Al-Manar: Beacon of Hate
August 18, 2006, 11:40 am |
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by Asaf Romirowsky
Tech Central Station*
August 18, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/990
* Cross-posted with permission
[N.B.: The following reflects what the author submitted, and not exactly what was published. To obtain the precise text of what was published, please check the original place of publication.]
Hezbollah has long used the satellite broadcaster Al-Manar as a medium for winning the hearts and minds of their supporters inside Lebanon and throughout the Muslim world. Al-Manar, literally “the beacon” in Arabic, is the official mouthpiece for Hezbollah — the “party of God”. This beacon is best known for airing propaganda against Israel, not least of which include reports of “heroic” and “successful” operations by Hezbollah fighters against the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
More significantly, Al-Manar programming consists of children’s shows that glorify homicide bombers. Anti-American and anti-Semitic material — including the infamous “blood libel” which fallaciously accuses Jews of slaughtering Christian children to make Matza for the Passover holiday — is the normal fare. Post 9/11, the station worked tirelessly to promote the perception that the Israeli Mossad was the one responsible for the attacks. And indeed, many Arabic speakers in London, Paris, Madrid, Brussels, Berlin absorb Hezbollah’s messages of hate and incitement via al Manar.
Clearly Al-Manar has become an integral part of the Party of God’s psychological warfare toolkit. It was the first channel to announce the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border. Currently, the station currently enjoys top ratings around the Arab world. These ratings result in no small part from Hassan Nasrallah’s skills as an orator, whereby he manages to woo crowds using superb Arabic woven together with colloquial Lebanese expressions. Nasrallah also plays on the fears of the Israeli public to drive messages of fear, and rebroadcasts Israeli news reports about public uncertainty in Israel regarding the war. All of this is possible due to the relatively sophisticated technology al-Manar uses, which does not fall far behind the standards of other high-tech TV stations.
Recently, in a brilliant cyber-attack, the IDF intelligence unit managed to hack an al-Manar broadcast and plant a caricature of Nasrallah captioned ‘your days are numbered.’ Additionally, they managed to place an image of a dead guerrilla fighter flash on their screens saying that this is the corpse of one of the members of Hezbollah’s Special Forces and that “Hassan Nasrallah lies.” Consequently, al-Manar’s PR director Ibrahim Farhat reported that “the Israelis had succeeded in creating static and other signal interruptions at least 10 times on TV broadcasts since the start of the war.” He added that despite the circumstances the station is in “terrific” shape. But this admission from the station that sees itself as the “station of resistance” was a huge success for the IDF. Still, the broadcasts continue.
The situation is now intensifying on the northern border of Israel. Al-Manar was the first to report the preparations for a possible attack like Nasrallah promised, “if our capital Beirut — is attacked, we will attack their capital — Tel Aviv, ” If nothing else, such proves the aggressive nature of the psychological warfare he is waging on Israel. After all, Nasrallah often means what he says. Moreover, with the so called “cease-fire” it was al Manar that featured Nasrallah saying, “we are at the brink of a great victory; a strategic and historic one.., that Hezbollah fighters brought about this great triumph.” And now is not that time to lay down our arms this illustrates how nothing has really changed despite the supposed “cease-fire” and as long as al Manar aka Nasrallah says so you can be sure that it is indeed so.
The IDF’s psychological unit follows Nasrallah’s speeches very carefully and analyzes the way he expresses himself. They believe his inaccuracies stem from both his instability and uncertainty; hence he never discloses the true number of loses Hezbollah suffers from IDF attacks — demonstrated to have been quite large. There is no doubt, given the criticism he is receiving of late from disparate Lebanese sources, that he is trying to boost his public image through such spectacles.
We have also witnessed over the past three years how the governments of France, Spain, and Holland have determined that al-Manar violated European law due to its anti-Semitic/Western and racist programming. This has led to a domino effect among other countries such as Hong Kong, Australia, Barbados, and Brazil who have also decided to remove al-Manar from local airwaves.
This is a good start but it is not enough. The basic problem is that al-Manar is not a news network serving freedom of speech, but the propaganda and incitement arm of a terrorist organization. We should therefore applaud the IDF attacks on military targets and as well as Hezbollah’s media organs. Islamism is not just an epidemic that spreads in the ranks of jihadists but also through the airwaves. America and Europe should thank Israel if they managed to find a cure for the disease.
Asaf Romirowsky is a Campus Watch Associate Fellow for the Middle East Forum and the Manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
Related: Anti-Semitism, Arab/Muslim World, Israel, Lebanon, Media/Blogsphere, Terrorist Groups
August 18th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Libyan Leader Mu’ammar Al-Qadhafi on Al-Jazeera on April 10, 2006: “There are Signs That Allah Will Grant Islam Victory in Europe;” Europe & the U.S. “Should Agree to Become Islamic… or Else Declare War on the Muslims:”
“The so-called Old Testament and New Testament are neither Old Testament nor New Testament - because both testaments were superseded, and they are forged. They were written by hand hundreds of years after Jesus.”
“In the Bible there are things that are inappropriate for both Jesus and Moses. If we want to mend the state of humanity, and live in a global village, because of the globalization, we must search for the true Bible, because the Bible that exists today is a forgery. Today’s Bible does not mention Muhammad, whereas our Lord’s Bible mentions Muhammad repeatedly.”
“We must search for the Gospel of Barnabas*, of St. Barnabas, because this is the true gospel.”
