http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/friedman200501070750.asp
January 07, 2005, 7:50 a.m. Pulling the Plug on Jihad TV Why the U.S. should shut down Hezbollah Live. By Rachel Zabarkes Friedman Last month, the U.S. State Department placed al-Manar, the television station of Hezbollah, on its Terrorist Exclusion List. That designation means that foreign nationals who work for or support al-Manar can be barred from entering the United States, and that those already here can be deported. Some experts - among them the Foundation for the Defense of <http://www.defenddemocracy.org/> Democracies' Avi <http://www.defenddemocracy.org/biographies/biographies_show.htm?attrib_id=9 609> Jorisch, who wrote <http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/jorisch200412220812.asp> about al-Manar for NRO in late December - say this is an important step but should be just the beginning of a concerted effort by the U.S. and others to undermine the terrorist group's popular propaganda outlet. The French government, it would appear, is already on board. Shortly before the State Department's move, France's highest administrative court banned al-Manar, ordering the satellite company broadcasting it there (one of three satellite companies carrying it in Europe) to abandon the channel immediately. The French cited their hate laws and commitment to fighting anti-Semitism as reasons for the ban; in fact, it was the culmination of a year-long <http://www.jewishledger.com/articles/2004/12/22/news/news09.txt> diplomatic campaign by Israeli minister Natan Sharansky to bring the al-Manar phenomenon to European leaders' attention. Already, at least one American pundit has voiced concerns over the free-speech issues raised by the State Department's move. Slate's Jack Shafer wrote <http://slate.msn.com/id/2111527/> in late December: "In suppressing Al-Manar's message, the government is saying that it shall determine what the public can be trusted to know. Not even during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union dedicated itself to the West's destruction, did the government block a sworn enemy's message from reaching us.... However vile and propagandistic Hezbollah's TV station may be, my sense is that it's only one of the administration's targets. The other is you." Shafer's point is not a trivial one, but before judging whether he's right to be concerned, one needs to understand what al-Manar is and why some argue it should be treated not merely as an "unpalatable foreign media outlet" but as the active extension of a terrorist group, even a terrorist <http://www.defenddemocracy.org/research_topics/research_topics_show.htm?doc _id=253870&attrib_id=10016> entity in its own right. BEACON OF TERRORIST PROPAGANDA For this, there is no better resource than Avi Jorisch's powerful study Beacon of <http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/pubs/exec/beacon.htm> Hatred: Inside Hizballah's Al-Manar Television. Jorisch, a former Arab media and terrorism consultant to the Defense Department and fellow at the Washington Institute for Near <http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/> East Policy, begins with some historical perspective. During the 1970s, when Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini was living in exile in Iraq, cassette tapes of his sermons circulated among Shiite households in Iran. Largely unnoticed by the West, these tapes inspired Iranians to launch the Islamic revolution that installed Tehran's current regime. "This phenomenon," Jorisch writes, "occurred largely under Washington's radar screen because relatively few government personnel spoke Persian or Arabic, and fewer still tracked this grass-roots medium of communication. If more American analysts had examined Khomeini's ideas and the dissemination of his sermons, the U.S. government might have been better prepared for the Iranian revolution." Something similar is going on in Lebanon today, Jorisch warns - a "new kind of televised revolution" launched by Hezbollah through al-Manar. Jorisch has spent hundreds of hours watching al-Manar programming (the study also includes a CD-ROM of video clips) and has interviewed station personnel. He concludes that al-Manar provides "a powerful forum for terrorists and rejectionists while promoting the same violent goals as the so-called military wing" of Hezbollah. Hezbollah was founded in 1982 to represent Iranian interests in troubled Lebanon and further Tehran's efforts to export its radical Islamic ideology. In exchange for pledging support for Khomeini and for the creation of an Islamic republic in Lebanon (Hezbollah still opposes a secular Lebanese government), the group received arms and tens of millions of dollars, as well as assistance from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Syria began supporting the group as well in 1989, assuring it freedom of movement in Syrian-occupied Lebanon; when Lebanon's 15-year civil war ended with the signing of the Taif Accord that year, Hezbollah was exempted from the accord's provision that all militias be dismantled. Hezbollah has continued to operate from Lebanon since, launching terrorist attacks across the globe and particularly against American and "Zionist" targets. The group, Jorisch recounts, is for example believed to be responsible for a series of attacks in 1983, one of which killed 241 Americans; for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, which killed 95 people; and for the attack (possibly with al Qaeda) on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia, in which 19 Americans were killed. The reported director of its international activities is on the FBI's most-wanted terrorists list and serves as a liaison between Hezbollah and other groups, including Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda. Hezbollah was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department in 1997 and a "specially designated global terrorist" entity after 9/11. Since its first broadcast in 1991, al-Manar (which means "the beacon" in Arabic) has grown from a handful of employees to 300. It went from using a broadcast signal that barely made it outside Beirut to a 24-hour satellite station with global reach, broadcasting news, docudramas, political talk shows, sports events, and even music videos. It advertises itself as "The Station of Arabs and Muslims." Most of al-Manar's money comes from Iran (indirectly, through Hezbollah); its annual budget was about $15 million in 2002. The station also receives donations from viewers around the world, who are asked to deposit money directly into Hezbollah's Lebanese bank accounts. Commercial advertising from Lebanese and Western companies accounts for another portion of income. Though