Beirut, 25 Sept. (AKI) – Throughout the war in July and August, when Israel mercilessly bombarded Lebanon and Lebanese Hezbollah militias fired rockets into northern Israel one of Israel’s main targets was al-Manar, a satellite channel part owned by Hezbollah. The network, which offers 40 percent news programmes, managed to broadcast almost uninterrupted from a secret location. But now that there is a shaky truce, the channel’s director Abdallah Qasir, defends the credibility of his news output and told Adnkronos International (AKI) that Israel could be a new basin for viewers.
“Even within Israel there are people who tune in to know what is happening to their soldiers: during the war, many Israeli viewers often prefered al-Manar to know the truth of the war of Olmert and Peretz” Qasir said.

According to a survey conducted by the university of Beirut in April 2005, al-Manar emerged as the most popular channel in Yemen, Bahrain, and the Palestinian territories, while in Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Jordan it was the third most popular network. But in terms of new market share, Qasir indicates Israeli television viewers as the next target.

“We have nothing against Jews” he claims. “We are not anti Jewish, but we are anti-Israel and anti Zionist, because Israel has occupied our lands and threatened our lives for decades now”.

“We are Muslims and as such we respect the other two revealed religions, Christianity and Judaism, and we consider them sister faiths” he added.

Al-Manar is owned by a company 55 per cent controlled by Hezbollah and 45 percent by private Lebanese shareholders. “The board reflects this division” Qasir explains. “The television is certainly close to Hezbollah and to its political line but it is also a channel with a strong editorial independence, in favour of a sovreign independent Lebanon, which opposes the Israel and US dominion in the region.”

Regarding the financing, al-Manar’s director said “they mainly come from advertising and from private donations” and vigorously denies any financial support from Iran.

The television studios in the southern outskirts of Beirut, were hit from early on in the recent conflict but the channel rarely interrupted its programming.

“We were ready for such an emergency and as soon as they struck our transmitters on 13 July we knew we had to move within 48 hours to emergency studios. We stopped transmission only for two minutes on 16 July, the time it took to call the technicians in the makeshift studios and tell them to start broadcasting from there instead.”

Qadir, who has been the director since January 2005, after being a Hezbollah MP in the national parliament, has no intention of revealing from where the tv transmitted for the 24 days of the war, not where it currently broadcasts from. “We are always a target and for security reasons we cannot give any details.

He brushed off as “nonsense” rumours that al-Manar broadcast from the Iranian embassy or from Syrian villages near the border with Lebanon. “Certainly we have never fled Lebanon but we preferred working from the southern outskirts of the capital” he said.

“We currently work in various premises but hope in the near future to have it all under one roof,” he said.

Al Manar, which literally means The Lighthouse, was founded in the late 1990s as a local television station that transmitted only in Beirut and the southern suburbs. In 1997, it was granted a national broadcast licence, and in 2000 entered in the stable of Arabsat and Nilesat. The global leap came in 2003 when it began broadcasting by satellite in Australia, the Far East and North America.

However, in 2003, the Bush administration put the channel on the terrorist black list, banning it from the Intelsat platform. Around the same time, France’s Council of State ordered those operating the European Eutelsat to block al-Manar’s broadcasts after it showed a Syrian television series considered anti-Semitic.

“Religion was just a pretext to close down a broadcaster that was a thorn in the side of the US and Israel ” he explained. That series was not even produced by al-Manar, we simply put it out without checking the contents. We apologised but it did no good”

“In France the channel of the Jewish community and even many national television networks offend Islam, provoking protest by various Islamic representatives in Paris but no one would dream of shutting them down” he argued.

Al-Manar produces 90 per cent of its own programming and buys the remaining ten per cent, mainly Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi soap operas. Forty percent of what is broadcasts is news and current affairs.