CRIF presses president Chirac over Hezbollah TV 

The French Jewish umbrella organization CRIF has urged president Jacques Chirac to prevent the TV channel Al-Manar from broadcasting in France. In a statement issued Tuesday, the CRIF said last week’s decision by France’s broadcasting authority to allow the Hezbollah-linked Al-Manar to continue broadcasts “gives official authorization to anti-Semitic propaganda". Referring to a cabinet committee on anti-Semitism that initially called for a ban, CRIF said the committee should hold an emergency meeting on the issue. “We would like to know the position of the president of the republic regarding the situation created bythe broadcasting authority”, the statement concluded. CRIF also launched a public petition calling for the station to be banned. Al-Manar, which is broadcast across Europe through the French-owned Eutelstat satellite network, transmitted a virulently anti-Semitic, Syrian-made series last fall that included images of Jews slaughtering a Christian child to use the blood to make matzoth.