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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">Lebanese journalists defy Israeli threats to expose the truth</h1><p class="gmail-">Despite
constant death threats and targeted airstrikes, Lebanese journalists
Ali Mortada and Amal Khalil continue reporting from the frontlines,
determined to share the reality of the battlefield, expose Tel Aviv’s
crimes, and challenge the narratives set by the occupation</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><br><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/william-van-wagenen" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">William Van Wagenen</a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>OCT 31, 2024 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/lebanese-journalists-defy-israeli-threats-to-expose-the-truth">https://thecradle.co/articles/lebanese-journalists-defy-israeli-threats-to-expose-the-truth</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/0a78bd84-97a8-11ef-8301-00163e02c055.webp" alt="" width="428" height="203" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>(Photo Credit: The Cradle)</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><blockquote><p><span style="color:rgb(14,16,26)">If
the Israeli army wants to stop my work and my voice with missiles, they
will. But I will not stop my work because for me this war is a just
cause.</span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align:right"><span style="color:rgb(153,153,153)">— Lebanese journalist Ali Mortada speaking to <i>The Cradle</i> on 24 September</span></p><p style="text-align:right"> </p><p>While
reporting from south Lebanon for the past year, Mortada has received
many threats, including directly from the Israeli army’s Arabic language
spokesperson, Avichay Adraee.</p><p>“He put a tweet on his X account
saying I’m not a journalist. I am a spy working for Hezbollah on the
border,” says Mortada, the <i>Al Mayadeen</i> field correspondent in
south Lebanon, where Hezbollah fighters are fiercely resisting Israel’s
ongoing ground invasion and mass bombing campaign.</p><blockquote><p>The
Israelis started to make online polls, asking people whether they
should kill me today, or tomorrow. It was hard because we know they are
not joking. There is a big probability they will do something.</p></blockquote><p><strong>Hello my enemies</strong></p><p>The charismatic <i>Al Mayadeen</i>
correspondent has become better known to western audiences recently due
to his trademark greeting and informal, satirical social media videos
directly addressing Israelis, <a href="https://x.com/AsH_N_ASE/status/1847664171334455674">including</a> the army spokesman Adraee.</p><div class="gmail-twitter-tweet gmail-twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display:flex;max-width:550px;width:100%;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px"></div> <p>“Hello, my enemies, may you have a very, very bad day,” he says at the beginning of each video, at times filmed while <a href="https://x.com/aliimortada/status/1847529353376047146">lighting</a> a cigar or walking on the <a href="https://x.com/aliimortada/status/1844341306933621169">beaches</a> of the war-torn southern Lebanese city of Tyre (Sur).</p><p>Just one day after speaking to <i>The Cradle</i>, the occupation army <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-kills-three-lebanese-journalists-in-intentional-targeted-assassination">murdered</a> three journalists, including two of Mortada’s colleagues at <i>Al Mayadeen</i>, with an airstrike as they slept at a media guesthouse in southeast Lebanon.</p><p>“The
3 am airstrike turned the site – a series of chalets nestled among
trees that had been rented by various media outlets covering the war –
into rubble. Cars marked ‘PRESS’ were overturned and covered in dust and
debris, and at least one satellite dish for live broadcasting was
totally destroyed,” the AP <a href="https://apnews.com/article/journalists-killed-lebanon-israel-c89cf1109daaf3e6e7b766584710234d">reported</a>.</p><p>The
strikes killed camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician
Mohammed Rida of Al Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who
worked for Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar TV.</p><p>Mohammad Farhat, a
reporter from Al Jadeed TV, says everyone awoke in a panic and rushed
outside in their sleeping clothes. “The first question we asked each
other: ‘Are you alive?’”</p><p>“The journalists thought they were safe
