The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is complaining on their Web site that DirecTV is refusing to show an ad of their on their satellite system. They state:
After detailed discussions with DIRECTV, including agreement on rates, times, and network placements of the ad, when we gave them the final product, they abruptly decided not to do business with us.
This blatant act of censorship is preventing millions of U.S. households from learning the truth about our government’s crucial role in enabling Israel’s war on and siege of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
They obviously know as little about the First Amendment as they do the Middle East. Censorship is an act of the government. A private company such as DirecTv is under no obligation to sell air time to anyone. It also doesn’t seem to occur to them that the reason DirecTV decided not to run it was because they actually saw the final product.
After watching it, I can see why the satellite provider decided as it did: it is propagandistically one-sided, contains inaccurate and unverified information, and calls on the president to take an action designed to ultimately render Israel defenseless by cutting off the aid it needs to maintain its military strength in the face of terrorist groups as well as the hostility of Syria and Iran. The U.S. Campaign, which includes representatives of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and American Friends Service Committee on its steering committee, is in the habit of referring to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as “apartheid,” and refuses to criticize Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, or any other anti-Israel terrorist group for anything they do or say. Here’s the ad–just consider it mainline church leadership at work:
February 4, 2009 at 7:45 am
Much of the statistics shown on this video are an outright lie. An Italian newspaper reporter actually in Gaza during the recent war estimates that about 500 to 600 deaths is a more accurate number, with nearly all of them of men aged 20 to 45. Additionally, the Palestinians frequently “stage” events for the international and their own media, including scenes like the little boy crying on the pile of rubble.
Also, Israel has always, always allowed humanitarian relief shipments into Gaza, even stopping their war efforts for 3 hours at a time to allow those shipments in. Many of these relief convoys are intercepted by Hamas, which steals the food and medicine for its own use, depriving its citizens of needed aid. And Israel supplies Gaza with over half of its electricity, for which Hamas has not and doesn’t pay.
This video ad is nothing but a reprehensible piece of propaganda, paid for by left wing Christian groups whose agenda coincides with the violent, Islamofascist precepts of the terrorist group Hamas.
February 4, 2009 at 2:02 pm
My favorite censorship remark came from the editor of the local paper in the town where I did my internship: “Those who complain about our not publishing certain things and accusing us of censorship have to realize that freedom of the press applies only to those who own presses.”