Joanna
Joel Schalit wrote:
> I hear tell from various sources that Al-Manar had a backup studio
> operating out of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, which is where
> Nasrallah is alleged to have sat out the war. One can understand why
> the Israelis would not target said building.
>
> 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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