The IDC

“BASED ON THE TRENDS OF THE PAST HALF
CENTURY, THERE’S A FAR GREATER CHANCE
OF EUROPE BECOMING ISLAMIST. A FAR-LESS
DISCUSSED PROSPECT IS THAT EUROPE WILL
SAY THAT IT HAS HAD ENOUGH”
- Dr. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum; Taube Distinguished
Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution
beyond al-Qaeda’s organizational structure and operational capabilities.
Any changes will result from an internal Islamic debate.
In a discussion of the Muslim Brotherhood, Dr. Reuven Paz, director of
the Project for the Research of Islamic Movements (PRISM), GLORIA
Center, IDC, claimed that there is no real Arab leader who exerts a forceful
communal leadership today. Within each of the local Hamas movements, he
Co-keynote Speaker Tzipi Livni, MK, chairperson of the Kadima Party and chairperson of the Opposition, sits amongst
other guests at the opening of the 9th Annual ICT Counterterrorism Conference
pointed to multiple rivalries and factions in leaderships. From the outside,
they can always present a united front of the movement, which forms their
main public appeal, the “sublime goal” of reviving the Caliphate. Ronald
Sandee, director of Analysis and Research, NEFA Foundation, USA, pointed
to a re-energized version of the Muslim Brotherhood in recent years, which
he dubbed “MB 2.0” - more organized and far more structured. Sandee
illustrated this point through two case studies, the reaction to the Danish
cartoons and the pro-Gaza demonstrations. What looks like spontaneous
demonstrations in the media are really carefully engineered by Muslim
Brotherhood activists to achieve full effect, coordinated by all means of
internet contact, including Facebook.
THE BATTLE FOR PUBLIC OPINION
Stuart Green, Lt. Commander, United States Navy, presented an analysis
of cognitive warfare and manipulation within and by mainstream media to
infiltrate and advance foreign goals. Citing former senior KGB official Yuri
Bezmenov, the objective of “Soviet Active Measures” was “the art of having
your enemies say what you want them to say “and Bezmenov’s assessment
that the Soviets’ aims at demoralizing Americans were “over-fulfilled.” Lee
64 < IDC Winter 2010
Smith, visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, critiqued the US media’s
susceptibility to propaganda due to its approach to “show both sides” of the
story despite knowing that one side does not do so.
Tamar Sternthal, director of the Israel office of CAMERA (Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting of America), elaborated on the Hamas and
Hezbollah media strategy, noting that Hezbollah trains its own press corps
and also manipulates and controls information and data. Israel inadvertently
abetted this process by allowing journalists to flow into Lebanon in 2006, a
move they did not repeat in Gaza. Sternthal also noted that both Hezbollah
and Hamas concealed information on their own casualties. The press also
failed to examine that Hamas took advantage of the fighting to take revenge
on Fatah. Yael Shachar, ICT’s researcher and database director, discussed
the ICT initiative to quantify Gaza fatalities, using the Palestinians’ own
statistics, those of the Palestinian Center of Human Rights. ICT built a
database of every Palestinian killed, corroborating those names with Hamasrelated
websites, identifying many more of the dead as Hamas combatants.
“THE YEAR 2009 WAS ONE OF REHABILITATION
FOR AL-QAEDA, WITH INTENSIFIED
RECRUITMENT EFFORTS AROUND WORLD TO
TRAINING CAMPS IN THE AF-PAK REGION”
- Dr. Col. (Ret.) Eitan Azani, deputy director of ICT
Richard Landes, Department of History of Boston University, presented
evidence that Mohammad al-Dura’s death was staged, the aftermath of the
affair inflaming rage and provoking the deaths of thousands. Daniel Moro,
chief editor of TG5, Italy, spoke candidly of the measures used to influence
members of the foreign press corps who cover the conflict based in Israel
– both incentives and intimidations. “At no time in history do you find a
country which provides free and safe passage to journalists to cover the
enemy – who intimidates those journalists to provide coverage from their
point of view only,” he noted.