because this south Lebanon area wasn’t in Israel’s evacuation zone,” PBS
journalist Leila Molana-Allen <a href="https://twitter.com/Leila_MA/status/1849749519631540488">wrote</a> on the social media site X.</p><p>Molana-Allen,
who is also currently reporting from Lebanon, said the journalists had
given details of their movements to UN peacekeepers to send to the
Israeli military.</p><p>“Turns out the IDF [Israeli military] used that info to bomb them while they were all inside asleep,” Molana-Allen reported.</p><p>Lebanon’s Minister of Information, Ziad Makary, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/25/how-impunity-fuels-israels-attacks-on-journalists-in-gaza-and-lebanon">called</a>
the Israeli attack “an assassination, after monitoring and tracking,
with premeditation and planning, as there were 18 journalists present at
the location representing seven media institutions.”</p><div class="gmail-twitter-tweet gmail-twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display:flex;max-width:550px;width:100%;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px"></div> <p><strong>Bombing </strong><i><strong>Al Mayadeen</strong></i><strong> HQ</strong></p><p>Just one day before Mortada’s conversation with <i>The Cradle</i>, the Israeli air force bombed the <i>Al Mayadeen</i> headquarters in the Bir Hassan area of Beirut.</p><p>“Thank
God no employees were there. We knew it was a high probability they
would hit our offices, so we had a security strategy and thank God we
didn’t have any casualties in that attack,” Mortada says.</p><p>Almost exactly one month before the journalists’ guesthouse was bombed, Israel killed another <i>Al Mayadeen</i> journalist, Hadi al-Sayyed. He <a href="https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1428337/al-mayadeen-journalist-killed-in-israeli-airstrike-in-southern-lebanon.html">died</a> from his injuries on 24 September, one day after an Israeli airstrike on his house in Srifa in the Tyre district.</p><p>Sayyed’s home was hit as part of a massive terror bombing campaign launched by Israel on 23 September.</p><p>Israeli warplanes dropped bombs, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-lebanon-hezbollah-e3ca9c83642056f962fdf76319e3b8de">killing</a> 492 people, including 35 children and 58 women while wounding 1,645 others in just one day.</p><p>According
to the AP, it was a “staggering one-day toll for a country still
reeling” from Israel’s pager and walkie-talkie terror attacks targeting
Hezbollah members, primarily from its civilian wing, the week before.</p><p><strong>Journalists under Israeli fire</strong></p><p>Lebanese journalists had already been working for almost a year under the shadow of Israel’s killings of <i>Reuters</i> video journalist Issam Abdullah on 13 October 2023 and <i>Al Mayadeen</i> journalist Farah Omar, her cameraman Rabih al-Maamari, and their assistant Hussein Akil on 21 November 2023.</p><p>All
four were killed reporting from the Lebanon–Israel border area after
the war between Hezbollah and Israel began on 8 October, the next day
after the launch of the Palestinian resistance Operation Al-Aqsa Flood
and Israel’s ensuing war on Gaza.</p><p>A <i>Reuters</i> investigation <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-LEBANON/JOURNALIST/akveabxrzvr/">concluded</a>
that Abdullah was killed and six others injured when Israeli troops
fired two tank shells directly at a group of journalists from <i>Reuters</i>, AFP, and <i>Al Jazeera</i> who were filming at an open spot one kilometer from the border.</p><div class="gmail-twitter-tweet gmail-twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display:flex;max-width:550px;width:100%;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px"></div> <p><i>Al Mayadeen’s</i>
Omar, Maamari, and Akil were killed by an Israeli airstrike while
reporting from Tayr Harfa, an area about 1.6 kilometers from the Israeli
border.</p><p>“It was a direct attack, it was not by chance,” the outlet’s director Ghassan bin Jiddo <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/21/israeli-strike-kills-three-journalists-near-lebanon-border">said</a>, noting that the Israeli government had blocked the channel from broadcasting in Israel one week before.</p><p>An
Israeli warplane fired two rockets on the journalists’ location just
after they ended a live broadcast giving updates on the latest Israeli
bombardment in south Lebanon.</p><p>“I cried with overwhelming sadness
at the enemy’s treachery because Farah, Rabih, and Hussein were in an
