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- [00:00]
A
Good morning and welcome to Dropsite News. I'm Ryan Grim. Towards the end of this live stream, we're going to talk about the ongoing conflict in Lebanon. We're going to be joined by NYU Professor Mohammed Bazi. Before that, we're going to be joined by reporter Jackie Sweet, who's going to break down her latest investigation for, for drop site on the Canary Mission, which is the kind of pro Israel doxing organization that operates in secret or at least, you know, has been attempting to operate in secret for the last about 11 years of its existence. Jackie has, has uncovered significant new details about, you know, who is running this organization and where and, and most importantly, I think where it's operating out of. Not necessarily going to be surprised by that, but it has significant implications. Before that, I'm going to be joined by my colleague Sharif Abdel Cadous and also our new colleague Mesa Mustafa. We're going to talk about the, the major breaking news this morning. United Arab Emirates announcing that it's going to be leaving the OPEC oil cartel. So let's bring in for now Sharif and Mesa. Sharif, thank you so much for joining me.
- [01:18]
B
Thanks for having me, Ryan.
- [01:20]
A
And we wanted to introduce a new journalist who has joined us at Dropsite News. Mesa, you're, you're muted, but welcome to Dropsite News. What you've been here for now one week.
- [01:34]
C
It's been a week.
- [01:35]
A
One week. How's it been?
- [01:38]
C
It's a whirlwind, you guys. It's a whirlwind. You guys do a lot of work in the moment as well, so I'm hopefully catching up to speed.
- [01:51]
A
But yes, unfortunately, never a dull moment over here.
- [01:55]
C
No, no, A lot of chats, a lot of, a lot of, it's a,
- [01:59]
A
it's a very robust and active newsroom. I can, I'll put it that way. So let's start before we bring Jackie and talking about this, this latest news. So the, there's a major summit going on. What can you tell us about this summit, Sharif, between Saudi Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait that seems to be taking place in, in Saudi Arabia. At the same time we get this major news that the UAE is announcing that it's leaving opec. So let's set that, let's bracket that for a second. What is, what is Saudi Arabia trying to put together here?
- [02:33]
B
Well, I mean, you know, the summit is coming in the context of the ceasefire that's happening in Iran right now. It's still a de facto ceasefire. As we know, the deadline expired effectively, but neither the United States or Iran has fired. And we're seeing a lot of, actually a lot of misinformation going back and forth about what Iran supposedly is offering. From what we understand in our reporting, Iran has not changed its position since day one. And it is calling for lifting of the US Naval blockade and that it will not negotiate about its nuclear program until that blockade is lifted. There's been reporting by Axios and others that has been repeated quite often that Iran has offered a new deal that is being considered today by President Trump. But I mean, all of this is being talked about right now because there is an oil crisis that's happening because of Iran engaging in very effective asymmetric warfare and effectively shutting off, closing down the Straits of Hormuz because of the war and really creating a paradigm shift in the global economy for this very strategic waterway that was before pretty much open. And so this summit is happening as Gulf states are discussing this. And then the UAE leaves opec, which is probably the most important oil cartel in the world. And I think also, if we put it in historical context, let's remember what a different geopolitical moment this is, that in 1973, after Egypt and Syria were in war with Israel, OPEC engaged in an embargo in solidarity with Egypt against Israel and against any country that had supported Israel, including the United States. And this caused a massive oil shock, probably the first oil shock of its kind that I think it sent gas prices spiraling in this country 300% and had a major, major effect. Fast forward to today over 50 years later, and we see a very, very different move with the uae. This news just broke, so it's unclear exactly what their ostensible justification for leaving OPEC is. But they said that Saudi Arabia, which is the main kind of country in opec, it said that the UAE did not raise the issue with them before leaving. And it said, it quotes. Reuters is quoting the energy minister as saying this is a policy decision. It was taken after a careful look at current and future policies related to level of production. But this could be some kind of move for President Trump that the UAE exit somehow benefits him. He's accused OPEC of ripping off the rest of the world by inflating oil prices. So this may be something to do with that.
- [05:50]
A
Yeah, and what's interesting is that it doesn't have any immediate consequences for the price of oil in the sense, or the price of gas either. For the, for this, for the simple reason that the UAE is way, way under what it's kind of quota is for opec. OPEC the way that, the way that it works, they'll say like, okay, we're going to set the amount of output and we're going to artificially depress the amount of output because if we just all pumped everything we had, the price would be too low and it wouldn't even be economically financially viable to pump it out of the ground. So we need to balance how much we're, we're producing. I think the UAE is currently something like 60 below what it's supposed to be producing because it's straight of hormuz is closed and it's industrial facilities are getting smashed. At the same time they're facing this incredible dollar crunch. You know, they, they operate, you know, they, they are very asset heavy. You know, they own a lot of America, they own a lot of equities in the American stock market, they own a lot of treasury bills, their sovereign wealth fund owns, owns property and other businesses around the world. And then they operate kind of on a day to day basis, on a cash flow basis where the, they're selling oil and gas dollars are coming in and they're using that to then service their debts. That now has been, that now has been broken. So they need to go. That's why they re, you know, reached out to the treasury and the Fed to get this currency swap which, which would allow them to basically get the Fed to backstop their, their flow of dollars because otherwise they have to sell assets, they have to start selling stocks or selling treasuries and Trump doesn't want either of those things to happen. Theoretically this could allow, you would, you would say, okay, what they're doing is they want to increase production because they need more cash, but they're so far below what their quota is that they can't even hit it if they wanted to. And not only that, they want to restart the war which is just going to make it that much more difficult for them to produce. So you know, analysts are really trying to look at rational reasons behind why they did this. But I think we also have to take into account kind of the personality behind the Emiratis, which is, which is kind of, I think reflected in the culture of Dubai like a real fake it till you make it kind of approach that there is a kind of bluster and in some ways it's almost like they're high on their own supply here. Like they, like they, they feel like they are as powerful as people treat them because you know, people have been flattering their sensibilities for a long time now because Everybody in the world wants something from them. Access to their, you know, gray market financial institutions, access to their capital, their sovereign wealth fund investments. And it seems like they're kind of, you know, buying some of their own rhetoric at this point that they are significantly more powerful than they are. If you, because if you look where they are, they're, they're among the most vulnerable. Everything about them is vulnerable. Their, their hotel occupancy rates, their resort occupancy rates are said to be at, you know, 10, 15, 20%. Not 10, not 10 down, but like 10 occupied. Like you're seeing, you know, the, the expats, the, the migrant workers from the west who do their laptop jobs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi fleeing.
