After receiving permission last month to broadcast via satellite to France, the Lebanese-based Hizbullah TV channel al-Manar has been banned from the French airwaves.
[A] French court ordered the French-based Eutelsat company to shut down al-Manar broadcasts following accusations that its programs could incite hatred.
Al-Manar obliged voluntarily but says the decision was political not legal, influenced by Israel and Jewish lobbies. It plans to pursue its case to restart broadcasts. The ruling has been widely condemned in Lebanon.
The order provoked protests at the French embassy in Beirut, and also from veteran French Holocaust denier Professor Robert Faurisson, who expressed his outrage in an interview with Iran’s Mehr News Agency:
Mehr News Agency: “France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, last week moved decisively to ban Al Manar television, alleging that the network had repeatedly violated the country’s anti-hate laws and ignored its own pledge to avoid making anti-Semitic statements. What is your view of the decision?”
Faurisson: “Unfortunately, it is totally normal. In France, Jewish organizations get whatever they demand. And especially the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), headed by former banker Roger Cukierman, who was very instrumental in the campaign against Al Manar.”
MNA: “Do you think the Zionist lobby in the U.S. influenced France’s decision to ban Al Manar?”
Faurisson: “In France Jewish power is even stronger than in the USA. In France it is our lobby number 1. Nobody dares to speak out against those people because of their alleged ‘Holocaust’.”
Etc., etc.
In one of his many moments of utter cluelessness (at best), Noam Chomsky once declared, “As far as I can determine, [Faurisson] is a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort.”
