The Gazafication of Lebanon

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J. Eskow, produced by the Weak Radio Network and broadcasting from the banks of the Anacostia directly into the halls of power. And now your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the program. One of the advantages of pre-recording this program, which we do is that I get to, you know, give a little thought to what I'm going to be saying to you, and I appreciate that. That's an opportunity for reflection, which is something that I hope this show offers. But here's one of the disadvantages of pre-recording, even by less than 24 hours. So if you're hearing this on broadcast Saturday morning, That's less than 24 hours in the future from what I'm speaking now, which is usually fine, but not when Donald Trump is president. Because when Donald Trump is president, every decision he makes can be undone. Every announcement he makes may be proven true or false, or he may reverse himself. And in the case of the war in Iran, and many other affairs as well. Every agreement he makes can be torpedoed or vetoed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel, which seems to have veto power over the president of the United States. That said, we'll be talking about Lebanon as well as Israel in this hour, and we'll also be talking about Pride Month, which it is. But I want to particularly point out that Democrats, instead of posing themselves as the unequivocal position themselves, I should say, as the unequivocal opponents of this insane war are attacking Trump's So, you know, as of now, deal based on it not being warlike enough, it not being aggressive enough. We may go into some of the details later in the hour with guest Rania Khalik, but the one that really got me that I can't. get over is Cory Booker, and I will quote what Cory Booker did to get warlike about all this stuff. He said, quote, one of the great quotes from American history is a group called Public Enemy that said, don't believe the hype. This is the utter disaster. Then he goes on to say, we're going to be releasing billions of dollars to this enemy. Well, first of all, Iran wasn't an enemy until we attacked them, not in any technical sense. Secondly, it's their money and we stole it. But thirdly, if anyone has Chuck D's email, would you please send it to me because I do not believe that the mind behind it takes a nation of millions to hold us back is going to support this use of his group's work. We'll be right back after this.

This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. And we are back on the Zero Hour. I, as always, am your host, Richard R.J. Eskow. And joining me once again is Sonali Cole Hotcar, Zero Hour Senior Correspondent, and so much more. And she has a great topic for us to discuss tonight. So first of all, Sonali, welcome back. Hi, Richard. Good to be with you. So this is Pride Month. And I believe that is on your mind right now, correct? It is June 1st through the end of this month is Pride Month. It is the month that since 1969 has been seen as a time to think about. Queer liberation, LGBTQ plus rights. It really, the history of it goes back to 1969 in June, late June of 1969, when the Stonewall riots took place, basically, you know, cops raided a gay bar in New York City. And people fought back, in particular, transgender people fought back. And Then it became this month to express defiance against the attack on LGBTQ rights. And, you know, until a few years ago, Pride Month was seen as a fairly mainstream thing. Culturally, we've come such a long way. Hollywood has pushed the narrative successfully on... especially gay rights and, you know, gay and lesbian rights, the right of people, marriage equality, as they've called, you know, as we've referred to it, people being able to marry whomever they please. So on the issue of sort of sexual orientation, we've come quite far, but on gender and gender identity and transgender rights. We haven't come as far. And now since the Trump administration took over a second time, we have seen massive regression. So there's a lot to think about. And LGBTQ rights groups across the country are marking Pride Month in various ways that are either, you know, like a defiance and we're still here or maybe toning it down. But the thing that has really kind of struck me is the fact that... corporations have who once championed gay rights because it was financially, you know, compatible for them, have pulled back.

