Joel Mowbray follows up his earlier work on the taxpayer-financed Arab television network Al-Hurra with a long report in today’s Wall Street Journal under the heading “Mad TV.” Joel’s report opens with the news that Al-Huraa carried a speech by the head of Hezbollah live on December 7:
Testifying under oath recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice misled Congress in her strong defense of Al-Hurra, the taxpayer financed Arab TV network. It was unwitting, though. She herself was misled.
During the March 21 House Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Rep. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) pressed Ms. Rice on the wisdom of providing a platform to Islamic terrorists, citing Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s Dec. 7 speech, which Al-Hurra aired live. The broadcast speech “went on for 30 minutes,” she responded, “followed by commentary, much of which was critical of Nasrallah.”
In fact, Mr. Nasrallah’s speech was carried in its entirety, roughly an hour and eight minutes. The commentary that followed–a 13-minute phone interview with Wael Abou Faour, a member of Lebanon’s governing coalition–was indeed critical of Mr. Nasrallah. He accused the Hezbollah leader of not being anti-U.S. and anti-Israel enough. While Mr. Nasrallah had claimed Lebanon’s governing coalition was aligned with the U.S. and had backed Israel during the war last summer, Mr. Abou Faour said that Hezbollah was actually closer to the U.S and added that any Lebanese faction that assisted “the Israeli enemy” should not be allowed to engage in political discussion because “the only place they should be [is] in prison.”
The secretary of state’s testimony was without doubt delivered in good faith. But the same cannot be said of the information about the broadcast Al-Hurra provided to the State Department.
In short, Joel reports that that Al-Hurra not only provides a platform for Islamic terrorists but that it also furthers Holocaust denial. He attributes its failures to news director Larry Register and his supporters — the Broadcasting Board of Governors and State Department Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. We anticipate that Joel will be following up on his column Wall Street Journal today with supporting information and additional items he will file for Power Line this week.
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