A media research institute is offering free translations to U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs) so they can understand Web sites in Middle Eastern languages and prevent homegrown terrorism from germinating.

Recent terrorist plots such as those against Fort Dix in New Jersey and New York’s JFK International Airport, as well as attempted car bombings in the United Kingdom all have been tied to radical Islamic Web sites, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

MEMRI is offering translation services to expose these types of Web sites and cut off Internet-based communication and propaganda.

Many Web sites containing radical jihadist messages are hosted on servers based in Western Europe and the United States, said Col. Yigal Carmon, founder and president of MEMRI. Carmon is a former counterterrorism adviser to Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Western world ISPs host radical Islamic Web sites because they are unaware of the content and because many Arab countries keep a tight grip on the Internet and media, Carmon said Thursday at a briefing held by the House Foreign Affairs Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee.

The subcommittee’s leadership agreed that MEMRI’s findings are disturbing and greater efforts are needed to confront radical messages.

“Terrorists seek to use the laws and the rights that decent societies uphold as tools with which to conduct their nefarious deeds,” said subcommittee Chairman Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y. “Freedom of speech, the foundation of democratic government, is thus converted by terrorists into a weapon with which to attack democracies. This task of reconciling national defense with free speech is not an impossible one.”

The sites spawn threats to homeland security because they are used by radical Islamic organizations to disseminate operational information — such as instructions for using military weapons, building explosives and executing battle tactics — and indoctrinating new recruits, Carmon said.

“One can hardly imagine the growth of [Islamic radicalism] in recent years without the Internet,” he added. “Without the Internet it is like [they are] without limbs.”

By helping ISPs translate the content on questionable Web sites, MEMRI anticipates the companies will end business relationships with any radical Islamic clients and get them off of the Web.

If the radicals try to regroup through a service provider in another part of the world, an electronic trail will always lead back to a U.S. ISP, Carmon said.

However, if a U.S. ISP doesn’t rid itself of a client with a radical Islamic Web site, MEMRI would like legal recourse to be taken against the business.

Carmon said First Amendment concerns could be superseded by U.S. law and legal code that works against terrorist organizations and material support for them.

MEMRI received legal counsel from Alexandria, Va.-based Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier and Neustadt, as well as the Justice Department when considering the right for legal recourse against ISPs.

“I don’t believe there will be a need to make it a legal matter,” Carmon said. “They will remove it by themselves. They don’t need lessons in patriotism to tell them what to do.”

He also said it is more beneficial to take down radical Islamic Web sites and handicap potential growth for homegrown terrorism than it is to try gathering intelligence from the Internet by allowing radical Web sites to persist.

The institute estimates it will need about a week to translate content on a Web site and return results to inquiring ISPs.

MEMRI was founded in 1998 to explore media in the Middle East, bridge language gaps by translating Arabic, Persian and Turkish media, and provide analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural and religious trends in the region, according to the institute’s Web site.

Matthew M. Johnson can be reached at mjohnson@cq.com.