← The Chris Hedges Report
The Chris Hedges Report
Is Hezbollah Beating Israel in Lebanon? (w/ Laith Marouf) | The Chris Hedges Report
00:43:39
Loading summary
Transcript28 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:10]
B
Israel, without warning, launched Operation eternal darkness on April 8 against Lebanon. In the span of 10 minutes, Israel hit more than 100 sites across the country, killing more than 300 people and wounding over 1,000. This act of state terror took place as the regional ceasefire agreed to by Iran and the United States took effect. Israel carried out a Gaza like obliteration of villages in Southern Lebanon, driving 1 million people, a fifth of the Lebanese population, from their homes. The current ceasefire, declared on April 16, is likely to prove as elusive as all previous ceasefires. Israel has not ceased its bombing campaign in the south and its random bomb bombing attacks in Beirut even during this ceasefire. Ceasefires mean nothing to Israel, which has threatened to resume the attacks on Iran with or without the United states. In the seven months following the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon in November 2024, Israel continued to occupy territory in southern Lebanon and pound Lebanon with airstrikes, killing at least 250 people. Israel's goal is to turn Lebanon, like Syria, into a failed state and set the weak Lebanese military against Hezbollah, precipitating a civil war. This objective is not new. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, it began a 22 year occupation in the south. Israel carried out a full invasion of the country in 1982, which would result in the deaths of tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians and birthed the resistance movement Hezbollah. Joining me to discuss the crisis in Lebanon and how it will affect regional stability is the journalist Laith Marouf from Free Palestine tv. He is based in Beirut and is covering the Israeli assault on Lebanon. Leif, you just came back from southern Lebanon. What did you see and what did you report on?
- [02:11]
A
Well, thank you very much Chris for having me on your show. And I would like to send my congratulations to the Lebanese people, the Iranian people, people of the Axis of resistance, on the successes to force the United States and the Zionist colony into a ceasefire. What we saw today, we actually started our travel down to the south around midnight last night when the quote unquote ceasefire came into effect. We drove down, there was already thousands of people not waiting for the permission from anybody trying to get down to their villages. In fact, even though both the speaker of the House, Nabih Biri, leader of the Amal movement, and officials of Hezbollah issuing statement telling people don't go down because the Zionists are a vengeful enemy and you cannot trust them, wait till the morning, people still went down. So as we were driving down, there was thousands of people lined up on the streets, on almost every intersection up to Nabatiya Town, which is the largest city in the central sector of the border region between occupied Palestine and Lebanon. And then we started driving around trying to check on those cities and towns and villages that were abandoned under the bombardment of the Zionists. It was massive destruction. But to see all those people coming back joyfully dancing outside their homes, sitting down in the rubble, smoking shisha, and, you know, this showed us how much the connection of the people to the land is in Lebanon. There was a few things that we saw that I don't think anyone has reported on yet. One of them is we got to the Beaufort Castle. It's a Crusader castle just outside Nabatiya City, near Nabatiyeh city. It's called Arnun Castle in Arabic. And when we got there, there was locals that were removing Israeli flags from top of Bufor Castle. And we in the beginning didn't understand how these Israeli flags made it into the Crusader castle. This is like north of the Litany River. And what we were told is that in the early hours of this morning, the Zionist tent, four, not quadcopters, but you know, those drones that have eight actual blades, huge ones, each one of them carrying hastily made rods with tripod legs and Israeli flags, and one that had actually a surveillance dome. And they landed with these drones on top of the Beaufort Castle, which looks over the whole of the south of Lebanon and much of the area around Nabothiyeh City, in order to make people feel or lie to themselves that they made it north of the Litany River. And we saw those flags, the locals threw them off the cliff. Remember just last week, the Zionists fell into an ambush at the bottom of the valley under Buffoor Castle when they were trying to cross the Litany River. They were ambushed and they lost many of their soldiers, many injured. And they abandoned all their equipment, including very heavy machinery, three heavy machineries, all these canoes, all these temporary bridges that were trying to build over the Litany River. So it's clear that that ambush that they fell into, it itched deeply in their heart that they wanted to come and make this fabricated win by planting these flags, by the use of these