- 2 days ago
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00:00:04Last month, about two weeks ago, a British journalist called Steve Sweeney,
00:00:09who lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon, was in southern Lebanon attempting with
00:00:14a cameraman to document what the Israeli military is doing to the southern part of
00:00:19that country, which is leveling it, moving people wholesale out,
00:00:25including Christian villages across the area.
00:00:27And as he was preparing his report, he was targeted by an Israeli-owned,
00:00:34American-made aircraft that fired a missile at him in an attempted assassination.
00:00:38Here's what it looked like.
00:00:40Further rocket attacks were reported against Nahariya and a minute.
00:00:55Fucking hell.
00:01:01Fuck.
00:01:03That wasn't an accident.
00:01:05It was intentional.
00:01:07The jet that fired it had flown over his position, attempting to assassinate him as the Israeli
00:01:13government has assassinated on purpose, not accidentally assassinated, murdered so many
00:01:18journalists, including Western journalists, trying to cover its atrocities.
00:01:21Atrocities that are spreading even now under the cover of the Iran war.
00:01:27A massive land grab across the region, killing of Christians, desecration of Christian holy sites.
00:01:33That's all happening.
00:01:34It's all real.
00:01:35And one of the reasons you may not know about it is because the people trying to record
00:01:39it to chronicle it have been assassinated.
00:01:42But Steve Sweeney was not assassinated.
00:01:45By luck or the grace of God, by a quirk of the landing of that missile, he survived.
00:01:51He joins us now to explain what happened.
00:01:54Steve, thanks very much for doing this.
00:01:56I'm grateful you're alive.
00:01:57We just played the tape of the moment where you were almost killed.
00:02:01Can you add context to that and describe what was happening?
00:02:07Well, yeah, you've seen the footage.
00:02:10We were incredibly lucky to come out of that situation alive.
00:02:14It was only purely by luck that the missile ended up, as you see on the footage, it went
00:02:20through the hole and the bridge had already been destroyed.
00:02:23So just to give you some context of why we were there, Israel had issued these evacuation
00:02:29orders.
00:02:30It said that it was going to bomb every single bridge in South Lebanon.
00:02:34So the bridges that cross the Litani River, this connects the south of Lebanon to the rest
00:02:39of the country.
00:02:39So this was a hugely important news story.
00:02:42This is essentially cutting off a whole swathe of the country.
00:02:48And they'd started the bombing the night before.
00:02:51It was a Thursday when we went to the bridge.
00:02:53On the Wednesday evening and into the early hours of the morning, they'd started targeting
00:02:57the bridges.
00:02:58So, you know, as a journalist and as a war correspondent, you know, we were there to
00:03:03report on this huge news story.
00:03:05So we drove down.
00:03:07This is in Sur District or Tyre District, as other people will probably better know it.
00:03:11And as we approached, the Lebanese army have a base there, just ahead of the bridge.
00:03:19So we approached them and we said to them, OK, is it safe to film?
00:03:23And they assured us it was perfectly safe for us to go on that bridge.
00:03:27And they would know because if Israel is about to bomb a bridge, which they had already bombed
00:03:32it the night before, then they would get a message to the Lebanese army via UNIFIL, the
00:03:39United Nations peacekeepers.
00:03:40They don't have direct communication.
00:03:42So there was no pre-warning that this bridge was about to be struck again.
00:03:45There was no military objective in striking the bridge again.
00:03:48It was already destroyed.
00:03:49There was you could barely even walk across it, let alone take a vehicle across it.
00:03:53So this was the the Kazmier Bridge.
00:03:55This was the smaller bridge.
00:03:57So these kind of link villages and settlements in South Lebanon together.
00:04:02So, OK, we we approached the bridge.
00:04:05We set up our camera.
00:04:07We started filming.
00:04:07There were fighter jets roaring overhead.
00:04:10And again, this isn't uncommon in in the south of Lebanon.
00:04:14But we knew that the fighter jets were flying away from us.
00:04:17So they were roaring overhead, but they were heading further south and they were bombing what
00:04:21they would describe as Hezbollah positions around that area.
00:04:25So we weren't still unduly concerned.
00:04:27And we went onto the bridge and we started filming.
00:04:31So it wasn't live.
00:04:32Some people have said it was live.
00:04:33It was what we call it as live.
00:04:34So we were filming that.
00:04:38Ali Reeder, who is my colleague, was at the moment we arrived on the bridge.
00:04:43I was doing my piece of camera.
00:04:45He went to film some B-roll.
00:04:48He went to film in the hole where the bridge had been struck.
00:04:52And it was I mean, we talk about luck and we talk about the chance and we talk about God's
00:04:59will.
00:04:59But as he was filming, there was a gust of wind on the camera and the tripod was shaking.
00:05:05So I called him over and I said, Ali, Yallah, Yallah, please come.
00:05:09The camera is shaking.
00:05:10I need you to steady it.
00:05:12As he came over, I guess around 15 seconds later, then we heard this tremendous roar and the Israelis struck
00:05:20the bridge again.
00:05:22And I mean, the immediate aftermath, I mean, I remember just thinking, God, we're dead.
00:05:28That was it.
00:05:29It was it was it was like this earth shattering sound.
00:05:34The explosion was it was an almighty blast.
00:05:37And then there was just dust and I couldn't really see anything.
00:05:40And from the footage, you can hear the soldiers.
00:05:43Maybe they started saying to me, Yallah, Yallah.
00:05:45And I couldn't see anything.
00:05:47So I was where, where?
00:05:49And they took me into their barracks.
00:05:53They put tourniquets on my arms.
00:05:55I thought, again, with the adrenaline rush, I just thought I've got some minor cuts.
00:06:00You know, I couldn't really feel too much pain.
00:06:02But then I looked where they put the tourniquet.
00:06:05There was blood coming down my arms.
00:06:07There was blood on my on my clothes, but I was alive.
00:06:10And it's, again, completely by chance that we were alive.
00:06:14This was a very heavy munition that they'd use a GB, GBU 38 missile that we believe was used.
00:06:22It was fired from an F-16 fighter jet.
00:06:24So after the Lebanese army were, you know, they put these tourniquets on and gave us some water.
00:06:31Then they called an ambulance and the ambulance came and they put me on a stretcher and they took me.
00:06:39And I should note, really, that the paramedics and the emergency workers and the doctors and the nurses
00:06:46and all of the medical team that attended to us are the real heroes of this story.
00:06:54As we were traveling from the bridge to the hospital, I'm not sure the distance, maybe about 10 minutes, probably
00:06:59less than that.
00:07:00But they had the blue lights on.
00:07:02Now, in any normal country anywhere in the world, having the blue lights on and being transported somewhere by ambulance,
00:07:07you would be safe, right?
00:07:09Not in Lebanon, because the Israelis are now targeting medical staff.
00:07:15More than 50 have been killed. Hospitals, including the one we attended, the Jabal Amor Hospital, part of that has
00:07:24been destroyed in Israeli airstrikes.
00:07:26And we've been working in the field for many years now.
00:07:30We're very experienced journalists and we take safety very seriously.
