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Danielle Kurd
This is an I heart podcast.
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Cool Zone Media Announcer
Cool Zone Media.
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Danielle Kurd
Hello everyone. This is it could happen here. My name is Danielle Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I'm joined by Justin Salhani, who is a non resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and a writer and journalist based in Beirut. He has worked with Al Jazeera Digital and has contributed to a number of different outlets in the past and has been reporting on the region since 2011. Justin, thank you so much for coming on the show.
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Justin Salhani
Thanks for having me.
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Danielle Kurd
So since you are based in Beirut and so intimately knowledgeable of what's been going on, I thought we could start by just kind of laying out what conditions are like in Lebanon right now.
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Justin Salhani
So right now as we speak, we're in the midst of kind of a tenuous, fragile, incomplete, we can call it ceasefire. In Beirut proper, there still is occasionally, you know, a drone overhead, this kind of infamous drone that buzzes incessantly and keeps everyone constantly on their toes. But there's been almost two weeks or a little, maybe a little bit more now without attack on Beirut. Basically we had that day, April 8, which is being called locally Black Wednesday, where around the country I think the numbers are now over 350 people were killed and many of those were in Beirut in areas that came without warning. You know, there is this kind of dynamic now where the Israeli military will at times announce warnings for certain areas, though many attacks come with no warning and they brought down buildings without warning in some cases as well in central Beirut. So the conditions right now are, you know, relatively, I guess we can call it quiet here. Of course, that's vastly different in the south where there was an intensification, particularly yesterday, there wasn't really any cessation of hostilities. We can talk about how the minutes leading up to April 16 when the ceasefire went into effect, you know, throughout the country in Lebanon, the Israelis were attacking around the country, not Beirut, but in other parts of the country, particularly in the south, and in the city of Sur, they bombed. You know, I was down there the other day, and people were talking about what time the Israelis dropped their last bomb, whether it was 12 on the dot or 11:59pm or 11:57pm and so these are the conditions that essentially journalists and media workers are forced to live with on a daily basis.
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Danielle Kurd
I mean, it's wild how conscientious they are. You know, they have to take every single minute to bomb their neighbors. So, yeah, maybe tell us what the situation has been like for journalists in particular. I imagine different parts of the country are struggling with maybe different challenges.
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Justin Salhani
Yeah, this exists on a sliding scale. Obviously, since 2023. The first week post October 7, there was a Lebanese journalist by the name of Aam Abdullah who was killed. He was a Reuters photographer. And that was a strike that wounded other journalists, including journalists from AFP and Al Jazeera. So, I mean, it's been over two and a half years now that there has been a danger. And that first strike that killed Isam changed the way that media assesses risk in this country. Since then, a number of other journalists have also been killed. So in that sense, there still is a fear that targeting, you know, much like in Gaza, is the thing that happens. Of course, in Gaza, it was way worse. There was a way higher threat level. And I think part of that is because there were no foreign journalists in Gaza during that period, so it was killing of Palestinians. Until now, there has been at least one foreign journalist who was wounded in that initial attack. Since then, most of the attacks have targeted Lebanese journalists and particularly Lebanese journalists working with outlets who have some sort of, we can call it, line that supports or is differential to Hezbollah. I mean, of course, this is not an excuse. Right? They're still journalists. They're still working in the. Regardless of what their political affiliation is, these are people who are there to assess information. Recently, in this latest intensification, there have been more killings of journalists, of course, and these are typically journalists who are working on the front lines and in the south. You know, we can't know what's in the minds of the Israeli military. But based on my conversations with media professionals and media watchdogs in the recent years, I wrote a piece for Al Jazeera back in 2024, I believe it was about the killing of journalists in Gaza. And, you know, people at outlets like Reporters Without Borders were telling me that at that point, we're talking, you know, a year and A half ago it was already systematic. There was a systematic means of trying to control the narrative through the killing of journalists. And this is a big thing for these groups that are, you know, work really hard to share only things that they've backed up with data. They're not bombastic spokespeople who have some sort of political lean. You can say these, these are people who really have to. And organizations that really have to be careful with the language that they pick and choose. So I thought that was like a really interesting framing. So what they had told me at the time, and I think this is inevitably still true if you subscribe to this idea, is that the goal was to prevent the information from getting out from the front lines, to stop people from knowing what was happening. And this has been clear as lately we've seen journalists targeted. And you