late night rumor

Here's a small story whose authenticity I could not check. Nevertheless, the contents of the story, regardless of whether true or not, carry some form of truth concerning the sectarian tension in the country.

According to the source, a small team of the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar TV managed to salvage some equipment from the station’s HQ, which was demolished in the Israeli aggression. The team decided to set up shop in another location in Beirut and continue the broadcast. (Al-Manar was formerly located in the Southern Suburb of Beirut, Dahieh, which has been leveled by Israeli jet plane shells)

The story has it that the Al-Manar crew barged into an apartment in an upper-class neighborhood in Greater Beirut and set up their equipment.

Before long, i.e. within a couple of hours, the neighbors caught word of the newcomers and did not take a liking to the possibility of Israel jetfighters attacking their neighborhood. Taking matters into their own hands, the neighbors attacked the TV crew. The police arrived on the scene and put an end to the fighting. Needless to say, the Hezbollah-TV crew left the mainly Sunni neighborhood for a new (yet unknown) location.

There are many other rumors regarding Sunni-Shiite tension since Hezbollah angered their fellow Lebanese by taking a unilateral decision to kidnap Israeli soldiers in hope of trading them for Lebanese POWs.



NB: For those of you familiar with Beirut, the apartment overtaken by the unfortunate TV-crew was in the Sakiet el-Janzeer area behind the Koreitem shopping district. This additional detail does not in any way defend the validity of the rumor.