00:07:35We've spoken to a lot of medical workers and they told us that the logo on the top of the
00:07:41ambulances, which is supposed to give them protection under international law, under the Geneva Conventions and this kind of thing.
00:07:49Instead of giving them protection, it now places them at risk.
00:07:53So many of them have removed those logos from their emergency vehicles.
00:07:58Now, barely a day goes by now that when we don't hear of a medical worker being struck,
00:08:04the IDF, the Israeli Defence Force, soon after they carried out a massacre of 12 emergency workers in the south
00:08:14targeting their station,
00:08:16they put out a statement saying that Hezbollah is using medical facilities and ambulances for military purposes.
00:08:27Now, of course, they didn't back that with any kind of evidence.
00:08:29This is a statement that they've reissued again quite recently.
00:08:33But we've been on the ground.
00:08:35We've been in the back of the ambulances.
00:08:36We've been in the hospitals.
00:08:38We've met the civil defence workers.
00:08:40We've met the paramedics and we've been to these stations.
00:08:43And all that you can see there are the kind of things that you would find in any hospital, in
00:08:49any medical station, in any ambulance anywhere in the world.
00:08:52These are medical facilities there and they should be protected under international law, of course, targeting these deliberately.
00:08:59It's a war crime, but it's just one of many that we're seeing here on the ground in Lebanon.
00:09:06So you're a Westerner.
00:09:08It's by your accent.
00:09:08You sound Irish.
00:09:11You live and work in Lebanon.
00:09:13How long have you been there?
00:09:16I came to Lebanon in October 2024.
00:09:20So this was during the period we call the 66 Day War.
00:09:23So it was a week or so after the assassination of Saeed Hassan Nasrallah, the former Secretary General of Hezbollah.
00:09:32So I came there.
00:09:34We quite often joke and say that if Steve Sweeney arrives in your country, then it's not good news.
00:09:40But I came during that period.
00:09:44Now, Lebanon, as you know, and I think I've heard you say, Tucker, if I'm correct, it's a beautiful country.
00:09:52Oh, the most.
00:09:53Wonderful place.
00:09:54Yes.
00:09:54You know, you look at the rich culture, tradition and history of this country.
00:09:59Even in the south now, which is the area coming under heavy bombardment, this is the area of Jesus.
00:10:06Kana is where Jesus performed what I believe was his first miracle, turning water into wine.
00:10:14There's the tomb of Shemun al-Saffar.
00:10:16This is Peter Simon, St. Peter, who for I think for many Catholics, they believe that he was the first
00:10:23pope.
00:10:23Now, he's that's where his some Christians believe that that's his burial site.
00:10:28Of course, this has been destroyed by Israel.
00:10:30They bombed it.
00:10:31This is an important site, actually, Shemun al-Saffar, for both Muslims and Christians.
00:10:36So that's that's been bombed.
00:10:37Let me ask you to stop for a second.
00:10:40I'm ashamed by my ignorance, as usual.
00:10:42The Israeli military bombed St. Peter's burial site?
00:10:47Yes.
00:10:48When?
00:10:49Yes, they did.
00:10:50Yeah.
00:10:51This was back in 2024.
00:10:54I mean, they went to this wasn't an accidental bombing.
00:10:58The Shemun al-Saffar, I think it's protected under World Heritage law as well.
00:11:05And it's a very important site.
00:11:06It's a, you know, of course, the birth, the sorry, the burial place of St. Peter.
00:11:11It's also a holy site for Muslims.
00:11:14And what they did during that period was they brought an Israeli what they call a researcher.
00:11:20The Israeli Defense Force brought him in.
00:11:22And the purpose of that really was to, I guess, reinvent history.
00:11:29And the aim of it was to say, well, this is a Jewish holy site and this land belongs to
00:11:36Israel.
00:11:37This was the kind of narrative that they were trying to spin.
00:11:40And then that researcher, who was actually a very well-known settler activist, was killed during that time.
00:11:47So we went, we visited the site in early 2025 after the ceasefire period and missiles have gone through the
00:11:58domes.
00:11:59The whole area was destroyed, bullet marks across all of the buildings there, including the area of the shrine of
00:12:08St. Peter himself.
00:12:09So this is, so it wasn't like accidental, accidentally targeted.
00:12:14It wasn't kind of collateral damage.
00:12:16This was a deliberately targeted attack on the tomb of St. Peter.
00:12:20It's not the only church or religious building that has been attacked.
00:12:26Of course, we were in a place called Derdegaya.
00:12:29And this is a Greek Catholic church.
00:12:33And again, that was destroyed during the 66 day war.
00:12:38They killed eight people that had taken shelter inside there.
00:12:42A lot of those were emergency workers, the civil defense team.
00:12:45And they'd taken shelter in there and they bombed it to oblivion.
00:12:48It was completely destroyed.
00:12:51And again, in Yaron, this is another border town.
00:12:56And there were two buildings there.
00:12:59There's the Imam Ali mosque, which is a very well-known mosque in the south of Lebanon.
00:13:05But there was also the Church of St. George.
00:13:08And St. George, of course, the patron saint of England.
00:13:11And this was a Catholic church.
00:13:13And they're very close by each other.
00:13:14And you may have seen the footage circulating on social media.
00:13:19But there's footage of an Israeli soldier, I guess, with a body cam or something, a helmet cam, destroying the
00:13:26statue there to St. George.
00:13:29But both of those were completely destroyed.
00:13:33And this is a pattern across the south of Lebanon.
00:13:35Hezbollah is, and I'm not defending Hezbollah.
00:13:38It's not my fight.
00:13:39But they're designated, I believe, by the US government as a terror group.
00:13:42They've controlled big parts of Lebanon for many, many years, more than 20 years.
00:13:47And has Hezbollah blown up Christian holy sites?
00:13:51Has Hezbollah targeted ambulances?
00:13:54I mean, maybe they have.
00:13:55You live there.
00:13:56You tell me.
00:13:56No, they haven't.
00:13:58In fact, the opposite.
00:14:00And again, there's plenty of footage of this that people can check for themselves online.
00:14:06But Hezbollah was, in fact, protecting the Christian churches and protecting these kind of symbolic areas of religious importance to
00:14:17Christians.
00:14:18There's footage of them going into churches and cleaning up and tidying up and standing around, you know, protecting the
00:14:24Christian faith.
00:14:25If you listen to the speeches of Hassan Nasrata, again, he said the Hezbollah are the main defenders of the
00:14:32Christian faith in Lebanon.
00:14:34So, no, they're not destroying ambulances.
00:14:37They're not destroying churches.
00:14:39They're not destroying mosques.
00:14:41They're not destroying people's homes.
00:14:43But Israel is, and it's doing it with American and Western-supplied weapons as well.
00:14:47And it's happening without anybody, pretty much anybody in the United States even noticing.
00:14:54I think people's attention is drawn to what's happening in Iran and the unfolding disaster there, and they don't even
00:14:59know that this is happening.
00:15:00So, back to what happened to you specifically.
00:15:03You said that the missile that almost killed you and your cameraman was launched from an American aircraft, an Israeli
00:15:09-owned American aircraft.
00:15:11Yeah.
00:15:12Do you believe, was that one of the planes that had flown over you?
00:15:15Do you think it was targeting you?