because they've seen the winds of change or what they have perceived as the winds of change. And so that I think is important to think about because most pride-related celebrations in cities around the country are corporate sponsored. Most cities don't fund pride parades entirely. In fact, they only fund a fraction of it. And most organizations have had to reach out to corporations for major sponsorships in order to fund pride parades. And that has really been hampered this year. And it's such an interesting topic for now, like for so many reasons. But one of them for me is that in a way, you know, I... I observed this process that you're describing with definite mixed emotions because while I've lived to see, we've all lived to see tremendous progress in this area, the corporatization of it meant that there were, I felt that there were always going to be limitations to it, that, that, that, you know, be careful who you think your friends are, right? And so this corporate sponsorship, and I've talked to an interviewed LGBTQ activists who were furious about this, you know, leftist activists that, you know, the movement was being hijacked. It was always part of a broader movement for individual and social liberation and became this corporate thing. And in the Democratic Party, you saw like an influx of gay and pro-gay corporate money, but there was always the implicit, well, you can talk about individual rights, but, you know, stay away from class, consciousness, or social. So now we see this severing, which... I wonder how that's being received by some folks who may have thought they had a genuine friend in, you know, activists. They had real friends in the corporate world. Yeah. I think, you know, first of all, it's, it's important to acknowledge that some of the biggest critics of capitalist and, you know, pro-corporate sponsorship of pride. have been members of the LGBTQ community, which is so important and so powerful. And I think the best example of what's called pink washing or sometimes rainbow washing is target, the corporation target, which, you know, got a lot of people excited a few years ago when they started carrying merchandise specifically celebrating Pride Month. So, you know, just like they do. In the months before Christmas, you would see Christmas-themed clothing, et cetera, in the months before or the month before Pride Month of June, you would start to see targets selling quite proudly in a separate section, rainbow-themed merchandise T-shirts, you name it. And they were doing this also for Black History Month, where they would commission black artists or for Pride Month, they would commission LGBTQ artists.

to design clothing or products. And so Target was hailed as being very forward thinking. And it's one of many corporations that started doing that, that started sponsoring pride parades. But really, we always have to remind ourselves, these companies take, they don't. They don't have values. Their values are profit making. So if they see profit making in latching on to a social trend that is grassroots, they will do so in order to make more money. That is it. And it is always going to be it. And so, of course, Target in January 2025, when the second Trump administration took power, they were among the most prominent corporations. To see where the winds of change had blown. And when I say winds of change, I don't mean at the grassroots, I mean, in the power, you know, the halls of power, they very openly pulled back their DEI initiatives and started pulling back on pride-themed merchandise selling and basically being open, you know, proud of, of being associated with the LGBTQ community. This is an important lesson in the fickleness of corporations. who will never be our allies and whose only goal is to take advantage of the moment to make more money. Right. And it's a good lesson for all of us to be careful. And I don't mean this to criticize any activist group, but just in general, be careful that we're not turned into mascots. for any sort of profit-making corporation, I'm old enough to remember, although I was still in high school at the time or younger, but the so-called hippie movement, the counterculture movement, and how that became actually Tom Frank, Thomas Frank, wrote a great book, his first book, on the sort of corporatization of cool. And that which is like the prototype for a social rebellion movement or a change movement or a movement to expand tolerance and all the good things we support of being co-opted by the corporate world and so on, the advertising world. So, I mean, I think it's great if, you know, if gay kids can go or LGBTQ kids can go into Target and see, I mean, don't get me wrong. You know, I think representation is fine and good. But it always comes with the risk and it always comes with the price. And it always seemed to me that even whether it's gay representation, black representation, other minority representation, it would. They were always like well-to-do looking or attend it. You didn't have that class diversion. You'd have, you know, well-dressed in prosperous seeming groups. And for example, the LGBTQ community, the most vulnerable subgroups there, the trans kids, the self, the sex workers, whatever it might be.

