Norman Podhoretz observed in one of his Commentary essays that the name of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) appeared to be “the invaluable MEMRI,” because that is how he and other consumers of its information unfailingly referred to it. In a footnote to one of those essays, Podhoretz explained:

I am indebted to the invaluable work of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). Under the leadership of Yigal Carmon, a former adviser on counterterrorism to both Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin, MEMRI monitors the Palestinian media, as well as the press of other Arab nations, and issues daily translations into English of significant articles and interviews that are rarely, if ever, noticed in Western coverage of the Middle East. MEMRI’s website is at www.memri.org.

Carmon is the founder and president of MEMRI. Turning to its site this morning, I find Carmon’s January 12 column “Parts I-IV: The Face Of The ‘Suffocating Occupation,’ ‘Humanitarian Disaster,’ ‘Concentration Camp,’ And ‘Prison Camp’ Of Pre-War Gaza – In Pictures And Data (An Answer To António Guterres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Norman Finkelstein, David Cameron, Ron Paul, And Patrick Buchanan).” May I see it is invaluable in its own way? Please check it out.

In the Wall Street Journal’s featured weekend interview — “When terrorists talk, they listen” — letters editor Elliot Kaufman profiles Carmon and MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinksy while documenting MEMRI’s contribution to penetrating the fog that envelops Israel’s current war. Elliot’s profile opens (all but one of the links is omitted):

Yigal Carmon is one of the few Israelis who can claim to have predicted this war. His Aug. 31 article “Signs of Possible War in September-October” cited provocations by Hezbollah, escalating violence in the West Bank and threats from Hamas as evidence of regional coordination for something big. “Israel will likely be compelled to undertake a large-scale response,” he wrote, “even at the cost of an all-out war.”

Some details were off, but Mr. Carmon says anyone paying attention would have seen the writing on the wall. “They said it all. They said everything,” Mr. Carmon, a former Israeli intelligence officer and counterterrorism adviser to two prime ministers, says in a phone interview from Jerusalem. As president and a co-founder of Memri, the Middle East Media Research Institute, he had publicized Hamas’s videos advertising its drills for an invasion of Israel, as well as its claims that total war was coming.

But Hamas is always threatening war, and most of the time it comes to naught. “If they publish it many times, then you can ignore it?” he asks in response to the point. “I say just the opposite. If they publish it many times, it suggests they mean it and you cannot ignore it. You must take it seriously.”

Unfortunately, the tendency of sophisticated observers is to play down what terrorists say they believe. In a phone interview from Washington, Steve Stalinsky, Memri’s executive director, points out that in all the coverage of the war, “we have heard almost nothing about the Hamas ideology. Yeah, sure, sometimes you hear about the Hamas Covenant”—the group’s charter, which spells out its genocidal intentions—“but that’s it, and no one even prints it.”

Memri prints it, and publishes video compilations of Hamas leaders stating their movement’s goal: to build an Islamic caliphate stretching from Palestine across the region and the world. That sounds more like international jihad than Palestinian nationalism.

Headquartered in Washington, Memri monitors and translates TV broadcasts, newspapers, sermons, social-media posts, textbooks and official statements in Arabic, Farsi and several other languages. The work may be drudgery, but it yields a steady stream of articles and viral video clips that condemn the region’s tyrants, terrorists and two-faced intellectuals with their own words.

Memri also documents Gazans’ indoctrination from childhood into a religious ideology that puts them on a war footing. “Their textbooks are our life,” Mr. Carmon says, “but no one paid attention.” Instead, Israeli leaders were convinced that Qatari money and past beatings would deter Hamas.

This passage highlights one of MEMRI’s greatest hits — special thanks to MEMRI for this:

With some 70 employees and a clunky website, Memri has had an outsize influence on the post-Oct. 7 conversation. Take the trendy calls for a cease-fire, which is the key to a Hamas victory. Memri’s translations have furnished supporters of Israel with a knockdown reply: What good is a cease-fire when Hamas pledges to repeat its Oct. 7 massacre “again and again”?

That quote is from Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas politburo member, in an Oct. 24 appearance on Lebanese television. We know about it because Memri was watching. “We will do this again and again,” Mr. Hamad says in Arabic. “The Al Aqsa Flood”—Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 operation—“is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.”

Here is one more passage from Elliot’s column:

Mr. Carmon directs me to a recent article in which he writes, “Any Arab who hears American officials say that Qatar is America’s ally would burst into laughter—those clueless Americans, who don’t even know that Qatar is spitting in their face with wild anti-U.S. incitement 24/7 . . . because they only watch the deceptive Al-Jazeera TV in English.” On the Arabic-language channel, he says, Qatari-owned Al Jazeera “is the megaphone of Hamas like it was the megaphone of al Qaeda. Every speech, every statement—everything is aired several times until everybody gets it.”

The article faults the Biden administration for “pleading with Qatar” instead of threatening it: “Just one comment by the U.S. administration that it is considering relocating Al Udeid Air Base from Qatar (without which Qatar will cease to exist within a week) to the UAE will set the Qataris running to bring all the American hostages back home.” Instead, while hostage negotiations stall, the U.S. has quietly agreed to extend its presence at the Qatari base for another decade, according to a Jan. 2 CNN report. Mr. Carmon seems mystified by U.S. weakness. “Since when do experienced American officials conduct negotiations without power pressure on the side?”

The link provided in Elliot’s column to Carmon’s recent article pulls up a 404 error. This is Carmon’s quoted article: “Qatar – Enabler Of Islamist Terrorism And A Dishonest Broker.”

Elliot’s weekend interview is posted here in its entirety behind the Journal’s paywall with many more links illustrating MEMRI’s work. In any event, however, the invaluable MEMRI’s site is freely accessible here.