Hundreds of thousands of posts and comments were reaped by publications on social media years ago. Their publishers claimed that the creator of the “Star Academy” program for singing was an Israeli, and that the goal of the program was to “fight Islam”.
However, the claim is from the imagination of its owner, and the program, which began in 2001 in France, is produced by a French company, and Israel has nothing to do with it, according to AFP.
The publications show a picture of a man wearing a hat similar to that of religious Jews and behind him the Israeli flag, accompanied by an interview that his publishers claimed he had with an Israeli channel.
And the accompanying comment stated, “A meeting on an Israeli channel with the Israeli doctor (Malhoum Akhanov), who came up with the idea of Star Academy.”
The publications garnered hundreds of thousands of comments and shares on social networking sites from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
However, the claim that the creator of the Star Academy program is an Israeli is incorrect.
French production
Star Academy was launched in 2001 in France, and it is produced by Endemol – France.
Endemole France is a subsidiary of Banijay, a world leader in audiovisual production, and the owner of the rights to many famous TV shows in the world, including “Star Academy”, “Big Brother” and others.
Who owns the picture?
The search through search engines showed that the image of the man in the misleading publications belonged to an Israeli rabbi named Yona Metzger, who was imprisoned on charges of corruption, and was published by several Israeli websites.
In 2017, an Israeli court sentenced Yona Metzger to four and a half years in prison for receiving bribes worth more than $1.8 million, according to AFP journalists in Jerusalem.
