The Expulsion of Ghassan Matar from Lebanon TV: The Role of Abdel Halim Hafez

Elbow Al-Kahala and Abdel-Halim Hafez
Al Sheraa, August 14, 2023

The late artist Ghassan Matar (Abu Guevara) narrates on an Egyptian TV program that Abdel Halim Hafez was the reason for his expulsion from Lebanon TV, where he was working!
Why ?

Ghassan Matar answers;
Abdel Halim had a concert on June 13, 1967 in the Aley Bessin amphitheater, which had a capacity of twenty thousand people, and all tickets were sold out. It is Abdul Halim who attended with Baligh Hamdi on 2/6/
With the beginning of the Zionist aggression against the United Arab Republic, Syria, and the West Bank of the Jordan River, we thought that we were very close to reclaiming Palestine, but we were stunned when we heard President Abdel Nasser announce his resignation on 9/6/1967, that is, four days before the ceremony, bearing responsibility for the military defeat.
And the whole talk is for Ghassan: Abdul Halim locked himself in the Strand Hotel on Al-Hamra Street in Beirut, where he was staying with Baligh, but he realized the size of his responsibility in front of the people and in front of the undertaker, and in front of our urging to revive the party, he said: I am not able in these atmospheres and dark days to sing as much as longing Or Safini once, people want to hear something else
Ghassan said: What do you think about singing patriotic songs, while people in Lebanon and the Arab world are drawn to guerrilla work?
Halim liked the idea, and immediately contacted the Egyptian embassy in Beirut to request contact with the poets Abd al-Rahman al-Abnudi and Muhammad Hamza, asking each of them to write a song about the fedayeen action.
Hamza was the quickest to respond, so he sent the lyrics of the song: My redemption, my redemption, my redemption… I die, I live, I don’t care… as long as the flag of Arabism remains
At the awaited concert, Halim sang the song “Fida’i”, and it received a great public response from the twenty thousand attendees.

The party ended with this Nasserite political folk festival.
Here, Ghassan Matar reveals the most dangerous results of the festival, saying:

Two things happened directly during the ceremony, which Lebanon TV was broadcasting live on the air.. and after that, they are:
Director Ghazi Gharbatian called me to tell me that someone will talk to you about the concert being broadcast now.

I was surprised by a man speaking to me in a military accent, saying to me:

I, General Farah, order you to cut off the transmission immediately.

Farah said in his military language:

Cut now and do not discuss
Here, Matar says that he hung up and did not interrupt the transmission, and the next day I was summoned to the office of the TV director, Mounir Tokashi, to inform me that my services would be dispensed with, and so on – Ghassan Matar continues, laughing.
The second thing, which is the most dangerous (and look at what happened and drop it on today’s situation)

– Al-Kahala’s elbow, after getting off from Aley, had problems with the Phalangists and Shimonites exposing the returning party to attend the party. They broke the windows of some cars and hit the passengers of some of them. Perhaps they were waiting for Halim’s car to pass to hit him! I suggested that he take another route from Aley to Beirut without going through the dangerous Kahala road.

And so it was

sail