BBC Monitoring

Text of report by Syrian newspaper Al-Ba'th website on 27 September

[Report by Tafid Abu-al-Khayr in Damascus: "Workshop at Al-Ba'th House on the Role of Media in Enhancing the Culture of Resistance."]

The Role of the Media in Enhancing the Culture of Resistance was the title of the workshop organized by Al-Ba'th House and the internet site of the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party, during which the participants underlined the need to lay down an Arab media strategy to defend the Arab rights and identity and confront the campaigns of deception and distortion the causes, rights, and interests of the Arab nation are facing.

The workshop was attended by Talib Qadi, an assistant to the information minister, Ilyas Murad, president of the Journalists Union, and a number of thinkers and interested people. The speakers were Tahsin al-Halabi, deputy president of the Palestinian Journalists and Writers Union in Syria and Dr Muhammad al-Rifa'i, a professor at the Media Department of Damascus University.

Al-Halabi talked about! the advancement of the means of communication and the techniques of the modern media, which have become a central part of the balance of powers. He touched upon the Israeli aggression against Lebanon, noting a conflict between two media fronts; namely, the resistance media and the media of frustration and defeat. The legacy of the resistance culture of the Arab nation, however, facilitated the work of the resistance media, which achieved a great victory in the end. On the other hand, the Zionist society, which is an opportunist society, does not have the resistance energy the Arab human has. The Israeli media outlets, which are subject to a strict government control, failed to have the settlers hold out, while the sons of the south held fast despite the thousands of bombs, which have been falling on them for years. The set of values in which we believe prompt us to survive and continue the steadfastness and defiance. Al-Halabi stressed that the credibility of the media is ! extremely important, and so is the credibility of the leadership that confronts the hostile media. The resistance media should always enhance faith in victory among the ranks of fighters and supporters.

Al-Rifa'i talked about the manifestations of the resistance media in the Arab media. He began by talking about the main US and Zionist goal behind destroying the Arab culture, which is a long-standing ideology of resistance, by altering traditions and portraying surrender to the enemy as a civilized state based on the fact that a large part of the Arab countries came under this influence through peace agreements, under which they are bound to not mention texts that could harm the other side.

Al-Rifa'i divided the Arab media into impotent, capitulatory media and resistance media. He noted that Arab channels host Zionists at a time when no Arab is able to express himself and speak boldly on a Zionist or western channel.

Concluding, Al-Rifa'i said that the resistance and its media found a solution to the duality of vision between! what targets the domestic front and what targets the external front, because resistance is a state based on an ideology and a will.

In their comments, the participants talked about the achievements of the July media war and the inability of the Arab media to give the July victory its natural right. We did not benefit from the state created by the resistance; namely, that we are a living nation capable of defeating this entity.

The participants touched upon the negligence in exposing the massacres of the occupation and reminding the successive Arab generations of the heinous crimes the occupation committed against the Arab people. Some participants noted the history of the Zionist media plans and the fact that they coincided with the beginnings of the Zionist movement and directed the European public opinion in favour of the Israeli entity. They underlined the need to draw up plans and conduct strategic media studies for the next stage that would support the res! istance media and enhance the resistance potential of the Arab citizen s in order to defend the Arab rights and regain them fully.

Source: Al-Ba'th website, Damascus, in Arabic 27 Sep 07