IRANIAN RADIO TO BROADCAST THE "VOICE OF DAVID", IN HEBREW
TEHRAN, 10 Jun. (AFP-IPS) Iranian State-run radio this week will launch 30-minute daily news bulletins in Hebrew aimed at "countering the monopoly on one-sided news broadcasts", Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) told the French news agency AFP Monday.
The newscast, dubbed the "Voice of David", is scheduled to start on Tuesday and will be broadcast every night from 23H30 to 24H00 local time (1900 to 1930), the agency quoted the "Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic (VVIR) that is directly controlled by the leader of the Iranian theocracy, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, as having announced.
"The Voice of David is aimed at providing proper news for the people in the Middle East and can also be heard over the internet" site of the radio -- irib.com -- an official at the VVIR told AFP, adding that the news bulletin cannot be heard by listeners inside Iran, which has a population of some 27,000 Jews, the largest in the Middle East and officially recognised by the regime.
Tehran does not recognise the Jewish State, which Mr. Khameneh’i has likened to a "cancerous tumor" planted in the Middle East and must be eradicated, and instead supports the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, which since its start two years ago, has left more than one thousands dead among both Palestinians and Israelis, most of them civilians and leading the two communities to a state of war.
Since almost no one in Iran, but a few among the Jewish community speaks Hebrew, sources contacted by Iran Press Service in Tehran speculated that professional Palestinian journalists fluent in that language have been hired to run the program.
The newscast is an addition to the "Qods" (Jerusalem) news service started months ago by the official news agency IRNA and is aimed at countering the Persian service of Radio Israel, which has a large audience both inside Iran and among Iranian Diaspora of more than 3 millions.
However, considering the very poor audience of Iranian public media, particularly in news fields that follows a strict propaganda line dictated by the ruling conservatives, encouraging Iranians to turn to foreign radio stations or Iranian broadcastings from outside the country, observers doubt the "Voice of David" would attract much listeners in Israel, live alone the region, where a very few speaks Hebrew. ENDS VOICE OF DAVID 10602