- [09:23]
B
Yeah, but at the same time, they've also, probably, other than Israel, engaged in the most aggressive foreign policy in the region. They have, you know, in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, of course, is heavily involved in Yemen as well. But, but the uae, the level of bombing that the UAE itself did, also arresting and torturing people in southern Yemen, in Sudan, in the Horn of Africa, in Libya, in Syria, so very trying to project its military power and as a regional influencer. And in many ways this has backfired on them. But yes, I mean, they're weak in many ways and fragile in many ways. Independent in many ways. But, but they're also, other than Israel, the most aggressive military power in the region.
- [10:19]
A
Yeah, and beyond the region, depending on how you. Right, exactly. Like you said, they're responsible for an enormous amount of the fighting in, in Sudan. So we'll, we'll continue to watch this. This is, this is kind of an, a region shaking development to see one of the major players in OPEC say that we're, that, that we're walking away from it. So let, but let's get to our next story. Mesa, for people who aren't that familiar with it, you know, who is, what is the, what is Canary Mission? Like? What can you tell them? What can you tell us about Canary Mission?
- [10:54]
C
Yeah, well, I think in its inception, Canary Mission, the stated mission of Canary Mission is to document students, activists, academics, or organizations that it deems anti Semitic. So what they've done for more than 10 years now is they compile a dossier of these people or organizations and publicize them. So a lot of people on the site who have suffered consequences from their names being in connection with Canary Mission, they've suffered, whether it be like on campus in their academics, their job searches, losing their jobs. So for those that have suffered the consequences, they say it's a doxing site. It's a place where they blacklist those that have been vocal about Palestine. And it's to intimidate any further conversation, further movement of the narrative of Palestine in the West. In the latest installment that we have from last week in a series of job site investigations into Canary Mission, the names of the five highest paid contributors were leaked. This is huge because Canary Mission has operated almost completely anonymously. Nobody knows where the funding's coming from. Nobody knows who the people are if they're students, if they're just people that are, you know, monitoring conversations online. So it made quite a splash last week. A lot of people who were doxxed actually were posting and, and spreading the names of the people and, and kind of joking about how much people were getting paid to, to dox them for tweets that they, they published when they were 16. So. Joining us now is reporter Jackie Sweet, who has spearheaded the investigations into Canary Mission. Thank you so much for joining us, Jackie.
- [12:57]
D
Thank you.
- [12:59]
C
I first, just to give viewers an idea of how maybe the function has changed, the function of Canary Mission at first was primarily to censor the conversations on campuses, maybe online. How has the function changed, especially since the genocide and Gaza began a few years ago.
- [13:18]
D
Right. So the site's been around for now, it's been about a decade, but sort of the importance and the consequence of the site rapidly escalated during the second Trump administration when we found out that the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, was using the site to choose and target foreign students for arrest, detainment and deportation. Some of the highest profile arrests for Mesa Ozturk. You know, we found out this past summer in civil litigation and court testimony from, from a DHS official that he was instructed to use Canary Mission for like, the majority of these actions against foreign students, often just for pro Palestine speech, as we know. And he even testified that they didn't know who was running Canary Mission. So they were sort of instructed by some high level, we don't know, as a State Department person, we really don't know. And DHS was instructed to use this site. And what our investigation has uncovered, there's, you know, this is the third in a, in a kind of a series. It's kind of been suspected all of these years that it's been run in Israel, but our investigation has really kind of cracked open, you know, insight into its operations, the people running it, how the funding works, and it's, you know, as far as we have found, entirely run in a foreign country. And so the fact that our Government is using a completely foreign organization, you know, to exert such influence on our government is sort of extremely, you know, significant.
- [14:53]
C
And you know, what do you say to people, I guess, who see Canary Mission as, you know, kind of being contained within the Palestine sphere or the pro Palestine, you know, movement? What do you say to Americans that might not see this as a threat to just general freedom of speech?
- [15:13]
D
Yeah, I mean, well, we saw like Romaine's ostrich is a great example where you know, as far as we know, you know, her arrest was almost solely predicated on an op ed, you know, that wasn't entirely, that wasn't objectionable to a lot of people. So, you know, there's free speech concerns. When this, this last story, the story right before this, this most recent one, we were able to access public but non listed websites that that Canary Mission used to like stage material and just have internal communications like inside the organization. And that gave us great insight into sort of what they saw their goals as. And they broke, you know, their goals sort of in a very corporatized kind of way. They broke their goals down into return on investment. And they list different types of ROIs that they get. One being change in behavior. So like policing people so they changed their views or their speech arrest and deportations were another. And we saw some other campaigns that they were like piloting or starting to, you know, plan out. You know, they planned their quarters out. They had a focus on the Mamdani campaign. At one point they were like kind of starting to branch into monitoring journalist journalists. There was like an intriguing document that we found, not entirely clear what it was, but it suggested that they would possibly market their dossiers or their information for corporations to use like, like a screening thing. So like there's, there's ways that this expands right into, you know, policing discourse. And obviously as we saw with deportations and arrests, real life consequences.