open area that I had reported from in the previous month and a half,”
Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil informs <i>The Cradle</i>.</p><p>“Their
car was clearly marked showing they were from the press and there were
no fighters or military men with them,” explains Khalil, who has worked
at Lebanese newspaper, <i>Al-Akhbar</i>, as their south Lebanon field correspondent for the past 18 years.</p><div class="gmail-twitter-tweet gmail-twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display:flex;max-width:550px;width:100%;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px"></div> <p><strong>Killing to control the narrative</strong></p><p>A
week before her three colleagues were killed, Khalil herself survived
an Israeli attack. She was in a compound for journalists in the village
of Yaroun when it was targeted by two rockets from an Israeli drone. One
of her colleagues was injured when they were showered with dust and
pieces of rock from the explosion, as Khalil reveals:</p><blockquote><p>Whether
we were targeted or saw our colleagues Farah or Issam killed, we did
not stop our work or take any time off. We consider it a tribute to
Farah and Issam and Rabih and a spite to Israel that we continue our
work. Israel’s goal is to kill journalists and force them to leave the
south. They want to empty it of journalists so there are no pictures so
they can control and manipulate the narrative just as they did after
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in Gaza.</p></blockquote><p>“Of course, Israel
kills journalists in Lebanon because they want to hide their crimes
against women and children and civilians and their destruction of homes
and burning of farmers’ fields. They don’t want their crimes confirmed
in words and pictures. They want the world to believe they are targeting
military sites, rather than civilians,” Khalil adds.</p><p>Like Mortada, Khalil has received direct, personal threats from Israel to intimidate her into stopping her reporting.</p><p>On 25 August of this year, she received a message sent to her phone from an Israeli number saying:</p><blockquote><p>We
know where you are, where you and your family live. If you want your
head to remain attached to your body, you must leave Lebanon.</p></blockquote><p>Khalil asserts to <i>The Cradle</i> that:</p><blockquote><p>Israel
threatened me because my work is a challenge to them and is proof of
the crimes they have committed since the first day of the attack that
began on 8 October on the south. For the past year, I was present in the
field. I kept publishing stories of resilience and challenges to the
Israeli enemy from the border villages and front lines. I published
pictures from my own camera of how the Israelis were destroying and
burning houses and killing children and women.</p></blockquote><div class="gmail-twitter-tweet gmail-twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display:flex;max-width:550px;width:100%;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px"></div> <p><strong>The making of a war journalist</strong></p><p>Khalil displays remarkable courage in reporting from the warzone despite never wanting to be a war journalist.</p><p>When
the 2006 June War erupted between Hezbollah and Israel, she was living a
comfortable life in cosmopolitan Beirut, writing for <i>Al-Akhbar</i> about women and social issues.</p><blockquote><p>On
the first day of the war, I decided at that moment to return to my
village in south Lebanon. Shortly after, Israel began bombing all of the
bridges and highways to cut the connections in the region. But I had
decided to stay in the south no matter what, both to be with my family
and to do humanitarian and human rights work with the displaced. I did
these things in addition to my work as a journalist.</p></blockquote><p>When the ceasefire was announced 33 days later, the <i>Al-Akhbar</i> editor made her the paper’s south Lebanon field correspondent.</p><p>“So
it was the June war in 2006 that determined my fate that I would become
a war journalist. I did not make the decision to become the field
correspondent in south Lebanon. I only made the decision to become a
journalist and a writer in Beirut,” she tells <i>The Cradle.</i></p><p>She
has remained in that post ever since, allowing her to gain an intimate
understanding of the geography, history, and people of the area. Her
relationships across south Lebanon help her navigate the danger,
document the aftermath of Israeli bombing, and find leads for the most
