Farfour, Miltant Mouse as he’s been dubbed by some, has caused so much controversy that the show has now been cancelled.
RAMALLAH, West Bank – Hamas militants have suspended a TV program that featured a Mickey Mouse lookalike urging Palestinian children to fight Israel and work for global Islamic domination, the Palestinian information minister said Wednesday.
Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti said the character — a giant black-and-white rodent with a high-pitched voice — represented a “mistaken approach” to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.
He said that the program was pulled from Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa TV at his ministry’s request and “placed under review.”
The ’story’ was originally broken by an organisation called MEMRI. None of the outlets for this item, mentioned that this organisation has been responsible for outputting a lot of baised propoganda or that they have been caught out over and over again. This latest report seems no different. The clip they put out looked edited and some of the translation was questionable to say the least.
The transcript claims that “Sanabel”, the little girl caller of the show, responds with “I will shoot” to the host’s question “Sanabel, what will you do for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque?” As a matter of fact, and as can be seen in the video, it is the clown in the ridiculous Mickey Mouse like suit that says that and even makes the gesture of carrying a weapon. The little girl Sanabel does however respond, but MEMRI omits her response. The little girl actually said in Arabic “bedi arsem soora”, which means “I will draw a picture.” So this girl says she wants to draw a picture, and MEMRI transforms that to “I will shoot.”
The second example is the most outrageous one, where MEMRI translates the little girl Sanabel’s response to the question “we got that, what else?” as saying “We will annihilate the jews.” This is outrageously wrong and completely invented. The girl can be clearly heard saying in Arabic “betokhoona el yahood”, which means “the Jews shoot us.” The word “betokh-oo-na” can be broken down part by part and explained easily as follows:
- betokh: the verb “shoots”,
- oo: the 3rd person plural subject pronoun meaning “they”. It becomes “they shoot”.
- na: the 1st person plural object pronoun meaning “we”. It becomes “they shoot us”.
What’s worse is that a MEMRI spokesperson (Yigal Carmon) appeared on CNN to confirm his organization standing by its translation “word for word” and “according to the syntax” even though it is easy for an organization that employs Arabic translators to actually see how wrong the translations that were produced at first are.
Having pointed that out, what the producers of this show are doing is morally outrageous. Instead of giving their children viewers the joy of watching child TV characters and enjoying that aspect of childhood, they are depriving them of that just as the Israeli occupation is depriving them from other aspects of normal childhood development. Both are equally wrong here.
UPDATE: For a full transcript of what the characters actually said compared to what MEMRI claims they said, click here.
UPDATE 2: A comment for this article, pointed out that Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crooke whom I originally attributed that translation to do not work for MEMRI. They instead work for an organisation called Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), so the above article has been amended to remove their names. MEMRI deserve all the credit for this particular libel. What the commentator failed to point out though was that Itamar Marcus, Palestianian Media Watch (the organisation he works for now) and the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) (the organisation he used to work for) are just as baised as MEMRI and use exactly the same underhand methods to spread disinformation.
Technorati Tags: Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Miltant Mouse, Farfour, Itamar Marcus, Barbara Crook, MEMRI, Propoganda, Yigal Carmon
First of all, you should get your facts straight. Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook DO NOT work for MEMRI as you are stating. They work for a different organisation that is called PMW (Palestinian media Watch) and it has nothing to do with MEMRI.
It seems you have a difficult relation to facts.
They may not work there but they use exactly the same dirty tricks that MEMRI does.
Incidentlly, John, since you mentioned nothing about the translation, I’ll assume that you accept that MEMRI are complete liars!
I thought the Palestinian mouse was absolutely hilarious.
There is something known as artistic freedom and it includes the right to poke fun at brutal military occupations. I think the Palestinians are well within their rights to use cartoon characters to ridicule the illegal military occupation of their land.