00:15:20Undoubtedly, we believe it was targeting us.
00:15:23There could be no other explanation for what happened.
00:15:27Now, of course, because people have asked this question, you know, one, why were you on the bridge?
00:15:31And were you deliberately targeted?
00:15:34And we're unequivocal about that.
00:15:36This was an assassination attempt by Israel to silence the voices on the ground, to silence the truth.
00:15:42Now, the reason we say that is because, like I said, we've been working in the field for the last
00:15:49two years.
00:15:50So, our vehicle is very well known in the south of Lebanon.
00:15:55We were in a clearly identified press vehicle.
00:15:57We had, as you can see in the footage, we had our press jackets on.
00:16:02Israel has the most advanced military technology anywhere in the world.
00:16:05It has the most advanced surveillance technology anywhere in the world.
00:16:09It knows everything that happens in the south of Lebanon.
00:16:13It knows every vehicle.
00:16:14It knows every number plate.
00:16:15It reads our messages.
00:16:17It listens to our conversations.
00:16:19This is why we say it was deliberate, because there's no doubt that they knew we were there.
00:16:24And the other issue, as has been raised by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zaharova, said that this can't have
00:16:30been accidental.
00:16:31There was no military objective in targeting that bridge.
00:16:33It was already destroyed.
00:16:35So, we believe it was a deliberate assassination attempt.
00:16:38Absolutely.
00:16:39And it's only by luck, really, that we survived.
00:16:43There was a lot going in our favor that day.
00:16:45Let's say, had the missile not entered the hole in the bridge, had it exploded on the bridge,
00:16:50and we've spoken to military experts, weapons experts, who have told us that if it had been maybe a few
00:16:58inches or a foot the other way,
00:17:00then there wouldn't have even been bodies to recover.
00:17:04We'd have just been incinerated.
00:17:05These are incredibly powerful munitions that they were using.
00:17:09And there was no military objective, as I've said, in targeting the bridge.
00:17:13So, we say that we were deliberately targeted by the Israelis, without a doubt.
00:17:18So, I mean, because you are a Westerner, you do have a certain advantage.
00:17:22I mean, you're an English-speaking Westerner from the British Isles, and you're on television.
00:17:26So, you're the subject of an assassination attempt by a supposedly Western government, one that's armed by Western governments.
00:17:34What's your recourse?
00:17:35What do you do after they try and kill you, but they fail?
00:17:39Well, that's a very good question.
00:17:41Obviously, I am an English-speaking white Westerner, which gives me a certain advantage, a certain privilege.
00:17:48I mean, I have to say that just over a week after our very close shave, our dear colleagues and
00:17:55friends in the field weren't so lucky.
00:17:57Fatima Fatouni, Ali Shoaib and Mohamed Fatouni were killed in a targeted strike by the Israelis just after they'd been
00:18:06reporting in the South.
00:18:08So, I mean, this is the kind of the conditions that journalists are working in on the ground.
00:18:14In terms of the recourse, well, I work for Russian state television, which, of course, means that my own government,
00:18:22the British government, don't like me.
00:18:25In fact, they have already, instead of supporting me, they persecuted me.
00:18:30I was detained on a family visit last July at Heathrow Airport.
00:18:37I was met by counter-terror police off the airplane.
00:18:41They took me away for interrogation.
00:18:43They quizzed me over my relations to Russia, the Russian state, working for Russian state television,
00:18:50also about my work here in Lebanon, my associations or connections to Hezbollah,
00:18:55my connections to Ansarala in Yemen because I reported from Yemen, Hashdol Shabi,
00:19:01and my work in Donbass.
00:19:03I spent two years in the field in Donbass on the Russian side.
00:19:06So they were very interested in that.
00:19:08And they're still now currently investigating me for potential terrorist activity based on my journalism.
00:19:17So I don't expect anything from them.
00:19:21And some friends of mine at Declassified UK, a British media organization, well, they inquired.
00:19:29They asked the British government for comment after this assassination attempt.
00:19:33And they just simply said, and I'm summarizing here, paraphrasing, that they said something along the lines of
00:19:41the foreign secretary has given Britain's position on the Middle East in a statement to the Commons on Tuesday.
00:19:50That was all they said.
00:19:51They didn't address the specifics of my case.
00:19:54They haven't commented on it.
00:19:55They haven't offered any kind of support whatsoever.
00:19:57Even the British embassy here in Lebanon hasn't contacted me.
00:20:02The only support that I've had, I've had lots of love and well wishes from individuals and organizations
00:20:08across the world for which we're incredibly grateful and thankful for.
00:20:13But the only people, the only country that's actually given me strong and solid support has been Russia.
00:20:19Are you a British passport holder?
00:20:22I'm a British passport holder, yes.
00:20:24So you're a British subject.
00:20:26So this is, even though you don't live there most of the time, you have family there.
00:20:30You are a citizen, but the British government is taking the side of the Israeli military over its own citizens?
00:20:38Well, that's how it seems to me, yes.
00:20:40Not only taking the side of the Israelis, but they're helping provide the weapons and the ammunition
00:20:46and the political and military support to carry out such strikes.
00:20:49So, you know, somewhere along that chain.
00:20:52I mean, we know it was an F-16 and a GBU-38 American made American supplied, but Britain is
00:20:58well involved in that supply chain.
00:20:59So some of the, some of the kind of the add on equipment that enabled them to carry out that
00:21:04strike against me is almost certainly provided by the British government without a doubt.
00:21:10How does that, I don't understand, I don't understand since, you know, both Britain and the United States fought against
00:21:17the Nazis and lost hundreds of thousands of their own men doing it.
00:21:20I don't really see where the moral culpability is here.
00:21:24Why would Britain and the United States have some duty to become subjects of the Israeli government?
00:21:31Where does that come from?
00:21:35Well, I mean, there's a long history of, you know, the two biggest supporters of Israel have traditionally been the
00:21:42United States and Britain.
00:21:44And, you know, you can trace this back to the formation of the state of Israel.
00:21:47Now, of course, they have their own interests in the region.
00:21:51They use Israel as a proxy force for its colonialist, imperialist expansion for, you know, plans for the region.
00:21:58If you look at what's happening on the ground now, the reason that we reported on the bridges is that
00:22:04what you're seeing now is the,
00:22:06the fourth expulsion of 1.2 million Lebanese people that have been forced from their land, forced from their homes,
00:22:15and they're now forcibly displaced.
00:22:18We describe this in Lebanon.
00:22:19We talk about it as an ethnic cleansing operation on a scale far larger than the Nakba.
00:22:27That's the, of course, the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that were forced from their homes on the creation of
00:22:33the state of Israel.
00:22:34So the situation here is, it's simply astonishing.
00:22:39And, you know, the 370,000 of those forcibly displaced are children.
00:22:44So, but behind that is this attempt by Israel to grab that land.
00:22:49Now, not only are they forcing people out of that area south of the Latani River, they've extended that now
00:22:56to south of the Zarani River.
00:22:57So we're talking some 40 kilometers from the Israeli border that they push people out of that area.
00:23:02Now, the Israelis have been very open.
00:23:07Israel Katz, the defense secretary, has said that we want the land.
