Translation and propaganda

Horrifying news from Palestine - a Hamas Mickey Mouse is telling Palestinian kids to "annihilate Jews"! Or not. In fact - after running on a wide range of media, few of whom I suspect will bother to correct their story - this story was independently quickly exposed by several sources, such as Angry Arab, Ali Alarabi, and Brian Whitaker; MEMRI (the Israeli secret services-linked outlet that provided it) made the mistake of providing a video allowing any Arabic-speaker to confirm their mistranslations. With just a bit of spin, the kids' show in question was turned from merely propagandistic to verging on Bond-villain-esque:
* nqāwim, "we will resist", is rendered as "we will fight";
* biṭuxxūnā l-yahūd "the Jews shoot us", is rendered as "we will kill the Jews" (!);
* 'astašhid "I will be a martyr" as "I will commit martyrdom" (I don't think that's even an English expression, but never mind);
* 'ustāđiyyat al-`ālam, literally "professorship of the world" (in context, they clearly mean being at the intellectual forefront of the world), is rendered as "masters of the world".

When challenged on the translation of "biṭuxxūna l-yahūd", the ex-colonel in Israeli military intelligence who runs MEMRI, Yigal Carmon, apparently resorted to insisting that because "yahūd" (Jews) comes at the end, it must somehow be the object! ("Even someone who doesn't know Arabic would listen to the tape and would hear the word 'Jews' is at the end, and also it means it is something to be done to the Jews, not by the Jews.") It is rather difficult to imagine someone running an organisation dedicated to translating Arabic being unaware that subjects in Arabic commonly follow the verb (especially when a pronominal object suffix (-nā "us") is present, as here).

The moral in all this for English-language media is clear: when some helpful organisation sends you a free translation of some foreign-language article or program, do look a gift horse in the mouth, and check the translation with an independent source first. As for readers/viewers of the media in any language - caveat lector! But you no doubt already knew that.