Anti-Israel campaigners have been using the stamp of the Welsh Assembly to give legitimacy to an offensive video attack on Israel.
The video on the Swansea Telly online channel is narrated by “Paul”, who describes himself as an “allegedly unbiased reporter for the BBC Zionist network, reporting from Zionist Games at the Gaza Strip”.
It features three “Israelis” dressed in mock IDF uniform, competing for a shooting medal. Their faces have been deliberately blurred.
“At the sound of the whistle, the competitors will attempt to shoot as many Gaza fishermen as possible in 60 seconds,” says Paul. The contest is shown against a graphic of fisherman dripping with blood. A man in a Netanyahu mask then presents medals.
The video also lists numbers of Gazans allegedly killed or injured by the Israelis, using statistics from the Global Network for Rights and Development.
Swansea Telly was funded by the Welsh government until March 2012, but it no longer enjoys its support.
A spokesman said that they had requested that its name be removed.
He added: “If we had still been funding this organisation, we would have requested the immediate removal of this offensive video.”
Paul O’Connor, Swansea Telly’s production manager, who acted as a media representative for Swansea Action Palestine last year when four of its members joined the flytilla to Gaza — among them Pippa Bartolotti, the woman running for the Green Party leadership — said that, since they lost government funding, the channel had been “open for the wider Swansea public to submit and share their own views”.
He added: “The majority of videos are from personal viewpoints and are not intended to be objective.
“The local people who made the Zionist Games 2012 video have a point of view and they produced a video to reflect that viewpoint. Swansea Telly is a platform for sharing views to provoke comment and discussion about society.”
But Paul Charney, of the Zionist Federation, said: “Reaching new heights of ridiculousness, it looks like the flying circus of ‘apparent’ human-rights activists have now replaced common sense and reasoned debate with pointless satirical propaganda and lies.
“If this is meant to lend pragmatic support to the Palestinian cause, then I suggest they turn their attention elsewhere, possibly in supporting the IDF in providing tons of humanitarian aid, food and medical supplies to Gaza on a daily basis.”
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