At a time when interfaith dialogue groups are opening around the country, when Islamic histories make the bestseller lists and bookstores can't keep the Koran in stock, when the nation is following the President's lead in working toward a fuller and more amicable appreciation of Islam and the Arab world, the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute spreads hate speech, baseless conspiracy theories and vicious calumny in a blatant effort to discredit Arabs and stir up malice toward Muslims. And they're providing a pretty valuable service in the process.

Heard about the Palestinian doctor's love letter to anthrax? How about the Saudi debate on the annihilation of Christians and Jews? The state-sponsored newspapers reporting that Rudy Giuliani is a Jewish, homosexual mack daddy who uses his diminutive first name to avoid being confused with the German dictator Rudolph Hitler? If you missed these stories, you're not just missing some vital perspectives on America's War On Terrorism (WOT). You might also consider giving up on such relatively tame online chuckle sources as Modern Humorist and your collection of wacky bin Laden Photoshops, and sign up instead for the full frontal comedy MEMRI delivers every day or so to its fax and e-mail list.

From two offices—one in Jerusalem and another (staffed by 'about half a dozen people,' according to one worker) on H Street in our nation's embattled capitol—MEMRI publishes a range of articles, including reports and analytical pieces written by its staffers. The most recent of these, which went out via e-mail but had not been posted to the organization's site as of this writing, is a character assassination of the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Edward S. Walker, who made headlines a few weeks back by appearing on Qatari superstation al-Jazeera to rebut, in Arabic, an Osama bin Laden broadcast.

Walker, a former ambassador to Israel and an impeccably-credentialed career diplomat whom even Robert Kaplan, tough-guy writer for The Atlantic Monthly and a tireless inquisitor of diplomatic heterodoxy, called 'a first-rate Arabist with experience in both Israel and the Arab world' in his 1993 book The Arabists, ran afoul of MEMRI for quibbling about whether present-day Hezbullah can best be defined as a terrorist group or a political/guerrilla organization. Where less-than-fully hawkish approaches to Israeli security appear, MEMRI writes them up like an especially tough hall monitor.

But what has gotten MEMRI attention and, in the past two months, a crucial spot in the media food chain, is its translations of articles—particularly unhinged, rabid articles—from the Arabic media. Whatever you think of its story-selection process, MEMRI is filling an important gap in our understanding of the Middle East. Americans still have little access to important news and viewpoints from the Arab and Farsi media. The Beirut Daily Star provides welcome English-language coverage, but even that fine paper can't reproduce the range of news and opinion available in Arabic. The resulting vacuum tends to get filled by D.C.-based Arab journalists like as-Safir's excellent Hisham Melhem, by Condy Rice-approved snippets from al-Jazeera, or worst of all, by American blowhards explaining how this or that policy is going over in the 'Arab street.' Translations of the sort MEMRI provides are essential.

They're also risible. MEMRI's window opens on a world where the line between the crazed mob and the reasoning intelligentsia doesn't exist, where government officials, playwrights and popular dailies all believe in the Blood Libel, a myth of Jewish perfidy that went into decline in Europe around the time of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale, but still seems to have currency in the Levant.

These translations get around quickly. A juicy MEMRI mailing will get picked up quickly by bloggers, discussion lists and various right-wing journals of opinion. In the case of Dr. 'Atallah Abu Al-Subh's recent ode to anthrax, MEMRI was first with a version in English. The story picked up a favorable notice from the Wall Street Journal's editorial site, ran in the Jerusalem Post, and received the inevitable Drudge link, all within a day. What's impressive is that the organization, formed in 1998 ' to study and analyze intellectual developments and politics in the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict,' can put out this volume of translations on a relatively tight budget. MEMRI representatives refused repeated requests for comment, but it's clear that the organization puts great effort into culling and translating. (Most of the actual legwork and translating seems to be done from the group's Jerusalem office.) Nearly a quarter of the organization's half-million-dollar annual budget is spent on translations, and its site asks for interns fluent in Hebrew or Arabic.

Nor is MEMRI a media powerhouse fueled by AIPAC-level bucks. A 501(c)(3) non-profit that raised less than a million dollars in its first three years of operation (2000 records were not available), the organization cites mostly small-time expenses in its tax filings—$54,000 in compensation to Meyrav Wurmser, one of the organization's three officers, $13,000 in 'apartment expenses,' and so on. Its work is paid for mostly by relatively small donations, the largest being an undated gift of $150,000—chump change in the shadow world of well-heeled interest groups and free-spending millionaire cranks where non-profit policy centers dwell. A $48,000 line-item for salaries and wages, at an office with half a dozen people, hints at the sort of slavery Washington interns are routinely subjected to; but MEMRI's finances, at least in its US office, appear to be on the up-and-up.

