Israeli Radio Show Captivates Iranians
by Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2009
Menashe Amir Kol Israel Persian service
“We’re listened to in Iran and considered very credible and effective,” Mr. Amir says with pride. “We’re close to the Iranian people, we know what they want, and we have our sources that give us detailed news about everything that’s going on in Iran.”
The spread of the Internet and satellite television in Iran over the past decade seemed to eclipse the prominence of Mr. Amir’s old-fashioned shortwave broadcasts on Kol Israel, Israel’s public radio. But now, as the Web in Iran is either blocked or dramatically slowed and satellite-TV channels are jammed by the government amid spreading unrest, Mr. Amir has suddenly become relevant again.
“Today we have many more listeners inside the country because Iranians are thirsty for any information” about the unrest, the 69-year-old Mr. Amir says. He estimates the Iranian audience for Kol Israel’s 85-minute daily show in Persian is between two million and six million people. Independent audience numbers, for obvious reasons, are impossible to come by.
Though semiretired, Mr. Amir has been hosting the show every day since Iran’s controversial June 12 elections, narrating news summaries and taking live telephone calls from listeners within Iran. The call-in part of the broadcast, normally a weekly feature, is now on air daily due to the current unrest. Because Iran bans phone and postal links with Israel, Iranian callers dial a special number in Germany; as a precaution, Mr. Amir asks them not to mention their names or hometowns.
On a recent day, as Mr. Amir sat in his tiny studio in Kol Israel’s Jerusalem offices, one caller from Iran, his voice trembling with emotion, recounted how “there’s blood on the streets and people are being killed like butterflies.” Another urged the world to help the protesters—reminding that Persian emperor Cyrus the Great protected and aided the Jews two and a half millennia ago, and asking the Jewish state to repay the favor by supporting Iranian demonstrators today. (Continue Reading this Article)
The regime is worried about the broadcasts. What they lack in audience size they make up in influence and credibility. What a totalitarian dictatorship fears above all is the truth.
Comment by NormanF — June 23, 2009 @ 7:35 pm
I’m glad Mr. Amir is finding an audience, and I wish him well. Concerning all the ado about Iran, though, I am very skeptical. I am so used to the mainstream media lying through their teeth, that I almost automatically assume they are lying. Obama and the msm report that there was massive election fraud in Iran, and Israeli Intelligence says there wasn’t. It’s a no brainer, whom to believe.
Comment by BlandOatmeal — June 24, 2009 @ 10:31 am