Rev Left Radio - On Lebanon: Hezbollah, Faith, and the Struggle Against Zionism and Imperialism

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Myriam Charabaty, a Lebanese political analyst and journalist, joins Breht for a wide-ranging discussion on Lebanon, the struggle against imperialism and Zionism, the nature of solidarity and resistance, and the rapidly shifting political landscape of West Asia. Drawing from both personal experience and political analysis, Myriam helps unpack the history, forces, and contradictions shaping the country while challenging many of the assumptions commonly found in Western media and political discourse. The conversation ranges from questions of sovereignty, faith, and national liberation to the human realities of war, occupation, and collective struggle. Along the way, Breht and Myriam explore the relationship between Christianity, Islam, and anti-imperialism, the criminal pager terrorist attack by Israel, what meaningful solidarity from those of us in the imperial core looks like, the role of Hezbollah in Lebanese society, the religious diversity within Lebanon, and the challenges facing those committed to self-determination and liberation in an era of deepening global crisis.   Follow Myriam and her work: X: https://x.com/miriam00961 Substack: https://substack.com/@myriamch Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liberationchronicles?igsh=c2NnenNscG5uZ3Zn   ---------------------------------------------------- Check out our NEW REV LEFT MERCH with Goods For The People HERE Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio https://revleftradio.com/

Hello everyone and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we have on Miriam Sharabadi from Beirut, Lebanon to discuss the current situation in Lebanon, the current war of aggression, Israel and the U.S. against multiple countries in the region, including Lebanon, the invasion of southern Lebanon, the bombing of Beirut by Israel. We talk about the ethnic and religious makeup of Lebanese society, Christians, Sunnis, Shi, Drews, the political formations that arise out of that, the impotence and the corruption, the Comprador nature really, of the official Lebanese government,

the relationship between the government and the military proper, the relationship between the military and Hezbollah. We talk about the pager attacks, the assassination of Nasrallah, the intentions of Israel, the contradictions politically between Israel and the U.S. and the rest of the region, the Iran war, and so much more. This is really an attempt, and so many of our episodes over the past several months, really,

have been an attempt to educate as much as one can politically about the nature of the societies in West Asia. You know, opposing American imperialism, opposing Israel, that's all essential. But understanding the domestic makeup, the perspectives of Iranians, of Palestinians, of the Lebanese, and understanding those societies at deeper and deeper level, understanding the true nature, the organic mass-based nature of the resistance movements that

were taught to hate. You know, what the Western media calls terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas, the PMF, the militias in Iraq, Ansar al-A, we're told that these are terrorists. These are organic people's movements against imperialism and colonialism. And, you know, we're taught, and we talk about this in the episode as well, that these, that Hezbollah, in particular, and Hamas and Ansar al-a that these are Iranian proxies, as if there's some nefarious artificial creation of Iran and not natural organic movements that around their shared interest of decolonizing West Asia and kicking out the imperialist invaders,

they naturally come together to form the axis of resistance. And we just get a fascinating, you know, on-the-ground perspective of somebody born and raised in Lebanon, who is in, you know, the Maronite Christian community. Overcame right-wing indoctrination as a youth to have a broader view. And I really want to connect and I want people to go to Miriam's articles in the show notes. We touch on some of them a little bit, but they're really good, really in-depth, really

insightful and moving, inspiring, analysis, critique, and so much more. So I highly encourage people to support her, check out her substack, read those articles, And once again, I truly believe that if you listen to this entire episode, you will come out the other end with a better understanding of Lebanon. The internal politics, the resistance, the solidarity between different religious groups, a Christian recognizing the utter importance of Hezbollah and supporting Hezbollah, even against the Vatican who takes a much more wishy-washy position so many times on the wars of aggression on behalf of Israel and the U.S. and the West more broadly in West Asia. So fascinating conversation, amazing guests, so happy to have Miriam on. Huge shout out to Adam, aka. Save Sheikh Jara on Instagram. Many people listening to this podcast will have heard Adam on previous episodes or certainly

be following him on social media, a wonderful voice. And it was because of him that I was able to be put into connection with Miriam and making this episode possible at all. So without further ado, here is my fascinating, insightful. full conversation with Miriam Sharabadi about the current situation in Lebanon, Israeli aggression in the region, Hezbollah, and so much more. Enjoy. Thank you for having me. I'm Miriam Sharabadi. I'm Lebanese journalist based in Beirut. My focus is typically on how we revive our Christianity in the time of resistance and how we should not abandon our identity as a people, as natives,

in exchange for our sectarian identity, which has been used to kind of divide and conquer the region for centuries, I would say. So from that perspective, I think I'm just going to talk from a human position and is a person who's lived in this region for a while. Wonderful. It's a pleasure and an honor to have you on. Shout out to our mutual friend, Adam, on Instagram, it's Save Sheikh Jiraa, who connected us. And I really wanted to have somebody from Lebanon to talk about the situation. that is actually living it that has the lived experience of operating within it, not only presently, but for the past several decades, given the tensions between Israel and Lebanon and Israel and the entire region, of course, before we get into the details of the outline itself, can you kind of just talk about your personal experiences in Lebanon,

how far back those experiences go, and how it's kind of shaped you to live in that country, but that region given the volatile nature that it can sometimes take. So let's go way back. First of all, I'm a Christian Maronite. So I'm from the heart of Mount Lebanon, where largely, especially before 2006, most people would identify as like a right-wing political party members, even though they're not necessarily members. but they're largely from that ideology, from that mentality, right? Because the Civil War has divided the country into regions, and that kind of ended in the late 90s,

which means most of the people where I grew up had not overcome that kind of identity crisis they were facing in the sectarian sense. So I'm born in the late 90s, so I lived a bit through that mentality. I grew up in it, actually, where the perception of Muslims is a distant perception.

We don't really like them. We don't particularly hate them, but we also kind of find them irrelevant in our day-to-day life because the majority of all our surrounding is Christian Maronites. And that has been the position of the church throughout the Civil War,

and there was a whole order that was about eliminating each other and creating that Christian Maronite canton kind of space between Mount Lebanon, a bit to the north and excluding the southern side of Beirut to the south and the north as well as the Bapa. And so that mentality kind of lived still at the time when I was growing up. However, there is also a parallel ideology I grew up around, which is the SSMP, the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party.

So that's basically the political party that says Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, or one country, and we should work to liberate and reunite greater Syria, right? So these are two very opposing parties that live in the same area. However, my direct surrounding was more right-wing. So I grew up in that. I went to school in an American Catholic school. So largely, our discussions were very devoid of any understanding of how Muslims think, who they are, what they believe in. It was very kind of eccentric on Christian marinites and Europe, Europe, the U.S.

Like that was the ideal, the dream to kind of go there. And so obviously we also grew up on hating on Palestinians in the sense of considering them like outsiders, a bit of occupiers, a bit of, you know, the whole civil war mentality in Lebanon was about how the Palestinians killed. Christians and how the Syrians also killed the Christians and there's like that sense of persecution for the Maronites throughout however growing up my mother wasn't particularly very keen on the right wing on the right wing politics even though she is from the heart of the right wing family she's from the Jmail family actually but she had a different mentality she had engaged a lot with the Islamic surrounding of the of the country and with Syrians and with Palestinians, and she had a very different position.

So we grew up in a bit of a mix, but largely our friends, their surroundings, their extended families, they were very right-wing. At some point, the questions began to arise that we see the extent of, how do I call it, the criminal mentality at the time, that was what I defined it as, the criminal mentality, of what Israel is, but we cannot define it in our understanding of our day-to-day life ideology, right, where I grew up. Because there was a certain allyship between the Maronites and Israel during the war, and nobody would kind of say this was a mistake. Some people will defend it from a certain position of, oh, look, we had no other choice. So it was very difficult to take that position where to say, well, no, that's an enemy, and it will be an enemy.

there's no way we had no other choice. Something is wrong. But this is what drove me to questioning where I came from, how I thought what my ideology is. Now somewhere around the 2013, like every Maronite family, we all kind of end up immigrating at some point or one of us or some of us immigrating.

So we did. We immigrated to Canada. And then shock of my life, for the North Americans, we are all Arabs. And I had never been defined as an Arab. And so you start having those questions of, if the world sees us as this one bulk, then how come we don't see ourselves that way?

