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MEMRI Founder and President Yigal Carmon gave an interview to KRM News, an Israel-based Korean-language news outlet. In the interview, Carmon gave an overview of MEMRI's work translating media from the Middle East, Russia, and China, and he described how Qatar and Iran – despite one being Sunni and the other being Shiite – have worked together to establish an "Islamic pole" in the world. He also said that Israel's experience with Hamas should serve as a warning to South Korea because Kim Jong Un's ideology resembles Islamism, and he predicted that a North Korean attack against South Korea is coming. The interview was aired by KRM News on June 28, 2024.
Yigal Carmon: "Communism was defeated, but Islamism was not, and we got 9/11. And from then on, Islamism rose up. I published an early warning, talking about war in September/October. And the early warning [was met with] 'What? Enough with this...' – until October 7th. The ideology of Kim Jong Un is no less than the Islamist. Now that he says that South Korea is an enemy, our experience should serve as a lesson for South Korea."
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Interviewer: "Thank you so much for having us here today and making some time."
Carmon: "Thank you for having me."
Interviewer: "We've been watching MEMRI a lot, and we've been referencing your work a lot. Could you tell us a little bit about MEMRI?"
Carmon: "When I retired, I realized that people don't know what's going on, not because they don’t know the secret stuff, but because they don't know open-source of what is available – there for everybody. Why don't they know it? Because it is in languages they don’t speak. So, this was the source of the beginning of MEMRI.
"MEMRI – to bridge the language gap. I gathered a group of linguists, experts, and we began translating from the media, to know the present, from schoolbooks, to know the future. Whatever is being taught now will emerge in the life of people. And the religious texts, wherever religion plays a role in the life of the individual in the society, like the Arab world.
"So, we began with the Arabic, twenty-five years ago. And we translated from Arabic, then we expanded to Farsi, to know what's going on in Iran. Then, to Turkish, which is ruled by an Islamist, Erdogan. Then to Urdu, which is Pakistan, Afghanistan, we have teams of workers there.
"And ten years ago, we moved to translate from Russian, and in a way, we could tell about the war coming, because the leader of Russia, Putin, wrote four months before the war, a very interesting essay of four thousand words. We translated it to the effect that there is no such thing as Ukraine, it is fiction. And you know what can follow after such a thing. And then five years ago, we began translating the Chinese media."
Interviewer: "What is the difference between the media in Arabic, and the media in English?"
Carmon: "The TV channel Al-Jazeera, it’s the regular thing, two faces. Jazeera in English, that plays more or less like the BBC, something like that. And there is Al-Jazeera in Arabic, a tool of the Islamic terrorist organization. From the time of Bin Laden, where they aired every single speech by him in full. This is not media. Media gives a few seconds, gives a summary, and that's it. No, [Al-Jazeera broadcast] hours, and hours, and hours, repeated, and repeated, and repeated. This is an indoctrination and propaganda tool of the Islamist, and that's what they do everywhere.
"A declaration of war on Saturday morning on October 7, was done on Jazeera. At seven in the morning, they aired a call to all the Muslims everywhere to rise up... as a beginning. It was Muhammed Deif, the commander of the killer units, that spoke on Jazeera. And they serve Hamas all the time, but not only here, in Sudan, in Tunisia. The Taliban – they did it all for the Taliban. This is a known fact."
Interviewer: "What is the role of Qatar?"
Carmon: "Qatar is an entity, I call it everywhere, an entity of evil. They play the game of like... What the Americans [call] Dr Jeckel and Mr. Hyde. They have one face for the West, and another for the Arab world. They support every single Islamist jihadist organizations. Anywhere. Wherever there is a battle between movements in the Arab world, they are always for the Islamist one. The dangerous, jihadi one.
"One mosque, big mosque of Abdul Wahab, the Wahabism, Wahabism being the worst sect in Islam, from the 18th century, which goes back in their ideas and their religion to 7th century Islam, which was the worst Islam, of jihad, that conquered from Andalusia, Spain, all the way to China. This is the kind of Islam that they cherish. Qatar supported and hosted the perpetrator of 9/11.
"This whole story is in the book of Richard Clark and he gave it in another, in an interviewer to a paper. Richard Clark was advisor on counterterrorism to two American Presidents. And he wrote about it. There was a guy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an Islamist, who was in missions of jihad in Bosnia, and they brought him to Qatar. Who brought him? Abdullah Bin Hamad, the Minister of Interior. Also the same family, Al-Thani. And from there, he tried to do – with the sponsorship of Qatar, with the plays, with the money, with everything. He tried to kill the Pope in Manilla. It didn’t succeed, the bomb exploded in the hotel, he had to run away. They tried to down American planes over the Pacific. Also didn't work. They succeeded with the American Embassy in Mombasa. When he was in Qatar, working seemingly in the municipality, and the FBI came to arrest him, and they told the Emir, only the Emir, like confidential. Within hours he disappeared. And this was in 96', and in 2001, he reappeared as the mastermind of 9/11."
Interviewer: "Do they follow a similar line with Iran? Are they the same group of..."