drones. Another location that we visited that we thought was very telling about the battles that happened over the last 45 days was the town of Dabin, which is just one town north of Al Khayyam. And Al Khayyam is very famous village on the border, directly on the border with occupied Palestine and the Hula valley. And during 45 days, the Zionists were unable to capture Al Qyam or enter it. So what happened is that they went through a Christian town that is mainly controlled by the Christian supremacist Falange and Kataib party that didn't have any Lebanese resistance Hezbollah members in there to protect it. Those Kataib Christian supremacist parties let the Israelis go through Marjayun to get to the Bean and try to kind of cut the supply route for the resistance into Khyam. Now what has happened is that the Israelis were scared of sitting and sending an armored column. So they sent in a special force, infantry, special force into the Bean. But they were already spotted by the resistance. And the resistance lured them into the village. And as soon as the special forces entered into two homes to begin stationing themselves in the village, they were bombarded from all sides by the resistance. And there was a literal massacre of the invading forces. And that required huge waves of bombardment from air by the Israelis to try to extract their trapped invading force. And in this crazy bombardment, the Bean has a historical castle in it and also a graveyard for French soldiers that perished in Lebanon in 1941 during the uprising across of Syria and Lebanon against French occupation. The Israelis dropped a bunker buster, the largest size of these bunker busters, onto the graveyard hosting these French dead soldiers and wiped it off the map. There was a crater that is at least 40 meters wide and 20 meters deep. And the marker for these graves, the, you know, there's even a statue there for these soldiers, all destroyed. You know, it's almost 80 years since the death of these French soldiers. And the Lebanese people, although they fought the French to leave, still respected those graves, but it was the Israelis that destroyed them. So in general, what we understood from looking at the few scenes of battles that we visited was that the Israelis had huge losses. This is also of course, proven with the videos that Hezbollah released over the last 40 some odd days. At least around 200 tanks destroyed or out of commission above and beyond all their other heavy equipment that they lost, the armored vehicles and jeeps and what have you. So, you know, we look at this and we can wait to see more and more of the videos that are going to be released for sure right now by Hezbollah, since they don't have the worry of trying to bring the videos through a battle zone to the editing teams. So we will see more of that in the next few days. The last thing I would say about what we saw there is that the Zionists were trying to still destroy, detonate houses in villages that they still occupy right now before they have to leave and throughout the day, we were hearing huge explosions of houses that have been being detonated in villages across the border that the Israelis are still stationed in but will be leaving soon.
- [11:29]
B
Well, they have reports erased, I mean, virtually demolished. Is it in 20 villages in the south? Just entire communities?
- [11:41]
A
Yeah. I mean, there was already a lot of villages that were destroyed during the, you know, the 66 days war in 2024 and the so called ceasefire that followed, about 15 months of ceasefire. And the villages that they have destroyed now were all partially destroyed already. I think the most important thing that the Zionists were trying to do over the last two few days of this war before Donald Trump forced them to end their movement in Lebanon, was to try to capture Bintishbel town. Bintishbel is in, you know, a second line or third line village in the central zone of the border with Occupy Palestine is very famous for the speech of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah, martyred Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah, that he gave in the year 2000 after the liberation of Lebanon, where he said, in the soccer field of the town, where he said, the Zionist colony is as weak as a spider's web. And so they were trying to achieve some emotional or psychological victory. And again, to attack Bentish Bail, they were unable to reach it, except after the treasonist, collaborationist Prime Minister Nawaf Salaam ordered the military, the Lebanese military, to withdraw from three Christian villages that are right south of Bintishbel, where then the Israeli military entered those three villages and so surrounded Bentishbel. And the battle for Bentishbel was almost 35 days. And the Israelis were unable to enter the main parts of the city and lost tens of tanks and soldiers in this battle. And again, they were unable to achieve that symbolic victory that they were trying to hurry up before Trump forces them into ceasefire. Remember this, they refused to accept the ceasefire a week ago when Iran and the United States reached that deal just because they wanted to reach an occupy Bintaj bail. And they failed miserably.