- [16:56]
C
I think maybe. Oh, go ahead, Ryan.
- [16:58]
A
No, I was just going to say you can imagine that, you know, if they as they've gotten quite, you know, effective at what they're doing as they start musing about selling their services to corporate America and corporations around the world, that, that, that moves them from, you know, foundation and donor based to having an actual business model that can serve executives who, you know, there may be executives who say, yeah, we, we want to make sure any, anybody remotely affiliated with any campus protest ever, you know, never has an opportunity to even, you know, get past the application phase at this company, so let's hire them. But then you may also have executives who, who want other screens applied as well. And you'd have a kind of a pug and plug and play operation that would be able to then do that. And all of this going on in complete secrecy. So no opportunity for people to challenge the findings, to even be aware that the findings exist. To say like actually that's, that's, that's not me, that's not even, you know, that's a different person. So as, as you, as you look at the depth of the operation, like how extensive at this point is this organization?
- [18:23]
D
Well, they're really well funded. You know, we, we don't obviously have total, you know, insight into the, you know, the funding once it leave leaves the US but we know through different sort of like accidental earmarks on American non profits and that goes through a big non profit central fund. So a lot of money is moving, a lot of money from very wealthy people is moving to this group and it has, you know, unprecedented access to the highest levels of our government without people really knowing who it is. And, and as somebody who's probably seen more about who's, who's running it, you know, it's, it's just some people, you know, it's, it's just people that, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not even necessarily a repress. It's a, you know, generally pretty far right people in, in Israel or Americans who have moved to Israel. It's a kind of quasi, you know, it's kind of a religious movement. So like the appropriateness of something like that, you know, dictating domestic policy and things at State Department, you know, is, you know, really in question. I think,
- [19:34]
C
I think also what made it so effective, I would argue more before the genocide began was that it was anonymous. Completely anonymous. Right. As I said before, you didn't know who these people were even, I mean I would say in the broader Arab diaspora as well. Like personally, I'm 28, I still wouldn't look up my own name on the Canary Mission site because my parents told me when I was 15 that is basically giving them your name to look through. So. And also for Palestinians, if you're trying to get in through the border to get into the west bank, the first thing that pops up whenever you Google that person's name, whenever they do their checks is your Canary Mission profile. So seeing these names was huge for a lot of people because they're little to no, there's no information about who's behind the screen doing these things. Can you explain how they managed to stay, stay anonymous for so long? How they managed to keep the funding so hidden for, for more than a decade?
- [20:41]
D
So we had some early reporting at like close to, well, 2018. And the series of reports in the forward where, you know, the person running the group, man named Jonathan Bash, UK born businessman, living in Israel for a long time, associated with Aisha Torah, which is a Jewish religious organization which has a big presence in New York and in the US it was reported that he was running it and some of the board members, most of them associated with Aisha Torah as well and part of this man's network. But since then we haven't gotten a lot of new reports. So one of the things, you know, is we don't have, you know, a foreign organization's non profit, you know, nonprofit spent, you know, receipts. We're not, we're not going to be, have access to. So there's kind of not, not shell in terms of like hiding money, but just a legal shell game where, you know, you have American nonprofits donating to the central fund, which is everyone's really in Israel, there's a guy with an interior design store who physically receives the money and then it just goes to Mega Mat Shalom, which is the nonprofit in Israel. And from, from there, from what we understand through our reporting and previous reporting, that's what's running and funding Canary Mission. There's probably other organizations too that we're uncovering. So it's just these series of nonprofit shells, which is all legal, but it obscures the funding and, and the, and the people running it. So, so any, any like little information we've gotten has just been hard to piece out, but not impossible.
- [22:10]
C
Another part of your report was kind of tracing the relationships it has with other pro Israel or Israeli organizations that their main purpose is to get more land or sustain the occupation. Can you kind of, can you kind of talk about those relationships that, that we see and how Canary's integral to all these different operations?
- [22:35]
D
Yeah, so a lot of the, you know, American nonprofits that we've seen donating, you know, where it's earmarked on, on a text form saying, you know, two Megabot Shalom for Canary Mission and that, and that's been a big piece of evidence that we've had that megamont runs Canary over the years. You know, a lot of these nonprofits, they're pretty mainstream. They donate to a lot of, you know, sort of generally pro Israel causes. But in some of my, my findings, you know, there's A lot of, several of the people that we identified as being paid by Megamot Shalom for content most likely to do with Canary Mission, often they're living in, you know, settler towns. There's overlap with other kinds of, you know, settler nonprofits, again, where, you know, there's one American address, whether it's at a law firm or whatever, and then the money is just, is just moving overseas. So you're seeing some of the same people involved, some of the same networks. So it's pretty, it's pretty mainstreamed into, I think, you know, a lot of these American nonprofits.
- [23:39]
A
And without giving away kind of sources and methods that would compromise your ongoing investigations, because I know that we've got more, more to come on this front. What can you tell us about how you were able to kind of unravel some of this? And to Mesa's point, like, what, what kind of took so long for these names and these, and these details to surface?
- [24:03]
D
Yeah, I mean, they did a. They did a pretty good job on opsec, you know, like, you know, being careful about things. And, and it was interesting in our previous drops, a story from a couple months ago where we saw, you know, their, their core value, core value statement like a PowerPoint. And one of them was, you know, anonymity to scare the me. Like, they, they prided themselves on staying pretty anonymous, but, you know, on the tech side and in, you know, open source investigations and things like that, sometimes there's one little trail that can break something open. Our very first story and job site last fall, we were able to see, you know, another way you can donate to Canary Mission was through, you know, just an online donation button. And that kind of opened up a way into some of the networks they're helping to move there. It's a lot of, like, figuring out, you know, patterns and figuring out who's who. And, you know, for every person that we report, there's like 100 more we don't report that help, like, bolster, you know, these connections. And so it's sort of like starting to understand, you know, the people and who knows who. And it's just, you know, it just takes someone to do it, I guess. It seems, you know, it seems inscrutable. And every story you read says carry mission is anonymous. We'll never know anything. But, you know, it's so it was, it wasn't particularly. It wasn't necessarily the easiest, but we started to open up and there's still a lot we don't know right about, about how everything is Exactly. Running. We don't know all of their donors, we don't know all of, all of the Americans who are financing this for,
- [25:33]
A
for the kind of OPSEC nerds who are really fascinated by this stuff. Can you talk just briefly about that button, that donation button and how it became a key to unlock.
