Uzi Mahnaimi has reported once again in The Sunday Times that Israel is about to attack Iran, this time with tactical nuclear weapons. Were we to believe the reports of Mr Mahnaimi, both Syria and Iran would have been wiped out by Israel several times. In 2005 he reported that Israel was preparing to attack Iran in March of 2006, with a similar scenario to the one that he and Sarah Baxter report now. The fact that Israel didn't attack Iran does not prevent Mahnaimi from repeating the same fable again, nor does it prevent media all over the world from quoting him as though he is a trustworthy source and reliable authority.
In September of 2006, Mahnaimi had also reported that Israel is preparing to attack Syria and Iran. In 2000, Mahnaimi reported that Israel was going to attack Syria if the peace talks with the Palestinians collapsed. The talks collapsed, but there was no attack. Strangely, Mahnaimi did not lose either his credibility or his job.
Mahnaimi's greatest coup was a story he initiated apparently in 1998, though it may have had its origin in a science fiction story published in the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Ahronot. According to this fantasy, Israel was developing a genetically programmed "ethnic bomb" - a bacteriological warfare agent that would target only Arabs. Not only did this story have no basis in fact, it was also a scientific impossibility that should not have been believed by anyone who had taken an introductory course in human genetic. Nonetheless, this absurd lie was parroted in respectable newspapers and is still cited by Web sites like "Global Research" and "anti-Zionist" cites like Radio Islam.
Guysen news has published a review of the journalistic career of the
imaginative Mr. Mahnaimi, a discussion of his political affiliations and possible motives for inventing these tall tales. It is worth a read. ( English:
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2007/01/israel-attack-on-iran-sensation-who-is.html French:
http://www.guysen.com/articles.php?sid=5425)
The question that must be asked is not why Mahnaimi continues to write this rubbish, or even why the Sunday Telegraph continues to publish it. The world and especially the Middle East, have never lacked for liars and sensation mongers. The question is, why do so many journals pounce on this material so eagerly? Within hours, this absurd fib, invented by a man with a well-earned reputation for confabulation, had made its way around the world. Despite Israeli government denials, it elicited a bellicose threat from Iran. Similarly, when Robert Fisk reported in the Independent, on trumped up evidence, that Israel had used nuclear weapons in Lebanon, it created a sensation. The story was repeated everywhere in huge headlines. The denials were ignored, and the announcement by the UN that there was no basis for the allegations got hardly any attention at all. The damage was done.
As Guysen News pointed out:
It is not information which causes the scoop, but the forged scoop which causes information.
In contrast, revelations in the New York Sun that supposedly implicated Iran in causing sectarian mayhem in Iraq, were ignored almost totally by other journals. Why was this story less interesting, less relevant or less plausible than fables of Israeli tactical nuclear weapons, uranium bombs in Lebanon, ethno-bombs and perhaps, soon to come, death rays, faster than light missiles and time machines? It seems Mahnaimi and the Sunday Times are not the only ones with an agenda.
Ami Isseroff
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Replies: 3 Comments
First of all, all humans are closely related.fact. Secondly, Arabs and Jews, Bedouin and so forth are even more closely related and the closer they are to Jerusalem historically the closer to the gene pool similarity. There was a study done about a decade ago that showed this particularity and it is not a surprise although most Jews were living out of the Middle East for a LONG time, they did not much intermarry and maintained their gene cohort quite consistently. So with this in mind, how daft, really is a hypothetical gene bomb that would decimate a particular gene pool aka Bedouin....It would be like a grenade that only gets people with red hair and freckles. Yeah right. There are those out in our wonderful world who will find any number of devilish and devious plans that inevitably can be tied to plots by Israelis and Jews by paranoid, racist, neo-Nazi or red Nazi people who masquerade as standing up for this or that underdog. It is abundantly clear to this writer that underneath many a European there is nothing but the old anti-Semitic rantings of granny and granddad.
Neil Fiertel, Friday, January 26th
Dear friend,
Let me explain what I mean by "impossible." By "impossible," I mean that the idea is contrary to everything that we know about human genetics. Every geneticist who heard about this story laughed.
There are NO human genes that are specific to a single population. The genes of Bedouin, Arabs, Jews, Africans and Eskimos, as well as Germans and Americans, are all hopelessly internmingled.
The point is, that the impossibility of the assertion proves that Mahnaimi is a fraud, that he never consulted any actual geneticists. Had he done so, they would have explained to him that it was impossible.
The story that you quote did NOT say at all that the disease kills mostly Bedouin children. In fact, it states quite clearly:
"The research was recently published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in parallel and independent of a similar study done by a research group in the US. studying the same disease in another population cohort."
The disease is more common among Bedouin, as noted, because of the high frequency of intermarriage. Nonetheless, others also suffer from the disease, and the percentage of Bedouin who suffer from it is tiny. It could not be the basis for a weapon of mass destruction.
Ami Isseroff
Ami Isseroff, Monday, January 8th
I agree with your sentiments exactly however, I wouldn't write off the genetic possibilities. You said "it was also a scientific impossibility that should not have been believed by anyone who had taken an introductory course in human genetic." Well it may be impossible today, but While I believe Israel would never stoop to this kind of warfare, it may well be possible that others will.
See this Jerusalem Post article about Israeli research on a disease which kills mostly Bedouin children. http://tinyurl.com/yesuml
joseflklein, Monday, January 8th
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