By Michael Miner
Because he’s not rushing to judgment, Abunimah can focus on curious specifics. “First we were told that someone said on the tape ‘I have made my decision,’” he E-mailed everyone on his far-flung list. “Later we learned from the FBI that this phrase did not exist. Now, out of the blue, we hear that the suspect phrase [Tawakalt ala Allah, or “I put my trust in God”] was actually spoken not once but anywhere between ten and fourteen times, depending on which ‘sources’ you choose to believe. How could this ‘fact’ not have been leaked up to now, considering that so much else–even falsehoods–were being leaked?” What Abunimah was coming to suspect wasn’t simple confusion arising from mistranslation or cultural differences, but a turf war between the FBI and National Transportation Safety Board over jurisdiction in which truth was taking a beating.
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Abunimah is one more Chicago gadfly. The son of a Jordanian diplomat, he was born in America, grew up in England and Belgium, studied at Princeton and the University of Chicago, and today, at the age of 27, lives in Hyde Park and works at a U. of C. research center. But the life that counts is lived on-line. His Web site is a touch self-dramatizing–“ali abunimah’s bitter pill, uncovering media myths about the middle east” is the banner across his home page. He immediately states “Who I am”: “To borrow George Bush’s words, I’m just a ‘lonely little guy’ in Chicago.” And “what I do”: “On a daily basis, I monitor several sources of news, and respond to them by E-mail when I hear reports that are inaccurate, biased or incomplete. In the past two years I have written more than 300 letters.”
Abunimah is preoccupied with National Public Radio. “That’s supposed to be the place where we get critical analysis,” he explains. “You can write to ABC, CBS, and NBC about something egregious. But there’s no point complaining they have no sophisticated analysis about the Middle East–because they don’t have critical analysis about anything, so far as I can tell. But NPR is supposed to provide it, and when they don’t I step in.”
Not always so short, I said.
“That list is no kind of objective assessment of what countries do,” Abunimah went on. “It’s a political tool used to put pressure on countries. It’s still very easy to show Arabs in this very nefarious role, and very few people will stand up and say no.”
I received a note from my friend Ron Dorfman, a prominent Chicago freelancer who’s sold several pieces to the Tribune, including an account of a trip to Cuba in 1994. “Appended to the on-line version of that piece, which I just downloaded for $2.95,” he wrote, “is the following notice: ‘Copyright 1998, The Tribune Company. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.’”
