PARIS, Jan 9: The Palestinian militant group Hamas’s television channel was taken off the air in Europe less than 24 hours after it was added to a satellite network, industry officials said on Friday.

Hamas announced on Monday that Europeans would be able to see its Al-Aqsa service — best known in the Middle East for its virulent anti-Israeli content — via the French firm Eutelsat’s satellites.

Al-Aqsa is Hamas’ official mouthpiece, and became notorious outside the Palestinian territories for a show in which a man-sized pink rabbit named Assud urged children to embrace martyrdom and threatened to eat Jews.

Alerted by industry sources, the French broadcasting regulator CSA this week wrote to Eutelsat and warned that much of Hamas’ programming contravenes laws against inciting hatred and violence, the government body said.

A Eutelsat official said the company had never had a contract with Hamas but that it had rented space on one of its satellites to Noorsat, a Bahrein-based provider, which had in turn begun showing Al-Aqsa.

Noorsat was warned to respect French law, and the broadcast has halted.

“Al-Aqsa TV is notorious for its incitement to anti-Semitism,” the Simon Wiesenthal Centre complained in a letter to French regulators.—AFP