By Najia Houssari — arabnews.com — BEIRUT: Unidentified persons hurled a Molotov cocktail at the NewTV station building in Beirut Tuesday morning. Security forces are currently inspecting the station’s surveillance cameras and looking into the incident to prosecute the perpetrators. About a week ago, NewTV broadcast a satirical clip within a weekly political show. The clip referenced the attack on the UNIFIL vehicle in southern Lebanon and the death of an Irish peacekeeper. Hezbollah supporters took offense at the clip and launched a fierce online campaign against NewTV, the station’s news editor Maryam Al-Bassam, the show’s host Dalia Ahmed and comedian Joanna Karaki.

Jawad Hassan Nasrallah, son of Hezbollah’s secretary-general, participated in the campaign. Karaki, who played a southern Lebanese woman, said in the clip that “when the UNIFIL peacekeepers first came to southern Lebanon, they took Lebanese wives, so the majority of southerners now have blue or green eyes with blond hair, with some who look more Italian and British than Lebanese,” referring to intermarriage between residents and peacekeepers operating in the south since 1978. Hezbollah supporters said this clip offends the honor of women in the south of Lebanon. Karaki refused to apologize for what she said, stressing that she is also from the south and is not accusing the women there of doing anything wrong. The incident escalated into a sectarian crisis with the intervention of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council, which denounced “slander, misinformation and defamation targeting the Shiite Islamic community…under the guise of satirical shows.”

The council said it would hold the NewTV team accountable through legal and judicial means because they are hiding behind the slogan of freedom of speech to offend people’s dignity and honor. Hezbollah MP Ibrahim Al-Moussawi called on authorities to take legal measures to ensure that all channels adhere to the laws as well as moral and national obligations. On the other hand, former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora denounced the attack on the NewTV building. “Some have adopted such means to intimidate media institutions, and the security forces must expose the perpetrators and hold them accountable, and not allow such an attack to be repeated,” he said.

NewTV was previously subjected to attacks by supporters of the Amal movement after the channel criticized the performance of the movement’s head, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, during protests in 2019. The channel did not spare Hezbollah, as it also criticized both the movement and Berri for being involved in corruption issues, although it was a fierce defender of the party before 2019. In its news intro on Monday evening, NewTV said that the smear campaign it has been subject to has only succeeded in stirring up strife.