Dei'ah veDibur - Information & Insight
  

A Window into the Chareidi World

18 Sivan 5763 - June 18, 2003 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
NEWS

OPINION
& COMMENT

OBSERVATIONS

HOME
& FAMILY

IN-DEPTH
FEATURES

VAAD HORABBONIM HAOLAMI LEINYONEI GIYUR

TOPICS IN THE NEWS

HOMEPAGE

 

Produced and housed by
Shema Yisrael Torah Network
Shema Yisrael Torah Network

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

All material on this site is copyrighted and its use is restricted.
Click here for conditions of use.