Fight breaks out between guests live on air in Jordan

A political chat show on Jordanian television descended into farce on Tuesday evening, after two guests broke out into a fight over a disagreement about the civil war in Syria.

The host of Bil-Etejahayn (Two Ways) on local channel 7 Stars struggled to keep warring guests apart and saw his table destroyed when one accused the other of supporting the murder of civilians in Syria.

Journalist Shaker al-Jawhari accused Muhammad Sharif, a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, of “supporting the slaughter of people” in Syria. Sharif, a member of Assad’s Ba’ath Party, responded by telling the host to “have him shut up”.

Jawhari then promptly grabbed the table separating him from Sharif, breaking it in two, before both men engaged in pushing the table at each other forcing television crew to intervene and separate them.

It is not the first time Sharif has been involved in an on air spat. He got involved in a fight on a show in March when a fellow guest described President Assad as a “butcher”. On that occasion the host attempted to intervene but to no avail as the fighting guests pushed and threatened each other until they eventually left the studio.

Jordan regularly sees passionate debate overspill into fighting on television, most famously in July 2012 when an MP and political activist threw shoes and threatened each other with guns in a similar disagreement about the Syrian civil war.

The three-year-old Syrian civil war has taken its toll on neighbouring Jordan, where more than 600,000 refugees have fled, according to the United Nations.