I just heard on one of the radio stations here that the insidious force messing with our satellite television is none other than the UN!
According to RAMFM‘s 6:30pm news report, the interruptions are thought to have been caused by a UNIFIL surveillance vessel, and not the Russians as we may have believed.
Update: It’s now being reported by AFP.
Signal disruptions that have plagued Israeli satellite television channels for over a month are believed to be caused by UN ships patrolling off the coast of Lebanon, officials said on Wednesday.
Clients of Yes, Israel’s sole satellite television provider, have had to put up with frozen and fuzzy images and sound disturbances for weeks, with the company unable to pin down the source of the problem.
The company, which provides services to nearly one million clients, warned that it risked bankruptcy because customers were abandoning it in droves, so the government stepped in to look for the cause.
Israel now suspects that the source of the disturbances, which began following an Israeli air strike in Syria on September 6, originate from Dutch and German ships of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.
“Officials believe that part of the systems used by UNIFIL (UN Interim Force in Lebanon) could be the cause for the Yes satellite signal disturbances,” foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev told AFP.
“The foreign ministry has approached people in charge of the international peacekeeping mission in New York and communications specialists will work on the issue,” he added.
