Beirut and Damascus under pressure to intervene. Americans cry 'anti-Semitism' as Hizbullah's television station prepares to run series on history of Zionism.
The United States criticized on Tuesday a television series on Hizbullah’s television on the history of Zionism and complained to the Lebanese and Syrian governments for allowing it to be aired.
Al-Manar Television aired on Monday the first episode of a Syrian-made mini-drama it advertised as portraying the history of the Zionist movement.
Al-Manar is airing the series, “Al-Shatat” Arabic for The Diaspora in daily segments during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when television audiences peak.
“We are strongly opposed to any and all displays of anti-Semitism and view programming that includes scenes recognizing the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is an anti-Semitic forgery, as unacceptable,” US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “Such programs do not contribute to the climate of mutual understanding and tolerance that the Middle East so desperately needs. We have been in touch with the Lebanese and Syrian governments.”
Al-Manar’s program director, Nasser Akhdar, told The Daily Star Wednesday that the series was “purely historical” and that it was based on some 250 sources written by Jews.
The program covers the history of the Jews and the Zionists between 1812 and 1948, he said, and underlines the Jewish emigration to Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, and the European policies regarding this issue during that period.
“It offers a clear image of what the Zionists have committed in the social, political, and ideological fields,” Akhdar said. “It is a voice against all those who wish to hide the truth.”
He said US complaints were an attempt to “misguide public opinion,” adding that this was part of the US strategy of hegemony over the media to “cancel other people’s opinions.”
Akhdar said that the program showed the difference between Jews and Zionists, adding that some Jews were against the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, but “it seems that those Jews have disappeared now.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), a Jewish rights group based in Los Angeles, California, said in a statement last week that the program “alleges Jews forged the Bible and follow the dictates of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
But Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, said on Tuesday that the SWC was not certain that the Protocols really do play a part in the series. The SWC has gleaned its information about the series mainly from promotions aired on Syrian state television, which had been expected to broadcast the program, he said.
Cooper also complained that the series portrayed the main character, a leading Zionist activist, as “immoral” and “manipulative.”
“If the authors of the Protocols were alive today, they could sue the producers for copyright infringement,” he added.
The SWC said the series, which describes the origins of Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel, would run on Syrian state television, but Boucher said this did not appear to be the case. Syrian television channels have not listed the series in their programming and the US Embassy in Damascus has learned that they do not intend to run it, he said.
But Al-Manar, which is based in Beirut and broadcasts by satellite to much of the Middle East, would air it, he said.
The United States says Syria has considerable influence over Hizbullah, which the State Department lists as a “foreign terrorist organization.” Last year Israel and the United States criticized Arab governments for allowing their state-run televisions to broadcast another series alleged to give credence to the Protocols.
With agencies
Badih Chayban
© The Daily Star 2003