- [14:22]
B
I want to talk about the tanks. So we've seen images of Israeli soldiers leaping from their tanks and fleeing. We don't know a number, but it's certainly significant. The tanks that were disabled or destroyed by Hezbollah, we also saw Israeli columns of tanks almost bumper to bumper. I know from covering war, you never do that. You space your tanks out. I'm curious why Hezbollah was so effective in taking out tanks. I believe they were taken out by drones. Is that correct?
- [14:54]
A
Yes. Yes. So Hezbollah was using drones, FPVs that, like the ones that have been used also in the Ukraine war, the ones that are very simple with an attached bomb at them and you just drop it. That's one way. They had also all these suicide drones that would crash into these tanks and have shells attached to them. They also were using their ATGMs. And Hezbollah is considered the most expert military force in the world. And the use of ATGMs, we watched how they were.
- [15:32]
B
Explain what those are for people who don't know. Leif?
- [15:35]
A
Yeah, anti tank, you know, missiles like RPGs, but much more advanced that, you know, there's a camera on the nose of this missile and it's guided by hand and can evade any attempt to take it down. And we watched throughout the 33 day war and the solidarity front with Gaza in 2024, all those amazing videos of Hezbollah fighters hitting pinpoint little cameras on the basis of the Zionists looking into Lebanon. So, you know, the Russian military who built those ATGMs were saying clearly that they don't even have soldiers that can reach the expertise of Hezbollah fighters in those shoes. So, you know, there's two things that can confirm to us that the Zionists had huge losses. One, of course, is that in the admittance of the Zionists in June 2020, they said that they lost 1000 tanks in both the battlefield in Gaza and in the battlefield in Lebanon. And of course, the Israeli military has around only 2,000 tanks. And the other thing that proves to us that they've lost even more since this battle happened is that we started seeing Merkava's, not the latest versions, the Merkava four, but, but Merkava's three. Those are like almost 10 year old. So clearly the best tanks that they had were very much hit in those battles in Lebanon and Gaza in those two and a half years. And now they were having to use older stock. The other thing about those columns that you described, you know, Lebanon is blessed with a topography in the south that makes it just that, topography and geography of the south, a defense mechanism. Okay? It's not a flat territory like Gaza, and it's huge territory. It's not a small strip like Gaza also. And when we look at the geography of the south, there's clearly a few paths that any armored columns can go through. It's not like they can fly these armored vehicles. They have to go either through the valley or try to go on top of ridges of mountains, and the ridges are full of villages and so forth. So they have no choice but to go through specific paths. And Hezbollah was ready for them, because it's the logical path. It's not a genius thing that they have to come up with some new ideas of how to invade south Lebanon. It's the same repeated tactics that they've had to use since the 1970s, as you mentioned. And Hezbollah had prepared a lot of ambushes, a lot of mines, a lot of IEDs, and they managed to destroy these columns as they are advancing. And also, when we look at the videos of Hezbollah taking out these tanks, it's clear that from all sides, Hezbollah had spotted and knew the advancements where they're coming. The last thing I would say is that today, as the Israeli military was leaving the outskirts of Khyam village, they walked into a minefield or an IED field, improvised explosive devices, and it blew up on them. This is after the ceasefire. And according to Israeli sources, they have many wounded in this battalion, including those who have lost limbs. And I would say every time the Israelis admit something like severe wounded or so forth, it means that they have dead, but they're not truthfully telling about it.
- [20:06]
B
I want to talk about, you know, if maybe you would quibble on the word, the resurrection of Hezbollah, because you had the pagers. These were these exploding pagers that Israel used to maim hundreds of Hezbollah, not necessarily fighters. You know, they might be accountants, they might be, but I think Israel kind of wrote. Has been, perhaps the United States wrote Hezbollah off after that. Explain that incident and how Hezbollah proved so resourceful and effective in countering this latest invasion by Israel.