00:23:10We're going to, you know, they've said that they want to create a security buffer zone or whatever terminology they
00:23:17use to describe it.
00:23:18But these plans have been long in the making.
00:23:19You go back in history and Israel has invaded and tried to take that area.
00:23:24They think it's their biblical right.
00:23:25We're talking about the Greater Israel Project, which I know, you know, you know full well about after your conversation
00:23:31with Ambassador Huckabee.
00:23:33And, you know, it kind of reappears in different guises over the years.
00:23:38The most latest was the Trump economic zone.
00:23:41This was announced back in, I think, August last year.
00:23:45Around that time, Tom Barrack, the U.S. envoy, arrived here in Lebanon.
00:23:50And you might remember this soundbite from him because he spoke at the presidential palace to a group of journalists
00:24:00and there was a bit of a melee and he described them as animalistic.
00:24:04And he was condemned for, you know, this, you know, this was seen as an incredibly racist comment to make
00:24:10towards Lebanese journalists who were doing their job in the field, holding people to account, questioning him.
00:24:16But behind that, he laid out this plan for the Trump economic zone, which meant that hundreds of thousands of
00:24:23people would be forced from their homes permanently.
00:24:26Now, he was dressed up.
00:24:27This is going to be a regeneration project.
00:24:30We're going to create new homes.
00:24:32We're going to create jobs.
00:24:33We're going to create roads.
00:24:35We're going to create infrastructure.
00:24:36We're going to make the area safe.
00:24:38But it meant that people that have lived on this land for generations, these are their homes.
00:24:43These are not just, you know, dots on a map.
00:24:46These are homes where people have lived on that land for generations are going to be turfed out.
00:24:51And nobody really paid attention to it at the time.
00:24:54Of course, we did as journalists on the ground.
00:24:58And, you know, people talk about, they say that the Gaza model is now coming to Lebanon.
00:25:04Yeah, they've spoken about it in terms, I think Smotrich said, we're going to turn Dahir, the southern suburbs of
00:25:10Beirut, into Kan Yunis.
00:25:11And then they've used Beit Hanun and Rafa, Israel Katz, that they're going to destroy all of these villages that
00:25:18they call frontline villages.
00:25:19And I can tell you now, we've been here for two years.
00:25:23Those villages are largely already destroyed.
00:25:25The south of Lebanon already looks like Gaza.
00:25:28Whole villages completely lie in ruins, no reconstruction plan.
00:25:33And over the last 15 months, we've seen Israel break that ceasefire.
00:25:37And we talk about a ceasefire from November 2024, but there was never a ceasefire.
00:25:42You can't have a ceasefire when only one side stops firing.
00:25:46And, okay, 15,000, more than 15,000 violations over the last 15 months.
00:25:51And this included the rigging and destroying of homes, the drone strikes, targeted assassinations, the use of chemical spray to
00:26:01destroy crops.
00:26:03And, you know, we've witnessed and filmed all this, the use of white phosphorus.
00:26:07There's a place called Bleda, a village very close to the border.
00:26:10Now, during olive harvesting season, we went to make a film there.
00:26:14The Israelis refused to allow the farmers to tend to their land unless they gave them all of the contact
00:26:19details and the names of who was going into the fields while we were there.
00:26:23And they started bulldozing the olive groves.
00:26:25These are olive groves that are older than the state of Israel.
00:26:28So this isn't something new.
00:26:32What we're seeing now, the escalation on March 2nd has been going on for a very, very long time.
00:26:37Now, you asked me why Britain and the United States would support that.
00:26:40Well, they use Israel as their kind of proxy force in the area they refer to as the Middle East.
00:26:46We call it West Asia here.
00:26:47And they use it to grab the land.
00:26:52The Greater Israel Project suits Israel, but it suits Britain and the United States because this is a land of
00:26:57great wealth and resources.
00:26:59And they want to extract that wealth.
00:27:02They want to extract the resources and use it for their own gain.
00:27:07And, of course, they want strategic control across the whole of the region.
00:27:10We've seen that with what happened in Syria.
00:27:14We can see now with the bombing of Iran.
00:27:18We can see what happened in Gaza.
00:27:21All of these have taken place, not just with the connivance of the United States and Britain, but with that
00:27:27active involvement.
00:27:28So this is the kind of, you know, this is what we're happening now.
00:27:32You can see signs along the airport road here in Beirut that, you know, they say made in the United
00:27:39States, made in the USA.
00:27:40And that's how they see the bombs that are falling on them here.
00:27:43They're made in the United States.
00:27:45They're made in Britain.
00:27:46And they're causing, you know, they're the root cause of the death and destruction that's taking place across this region.
00:27:53You know, Israel fires the bullets, but the guns weren't truly loaded by Britain and the United States.
00:27:58Well, since you mentioned it, I have to ask you about a small point that has bothered me for many
00:28:02years.
00:28:03And that's the Israeli policy of cutting down olive trees, some of which are hundreds and hundreds up to a
00:28:08thousand years old.
00:28:10And of course, they're right.
00:28:12They're central to the ancient economy of the Levant, but they're also beautiful.
00:28:17Yeah.
00:28:17They're revered almost by the people who are actually from there, not the ones from Poland who pretend they're from
00:28:22there, but the people who actually are there.
00:28:25Why would the Israeli government chainsaw or bulldoze olive trees?
00:28:31That seems evil to me.
00:28:33I don't understand the explanation for it.
00:28:35Well, that's the only way to look at it.
00:28:38Of course, it's evil.
00:28:40But I think, you know, these, like you said, these olive groves, some of them are thousands of years old.
00:28:45I think the oldest in Lebanon is something like 6,000 years old, but it's the lifeblood of Lebanon.
00:28:51It's a symbol of Lebanese cultural heritage, identity.
00:28:57And the people here are very, very connected to their land.
00:29:00They're deeply connected to their land.
00:29:02And, you know, this is the lifeblood, not just for the south of Lebanon, where the farmers will harvest their
00:29:10olive groves.
00:29:11Tobacco is a big, a huge crop here.
00:29:14But this is the lifeblood for all of Lebanon.
00:29:16Now, if you can disconnect people from their land and their culture, then, of course, you can take it over.
00:29:24And that's what they've been doing, not just by bulldozing it, bombing it, but by spraying these chemicals that will
00:29:31make sure that these crops will never be able to grow on the land again.
00:29:34And they can just brush them aside.
00:29:36They can build houses.
00:29:38They can build settlements there, just like they did on the formation of the State of Israel.
00:29:43They're building these illegal settlements everywhere.
00:29:46And that's exactly what they want to do here.
00:29:48In Lebanon, they're building settlements?
00:29:50In Lebanon.
00:29:52Well, they want to.
00:29:53That's their aim.
00:29:54Yeah.
00:29:54I mean, you look at the Greater Israel Project itself.
00:29:57Now, I mentioned Yaron earlier.
00:30:01This is the place where the mosque and the church were destroyed.
00:30:05Now, earlier this year, a few months before the escalation on March the 2nd, this group of settlers came in
00:30:14across the border into or very close to Yaron and they planted trees.
00:30:20And the message was, I can't remember the exact terminology that they used, but this was them planting their roots
00:30:27in Lebanese territory.
