Democracy Now! / September 24, 2024
Guests :
Michelle Eid – editor-in-chief of the digital magazine Al-Rawiya
Lina Mounzer – Lebanese writer and translator, senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz Review
Links :
“Israel’s war on Lebanon: The trauma of watching the ‘Hollywood movie’ from afar”
Israel’s massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon killed at least 558 people on Monday in what is the highest single-day death toll in Lebanon in nearly two decades. Thousands more have been injured in strikes that targeted hospitals, medical centers and ambulances, while tens of thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes. “It has been havoc,” says Michelle Eid, editor-in-chief of Al Rawiya, in Beirut, describing attempts by family members to flee the attacks in the south. “The speed with which this has happened has been incredibly shocking,” says Lebanese writer and translator Lina Mounzer. “Once Lebanon goes up in flames, it’s also very likely that the entire region goes up in flames.”
TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli military says it carried out another airstrike on Beirut today in a southern suburb of the city. This comes as the death toll from Israel’s massive aerial bombardment of Lebanon Monday rose to at least 558 people, including over 50 children and over 40 women. More than 1,600 people have been injured. It marked the highest single-day death toll on Lebanon in nearly two decades.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been forced from their homes in southern Lebanon in the largest exodus since the 2006 war. Many displaced families are sleeping in makeshift shelters set up in schools in Beirut and other cities. Some 500 people have even crossed into Syria to seek safety, according to Agence France-Presse.
Israel claimed the airstrike struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets, but Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Israel also struck hospitals, medical centers and ambulances. Hezbollah forces responded to Israel’s massive attack by firing missiles at Israeli military bases, arms factories and other areas. Satellite data analysed by Associated Press showed the wide range of Israeli airstrikes aimed at southern Lebanon covering an area of over 650 square miles.
The aerial bombardment comes as Lebanon is still reeling from last week’s attack by Israel when thousands of electronic communication devices, from walkie-talkies to pagers, exploded at the same time across Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000.
For more, we go to Beirut, where we’re joined by Michelle Eid, editor-in-chief of Al-Rawiya, a digital magazine covering the Levant. She joins us from Beirut.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you describe what’s happening on the ground now in Lebanon with this largest single-day death toll in almost 20 years, the massive flight of Lebanese from the south moving towards Beirut, Michelle?
MICHELLE EID: Hi. First of all, thanks for having me.
Essentially, what’s happening now is a massive exodus from the south. Many people are displaced. They’re trying to find a safe haven. And as a result, the roads are jammed. There’s an oncoming fuel crisis, as well, because people are trying to fill their tanks. And so, so many people have been stuck on the road for hours on end trying to reach somewhere safe. And as people were exiting south Lebanon and going on the road towards Beirut, there were airstrikes falling near them, around them. So you can imagine it’s a very panic-filled scene.
And around Lebanon, so what’s happening at the moment is these individuals who are displaced from the south are trying to find safe havens in schools and different shelters all across Lebanon, whether it be the north, Beqaa, Mount Lebanon. And people are going, trying to help them, trying to find any basic necessities that they can help them with, provide them with food, with water, with medicine, with sleeping bags so they can sleep. So you can imagine the situation is quite dire at the moment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Michelle, these bombing attacks have occurred not just in the south, but also in some northern sections of Lebanon, as well. So, how are the civilians supposed to know even where to go?
MICHELLE EID: You know, the way that I can describe this is, they think about the next — the immediate solution. So, once they’re bombing the south, people are leaving the south. When they bomb Beqaa, they try to find another safe place in Beqaa. They don’t have the luxury of thinking long term. They don’t have the luxury of thinking, “Where would be the safest place for me to be now?” especially with the crowding, you can say, because there are a lot of people who are trying to find these shelters, who are trying to find apartments, so there’s an overflow of demand and maybe not enough supply, or, rather — let me fix that — there is supply, but there is also some sort of exploitation of the people who are being displaced from the south. So, landlords, for example, there is not a lot of, you can say, give and take when it comes to rent. And so, many families find themselves unable to rent an apartment with their children, with their elderly parents, with their members of the family that have special needs or special medical requirements.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this comes — these attacks come in a situation where Lebanon has already had a long-term economic crisis. Could you talk about the situation in the country as a whole?
