Seems our Zionist Israelis 'friends' are on the defensive, hopefully
even they aren't stupid enough to be prepapring for an offensive...
unless they're totally sure of U.S. backing!
W
You think that's bad, check this out. America is trying to tell other
countries what they 'can' and 'can not' show on TV.
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Call to drop TV series on Zionism rejected
Friday 31 October 2003, 21:32 Makka Time, 18:32 GMT
Lebanese officials have rejected US calls to intervene with Hizb Allah over
a mini-series on Zionism airing on its television station.
Government officials said doing so would be a violation of free speech.
"We will not interfere with an independent television channel," one official
told AFP, asking not to be named.
"The United States has a strange conception of freedom of expression. What
would they say if we tried to interfere with the way Fox News portrays
Arabs, Muslims or Palestinians," he said in reference to the nationalistic
US network.
Hizb Allah on the other hand welcomed the US State Department's complaint
against its 26-part series "al-Shatat", or "The Diaspora", that began airing
on Monday for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
"Let's face it, it's given the programme a lot of free publicity," the
movement's number two, Shaikh Naim Kassim, told the rival LBC television,
only half tongue-in-cheek.
'Artistic work'
He defended the programme's content against US charges of anti-Semitism,
saying it was "an artistic work based on clear historical facts."
The State Department said on Tuesday that it had complained about the series
to the governments of both Lebanon and Syria on the grounds that it
incorporated elements of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an infamous
19th-century forgery.
"We are strongly opposed to any and all displays of anti-Semitism and
programming that is seen to recognise the so-called 'The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion'," its spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
'Unacceptable programming'
"We view those programmes as unacceptable. Such programmes do not contribute
to the climate of mutual understanding and tolerance that the Middle East so
desperately needs."
The forged "Protocols," which the department has called "racist" and
"untrue," describes a Jewish plot for world domination and was used in Nazi
Germany and other parts of Europe as a pretext to persecute Jews.
It is not the first time that the State Department has protested against
Arab programming containing references to the forgery.
Last year, it objected but failed to prevent the broadcast by Egyptian
television of the Ramadan mini-series "Horseman without a Horse".
Washington regards Hizb Allah as a "foreign terrorist organisation" and bars
its official representatives from any contact with the group.