Chatham House again

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the curious case of Rime Allaf, a Middle East specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, with whom I had appeared on a CNN panel to give European reaction to President Bush’s State of the Union address. Mrs Allaf uses the Chatham House imprimatur to promote a personal web site that comprises in its entirety inflammatory op-ed columns, media citations, a web log and reader comments such as “It is horrible how the Jews have treated the Palestinian people.”

A correspondent has pointed out the additional quirk that, with the single exception of a book review in the RIIA’s regular monthly journal, the items cited on Mrs Allaf’s Chatham House page under the heading ‘Recent publications’ carry no reference to the place of publication. So far as I can ascertain, the place of publication is, in fact, Mrs Allaf’s personal web site. One of them is entitled 'America's fury over a potential French veto', February 2003. While it is a fairly standard op-ed condemning the Iraq war, it does include an arresting flourish:

Many may appreciate his eloquence and dashing looks, but it was Dominique de Villepin’s logic that provoked unprecedented and spontaneous applause in the Security Council on Feb. 14, star treatment that an American secretary of state could never hope for in the present state of affairs.

The current US Secretary of State of course made a well-received diplomatic tour of European capitals only this month. I am not aware that any European analyst of international affairs contributed a commentary during it along the lines of:

Condoleezza Rice isn’t just a pretty face, you know – she was formerly Provost of Stanford and has written a book on German unification!!!

But if any did, then I should have thought he is unlikely to be much longer in his post.

Mrs Allaf has been vocal in the last couple of weeks decrying the suggestion of Syrian complicity in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Here she is in The Guardian on 15 February:

The Syrians could not possibly have wanted this. It would be a case of shooting yourself in the foot. It clearly is the pro- and anti-Syrian forces at play, but rationally and logically, whoever did this was trying to get the Syrians into more trouble.

Here she is In her web log making heavy insinuations for which she hasn’t the slightest evidence (emphasis added):

The Israeli media has been uncharacteristically quiet about Hariri’s assassination, and the developments in Lebanon in the past few days; has Israel been asked to lay low for the time being, while the US handles the problem? Or will it spring into action sooner or later? And does this mean Israel, or the US, commissioned Hariri’s assassination just to get Syria into even more trouble? Nobody knows. But these possibilities are just as plausible as others, and given the repercussions, they are certainly more plausible than that of a Syrian hand in the crime.

Here is the same thought transmuted into the language of crank conspiracy theorists inhabiting a political fringe so far distant you need a stepladder and field-glasses to locate it:

Harriri’s killing, like so many of those in Iraq, is the work of either the Israeli dark ops or American mercenaries who have been hired out to kill people who are progressive in the Arab and Muslim worlds…. The parallels are evident to experts, but these experts will not be allowed on American media. But, Professor [sic] Rime Allaf, of the Royal Institute [sic] in England is correct, this was the work of an intelligence agency—and we damn well know who the only two would be—because they are the only two to gain by this deed, Israel or America.

Whether an Associate Fellow of Chatham House ought, in that capacity, to be spending her time floating entirely speculative hypotheses founded on a priori assumptions about the malevolence of Israel and the US is, of course, a matter for Chatham House. But the fact of its happening is also, I think, a genuine matter of public interest.