How come we divide ourselves? We look and say, oh, no, I'm a Christian. I'm not a Muslim, so I'm not an Arab. These questions kind of arise. And so I had that endeavor in Canada, and I found my identity crisis, driving me to questioning a bit of deeper questions, such as not just who am I, because, let's me establish.

I'm an Arab, I live in an Arab world. It is a majority Islamic world, but every ethnicity and sect within it live kind of peacefully. No one ever told me not to wear something, not to drink something, not to go somewhere. And I used to go around all the time. No one would really, quote-unquote, harass or persecute me for being who I am or doing what I do. So that kind of started breaking down. I joined Palestine activism and I began asking myself, is this a Christian problem?

Because it's clearly not an Islamic issue per se. It seems like there is a problem with our understanding as Christians and the right. to self-defense, right? Where do we draw that line between don't kill, forgive your enemy and when my enemy is annihilating me,

right? My enemy is killing humanity in front of my eyes. My enemy is killing my people and I don't see it where Christ ever said you have to only protect Christians, right? Like that's, that was very

these were very ludicrous ideas that came to mind and I could never find the answers where I grew up or in the right-wing mentality where I came from and the general political direction and the

telling of history because there is no real history for Lebanon. It has not been written as a unified history especially during the Civil War and before it there's a lot of questions about certain aspects of the history of Lebanon and the making.

up. Right. So the storytelling of history didn't add up on the Christian right wing end. There were a lot of loose ends, unanswered questions, and frankly, some things just don't make sense. Right. So it drove me to look somewhere else and to question why this is not just the political party position for the Christian Marinettes, but it's a Christian church position. Right. And that's very, that was very interesting for me. And I dealt from there towards where I am now. So I hope that gives you a bit of a briefing. But I finished high school and university in Canada, went to Germany. And then I decided, you know what, I should come back home. This is where we belong. This is where we have something to offer. And if we're going to do something, it has to be doing it from where I know I can, have an efficient voice, do. something on the ground, even in the most simple and basic ways. So I ended up becoming a journalist back in Lebanon. Nice. Yeah, so I'm very, that's a fascinating backstory, and I think it's really critical to understand the perspective that you're coming from and kind of the stuff you had to

overcome to reach the perspectives you have now coming up in a right-wing Christian community in the wake of a civil war that, you know, often exaggerated or emphasized sectarian and religious divides. You're mentioning and alluding to the fact that your Christianity and your own experiences have led you away from a sort of right-wing mentality. I was wondering if you could talk about how you might describe your politics today and how your Christianity in particular frames or influences your politics. I'm going to say something that could sound very odd. But at some point, my line of questioning of the world and of politics drove me away from Christianity, away from the church altogether. What brought me back is the martyrdom of Sariq Lever,

his ability to connect the dots that were missing in what the church was offering, which is we are facing a day-to-day-to-day-to-day. persecution, not by Muslims, not by our counterparts in the country, but by the Western ideology, right, the imperialist Western ideology inherently is what is persecuting us. And the only ones that defended us were actually the Islamic resistance. And largely, at least in the later eras. Before that we had Abdul Nasir, we had Haasas al-Assad, we had there is a history of Arabs

defending the Arab identity with all its structure, but during my lifetime, it was largely Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah that re-established the link between faith, reality, and the right to self-defense, which was very much missing. And so when I put it that way, what I identify as is, I'll say I'm an Arab nationalist. I happen to be Christian, and I do believe as a Christian today.

I am an actual Christian believer, not in the traditional sense, where I perceive Christianity as a tradition to upkeep. No, but I do have faith in Christ in the resurrection, in the life he has taught us to live. I do believe that the only way for us to move forward is primarily to liberate ourselves, not just militarily, but to also liberate our understanding of faith, because the faith God has given us

and the life that Jesus Christ has taught us is a faith where not only can we coexist, we live in a singular path with a singular faith. collectively as long as we believe in this one God, right? That's one end. And even if some of us might not believe in a God, if they uphold the understanding of the value of humanity in the same sense, this is what believing in God is in other terms, away from faith.

Like this is what religion is away from faith, right? Yeah. So it's understanding that. So I just identify myself as someone who lives here who wants liberty and freedom under the ground in terms of resources and in terms of our ability to understand our faith, which has also been largely colonized, not just recently, but since the Crusader era. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's go ahead and get into, I mean, I think it's so important to understand where you're coming from, and I really appreciate you. articulating that so well. But we are going to talk a little bit now about the history and the current situation in Lebanon because I think one of the main goals of this conversation is not only

to highlight some of the core arguments and themes that you put out in your work and in your essays, your articles, but also to help inform a largely Western or English-speaking audience about what it's actually happening, particularly in Lebanon, because obviously my audience will be you know, uniquely informed on these topics compared to the average American, but the average American has, I mean, they don't even know where Lebanon is, right? And so when they hear these words, when they hear Beirut, when they hear Hezbollah, Nasrallah, I mean, for the average American, they don't have any orientation to even those words and what they mean. So, you know, our audience is much more informed for obvious reasons, but still, there's so much that we don't know.

So I'm just going to kind of, let's walk through some of these questions. You know, Hezbollah was sort of born in 1982 because Israel invaded. The PMF was born in 2014 because the U.S. invasion created ISIS, and there's obviously deeper connections to the intelligence agencies between ISIS and Mossad and the CIA. Hamas itself grew out of the conditions of occupation. The resistance axis is a direct product of the aggression that it resists, but the aggression always gets to define the resistance as the original problem. We'll often hear that, you know, that Israel is like even just in the phrase that Israel has a right to defend itself, there is this presumption that Israel is uniquely under attack by, you know, this resistance axis

and that they have to defend themselves when the entire existence of the axis itself is a response in so many ways to Israeli and Western aggression. So how do you kind of explain that inversion? How do you make sense of that problem? And what would you like people in the West to kind of know about the, honest historical chain of cause and effect that is played out in Lebanon in particular? So primarily, the first thing I would point out is that throughout history, especially following World War II, the world began understanding itself from the position of a reality is a de facto

reality if the Americans and Europeans acknowledge it as such. all right so it's not about what history actually is it's not about what happened it's about how does it get acknowledged and even journalism um began to form itself in that perspective in which the wording uh that gets chosen is a de facto reality wording rather than um relaying information from a perspective of cause and consequence. And so the ability to say Israel has the right to defend itself emerges inherently from the concept that Israel is a de facto reality that everyone acknowledges and accepts.

And that makes it a country. The reality on the ground is very different from that. the reality on the ground is that to a large degree no one acknowledges Israel as a state inside the West Bank inside Gaza, in Lebanon in Iraq, in Syria, of course

prior to HTS on the ground from 1948 until the Oslo Accords Israel was not acknowledged as a de facto reality. an occupation in the making and the West was trying to establish its presence as a reality. I will highlight one thing. When I talk about Arabs, I do not include puppet governments. I do not include made-up states in the Gulf that have an imposed monarchy established to rule them,

which runs on clientele and basically they're just American puppets. when I talk about Arabs, I talk about an Arab people who understands their identity very clearly away from the divisions of Saikse Pico, the Gulf divisions, and other words. So from that sense, the people of the region never really perceived Israel as a de facto reality. So when you look at it from that perspective, you see that the resistance is not something to identify as a group excluded from the people. right it's not you have the resistance and the people no the resistance is the people right and to further establish that

when we talk about a resistance emerging for most Westerners they perceive it the same way they perceive a proxy emerging right and someone comes in gives a bunch of people weapons and they give them an agenda and they just blindly follow that right this is not what happened the rise of the resistance, particularly to Hezbollah. Primarily, Hezbollah did not rise from nothing.

It rose from a bunch of resistance movements. Some of them are left-wing political parties. Some of them are SSMP political party. Some of them are Fattah. Some of them are, you know, like Palestinian resistance groups. They developed from whomever was in the region that was being occupied, basically. And it started not with military operations. It started with people boiling oil and dropping it over the heads of Israeli soldiers walking in their towns.

