Gaza War: Anger on social media over a video from a Saudi channel describing the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists

Last updated 50 minutes ago

A video published by the Saudi MBC channel sparked a wave of anger and condemnation on social media, which developed into dozens of Iraqis storming, at dawn on Saturday, the station’s office in the Al-Jami’a neighborhood in Baghdad.

The protesters saw in the Saudi channel’s video an insult to the symbols of the “resistance”, and they set fire to the outer courtyard of the building and destroyed the contents inside it.

End of Twitter post, 1

End of Twitter post, 2

End of Twitter post, 3

Saudis denounced the attack on the channel’s headquarters, including Abdul Latif Al Sheikh, who saw it as a “flagrant violation of freedom of media and expression,” while another saw it as a “contrived” movement aimed at distracting public opinion from “repression” inside Iraq.

Some Iraqis also criticized the attack, which writer and TV presenter Omar Al-Jamal says did not lead to the closure of the Saudi channel’s office, but rather targeted an Iraqi company contracting with the Saudi channel, adding that the attack resulted in “the theft of Iraqi, not Saudi, money.”

End of Twitter post, 4

End of Twitter post, 5

The video broadcast by the news group, titled “The Millennium of Redemption from Terrorists,” came as part of a report for the “MBC in a Week” program, explaining “how the world got rid of these evil people,” according to the text of the report.

The video monitored the most prominent leaders of the armed Islamic movements who were killed since 2000, including figures belonging to what is known as the “Axis of Resistance,” such as Abu al-Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

The report also shed light on the most prominent leaders of the Lebanese Hezbollah, led by Hassan Nasrallah, as well as the leaders of the Palestinian Hamas movement, Saleh Al-Arouri, Ismail Haniyeh, and Yahya Al-Sanwar.

The report described Sinwar as “a new face of terrorism, and the last one to be rid of by the world,” and the program’s presenters wrote on the back screen: “Sinwar…Israel saved him from death, so he fought against it.”

End of Twitter post, 6

Angry comments poured in on social media sites from various Arab countries, condemning the report, which they saw as a kind of bias toward the Israeli side and normalization with it, while some described it as an “Israeli report with Saudi funding.”

Member of the Iraqi Parliament, Mustafa Sanad, denounced the Saudi channel’s report, noting that MBC Iraq is “government-supported.”

He stressed through his Facebook and X accounts that “the issue does not end with crushing or burning. There is no place for you in Iraq, and work will be done to cancel your license,” adding that “the name of Iraq does not honor customers.”

End of Twitter post, 7

End of Facebook sharing, 1

End of Twitter post, 8

End of Twitter post, 9

End of Twitter post, 10

Hamas issued a statement condemning the report, which it described as “obscurantist and inflammatory” against the movement and its leaders, and “a professional, media and moral failure that is consistent with the Zionist propaganda and narrative that seeks to demonize the resistance and its symbols.”

The statement said, “This report is nothing but yellow journalism and a fifth column,” and the Palestinian movement called on the Saudi channel’s management to “immediately retract this fall and professional decline, delete the report from its platforms, and apologize for this report, which offends the channel’s owners and those in charge of its management.”

According to the pioneers of the social networking site, the video was deleted from the weekly program’s page after it was published on Facebook and Twitter, and the account of the report’s author was disabled.

The hashtag #BoycottMBC has spread on social media calling for a boycott of the Saudi channel chain.

End of Twitter post, 11

End of Facebook sharing, 2

End of Facebook sharing, 3