- [25:43]
D
Yeah. And hopefully interior design store. So for a long time, Central Fund was located in a fabric store in Manhattan for many years because the Marcus family who established that nonprofit which moves tens of millions of dollars, dollars to Israel for a variety of pro Israel causes and groups, they had always been located in a fabric store that the family owned. And I noticed last year that the address. So if you want to donate to Canary Mission as an American and write it off on your taxes, you send it to an interior design store on Long island in the Five Towns. So I thought that was pretty interesting. So I tried to figure out, figure out why. And eventually what I found was that because the person running it was part of this network, close knit network of people in Israel mostly, but not all Americans who had moved to Israel over the years. And it was just basically getting, you know, started, get breaking into this network of people and seeing how they knew each other.
- [26:39]
A
And also kind of crazy that American taxpayers would be subsidizing that. But that's a whole, that's a whole nother question. So, Jackie, we're looking forward to, you know, your upcoming investigations. We learn more about this organization. But thank you so much for, for being here today.
- [26:56]
D
Thank you.
- [27:00]
B
We're going to turn now to Lebanon where today Israeli attacks are continuing across the country, mostly in the south and in the Beqaa Valley. Lebanon's health Ministry said four people were killed yesterday and 51 wounded. The Israeli military today issued forced displacement orders for a number of additional villages and towns north of what's called the Yellow Line south of the Latani river and telling them to evacuate immediately to the Saida area. And at the same time, Hezbollah is continuing to resist and to fight back. The Israeli army today announced that two of its soldiers were wounded and they were targeted in several areas. And this comes, you know, as we have more brazen rhetoric from people like the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He told his army commanders yesterday that Israel retains full authority to conduct strikes anywhere in Lebanese territory under this so called ceasefire agreement that was brought. President Trump, the Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also said calling on Hezbollah to be disarmed instead of the Lebanese government continues to quote, shelter under the shadow of the Hezbollah terror organization. Fire will burn The Cedars of Lebanon, end quote. You know, so this is all continuing as Israel published a map, as I said, showing a newly established yellow line inside Lebanon where its troops are deployed. It names More than 50 villages in the south to which residents will not be allowed to return. And you know, this is about 5-10 km into Lebanese territory. The yellow line term comes from Gaza. That's where Israeli troops withdrew to in October after the so called ceasefire agreement over there. And it's where they still control over half of the territory. And we also heard the Israeli Defense Minister say that all houses and village in villages in Lebanon will be demolished in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanun models in Gaza, which is a reference to just two of the areas in Gaza that have been completely razed. But to talk about this and give us a more broader historical context, we're joined by Mohammed Bazi. He's the director of the Hagop Kevorkian center for Near Eastern Studies and a Jerusalem professor as a journalism professor at New York University. He's the former Middle east bureau chief at Newsday. He has a recent article in the Guardian. I encourage everyone to check out. It's called Is this what War Looks Like Now? Mohammed, thank you for joining us on the live stream today. Can you, before we get into some of this historical context, just give us a lay of the land. Now we have this so called ceasefire agreement that's been extended for several weeks and yet this is a war that is raging.
- [30:09]
E
Yeah, thanks for having me, Sharif. I mean, this has been the typical ceasefire agreement that Israel has been doing, which is that it expects everyone else to cease firing and it continues to fire at will wherever it chooses. Pretty much the one restriction the Israelis seem to be abiding by is that they're not attacking Beirut. They're focusing their fire mostly on the south, although we saw the attacks on the Baka in the last two days or so. So there's slow expansion of the firing zone. And I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they attacked southern Beirut, if they attack the Dahi in the coming days under some pretext. And we're seeing, I think most dramatically is, as you laid out in Your intro, those 55 or so villages where Israel continues to demolish basically housing in a large scale. It's trying to make those villages and towns and the border areas completely uninhabitable. And there we're seeing very much that Gaza playbook and the Gaza model playing out where Israel will try to destroy everything that can lead to habitation that can allow people to live. And you have hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who are unable to go back to their hometowns and to their homes, either because they were destroyed or because they're within this new security zone, security belt that Israel has just unilaterally declared. And for the most part, the Lebanese government has been powerless to stop this. It's negotiating from a very weak position in. In this ceasefire. There's been two rounds of direct talks in Washington held under the auspices of the Trump administration. But Lebanon is negotiating from, again, this position of weakness. And for quite some time at the beginning of the Iran US ceasefire, the Lebanese government wanted to separate those tracks. And so in that way, lost a lot of leverage that Iran could have imposed on these ceasefire negotiations.
- [32:25]
B
And, you know, some of the, as we've said, these tactics that we're seeing Israel deploy in Lebanon mirror a lot of what's happening in Gaza. The complete destruction of villages. I mean, not just destruction, but complete erasure almost of towns and villages, the open targeting of journalists and healthcare workers. But you argue that this style of attack by the Israeli military actually dates Back to the 2006 war, the Israeli war with Lebanon, and the Dahya Doctrine. But before we get into that, can you just give us A lot of people, I think they hear about arguments about disarming Hezbollah. What is Hezbollah? Can you give us a brief thumbnail sketch? Just a history lesson? You know, Israel's wars on Lebanon date back to its first invasion in 78, and then in 82, and after the civil war ended in 1990, why Hezbollah was allowed to. The only militia allowed to keep its weapons. But take us through to 2006 and where the Dahe Doctrine was established. Established by Israel.