That's how it started. It started with women saying we will not accept to leave. It started with men saying, if you take one more step, we will shoot at you. It started with the people. And then the people organized and became the resistance. and not the other way around it's not a group that was imposed on a people it's a people

that were left with no choice and they were offered a choice and they took it that's what it is and that's not just Hezbollah that is Hamas that is the PIJ that is the PMF that is Ansarulah right there is

all those resistance movements and so I guess what I'm trying to say is that the West must understand that there is no such thing as a resistance that can be separated from the people. Half of the resistance is the people. Yes. I think that's so beautifully put, and I think it's so important to understand so often in Western media, these entities, these organizations, they're presented as, you know, the classic phrase.

These are Iranian proxies. And the idea, the way that they're painted is that these are sort of, like, like, yeah, artificial astroturfed, you know, sort of groups that Iran has managed to create and prop up in the region for its own nefarious goals. But what you're saying is actually the truth of the matter, which is that these are organic expressions and an organic emergence from the grassroots of resistance to the brutal occupation and colonialist expansionism and war crimes imposed on people. in the region and throughout the region and why wouldn't all throughout the history of colonialism in particular and the entire history of imperialism there's always resistance to it and so I think absolutely you said that very well so even Iran even you when we talk about Iran Iran is a revolution it did emerge in the same

in the same logic and largely the Islamic revolution is in Iran is inherently tied to the Arab resistance movement in the region and the Arab resistance countries. So largely, when we talk about Syria and the Islamic Revolution, most people don't know that a lot of the folks were trained in Syria, as were the Palestinian resistance fighters. They were trained in Syria. They were offered some weapons by Hafez al-Assad to overturn the government of the Shah.

Right? Yeah. There is a regional understanding that the future belongs to this. entire group of nations, this entire group of people. And so they have always understood that their fate is unified in the fight against Western imperialism. So even Iran comes at it from the same perspective. And Iran's support for resistance movement in the region is not from a position of, there definitely is mutual interest in that sense,

but it doesn't come from a position of imperial expansion. rather it comes from a deep understanding of what Islam truly is. And by all means, had Vatican taken the decision to say, well, I want to give people the right to defend themselves in the face of probable exploitation of the people of West Asia to the extent that their existence might become put to question. So Christianity today, for example, isn't an existential crisis in the region. Had Vatican done something about it, we wouldn't be.

Had we were given the right to self-defense, we wouldn't be. Our options were national options, largely in the region. The religious aspect emerged from an understanding of the nation and not from a sectarian position. The sectarian positions are actually largely a result of Western imperialism, giving a minority power over a majority and interfering in local politics. So you have the U.S. today sanctioning on-duty Lebanese army officers, and that's not considered foreign intervention in Lebanese affairs.

But if Iran says we will impose a reality on the Americans to force the end of a war on Lebanon, a spark of the end of the war on Iran or the war between Iran and the end of the U.S., then that's considered foreign intervention. There's a big question here about what is for an intervention. And how do we understand it in a sense of regional security? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's another great point. Not only is the organizations and the resistance themselves organic, but the connections between Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas and Ansarala, they themselves are organic expressions of a unified interest in resistance,

in self-determination in, you know, anti-imperialism in the region and the decolonization of the region, not only the extraction or the defeat of the colonial entity of Israel, but also ultimately the goal, you know, and one of the obstacles to liberation would be the overthrowing of these compradour regimes in so many of these countries that fundamentally are there to serve Western interests

in all its forms. And so that this is a national and, regional liberation movement from colonialism, from imperialism, and from neocolonial compradore regimes that have been imposed upon the people in the region? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think some people will come in and say, because these are some of the arguments that I've heard, is that, well, diplomacy could be an option that would cost less blood. Well, where did that get us? We've been, what we're seeing, we're seeing, today is actually a result of over 70 years of diplomacy. This is exactly what this is. Over 70 years

of diplomacy having the upper hand and armed resistance movements being kind of the weaker hand on the global scale, right? So even Vatican went on to say, okay, we have a diplomatic decision to make and they thought the diplomatic answer would save face, right, and protect, quote, at least the Christians of Palestine. Well, because Vatican only recognized Israel in 1993. And so where did that end up? So you have the Israeli argument that says, well, there are more Christians now than there was historically in Jerusalem, right? But these are Zionist Christians. These are occupiers. These are not the Christians of the land. So what's the benefit of that?

The people of the land are still being ethnically cleansed, forced out, killed, imprisoned, tortured. And so when we look at it, the diplomatic decisions have led to an existential crisis that we are living in today, which forced the hand of Palestinians to take the decision of the Al-Axa flood. There was no other option, right? And it forced the hand of the Lebanese resistance to say, we are going to support it. It forced the hand of Ansarulah

to say we are going to support. It pushed everyone to the decision to say, well, the only option we have left is a military option because the enemy is out there to annihilate us. They're not out there to quote unquote survive.

They're out there to annihilate. And that makes the whole war very different. It's framing, is occupier and occupied. It's not people, of the same region fighting for resources. This is not what it is.

Yeah. Absolutely. And the insistence on diplomacy in a fundamentally unjust situation is like the encouragement of diplomacy between the boot in the neck. Like Israeli interest and Western imperialist interest are just inherently at odds with the interest of the majority of the people in the region and their own, you know, determination, their own, you know, vision for self-determination and liberation. So even just the, it sounds good to liberal ears to be like, hey, why don't we all come together, use diplomacy instead of war and negotiate.

But the very foundations of that negotiation assume that both sides are morally equal and that they're all just trying to figure out how to live together in this, you know. And it's like, that's not the case. The entire conflict is the product of occupation and invasion and colonialist, you know, the colonialist drive to dominate the entire region. And what Israel wants is to be a regional hegemon to dominate so completely all of its neighbors to defeat any forms of organic resistance whatsoever so that it can ultimately expand in the region, its borders and territory, and dominate the region economically and militarily. Like you can't negotiate with somebody whose goal is that, right? Absolutely. And the rule becomes, if you don't work for us, you're dead. Yeah.

Right. And you're not, you're not just dead. You will be tortured to death. Your family will be tortured to death. And everyone you ever knew and loved will be tortured to death. That is the equation that Palestinians in the West Bank are offered. Yeah. Yeah. Quite literally. And it's the same thing in Gaza. And it's the same thing in South Lebanon. So when Israel calls up someone and says, either step outside your home or we will kill you with the rest of your family. what is that in what sense do you diplomatically deal with this situation I'm going to assume

you can diplomatically impose pressure on Israel not to do that aggression at that moment right how do you deal with that mentality that intention and the possibility

that this can happen again and there is nothing you can do about it is that a sense of security it's not that's bullshit true. Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to talk about Hezbollah a little bit more. I'm going to get a little bit and more into your critiques of the Vatican and, you know, Hezbollah versus the Vatican's presence and reaction in the region and all of that. But just to kind of give some

background, too, some of the bigger stories that have come out of Lebanon in particular in the last two years or so is the pager attack and, of course, the assassination of Nasrallah. Can you talk about your experience and the experience? of the Lebanese people to these two particular incidents and sort of how the Lebanese society overall dealt with them. And then maybe you could talk as well about the current state of Hezbollah today, given what's going on in southern Lebanon in particular. Right. So I'm going to start with the Pagers attack. The moment the Pagers attack happened, I was particularly in Beirut.

And people started calling each other, saying, if you have anything wireless in your hand, throw it out. Because it was starting to come out that things are blowing up, but nobody understood what was blowing up and how and why. And the event itself happened over a few minutes. So things started blowing up here and there And you know, people's panic also extended beyond the last blow-up So people were throwing anything that's wireless in their hands A Pager, a talkie-wocky, anything that they will use And those are included into the civilian world, right?

So we're talking nurses, doctors, people who work in the municipality, really, anyone who uses any sorts of wireless kind of communication devices in that sense other than phones. These were all kind of thrown out. People were shouting at each other. We went down the street. There were people on the ground. I was on a motorbike with a friend. We were going to the hospital to give blood because it was clear that there would be an urgency for that. and you would walk the street with ambulances everywhere, picking people up, people in shock, some people running with blood all over them. Nobody really understood what was going on.