know, this isn't a case whereby journalists were killed. And I'm speaking specifically in Lebanon. This also happened in Gaza, but specifically in Lebanon. In the last few weeks we've seen cases where there were double tap strikes on journalists that had targeted journalists. And then the Israeli military came out, particularly with an incident that happened, I think just a little over a month ago now. They came out and photoshopped journalists from the TV station Al Manar in Hezbollah fatigues and claimed that he was part of this elite fighting force, the Raw Adwan forces. They offered no proof for this. The Israeli military, a spokesperson, I believe it was later admitted that this was a doctored or an AI created photo that they released. But these are the conditions that journalists are working with. Unfortunately, Lebanon is not signatory to the ICC or the icj. And so these cases, though there's been pressure by media watchdogs and other bodies to get Lebanon to sign up to join the ICC and the ICJ so that they can put forward cases against Israel and for specifically the targeting of journalists, as well as many other actions Israelis have taken in Lebanon, particularly south Lebanon over the last two and a half years. These are essentially the conditions that Lebanese journalists are working under where their lives are at risk. I might point out one other incident where a journalist from RT was reporting on a bridge in south Lebanon. It was one of the last bridges to not yet have been bombed that would connect south Lebanon to the rest of the country. He was reporting when it was caught on video that a strike had happened. I think there are legitimate criticisms about this journalist's conduct in terms of placing himself. He wasn't wearing a helmet at the time. Those are legitimate criticisms for kind of here's how you can do better sort of thing. That still does not excuse the fact that the attack happened while the journalist was there covering. And again, regardless of the outlets lean, regardless of what their agenda is, etc. Etc. These are still media professionals working. I believe that a warning had happened at that time. So again, questions over maybe decisions that were made. Still that does not excuse the Israeli military action. And I've heard people say, you know, that if you work through this logic, if we go back to the logic of what happened in Gaza, for example, with the first attack on a hospital, and you know, this was in the first few weeks after October 7th, you may remember at the time there was this whole kind of debate between analysts and pundits and talking heads and what have you. And you know, Israel would never do that. They would never attack a hospital. And then months later, here we are and every hospital in Gaza, you know, at one point multiple hospitals in Gaza were completely unoperational attacks that happened around hospitals, at hospitals, claiming hospitals were militant centers or centers that were hosting militants and all these other sort of things. Forensic architecture has done fantastic work on the Gaza example of how the Israelis had structurally gone in and dismantled Gazan health care, Palestinian healthcare in Gaza. And I think it might be fair to say that there's a similar logic that is working here in Lebanon, is that, you know, because after the murder of Ay Sam Abdullah, essentially there was a period where journalists were not killed for at least, you know, a short period of time. Then two journalists from the outlet Al Mayadeen were killed. And then since then we've had others from Mayadin, from Manar, et cetera, that have been killed by the Israelis. So you see kind of a pattern that, okay, we can get away with killing these journalists that are ostensibly working with outlets who have some sort of affiliation or lean towards the Hezbollah narrative. That's also the case for Al Akhbar with the newspaper that Ahmad Khalil worked with. She was killed in a really horrific targeted strike just a few days ago where her and a colleague were in the south. An attack happened. They fled into a building, then the Israelis attacked that building. She was stuck under the rubble. And the Israelis prevented Red Cross medics and first responders from getting to her for a series of hours, I think it was around seven hours, the official reporting says, and she died. There's no way to frame this other than that Israel attacked her and then prevented her from receiving the treatment that she needed to be able to continue to live. And Amad was somebody Who I didn't know personally, so I can't speak to her character in my sense. But from the reports, people reported her as a person that was incredibly generous with her time, was incredibly helpful, was very kind to animals. She was somebody who was in the south for years and years, was often in the south, was constantly in the south, was always on the front lines, felt it was her duty to report from the front lines as much as possible. You know, these are the people that the Israelis have targeted until now. Without maybe going too much into, you know, an attempt to draw some sort of pattern, I think that what seems clear is that those people are targets. But we have to ask, are the Israelis maybe trying to expand that a bit? Because this is the first journalist they've killed from Al Akhbar. Right. If they've killed Manar before, they've gone on to Mayadeen, or they've killed Mayadin and Manar and Mayadeen in one way, gone on to Akbar, are they widening the scope? Are they challenging more people? Are more people at risk? And so I think what this does is inevitably now journalists will think twice about going south. They'll think twice about going to the front lines. Security advisors will put more caution into allowing their journalists to go south. People will take less risks, obviously. People who will see themselves, who work as targets, maybe with. With outlets that the Israelis are openly in opposition to, might take different decisions. You know, So I think this is where we end up at basically after such killings and such actions.
