BEIRUT, 2 November 2003 — Lebanese officials Friday rejected US demands to intervene with a television station run by the Hezbollah resistance movement to stop a controversial miniseries on Zionism. “Intervening in such a matter will be a violation of free speech,” a Lebanese governmental source told Deutsche Presse Agentur.
“The United States has a strange conception of freedom of expression. What would they say if we tried to interfere with the way Fox News portrays Arabs, Muslims or Palestinians,” he said in reference to the nationalistic US network.
Hezbollah on the other hand welcomed the US State Department’s complaint against its 26-part series “Al-Shatat” or “The Diaspora”, that began airing Monday for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
“Let’s face it, it’s given the program a lot of free publicity,” Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naeem Kassem said on Hezbollah radio and the rival LBC television, only half tongue-in-cheek.
He defended the serial’s content against US charges of anti-Semitism, saying it was “an artistic work based on clear historical facts.”
The State Department said Tuesday that it had complained about the series to the governments of Lebanon and Syria on the grounds that it incorporated elements of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, an infamous 19th century forgery.
US spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters “we are strongly opposed to any and all displays of anti-Semitism and programming that it seen to recognize the so-called ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.”
“We view those programs as unacceptable. Such programs do not contribute to the climate of mutual understanding and tolerance that the Middle East so desperately needs.”
The forged “protocols” which the department has called “racist” and “untrue” describes a Jewish plot for world domination and was used in Nazi Germany and other parts of Europe as a pretext to persecute Jews.
It is not the first time that the state department has protested against Arab programming containing references to the forgery. Last year, it objected vociferously but failed to prevent the broadcast by Egyptian television of the Ramadan miniseries “Horseman Without a Horse”.
Meanwhile, a small bomb exploded in a car in south Lebanon yesterday, slightly injuring the owner’s mother, security officials said.
The bomb was placed in the car of Abbas Shibli, believed to be a former member of an Israel-allied militia, as it was parked outside his home in Nabatiyeh, a market town some 55 kilometers south of Beirut.
The bomb detonated shortly after Shibli’s mother, Wafa Jaber, turned on the ignition, causing her minor injuries and damaging the car, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The motive of the bombing was not immediately clear. The security officials, however, said Shibli and his father, Karam, were former members of the South Lebanon Army, a Lebanese militia that fought alongside Israeli troops during Israel’s 18-year occupation of south Lebanon.
There have been sporadic revenge attacks against former SLA militiamen in south Lebanon, including car bombings and arson attacks, since the Israeli withdrawal.