We went to the hospital, we still did not understand what was going on. It took about an hour before people started truly comprehending to some degree what had just happened. In that moment, I don't think there was. was a Lebanese that did not feel a sense of violation. It was the biggest, most demonic aggression against a country with all its people. Everybody mobilized in Mount Lebanon, in Beirut and the south, in the north, everybody mobilized to try and do something.

thing in the phase of that. However, that unity did not translate for long. It was quickly employed to serve a political purpose. And those who fit into the American agenda, the political leaders that fit into the political agenda quickly came out and said, Hasolah has put civilians in danger. The shift was automatically blamed from the person or the country or the group or the intelligence agency that put together such a demonic plan to the resistance movement that is fighting an imbalanced war right that employment that employment was problematic largely especially in areas where she has lived alongside other sectarian groups, other sects.

Because that was the sign that we are about to see a rise in sectarian commentary, positioning, and an attempt to isolate the Shia group as a whole, which is the resistance and its community, because half the resistance is the people, to isolate those groups and pressure them into either, surrender or annihilation, right?

I think that was one of the primary signs that we witnessed. And then shortly after the second attack happened, the wireless tokiwakis also blew up. It was part of the same Israeli demonic operation. And so after that happened, came the assassination of the leadership in in Beirut. Really quickly, before you move on to the leadership, I'm just curious, ultimately, what was the casualty numbers insofar as, you know, Lebanese society could come up with them of the people that were injured or outright killed

in that disgusting pager attack across the country? I think in a total kind of number of casualty we're talking about maybe 4,000, 4,000 people injured. in that attack. I see. And that's a very big number, and a lot of them are civilian personalities. Including children. Exactly.

And when I say civilian, I do consider resistance fighters to be civilian because they are the people choosing to defend themselves. But in that case, when I say civilian, I'm talking about women and children and elderly, and people just in their homes. Nobody that was at the front line fighting. These were people who were in their homes

and their jobs in the street because some pagers blew up in grocery stores. Right? It was just people doing people things. It's like you're walking down Costco and things just start blowing up. It was pretty much that was what it is. And we're talking 4,000 casualties. It's people who lost their eyesight. people who lost their hands, people who lost limbs, stomach injuries, people who were paralyzed.

It's people who lost something major. And it's also the trauma of people who are sitting there, seeing it happen, not knowing how to react and what was going to happen next. It's also people who lost children because they're kids. It was closer to the pager than they were. This is what happened. It was, it targeted the people inherently. It did not have any military target. It was meant to break the morale of a people.

It was meant to make them feel like there is nowhere safe for them. It was meant to make them feel like the resistance is willing to sacrifice them. and create that separation between people and resistance, right? It was a straight up terrorist attack on the civilian society of Lebanon. Absolutely. And in the U.S., you know, Netanyahu came over to the U.S. and handed out golden pagers to, you know, his most fervent supporters in Congress here in the United States. It was absolutely disgusting.

So it was considered one of the most successful terrorists that acts in history. history, but in parallel to that, what happened on the ground was exactly the opposite of what the Pagers' attack was meant to yield. It made the people who's trust in the resistance more keen. And what do I mean when I say that? I mean, it made people who still had doubts realize that there is no safety for humanity. except in ending that terrorist occupation. There is no other option, right? Because they're willing to go this far.

Who's willing to go this far? Like, for God's sake, this is, this is not even something we've seen in movies. You know what I mean? It's cartoonishly evil. Exactly. It's like, it's pleasure in creating pain. Yeah.

It's sadistic. to the largest degrees. And so after that, it was employed politically to create a sectarian issue, even deeper. And then after that, we have the assassination of the leadership in Dahlia. And what followed is the moment that stopped time for everyone. It was the martyrdom of Sayyed Haasem. Without a doubt, the martyrdom of Sayy Hassan changed the future of the region. That Israel was correct about.

What didn't happen is the resistance did not end. It grew. But not surprisingly, the Americans and the Israelis knew that, because they have a history. They had martyred Sayyad Abbas, the first leader of the Islamic resistance in Lebanon. They have assassinated our leadership, but that did not end or falter the resistance.

What it did do, though, it did create major shockwaves and create certain vacuums in certain places. One place I would largely admit, is the media. It's the ability to offer a clear description of reality as it is. He was one of the people that could do that in the most eloquent, tangible, easy to understand ways, and put it in the context of what is the people's duty, what is the resistance duty, and where everybody fits in the fight against occupation and imperialism. So there is a vacuum on that end.

On the military end, however, the resistance was very much capable of regenerating itself, regenerating its leadership and regenerating its plans, its growth on the path that Sayyad Hassan had drawn, on the path of the Islamic resistance. Even on the path of understanding the Islamic Revolution, it did not move a single centimeter away from that. And we have seen that on the battlefield. We have seen the FPVs taking hold of what it means to go to war with Lebanon for Israel. We have seen that the Israel is why they are capable of entering Lebanese territory,

which they failed to do for two years, which is already a miracle. So entering it on the third year is not really shocking. it's a failure to them. But even though they manage to enter, they cannot sustain a single post. They cannot sustain their presence in a single house. They cannot sustain their presence in a single town. They're being attacked from everywhere all the time continuously.

And that's by their own admission, if I don't want to talk about their resistance of statements and the clarity that comes from that. So in the face of that, What Israel did is it went over to assassinate the journalists that are covering the reality on the ground. And so then we had several journalists martyrs. But as of latest, the veteran martyr, Alish Hayat, who was martyred alongside Fatim Fadne, the two journalists that had been closest to the battlefields and proving every time Israel puts forward a narrative

that it is false, like taking over the kiyam or. entering to this town or that they would go to that town and they would show that they're spanning in that town and Israel is not there. So they broke even the image of a victory for the Israelis. So Israel

decision to go from the pages attack to the assassination of the resistance leadership to the assassination of Sayyth Hassan Masbalah to the assassination of journalists and now a systematic assassination

of the medics, and then in the middle of all of that, a continuous assassination of the people, creating a death toll that is absolutely unnecessary in a war context. So it's basically a genocide and ethnic cleansing. The purpose of all of that is to break the structure of the resistance, which is the people, which is the popular choice. but can you do that? Can you really eliminate a people?

History has shown that you cannot. Recent tears have shown that Israel has failed to do so even in Gaza, despite the televised genocide, despite over 100,000 more tears, despite all of that absolute destruction, tragedy after tragedy, global support, zero accountability. What still stands is that the people of Gaza will not surrender to Israel and they will not leave. These are two things that we have seen not happening.

And this is what the resistance is made of. It's not that people choose resistance. It's that people have no other choice but to defend themselves. Well, I love to move in this direction because a natural question that arises in the minds of anybody paying attention to everything that you're saying is, okay, where in the hell?

is the Lebanese state proper. You know, we Hezbollah and these resistance factions, they're not the state in Lebanon. They're organic. They're very much intertwined with the people, as you made it incredibly clear. They're doing, you know, everything they can to protect their people, to fight for liberation, to defend themselves against Israeli

and Western brutal terroristic aggression. And then you say, well, where's the Lebanese prime minister? Where's the state proper? And that gets into a very interesting question here, because the Lebanese state is a sort of case study, and so much of what your articles, which I'll link to in the show notes here, are covering and arguing, right? It's a government that's hollowed out by clientelism, corruption, foreign patronage, that 91% of Lebanese people say corruption pervades their national institutions.

You have the new government under Noaaf Salam, who is entering peace talks with Israel, reportedly moving toward disarming Hezbollah, which is a major, You know, part of these talks, as far as I understand it, and even the government of Lebanon itself has at various times said that it's going to disarm Hezbollah. The actual practicality of doing that is something else entirely, but still there's that move. And this is all while currently Israeli forces are trying to occupy and continuously demolishing Lebanese homes and sometimes entire villages in Lebanon. So can you tell us about the Lebanese government and what the people's, reaction to it is and how you understand it, how the people who support the resistance understand the Lebanese government. I'm going to start with a general description of what

a Lebanese government is historically. The Lebanese government is the agreement between sects and political movements to manage Lebanese livelihood. It is, by no means, has historically have not been a decision maker in Lebanese politics. It is a consequence of de facto power balances in Lebanese society.

In that sense, the West largely tries to impose an aspect on the Lebanese government, an agenda, a purpose, an image on the

Lebanese government, to try to achieve something. But the truth is the Americans do not think the Lebanese government can in any way, shape or form achieve the goals that they have set them out to. What they are doing is pressuring the government far enough to attempt to create a militia state that could potentially serve a certain level of chaos that would pressure the resistance. So let's go back a bit to when a similar, when we were in a similar situation just before the Ta'ev agreement.