00:30:28And they believe that Lebanese territory biblically belongs to them.
00:30:33Now, you know, you look back a few years ago and this could have been seen as a conspiracy theory
00:30:37or a fringe kind of movement.
00:30:41But this is now right at the heart of the Israeli government.
00:30:44Smotrich and Ben-Gavir are advocates of the Greater Israel Project.
00:30:47Benjamin Netanyahu himself is a supporter of the Greater Israel Project.
00:30:52This isn't kind of like a fantasy.
00:30:55This is happening now.
00:30:56It's unfolding in real time in front of our very eyes.
00:31:00So, they have some rabbis in Israel that justify this religiously as well.
00:31:08They will say that this is the land that belongs to them according to Holy Scripture.
00:31:15And this is why we're seeing this whole scale destruction.
00:31:18That's what it was around over the last 15 months.
00:31:20They say it was about destroying Hezbollah, but it's not.
00:31:24It's not.
00:31:25You're seeing whole kind of settlements lying under rubble.
00:31:29My beloved is from a village in the south and her entire village has pretty much been reduced to rubble.
00:31:38Her family home rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed so many times.
00:31:43And this is very common for the people in that part of the world.
00:31:49And again, Israel has occupied Lebanon.
00:31:54And after the ceasefire in November 2024, it built five military bases inside Lebanese sovereign territory.
00:32:00We filmed them.
00:32:01And rather than scaling them back, Israel was expanding the construction of those military posts illegally.
00:32:09In breach of UN resolution 1701, in breach of international law, the Lebanese government asked them to leave Lebanese sovereign
00:32:18territory.
00:32:19And of course, they just simply refused and they pushed further and further into Lebanese sovereign territory.
00:32:24Now, the interesting thing, and I don't know whether your viewers will be aware of this, and many people don't
00:32:31know, but there isn't really an official border between Israel and Lebanon.
00:32:35There's no officially agreed border.
00:32:38We have the blue line, which was established by the United Nations.
00:32:41This was after Israel was forced out in 2000.
00:32:46And this line is supposed to be the demarcation point that Israel is not supposed to encroach further upon, you
00:32:53know, further across this line.
00:32:55So Israel sees a lot of this land as belonging.
00:33:00You know, there was the 1923 mandate line when it was the British mandate of Palestine.
00:33:06There was a kind of border drawn up then, which Israel inherited in 1948, but has never really agreed to.
00:33:12The armistice in 1949 didn't again agree those borders.
00:33:18So Israel sees fit to push forward at will.
00:33:23And it's done so with total impunity, of course.
00:33:26You know, there's no kind of international outcry about the destruction of these villages and settlements or the use of
00:33:32chemical weapons,
00:33:33the use of white phosphorus or the assassination of individuals in drone strikes or the killing of paramedics, the murder
00:33:42of journalists.
00:33:43All of these things have been happening for many, many years.
00:33:47The world is maybe paying more attention to it now.
00:33:50We've had the Western journalists arriving in the country since March the 2nd.
00:33:55Of course, the major news networks have arrived and they're kind of surprised at what they're seeing.
00:34:00They're seeing this for the first time.
00:34:02But this has been going on for a very, very long time.
00:34:04And I say this is a bit of a failing, I would say, of the major media organizations, because had
00:34:09they been on the ground in Lebanon for the past 15 months, they would have seen this unfolding.
00:34:14And, you know, maybe the situation would be very different from what it is now.
00:34:18As it is, they weren't there.
00:34:20And the Lebanese journalists were reporting the people that live on that land were, you know, crying for help and
00:34:28nobody was listening.
00:34:30I have to ask.
00:34:32So you are covering this on the ground in Lebanon, living and working at the center of all this, and
00:34:37as noted, almost got killed for it.
00:34:39But you're working for a Russian news agency.
00:34:41You've clearly been a journalist a long time.
00:34:43You look over 40, so probably a long time.
00:34:47How did you wind up working for a Russian news agency?
00:34:51Like, why aren't you a BBC reporter?
00:34:53How did, what was your path?
00:34:56The MI5 would never claim to work for the BBC.
00:34:58No, they wouldn't.
00:34:59No, it's true.
00:35:01There's no chance, no chance.
00:35:03I mean, I wouldn't work for the BBC on a personal level.
00:35:07We've met some BBC journalists here and they've been very pleasant and very nice.
00:35:10And I have all the journalists from, you know, the major networks as individual journalists.
00:35:15You know, I have no problem with them.
00:35:17But how I ended up working for RT for Russia Today is I was working for a newspaper before I
00:35:26entered the world of broadcast journalism.
00:35:27I was the international editor of a national daily newspaper in Britain for many years.
00:35:31When the Ukraine conflict started, the special military operation, I was covering that.
00:35:39And I went to the western part of Ukraine to pick up – there was a couple of stories I
00:35:46was chasing there.
00:35:47I ended up in Lvov.
00:35:48The Ukrainians tried to kidnap me and I managed to make my escape from there back out through Poland and
00:35:57then to Germany.
00:35:58Wait.
00:35:58I'm going to ask you to pause.
00:36:00Why did they do that?
00:36:01Why did they try to kidnap you, the Ukrainians?
00:36:05Well, simply because I was a journalist that wasn't telling their narrative.
00:36:10And the Ukraine conflict is the most propagandized war in history, in my view.
00:36:18I mean, you look at what happened, you know, even the Iraq war, there was kind of that space within
00:36:23the media field to criticize your government's policy.
00:36:27When it came to Ukraine, that window or that gap narrowed to the point where it was impossible because there
00:36:37was no space to offer anything that was different from the narrative of the western governments, the British government, the
00:36:43Ukrainian government.
00:36:44So if you were going there to actually do some proper journalism, and I say that because, you know, with
00:36:50all due respect to those organizations, the BBC, CNN, Sky News, you know, the Times, the Telegraph, Channel 4, they
00:37:01were doing these kind of – it was – they were all saying the exact same thing.
00:37:08They were taking it in turn to stand on the top of the same hotel roof in Kiev or Lvov
00:37:12and repeat the line, repeat the line.
00:37:15But they weren't actually seeing what was the reality on the ground.
00:37:20They were just stenographers, essentially, these kind of copy and paste reports.
00:37:27And it reached kind of insane levels in Britain.
00:37:32I'm sure it was the same with the United States, but Britain was – you know, they started demonizing Vladimir
00:37:36Putin.
00:37:37One of the craziest reports I saw was that Vladimir Putin has an assistant that follows him around with a
00:37:44briefcase.
00:37:45And every time he goes to the toilet, they collect his feces and urine so his opponents can't run any
00:37:52kind of tests on them.
00:37:53I mean, it got to, you know, completely insane levels.
00:37:56And any time you were reporting – so I ended up at Russia Today after that because I saw that
00:38:02my independence as a journalist and my ability to report on the truth had completely disappeared.
00:38:11It was impossible.
00:38:12The only way to do that was to, you know, was to go to Russia and work for RT.
00:38:17Now, we have our – one of our logos, question more.
00:38:21And that's what we do.
00:38:23And I always say, you know, question more.
00:38:24Question us.