previous American commercial advertisers - including Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble, and Western Union - stopped advertising on al-Manar in 2002 following an L.A. Times op-ed by Jorisch, European companies continued. Al-Manar's stated purpose is to wage "psychological warfare" against the "Zionist entity" by promoting Hezbollah's worldview and encouraging "resistance" against Israel. "Hizballah regards Israel's very existence as an act of terrorism," writes Jorisch; al-Manar's general manager and board chairman told him that Israeli "civilians and military are both occupiers and, therefore, both are legitimate targets" for attack. The station isn't subtle in communicating its message, either: "Throw stones! Stab! Kill the occupier with a stone, with a knife, with any weapon," says a voice-over in one video clip, as footage shows triumphant Arabs and bleeding Israelis. Jorisch reports that according to several analyses, al-Manar is the third-most popular television station in Lebanon under normal circumstances, and the first when conflict arises in southern Lebanon or the Palestinian territories. It is also the most popular station in the West Bank and Gaza, along with Al Jazeera. Naturally, as part of its mission, al-Manar encourages martyrdom - openly inculcating militancy in young people, urging parents to teach their children about resistance, and asking family members to support potential martyrs. Ayat al-Akhras, a Palestinian suicide bomber, had reportedly "watched al-Manar incessantly before blowing herself up in front of a Jerusalem supermarket." Hezbollah's enemy list doesn't stop at Israel: The United States is also one the group's - and therefore al-Manar's - primary targets. One al-Manar segment proclaims, "America owes blood to all of humanity," and shows a gradually enlarging image of the Statue of Liberty with a weapon in its hand and a deformed, skeletal face. Another clip compares President Bush to Hitler by juxtaposing - over a background of burning fire and wailing music - images of the violence and suffering each imposed. Al-Manar now broadcasts inside Iraq, Jorisch points out, where it incites violence against U.S. forces. NEXT STEPS The success of al-Manar is troubling news for anyone who would like to see pro-Western democracies flourish in the Middle East, or who worries about the future of Europe's many Muslim immigrants (who can watch the station via satellite). Moreover, without serious opposition, Jorisch suggests, the station's influence in the region and around the world will only continue to grow. He learned, for example, that al-Manar hopes to launch a 24-hour news channel and a number of new stations that broadcast in English, French, Hebrew, and Russian. What, then, is to be done? Jorisch argues that there are a number of steps the United States can take - on top of the recent Terrorist Exclusion List designation, which also prompted two satellite providers to block al-Manar from the U.S. market - to mitigate al-Manar's destructive influence and stop its further spread. These include adding the station to the Treasury Department's terrorism-sanctions list; asking Lebanese banks to freeze Hezbollah's accounts, and blocking the U.S.-based assets and market-access of any bank that refuses to do so; prohibiting American companies from advertising on terrorist media outlets; engaging the European Union about European companies that advertise on al-Manar; closing down al-Manar's Washington bureau in accordance with existing anti-terror laws; and pressuring Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and the UAE to close down the station's bureaus in their territories. Do such attempts to shut down al-Manar amount to a patronizing, power-hungry attempt by government to decide what news Americans and others are permitted to see? No more than restricting incitements to imminent violence is a violation of free speech, and no more than enforcing that restriction necessarily invites a slippery slope to the end of free speech as we know it. The State Department's latest move is a defensive response (or the beginning of one) to a clever terrorist tactic: As Jorisch shows, al-Manar recruits jihadists and gives them ideological fodder; it explicitly encourages attacks on Israeli civilians and American soldiers. Pretty much any way you look at it, it's a weapon in Hezbollah's war - which is also Iran's war, which is also, evidence <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6581-2004Jun25?language=printer> suggests, al Qaeda's to a significant extent. In short, al-Manar is hardly comparable to an independent news outlet whose views the administration happens to dislike. Shutting down such an outlet would of course be troubling; shutting down al-Manar is not. AND ONE MORE THING... There is yet another important consequence to al-Manar's popularity and influence. Jorisch begins his study with the suggestion that Hezbollah has been fomenting a powerful mass movement, even a revolution, through the station. That claim might seem exaggerated - after all, as the indispensable Middle East Media Research Institute has made clear to the world, the messages al-Manar promotes have been propagated throughout the Middle East for years. In the Palestinian territories, for example, a generation of children has already been indoctrinated in the virtue of "resistance." Who needs al-Manar? No doubt, in some places the station may be just another voice in the Islamist chorus, albeit a powerful one. But where al-Manar stands to have a uniquely significant impact seems to be in Lebanon. Many who hope for an end to the Syrian occupation of that country assume that a non-occupied Lebanon would serve U.S. interests in the region. As Amir Taheri argued in the <http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/9915> Wall Street Journal in December, Lebanon's history, its established middle class, and its intellectual elite all indicate that it "could, given a chance, become one of the first Arab states to join the global democratic mainstream." But even if there is a powerful Lebanese opposition to the occupation, al-Manar's popularity suggests that support for Hezbollah there could be greater than we think. Lebanon could in fact be a cauldron ready to boil over, in which case that long-troubled nation just might be transformed from a passive extension of Syria into an active extension of Iran. This is in the realm of speculation, however; what is certain is that al-Manar is a dangerous force that should be reigned in. Avi Jorish's carefully researched and powerfully argued study is a key step in that direction. - Rachel Zabarkes Friedman is an associate editor of National Review. 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