So in 1983, after the assassination of Bashir Ismail, who had come to presidency on, largely known as have come to presidency on an Israeli tank and that's because the Israelis were in Baird, they wanted him.

And he was the liaison, the Christian Maronite liaison, with the Israelis and the war against the Shias, the Sunnis, the Palestinians, and anyone else, including the Syrians until Pierre Jemail, the father of Meshir Jemail, found himself stuck. So he called in the Syrians to defend him in the face of Al-Ahrar and in the face of the Palestinians. They called in on the Syrians to enter Lebanon. That's how the Syrians entered Lebanon. It's by request from the Christian Maronite leadership, opposite to what gets told in today's day-to-day conversation.

And so the Syrians entered Lebanon, Bashir Jemail allied with the Israelis. Amil Ismail was the pawn that was meant to talk to the Arab kind of countries. And Pierre Jemail is the father. Amin and Bashir are siblings. So after the assassination of Bashir Jemail, because he became president and well, there was a whole controversy over his assassination, but largely he was assassinated

and in 1993, I mean, Jemayil came in and signed something called the May 17 Agreement. So in 1983, the May 17 agreement treaty stipulated

allegedly a normalization agreement between Lebanon and Israel. At the time, it was the Prime Minister with Sheffit was Zahn, I believe, and the idea was similar to exactly what today we are talking about. So if you sign a normalization agreement, the Israelis will withdraw from the country, right, and we will have full diplomatic, political, and economic relations with Israel. The agreement was signed, by the way. It just was never ratified. And it wasn't ratified

because of the popular opposition to that treaty. And so the first time the Christians went towards that direction, which Joseph Aungo is going to now, the Christians ended up with the Ta'IF agreement, which reduced their political influence in the government to presidency. Before that, they had much greater influence, and now even the presidency has limited reach in what the president can do

and cannot do before the prime minister moves forward with any file. So if we put it in that context, the attempt at the time was to alter the balance of power at a time when Israel and the U.S. were the most powerful in the whole region. When we look at it from that perspective, we understand that the government failed to achieve the U.S. agenda when the opposition was still largely contained in southern Lebanon parts of Beirut, and that's about it.

The Americans, on the other hand, at the time, not only had all the Arab support, they had their marines in Beirut, they had their warships just facing our sea. I think that the New Jersey came in 1984, just soon after. The Americans had ultimate power in the region. The Islamic Revolution was barely just a few years old. It had not been able to create a sense of regional security. There was no resistance in Iraq. There was only the Iraqi government, which is equally infiltrated as the Lebanese one.

There was only pro-resistance state was Syria. And that was the only line of defense. Today, the situation is different. Syria has fallen. There is no Damascus for the backing of the Christian Maronites if their plan fails. But the Americans don't have the reach they had. And in doing that, what they're trying to do now is push the Lebanese president to take a decision and the prime minister, because the president is not actually the head of the Lebanese military anymore.

it's actually the decision of the prime minister. So push the prime minister and the president to force the Lebanese army to take a decision to militarily face the resistance which will result in only one thing, which is the division of the military, which is exactly what happened at the start of the Lebanese civil war. But chaos has become the plan of the Americans.

It happened in Syria. The plan, in my opinion, is moving forward to Jordan next. and Egypt. It happened in Libya, Iraq. The plan is chaos. If you cannot contain it and take control of it, create enough chaos that your opposition cannot either. And the attrition would become less on the Americans

and more on the proxies. So from that perspective, this time, the first time there was something, there was a military platoon kind of called the free Lebanese army we've seen that in Syria too that failed and then they created the

South Lebanon army which later became known as the Lahad army which is basically ahead of a platoon in South Lebanon Antoine Lahad and they separated from the military created their own army

they are Israeli led and they're the ones that created the Chiam Teuture Center under Israeli supervision and became the direct proxies of the Israelis in South Lebanon during the occupation. But that plan today has no grounds. At the time, the leadership of that platoon was Christian. A lot of the soldiers in it were Sunnisia, Christian, etc. Druus.

But at the time, the resistance was minimal relative to the capabilities of the resistance today. and the ideology to fight as an existential threat was also different. Today, not all the Christians are in one basket of positioning. The Sunnis have absolutely no interest in South Lebanon, we're talking, have absolutely no interest in any allyship with Israelis. And the Shina clearly find themselves in an existential crisis, not in a situation where they can convince a group, to compromise something in return for something else.

Equally, the Israelis have no intention of finding a middle ground. What they need is a major victory. Otherwise, they cannot convince their settlers that they have reestablished any form of deterrence. And if they can't convince their settlers, Israel as an entity falters from the inside without the need of an external war anymore. Because most people that make Alia, why do they do that? They're promised land, their promised money, their promised security and stability.

This is part of the kind of luxury life. It's the American dream, but for the Jews, basically. But that is no longer an auction. So that means most people that have somewhere else to go will go. The ones that will choose to fight are the remnants of the Haganah and the Zionist terrorist militias. And so those in the face

of our resistance I think would eventually falter because that would mean the weakening of Israel would mean the rise of Jordan, the rise of Egypt, one way or another, because that means the threat against the two countries

becomes existential in its essence. And so in the face of that kind of switch and the balance of Our power alongside Iranian missile strikes that would destroy U.S. and NATO capabilities to defend the entity, I think Israel needs a clear victory. They cannot compromise on an image of a victory anymore. And that's not possible. The Lebanese government in all of this has no place.

Historically has had no place. it serves on the political end, but on the ground, it's the military that has any sense of balance of power. And everybody knows if the military this time divides along sectarian lines, the majority of the military is actually to the side of the resistance

and not opposing to it, because they understand the reality of the existential threat that the region is facing, not just from the south, but also from the north. And so from that perspective, the government, all it can do is it can say it wants something

or say it doesn't want something. But we know they're incapable of implementing anything. The Israelis know they are incapable of implementing anything. The Americans know they are incapable of implementing anything. The idea is to create chaos, but even internal militias, there is really, I don't think there is any grounds for any internal militia to perceive

that if it gets some military funding, it can take control of the ground in any way, shape, or form in a location that has any impact on the resistance. So if a Christian militia, for example, takes control of Mount Lebanon, this has zero impact on the resistance.

The Americans are not interested in that. They need to be able to take control of the southern suburb of Beirut, for example. they need to be able to take control of Marjayan, of Sur, of the south, the borderline, but they can't. There is no militia that now appears to be able to do that. We have a risk from the north that is much bigger than anything internally. So now the question is, to what degree do the Sennies in the country believe they have any option of survival with the proxies of ISIS and al-Qaeda in the north

versus in a liberated Arab world. And I think that is the largest, most concerning challenge that the region is facing, and we saw it in Iraq, where they have clearly positioned themselves in alliance with the resistance to a large degree through the PMF, we also saw it in Lebanon, particularly in parts of the Bikha'a'a, where other parts the Sunnis allied with the proxies,

some of the Sunnis did not. Right? And this time, the Palestinians are clearly positioned with the resistance. And Lebanon has a large number of Palestinian camps. So they are not part of the tools or proxies that will be used against the resistance, I think. So we're in a bit of a complex situation. But to go back to your question, the government, where is it?

What is it capable of? It's absolutely irrelevant. You see, no one was shocked when the military withdrew from the South. No one actually expected the military to stay in the South. They're not allowed to have guns and point them at Israel. What are they going to do? Like, you know, this whole kind of rhetoric of, oh, yes, one, military that will defend it.

No one really believes that this is just things you say in statements coming from the prime ministry or the presidential office. Things you say when you have like an idealistic security politics kind of kind of thing.

But no one on the ground thought that the military would hold its position in the south. No one. So there's two big things that I'm getting out of that question is that the Lebanese government

has no genuine mass support from the people. It's sort of impotent. It's irrelevant in so many ways. And it has, you know, no real connection to the real resistance and the military itself is not necessarily. How would you describe the relationship between the state and the military itself? The state and the military have a functional relationship. Let's put it that way.

