School owned by Lebanese singer torched after he seems to praise death of Nasrallah

But both Ragheb Alama and the Emirati singer he ostensibly spoke to say his voice was faked using AI in phone call in which Alama supposedly said Lebanon ‘relieved of Nasrallah’

By ToI Staff 25 December 2024, 12:22 pm Edit
Lebanese singer Ragheb Alama performs during the 57th session of the International Festival of Carthage (FIC,) at the Roman Theatre of Carthage on the outskirts of Tunis on August 5, 2023. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / AFP)
Lebanese singer Ragheb Alama performs during the 57th session of the International Festival of Carthage (FIC,) at the Roman Theatre of Carthage on the outskirts of Tunis on August 5, 2023. (Photo by FETHI BELAID / AFP)

Hezbollah members set fire to a school owned by popular Lebanese singer Ragheb Alama on Monday night, hours after he was heard in a viral video seemingly praising the killing by Israel of the terror group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, though it later came to light that it wasn’t him making the comments.

A video posted online Monday showed Emirati singer Abdullah Bilkhair on what was supposedly a phone call with Alama, who could be heard saying multiple times that Nasrallah was dead, media reports said.

At some point, Alama could be heard inviting Bilkhair to visit Lebanon, saying: “It has now been relieved of Nasrallah.”

After the video was spread online, Hezbollah terrorists set fire to the entrance of the Saint Georges school in southern Beirut, which Alama owns, and spray-painted graffiti on its walls reading: “At your service, Nasrallah.”

In one video on X, a group of men could be seen arriving on motorcycles and setting fire to the school. One man in the video could be seen waving a Hezbollah flag.

In a post on X on Monday, Alama denied that it was him in the call, claiming that someone had used artificial intelligence to mimic his voice.

“I deny this communication completely and in detail. I will pursue the matter legally to reach this person,” he wrote.

According to CNN Arabic, Bilkhair later confirmed this, saying he had been tricked by someone who was faking Alama’s voice using artificial intelligence, and added that he had been surprised when he thought the Lebanese singer had called him because the two had not communicated for a long time.

According to an interview given by Alama’s wife Jihan to the Lebanese paper Annahar, the artist has opened a number of private schools in Beirut’s impoverished southern suburbs, where he grew up, as a charity initiative to benefit the local community. The Shiite-majority area is a central Hezbollah stronghold, and hosts most of the terror group’s leadership.

In a social media post condemning the vandals, Jihan Alama wrote: “These mostly young men are roaming the streets at a time when the country is trying to heal its wounds from the war that has affected each of us in different ways. Some of them may have had the opportunity to learn in one of the schools built by Ragheb Alama. Yet, we now see them destroying those same institutions. It is painful to see this ingratitude towards efforts that were intended to uplift and educate them.”

Nasrallah was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Beirut in September after Israel ramped up its response to near-daily cross-border attacks that were initiated by Hezbollah, unprovoked, on October 8 last year, a day after its ally Hamas’s October 7 onslaught in southern Israel.

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