- [33:35]
E
Yeah, I'll try to be brief about this, but I think we can. We can start in, in the 70s and essentially in 1970, when the PLO was expelled from Jordan, it began creating bases in Lebanon and especially in the south. It put southern Lebanon and the largely Lebanese Shia community on the front line of a new conflict with Israel. And then that first Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, which many people don't think about because it was overshadowed by the invasion in 1982, but the first invasion was in 1978, and it was intended to drive the PLO out and to create the buffer zone. And so this gives us some perspective. We've been now talking about 48 years or so of buffer zones in the area. And the pretext was to create this buffer zone to prevent attacks on northern Israel. And then we get to the large scale invasion in 1982 when Israeli forces besieged Beirut, they besieged the PLO and forced the PLO to leave Lebanon. And that's where Israel controlled eventually within a few months controlled Beirut, most of Beirut and surrounding areas. And then slowly began to withdraw back toward the south. And that invasion 82 planted the seed for Hezbollah to emerge. There was a largely leftist resistance. Lebanese national resistance was largely leftist groups up until that point. But post invasion in 1982, Hezbollah and other Islamist groups, Amal among them was other large Shia group emerged and they began to take the lead in the fight against Israel and fight against the occupation. And from those early days the Iranian Revolutionary Guards helped create Hezbollah, helped arm it, help train various members and it continued to receive support from Iran in, in those decades. By 1990, by 1989, 90. The the agreement in 1989 has most all of the militias in Lebanon were disarmed except for Hezbollah, which got to keep its weapons because it was labeled national resistance against the Israeli the ongoing occupation in southern Lebanon. And by 2000. So Hezbollah led this guerrilla war for 18 years or so, including other, including other groups as well. But by the end, by 2000, when Israel eventually withdrew from the south, it was the leading actor on the ground against the Israeli occupation. Some of the other groups still played a nominal role at that point. And that's when Israel withdrew. It also withdrew its proxy militia, what was called the South Lebanon Army. And at that point Hezbollah really achieved something that no other Arab, that no other Arab military force had done, which was it had forced Israel to give up land without a peace agreement. And it was hailed for doing so in much of the Arab world. In the Muslim world, the Lebanese government was fairly weak. And so Hezbollah quickly moved into this vacuum in southern Lebanon. It opened schools and hospitals, it set up charities, it began winning municipal elections. And in many ways, Hezbollah's ascendance at that point put the Lebanese on the political map and gave them a sense of political power they hadn't had through the civil war years. And then Hezbollah continued and that's the moment where Hezbollah could have disarmed. And many communities in Lebanon wanted Hezbollah to disarm at that point. There was a conflict at that point about Shiva Farms, which is pretty much Syrian territory, it's occupied Syrian territory. But Hezbollah claimed it and continued its armed resistance on based on Shaba Farms. But that didn't go well with, with a lot of Lebanese. And, and so in 2000, in 2006, Hezbollah did a cross border attack on a military convoy, abducted two Israeli soldiers and had hoped to exchange them for Lebanese prisoners who were held by Israel. And that instigated this 34 day war which had been the most brutal Israeli Lebanese war up until that point. Israel destroyed large parts of southern Lebanon. It destroyed large parts of, of the southern suburbs, what are called the dahi. And that's where we saw the emergence of this DAHI doctrine. The Israeli military crippled Lebanese infrastructure. It bombed bridges, power plants, sewage treatment plants, hospitals, ports, the Beirut airport. Israel also imposed an air and sea blockade on Lebanon. And all of this happened with the support of the George W. Bush administration, which ran cover at the UN Security Council vetoing several ceasefire resolutions. So you know, the echoes of the later era of the Gaza genocide and the Biden administration and later the Trump administration running interference for Israel at the un, Some of that same playbook played out in, in, in the summer of 2006 in that war.
- [38:54]
B
And can you talk a bit about. So this. But the Dacha doctrine was announced and established. Talk a bit about what Israeli military officials were saying the purpose of this doctrine is and then how we saw it play out in Palestine.
- [39:09]
A
Yeah.
- [39:10]
E
So after the 2006 war, Israeli military officials think tankers, people in the security establishment began to articulate that DAHI doctrine. And the strategy essentially calls for the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure and civilians and this idea of the use of disproportionate, vastly disproportionate force. In all Israeli military campaigns, you had Gadi Ascanot, the head of the army's, the IDF's Northern Command in the 2006 war, he explained it as a form of essentially collective punishment and destroying civilian infrastructure, all, all things, all these acts that constitute war crimes. And the security establishment set out to create this framework of justifications, arguing that Israel needed to use this overwhelming force and target civilians and target infrastructure so that Lebanon and Israel's other enemies get bogged down for years rebuilding their shattered countries. And also this idea of deterrence, that this kind of overwhelming response, this overwhelming force creates deterrence. And we saw this begin to echo in Gaza in 2008, in 2012, in 2014 and in 2021, all those four wars on Gaza by Israel, eventually leading to the total siege and mass starvation and genocide unleashed after 2023. So the seeds of that target civilian infrastructure and civilians were planted, I mean they were planted in some earlier episodes in Israeli history and it's conflict with the Arabs, but they were really solidified. And that through line began with the Dahi doctrine in 2006.