In terms of internal security, it functions as such. Sure. They're in accordance. But the military itself is the balance of power of the country. It's not the government and it's not the presidency. The proof is we have lived in a country without a president for three years, I think. Nothing changed, right? Before the election of president-on, the first one, Michelle Aon,

we had been without a president for a few years. Nothing, nothing in the country changed whatsoever. Our government has been like a kind of, it's a managerial position, really. It helps manage the public sector, but the majority of the country is based on privatizing the public sector, which means every neighborhood in the country have their own generator for electricity. Nobody really counts on government electricity. Every neighborhood has their own supply of water one way or another. Every, you know, there is something called the government.

government supply and the management of resources. But nobody really counts on it as a legitimate and only source to do so. So really, its presence and absence is largely managerial. Yeah. Rather than functional on the ground. Even hospitals, schools, every sect has their hospitals, every sect has their schools, their universities. It's really just managerial.

Yeah, that's fascinating. The military itself, however, it's what sustains the balance of power and the country. And the military, the way it's divided, it's leadership, it's a civilian making. It's based on what the rest of the country is based on, which is called six by six repeated, which means every sect has to be present. Well, the major sects, the Christians, they're represented by the Maronites, the Simeans, the Shias, and the Jews. They have to be represented and agreed upon for a decision to move forward.

That's what it is. Yeah. It's structured so that the different sex get proportional democratic input. Well, I wouldn't call it democratic. It just has to be agreed upon. That's the version of democracy we have in Lebanon. It's called Democrataeufque, which is. a

conssociational democracy. It's a consensus-based democracy. So I don't know what kind of democracy that is. Democracy is just a big umbrella term that you make up words for it

to make it functional. What it is, it's basically a group of people if they don't all agree on something, it won't happen. Right. If they don't all agree on something that every sects for,

every sect for its own. Figure it out. That's how it works. And they will fight each other over it. The military, however, is the backbone of a unified country. At the moment the military divides, it means every sect will try to create its own, quote-unquote, liberated area. And it'll be civil war all over again, right?

Pretty much. Yeah. Now, what that means, the reason I say pretty much is because I think this time the understanding of what the liberated area is different yes the marinites will try to create a maronite area maybe parts of the Sunnis that are allied with the US will try to do like their own Sunni cantons

but the rest of the country is not interested they were created their liberated areas from Israel and the maronites you know what I mean they will be able to sustain their structure for what exists within them without feeling the need to eliminate one or the other and that would inherently break the cause for the conception of a civil war what you will have is once again Christian maranites killing each other which is what half the civil war was

it was Christians fighting Christians especially in the Maronite area whether it's the war between the Lebanese forces and the army and it was the Christian part of the army because the army was divided you had the Lebanese forces fighting each other where in one night there was a coup

from Samir Jaja on a guy called Habe' and Samir Jaja killed 400 Lebanese forces men It was a series of massacres between the marionettes, and I think we will see that again, if that would happen. So they only lose it out of it would largely be the Christians, and it would be, it's insane that the president is actually going forward with that idea, because at the time, the only ones that were able to save any Christian Maronite influence in the country

were the Syrians and not shocking. the head of the Amal movement and the Speaker of Parliament since forever. So, yeah, I think that gives you a briefing as to why. So the entire point of Nawafsalam now and the president is to try to trigger a popular response on the ground, which they believe would inherently then trigger an opposition response that would lead to a civil war. But people largely know that the president and the government have no real power to implement anything, which is why everybody is waiting to see what will the military decision be?

What's the position of the army chief, the army chief, Rudolf Heikal? And what will the meeting of the 29th, the quote unquote security? meeting between Lebanon and Israel achieve because that's what happened in 83 and 84. When we talk about security coordination, there will be some kind of, I don't want to call it coup, but it's a coup that will tip the balance of power. I don't think this time it will be in the country. I think it will be in the region because the region understands that the attrition of Hezbollah means losing the first line of defense against Israel, right?

Yeah. And it's the first line of defense for the Palestinians, the continued existence of the Palestinians. What is the relationship between Hezbollah and the military itself right now? The military has always had large coordination with Hezbollah. There was never a moment. in recent history, so post-2000, where the military did something without coordination with Hezbollah, even when we saw the military go into Hezbollah warehouses, right, and take out whatever weapons may be found or whatnot.

These are locations given to the military by Hezbollah and coordinated through Hezbollah. The military understands that it cannot do anything, neither in the suburbs nor in the south, nor in the Bikha, without Hezbollah coordination, because all they have to do. And that happened when the first time Rudolf Hegel was asked to face Hezbollah in the southern suburb of Beirut. That was back during the 15 months of, quote-unquote, ceasefire. He was asked, why don't you go in? He was asked us to go into the southern and suburb of Beirut

and search for weapons and whatnot. And then this question was, what do you want me to do when the people in the neighborhood come down to the street? They said, you're the military. Take practical action. He said, you want me to fight women and children? Because this is what will happen. The people will defend the resistance.

half the resistance is the people. And he said, no, I'm not going to do it. And he didn't do it. Because if there is no coordination, people will not back off. Yeah, that's powerful. Fascinating stuff to navigate in internal Lebanese society,

especially as they're under all these pressures. And I want to ask this, I have a couple more questions. I want to be respectful of your time here. No, no worries. But I do have this question about a recent event And all the stuff we've talked about so far is obviously an essential background to kind of understand, you know, the situation and how this affects the society. But on April 8th in 2026, just a month or two ago, the same day a ceasefire to the Iran war was announced. And Hezbollah had signaled a halt to attacks.

Israel launched what they call Operation Eternal Darkness. Again, cartoonishly evil name for this operation. But it was fundamentally around not just, you know, southern Lebanon, as we've often heard, but hitting central Beirut without warning during rush hour, right? Bodies on the street of residential neighborhoods. It was a brutal attack. You argue in your Vatican piece, again, which I'll link to in the show notes, that

strikes like this are deliberate. They're purposeful. They're intentional. They're timed to kill political settlements, negotiations, peace talks, undermine the ceasefire itself before they can possibly take root. And that was a huge part of that. the subsequent contention between Iran and the U.S. and the negotiations was that as they're ostensibly calling for a ceasefire and working through negotiations, Israel is directly and brutally

bombing all over Lebanon. Can you walk us through what happened there and what it tells us about who actually wants a resolution and what Israel's ultimate goals are, you know, even as we're given these ideas of ceasefires and negotiations and ending the war and all of this, what Israel's actual intentions are in Lebanon and beyond. So practically, what's going on, I would argue since the invasion of Iraq, has been a continuous war with at best periods of warriors' rest. Let's put it that way. when you talk about April 8

What happened on April 8 is something Israel does in every war everybody knows the moment a ceasefire is about to happen Israel will use the last few minutes to commit the largest most respectable massacre it can't That's general knowledge Imagine that we live in a time

where people, when they hear ceasefire, they know we are about to have 200 to 300 meters that will not live to the ceasefire. That's the reality on the ground. When Israel does that, this is not a sign of someone who's looking to end a war and compromise for a solution. This is a sign to say,

I will have an upper hand sustain it, maintain it and I will do whatever it takes kill how many people I want and even commit a televised genocide without flinching if I have to. But right now, I need a break to re-establish

my military capabilities, reassess my target banks and figure out what my next move is. That is what a ceasefire is for the Israelis and the Americans. And that is why Iran's demands for the end of the war as a sustainable end of the war and inherently includes the exit of the Americans from the region because what guarantees the Americans aren't going to go for another regime change at tant or war against any part of the region to ultimately be able to

occupy it nothing right nothing the only thing that does that is them exiting the region completely right yeah uh and then exiting the region completely includes them not being able to give standard military support to Israel. That then utterly means that we can take over because the only reason we have not been able as an Arab people to win the war against Israel is because we're not fighting Israel. We're fighting all of NATO, all of the West in the occupation entity. They have the weapon manufacturing capabilities.

of NATO and the US. This is what it is, basically. To be honest, not just NATO and the US. I think Russia is largely tied to that as well. And China has large trade with the Israeli entity. So it's really, they have major income and military support from across the world at a time when no one wants the Arab world and the Islamic worlds to rise and become a unified entity.

that can enter the scientific, economic, and cultural world, because it poses a great threat to the rest of the, let's put it that way, empires of the world. When Israel committed April 8 massacres, the ultimate goal was killing itself. That inherently drives us to understanding that the last resort, which is a diplomatic solution to a war,

a ceasefire is a last resort, is it not? I think a ceasefire is a last resort. And when you turn a ceasefire into a deliberate killing machine, you are eliminating the last resort. And the only aspect of the conditions of a just war by the definition of St. Augustine and Vatican themselves, that still held back the legitimate authority from taking the decision to defend for defense

was the argument that there is other resorts and self-defense has not become, the military self-defense has not become the last resort. But I would like someone to explain to me how military self-defense, has not become the last resort. In my understanding of what has been happening, I don't want to talk about the last 70 years, I want to talk about the last three years, isn't military defense we only resort left?