compelling stories.</p><p><strong>Unwavering commitment to reporting</strong></p><p><i>Al-Mayadeen’s</i> Ali Mortada also has years of experience reporting from warzones.</p><p>When asked by <i>The Cradle</i>
what motivates him to keep reporting even after so many colleagues have
been killed, Mortada says, “First of all, it’s my job; I did that in
Syria, I did that in Iraq, I did that in Beqaa when the fighting was
against terrorists [ISIS, the Nusra Front]. And I did it now in this
mission against Israel.”</p><p>While Israel has invaded Lebanon many
times directly before now, including in 1978, 1982, and 2006, it also
attacked Lebanon and Hezbollah indirectly using proxies, including
militant groups linked to Al-Qaeda.</p><p>As part of the covert US-led
war on Syria starting in 2011, Israel supported so-called “rebels”
seeking to overthrow the Syrian government, including the Free Syrian
Army (FSA) and the Al-Qaeda offshoots, the Nusra Front and ISIS.</p><p>Nusra and ISIS sought to <a href="https://www.inss.org.il/he/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/systemfiles/Lebanon%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20the%20Islamic%20State%20%20Benedetta%20Berti.pdf">infiltrate and invade</a> Lebanon through areas in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley but were defeated by Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army.</p><p>Mortada adds that the second reason he continues reporting from south Lebanon now is because:</p><blockquote><p>It’s
my country, it’s my people, those are the houses of my relatives. I’ve
lived here all my life. I am Lebanese, so I have a duty to report until
the last breath that I take. Especially because we have a big problem of
how to put the story out to the world. We have so few journalists and
channels that report the reality as it is and don’t spread Israeli
propaganda. So, it is a national duty. It comes with the job.</p></blockquote><p><strong>Losing the propaganda war and on the battlefield</strong></p><p>According to Mortada’s assessment of the ongoing war between Hezbollah and Israel in the south, he tells <i>The Cradle</i> that Tel Aviv has not been able to achieve either of the goals Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared:</p><blockquote><p>Netanyahu
made it a goal to take the towns south of the Litani River, and he
wants to return the settlers to Israel’s north. But the fact is that he
has been fighting for 30 days and he is stuck in the first line of
defense that Hezbollah made in the south.</p></blockquote><p>Mortada
says the Israeli military has no good options and is being dragged into
the “quicksand of Lebanon” as their losses in dead and injured soldiers
and destroyed tanks mount.</p><p>Israel has failed to return the
settlers, while Hezbollah’s rocket, missile, and drone attacks on
Israeli military bases and infrastructure have forced even more to
evacuate, including from as far south as Haifa.</p><p>“On top of that,
Lebanon has hit the bedroom of Netanyahu,” Mortada says, referring to
the bold Hezbollah drone attack that successfully hit the Prime
Minister’s residence in Caesarea.</p><blockquote><p>Even Netanyahu cannot sleep in his own bedroom now after the military operation in Lebanon.</p></blockquote><div class="gmail-twitter-tweet gmail-twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display:flex;max-width:550px;width:100%;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px"></div> <p>“So
this gives us an idea that Hezbollah took a blow to the head,” when its
leader Hassan Nasrallah and other top commanders were assassinated,
“but it is still standing and is hitting back and its situation is very,
very good on the battlefield,” he concludes.</p><p>Regarding the ongoing war, Khalil was also optimistic, despite the many painful losses Lebanon is now enduring.</p><p>She
recalls what she witnessed first-hand in 2006, when “Hezbollah fighters
were victorious against the invading and occupying forces. They are
sons of the land who know its terrain and know how to fight and execute
operations.”</p><blockquote><p>Hezbollah is the resistance in southern
Lebanon. It has once again succeeded in defeating Israel on the ground.
Israel is superior to us in the air; they are always bombing us with
artillery and airstrikes. But in direct confrontations the soldiers of
the Israeli enemy are weaker when confronting the men of the resistance
and the people of the region.</p></blockquote></span></div></div></div></div>
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