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Danielle Kurd
Referring back to the killing of Amal Khalil, we're recording this April 27th. As far as I'm aware, no other journalist has been killed since she was the last person who was killed. But we'll see what happens. But Amal was. Was not only double tapped, they had been threatening her over text message, right?
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Justin Salhani
Yeah. So this is a phenomenon that has happened. Obviously, it's not just journalists, but it's others as well that have gotten threatening mess. There have been cases, reported cases of people receiving texts saying, we're going to attack you now, you can die by yourself or you can die with your family. And I want to be clear until now, that's not a journalist that this has happened to. Amma did receive threatening text messages. Other reporters have followed up and messaged the number that messaged her. It's really hard to deduct if this is an actual campaign, if this is somebody within state capacity, or if these are individuals that found her phone number and did that. However, there is a psychological effect that takes place here. Right. There has been a phenomenon of different municipalities around Lebanon receiving phone calls from Israeli officials or Israeli military officials warning them of hosting displaced people. You know, this has been reported in outlets including in the New York Times and others. So essentially a psychological effect has began to take hold with that as well. There have been a number of calls that are essentially fake calls. So, you know, for example, a few weeks ago, a neighbor of mine or a neighboring building just a couple streets over reportedly received a warning, a threatening call threatening them that there might be attack on their building. Now, that attack never manifested and never developed, at least not at that precise building, though there have been other attacks within a walking distance of my house in the last few weeks. That being said, you know, that has a psychological effect because many people will not take the risk they'll leave. Other times, you'll find cases where people will get some sort of call or people in the building will get some sort of call, they'll write it off as fake, and then they won't leave their house. And so there have been people who have seen warnings coming one way or another. You know, I'm not saying it's directly through a phone call, but through one way or another, and thought, you know, whatever the case, we're not going to leave our homes and they end up dying in strikes. So there is absolutely a psychological effect. And we have no way of knowing if these fake calls are coming from the Israeli military or officials or individuals or just other people playing pranks. All those things can be true to varying levels. A neighbor who lives above me got a call from ostensibly a Cuban number that was like an automated recording of sorts. And through her mind, she started thinking, you know, what are the different possibilities of these calls? What sort of chances do I want to take? Incidentally, a day or two later, I got a call from a Cuban number as well. And I just chose not to pick it up because at that point we had figured out it was very likely to be fake. But this has a psychological effect, and this is one of the many things that Lebanese people are dealing with when we talk about this sort of psychological warfare through the things like, you know, calls, warnings of your neighborhood or of your entire village at times, or maybe even of your building. Sonic booms, distribution of leaflets. All these things are happening simultaneously. When we talk about the things that Ahmad received, again, this is the targeting of media workers and journalists, and you will see kind of this international indifference. Luckily now there's been kind of more voices, I think, picking up on the Fact that journalists are a threat. And it is a case where it seems like yesterday it was Palestinians and today it's Lebanese and tomorrow who could be next? And maybe this is starting to ruminate a bit with journalists and the international community. But, you know, these are the things that, you know, we've seen happen with Lebanese journalists, that they are directly attacked. There's been huge indifference. There's, there is always kind of this, you might call it not an indifference, but maybe kind of a hedging of sorts. Of like, yeah, of course we don't condone the attack of media workers, you know, but the affiliation with Hezbollah. Right. Because this thing exists on a sliding scale of sorts. International humanitarian law is not a super cut and dry thing. All the times there are nuances and exceptions and whatever have you. Under international humanitarian law, as I understand it, I mean, media workers absolutely are off the table. They're not somebody you can attack unless they're actually caring and taking part in battles. Even combatants who are not actively on the field of battle are not legitimate targets. However, Israel does not play by those rules. Israel will target people who are ostensibly in Hamas or Hezbollah or other such groups, even if they're at home with their families. Till now, nobody has held them