00:38:25That's the role of a journalist.
00:38:27So I ended up working for RT.
00:38:29I ended up working for two years in Donbas on the Russian side.
00:38:33And I was seeing something completely different from the narrative that was being played out in the West.
00:38:38I was seeing, you know, war crimes committed daily by the Ukrainians against a civilian population.
00:38:44When I was there, they called it Donetsk Roulette.
00:38:46You never know when, you know, when a missile might strike you.
00:38:49And I was seeing, you know, attacks on marketplaces.
00:38:52For example, 27 people killed body parts everywhere.
00:38:56These were like babushkas, dadushkas, old men, old women.
00:38:59The poorest people in, you know, in that part of the city selling, you know, homemade fruit and vegetables from
00:39:08their home.
00:39:09Just obliterated.
00:39:10You know, arms and legs everywhere.
00:39:12I was seeing hospitals that were struck.
00:39:16Bus stops that were being attacked.
00:39:17I mean, I could talk about that for a long time.
00:39:19I spoke about it at the United Nations Security Council.
00:39:22I gave testimony of what I'd seen in the failures of Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 and, you know, the
00:39:29path to peace.
00:39:31So what we're seeing and what I always say is what we were seeing in that part in Donbas is
00:39:41the same playbook that we're seeing in Gaza.
00:39:44The same playbook that we're seeing here in Lebanon.
00:39:47These are the most powerful countries in the world waging war using the most sophisticated technology, the most powerful weapons
00:39:55against some of the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world.
00:39:59They can't fight back.
00:40:00You know, they don't have the arms.
00:40:05They don't have the weapons.
00:40:06The people of Gaza, the people of Lebanon, they weren't sent climards or storm shadows or, you know, these advanced
00:40:14weapons.
00:40:15These were sent to their oppressors to massacre them.
00:40:19You know, this was this is this is what's happening.
00:40:21And it's the very same forces in Donbas.
00:40:24It was very simple for me as a journalist.
00:40:26It was a people that wanted peace, a people that wanted to be able to speak their own language, Russian
00:40:32people that wanted to be able to practice their own culture and traditions if they identified as Russian.
00:40:40And pretty much that was it.
00:40:42You could put it as really as simply as that.
00:40:46But then the Ukrainian government decided to wage a war against its own people.
00:40:51I know for some this went back to, you know, the start of the SMO.
00:40:54But this has a much, much longer history starting way back in 2014, the Maidat.
00:41:01You know, all of these things people forget about now, conveniently, including the media.
00:41:06The media actually made them forget about it because, you know, one day there was a neo-Nazi problem in
00:41:11Ukraine.
00:41:12You know, the Azov and the right sector were carrying out these horrific actions, these horrific killings.
00:41:20They were terrorizing the people.
00:41:21And the next day, all of a sudden, Ukraine is a paragon of liberal democracy.
00:41:27You know, it's incredible.
00:41:30But people aren't getting the truth.
00:41:31So this is why I ended up at RT because the space to do proper journalism just wasn't afforded to
00:41:38me anywhere else.
00:41:39None of the British press, like I said, I kind of semi-joked.
00:41:43But MI5 would never allow me to work for the BBC or for any of the other major news organizations.
00:41:50And, you know, I have to say with Russia Today, with RT, I have complete freedom to report exactly what
00:41:58I want.
00:41:58And nobody tells me what to say.
00:42:01Nobody tells me where I can film.
00:42:03Nobody tells me who I can speak to, who I should speak to.
00:42:06And, you know, I have total journalistic freedom.
00:42:09So and I'm very happy working for RT.
00:42:12I'm very proud to work for RT.
00:42:13And we always say that here on the ground, because, you know, obviously, I came kind of sprung into the
00:42:21into the limelight after what happened to me.
00:42:23And but it's not about me. Journalists should never become the story unwittingly.
00:42:29I did.
00:42:30But we always say that, you know, the our job is to raise the voices of the people of the
00:42:36of this land.
00:42:36And we always say that our mic is a tribune for the people and it will continue to be a
00:42:42tribune for the people as long as we remain in the field.
00:42:46It must be such a strange experience for you since you've been in the British, sounds like you're in the
00:42:51British media for a long time, conventional media, a newspaper in a country that, you know, reads newspapers famously.
00:42:58All of a sudden to have this perspective where you have more freedom to do journalism, to straightforward journalism at
00:43:07Russia today than you had at a British newspaper.
00:43:12I mean, what is that as someone who I assume you were raised in the UK? Right.
00:43:16Yeah.
00:43:17What is that like?
00:43:18It's.
00:43:20Well, you know, I, the British, the media field in Britain, you know, and I think it's not just in
00:43:28Britain, but I think if you look at the Western.
00:43:30Oh, yes.
00:43:30It's, it's, it's, it's kind of, it's very concentrated.
00:43:34It's owned by a very small group of people who, who own and control the media.
00:43:40They control what you say, they control the narrative.
00:43:42So, but I think that the change was that the, the owners of these media organizations are now more and
00:43:50more forcefully pushing their view and their narrative.
00:43:53And you see it permeating through every word that's spoken on, um, on British television.
00:43:59You see it written in every single word in every single newspaper.
00:44:04There's no, um, divergence.
00:44:06They're, they're all uniform.
00:44:08So, you know, of course, Russia, people in the West think that Russia is some kind of authoritarian dictatorship that
00:44:16we're living under the jackpot of, of Vladimir Putin.
00:44:19But you've been to Moscow, you know, you know, anything but the, but the truth.
00:44:25It couldn't, couldn't be further from the, you know, you see people.
00:44:28I mean, there are very educated people.
00:44:30They have, you know, rich, again, we was talking about Lebanon earlier, having this rich culture and history.
00:44:36I mean, Russia, come on.
00:44:38I mean, I don't know any other nation on earth that has such a rich culture and history.
00:44:43You know, Shostakovich, Dostoevsky, Prokofiev, Yuri Gagarin.
00:44:48They put, you know, the first human being in, in, in space.
00:44:53Mendeleev, the founder of the, um, you know, the, the table of the elements.
00:44:58Um, huge, these huge figures in the fields of science, of literature, of art, of music.
00:45:04And you go to any bar in, in, in Moscow and, and you can sit down there within five minutes.
00:45:12You've had one of the most intelligent political or cultural conversations that you've ever had sitting over a cold pint
00:45:20of, of Guinness.
00:45:21And for those that think that people are too afraid to criticize Putin, let me tell you, they're not.
00:45:28They're not.
00:45:28I've, I've heard it myself.
00:45:30And, you know, the same, the same kind of criticisms you hear in every country anywhere in the world.
00:45:36They're not afraid to express those issues.
00:45:38They don't necessarily hold them.
00:45:39Vladimir Putin is incredibly popular and he's incredibly popular for a very good reason is that people remember the days
00:45:46before Putin became the president.
00:45:48And they remember it was a very, very dark time in the country.
00:45:52And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, up until Vladimir Putin came to power, there wasn't that really that
00:45:58kind of national stability.
00:45:59I mean, Russia is obviously a huge country, 11 time zones.
00:46:03I think it is to hold it together is, is incredibly difficult.