Some conservative leaders, Republican governors have decided to rebrand. You know, they feel so threatened that the LGBT community has one month, that they have decided to rebrand Pride Month as, what is it called, Fidelity Month? Oh, my God. Nuclear Family Month, right? Meanwhile, their president is somebody who is the very definition of infidelity. You know, he's been whatever, married multiple times as multiple children from multiple women. So nuclear family month also wouldn't apply to him. Fidelity is just, you know, I think a new ingrich must be there. You know, I mean, so many of these guys don't live up to the values they represent. Exactly. And they feel so threatened. by a minority community whose goal is to simply live freely. as they are and feel celebrated and loved and, you know, not just tolerated, but celebrated and loved and thriving, right? And so what for me is a wonderful thing to point to earlier this year, I wrote a story for truth out about how in Minnesota, when ICE came for immigrant communities, particularly the Somali American community and immigrant community, among the people who were at the forefront of anti-ice pro-immigrant activism were queer activists, where, you know, organizations, small, you know, like bookshops and sex toy shops and queer run. community centers that were defending their immigrant neighbors because they saw the commonality. They saw the common links. And to that effect, as well, in New York City, for several years now, there has been a wonderful institutional rejection of corporate sponsored pride, and it's called the Queer Liberation March. This year is the eighth annual queer liberation march. They deliberately do it on the same day in New York City as the official city-sponsored. pride parade that's also sponsored by many corporations. And theirs is very explicitly corporate tree. In fact, I love their tagline. It's no cops, no corpse, no BS, right? No corpse. I love it. Yeah. And that was another thing that years ago, some members of the LGBTQ community were pointing out that cops don't belong in the pride parades. Because it had become in some city so mainstream that not only were cops there to, quote, unquote, provide security, which threatened or made LGBTQ people of color feel insecure. But they were also sometimes marching in the parade as like waving rainbow flags saying that they were part of the...

you know, the community and people felt very threatened by that because, of course, cops and capitalism go hand in hand. They are the enforcers of racial capitalism. So yeah, so queer liberation march in New York City is cop-free, corporation-free, and that is, I think, the way to go so that our movements can be completely independent of... the institutions that fuel classism, that fuel racism, such as cops and corporations. To hear the rest of my conversation with Sonali call Hotcar, please go to zero hour report.com. We'll be right back after this. I'm Richard R.J. Eskow, and you're listening to The Zero Hour. You are listening to the We Act Radio Network produced in Washington, D.C. Visit us online at weactradio.com or at YouTube.com slash weactradio, D.C.

And we are back on the zero hour on their host, Richard R.J. Escal, the situation in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East continues to be horrific, the amount of the devastation that Lebanon, as well as Palestine and other countries have experienced, has been neglected, I think, or underreported in the U.S. news and under-emphasized. And I think a lot of people. maybe even people of goodwill are overly complacent about what's going on there. So I want to get the word to you directly from the Middle East, from Ronnie O'Callek, who is a journalist with Breakthrough News. She also hosts a program called Dispatches. She's based in Beirut. So she's there now, and she knows the specifics of the situation as well. better than anyone I know. So first of all, Rania, thanks for joining me. It's really great to be on with you, Richard. Thanks for having me. You bet. Let's just start with this. Before we get into like the politics and the diplomacy, as I just mentioned, I don't think people understand, for example, the extent of the devastation. in Lebanon. I think it's almost in U.S. coverage and therefore in a certain sense of U.S. consciousness are kind of I don't want to say an ancillary issue, but I don't think people fully understand how much violence has been brought there. So could you just give an overview of what's going on in terms of that? If the violence were to stop today, I would imagine the rebuilding would be massive and the loss of life and so on. The harm has been terrific, but you tell me. Yeah, I know I appreciate that. And I imagine that once there's actually space to go and survey the damage because the Israelis are still occupying about a fifth of the country, we'll have better numbers on just how bad the severity of the destruction is. But, you know, since March 2nd, when Lebanon entered, when Hezbollah entered into the, you know, on Iran side in this war on Iran, and this was following 15 months, by the way, of a constant Israeli bombing of Lebanon ceasefire violations from a previous war. that hadn't ever really stopped in Lebanon and went completely ignored in the media. But since March 2nd alone, since this war in Lebanon by the Israelis, expanded dramatically. Over 3,700 people have been killed. A significant... or a high portion of that is actually children, something around 14% are children. And just to compare in Ukraine, for example, 1% of casualties have been children. So it seems like the Israelis really excel at going after children. And throughout this entire war, the Israeli leadership has been saying over and over again, publicly and proudly, that they are imposing the Gaza model on the south of Lebanon. And that's exactly what they've done. They've occupied about a fifth of the country. They just placed over a million of the people

