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Canadian TV host’s anti-Israel remarks spur protests

January 5, 2012

(JTA) – The Simon Wiesenthal Center has protested to the Canadian French-language station V-Television after a host aired anti-Israel views on his show for a second time.

Stephane Gendron on his "Face to Face" program of Dec. 27 urged viewers to boycott Israeli products. He also said it was unfortunate that Israel has not yet collapsed, and that it had no right to exist.

Gendron, who is also the mayor of Huntingdon, a town in Quebec, on his Nov. 2 show had called Israel an apartheid state that murders Palestinians indiscriminately. HonestReporting and other pro-Israel groups protested against the network, which has yet to take action against Gendron.

“[Gendron’s views] are shared by the likes of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran's ruling Mullatocracy and its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for annihilation of the only true democracy in the Middle East,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper of The Wiesenthal Center said in a Dec. 30 letter to Maxima Remillard, CEO of V-Television. “It is dangerously naive and irresponsible not to believe that such escalating rhetoric -- left unchallenged by V-Television -- could impact intergroup relations in Quebec.”

Cooper acknowledged that while Gendron is free to share his beliefs, there is no reason for V-Television to provide a platform for his inflammatory remarks.

Remillard has yet to respond to the letter or Gendron's remarks.
 

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