The Claremont Port Side has done its readers a disservice with a factually-inaccurate article it released today. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that they have decided to write on the subject nearly two months after my second article on Frangieh’s views and some nine months after my first. I salute The Port Side in having a dialogue about an issue that won’t go away. After all, even if it is off-base, it’s at least willing to discuss those views, which is much more than we can say for Richard Rodner, Claremont’s VP of Communications, whocensored Bassam Frangieh’s wikipedia page of anything critical. (Curiously, The Port Sideomitted that mention in their piece.)
Their first act must be to release a correction:
A series of articles have been published by Charles C. Johnson at the Claremont Independent and elsewhere decrying Prof. Frangieh’s (alleged) political views. Based on interviews and petitions translated from Arabic, it has been claimed that Frangieh has expressed “great pleasure” at Hamas taking power in the Gaza Strip and that Frangieh said that “without Hamas and Hezbollah,” the Arabs would have “Nothing. Except humiliation.”
We do not know whether these quotes are true or accurately translated. Most of the documents are in Arabic. None of the translated documents have been made public in their entirety. Only a few of these documents are made available in the original Arabic. Many of these are not Prof. Frangieh’s own comments, but instead petitions that he appears to have signed. So, the veracity of Johnson’s claims or of his translations cannot be independently verified.
Despite having nearly two months to vet all of sources in their original Arabic, The Port Side shows that it is uninterested in serious journalism. I have reproduced the sources from The Claremont Independent article here in an effort to help the Port Side‘s lazy journalism:
Arabic language sources:
http://www.diwanalarab.com/spip.php?article293
http://ya-ashrafe-nnas.blogspot.com/2007/05/world-doesn.html
http://www.jammoul.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4484&langid=1
http://articles.abolkhaseb.net/ar_articles_2007/1007/istnkar_021007.htm
http://alnoha.com/visitor8/la-letqseem.htm
http://www.al-moharer.net/moh262/hussaini262.htm
http://arabnews.ca/joomla/index.php?Itemid=44&id=2666&option=com_content&task=view
an interview
There is nothing “alleged” about the views. They have been translated by three different translators. I offered to make the translations available (with the original Arabic) to The Claremont Port Side’s publisher, Jeremy Merrill CMC ’12 and its editor, Everett “Alex” Heiney CMC ’12 as the transcript of gchat conversations between the two of us will show.As a token of good will, I gave Heiney the entire interview and more documents on January 18th, 2011. I know he received this email because he thanked me for it.
The offer to work with anyone interested in this topic still stands, as does giving everyone the material whenever they want it, but I have not released all of it yet online because I want the stories many dimensions to become clear to the campus. The Port Side owes its readers a correction given those conversations between me and its staff that offered, repeatedly, to share the translations with the Port Side. Moreover, the Port Side is incorrect. In an article I wrote nearly two months ago, I released all of the documents in their original Arabic here.
The Port Side is correct that many of the source material is petitions, though the most damning bits – where he praises Hezbollah and Hamas – are, in fact, in his own words and from a May 26, 2006 interview with Al Jabha. Heiney, at the very least, should know this, as I sent him that interview translated in English with relevant sections highlighted on January 18th. Does the editor of The Port Side not talk to its publisher?
Had the Port Side’s editor taken me up on my offer and read the interviews and petitions I sent him (and sent them to the publisher as I requested), he would know that Frangieh views petitions as something that “stem[s] from the heart, and are cast onto paper.” That makes us wonder if his viewthat there is a “Zionist plot” behind America’s Iraq war policy,that he supports a boycott against Israel and Israeli academics, that he condones violence against Israelis, that he considers the terrorist group Hezbollah the legitimate government of Lebanon, and on and on. Then we could move along to a more serious question: whether someone with these horrible views can credibly teach on what the Port Side calls a “complex” area?
I’ll go through the rest of The Port Side story later, but this dishonesty on the part of the editor and publisher of this magazine shows loud and clear and should make anyone question what The Port Side has written here. How terribly disappointing for a newspaper that was so recently proving itself to be beyond its libelous past. I’ve asked The Port Side‘s Jeremy Merrill for a correction, but he has thus far refused. Let’s hope he reconsiders.