MICHELLE EID: You know, prior to the war, the country has already been suffering. It’s been suffering since 2019 with the financial collapse, then, after that, with the coronavirus. So, public institutions are not able to support the community, the Lebanese population properly, or all communities that live within Lebanon. And so, once the war began in October, there was, you know, panic amongst people in the community, in the Lebanese communities, about whether Lebanon would be able to sustain a war, whether the medical sector would be able to sustain the war, whether directorates that are responsible for food security are able to, whether gas and energy directorates are able to, as well.
So, Lebanon is not properly equipped to be able to sustain such a war. And it was not properly equipped to function even ever so normally prior to the war in its normal situation. So, as you can imagine, there is panic across not only members of the public, but also people who are in public institutions, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle, you’re speaking to us from Beirut, so your own family has to be impacted by this. Can you describe both what you’ve talked about, the chaos —
MICHELLE EID: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — in the streets, what has happened to your family in the south, and what these phone calls mean? Israel is saying they’ve sent out tens of thousands of calls. Apparently, Lebanon’s minister of information got one of these morning calls. The U.N. Human Rights Office warned Israel sending a warning before attacking civilians is not acceptable.
MICHELLE EID: Mm-hmm. I can talk about maybe my family first. So, I have family living in the south and Beqaa, as well. And on a personal level, for the past few days, it has been havoc trying to be able to reach them to make sure that they are OK. My maternal great-uncle is stuck in the south because of the situation on the roads. He didn’t want to leave the south at first, either, because the concept of leaving his home is already painful enough, because this is not the first time the south witnesses such aggression, you know? And so, it’s been just panic mode on a personal level to be able to try and get my family to safety, especially with data not being able — not being proper, as well, not having good connections, so we can’t reach them all the time. So, as you can imagine, even my family living abroad, they’re also in this state of panic trying to reach their family members here, as well. So, on an internal level, it’s been a mess.
And then, going on to people receiving texts and phone calls, so, dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of individuals yesterday received either phone calls or texts telling them to evacuate their buildings because they do have some either Hezbollah weapons or Hezbollah personnel in these buildings. And they gave them either a timeframe to leave or with no timeframe at all. So, these individuals, not even knowing — you know, they haven’t had time to think of a plan B or a plan C. They had to grab their stuff and just leave their homes, try to find some safe haven, whether near or far. And these people who were conducting these phone calls, for example, the phone calls, they were coming from Lebanese numbers, but the individuals who were doing the calling spoke in formal Arabic, which is very different than our colloquial language, our mostly used language, our informal language. And so, as you can imagine, this induces quite the scary scenario for many people who are also unable to leave right away, who have members of their family who need special support, whether it be a physical disability, a mental disability of the sorts. So, it’s been quite hard on these families who were across the Beqaa, across the south and even in some suburbs in Beirut.
AMY GOODMAN: Michelle Eid is editor-in-chief of Al Rawiya. She’s speaking to us from Beirut. And in our New York studio, we’re joined by Lina Mounzer, Lebanese writer, translator, senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz Review. Her new piece for Middle East Eye is headlined “Israel’s war on Lebanon: The trauma of watching the ‘Hollywood movie’ from afar.”
Start off with what just has happened in the last 24 hours, worst single lethal day, deadly day for Lebanon in nearly 20 years, with over 558 people dead, 50 of them children. Your response, looking at all of this from New York?
LINA MOUNZER: First, hi, Amy. Thank you for having me here.