across Lebanon issuing these displacement orders. on X, often in the middle of the night, telling people either leave your home or leave your village or die. This happened. It terrorized people for the last three months. And in that time, the Israelis invaded Lebanon, occupied, like I said, a fifth of the country and subjected, particularly the south of Lebanon, but other areas as well, including Beirut, where I am, took just relentless, relentless bombardment with American taxpayer-funded weapons. So I was in a very... unique position being here in Lebanon of having to deal with bombs falling around me that were basically funded by me because I'm both Lebanese and American. They specifically targeted quite intentionally medics. They killed over 133 health care workers in Lebanon. They bombed hospitals. They killed at least a dozen journalists, some of which they hunted down and repeatedly tried to hit in what they call double-tap strikes. It's also what they did to medical workers. In one case, they did a quadruple-tap strike. These strikes, what they mean is that, you know, the Israelis will strike once and then wait for the people to come treat the wounded, recover the bodies, then strike again. That's called a double tap to try to maximize the damage. And then a triple tap, they would strike again. And then a quadruple tap, they'd strike again four times to make sure nobody could save the injured. And we saw this repeatedly documented by human rights organizations across Lebanon. And like I said, the Israelis, the Israeli officials repeatedly gloated about imposing the Gaza model, which they did. They destroyed over 50s. villages in Lebanon. And when I did say destroyed, I mean, they were blowing up entire villages, like detonating, placing bombs in every single structure and detonating entire villages at once. You can go see these wild. just images of these massive detonations online. For some reason, U.S. media kind of ignore this. You didn't really see it played on CNN. But really just horrifying levels of just mass destruction of civilian property. And they said that they were doing this in order to ensure that Lebanese in the South never returned, specifically Lebanese. And they kept saying that they were trying to carry out a Nakhba in the south of Lebanon. And Nakhba is the word that's used to refer to what was done to Palestinians in 1948, which was the forcible expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians across a historic Palestine in order to create a Jewish majority country of Israel. And then you have Israeli officials like Itamar Ben-Gvir repeatedly saying that we're going to not just cleanse South Lebanon of the Lebanese to create this buffer zone, but ultimately settle it with Israeli Jews. So basically a formula for southern Lebanon that they applied to places like...

you know, across the West Bank and in Gaza. So Lebanon, I mean, this is, you know, this is a destruction Lebanon has been subjected to for the past three months. And of course, when you hear it framed in US media, it's always under the umbrella of security. Like Israel has to destroy Lebanon for security. It has to displace people for security. The security of the Lebanese is never mentioned or the fact that they are literally ethnically cleansing people from their homes. And again, for some reason, there's statement after statement from Israeli officials saying that the goal is, forced removal permanently of a Lebanese Shia presence in the south of Lebanon so that they can create a new border for Israel, which would be at the Latani River, which eats up about 14% of the country. So, yeah, it's been a wild, horrific three months. And finally, you see the intensity of the violence has decreased tremendously because Iran in this time has been insisting since the beginning of their negotiations with the Americans that Lebanon be included. in any ceasefire moving forward. And that kind of ceasefire would include not just an end to Israeli attacks on Lebanon, but also a withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Lebanon, who, again, I said, are occupying Lebanon. And the Israelis are saying, for their part, that they refuse to leave and they refuse to stop bombing. They maintain their right to what they call freedom of movement in Lebanon, meaning they can bomb when they want, when they please, for whatever reason they say, and that their soldiers will never leave. And so this has become a serious point of contention and really vulnerability in this U.S. Iran. deal because this all depends on the Americans forcing Israel to cease its attacks on Lebanon and to ultimately withdraw their forces. And that's one of the reason that Iran has included this provision as one of their demands is because they want to see if the U.S. is capable and willing to restrain the Israelis who cannot do this without U.S. weapons and funding. So a small point and a large point in reaction. The small point, but it kind of sets the tone is I hadn't heard this phrase freedom of movement in Lebanon, which is so classically Orwellian, right? But if a burglar and murderer comes into your home and you try to have him arrest, he said, you're impinging my freedom of movement to creep into your bedroom and stab you. That would be bizarre, but that's what we're dealing with. And that's the kind of thing that's worked in American media, Western media, European media for a long time. The larger point that I wanted to make, and it shouldn't need to be made, is that every single thing you've just described around there is not only undercovered or not covered in Western media, but every single thing you described is a war crime. It is a war crime to seize territory of other countries. It is a war crime to intentionally displace people. It's war crime to destroy homes, to murder medics and health workers to murder journalists. It's just a litany of war crimes. But day after day, I see headlines that say things like Israel says it will continue its war with Hezbollah.