I don't see how any other resort is available. And the proof is that the resistance has surrendered in Syria. There is no resistance in Syria. What happened to Syria? Israel is halfway through to Damascus. Exactly. They're killing people every day. They're kidnapping people every day.

They're bombing in Syria whenever they want. And that's their own proxies in Syria. That's their own revolution in Syria. That's the most diplomatic win they've gotten in Syria historically. And what do we have? More killing, more aggression, more crime, more genocide. Yeah. So even the argument that if the resistance surrenders,

Israel will no longer have an excuse, Syria has demonstrated that. The truth is Israel will create an excuse. I don't think anyone gave the Israelis more than Yasser Arafat gave the Israelis. And Mahmoud Abbas, where is the West Bank today? So what is the last resort? All diplomatic, non-violent, peaceful alternatives have been fully and utterly exhausted for 70 years.

More. Well, yeah, I mean, so many great points earlier you talked about the point being chaos, right, destroying these societies, doing basically to Lebanon. And ultimately, they want to do this to Iran as well, what they did to Syria, what we're talking about, what they accomplished in Syria. We covered that on this show extensively before, during and after. We said that that's exactly what would happen, that that was. the Israeli goal that if the U.S. and Israel were able to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, that is what

they would replace it with, and they're trying to play that out throughout the region. I think the U.S., right after Iraq and Afghanistan, the goal on what the U.S. narrative of the goal was is like we're going to overthrow these governments and we're going to build these nations up in our own image, and that was a failed project. So what the U.S. military, from my perspective, and you can tell me if you agree or disagree with this, they're kind of aligning themselves more, especially under the Trump regime, with the Israeli perspective,

that regime change and an installation of a puppet government and full control over society and developing it in its own image, that's kind of failed. That was dead with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They're cool with just destroying these countries because that fundamentally still serves Israel's main interest and it doesn't take the 10, 20 years

of occupation by the U.S. military and the attempt to build the economies and all of that that the American people have turned so much against, right? The idea of nation building, et cetera. So they're fine with just destroying, and I think that's what they're doing. The resistance makes it hard because, as you said earlier, the whole settler colonial idea is that, you know, Israel says, settle in these areas and will make it safe for you. Resistance compromises the ability for that stability and that safety.

and Israel has, although it's lashing out in these violent ways, has increasingly sort of been exposed as not being able, really, to provide that stability and safety. And certainly, in lieu of U.S. military and economic support, it would have no chance whatsoever. I'm interested in your perspective, given the fact that the U.S. and Israel are so tight at the hip, and you just said, we're not just fighting Israel. If we were just fighting Israel, this fight would have been over a long time ago. We're fighting NATO. And more than anything, when you're fighting NATO, you're fighting the U.S.

NATO is an extension of U.S. hegemonic geopolitical power in so many ways. And the U.S. leads NATO fundamentally. So I'm interested in a two-part question here. What do you make of the internal divides in American society over support for Israel, while the parties and the institutions and the Trump administration clearly are all in for Israel? the people themselves right, left and center, and I can say that as somebody who lives here and talks with people across the political spectrum, they're 100% have turned against Israel. And so that's not going to have an immediate consequence to the aggression in the region,

but certainly perhaps there will be medium and long-term impacts of that. So I'm interested in your perspective on that. And then I'm interested in the second question, which is, how would succinctly, how would you phrase the answer to the question, What are Israel's goals in Lebanon? And I'll hand it over to you. All right. Happy questions.

I will try to make this as concise and clear as possible. Israel is the most advanced proxy post for Washington in the region. Okay. This is how I would define it. It is not a state in and by itself, and it is not. the chooser of its own political decision making. It is a consequence, a necessity, and an imposed reality in such a way that it has been shaped as a state to create the option for plausible deniability when the U.S. wants something done

without having to do it. So the concept of up to her destruction for Israel is actually an American one. using Zionist militia processes to achieve that goal the same way they use ISIS but Israel is much more expensive to upkeep it has a much greater role

it serves as a barrier state in the region it cannot possibly integrate it's not even meant to be potentially in any way, shape or form possible for it to integrate in the region or the region to integrate with it. It is structured in a way to serve the purposes with utter blatant aggression,

with plausible deniability for kind of like the diplomatic Obama era, U.S. So I said Obama, but like all the presidents in Washington prior to Donald Trump. Donald Trump came in at a time, in my opinion, when the U.S. empire is no longer doing great.

The global trade economy is shifting. The military power is shifting. The resistance movement is becoming a regional movement and solidifying in that sense. Africa is looking

at alternatives for liberation with greater capacity and the world in general is starting to shift away from the reality imposed after World War II. And so from that perspective, Washington itself and the decision as to why suddenly we see the great divide between the U.S. and Israel is foundationally in the idea that Israel is becoming a greater burden on the U.S. than it was the need which the need Washington's perspective

of its future is starting to shift from hegemonic to how can we recede our influence and sustain our existence so receding the influence is out of the Middle East

or West Asia and abandoning the burden which is Israel So to do that, the cost must become much, much higher. And now the cost is rising. Sayyad Hassan Masvalla, peace be upon his soul. He said in one of his speeches, when American soldiers start coming into the region vertically and leaving horizontally, so coming in alive and leaving dead, this is when the price will start becoming high enough for the Americans to realize.

that the only option is an exit from the region. And I think we're witnessing that today. And this struggle itself is what is showing in Washington, because the burden of sustaining and upkeeping Israel has become so high that the average American citizen is paying the price. They're paying the price financially in grocery stores and gas stations. They're also paying the price in their understanding of their own humanity. Because for the first time, the average American,

sees what has been happening for 70 years, what they have been funding for 70 plus years. So I don't know if that answers your question. Oh, yeah. But for me, I don't perceive them as two states with two different agendas. I perceive it as a proxy. The proxy now wants to survive,

so it's willing to do the extra damage, right, to prove that it is worthy to upkeep. and there is no need for America to abandon it and that it can achieve its goals, so it's willing to go into greater criminal mentality with the backing of the US, because the US has no issue with the criminality of Israel, per se, as long as they achieve their goals,

but the problem is that they're not achieving the goals. So in that perspective, the average American is suddenly realizing that the burden of upkeeping Israel is greater humanistically and financially. and there is no purpose in doing that if the hegemony of the U.S. recedes, the livelihood of the average American will not diminish. It will not.

But the livelihood of the rich 1% probably will. So I think that's what the U.S. is facing right now, even though it's being defined in the words of U.S. Israel. What it truly is, it's a war between the interests of the average American and the interests of the oligarchs. Yeah. I mean, absolutely correct. I agree with that.

And it is hopeful, right? Even as Israel and the U.S. lash out, more belligerently, you know, more cruelly, more just genocidly in the region, it is a function of their weakness that they have to lash out. It's a function of their decline. For the U.S. increasingly to kind of, you know, parrot what you're saying in so many ways, it's a burden, right? There's domestic issues as well. This huge ballooning debt from all of these West Asian wars, you know, trillions and trillions of dollars spent, millions of people killed. The quality of life for the average American is going down. It's sad, and I just want to say this as an American,

it's pathetic that the average American has known so little about this, that it took so much for us to see our common humanity and still millions of Americans do not. 30% of this country are on the Trump train as it flies off a cliff, right? They would, they're, they're sort of psychopathically distorted by living in empire. And they are true children of empire. And, you know, if we have to go into World War III, they would still support it. But that's a minority of the population, a strong one, a powerful one, but still a minority. Increasingly, especially among people under 50, we're disgusted by, by Israel, disgusted with our own government, right? Right, left or center. The average working class person in America hates our government as a whole. And there's

going to be domestic, there's going to be domestic consequences of that eventually. The people are one place. The government is in quite another. There's a lag there. But yes, I think all of these things are kind of coming to a head. And so Israel will get increasingly desperate. And that should, I mean, that does worry us. It's already committing a genocide. It's willing to, I mean, it has nuclear weapons, etc. As this plays out, because I do think ultimately you're correct that they will purge the U.S. Israel entity from West Asia. I do think that the resistance will ultimately be successful. In the meantime, Israel will do anything and everything to prevent that. Absolutely.