Carmon: "No, they are Sunni, and Iran is Shi'ite. However, they found the common denominator. There was a unipolar moment when the communist Soviet empire collapsed. And for ten years, America was the one pole in the world. It lasted only ten years.
"Communism was defeated, but Islamism was not, and we got 9/11. And from then on, Islamism rose up. Who identified this moment? Qatar and Iran. They realized that this is their hour. And they united to the same policy to create an Islamist pole. So there is the American pole, there is Russian, Chinese, and there is the Islamist pole that they created together, and they collaborate, even though one is Sunni and one is Shi'ite. They collaborated to create a power. And if this power had been for peace – okay. But this is a power [used] for attack, for taking over, like Iran.
"In Gaza, you see the collaboration of Iran and Qatar. Iran gave the weapons, the training, the knowhow, and Qatar gave the billions of dollars. You cannot do with only one of the two. So, this is an example of how they collaborated.
"They share the same gas field, which is the biggest in the world. South Pars gas field. And Qatar is developing it for the benefit of both. They share it in the middle. Now, of course, the Iranians could take it over in an hour, but no, it serves them the way Qatar works, they are working together in coalition. Now the question is of course, you say: 'Why is America holding them as a non- NATO ally?' There are problems also of money. This country buys everything in the world, everything."
Interviewer: "Literally, we saw the statistics that they were the biggest donor for the American universities..."
Carmon: "Of course, of course, billions of dollars, of course. There is a story of Qatar-gate. The Deputy Head of the European Parliament is in jail, they found in the home millions of dollars, cash. Politico, the magazine in America, had a big report about the brother of President Biden, that got millions from them, Jim Biden. Senator Menendez, in the Senate, is now defending himself in court for bribes.
"Our [Israeli] Prime Minister allowed Qatar to fund Hamas for a decade, with billions of dollars. Totally misguided. He had the thought in his head, that he is buying them. This is such nonsense, that you cannot believe that someone... [can] you buy a psycho like Sinwar? How do you buy him? He had everybody believe that we are flooding them with money, and they have good life, and that's what they want, and that we are fine, its okay. This is the source of October 7th.
"The money that we allowed, the money to Hamas was totally illegal, because according to the laws of Israel, also American, international laws, Hamas is a terrorist organization. You cannot give them money. Why was it, if you heard about it, was it in suitcases? And there are pictures. Why? Because Bank of Israel – if this is the policy, to give them money, fine, have the Bank of Israel give it. No. I mean pass it through the Bank of Israel – [but] you cannot, because the Bank of Israel will not accept it. Because the laws, Israeli and international, are against it, are not allowing it. So if they would do it, they would be thrown out of swift. So Netanyahu found the bypass. The Mossad passed suitcases of money. Insane, insane. Now everything is out, but for years it went on like this. And did he buy them? No. There were other times, rounds of battles, so not even for buying them was it of any worth.
"You don't change minds by money, you change them only when there is an ideological change. Money alone will do nothing except for raising their capabilities. This idea, that economy, in and of itself, changes the minds of people, was proven wrong in China, in Russia, everywhere, [and] with Hamas.
"There was, at the time of Nixon and Kissinger... they opened to China, Clinton, they thought that once China is flooded with American money and economic change to capitalism, and communism will be destroyed, [that] people will endorse Western values. None of this happened. China became capitalist, especially in the time of Deng Xiaoping, but they didn't change their values.
"And even if such an approach is applied with regard to North Korea, it will not change its values. It will be flooded with money, people will live, but they will be under the same ideology. Maybe they will say: 'Well, we'll not change the mind of Kim Jong Un, but the people...' – but the people live in a dictatorship, what can they do? And our experience should serve as a lesson for South Korea."
Interviewer: "What do you see as a similarity between the October 7 that happened, and the concern that you have with North Korea?"
Carmon: "Let me tell you a story about myself. On the 31st of August, I published an early warning. Talking about war in September/October. I was treated, like before, in a very bad way. Even my friends told me, 'Enough with this. This is racism. To say that they want to kill us is racism.'
"I suffered all my life, my career, because I showed in MEMRI what they are really saying. Not in English, in Arabic. And people... We did schoolbooks, horrible schoolbooks. We have ]translated] the school books of Qatar. All [about] jihad, martyrdom, everything. And people told me 'What nonsense are you dealing with?' Their schoolbooks [affect] our life. 'What are you dealing with? This is nonsense, what are you doing?' And [with] the early warning: 'Enough with this' – until October 7th.
"The ideology of Kim Jong Un is no less than the Islamists. Now that he says that South Korea is an enemy, this is one step before attack. If it is an enemy – if they are brothers, sisters... By the way, brothers and sisters is the supremacist idea [of] 'We are better than them, we have to help them.' Now, it is: 'We have to kill them. They don’t listen, so let's kill them now.'
"It's coming, it's simply coming. I hope that this interview will not be aired after, I mean, will not need to be aired after it happens, but it's coming. If people don't know what is coming, it will be horrible."
Interviewer: "Thank you so much for making time for us and letting us hear amazing wisdom and advice."
Carmon: "And it's worth discussing it."
Interviewer: "Thank you so much".
Carmon: "Thank you."
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