Honestly, it’s very shocking, looking at it, the speed with which everything is happening. The death toll, as you said, it’s actually — at this point, I think it’s fully half the amount of casualties that we saw in the 33 days of the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon — or, I should say, the assault on Lebanon in 2006. So, within one day, we’re seeing a huge amount of casualties.
And at the same time, we’re seeing all of the tactics that they have been using in Gaza. They’re kind of speed running what has been happening in Gaza. They’ve been bombing ambulances, pathways to hospitals. As Michelle was just talking about, they’ve been asking people to evacuate, but really it is flee. They’re, you know, making people panic. And then they’re also bombing the roads out, the bridges. People are terrified. It’s very difficult for them to find their way out.
And it’s really — you know, I just left Beirut. I’ve been there. You know, I live there normally, and I left Beirut a few weeks ago, and knowing that there was a possibility that things would escalate while I was gone, but truly the speed with which this has happened has been incredibly shocking. And, you know, just between one night and the next to wake up and to see full-blown war and this level of casualties and carnage is just absolutely terrifying. So, you know, my initial reaction really is one of shock, even though I feel we should have been inured watching what’s been happening in Gaza over the period of an entire year. We shouldn’t be shocked anymore, but still it is absolutely shocking.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lina, I wanted to ask you about the coverage, the media coverage, in the United States and Europe on this, because it’s clear, number one, that these pager and walkie-talkie attacks were sheer terrorism on the part of Israel and that this is a naked escalation of the war on Israel’s part, yet that’s not the way it’s being portrayed. Rather, they’re concentrating on the technological sophistication of Israel and being able to use these pagers and these walkie-talkies to attack Hezbollah.
LINA MOUNZER: Yes, Juan, absolutely. I mean, basically, what we’ve been seeing from the beginning of the assault on Gaza, as well, is the media has been — you know, we use the word “complicit,” but what does that really mean? I mean, the media has been actively helping manufacture consent for what has been happening, allowing people to — not just to be complacent, but to feel that whatever is happening in Gaza, in Lebanon is well deserved. You know, this is Israel’s counterterrorism. This is Israel “defending itself,” quote-unquote. And people have bought that, to the extent that now Israel can come up with whatever flimsy excuse. You know, one of the things that they’ve been saying now is that they are bombing locations in the south because Hezbollah uses people’s homes to hide rocket launchers, and so any civilian casualties incurred are part of this counterterrorism.
And so, for me, the pager attack and the way that it was covered is really only just a small part of all of the way that Israel’s attacks have been — are being covered, you know, whether it’s by the fact that they continue to repeat the lies about, you know, burned, raped, mutilated, beheaded babies. If you notice, every single time an Israeli spokesperson speaks, they will never — you know, when they talk about the attacks, they will always — you know, it’s like they’ve been given this directive to use all of these, like — to use this particular language that’s very incendiary and to remind people of, you know, burned, beheaded, etc. And no one calls them out on it, even though there is no evidence of any of these things actually having taken place.
And so, it was very shocking to me. You know, if this pager attack had happened anywhere else — and we keep saying that, which I think it’s actually quite sad that we have to keep saying, “Imagine this happened to you,” or “Imagine it happened in any other country. What would you think about it in that way?” You know, it’s this constant feeling of having to remind people that, you know, we are equally as human as anybody else.
But, truly, I mean, what you had was you had a series of small explosions going off against the intimacy of people’s bodies across the entire country. And it was — everybody was in a — it is the absolute definition of terrorism. People were terrified. People were afraid of the electronic devices in their own homes.