- [41:09]
B
And we're seeing now, you know, this war of words getting deeper with the Lebanese government taking part in direct talks with Israel at the ambassador level and then at a higher level, supposedly in the coming weeks, the first time officially taking place directly since the early 90s. But we saw the, the head of Hezbollah just the other day very harshly criticized Lebanese government for taking part in these talks, as these know, these attacks continue. We saw the Lebanese president then fire back and say, you know, we're not the ones who are traitors. I forgot the exact quote, but it's something like the ones who committed treason were the ones who brought us into this war in a reference to Hezbollah firing rockets at Israel after the US And Israel launched a war in Iran. But there's all this talk about disarming Hezbollah. Can you, I think most people don't really understand. The Lebanese army is supposed to, supposed to do this, is supposed to disarm Hezbollah and be the national army, but the Lebanese army is actually funded and armed by the U.S. what is that level of funding and arming and what is the purpose for it? There was a comment last year, the envoy, Tom Barack, who basically said we're not arming them to be able to take on Israel. And so Hezbollah has this argument to say that we are the only ones who can resist Israel. And so we're not giving up our weapons. But can you just unpack that a little bit?
- [42:53]
E
Yeah, that, that comment by Tom Barack you mentioned really undid many years of Washington think tank work on, on Lebanon. And, and, you know, in this very, you know, in his own way, he's been one of the most open, let's say Trump administration officials. And, and he actually said the next part of that quote was he was in crude to the Psalms. He was saying, what do you mean? We're not, we're not arming the Lebanese army to fight Israel. We're arming them basically to fight Hezbollah. And there was tremendous anger in, in Lebanon at this comment, at the echoes of the civil war. But, but that's largely been the US Policy. It's also been US ignore or to arm the Lebanese army, the Lebanese military, in, in the, in the least functional way possible. And that's, and that's been at the insistence of Israel. So even when Europe and sometimes France donates some military equipment to the Lebanese military, even when Europe gets involved and arms the Lebanese army, there are limitations essentially imposed by Israel. Over the years, we've had Israel object to the Lebanese army receiving basic things like even night vision goggles, arguing that they would end up in the hands of Hezbollah eventually. And so it's, it's been a joint US Israeli policy to limit the, potential, limit the capability of this Lebanese army and so enabling Hezbollah to argue, well, the army actually can't defend Lebanon's borders. And that's what played out after this last, after this last phase of the war in early March when Hezbollah fired those rockets. And very quickly, within several hours, Israel expanded the war greatly again and reinvaded the Lebanese army, abandoned its positions. And that was actually a government decision, a Lebanese government decision that the commander of Lebanese army objected to initially. He, he wanted the army to stay as, as a form of interference in some ways on the ground, but the government, the cabinet overruled him. And so you've had decades of circular debate in Washington think tank circles about when can the Lebanese army be ready, when can it be prepared to defend Lebanon and disarm Hezbollah. And it's been kept weak on purpose. And this is nothing against, I mean, we've also seen some tremendous acts of bravery by the Lebanese army and Lebanese security forces over the last few years since the 2024 war and, and target and Israel's targeting of, of certain units of the Lebanese army and security forces at different points and mass scale killing of those units. So it's, it's not, it's not a critique of the army itself. There's tremendous bravery in, in the ranks of, of the military, but they don't have the resources, they don't have the weapons that Hezbollah has and they're not capable of protecting Lebanon.
- [46:03]
A
And I wanted to ask you real quickly, Professor Bazi, about the, the kind of technological innovations of this current conflict. It feels to me, watching from the outside that Hezbollah and Iran were paying fairly close attention to the Ukraine Russia war. Iran actually, you know, obviously more actively involved and that the kind of fiber optic first person drones have become kind of an asymmetric game changer. Ukraine kind of, you know, discovered that they were able to at least hold off these Russian advances with these, these fiber optic drones, which, which then were able to overcome kind of, you know, Russian jamming.
- [46:50]
B
And maybe Ryan just explained a little more what, yeah, fiber optic drone is.
- [46:54]
A
I think you kind of have to explain it because it's like when I first started learning about these during the Ukraine conflict, I was like, wait a minute, what you're, you're attaching a ethernet cord and it's not an ethernet cord, it's a like very thin cord that basically operates as similar to an ethernet cord that attaches itself to a, to a device and it. And you will have then a spool that can run, you know, there are now attempts to run them more than 20 miles. But you can, you can run, you can run a spool of fiber optic cable, you know, for miles behind a drone. And there are these kind of famous images in, on the kind of Ukraine, Russian battlefield of just spools of fiber optic cables everywhere from these, from the, you know, the after effects of these drones. And there's very, there's very little that can be done about them. You could try to shoot them out of the sky. It looks like some Israeli soldiers may have actually kind of deflected one recently as it was attacking a gathering of soldiers near a medical helicopter, evacuation helicopter. But what it means is that as long as you're within 20 miles of a target, you can launch a drone that can be put together with consumer products for something like 200 or less. And you can, and you can operate it first. Per the fpv, first person view means you can. There's a camera on it, so you can follow it for a very long time up until it hits the target and the Israelis can't jam it. And so we've gone from, you know, artillery shells or, you know, very, very inaccurate rockets to these very precise unjammable munitions. Flying munitions. And I'm wondering if, how, how kind of significant you think this kind of technological change is, and how is, how is Israel going to respond? Because if they're, you know, forget southern Lebanon, if they're northern Israel, if they don't reach some sort of, you know, peace agreement, genuine coexistence, it's not expensive for Hezbollah to, you know, constantly harassing Israeli troops and settlements with these drones. So what, what, how significant is this kind of innovation?