regardless of what Trump negotiates with Iran, for example. It seems to me, I mean, we could have a whole conversation about the Lebanese government as complicity, but it seems to me that the issue of Hezbollah is one that it's not any of Israel's business. I mean, that's a classic American move to go into Vietnam and say, well, we're getting the... Combine Bashar al-Assad or whatever, you know, it's not your business. It's a war crime. It's illegal. So it just strikes me that the U.S. media continues to be complicit in... in warping and dimming the American public's awareness of what's being done with their money, their resources, their weaponry, their military targeting, their AI software. Can I also, to what you're saying, can I just, I'd love to add something to what you're saying. Please do, yeah. Because when you talk about this framing as it's a war on Hezbollah, I mean, Hezbollah are Lebanese people. who are from the south of Lebanon and they exist because of Israel used to occupy Lebanon, just like it occupies like the West Bank for 18 years. They invaded Lebanon, occupied it in 1982 and just, you know, imposed a brutal tyranny in the south of Lebanon. And so like any place in the world would the people locally, you know, had a popular movement called Hezbollah. where they had, you know, they created an armed resistance to this violent barbaric occupation. And that's why Hezbollah still exists because of the aggression of the Israelis. And they actually, they are Lebanese people who have a right, like them or hate them. They have a right to protect the territorial integrity of their country and land. And they have a right to fight back an occupier. Like these people are literally called terrorists for firing at Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon. illegally occupying Lebanon. It's just like they do with Palestine, that framing. But also, you know, just to the idea of the media calling this a war on Hezbollah, Israel's war on Hezbollah. On April 8th, when... The day after the ceasefire, the first ceasefire was announced between the Americans and the Iranians. The Iranians had stipulated that Lebanon would be included in that ceasefire. The Americans, according to the Pakistanis and Iranians had agreed to that. The Israelis decided, no, we're going to torpedo this deal. And they unleashed hell on Beirut. I was in Beirut that day. They attacked Lebanon. They bragged that it was 160 bombs in 10 minutes. And most of them were... were focused on Beirut. They killed up to 400 people that day. And one of those people, by the way, was my relative who was killed. And it was killed. And I mentioned this for a reason. She was killed while at a pharmacy purchasing medications to distribute to the displaced. And so when I saw the media coverage that day, the next day and days after, I kept seeing.