accountable for this. Right? This is why they've been able to attack Beirut at will, to attack the Beirut suburbs at will. This is why they can bring down buildings in the capital or in the south and say that, you know, there were Hezbollah figures in the building even if they were not carrying weapons, even if they were not active combatants. And the burden of proof has not been on them, though it should be. So this is a sliding scale. So it starts with these kind of militants and they get away with, you know, attacking maybe somebody who was a former militant who's no longer carrying a weapon or somebody who's not an active combatant. And it goes all the way to media workers who have this sort of, you know, what we might call kind of this not clear cut affiliation or whatever. We should be clear that it doesn't matter what their affiliation is as a media worker, as a journalist, they should be protected. But because of these affiliations, they're not. Again, in Gaza, it started with such media workers. It ended up with more recently seeing, for example, a Palestinian journalist who worked with the Associated Press being killed on a live stream. So this is kind of the sliding scale that we're seeing happening now.
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Danielle Kurd
Like you said, it's widening. It's a testing of the limits. Some outlets will get no outrage. But Then they widen the scope of it. The entire landscape and dynamic that you're describing can only be described as terrorizing. And we've seen this in the past, of course, like in Gaza, they drop leaflets to terrorize people. They send those text messages to Gazans. I mean, I don't encourage anybody to look for these. But there have been videos of people fleeing their cars because they're about to be droned after receiving a threat saying, leave or your family will get droned with you. It's unbelievable. And of course, as you said, we're talking about journalists now, but we've seen a targeting of medical professionals, we've seen quadruple taps at this point of medical professionals to prevent people from helping those under the rubble, to prevent. Helping those who have now then been targeted for being in an ambulance. I mean, it's a really outrageous state of affairs. Has there been an exodus, a foreign journalist? What's the situation like for those who are in Lebanon?
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Justin Salhani
No, there's not been an exodus. You know, I think that many foreign journalists still feel that they're protected. It's an interesting dynamic, you know, because I think as you, you'll know very well, right? Like whenever there are active hostilities or things like this, we have this flock of journalists who come in and then once it kind of calms down, they leave. And I always find that bizarre because I feel like so much of the work to be done happens when ceasefires go into effect, because that's when you can see the extent of damages. That's when you can actually investigate and see, okay, now that the firing has stopped, you have better access to places you can spend more time in, places you can get deeper stories. I mean, unfortunately, the way that media works today, there's not the luxury of time. Oftentimes, media outlets are understaffed and underfunded. And so it's a difficult prospect. There's still actually quite a lot of foreign journalists here. Luckily, some of them even covered Amad Khalid's, you know, funeral. They covered her memorial, they covered what happened to her because it was such an egregious example. You know, at the same time, I think that there is this sort of dynamic. The Israelis are aware of, that if they kill a foreign journalist, right, like they can kill. They have killed a Lebanese journalist who worked for a major international outlet. And that led to some troubles for them because Reuters and others collaborated to do an investigation. Human rights organizations are reporting on this. Killing other Lebanese journalists that worked for less prominent outlets still led to certain condemnations, certain Reports were written. But I think that, you know, it's kind of this effect. It's like an avalanche effect. It's that the more, the more sort of attention goes towards these sort of incidents, the more of a more problem it becomes for Israel with their international partners or their international relations. Right. And so I think there's an acute awareness about that from the Israeli side. They know kind of how far they can get away with things to a certain extent. You know, I think a lot of journalists are aware of that as well. And so they feel that for until now, they can still go into these places. But like you said, it's, it's a widening effect, right? It's trying to see how far you can expand and how much you can get away with. Now, let's say that, you know, for example, this RT journalist, if they had killed him, he's a British citizen, you know, does that suddenly change the calculus or the fact that he worked for rt, does that count against him? How many politicians, let's say, in Europe will come out and say, you know, this is wrong, the fact that it was an RT journalists, Hopefully they still would, but it creates this kind of, you know, indecision, if you will.
