Saudi MBC's news chief quits after channel calls Sinwar and Nasrallah 'terrorists'
The director of news at the Saudi-owned MBC network, Musaad al-Thubaity, has submitted his resignation following backlash over a controversial report characterising the slain leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah as “terrorists”.
The report, titled "Millennium of Salvation from Terrorists", branded several groups and individuals as “the faces of terrorism”, including Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, all of whom were recently killed by Israel.
The report also included Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed in 2020 US strike in Baghdad, and al-Qaeda and its late leader Osama bin Laden.
It sparked backlash and protests, prompting Saudi Arabia's media authority to order an investigation into MBC, saying the report violated its media policy. The report has since been removed from all platforms.
According to multiple reports in Egyptian and Arab media citing informed sources within MBC, Thubaity’s resignation was accepted after he was found to have the "primary authority on news within the network".
In Iraq, hundreds of protesters stormed and set fire to the channel’s offices in Baghdad following the report, filming themselves vandalising equipment and smashing computers.
Shortly after, Iraqi regulators suspended the channel’s operating licence for “violating media broadcasting regulations”.
“Given the MBC satellite channel’s violation of media broadcasting regulations via its repeated violations and its attacks on the martyrs, leaders of victory, and heroic resistance leaders who are fighting the battle of honour against the usurping Zionist entity, we confirm taking all necessary legal measures and suspending it from operating in Iraq,” the Iraqi regulator said at the time.
Despite speculation that Saudi Arabia and Israel were close to formalising open relations until Israel's war on Gaza began, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman has recently stated that his government will not do so without the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
"The Palestinian cause is a top priority for Saudi Arabia, and we reiterate the kingdom's rejection and strong condemnation of the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinian people, in disregard of international and humanitarian law in a new and bitter chapter of suffering," he said.
A report in the Atlantic, however, has cited Mohammed bin Salman as saying, privately, that he "personally doesn't care about the Palestinian issue" but that he recognised the importance of the Palestinian cause for the Saudi public.