(IsraelNN.com) MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima) says that Israel’s public Arabic-language television channel has become a mouthpiece for radical Muslim and anti-Israel propaganda.
Hasson, who chairs the Knesset’s State Control Committee, says that the station’s promotion of pro-Palestinian content is effected largely by Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem who are not Israelis and who occupy influential positions in the Arabic station.
Hasson wrote a letter on the matter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who holds ministerial responsibility for the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) – Minister Yuli Edelstein stepped down from the position a number of weeks ago – and to State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss and IBA Director Moti Shklar.
The IBA's Arabic broadcasts are hosted on Channel 33, broadcast by satellite to Israel, the Middle East, and Europe. Just ten days ago, MK Ophir Akunis (Likud), a member of the State Control Committee, called for Channel 33 to be closed down altogether.
“Israel Television in Arabic,” Hasson wrote, “is supposed to present an accurate and balanced news picture, in the face of hundreds of hostile Arab satellite stations. It is therefore troubling to note that it chooses to promote to important positions Palestinian workers of eastern Jerusalem, who do not have Israeli citizenship and whose outlooks are pro-Palestinian and pro-Islam. These workers take advantage of their senior positions in order to attack Israel and the IDF, and to promote their own anti-Israel outlooks.”
Hasson notes that two of the three top news editors in Channel 33 are non-Israeli Arabs. “They have the ability to determine the agenda of the news programs, despite the fact that they are not necessarily identified with the State nor with Israeli-Arabs’ news needs.”
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