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Danielle Kurd
It seems to me from your answer that like they still expect the deterrent effect of their foreignness, essentially.
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Justin Salhani
Yeah, I think so. They, they still carry that. And I think they, they have an awareness of that. You know, I wouldn't want to speak on their behalf. And there's always layers, right? There's the ones who parachute in, who maybe a good basis in the region. There are those who are based here and have been here a long time. There are those who speak the language and understand the culture. There are those who, who don't. And I mean, like, this is not to single out foreign journalists. There are local journalists who are amazing, and there are local journalists who are horrible, obviously. Right. But I think that there is kind of a thought process that, yeah, carrying, you know, a foreign passport, working for a major organization still comes with some sort of protection. So. But I mean, at the same time, this also means that the Israelis killing the journalists that they have killed, it's not a mistake. Right. I can think off the top of my head of at least two journalists who were killed in their homes. And so again, this is attacking civilian infrastructure, attacking buildings, and that comes with a different sort of criticisms. But if we're talking just about the operation of journalists while they're doing their jobs, while they're driving in cars, while they're covering, sometimes Conflict sometimes maybe just moving from one place to the other, it becomes very clear that, you know, if you feel protected by the fact that you have a foreign passport, that also means that the Israelis are aware of who they're attacking and when they're attacking. We've seen things, for example, like recently, you know, compared to the killing of people, this might be a minor example, but we saw this thing that got a lot of international attention of an Israeli soldier destroying a statue of Jesus in a Catholic town in the south of Lebanon. And then more recently, there was the destruction of solar panels in another Christian town in south Lebanon. And the Israeli military will come out and say things like, you know, this does not represent the values of the Israeli military. Military. So, okay, then there's the targeting and killing of journalists. Does that represent the, you know, and then. And then additionally, I think it's important to say that with the level of data, with the level of precision that the Israelis have, that they've killed at times. You know, I visited a scene in a Christian town just east of Beirut, in a place called Aina Sade, where our mutual friend Elia Ayub grew up. And we saw the attack, the site of the attack. And I went to a building behind the building that attacked, that had, you know, we had the view from up top, and you could see that two holes were in the rooftop of the building that was struck. And it's because the shells went through, or the rockets went through the top of the building, through the roof, went down a floor below, and then exploded and killed what ended up killing a local Christian official. And that. That was according to the Israelis, not the target of who they wanted to kill. But the point being is that they have this technology that they can attack precisely certain areas. They can attack to the apartment. They can blow out the walls of one apartment and leave the one a floor below or two floors below intact. And they've done this. They did this at a hotel just five minutes away. Some ostensible Iranian officials were staying in a hotel. They destroyed that room. It doesn't mean that at times there aren't other people nearby that are hurt. But if you're able to attack and you know the figures that you are going after and it is this precise, that then what is the need to take down entire buildings? Or what is your excuse when you're going after media workers? Now, they say it in a sense of like they did with this Minar correspondent, that he was a member of the Radwan forces. But again, they've Provided no information to do that. These are people who have very public facing social media accounts. These are people who are in the public eye, who are on tv, who are doing all these sort of things. So it really begs to ask, ask many, many questions of the Israelis.
