Israel Matzav

Lebanese television host and terror victim May Chidiac calls it quits in a tearful farewell, live on television

On September 25, 2005, Lebanon Broadcast Corporation news host May Chidiac was a terror attack victim.

Chidiac, 42, a leading anchorwoman at Beirut's LBCI television network, miraculously survived a bomb blast that ripped her grey 4-wheeler when she started the engine to drive out of a parking lot in the township of Ghadir close to the LBCI headquarters in Adma off the coastal city of Jounieh north of Beirut Sunday afternoon.

She was afire behind the wheel when onlookers rushed to extract her out of the burning car and extinguish her flaming clothes and hair with bed blankets from nearby homes. She was first taken to a Jounieh clinic and then transferred in a heavily escorted ambulance to Hotel Dieu after PM Siniora visited her and recommended be moved immediately.

Police said a 40-to-50 kilogram explosive charge was planted below her driver seat with a detonator attached to the ignition so that it would go off once the engine is started. But An Nahar said the bomb may have been detonated by a mobile telephone from a short distance.

Mrs. Chidiac began her working day with a 90-minute interview on LBCI with An Nahar's columnist Sarkis Naoum about a 'black cloud' hanging over Lebanon during the countdown for the U.N. report on the Feb. 14 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri.

She drove afterwards from Adma to the house of attorney at law Asaad Fares for a prolonged lunch with his family in Ghadir and then walked out to her car in a nearby parking lot to go home. She landed in hospital, instead.

The attack on Chidiac was the latest in a series of bombings across the capital in which Hariri, An Nahar's columnist Samir Kassir and Communist ideologue George Hawi were killed. Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh and Defense Minister Elias Murr escaped separate car-bomb assassination attempts in October and July.

There has been growing speculation that the attacks would increase as the U.N. investigation into Hariri's assassination edges toward conclusion. Chief investigator Detlev Mehlis is due to announce the outcome in a report to the Security Council Oct. 21.

Chidiac is apparently a straight shooter. Some of you may recall a video I posted of her in January in which she and co-host Uqab Saqr ripped Hamas' Lebanon representative Osama Hamdan some new body parts. Chidiac and Saqr complained that whereas once Arabs had many defeats and no casualties, now they have many casualties and no defeats. They attributed this to the small value the Arabs put on human life. They were right. And Osama Hamdan, Hamas' representative in Lebanon, knew it too, which is why he sat in silence on their television show.

Last Tuesday, Chidiac called it quits in a tearful farewell, live on television. Let's go to the videotape.



Was May Chidiac threatened because of that Hamdan interview? I wouldn't be surprised. If I were advising her, I'd tell her to move to the West where she will be safer.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:27 PM