00:46:07But Vladimir Putin bought that stability.
00:46:09He made Russia into what it is today.
00:46:10And this is a strong, economically thriving, independent country that is actually, despite what the West says, you know, it
00:46:20still has these good relations with other countries on the world stage.
00:46:25It's not isolated by any stretch of the imagination.
00:46:27It's only isolated if you think the world is the Western powers.
00:46:32So, you know, there is this freedom to criticize, but of course, he's hugely popular.
00:46:39And, you know, I think people in the West find that very difficult to understand that, you know, just how
00:46:49popular Putin is in Russia.
00:46:51Everything you're saying is true. I've seen it multiple times.
00:46:55Even, for example, RT is banned in the United States.
00:47:00It's banned in Europe.
00:47:02In Russia, you've probably seen, but Vladimir Putin holds a, every year, he holds a Q&A for journalists, for
00:47:09members of the public.
00:47:10Every year, the BBC is there.
00:47:12Steve Rosenberg asks a question.
00:47:13He tries to get a gotcha every year.
00:47:16He fails every year, but he keeps giving it a go.
00:47:19But the BBC is allowed to operate freely inside, inside Russia.
00:47:24I couldn't do the same in Britain.
00:47:25They try and arrest me.
00:47:27They would arrest you?
00:47:29Talk about freedom of press.
00:47:30If you tried, if you practiced what you're doing now in your home country.
00:47:35If I tried, if I took it, yes.
00:47:37If I took an RT microphone into, into London and started trying to interview people, or if I stood in
00:47:44front of a camera with an RT microphone and started trying to give a report.
00:47:48Well, I would be arrested.
00:47:50We're banned.
00:47:51We're, you know, we're, we're, you know, we're treated as, I don't know, like foreign agents.
00:47:56So it's, it would be unlawful for us to work there.
00:47:59We could be jailed, sanctioned, a whole host of things could happen.
00:48:04So we don't have that freedom to operate inside, inside Britain.
00:48:07I always, you know, this is something that always amazes me because, you know, the Russian state television was banned
00:48:13in, in, in Europe and America because, you know, we're propagandists or, or whatever, the Kremlin media machine or, you
00:48:20know, these kind of tired old tropes that we hear.
00:48:22This, you know, which is deeply rooted in, in Russophobia, but what they're really saying is the people of Europe
00:48:29and Britain and America are stupid.
00:48:31Right.
00:48:32You know, people, people, um, are able to disseminate fact from fiction.
00:48:39They're able to watch a news report and decide whether it's propaganda or whether it's true.
00:48:43They can make that decision themselves and they should be able to make that decision themselves in a free and
00:48:48democratic country that, uh, operates with, um, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
00:48:54So, um, you know, it's, it always strikes me as quite bizarre that they keep saying, well, we uphold freedom
00:49:00of the press.
00:49:01Well, in fact, the European union has, uh, sanctioned a journalist, uh, someone I knew, no, uh, who's a journalist
00:49:10from, for red media.
00:49:12They sanctioned him because of his work.
00:49:15They said he's closed doors.
00:49:17I think they accused him of something to do with the Russian state, but it was because of his reporting
00:49:21on, uh, on Palestine.
00:49:23So there is no way that they uphold freedom of the press.
00:49:26I, I myself am being investigated for potential terrorist activities based on my journalism, nothing else.
00:49:32That's it for my journalistic, um, journalistic reports.
00:49:35So, you know, where, where, where does, where's the press freedom?
00:49:39Can I walk into, um, in, into the United States?
00:49:44Can I, can I, you know, freely walk around and start interviewing people?
00:49:47Can I interview Donald Trump?
00:49:48Can I sit down and speak to the people on the ground?
00:49:51Of course not.
00:49:52We're banned.
00:49:53It's an absurdity.
00:49:55It is an absurdity.
00:49:55But press freedom is alive and kicking.
00:49:57And it's, it's also a little bit bewildering.
00:50:00It's, it's surprising for me.
00:50:02And it's an ominous sign.
00:50:05I would say as an American to see people arrested in Britain for criticizing Israel.
00:50:10Why would it be illegal for a Britain to criticize Israel?
00:50:14What does Israel have to do with the UK?
00:50:16And by the way, it was Israeli terror groups who murdered British citizens, British soldiers, British diplomats.
00:50:21Exactly.
00:50:22The King David Hotel.
00:50:23That's exactly.
00:50:23And many others.
00:50:24Yeah.
00:50:24And they murdered a lot of Brits and murdered them with their hands slowly.
00:50:28Yeah.
00:50:28In some cases blew them up with bombs, but true terrorist acts.
00:50:30And the guy who did it later became the prime minister, Monaco Megan.
00:50:34So actually Israel owes a great debt to the UK, which is responsible for its formation in the first place,
00:50:40as you know.
00:50:41So why in the world would British citizens be banned from criticizing Israel?
00:50:47They owe nothing to Israel.
00:50:48What is this?
00:50:51Well, it's a bizarre dystopian situation.
00:50:56You've probably seen, but in Britain, I guess maybe six months ago, the government moved to ban a group called
00:51:04Palestine Action.
00:51:05And these were protesters that were throwing paint at airplanes or whatever.
00:51:10They were trying to stop a genocide.
00:51:12And Britain prescribed it as a terrorist organization, I think against all the legal advice that they were given.
00:51:17They ignored that and they went ahead.
00:51:20And it became illegal to even support or hold up placards saying, I support Palestine Action.
00:51:25So they were arresting like 80, 90 year old women.
00:51:30They were dragging them away and charging them as terrorists under terrorism offenses.
00:51:37So, I mean, Britain has a, obviously it's invested in Israel, heavily invested in Israel clearly because, you know, it
00:51:45was Britain really that was behind the formation of the state of Israel in the first place.
00:51:49And you can trace it back to the Balfour Declaration, where they drew a line in the sand and gave
00:51:53a land that didn't belong to them to another people whose land it wasn't.
00:51:57You know, they gave away the land that belonged to the people indigenous to that land.
00:52:02So I think, you know, they talk about this historical debt owed to Israel.
00:52:06Now, of course, you can go to Germany and some of the European countries.
00:52:09And of course, they talk about the Holocaust and, you know, they bear a heavy burden and responsibility for that
00:52:16or they feel that.
00:52:17And again, there's this kind of historical debt that they feel.
00:52:21But in Britain now, it's kind of, you know, moved way beyond, way beyond that.
00:52:27And like you said, they were in the early days in the formation of the state of Israel, they were
00:52:32attacking Brits, killing Brits, blowing up hotels.
00:52:37And so this kind of unravelled support where you can't even criticise Israel, you can't.
00:52:45There's no space.
00:52:46Any criticism of Israel is now deemed either anti-Semitic, an act of terror, unlawful.
00:52:53And it means that you're ostracised from from society.
00:52:58You're labelled an anti-Semite.
00:53:00You're labelled a racist.
00:53:01And I think that Britain's objective is, I mean, Israel is an outpost for Anglo-American imperialist, you know, what
00:53:13they want to gain out of the region.
00:53:15So it acts as this kind of Anglo-imperialist outpost.
00:53:18And it will back Israel militarily to the hilt.
