Hamas’ official television channel, Al-Aksa TV, will stop broadcasting in Europe, in compliance with an official order from the French broadcast authority.
The Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA) made the request to Eutelsat, the third-largest satellite company in the world, because "some programs violate French laws against promoting racial hatred and religious violence."
In addition to providing comprehensive local coverage – notably during the 2008 Operation Cast Lead – the network frequently runs controversial cartoon programs that mimic popular characters Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, and which feature radical Islamist messages. In one episode, the Mickey Mouse-like character, Farfour, urges children in song to pick up AK-47 rifles to defeat Israel and the United States. Later, Farfour is beaten to death by an Israeli officer. The cartoons often criticize the West and applaud suicide bombings and self-sacrifice; anti-Semitism is also a common theme in Al-Aksa’s programming agenda.
“There can be no doubt: These broadcasts radicalize its viewers and put European citizens – particularly of a young age – at risk,” said Alexander Ritzmann, a senior terrorism analyst from the European Foundation for Democracy, in The Jerusalem Post.
In a March 2009 broadcast, Al-Aqsa TV aired a play at the Islamic University in Gaza City, established by Hamas-founder Ahmed Yassin, which charged Jews with drinking and washing their hands in the blood of Arabs and Muslims as part of their rituals.
Launched in 2006, Al-Aksa TV has an estimated 20 million viewers in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The station is owned and managed by leading Hamas party officials, who provide most of its funding. Hamas has a long record of propagating anti-Semitic views as their charter views Jews as “diabolical and deserving of slaughter.”
The network says the CSA ban will cost it 70 percent of its viewers, but it will continue broadcasting in Africa and the Middle East.
The move has been met with protests in Egypt and Syria, where demonstrators gathered in front of the French embassy in Damascus denouncing the order as illegal and without proper basis. French authorities counter that they have been warning the Hamas-run network since March 2009 to edit their programming to satisfy French laws.
Al-Aksa TV was put on the U.S. Treasury Department’s global terrorist list last March, but even without the channel, Hamas controls a range of other media outlets; including radio stations, newspapers, magazines, an a film industry.
The Gaza-based station said the move could "only be explained as submission to Israel and the US who aim at suppressing public freedoms and freedom of expression."
