Day Of Solidarity with Al-Manar TV - Ghaleb Qandil: We Arabs Are Semites, The Jews Are Khazars

Against the backdrop of the trial of Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV, the Lebanese media held a conference to mark a "Day of Solidarity" with Al-Manar TV. Ghaleb Qandil, of the the Committee for Solidarity with Al-Manar, spoke on Al-Manar TV itself. The following are excerpts:

The measures against Al-Manar TV discriminate against the Arabs' freedom of expression, against the Arab media's right to express itself and to present facts and events. This discrimination contradicts French cultural legacy and the French constitution and laws. We must tell the French that we will not compromise our right to express our opinion on issues concerning us.

We are committed to avoiding discrimination. All the talk about anti-Semitism is a kind of meaningless nonsense that does not warrant attention. We Arabs are Semites by origin and the offspring of the Khazar Jews will not be the ones to judge how Semitic we are. They are aliens in our region who established their entity through plunder, occupation, and massacres.

I believe that (the French decision) is indicative of an American-Zionist effort aimed at taming our media and subjugating it to a list of conditions that obfuscate the picture of the Israeli crimes that we are presenting.