NEW YORK- In another demonstration of the post-Arafat Palestinian Authority’s hostility towards both Jews and America, the PA is opposing France’s decision to ban a television station operated by the Hezbollah terrorist group after it aired anti-Semitic statements.

In addition to its murders of hundreds of Israelis over the years, Hezbollah carried out the 1983 car-bomb attack on the U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon, massacring 241 Americans.

The PA’s senior representative in France, Leila Shahid, has publicly defended Hezbollah’s “Al-Manar” television station and claimed that she “did not notice hatred in the programs” that Al-Manar broadcasts. (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Dec.7, 2004) Last year, Al-Manar aired a series based on the notorious Czarist Russian anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As a result, when Al-Manar requested permission to begin broadcasting in France, the French government required it to sign a pledge to refrain from broadcasting any hate material. Al-Manar signed the agreement on November 19, and then just four days later ran a news story accusing “Zionists” of “transmitting dangerous diseases such as AIDS through exports to Arab countries.”

Morton A. Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), said: “Once again, the post-Arafat Palestinian Authority sides with America’s enemies. From Saddam Hussein to Hezbollah, the PA consistently supports those who hate and murder Jews and Americans. The time has come for the Bush administration to recognize that the PA is fundamentally an anti-American terrorist regime, and withdraw its support for the creation of a Palestinian Arab state. It is clear that such a state would be an anti-American terrorist dictatorship.”

For a free copy of the ZOA’s report on anti-American statements and actions by the Palestinian Authority please call the ZOA at 212-481-1500.