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Danielle Kurd
Yeah, statues are off limits, but people are okay. Yeah, yeah, fair game. So there's a ceasefire now. What are people expecting for Beirut and what does that ceasefire look like? As you said, the attacks are still going on in the south, but what are people expecting for these different parts of Lebanon?
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Justin Salhani
Yeah, the south is still very active. And yesterday was a particularly brutal day with attacks across the area. There was forced evacuation orders for areas above the Litani river, which for anyone following, there's been this whole kind of dynamic about disarming Hezbollah below the Litany river, which runs across south Lebanon. The Israelis have previously issued evacuation orders for above the Litany as well, reaching up to another river called the Zahrani. According to Human Rights, someone at Human Rights Watch, who I spoke to, these evacuation demands to comply with international humanitarian law. They need to be precise, they need to be exact, and they need to be temporary. You know, you need to leave your home now because we're attacking a target. But you know, they can't be open ended the way that they've been with the, with the Israelis. And they cannot be indiscriminate the way that they've been of demanding the entirety of south Lebanon to move north or the entirety of the southern suburbs. So attacks on Beirut after Black Wednesday have come to a halt. And this is also true for the southern suburbs, which have been an area whereby they've suffered many, many attacks. And so it's a bit of a strange respite. At the same time, I think people have gone home to check on their houses. Some people have gone home to just stay in their houses for a variety of reasons, either because they might feel that it's safe for this moment, or they're hedging their bets. But still a lot of people have not returned home. Many of them cannot. These are obviously people of the south, or you cannot if you've had your home destroyed in the south or in the southern suburbs or parts of the eastern Bakao Valley. I've got a school by my house which is hosting displaced people. And it's still filled with the displaced, either because they cannot go home or because, as many have told me, they don't trust that this ceasefire will hold. Obviously, in places like the south, it has not held and it's still ongoing. With attacks coming from both sides in Beirut, it's calm in a sense, for this moment. Like I mentioned, there's still a drone overhead at times. There have been reports of warplanes flying over different parts of the country. So there's still this doubt if this ceasefire, this truce, will hold. So we're kind of expecting or waiting any moment. But I should say that this was also true of the 2024 ceasefire to an extent. Now, in 2024, immediately the next day, people went home, they drove home, they drove south. They went ahead with it. Of course, the attacks from the Israelis did not stop in the south. In Beirut and the southern suburbs, predominantly, there were a few attacks in the southern suburbs, but not regular attacks. You know, a kind of normalcy returned a bit. However, there was still kind of this attitude of waiting and seeing what would happen because very few people trust the Israelis to stop the attacks. Very few people trust that the Israelis want to stop the war. At this point in time, they're stronger. They're the hegemon in the region. They control the skies to a large extent, they control the seas. And now in southern Lebanon, they also, to an extent, control parts of the land. And so I think that the attitude here is very much one of this truce is tenuous. We're living day by day. We're waiting to see if tomorrow we have to return to kind of a pre April 16th reality where we're checking our shoulders, we're deciding which streets to go down. You know, those of us who are lucky enough to maybe have relatives or friends in other parts of the country that we feel we can go to to, to be a bit safer, are, you know, waiting to do that again. Maybe initially there was something of an exhale kind of, okay, we know that we're going to be okay for, or we hope we'll be okay for at least a few days. But as the days go on and as there's been no conclusion to this issue, and of course we know that these are connected to the Iran US discussions, which are in a who place themselves, I think everyone's just kind of waiting to see what develops. And there is the sort of bated breath.
- [28:37]
Danielle Kurd
And of course, the reality, I mean, even if the ceasefire holds for a bit, like, the reality is that the situation on the ground has changed, whether it's how much land they've taken. There's like a new yellow line in Lebanon in the same way that they've constricted Gaza, and also the damage that's been left behind, not just of the infrastructure, but of the herbicides that they're spraying and the environmental destruction. So there's just so much to think about. Thank you so much for coming on and making time to talk about this, and please stay safe.
- [29:09]
Justin Salhani
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you so much, Donna.
- [29:13]
Cool Zone Media Announcer
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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Danielle Kurd
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.