BDS Movement Calls for Boycott of Several Arab Channels, Including Al Arabiya and MBC

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has called for the boycott of several Arab channels accused of supporting the occupation.

In a post on the “X” platform, the movement stated: “Amidst our resistance to the colonial and hegemonic project, boycotting the Arabic-speaking mouthpieces of the Israeli enemy and applying the standards of boycotting the Israeli-Zionist media machine to the Saudi-Zionist and Emirati-Zionist media is an urgent necessity.”

Last Sunday, the Saudi General Commission for Audiovisual Media, a government body, announced that officials from MBC had been referred for investigation after the channel aired a report that incited against Hamas leaders who were martyred in the “Al-Aqsa Flood” battle.

The commission stated in a statement that it had referred “officials from one of the TV channels for investigation due to a news report that violated the regulations and media policy of the Kingdom.”

On Saturday, Iraqi protesters set fire to the headquarters of the Saudi MBC channel in Baghdad after a report labeled leaders from Hezbollah and Hamas as “terrorists.”

Protesters stormed the building despite the heavy security presence around it and set it ablaze from within.

Earlier, the channel aired an extensive report labeling Hezbollah leaders, including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and leaders of Hamas, as “terrorists,” which sparked widespread outrage on social media, prompting the channel to remove it from its platforms.

The channel accused the head of the Hamas Political Bureau, the martyr Yahya Sinwar, of the same charge, stating that he was the last person the world got rid of, referring to him as the “Butcher of Khan Younis.”

The Saudi channel presented the report under the title: “The Millennium of Liberation from Terrorists… Personalities Who Terrorized the World and Shed Blood,” in which it also discussed military leaders from Hezbollah, the former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Qassem Soleimani, and others.

For its part, Hamas condemned the report in a statement, calling it “nothing but yellow journalism and a fifth column.”

Hamas demanded that “the channel’s management immediately retract this professional and ethical downfall, remove the report from its platforms, and apologize for this report that discredits the channel and its management, not the resistance and its leaders who sacrificed their blood on the path to liberating Palestine and Al-Aqsa. We also demand an adjustment to this malicious editorial approach, which aligns with the occupation’s agenda, and to pay attention to the crimes and atrocities our people are subjected to at the hands of the criminal Zionist entity.”