With a track record of standing by Lebanon, Qatar turns its attention once again to a country battered by crises, from the scorching summer of July to the troubled autumn of October. It was Qatar that, one spring, pulled Lebanon back from the brink of an internal crisis, bringing together the government and the opposition and turning divisions within the same household into unity that paved the way for the Doha Agreement.
Today, amid Lebanon’s darkest days, Qatar has opened a window of hope through the energy sector. Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has brought forward a comprehensive project, fully equipped and financed, tailored to the scale of Lebanon’s crisis. The initiative has moved beyond the planning stage to implementation, focusing on developing electricity-generation infrastructure and securing gas supplies.
From the outcome of the visit emerged a convergence between Qatar’s official position and those of Lebanon’s three presidents, alongside the army command and General Security, on the need to end the Israeli occupation and extend the state’s authority over its territory. Added to this was a renewed commitment to maintaining material and moral support for the military institution. The catastrophe facing southern Lebanon, with its destroyed and occupied villages, was also at the heart of the discussions.
Qatar reaffirmed its support for Lebanon’s efforts to achieve security and sovereignty, drawing on Doha’s leading role as a platform for mediation and as an intermediary open to all parties, working to de-escalate tensions, address their root causes, and restore stability across the region.
Doha has done its part to throw Lebanon a lifeline, seeking to pull it from the jaws of a complete blackout. According to information obtained by Al Jadeed, the Energy Minister has suspended his work stoppage and is preparing to travel to Doha in the coming hours to sign the agreement.
But someone has stolen the joy from the eyes of the Lebanese, using a barrage of interference tactics whose source is a seasoned provocateur, engaging in below-the-belt attacks, blackmail, lies, misinformation, and fabricated files.
Michel Murr is a name synonymous with scandal. He comes from a family history marked by a bitter rupture with the very man who brought him into the world. The prodigal son took control of MTV, the legacy of its founding father, going so far as to besiege his own father inside the station’s building. He turned it from a media institution into what critics describe as a den of corruption and documented theft, including the alleged misappropriation of public funds linked to the telecommunications sector and the illegal telecommunications case.
Having been sentenced to prison, the convicted man took advantage of the currency’s collapse to pay a multibillion-pound fine in Lebanese lira. And to cover up his dark past, he deployed his cheap media machinery, relying on figures such as “Al-Li’am” and “Ghanem,” who appear on every occasion to attack and disparage, along with a third figure who apparently has no qualms about joining in. The aim, according to these allegations, was to tarnish the reputation of Karim Khayyat in a media marketplace driven by financial blackmail, including an entire episode devoted to targeting Khayyat and a businessman in an attempt to extort them at any cost, regardless of the serious consequences.
After the “Thursday of Cheapness,” when the fool revealed what was inside him, the time has come for every official who cares about the media sector to sound the alarm over what the Murr-owned station is doing to the media profession and freedom of the press.
The vast majority of Lebanese who watched Thursday’s cheap spectacle expressed shock at this level of degradation. One need only look at the comments flooding social media. What Michel Murr and his entourage of freeloaders intended has backfired. His weekly satirical platform has turned into a paid circus of laughter, applause, fabricated lies, and character assassination.
Al Jadeed responds with the seriousness of documents and figures.
And if fire consumes itself when it has nothing left to burn, then let Murr choke on his own poison. Al Jadeed, out of concern for the profession and its standards, has complied—and continues to comply—with the decisions of the board of Électricité du Liban, as well as with the judicial process, which alone has the final say.