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| Europe |
| France to curb anti-Jewish Arab TV broadcasts |
| 2004-01-31 |
| France will soon pass a law to curb anti-Semitic television broadcasts coming from the Middle East and fine satellite operators who distribute anti-Jewish programs, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin said on Saturday. Raffarin told the annual dinner of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) that he and several cabinet ministers had seen some of these broadcasts and found them "unbearable to watch (and) revolting." This followed an appeal by CRIF President Roger Cukierman to block anti-Semitic broadcasts from the Middle East, which officials here say encourage Muslim youths in France to attack Jews to take revenge for Israeli policy against the Palestinians. "I believe deeply that our struggle against hate must take on a new dimension," Raffarin said as he announced the government would submit a bill to parliament to enable French judges to stop a satellite station that broadcasts anti-Semitic material. He said the law would force satellite operators to inform Paris which stations they carried and threaten them with fines if they transmitted provocative broadcasts. Satellite television is widely watched in the poor suburbs around French cities where most recent anti-Semitic attacks have occurred. Cukierman said: "We see that messages of anti-Jewish hate are invading the air waves. Day after day, they reach households in our cities and suburbs thanks to satellite dishes." He said satellite television broadcasters had beamed into France Egyptian and Syrian programs based on the 19th-century Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery purporting to show Jewish plots to dominate the world. "The Al Manar station, which belongs to Hezbollah, broadcasts from Lebanon unbearable scenes ... one sees actors disguised as Jews who slit the throat of a non-Jewish child and collect in a saucer blood supposedly meant for their unleavened bread," he said. Cukierman said France’s 600,000 Jews were living "a period of malaise" and asked what their future would be. "The anti-Jewish climate is spreading at schools and universities, across the whole country. Even small Jewish children have become victims." |
| Posted by:TS |
| #2 "a period of malaise." That's just so f#$king french for you. Can anybody see the obvious? They denounce the Anti-Semitism report that found that the majority of anti-semitic attacks were caused by followers of the ROP but what do they do? Ban the Hijab and block Hezbollah TV. It's so pathetic it must be French. |
| Posted by: Daniel King 2004-2-1 1:57:21 PM |
| #1 'Bout time. But a day late and a dollar short. |
| Posted by: whitecollar redneck 2004-1-31 10:28:27 PM |