And yet, you know, you have people covering this as though it were a marvel. I mean, even I saw an opinion piece in The New York Times the other day that began with, “Even though we’re all amazed by this, even though we all think it’s such an incredible thing, you know, technological feat that Israel pulled off, we still must admit that this is an act of terrorism.” So, even if somebody uses those words, it’s always couched within a kind of inherent excuse. And it’s, frankly, sickening, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, it’s quite something to, for example, hear Leon Panetta, the former CIA director, the former defense secretary, saying that the blowing up of pagers and walkie-talkies is terrorism. So, he is describing it in that way, you know, represents the establishment in the United States. And, of course, you hear Biden and Blinken decrying the fact that there isn’t a ceasefire, but at the same time, we bring you this report today from ProPublica, just one of many different reports, that says, USAID and the State Department’s refugee bureau — and this has to do with Gaza, and you make serious links, like saying Israel is speed running the Gaza playbook. ProPublica has revealed USAID and State Department’s refugee bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza, but Secretary of State Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies, the two foremost U.S. authorities on humanitarian assistance. That decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel, because under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed aid. And I wanted to bring that to the end of your piece, where you quote a Lebanese friend who’s been living in the U.S. for a while, saying, “I’m either in the flames or I’m in the place [that’s] lighting the fire.” Can you talk about the U.S. role in what’s happening in your country, Lebanon, and Gaza?
LINA MOUNZER: I mean, the United States is — you know, there’s always these debates about who is wagging the dog, let’s say, you know, this idea of like who is truly in control. Is it Israel, or is it the United States? For me, they are one and the same. Israel seems to be kind of like a colonial outpost of the United States, and I feel that their interests are very much aligned. And so, the United States continues to say that it is not interested in a regional war, it is not interested in a conflagration. At the same time, they have been running cover for what Israel has been doing in Gaza for an entire year.
And honestly, since pretty much October 8th, we could see that this day was coming. We could see that so long as the war continued in Gaza, as long as the assault on Gaza continued, that this was eventually going to come and engulf Lebanon. And, you know, once Lebanon goes up in flames, it’s also very likely that the entire region goes up in flames.
And so, the United States can say all they like that they are, you know, looking at the possibility of a ceasefire, that they don’t want for there to be a regional war, but the way that they have been doing things is — you know, frankly, says otherwise, including and up to the fact that every single time that there’s something that Israel needs to be called out on, we see them running interference for Israel. You know, all the State Department spokespeople refuse to comment. They will not allow journalists to ask them any questions, and they will deflect constantly.
And so, I mean, the United States is firmly partnered. You know, as they keep saying, they say, you know, “We’re looking to our partners in Israel.” That’s exactly what they mean. They’re partners in Israel. They are partners in crime. And they truly are one and the same. It’s very difficult, honestly, to separate between the two, the United States and Israel, at this point.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Lina, I wanted to ask you about the timing of this escalation by the Netanyahu government, because those of us who have followed the conflict in the Middle East for decades know that Israel almost always uses the period before a presidential election, or sometimes after the election before a new government is sworn in, to launch its fiercest attacks, precisely because it knows that the administration in power, given the volatility of U.S. elections, is reluctant to take any action to even mildly criticize Israel. I’m wondering what your thoughts about the timing of this escalation.
LINA MOUNZER: I mean, I think you’re absolutely correct, and yet, at the same time, because we have seen absolutely no change in the U.S. administration, the Biden administration has been absolutely gung ho, 100% behind Israel, you know, so they have the full support. So it’s not — it doesn’t seem to me like this is going to — that the United States at any point was even threatening to withdraw full support from what’s happening. So, yes, the timing is before the election, and at the same time, you know, it’s been going on for so long at this point that I don’t even know what the election has to do with it anymore. It just feels like the United States is busy right now with its own — you know, with the elections and what’s happening there, and Israel is just free to run rampage all over Gaza, all over Lebanon. So, it is related to the United States elections, and yet, at the same time, I really cannot see how it’s going to make any difference whether it’s Harris or Trump or Biden in power, frankly, at this stage. It seems like it’s just running on autopilot, this war, at this point.
AMY GOODMAN: Lina Mounzer, I want to thank you so much for being with us, Lebanese writer, translator, senior editor of the arts and literature magazine The Markaz Review. We’ll link your piece in Middle East Eye headlined “Israel’s war on Lebanon: The trauma of watching the ‘Hollywood movie’ from afar.”
