Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI) was forced to delete an animated video featuring Hezbollah terrorists as Angry Birds after a judicial order, the media site announced on Saturday.
The public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, Ahmad Rami al-Hajj, ordered that LBCI remove the video featuring Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem as an Angry Bird.
The Finnish video game franchise Angry Birds follows the story of a flock of anthropomorphic birds as they defend their nest of eggs from a species of green pigs.
Hezbollah said in a statement that the video contained “offensive and cheap insults that degrade political discourse to a repulsive level.”
Members of the terror group’s Shia support base began insulting Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, the highest Christian authority in Lebanon, online in response to the video. While LBCI was originally established by the Christian Lebanese Forces, it has tried to depict itself as independent in recent years.
Despite Hezbollah’s complaints, the video was not complimentary to the Israeli military, depicting IDF soldiers as the antagonist green pigs.
Lebanese Parliament Speaker and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri also condemned the video. He decried “the campaigns of insult and attacks against religious and national symbols, regardless of their source or the means used, whether in the media or online.”
Seemingly in response to the incident, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun urged citizens to reject sectarian divides.
“President of the Republic, General Joseph Aoun, considered the targeting of the heads of Christian and Islamic sects and spiritual authorities in Lebanon to be a condemned and rejected act, given the values that spiritual leaders represent, which transcend the religious dimension to touch the national dimension.
"Therefore, it is incumbent upon all to refrain from undermining these values that embody the unity of Lebanon and its people, in addition to the fact that applicable laws prohibit such offenses and punish their perpetrators,” the presidency published in a statement.
“President Aoun called on everyone to keep differences in viewpoints within their political framework and to rise above personal insults, due to the negative repercussions of such practices, especially in the current circumstances through which the country is passing, which require broad national solidarity.”