Saturday, January 31, 2004
Another one for the flying pigs file. France does seem to be seriously acknowledging they have a serious and growing problem.
France to curb anti-Jewish Arab TV broadcasts
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...
What kind of programming is this?
"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.
Of course, there's nothing that can be done (I'd imagine) about the more mundane, daily anti-Jewish bias in Arab media, but getting rid of the most blatant is at least a start.
If you'd like to see what some of this stuff looks like, don't forget that MEMRI has plenty of streaming video for your viewing "pleasure."
good to see.
it's all about baby steps....one at time.