Anti-semitic programming to be banned on Arab channels

The government will take action to ban Arab satellite television stations from broadcasting anti-Semitic programmes in France, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has announced.

Raffarin told France’s Jewish leaders last night he was revolted by some of the anti-Jewish broadcasts he had seen on French television and that parliament would pass legislation to ban such programming from French airwaves.

“I say to the Jews of France, do not be afraid, do not be tempted by those who want to separate you from the national community,” Raffarin told a crowd of 800 people attending the annual dinner of CRIF, an umbrella group of French Jewish organisations.

The announcement comes one day after Israel announced that it had asked France to block broadcasts by Al-Manar, a television station that belongs to Lebanese-based Hezbollah militants. Hezbollah is fighting Israel in south Lebanon.

Israel and the United States last year formally protested at the Al-Manar channel’s broadcasting of a series it said was based on the “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, a 19th-century, anti-Semitic tract commonly used in Nazi propaganda to incite hatred against Jews.

Raffarin said Culture Minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon was to prepare an amendment to electronic communications legislation being examined by the National Assembly on February 10.

The amendment would allow the CSA, France’s media watchdog authority, to bring action before a judicial administrator in order to have programmes banned from French television. Financial penalties would be put in place for violators.