- [49:26]
E
I mean, it's significant, and it's also trying to even out. I mean, the technological disparity is huge, right, because we saw Israel carry out the pager attacks in September of 2024. We saw Israel really use its own drones that are constantly over Lebanese skies in this entire time, both for surveillance, but also to scoop up IP addresses and other information. And we've seen tremendous Israeli capability to penetrate Hezbollah's systems. We've seen that in Iran as well as, and so some attempts. And Hezbollah suffered huge setbacks in, especially in 2024 with the killing of most of its top leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime Secretary general, and others. And it showed this tremendous ability for Israel to be able to penetrate Lebanese society and Hezbollah itself had been previously a fairly secretive organization. There's been, there's a couple of theories as to why that happened. One of the reasons probably was Hezbollah's expansion into a regional force, Hezbollah's role in supporting the Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah's role in Iraq and Yemen and other places where it opened itself up in ways it hadn't before. And so we're also seeing some reports, and I don't know this firsthand, but reports after 2024, Hezbollah going back to its more secretive small cells, often working with possibly guards, commanders and others to go back and reorganize in that way so that it's more difficult for the Israelis to penetrate that. But it's also coming at a huge cost on the ground because Israel's overwhelming force destroyed large sections of southern Beirut this time around in 2026 and now completely demolishing and destroying those frontline towns and villages in the south. But I think, Ryan, as you said, it's the Israeli strategy ultimately because we have over 100 years and maybe even longer of counterinsurgency theory about this. That overwhelming force going back Algeria, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, it never really works. You can't turn the population against indigenous force and you might make it extremely painful, which the Israelis are doing now. And yeah, and some people have turned against Hezbollah. But this, the low tech aspects of this are going to enable that kind of sustained. And so Israel's answer might be to just ever increase buffer zone, the so called buffer zone, the security zone to go deeper and deeper into Lebanon and they try to then grab 20 miles so that you can't reach. But that's, and that's the question where becomes, what is the world willing to
- [52:49]
A
let them do buffer zone? Like.
- [52:51]
E
Yeah.
- [52:52]
A
So even if they push up 20 miles, what's at, at the 20 miles is a grouping of soldiers that would then be. Right.
- [53:00]
E
Yeah. And you can continuously expand. But that's, but that seems to fit in. I mean now it's, we've gone far beyond the Dahi doctrine. We've gone into the Gaza doctrine and the Israel cats and others are no longer threatening the Dahi doctrine. Not threatening Lebanon was that they're, they're threatening it with Gaza, you know, and it's, it's part and parcel of this Israeli open warfare, endless warfare that we've seen since 23.
- [53:32]
B
I just have a couple more quick questions, Mohamed. One is that, you know, part of the Gaza doctrine is the open targeting of journalists. Can you tell us a little bit about Amal Khalil who was murdered last week, the circumstances around her death, her significance and the outlet that she reported for. And also I understand your family is from vintage Bil in the south. Can you just tell us a little bit about the importance of Bintish Bil? You know, it's one of the first places Nostralla went to after the 2006 war and the victory or when they fought Israel to a standstill. But yeah, both of those things. If you can just give us your answer.
- [54:20]
E
Sure. So Amal Khalil was a longtime journalist in Lebanon. She was probably one of the best known journalists covering southern, the south especially. She had started out at Safir but then fairly quickly at the founding of Al Akhbar where many journalists who had worked for as Safir had moved. She became one of their correspondents in the south and over the years became essentially their primary correspondent in south Lebanon. And she was, she was well known for, for her coverage. She was well known for videos on the ground, videos that she would produce and share on social media. And she was beloved as a correspondent and had excellent sources all through, you know, through, in the Lebanese military, in Hezbollah, in unifil, in, in other parts of society. And so this was a journalist who was best known for covering this area. And it seems Israel had her in their crosshairs for some time. And so she was killed outside of the so called security zone. Essentially she was targeted by Drum Sheen, a colleague were traveling, a car in front of them was hit and then they took refuge in a house where the Israelis then shortly afterward attack, bombed that as well, injuring her and her colleague. And for about six or seven hours the Lebanese Red Cross and others, Lebanese military, others were trying to go in to rescue her. This is a Lebanese journalist attacked, wounded on Lebanese territory. And the Lebanese military and the Red Cross could not get to her because the Israelis wouldn't let them. And this got all the way up to the, the president, the Lebanese government and they couldn't do very much about it. And eventually she, she bled out to death. She died as, as we saw happen with quite a few journalists who were targeted by Israel in, in Gaza. This, this targeting and, and where they can't kill them in one go, they will prevent them from getting help and they will die on the ground. And frankly it's one of those things where you hope that journalists around the world would raise a fuss about something like this. I think if it had happened, if something like this had happened in Ukraine to a Ukrainian journalist, we'd hear a very different narrative of that. But sadly we haven't heard that kind of narrative from many Western media outlets. The kind of pushback we, we see elsewhere.
- [57:05]
B
Yeah. Just to remind people, also today is the, yes, the one month anniversary. Exactly one month ago today, the Israeli military assassinated Ali Shwaib, also a very prominent journalist in the south, along with his colleague Fatma Ftouni, her brother Muhammad. And what was slightly different in this one, which mirrored also Gaza, was the open bragging afterwards about the targeting and killing of this journalist, claiming that this was in fact not a journalist, that this was a militant putting out a photo with some kind of split photo of him, half of him shown in military uniform, which they later admitted was photoshopped. And so just to remind people, and yeah, since this latest phase of the war, since March 2, 9 journalists in Lebanon have been killed by the Israeli military. But, but yeah, sorry, sorry to interrupt. Go ahead with about Bintou. Is your family house still standing?
