internet archives.

The reason for Memri’s air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.

Mr – or rather, Colonel – Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri’s website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three – including Col Carmon – are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.

Col Carmon’s co-founder at Memri is Meyrav Wurmser, who is also director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Indianapolis-based Hudson Institute, which bills itself as “America’s premier source of applied research on enduring policy challenges”.

The ubiquitous Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon’s defence policy board, recently joined Hudson’s board of trustees.

Ms Wurmser is the author of an academic paper entitled Can Israel Survive Post-Zionism? in which she argues that leftwing Israeli intellectuals pose “more than a passing threat” to the state of Israel, undermining its soul and reducing its will for self-defence.

James has more information including a quote from our friend Steve, who is headed there as a peace activist.

Iran turned over al Quaeda members to Saudi Arabia in June.