- [20:48]
A
Well, the first thing that we need to point out is that according to international law and the laws of war, the booby trapping of civilian objects is a war crime. And so we know the Zionists are very proud of their war crimes, and they considered this a huge win, booby trapping these pagers and intercepting the production lines of the companies that were selling these pagers. Having said that, as you pointed out, also hundreds of non combatants were injured or killed in those attacks. The pagers are used heavily, of course, within the medical field. You know, doctors and nurses use pagers to receive their calls in the environments with no cell phones allowed. And, you know, although it is a big loss and a lot of suffering happened, children that were around these pagers or what have you, were also injured or killed. We saw videos currently throughout this war released by Hezbollah of wounded men that survived the pager attacks that were actually on the front lines firing missiles, firing drones. And this shows you how much pride there is and how much conviction the Lebanese people and Hezbollah members have now we look at the decapitation attack that happened against the leadership of Hezbollah.
- [22:37]
B
This is just, this is the assassination of the head of Hezbollah, Nasrallah.
- [22:43]
A
Yes. And much of their commanders and much
- [22:46]
B
of their command structure. Right?
- [22:48]
A
Yes, in, in 2024. And we can think of two things. One is the, that Hezbollah, during its engagement in Syria, trying to stop the Wahhabi death squad hordes that were thrown by the CIA and Mossad on Syria. In that battle it had to restructure itself and it became a semi military with tanks and APCs. It also meant that in that 15 year war that every other intelligence agency in the world was able to draw up a chain of command for Hezbollah in those battlefield. The names of the commanders, their faces and what have you. So by the end of that 15 year war in Syria, those intelligence forces that are allied with the Mossad and the Zionists knew practically the military structures of Hezbollah. And that is how the Israelis were able to assassinate the leadership of Hezbollah in 2024. Now, once that happened, Hezbollah had to switch back to being a guerrilla organization. Therefore, the structures had to be shifted back from a semi military format to cell formations with leaders that are unknown, with three member cells and with a kind of non hierarchical dispersed commands everywhere. And in fact, during the 15 months of the ceasefire, we saw a continuation of the Israelis assassinating known Hezbollah commanders. And those commanders were out on the streets in, in their cars normally and so forth. And this is only because Hezbollah had literally, you know, retired them. Right. Anyone that had any public face that was discovered during the war inside Syria had to be retired and new structures and new leaders had to be put in. And this is what drove the Zionist cross crazy right now. And it also allowed Hezbollah to play this ambiguity very well and hide its capabilities. So what the Zionists and the United States behind them thought that they have destroyed the structures of Hezbollah and that they have somehow destroyed all its military capabilities. And lo and behold, Hezbollah actually surprised them and surprised even the Lebanese people with the huge amount of ammunitions that it still had and the very, very well organized defense lines and defense structures that it played out here during this war.
- [25:55]
B
Two things I want to ask first about the Lebanese government. They have expelled the Iranian ambassador. Even before this current assault. The Lebanese government has been quite obsequious to Israel calling for negotiations which even before the negotiations that have apparently begun. I want you to talk about the role of the Lebanese government and then I want you to address the long term demand by Israel that the Lebanese military disarm has bombed. And that can at least you can comment on this. But at least it's always been my understanding that that is because they are seeking to create a civil war within Lebanon.
- [26:42]
A
Well, for the viewers, let's start with the basics. I think it's very important to understand that there is no state called Lebanon. There has never been a state called Lebanon. That, and the way we can judge states is a state has a monopoly over the use of force in its territory and control of its borders. And those things never happened since 1942 and the declaration of independence and chopping off Lebanon from Syria. So, you know, when we look at the. Another thing is that Hezbollah, in the year 2000, when it liberated Lebanon, it became the first liberationist movement in the world in the history of humanity that liberated a country and didn't take control of the state. And that was a choice that Hezbollah did, although it had the right as the liberators of the country to do so. But it did so not take the control of the government because it was hoping not to trigger any civil war. Right. After spending decades fighting the occupation.
- [27:53]
B
Just for people who don't know, Lebanon is a mix of Christian, Sunni, Shia. Hezbollah is a Shia organization, but there's quite a heavy ethnic mix within Lebanon.
