Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The Mossad Vulture story and some other agendas

Last Friday a blogger named Marco Villa amplified an Angry Arab post about the Mossad Vulture. According to AA:
. . . the original reports from Saudi media says NOTHING about the bird being in the custody of the Saudi security forces nor that they suspect it of having been trained by Mossad. It was just some villagers who got scared by the big bird with the weird transmitter . . .
Villa frames AA's post with a whole discussion of how Israel's press has supposedly deteriorated:
The liberal press is Israel has become nothing more than a wraith of its former self. It is not a right-wing dominated press establishment. Israel may be the only nation where the media tilts to the right.

And part of this right-wing shift is that the new owners have political agendas and place less emphasize on journalistic integrity and professionalism. There has been a dumping-down. And the Israeli press is now filled with silly pieces about how Arabs are conspiracy minded . . .

This fits the racist and crude Israeli stereotypes of dump, hate-filled antisemitic Arabs and the Israeli press amps it up.
In this light, it is worth noting how Iran's PressTV reported the story. Persians are not Arabs, of course, but PressTV is one of the slicker and more widely disseminated news organizations in the Muslim world. I would venture to say that a significant block of Arabs takes it seriously. Here is their take on the Mossad Vulture. The sentence in bold is in bold in the original and set off somewhat from the main text:
A tagged Israeli bird found in Saudi Arabia has raised speculations that Israeli spy agency Mossad is training birds for espionage in the region.

The vulture, with the identification code of R65, was found in a rural area in Saudi Arabia, wearing a transmitter and a leg bracelet bearing the words "Tel Aviv University", Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported Tuesday.

It was captured near the home of a sheikh in the community of Hayel in Saudi Arabia.

The words "Tel Aviv University" etched in English on a ring clasped to the bird's leg, and especially the transmitter, raised suspicions among the finders who said it could be a Mossad agent.

According to the report, the tags indicate that the bird was part of a long-term research project into migration patterns.

Saudi residents and local reporters, however, say it seems to be a "Zionist plot."
The "plot" view gets the last word. "Related stories" you might also want to click on at the PressTV site have the following titles:
Lebanon indicts general over espionage
Mossad behind Egypt church blast
Israel wants press away from Dubai hit
Mossad on verge of collapse

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