- [58:09]
E
No, I mean that's that as far as we know. I mean it's very, it's very hard to tell because there's not a lot of firsthand visuals coming out. What people are relying on are the satellite imagery and trying to fix, to see. But from the little we've seen, there's been some drone footage that some Israeli journalists have released from being taken on tours by the IDF to and elsewhere. There's tremendous destruction in vintage bail. And one of the reasons for that is that the Israeli military has had a grievance, has had this intent on vengeance against Spindish Bail in particular, because it was one of the first places that Nasrallah went in in May of 2000, in late May of 2000, after the Israeli withdrawal from the south. And he gave a speech in the stadium in Benji where he, he talks about Israel. He compared Israel to a spider's web. And that speech became rather famous. It got traction again during the war in 2006. And so you had recently an Israeli military commander show up in the rubble of the stadium because they destroyed, they dynamited the stadium and bombed it. And he said something like, you know, this here in this stadium, some guy gave a speech 26 years ago and he's no longer with us and the stadium doesn't exist anymore and they raised the Israeli flag. So just very clear want and destruction and taking vengeance against this town. You know, that's existed for hundreds of years. They've bombed. We've seen photos of. There's a Grand Mosque in one part of the town and near my grandparents and great Grandparents, homes, those have all been destroyed. The mosque has largely been destroyed. So it's, it's a, it's, it's a complete, it's an attempt again, we, we've seen this play out in Gaza on, on a much larger scale. An attempt to demolish and erase an entire society.
- [60:22]
A
Yeah. I just want to underline how insane it is to be angry at a stadium just in case people skip past that. Like, it's just bonkers. A stadium. The stadium didn't give the speech. Like it's toddler level lashing out, but not remotely unusual at all. Like, you know, characteristic of. This is not, this is not something that was like out of the ordinary. But yes.
- [60:49]
B
And we also, just in terms of the destruction, we published a piece just a few days ago about because of this problem that no one can get in to look to see if their homes are still standing, that they're relying on satellite imagery and some displaced families are pooling money together and purchasing satellite images. You know, the story that we worked on, they're purchasing from a company called ongo, which charges $350 per image. And so they'll pull money from the entire village, buy something. You know, in this case it was 10 images which are high res, which they can zoom in on and then sharing it on a WhatsApp group of residents of the village of like 1200 people so everyone can take a look. But this is a kind of dystopian world we're living in where people need satellite images to see if their homes are still standing because they can't and Israel won't let them go back.
- [61:44]
E
Yeah, maybe this is. And it shows. It's. Yeah, I mean, kind of weakness of the state. Right. It's, it's, it's, this is also something, it's, it's a basic thing that Levi's doing, but it's not on their agenda at all.
- [61:59]
A
Last one for me, what, what are people doing? So we're talking, you know, many hundreds of thousands of people for many, many months. Like, where are people living? Like, how annoyed are people getting at each other having to live in the same, you know, bedroom with their cousin who was like, sure, you can come for a weekend. And the weekend has turned into many months. Incomes that were dependent on where they were living are now up in smoke. You know, I can't imagine how difficult that must be. Just on a mundane kind of day to day basis. Like, what, what are you hearing about what it's doing to the, not the, not just the people that are deployed, displaced. But the people who are, you know, dealing with the displaced people.
- [62:44]
E
Yeah, it's, it's, that's a, that's a great question. It's tearing up the social fabric of Lebanon and it's also, some parts of it are, it's reigniting sectarian tension. You, you've seen the reports and I think it's, it's, it's also you, you've done some reporting on this aspect of, well, of the communities where some displaced people have taken refuge if they happen to be mixed communities or if they're Christian majority communities, especially where Israel has worked at instigating sometimes by these targeted, the so called targeted attacks where they're trying, where they hit an apartment or a building and cause damage, kill people and then the neighbors and the people in those neighborhoods, you know, go and are very angry at the landlords that might have rented an apartment to a displaced Shia family or people who've taken in their, their relatives. So it's, it's tearing at the social fabric at multiple levels. We've also seen the reporting of some villages in the south or some villages that are not Shia majority. There's, there's villages that are Christian or Druze and Israel is essentially going in and saying, you know, don't host your Shia friends and, and neighbors from neighboring villages because then we'll target you. So push them out and other sort of dystopian layer to this. So it's causing this damage to the society. It's, it's causing people to doubt this doubt among neighbors. It's, and there's a huge economic component because yes, people have lost their livelihood or in southern Beirut, they're dependent on remittances to some extent if they're lucky enough to have family outside. And again, some, that's another area where this state is largely failing. Some, some ministries, some individual ministers have been pretty good about it. Civil society has been excellent as it always has in helping the displaced. But that's on a day to day basis. That's about secure meals, getting people mattresses and things like that. And there's been a lot of, a lot of schools are now serving as shelters because there isn't the infrastructure for it. And so that displaces students and now students have to study online. So it has this ripple effect throughout society.
- [65:17]
A
Well, Professor Bozzi, you know, thank you so much for joining us. Very much appreciate it.
- [65:23]
E
Thanks for having me.
- [65:25]
A
Yeah, you got it. All right, Sharif. I think that'll do it for us today. Unless there's anything else you desperately wanted to, wanted to go over for people here?
- [65:35]
B
No, I mean, I thought that that was great. And yeah, I would encourage people to go and look at some of our coverage where we cover a lot of the things, things out of Lebanon that about in different ways, targeting of journalists, the eradication of villages, use of satellite imagery, different Israeli tactics by we've used multiple journalists on the ground, primarily Lea Yunus. So I'd encourage people to go read those.
- [66:01]
A
And Mesa, thank you for taking some time to join us here and also, you know, welcome to Drop Site News. Glad to, glad that you're here with us.
- [66:10]
C
I know it was great. Hopefully I did okay for my first try.
- [66:15]
A
I think you did great. So as, as always, if you're watching us on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe. We also now have this membership capacity where you can kind of just support us by becoming a member on YouTube. Not even sure what that means. It's not really going to be any benefits other than knowing that you're, you know, supporting independent journalism. And you can also do that over at donate.dropsitenews.com be sure to sign up for our morning newsletter, Dropsite Daily. You can do that@dropsitenews.com you know, without the support of our viewers and our readers, none of this is possible. And so once again, on behalf of all of my colleagues here at Dropsite News, you know, deep appreciation and we will see you next time.
- [67:02]
E
It.