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The following are excerpts from a statement issued by Tawfiq Okasha, the owner of Al-Faraeen TV. It aired on Al-Faraeen TV on January 17, 2010.
Tawfiq Okasha: On Wednesday, the Middle East Media Research Institute sent us some of its reservations about the political shows aired by Al-Faraeen TV.
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The strategic Middle East Media Research Institute has three offices in the Middle East. The first office is located in an Arab country – Jordan. I will not state the exact place in Jordan for now. [MEMRI] has another office, in Egypt – within the US embassy in Cairo. This office is supervised by our colleague Nihal Rizq, who is a journalist in Egyptian Radio. The strange thing is that the American Middle East Media Research Institute has a third office, within the Al-Jazeera TV headquarters in Qatar. Then we received [a letter] from the world Jewish legal center, which is based in Europe and financed by the EU.
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They have taken measures against us, and have written to the German Deutsche Welle TV, calling upon it to cancel its contract with us, claiming that Al-Faraeen TV is an antisemitic channel, which levels false accusations against the Jews. Okay. Indeed, we had contacts with the German TV. The German TV called us and asked for clarifications. Our colleague Sumaya Shinawi, who heads the news department of Al-Faraeen TV and is our liaison officer with the German TV, talked with them and clarified everything.
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I have a clear message to the Middle East Media Research Institute, and to the international European Jewish legal organization: Al-Faraeen TV is a purely liberal TV channel. It does not belong to anyone, and is not paid by anyone. Al-Faraeen TV is not sponsored or supported by the National Democratic Party.
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I would like to say to the Jewish legal center – with regard to MEMRI, things are clear... I say to the Jewish center: If something we said made you think that we are anti-Semites, there is such a thing as the language of dialogue. What we presented were facts – according to our view and the information at our disposal. You claim that what we said makes us anti-Semites. Fine, come and debate us.
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We do not consider it beneath us to conduct a dialogue with the other. On the contrary, Al-Faraeen TV's mission is to encourage dialogue with the other. Al-Faraeen TV fights the clash of cultures, and supports dialogue between cultures. This is our way.
You said that we had talked about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and that these protocols are humiliating to the Jews. Well, these are the documents we have. You are invited to start a dialogue with us, and deny that the Jews have anything to do with these protocols.
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Not all Jews are Semites, and not all Semites are Jews. The Ashkenazi Jews are an Aryan race, with no relation whatsoever to [the Biblical] Shem. If you have any evidence to the contrary, we are fully prepared to air it, and to defend it, on the condition that the evidence is clear and well-documented. According to our well-documented evidence, the Aryan Ashkenazi Jews have nothing to do with Semitism, and the Jewish Semitism is restricted to the Arab Jews. Every Arab Jew is a Semite, and every non-Arab Jew is not a Semite.
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I would like to say to the Jews: You talk about the Holocaust and about many other things. Do you have any video footage of this? Do you have any pictures of this? If you do – send them to me, and I will show them [on TV]. I have no problem with this. All my life I have been hearing about Jewish holocausts. Ever since I was born, I've been hearing about the Holocaust, but I haven't seen any films of it. Send me films, and I will show them to public opinion, and we will be able to talk about this... There's nothing to it. You have the right to do this.
This is a media institution, and as such, it belongs to public opinion. Anyone can come and present his opinion and defend himself, if he believes that he was criticized. But you cannot use methods of terror, like threatening to hang us from our feet and to sentence us to death. Go ahead and sentence us to death! We are not afraid. If we die, we will die as martyrs for the sake of Allah.
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