“This gospel explicitly mentions that Muhammad would come after Jesus.”
* A Renaissance forgery, The Gospel of Barnabas was discovered in the beginning of the 18th century by the Prussian councilor J.F. Cramer, who had acquired the only known Italian manuscript in Amsterdam. The introduction of the Spanish printed version of the book tells us how a friar named Fra Marino had found the Gospel in the library of Pope Sixtus V, at a moment when the Holy Father had taken a little nap. The friar is said to have been so impressed by the reading that he converted to Islam.
The teaching of The Gospel of Barnabas appears with full evidence in the passage where Jesus tells his disciples about the Creation and the Fall. When Adam is created, he sees a writing in the air with the Islamic confession: “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God” (Chapter 39) Jesus tells James (Chapter 43) that the Messiah descends not from Isaac, as the Jews believe, but from Ishmael, from whom the only true Messiah – Mohammed – will descend. Accordingly, it is not Isaac but Ishmael whom Abraham was ordered to sacrifice (Wouldn’t that explain the willingness of Palestinian parents to sacrifice their children as living bomb?). Finally, Jesus declares that he has seen Mohammed in a vision and cries out: “O Mohammed, God be with thee, and may he make me worthy to untie thy shoelaces, for obtaining this I shall be a great prophet and holy one of God” (Chapter 44)
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in India, used The Gospel of Barnabas as early as 1899, eight years before its publication. When the Oxford edition appeared in 1907, it was supported by those involved with the Cairo periodical al-Manar, which published the first edition in Arabic in 1908. Many new editions have followed, and the Gospel of Barnabas is till important as ever in the Arab world and in the Islamic mission in the West. In the Islamic Cultural Center in London there is always an impressive stock of this Gospel in English, intended for free distribution. Now they added to this stack a mountain of the Israel Lobby by two leftist professors. They are true theologians of liberation made in USA. Hezbollah’s TV station is also called Al-Manar. Among other things Al Manar programs present the blood libel – the medieval canard that caused so much bloodshed against the Jews.
France’s highest administrative court ordered the operatives of the French satellite, Eutelsat, to stop beaming Al Manar, the popular Arab-language channel run by the Hezbollah militia out of Lebanon, which transmits anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Israeli broadcasts.
The delay by the court reflects the delicate nature of the impending ruling after a yearlong campaign by the French government to shut down Al Manar because of its anti-Semitic and racist reports and support of violence. It broadcast a report claiming that Israel for years had spread H.I.V. the virus that causes AIDS, and other diseases throughout the Arab world. Reflect, in the context of this propaganda of hate, on Y. Arafat’s last trip to Paris. His picture evoking that of dying Rock Hudson was supposed to prove that he was, indeed, infected with H.I.V. virus, of course, by the Mossad and not as result of his innumerable homosexual acts.
Al Manar is available in dozens of countries around the world through a network of international satellite providers. It is broadcast in Europe via Eutelsat, based in Paris, as part of package of nine channels put out by Arabsat, based in Saudi Arabia.
It is even available in the United States, despite the fact that Hezbollah has been listed by the State Department as a terrorist organization since 1997. (NYT, December 14, 2004)
The pope and the Koran or behind the electoral victory of Hamas
During Pope John Paul II’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land which lasted from March 21 till March 26, 2000 protesting Jews were holding posters that read: “Pius XII – Hitler’s Pope, John Paul II – Hamas’ Pope.” You can see these scenes in the newly released Polish film about this pilgrimage entitled The Double Promised Land.
Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months in office. One report, however, provides important clues to his current thinking.
Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, recounted on the Hugh Hewitt Show the details of a seminar he attended with the pope in September 2005 on Islam. Participants heard about the ideas of Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani-born liberal theologian (1919-88) who held that if Muslims thoroughly reinterpret the Koran, Islam can modernize. He urged a focus on the principles behind Koranic legislation such as jihad, cutting off thieves’ hands, or permitting polygyny, in order to modify these customs to fit today’s needs. When Muslims do this, he concluded, they can prosper and live harmoniously with non-Muslims.
Pope Benedict reacted strongly to this argument. He has been leading such annual seminars since 1977 but always lets others speak first, waiting until the end to comment. But hearing about Fazlur Rahman’s analysis, Fr. Fessio’s recalled with surprise, the pope could not contain himself:
This is the first time I recall where he made an immediate statement. And I’m still struck by it, how powerful it was…[T]he Holy Father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said well, there’s a fundamental problem with that [analysis] because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Muhammad, but it’s an eternal word.
It’s not Muhammad’s word. It’s there for eternity the way it is. There’s no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it.
This basic difference, Pope Benedict continued, makes Islam unlike Christianity and Judaism. In the latter two religions, “God has worked through His creatures. And so, it is not just the word of God, it’s the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He’s used His human creatures, and inspired them to speak His word to the world.” Jews and Christians “can take what’s good” in their traditions and mold it. There is, in other words, “an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations.”
I remember that the library of the Oriental Institute of the Carcow University where I was studying at first Arabic and then Hebrew possessed hundreds of copies of brick-like Qura’ans printed by the Wehrmacht presses during WWII with the purpose of being distributed among the Mulism population of the Soviet Union. The Nazis did not print the Bible which was derided by Hitler as “Jewish folklore and therefore contemptible nonsense.”
August 18th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
For those interested in Gadhafi’s diatribe:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50020