In June of 1991 the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah aired the
first broadcast on its own satellite channel, al-Manar or “The
Beacon.” The Iranian/Syrian funded channel quickly took off and
became a regional hit with its combination of relentlessly
anti-Semitic/American programming and conspiratorial “news” that
wouldn’t even clear the lax fact-checkers over at al-Jazeera.
Sadly, the station’s success in the poisoned, regressive culture
that reigns throughout much of the Middle East is no surprise. But
it was somewhat of a shock when two weeks ago France gave al-Manar
a license to broadcast throughout the European Union over the
protests of already-embattled Jews throughout Europe. France’s
Higher Audiovisual Council dismissed the criticism with a haughty
announcement that al-Manar had agreed not to “incite hatred or
violence.” Al-Manar’s head, Mohammed Haidar, was even so kind as to
call the decision to air accusations that Jews use the blood of
goyim in their holiday treats as an, um, “mistake.”
Well, we all make mistakes, right? Still, not a week after the
channel began beaming into European homes it aired a program on
Israel’s dastardly plan to infect the entire Arab world with AIDS
through exports. Now, embarrassed, France’s Higher Audiovisual
Council is scrambling to ban the channel they just proudly (and
publicly) announced a deal with — but because the organization has
authorized the program, it’s up to the French courts to decide what
will happen. In the meantime, Hate TV is on the air, spewing a
degree of anti-Semitic propaganda not seen in Europe since the
1930s.
All of this could have been avoided if the French government,
eager as it is to embrace anything even vaguely anti-Israeli, had
bothered to take a quick glance at the al-Manar programming
guide.
Consider the following: One of al-Manar’s most popular programs
is the game show, “The Mission.” For every question a contestant
answers correctly about the American-Zionist conspiracy, he moves a
step closer to Jerusalem on a large map. The standard game show
chitchat is here as well, except instead of talking about
contestant hobbies, the host praises suicide bombings and pleads
for viewers to keep the faith that one day Arabs will “recapture”
the land stolen by the Jews. The first contestant to reach 60
points stands atop the holy city and receives a check for $3,000
while the Hezbollah anthem plays in the background — “Jerusalem is
ours and we are coming to it.”
And this isn’t the worst of it. The popular weekly program,
“Sincere Men,” for example, airs edifying profiles of suicide
bombers. Hate-laden “sermons” by well-known Hamas and Hezbollah
figures are broadcast over and over again alongside video of
terrorist marches. A new documentary series promises to expose
“crimes perpetrated by the Zionist enemy” and “recalls the Zionist
massacres, and brutal practices.” Before Israeli forces withdrew
from Lebanon in 2000, the station aired attacks against Israeli
soldiers live and broadcast threats against the Jewish state in
Hebrew.
Showing its own true colors, the al-Jazeera network ran a story
describing French protests against al-Manar as being based on
“perceived anti-Semitic content.” Al-Jazeera was recently lionized
as the sole unbiased organization fighting American deceit and lies
in the provocative film, The Control Room, and yet it
cannot come out and say that claims that Jews sacrifice children to
make better bread are anti-Semitic. Some truth-tellers.
How’s this for “perceived anti-Semitic content”? Al-Manar was
the first station to air the rumor — persistent to this day in
fundamentalist circles — that 4,000 Jews failed to report to work
at the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001,
thereby suspiciously avoiding the terror attacks, which were
perpetrated not by Osama bin Laden, but the “Jews, Israel, and
Mossad,” of course.
This bit of investigative reporting doesn’t quite make al-Manar
Friends of America, however.
“Today, as the region fills up with hundreds of thousands of
American troops, our slogan was and will remain ‘Death to
America,’” a Hezbollah official warned Americans during a broadcast
earlier this year.
Defying all facts on the ground and programming on the air,
France opted to take a leap of blind faith and go on Mohammed
Haidar’s word that al-Manar was not owned by Hezbollah — an
organization that France, at any rate, refuses to label as a
terrorist organization. But in Beacon of Hatred, an
exhaustive study of al-Manar, Avi Jorisch of the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, quotes al-Manar’s chairman of the
board, Nayef Krayem, describing the relationship between Hezbollah
and the station thusly: “They breathe life into one another. Each
provides the other with inspiration. Hezbollah uses al-Manar to
express its stands and its views, etc. Al-Manar in turn receives
political support for its continuation.”
Jorisch also quotes an al-Manar employee explaining the station
helps members of the public who are “on the way to committing what
you in the West call a suicide mission. It is meant to be the first
step on the process of a freedom fighter operation.” This must be
the perception gap the folks over at al-Jazeera are referring
to.
But the truth is, there is some hope in the whiff of desperation
one comes across while scanning the al-Manar website. It sometimes
reads as if they are rage, rage, raging against the dying of the
fundamentalist light.
“Despite its huge burden on every Lebanese, the occupation was
not the one and only concern,” the station’s website reads.
“Lebanese TV channels have been overwhelmed by a trend of movies
and programs that can only be described as immoral…Numerous
TV channels have been broadcasting programs that would decay one’s
ethics and provoke his or her instincts, instigating violence and
identifying with western living patterns which are quite remote
from our Islamic and Eastern values and culture.”
Al-Manar is a token act of desperation as technology facilitates
communication and an escape from the persistent, singular message
of fundamentalist/totalitarian governments. They are more afraid of
our music and our movies than our bombs, because our popular
culture carries with it an inherent sense of individualism and
freedom. Those ideas are not exclusive to America, and are more
powerful than even the most powerful army in the world. So, does
anyone honestly believe the stilted, clunky entertainment of
al-Manar will prevail over Western entertainment in the long-term?
Apparently even the French government has been disabused of that
foolish notion now.
