How Clips Are Chosen
Sources, transcripts, translations and corrections for On Camera, as of October 17, 2026.
What a Clip Is
A clip is a passage of 20 to 110 seconds from a video, with the speaker's words as text, each line timed to the second in the source, and a Chicago citation. MEF-owned clips play here, with a captions file. Clips from other broadcasters play at the source: the page links to the exact second.
Two Sets, Two Rules
UN General Debate. UN General Debate, 81st session: the addresses by the heads of state or government whose UN appearance the Turkish, Arab and Israeli press monitors captured in September 2026. Two excerpts per speaker, same rule for each: the passage on Gaza and the ceasefire plan, and the passage on the speaker's main other subject. 30 to 90 seconds each. The three addresses are those of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (September 22), Mahmoud Abbas (by video, September 24) and Benjamin Netanyahu (September 24), all on the United Nations YouTube channel.
MEF programs. Clip windows cut by MEF's video desk from MEF-owned YouTube uploads published September 14, 2026 to October 5, 2026. Ownership is checked per video: the upload's channel ID must match the Middle East Forum channel.
Who Is Speaking
Speakers are named only from documents: the chair's announcement on the UN floor, the UN video title, or MEF's own episode listing. Office lines come from the UN video title or the MEF episode description, linked on each clip; an office with no such source is left out. No voice or face matching is used. Other voices in a passage, such as a host, are marked "Other voice". Viewers who sent questions are not named, in the text or in the audio: hosted clips start after the name.
Transcripts
MEF clips: word-timed speech-to-text from the MEF upload, edited only to withhold private names and to correct misheard public names, in square brackets. Netanyahu spoke English; his transcript is YouTube's automatic captions of the UN broadcast, speech recognition rather than a published UN text, with obvious mishearings corrected in square brackets. No official English text was reachable. Erdoğan and Abbas spoke Turkish and Arabic; their transcript is the official text published by the Presidency of Türkiye and by WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, aligned to each excerpt and kept only where it matches the published text character for character. Published text and delivered speech can differ.
Translations
Each clip has translations into Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Turkish (or English, for non-English speakers). A translation appears on the public site only after a fluent reviewer signs it off; the review note names the reviewer's role and date. Reviewed now: 0 of 112. Until then, the UN's own English interpretation can be heard at the source from each excerpt's start. Turkish and Arabic pull quotes on the front page and on each clip page carry the English text their own side published: the Presidency of Türkiye's Directorate of Communications for Erdoğan, and WAFA's English service for Abbas. That English is the publisher's translation, not MEF's; it is quoted as published, linked to its source, and kept only where it matches the published English word for word.
Pull Quotes
Each clip carries one pull quote chosen by an editor from the speaker's own words, with fillers and false starts removed. The full transcript sits beneath it.
What the Mentions Figures Measure
Each figure is the number of times a term appears as a whole word in the full address, from the speaker's first words to the chair's thanks, on YouTube's automatic English captions of the UN broadcast. For Erdoğan and Abbas that track is the UN interpretation, so each figure is checked against the official Turkish or Arabic text below.
On the front page, each square's area is proportional to its figure and drawn at its true size, with no frame or ring; squares in the Iran column are white and the rest pale grey; a figure of 0 has no square, only the word "none"; the row with no official text on file is hatched. The addresses differ in length (23:56 to 40:09), so the front page also gives Iran mentions per 10 minutes of address: Netanyahu 4.7 (19 mentions in 40:09), Erdoğan 0.3 (1 mention in 36:01), Abbas 0 (0 mentions in 23:56).
| Speaker | Term | Automatic captions | Official text |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erdoğan | Gaza | 9 | 10 |
| Erdoğan | Iran | 1 | 1 |
| Erdoğan | Israel | 4 | 4 |
| Erdoğan | Palestine | 11 | 10 |
| Abbas | Gaza | 7 | 6 |
| Abbas | Iran | 0 | 0 |
| Abbas | Israel | 16 | 14 |
| Abbas | Palestine | 35 | 32 |
| Netanyahu | Gaza | 9 | n/a |
| Netanyahu | Iran | 19 | n/a |
| Netanyahu | Israel | 46 | n/a |
| Netanyahu | Palestine | 10 | n/a |
Corrections
Send corrections to info@meforum.org. Each correction appears here with the date and what changed. No corrections yet.
Sources and Retrieval Dates
| Source | Last fetched |
|---|---|
| YouTube Data API, video metadata | October 17, 2026 |
| MEF speech-to-text | October 17, 2026 |
| YouTube captions via TranscriptAPI | October 17, 2026 |
| Official speech text | October 17, 2026 |
| Official page screenshot | October 17, 2026 |