00:53:21It will back them politically to the hilt.
00:53:23But of course, you know, they're using it to strategically control the entire of the Middle East.
00:53:29I mean, this is this is their historical myth.
00:53:32I mean, yes, everything that happens in this region is because of the historical mess of the British and the
00:53:39French, you know, back in the time of the Sykes-Picot carving up of that part of the world, just
00:53:46arbitrarily drawing lines.
00:53:47Okay, you can have this part, you can have this part.
00:53:50And, you know, the legacy of that lives on today, which is, in fact, why as a British journalist, I
00:53:57say of Irish origin, but, you know, certainly as a Western journalist, I have a historical debt to the people
00:54:06of this land because of what my country has inflicted upon them.
00:54:10And, you know, I see that as part of my my my duty as as a journalist, not to just
00:54:16fall in line behind my own government, not to be a stenographer for power, but to expose to the world
00:54:22what's happening here on the ground in in Lebanon and in other countries.
00:54:27And, you know, for every bomb that falls on on Lebanon and there have been many of them, I can
00:54:32tell you, but every bomb that falls on Lebanon is a bomb that is supplied by the United States.
00:54:38Yes. A bomb that is supplied by Britain.
00:54:40Israel just simply fires the bullets that they're supplied.
00:54:43And it's been carrying out these actions with the support and complicity of Britain and the United States and other
00:54:51Western countries.
00:54:52Do your former colleagues in the British media feel shame as they continue their stenography and see you speaking freely
00:54:59and risking your life to do it?
00:55:02They should do. Yeah, they should. They should feel a great sense of shame. But now I don't know whether
00:55:07that whether they do.
00:55:08Like I said, on a personal level, I've met the individual journalists from the major news organizations, and they've been
00:55:14very, very gracious and very pleasant as individuals.
00:55:19But, you know, they all fall in line with the same narrative. Even the journalists that are coming here, they'll
00:55:24describe Dahir, which is the southern suburbs of Beirut.
00:55:27That entire area has been evacuated. We're talking an area between five hundred and eight hundred thousand people.
00:55:33And that whole area has been evacuated. It's bombed every single day without fail, fighter jets roaring overhead, drones overhead,
00:55:41civilian buildings being destroyed.
00:55:43Now, for them, this is the southern suburbs of Beirut. They call it a Hezbollah stronghold.
00:55:48Now, OK, that use of language is not an accident. It's deliberate. They call it a Hezbollah stronghold because it
00:55:57justifies the bombing of that area.
00:55:58But this isn't a Hezbollah stronghold. This is where we live.
00:56:03You know, these are the coffee shops where we meet our friends. These are the places we go shopping.
00:56:09This is an area vibrant, full of life, people's homes, this kind of thing.
00:56:14And the Western media play a very pernicious role, in fact, in what I believe is this manufacturing of consent.
00:56:24Because outside of that, Dahir is just a place on a map that gets bombed.
00:56:27Lebanon is a war zone. That's how they describe it. Lebanon isn't a war zone, as we already discussed.
00:56:33Lebanon is a land of rich culture, rich tradition, rich history, full of the most amazing people you could ever
00:56:41meet anywhere in the world.
00:56:43The same with the south of Lebanon. They say, well, you know, all these areas south of the Latani, they're
00:56:48all Hezbollah supporters.
00:56:50I mean, of course, there's strong support for Hezbollah in those areas because they see them as the only organization
00:56:57that is standing up and fighting against Israel, that is defending their land, their territory.
00:57:03Hezbollah was only born in the mid-1980s.
00:57:09Now, the people of Lebanon don't have like a dereliction or a fantasy of, you know, or a predisposed to
00:57:17using weapons and guns.
00:57:19You know, it's not that they enjoy going around shooting people.
00:57:22They were formed as an armed militia exactly to defend their land.
00:57:27The same as in Ireland, the same as in, in fact, you can pick any country that's come under attack
00:57:34from, you know, from the Western powers, from Israel, from their neighbors.
00:57:38You know, that's the origins of these organizations.
00:57:41But to call it Hezbollah land, which is some of the description that we're finding, this is, as we said,
00:57:47the land that Jesus walked in.
00:57:48It's a land rich in culture and history.
00:57:53But the Western journalists are kind of seeing it very much or speaking about it or writing about it very
00:57:59much in those terms.
00:58:00We hear the same kind of, it's not like these dog whistle trigger words, you know, Iran backed, the Iranian
00:58:07backed militia, you know, the Hezbollah strongholds or, you know, these kind of things that they'll, the terminology that they
00:58:15use.
00:58:15And it's absolutely deliberate to justify Israel bombing those lands.
00:58:20That's, yeah, that's all it is.
00:58:22So whether they're embarrassed about writing that or not, I don't know.
00:58:26I think it's very difficult to get a job in the British media if you don't write those, those kind
00:58:32of lines or you don't speak them into a camera.
00:58:35Now, Noam Chomsky, who back in, I guess, the 90s, was interviewing a British journalist, Andrew Marr.
00:58:44And he, I think he hit the nail on the head when he said, okay, I'm not necessarily saying you
00:58:49don't believe what you're saying.
00:58:51But if you didn't believe what you said, you wouldn't be sitting where you are now.
00:58:56I think that's true, right?
00:58:59I mean, you know, you're not going to get a job unless you believe those things, unless you're prepared to
00:59:03say them or write them.
00:59:06So whether they're embarrassed or not, I don't know.
00:59:09And to be honest, I don't care very much.
00:59:11They may not be capable of it.
00:59:12So my last question, I know you don't like talking about yourself, but it is about you.
00:59:16So Israel tried to assassinate you.
00:59:18They failed, just barely.
00:59:22I can't imagine interviews like this make them less inclined to assassinate you, to try again.
00:59:29Are you going to stay in Lebanon?
00:59:34Absolutely.
00:59:35100%, without doubt.
00:59:37I'll stay in Lebanon.
00:59:38Lebanon is my home.
00:59:40I have my, you know, my beloved is here in Lebanon.
00:59:44My life is here in Lebanon.
00:59:45I always say, look, Lebanon isn't my country, but Lebanon and the Lebanese people belong in my heart.
00:59:52Yes.
00:59:52And, you know, I'll forever be in the service of the Lebanese people.
00:59:58They've been good enough to host me in their country.
01:00:00And I hope that my journalism does some justice and I hope my presence does some justice.
01:00:07I always remember and it's always important to remember that I'm a guest in this land.
01:00:13So, no, I have no intention of leaving.
01:00:15I have no intention of stopping reporting.
01:00:17We've already been back to the front line.
01:00:20Just two days after the attack, we made sure that we went out because we're not going to be silenced.
01:00:25And, you know, if they think that we're going to be leaving the field, then they're very much mistaken.
01:00:32What a remarkable conversation.
01:00:33It is one of the great countries and most beautiful countries in the world.
01:00:37Top five, in my opinion, top three.
01:00:40So I'm grateful you're there to chronicle what's being done to it in our name with our weapons.
01:00:45It's really evil.
01:00:46So anyway, Steve Sweeney, thank you very much for doing this.
01:00:49I appreciate it.
01:00:50My pleasure.