And we know they have the Samson option, that if they felt like they were existentially cornered, that they've internally said that they're willing to let the nukes fly. So what do you think? I mean, I know this is speculative, but how do you see that process playing out over the next several years and so far as you have an opinion on that? My understanding of the resistance

and of the Islamic resistance in structure and constant, they have absolutely thought about that. They have absolutely taken it into consideration and given the fundamental disagreement with the use of nuke and the fact that they would they would not end the resistance

because they're being threatened with nukes, but they would absolutely look for a way to resist in which nukes is not used, even if that means a larger number of martyrs today, a nuke means a greater loss over time, in a sense it means, in a sense of proportionality, the overall destruction and loss of life, not just human life,

given an nuke, is much greater than a war of attrition without a nuke. So from that perspective of proportionality, I think the idea of the resistance in winning the war in a points-based perspective is very important to understand. Had they perceived it differently, I think we would have seen an all-out war by now. The number of martyrs is very big between Gaza and Iraq and Lebanon and Libya and Yemen and Syria. It's very big Iran, right?

We would have seen an all-at-war had it not been that perspective. The perspective of a point-based confrontation, ideally, the way I think they think is that they will look for a way that Israel will fall in Tel Aviv. as fast as Syria fell in the masters internally. And they would not have the time for nuking it. Yeah, yeah. We shall see. I hope so at least. Yeah, no, definitely, absolutely.

And of course, launching the nuke would have its own incredible international blowback. I mean, it would be unprecedented. It would literally be the nail in the coffin of whatever's left of Israel if they were to pursue that. So it would certainly be. be a last resort. They say it's on the table, but it would also at the same exact moment be the official, the end of Israel for sure. So let me just ask you one more question here, and then I'll allow you to go. I just want to say that we weren't able to get into a lot of the stuff in your

piece about the Vatican and Christian experience. I mean, we touched on it quite a bit, I think, but I'm linking your articles in the show notes, and I highly encourage people to read them. They're wonderful. They're in depth. They're incredibly insightful in education. and they're principled, right? There's not this pretense that you often see in journalists, especially here in the West, to feign some sort of objectivity. It takes a side. It takes the side of humanity, and I appreciate that about your work.

But your closing image in that Vatican piece, again, I'll link to it, is a burning house, right? The choice facing every outside institution is whether to help out the fire, help put out the fire, or stand outside, calling it a tragedy while telling the people trapped inside to quietly accepted. This is something, you know, that we see time and time again from the VAT again, from liberal institutions around the world more broadly, especially ones connected to the West. We talk a lot on this show about building real internationalist solidarity. I believe as an American that my primary political goal is to do everything I can to get my government's boot off the throat of my brothers and sisters in the global South. And whether I get

health care, higher wages, better transportation. here in the United States, that is all secondary to the human moral obligation that I have to stop my government harming, embargoing, sanctioning, murdering my brothers and sisters around the world. And that's something that we push hard on this show. And that requires knowledge of international societies, of different cultures, refusal to fall into our own propaganda, and ultimately solidarity with those resisting empire. And our listeners are truly hungry. for what that might mean beyond merely posting on social media. So this is a hard question.

I know you know no one person has all the answers here, but I'd like to ask you this directly. What would you like to see? What do you need from Western anti-imperialists, right, right now? And what does meaningful solidarity from us with the Lebanese resistance actually look like from your perspective? I don't think I'm in a position to tell people what to do, but I will frame my answer as such.

what are you willing to lose to defend another person's right to life? And in our, well, in my understanding as a Christian, Christianity has taught me that when you do what is right, you will be persecuted. When you do what is just, you will be persecuted. You will lose a lot, and you have to be willing to give up a lot from what it means to live a comfortable life. These come as inherent consequences in the face of oppression and the oppressors.

Because the oppressors have the ability to do that, to persecute you, to threaten you, to strip you of certain rights, and even to paint you in a despicable image. The question is, what are you willing to live? lose to defend another person's life. And if your answer is not coming from a position of true love for the right to life, you have to question to what extent you perceive yourself as an anti-imperialism.

Because a maximal version of anti-imperialism is drawn to us in the life of Christ himself. And it comes from the idea. and from the statement which he made, there is no greater love than to lay down your life for those you love. Right. So sacrifice is a necessity. How much you're willing to sacrifice,

I understand not everybody in this world is willing to sacrifice everything to the extent of martyrdom and persecution. But to understand the extent of your imperialist work, you must be able to weigh it to the extent of what you're willing to lose because the governments that you are fighting, the oppressors

that you are fighting, the institutions that you are fighting, they are willing to go as far as killing you, persecuting you, imprisoning you, painting you in despicable images. Are you willing to go far enough to do that

regardless of what's going to happen in return to you and to what degree? And this is how you understand to what degree you can be efficient in your anti-imperialist war. Are you willing to go and fight the weapons manufacturers? Are you willing to go and fight the AI agencies that are creating killlists? Are you willing to go and fight the economy that sustains imperialism?

Are you willing to go and fight the ideology that sustains imperialism? Are you willing to even go as far enough as to challenge your own perception of what the world is, of what good and bad are, of what faith really is, of what humanity really means to reach the answers that you are looking for and fundamentally, finally, but not the least of all.

Are you willing to always say the truth for what it is regardless of the consequences without the buts and ifs? If you say the resistance is doing well but your conversation is over. you don't buts and if the resistance. The resistance knows what it's doing, what it's capable of. And it has proven it has a very clear, moral, ethical agenda in its fight against the enemies,

even when the enemy is targeting women, children, and their homes sleeping. Amen. Absolutely beautifully said, my friend, Miriam, thank you so much, so much for coming on the show, sharing your knowledge, your insight, your wisdom, and, you know, you're moving call to solidarity at the end there, truly. You've been very generous, and I deeply, deeply appreciate it. Before I let you go, can you let listeners know where they can find you and your work online, anything else you want to plug or promote, or maybe even news sources that you would point our listeners toward to get a better understanding of Lebanon in particular?

By all means, you can find me on Substack and Twitter. My name on SubSpek is going to be, I guess, the same name that you're going to use. My Twitter, I will also ask you to link it below. And perhaps if you're going to look to understand politics in a better way, there's vocal politics that's a good platform in English to follow up on alongside a few others, I guess. I will link them. I just don't have something off of the top of my head right now. But I will definitely link a few.

And hopefully we can try to work better towards establishing an understanding of the real world. Look at journalists who are from the region. Look at journalists who have been in the region for decades, not who have come to cover the war for a couple of weeks and leave. There are journalists that have covered Syria for decades and Lebanon for decades. They're foreigners. Perfect English. You will not have any trouble with that. And there are local journalists as well.

that you can find on Twitter and Instagram that will help you perceive reality for what it is, for all the pain it carries, and the fierceness it forces people to adopt. Yeah. I'll link to all of that in the show notes. And, you know, I just want to say for all the downsides of the Internet and social media, one of the most amazing things about it is that regular people like you and I from across the world are, you know, my government. brutalizing the people of West Asia. This is the first time in human history that a regular

guy from Omaha could talk to somebody from Lebanon and get underneath and beyond the corporate media narratives and actually talk about truth, talk about what's going on and connect as human being. So it's deeply meaningful to me. I really appreciate your work. I'll link to your substack, your Twitter. Any links you send me in the meantime over an email, I'll make sure to include them as well. And keep in touch. I would love to have you back on anytime. as the situation develops, my friend. Thank you so much. Pleasure is mine.

Thank you very much for having me, and thank you for all the listeners for taking the time to watch this whole thing. Thank you for listening. RevLeft Radio is 100% listener funded. If you like what we do here, you can support us at patreon.com forward slash RevLeft Radio

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