MEMRI's success depends on doing a simple job well, and using a push medium to get it out. The news selections—made at the group's Jerusalem office—are not a substantially different species from the news provided by World Press Review, but e-mail and fax distribution puts these stories into rapid circulation, and helps ensure this version of Arab media gets prominence.

It's a service that organizations more sympathetic to the Arabs seem unwilling or unable to provide. 'We don't have any money,' says Andrew Killgore, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. 'We don't have the resources to put out translations. Have you ever seen our magazine? Our magazine is a gem by itself, and that's what we do.'

To be fair, MEMRI's picture of an extreme, militant and delusional Arabic press allows for a few shadings. One recent article notes the efforts of Kuwaiti professor Ahmad Al-Baghdadi to critique Arab Muslims as 'the masters of terrorism towards their citizens.' Another cites a rhetorically deft dismantling of current anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories by Saudi columnist Hamad Abd Al-Aziz Al-'Isa. But there are enough stories about extremist kindergartens and calls for jihad to attract criticism from the growing Arab and Islamic lobbies. 'They tend to translate non-representative stories,' says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 'and members of the pro-Israel lobby then use them to club Muslims.'

That MEMRI has a bias against Arab societies can hardly be disputed. Although chairman Yigal Carmon occasionally argues for restraint in Israel's dealings with the Palestinians, he has been fixated on both the failure of the peace process and extremist Arab media for many years. Co-director Wurmser argues at length for blood-and-iron approaches to Israeli nationalism. MEMRI writers stay focused on the Middle Eastern culture of incitement when writing for other publications.

What is not clear is why this is necessarily an unfair representation of the Arabic media. 'They look for the absolute worst, most inflammatory rhetoric they can find in the Arabic press,' says CAIR's Hooper. 'It's kind of like if we translated Franklin Graham's remarks [condemning Islam as a 'wicked' religion], and then went to the Arabic press and said 'See, this is what they're saying in America.''

Well, since Franklin Graham is the son of a prominent U.S. religious leader, and his views are neither unique nor even particularly unusual, it would be quite fair to do just that.

'Not if you say it's representative,' says Hooper. 'I don't think those remarks by Franklin Graham represent a large number of Americans.'

But that's the catch. Just how unrepresentative are the comments the Middle East Media Research Institute highlights? Anybody who has spent any time in the Middle East, or even stayed alert to Arab politics, knows that MEMRI doesn't need to travel very far to cherry-pick offensive comments. Indeed, after listening to enough college professors who believe Jews blew up the World Trade Center, priests who say the Holocaust never happened, business executives who tell you McDonalds donates all its Saturday profits to suppressing the Palestinians, burghers who contend that the CIA assassinated Bashir Gemayel, and college students who argue that a rabbinical cabal is suppressing the message of Pat Buchanan, you begin to recognize MEMRI's picks not as extreme outliers but as very common Middle Eastern sentiments, the very air of political discourse in the Arab world.

MEMRI is enjoying some success. (Steve Stalinksy, the organization's executive director, now brags at National Review Online that awareness of extremism in the Egyptian media has begun to penetrate Capitol Hill). But that success is also a measure of the failure of moderate pro-Arab thinkers to get ahead of this story, to debate, or even acknowledge the existence of, the abundant lunacies that hold sway in the Arabic media. To listen to the many followers of Edward Said's increasingly irrelevant Orientalist critique, you'd think the problem is American misperceptions about Middle Eastern culture. CAIR's Ibrahim, for his part, doesn't confront the issue but simply counterattacks, using the tried and true 'I know you are but what am I' tactic. Meanwhile, it's left to the Arabs' enemies to explain for an American audience why so many people seem to believe that Jews blew up Egyptair 990 and that the U.S. is dropping poisoned food packets on Afghanistan.

The Web and the kinds of mailing-list approaches that work well for instant news are vital tools for getting a broader picture of opinion in the Middle East. So far, the champions of Arabic and Islamic thought have markedly failed to use those tools. The picture of Arab media presented by MEMRI is a slanted, ridiculous cartoon. But it is not an entirely inaccurate picture. It's also a vital service at a time when Americans are starved for other viewpoints. And at the moment, it's one of the only shows in town.