Several employees of the Arabic editorial office of the German public broadcaster “Deutsche Welle” have made anti-Semitic statements in posts on the internet in the past. This is what the newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reports in its Wednesday edition, citing an extensive analysis of a large number of social media posts and articles published in Arabic media.
One editor, for example, called the Holocaust an “artificial product” on Facebook and wrote that the Jews would continue to control “people’s brains through art, media and music”.
Another employee wrote columns in an Arabic-language newspaper before her time at the German foreign broadcaster, which is financed with almost 400 million euros of taxpayers’ money, and wrote there, among other things: “If the Islamic State were fighting for liberation in Palestine, I would revise my judgement of it, its men and its financiers. And if it kicked the Israelis out of the Holy Land, I would be in its ranks.” One of the channel’s correspondents wrote of a “barbaric war machine” in a tweet suggesting a reference to Israel, while a freelancer from the Deutsche Welle Academy, which works independently of the editorial office, tweeted: “The Holocaust is a lie #FreedomOfSpeech”.
The two journalists stated that their remarks were to be understood as advocacy for freedom of expression or taken out of context, reports the newspaper. A spokesperson for the broadcaster also wrote the latter in a statement in relation to Facebook posts by an employee, which, according to information from the newspaper, were pointed out to the editorial management at least twice by internet users. As a result of the newspaper enquiries, some affected employees deleted their accounts or individual posts on the social media. But too late: According to the newspaper, it was able to secure the statements in question and many others in advance via screenshot.
Deutsche Welle (DW) is the foreign broadcasting service of the Federal Republic of Germany and a public institution. However, it is not financed by broadcasting fees, but by taxpayers’ money. Most recently it received around 400 million euros per year.
Is this perhaps only the tip of the iceberg? What about the other state broadcasters? The Office for the Protection of the Constitution should take action here and investigate the ARD and ZDF broadcasters to see how it is that so many anti-Israel reports are allowed to be published.
https://journalistenwatch.com/2021/12/01/sowas-antisemitismus-verdacht/
