Joel
On Aug 27, 2006, at 11:41 AM, Michael Givel wrote:
> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Mideast_Guerrilla_TV.html
>
> Friday, August 25, 2006 · Last updated 11:35 a.m. PT
>
> Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV survived attacks
>
> By ZEINA KARAM ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
>
> BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Its headquarters was leveled, its antennas
> pounded, its transmissions jammed and Web site hacked. Yet,
> throughout 34 days of ferocious fighting between Israel and
> Hezbollah, the group's Al-Manar TV stayed on the air - mocking
> Israeli military power from studios in secret bunkers.
>
> How is a mystery. For security reasons, Al-Manar officials won't say
> where they located makeshift studios. The station stayed on the air
> even after its main offices south of Beirut were flattened by Israeli
> warplanes, beaming out live talk shows with political guests.
> Newscasts were broadcast on schedule.
>
> Now that the war has ended, Al-Manar's public relations chief Ibrahim
> Farhat said the broadcaster would rebuild its bombed-out
> headquarters. But its plans have not yet come together about where
> and how quickly. He said the station was still taking stock of its
> losses.
>
> During the conflict, which began July 12 after Hezbollah killed three
> Israeli soldiers and captured two in a cross-border raid, the station
> routinely aired reports on guerrilla rockets strikes on northern
> Israel and ground battles with Israeli troops.
>
> Perhaps the most important broadcasts carried exclusive videotaped
> speeches by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who went into
> hiding when the war began.
>
> And within hours of a U.N.-brokered cease-fire that ended the
> fighting on Aug. 14, Al-Manar came out of hiding and into the
> sunshine, its reporters anchoring a live program in the midst of the
> rubble of destroyed buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs.
>
> advertising "A flame that will not be extinguished," read the new
> slogan beneath the station's logo that was hoisted on surrounding,
> bombed-out buildings.
>
> "It (Al-Manar) fought alongside the guerrillas ... fielding a unique
> experience of tenacity with great commitment," wrote George Hayek, a
> TV columnist for Lebanon's leading daily newspaper, An-Nahar. "Its
> employees were like the soldiers on the battlefield."
>
> Farhat said the station was able to continue broadcasting through the
> efforts of its employees. "Certainly, there were many difficulties,
> but the will to confront was bigger and stronger," he told The
> Associated Press.
>
> He said contingency plans to face such a situation were made several
> years ago, after the U.S. decision in December 2004 to place the
> station on its list of terror organizations. Earlier that year, the
> station was blocked from satellite programming in Australia and had
> to struggle with France to keep it from taking similar measures after
> its transmission of an anti-Semitic miniseries was denounced by
> Jewish lobby groups.
>
> The series - "Al-Shatat," Arabic for "The Diaspora" - was based on
> "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" - the 20th century anti-Semitic
> text purporting to describe a plan to achieve Jewish global
> domination - and depicted among other scenes the killing of a
> Christian child on the orders of a rabbi so the child's blood could
> be added to matzos for Passover.
>
> On Wednesday, a Pakistani businessman in New York was arrested and
> charged with providing satellite broadcasts of Al-Manar to New
> York-area customers.
>
> "They (Israelis) were trying to silence Al-Manar during peace, we
> knew it was only a matter of time before they tried to do that by
> force," Farhat said.
>
> Al-Manar's headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut was leveled
> in an airstrike in the early days of the monthlong war. The TV
> station went off the air for just a few minutes when hackers broke
> into its transmissions but has since been broadcast without stop,
> despite repeated airstrikes that knocked down transmission towers
> across the country. Israeli warplanes attacked an Al-Manar antenna
> just 15 minutes before the cease-fire took hold on Aug. 14.
>
> Since then, the station, which obtained its license from the Lebanese
> government in 1997 and is watched by many across the Arab world and
> elsewhere, has been broadcasting live programming from secret bunkers
> and bombed out areas in south and eastern Lebanon and the southern
> suburbs, often interviewing women who claim to be the mothers, as
> well as other relatives, of those killed in the Israeli attacks.
>
> Al-Manar also airs blatant propaganda videos of its fighters - often
> firing Katyushas from rocket launchers - anthems to rally fighters
> and marches that glorify Hezbollah guerrillas.
>
> One of the clips shows smiling Israeli generals and prime ministers
> juxtaposed against an Israeli flag, ending with the words "Terrorism
> has found a state." Another shows dead and wounded Israeli casualties
> being evacuated from southern Lebanon, with the words: "Your wretched
> fate."
>
> The clips are signed by Hezbollah's "war media" department, in charge
> of recording battles and operations on the battlefield and editing
> them for propaganda purposes.
>
> Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres recently ridiculed Al-Manar's
> coverage.
>
> "They can sing all the songs they want. We know the realities on the
> ground," he said in an interview with the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya
> station.
>
> President Bush said it could take time for the people of Lebanon and
> the world to come to the "sober realization" that Hezbollah lost the
> war.
>
> "The first reaction of course of Hezbollah and its supporters is to
> declare victory. I guess I would have done the same thing if I were
> them," Bush said last week.
>
> Regardless of who won on the battlefield, employees at Al-Manar are
> confident they have won having survived the war.
>
> "I feel so proud that we kept Al-Manar on the air," says Farhat. "And
> they should know they will never succeed in silencing us."
>
>
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