- [28:06]
A
Yes, yes. And the other thing is, of course, that the confessional sectarian makeup of the government, the parliament and what have you, was imposed by the French in 1942 as they were leaving. And the number of seats per sect, you know, Christians, Druze, Sunnis, Shias, what have you, is according to the percentage of the population in 1942. And the country was, has not been allowed or did not want to have a census since then. Because actually today, as we are speaking, at least 50% of the population are Shia. And if there's a census done, even if the confessional sectarian constitution is maintained, Hezbollah will have 50% of the seats along with this Shia, you know, partner Amal. And then you add to it all the other parties that are allied with it, and it will govern naturally. So that's one thing. The other thing that we need to understand about the current Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam. This man comes from a multi generational, treasonous family. His grandfather, Salim Salaam, which was one of the, you know, elite of Lebanon at the end of the Ottoman era, went and bribed Ottoman land registrars and defrauded the landowners in what is now the Hula Valley, the panhandle of Palestine that sticks up north, and changed the ownership of those lands to his name. And he was trying to do the same for much of the south of Lebanon. Okay. And you know, fortunately for the, for the Lebanese people, World War I broke out before he was able to defraud the rest of those villages that we're talking about, Ben Shebel Khyam and others. And so once that happened, Salim Salam tried to sell those lands in the Hola Valley to the Zionists, the Jewish colonists, but the French authorities, because the Hula Valley was still part of Lebanon at that point, or the French Mandate, the French authorities refused because they. The Hula Valley has a lot of the water coming out of the Golan Heights. And so he ended up Salim Salaam, working with the Jewish Colonization Agency to bribe the French authorities, brought a bag of $30 million, handed it over to the French occupation where they redrew the land map and handed over the Hula Valley to Palestine and the British Mandate in Palestine. And eventually he sold those lands to the colonists. And now we know Kiryat Shmona and all of those were built on, on the land defrauded by the grandfather of Nawabsalam, Nawab Salam himself.
- [31:26]
B
Let me just interrupt there because going back to documents from the early 1920s, the Zionists have always coveted southern Lebanon because of the water supply and because of the very fertile land. And when they always talk about this security zone up to the Latani river, this is, you know, over a century long project on the part of the Zionists. I just want to historically throw that in.
- [31:54]
A
Yes, you are right. And now, you know, comes Nawaf Salam, the grandson of Salim Salaam. Nawaf Salam, according to East German intelligence files, was recruited by the Mossad in the 1970s, late 70s, and infiltrated the PLO youth wings in the universities to try to get them information. And eventually was on the team of the President of Lebanon that came on the Israeli tanks into the presidential palace in 1982. Jamail and Nawaf Salam was on the negotiating team at that time in 1982, 1983, to sign the normalization and surrender and peace with Israel. So Nawaf Salam has been an agent himself since his student days throughout the occupation of Lebanon by the Zionists and now was brought back back again on the top of an Israeli tank and an American jet to finish the job that he attempted to start in 1982. And by the way, the president of Lebanon at the time, Jamail, his life ended with a bullet to his head by Habib Shartouni, a very famous Lebanese resistance And when you walk around Lebanon, there's always posters that say for every Jmail there's a Shartouni in Lebanon.
- [33:39]
B
Let's talk about this Israeli policy of fomenting civil war that has just been a constant. I was actually in southern Lebanon with Lahad, who was. And we can explain who he was, an Israeli proxy. And when they talk about negotiations, the iron demand that Israel has is that Hezbollah be disarmed, knowing that that would provoke what they want, which is an armed conflict. And let's also characterize the Lebanese military because it's very weak.
