JERUSALEM: Israeli satellite TV viewers have for the past month had their favorite programs disrupted by electronic snowstorms, variously said to be caused by the radar of U.N. patrol boats, Russian spy ships or Israel's military. On Wednesday the satellite TV company was said to be near collapse.
The interference began on Sept. 6, the day Israeli warplanes slipped past Syria's Russian-made air defense systems, attacked a military target deep inside the country and escaped unchallenged. Israeli has maintained an almost total official silence over the strike, which Syria said hit an unused military installation.
Since then, desperate viewers of "Desperate Housewives," frustrated followers of "The Bold and the Beautiful" and other TV lovers have been bombarding the switchboard of Israeli satellite broadcaster "Yes" and have launched a 122 million shekel ($30 million, €21.37 million) class action suit against the company, for failing to deliver the goods.
The interruptions have led to canceled subscriptions and forced Yes to seek to pacify its half-million subscribers with free movies. The competing commercial TV distributor, "Hot," uses cables and has not been affected.
The Haaretz newspaper on Wednesday quoted an unnamed Yes executive as saying the Yes company would collapse if the interference continues another month. The paper said Yes has enlisted the Israeli military to trace the source of the problem. The army had no immediate comment, and the Yes spokeswoman could not be reached.
The prime suspect at the moment appears to be the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, which has ships at sea, just north of Israel.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said technical experts from the ministry and the U.N. were in contact over the possibility that UNIFIL was the source of the transmissions, and the United Nations was ready to cooperate if it was proven responsible.
In Lebanon, senior UNIFIL official Milos Strugar said both Lebanese and Israeli authorities had told the force of electronic problems and the reports were being investigated.
"At the moment it is not clear what is causing the interference," he said.
The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot on Tuesday pointed to Moscow as another possible culprit, quoting an unnamed Israeli security official as saying Moscow was suspected of beaming signals at Israel to try to probe its military electronic capability in the wake of the Sept. 6 raid on Syria and as an expression of its anger at Israel for making Syria's Russian radar appear impotent.
"I believe that they sent ships to the region equipped with electronic warfare systems...to try and examine Israel's capabilities in electronic warfare and also to give trouble to those who gave them trouble," the official said, according to the paper. "The Russians have an entire fleet of electronic warfare ships that are disguised as merchant ships."
The Russian defense ministry refused to comment on the allegations.
Another Yediot Ahronot story, by the paper's diplomatic correspondent, quoted an unnamed government official as saying that the answer to the riddle could lie in Israel itself, with the emissions coming from military radar.
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