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NEWS
S A Jews Struggle Against Propaganda
by D Saks, South Africa
South African Jews are making little headway in countering
negative portrayals of Israel -- and increasingly also of
Jews -- in the mainstream media, despite statutory provisions
prohibiting the dissemination of "hate speech" based on race,
religion, gender or ethnicity. Over the past three years, a
host of complaints have been lodged by members of the
community with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of
South Africa (BCCSA). Of these, all but one have been
dismissed.
The concerns of South African Jewry are mirrored to a greater
or lesser extent by those of other Diaspora communities. In
the United Kingdom, for example, a complaint regarding the
broadcast of the documentary "Palestine is Still the Issue"
was dismissed last year, despite the film's obvious anti-
Israel bias, as was a complaint against a leading newspaper
for publishing a cartoon depicting Ariel Sharon eating
Palestinian babies. Jewish leaders in Canada and Australia,
where antisemitic incidents have mounted over the past two
years, also report struggling to turn the media tide in a
climate of intense hostility towards Israel.
The most recent BCCSA decision to have gone against a Jewish
complainant concerned the reading over the air of an email
message from a listener that, inter alia, blamed America's
war on Iraq on "Jewish interest groups" who were allegedly
responsible for funding and electing the US government and
wished to gain control of Iraq's oil reserves. The
complainant, Joel Pollak, demonstrated that the statement was
both untrue and degrading to Jewish people everywhere and
stated that the radio host should have excised the offending
portions from the email message before reading it out.
The Tribunal concurred that a radio host indeed had a duty to
exercise due discretion when dealing with written comments
submitted by listeners, but ruled that in this particular
case the statement was not of a sufficiently offensive nature
as to constitute hate speech and the host had therefore not
been obliged to omit reading it.
In the past, the BCCSA has shown a willingness to censure
more blatant forms of prejudice, as it did in a case of a
call to "kill all Jews, wherever you may find them" on a
local Muslim station and the broadcast of a controversial
song whose lyrics blamed South African Indians for causing
black impoverishment. Unfortunately, when it comes to
criticism of Israel and its government, it is evident that
"anything goes," with no amount of anti-Israel bias
apparently being sufficient to earn censure of any kind.
While having always to be seen against the equally important
need to protect legitimate freedom of expression, its has
created alarmingly wide perameters within which vitriolic
attacks against Israel and thinly disguised denigration of
Jews can take place on an ongoing basis.
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