On June 16, a debate took place on a program of the LN24 French-speaking channel, a day after a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the center of Brussels.
The panel of commentators included Alain Kupchik, director of the Institute of the Jewish Audiovisual Memory (IMAJ).
As the word “genocide” was used several times to describe the situation in Gaza, notably by the program host, Kupchik took the floor and denounced the imputation.
“I’ve heard so many inaccuracies that are taken for proven certainties that I’m flabbergasted,’’ he said.
“The aid trucks have never stopped arriving in Gaza. It’s all very well to make covers of L’Humanité [the French Communist daily] calling Netanyahu the starver of Gaza, but it’s a hoax. At the same time as this Humanité cover, there are stories on TikTok of Gazans eating Nutella pancakes. In my opinion, famine isn’t exactly that,” he added.
Kupchik refuted the accusation of famine and pointed out that in the “last two weeks, 20 million meals have been distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.”
He also recalled the “genocidal savagery” of the perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023, pogroms, who “filmed, broadcast and assumed responsibility” for their crimes. And he responded to another panel member by saying that “there has never been a country called Palestine.”
Kupchik denounced certain “Palestinian stagings,” speaking in particular of “Pallywood” and “an anti-Jewish propaganda operation.”
In the hours following the debate, reactions poured in on social networks. Several left-wing influencers cited the sequence and expressed indignation, calling for the Institute of the Jewish Audiovisual Memory to be seized.
LN24 subsequently decided to fire Kupchik, who has been with the channel since 2022. It denounced his comments as “scandalous, shocking and factually false.
“These words run counter to the work our journalists do every day to bring you factual, verified information,” announced Jim Nejman, the channel’s editor-in-chief.
The offending sequence was removed from the copy of the program available for users.
Kupchik reacted to his expulsion on his Facebook page. While he acknowledged a factual error when he said that “the trucks never stopped returning to Gaza,” as they did so from March 2 to May 19, he deplored “a witch hunt orchestrated on social networks.
“Nothing in my comments denies the scale and gravity of the human losses in Gaza. What I was talking about was the narrative, its construction, its blind spots and the way in which certain discourses prevent any complexity—or even any thought,” he said, denouncing a “smear campaign.”
Joël Rubinfeld, president of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, spoke of “censorship.”
“By acting in this way, LN24 has preferred to gag a speech that has become inaudible rather than ensure its expression. This choice is all the more distressing coming from one of the rare players in the Belgian audiovisual landscape where the word ‘debate’ has hitherto retained its full meaning,” he wrote on X.
‘’If every journalist or commentator were to be dismissed at the first inaccuracy, the kingdom’s newsrooms would be quite empty,’’ Rubinfeld added.
Originally published by the European Jewish Press.