- [34:14]
A
Yeah, well, look, the Zionists may dream that they can have a civil war in Lebanon or that they have a partner for such a civil war. Maybe they're still living in that delusions of the 1970s. But when we look at the possible opponents of Hezbollah, let's start with the Lebanese military. The Lebanese military, more than 50 to 60% of the soldiers are Shia, although the head of the Lebanese military is always appointed as a Christian. Currently, the commander in chief is General Rudolf Haeckel. And although he's under a lot of pressure, he has refused up until now to try to deem, you know, arm, disarm his. And this is because he knows that if he attempts to do such a thing that there will be a mutiny within the military and it will collapse. And in any case, the Lebanese military is very lightly armed. It doesn't have tanks, it has APCs, it doesn't have, you know, missiles or drones. And it cannot last in a fight, even if the whole Lebanese military is unified behind the leadership, which is not. So, although there's been multiple recordings or testimonies about meetings between Nawaf Salam and Rodolf Haeckel, those meetings almost descended into fistfights because Haikal is not willing to sacrifice the military for the aims of Nawafsalam. Looking at the Christian supremacist parties in Lebanon, the Falange or the Kataib, these parties are a shadow of what they used to be. And, you know, their main backers are the Saudis. This is the crazy part. The Saudis are the main backers of the Christian supremacist parties in Lebanon. And they don't have much arms, they don't have many men that are ready to fight. And therefore they're not a possible opponent to Hezbollah that can challenge them. The last possibility is to somehow instigate Wahhabi death squads, as happened in Syria. Syria, to create trouble in the country. And we already saw a few attempts of that. An invasion from the outside in the north of Lebanon, right on the border of Syria. After the collapse of the Assad government and the takeover by Al Julani in Damascus, they attempted to invade in the north Beqaa Valley, the special forces of HTs, known as the Red Bandanas. And at that moment the Lebanese military just withdrew and opened the door for these red bandanas. This is in 2025, to advance onto the Bihar Valley. And what we saw is that the local clans, not even His Willah, picked up arms and repelled the Red bandanas, defeated them and advanced into Syrian territory, took over three villages and were almost reaching Homs. And at that point the Lebanese army came and cut the route of the Lebanese clans in the north of the Biqa Valley. And the Israeli military send its air force to, you know, destroy the supply routes of the clans in the north of Lebanon to save the HTS red bandanas. So I don't think that even Al Julani and his death squads can defeat Hezbollah, even if they bring them all to the border here with Lebanon.
- [38:41]
B
Where do you see this going? Have covered many, many ceasefires established by Israel. There's not one that they don't violate. You mentioned pressure from the Trump administration, but it's pretty clear from the rhetoric out of Netanyahu's office that they're not done. What do you see happening?
- [39:07]
A
Look, this has been an ongoing 100 year war and it is anchored in Jewish supremacy and it's anchored in imperialism that maintains that Jewish supremacy on the land of Palestine. The Jewish colony wouldn't be able to last one day in front of the children of Gaza if there isn't a non stop financial, political and and military support for this Jewish colony. And we saw, what we are seeing today is the end of Western hegemony as a whole. And everything that we saw with the genocide in Gaza and the wars since October 7, where the apex of this 100 year war in terms of the projection of power of the west and the Zionist colony. And from this point on it is a retreat for both the empire as a whole and its favorite lapdog. Now, does that mean that it's going to end tomorrow? No. Does that mean that we're not going to have more wars? No, but it just means from this point on it will be the Jewish colonists and their sponsors that are going to be suffering more than us. And with every new wave of this battle, it will be more suffering for the west, more suffering for the Jewish colonists and less for us until we're fully completely down from the apex moment that we saw with the threat of use of nuclear weapons against Iran, which the United States had to retreat from. So when we look at this moment, because we saw all this 100 years before, sometimes we're unable to see what's coming. We feel that there's a routine, a repetition. But you know what? Iran controls the Hormuz Straits right now. It controls 30% of the oil output and gas output of the world. Iran forced a ceasefire in Lebanon before it opened the Hormuz Canal. And we have a new superpower arising. Does that mean that Israelis are going to just give up or the Americans are just going to give up? That's not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is that we are living right now a historic moment. Probably the only comparative moment that we can look in our history, too, is that moment of the Tripad attack on Egypt by the French, the British and the Israelis in 1956, which ended with the defeat of that Tripath invasion.
- [42:12]
B
You're talking about the Suez crisis.
- [42:15]
A
Exactly. And the end or the demotion of France and England, the UK from being superpowers to being secondary powers under the control of the United States. What we are seeing today is the end of the superpower of the United States. But there is no other European pole that can fill that gap. What is rising right now is a new world, multipolar world, that Iran is going to be one of the central poles of it. And the axis of resistance, including members like Hezbollah or Ansala in Yemen, are going to be the victors in this, the ones that are going to pick the fruits of this battle. Great.
- [43:07]
B
Thanks, Laith. And I want to thank Milena, Sophia and Max, who produced the show. You can find me on chrishedges.substack.com thank you, Chris.