British Channel 4 broadcast Ahmadinejad’s X-mess message
Giving all credit to Channel 4 for delivering the Ahmadinejad’s Christmas message, it did tick off some people. They call the speech inappropriate (see for yourself):
The MP Philip Davies, a Friend of Israel, said that the address was “completely unacceptable on every level” but didn’t explain why. “His previous comments don’t strike me as being in tune with what most people feel at Christmas time. He is an offensive man and the last person you would want to use for a Christmas message.”
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Israel’s ambassador, Ron Prosor, complained that Ahmadinejad’s government “leads Christ’s followers to the gallows”. Channel 4’s decision to broadcast the message was a “sick and twisted irony” and a “scandal and a national embarrassment” because the Iranian president “denies the Holocaust, advocates the destruction of the sovereign State of Israel, funds and encourages terrorism, executes children and hangs gay people.”
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Even the TaxPayers’ Alliance had to stick its oar in. They were upset because Channel 4 receives a bit of state funding and taxpayers’ money was being used “to give a platform to a regime that despises democracy, oppresses women and gay people and has made clear its dislike for everything Britain stands for”.
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The Foreign Office went on to say that the broadcast would “cause offence and bemusement not just at home but among friendly countries abroad”.
And the rebuttal:
Mr Prosor himself represents a thuggish regime that is forcing children to eat grass and rummage through waste tips for food this Christmas in order to survive. I’m talking about Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza, of course. His government’s crimes against humanity, violations of human rights and all-round racist vileness are recorded elsewhere so there’s no need to amplify. Let’s just say that Mr Prosor is in no position to criticize others or indeed to lecture us on what constitutes a national embarrassment. He has plenty of his own.
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The Foreign Office, which many feel is infected with pro-Israel bias, also issued a ticking off. “President Ahmadinejad has during his time in office made a series of appalling anti-Semitic statements,” announced a spokeswoman, presumably referring to the famous remark where he quoted the late Ayatollah Khomeini as saying that “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”, a proposition that many people agree with. Israeli propaganda twisted it to read “Israel must be wiped off the map”.
