Hizbollah TV airs show on Zionism, US objects

News, October 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Jordan Times, Thursday, October 30, 2003

BEIRUT (Reuters) — Hizbollah's Al Manar television, in a move that has drawn Washington's ire and accusations of anti-Semitism, has started airing a series on the history of Zionism it says shows a Jewish plan to dominate the world.

In a Syrian-produced series broadcast on Manar's satellite channel across the Middle East during the high-viewing Holy Month of Ramadan, the station promises to reveal what it says is the true face of Zionism.

"The series shows us how Jews don't refrain from ... committing the worst crimes against all those, Jews or non-Jews, who stand in the way of the Jewish dream and their project," a summary of the series, entitled "The Diaspora," said.

Western critics worry the show, set in mandated Palestine and Europe between 1812-1948, could stoke hatred towards Jews and invokes what Jews view as stereotypes used for centuries to incite violence against them.

Manar says it has received no complaints.

Manar, the mouthpiece of Hizbollah whose attacks helped drive Israel from south Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation, says the 26-part series is based on Jewish sources including the Torah and targets Zionism, not Judaism.

"This series carries a dose that could be very surprising for those who don't know the ways and policies that the world Zionists used to achieve their goals and to corrupt the world," said Nasser Akhdar, associate director at Manar.

The US State Department said on Tuesday that Washington complained to both the Lebanese and Syrian governments after a Jewish group described the show, which started airing on Monday and is also available to satellite viewers in Europe and the United States, as anti-Semitic.

Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, opposes both Middle East peace-making and the existence of the state of Israel.

Israeli foreign ministry spokeswoman, Amira Oron, denounced the series on Wednesday, saying it "rehashes a false history" of the Zionist movement that portrays Israel as "conceived in sin by deliberately shedding Arab blood and stealing Arab land."

Ehud Yaari, Arab affairs correspondent with Israel's Channel 2 television, said: "This series is a classic act of anti-Semitism, that has invested a great deal in trying to fuse European Hitlerism with Islamic anti-Jewish bigotry.

"Hizbollah wants to continue in the tradition of poisoning minds in the region against Israel."

The show, a high-quality production made by a private Syrian company with Manar's backing, opens with an actor portraying an early promoter of Zionism telling his children to spread their ideas in Europe.

"Our lord has promised us retribution against those who sent us into exile. For this reason ... we must control the world, all of it, through loyal agents in foreign governments," he says.

Manar says the actors are meant to depict actual historical characters.

In one yet-to-be-broadcast scene, set on a boat taking Jews to what would become Israel, a Jewish rabbi is portrayed as raping a young woman.

In a scene set in a training camp for the underground Jewish Haganah militia, a commander is portrayed as encouraging Jewish fighters to hit targets at a firing range by telling them to get drunk on the blood of "butchers."

"Let's drink the blood of these butchers until our souls are drunk...Get ready, fire," the commander tells his men in a scene viewed by Reuters at Manar's studios in Beirut. The series is set to be translated into English and Hebrew.

Manar said it was wrong to view the series, which took nine months to complete, as anti-Semitic, saying that it had been reviewed by historians and there were Jews in the series who opposed Zionism.

"We did not direct this series against Judaism. It is against Zionism. We differentiate between Judaism and Zionism," Akhdar said. "We want to reveal the truth of Zionism."

"From the beginning, Al Manar has had policies on productions like this, which are a part of showing the truth of the Zionist organisation — the methods it resorted to in raping Palestine."

Last year Israel and the United States criticised Arab governments for allowing their state-run televisions to broadcast an Egyptian series alleged to give credence to the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The producers said that series did not take a position on the authenticity of the protocols.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

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