Israel's attack on Hezbollah, I start like, was my relative purchasing medication at a pharmacy considered a Hezbollah target to these people? Apparently so. So it's just unbelievably offensive, this framing. And I don't say that to say, oh, it's okay for Israel to bomb where they think Hezbollah is. That's also criminal because they're bombing apartment buildings. And they're, you know, this is not a war. They're fighting. on the ground, they're just bombing with American weapons from the air against people who have a right to defend themselves against the Israelis. But just to say, even their framing of Hezbollah targets is total BS. I know. I'm so glad you emphasized that because, I mean, and something that may upset some people, but is also a fact of international law. And it comes up. when one is discussing Hamas or Hezbollah or any other group, which is leaving aside whatever feelings people may have about how they go about doing what they do, armed resistance to illegal occupation is legal under international law. So they are not by existing violating international law. That is something people don't understand. Do they perform actions that violate international law? We can talk about that if it's part of a comprehensive conversation about the laws of war. But so that's a very important point. And this business of bombing apartment buildings are justifying it. I forget the Israeli word for it. The AI system they use to drive a lot of those initial bombings translates as gospel in English, as you probably know. And as one operator of the system said, it existed to generate reasons for targets. So if I live in a 500-person apartment building, and there's one person there as a junior official in the sanitation department of Rafa, who's technically Hamas, for example, the same would be true of Hizmala, I imagine. They can kill me and my entire family. That makes no sense. It's horrific. So here we have the situation that is so extreme. Here we have Donald Trump. publicly, softly chastising Benjamin Netanyahu up and saying, well, they go a little too far, what have you, and agreeing at least in principle, depending on what you read, that the war crimes in Lebanon should stop as part of any deal. And Israel continuing as it is, one of the things that I don't think gets... reported or emphasizing another one of the things is, well, if the U.S. wants to do a peace deal, really wants to do a peace deal, and Israel refuses to comply,

U.S. has all sorts of recourse. First of all, stop sending weapons. Secondly, stop sending money. Third, stop providing the diplomatic cover that allows the UN to continue violating, I mean, allows Israel to continue violating international law, not to mention stop the targeting and other logistical support that the U.S. provides. So it strikes me that before we even get to the Democrats, that Donald Trump is getting a free ride out of this, that he's continuing to support and back these war crimes. Nobody in Congress is stopping him, and he gets to act like, well, I didn't like it. I tried to stop it. I told I told Benjamin Netanyahu on Truth Social to stop it. Like that's the truth social posts don't mean anything. Calling up Benjamin Netanyahu and using foul language and then bragging about it to Axios is just a show. That's like feeder because it doesn't actually amount to real consequences for the Israelis. The only way to get the Israelis to rein them in to stop them from torpedoing this deal, if Trump really wants it to move forward, is to... actually take away their weapons to actually threaten material consequences. Otherwise, why would they stop? Like, why stop bombing Lebanon if the only consequence is like Trump whining about it on truth social? You know? And it's also a way for Trump to still use Israel as like the sort of police, the police dog in the region. Like, we're not the ones bombing Iran. We're not the ones bombing Lebanon. It's crazy. That's in Yahoo. Right. It's good, dog. Yeah. It's good cop, bad cop, right? It's, oh, you know, my partner, he's nuts. He'll, you know, well, then why is he your partner? Well, which is why, by the way, which is why by the way Iran has been so insistent. Of course, like Iran and Hezbollah have a partnership. There's a lot of solidarity there. There's like that whole part of it where Iran's like demanding the ceasefire for Lebanon. But all another really. big reason they're including Lebanon in this broader regional settlement is like this is where they test whether the Americans are capable of reigning in the Israelis or not. Because at the end of the day, if the Israelis can continue to violate this understanding over Lebanon, what's to stop them from violating it and bombing Iran again? Because they can do that without America's help. They can't do it, you know, as frequently or as destructively, but they absolutely can. And Iran for them, you know, they sacrificed a lot.

They fought this war against the Americans who started it. The Americans in Israeli started it. And they lost a lot. And they don't want that to be in vain. And they don't want another war in six months or in a year. So like this is for them. This is the war that needs to end all wars. To hear the rest of my conversation with Ronnie O'Callek, please go to zero hour report.com. We'll be right back after this with more of the zero hour. I am Richard R.J. Eskow. This is The Zero Hour with Richard R.J.S. Gal. Check out our free video archives at YouTube.com slash the Zero Hour. And we are back on the ZeroR. I'm your host Richard R.J. Eskow. To follow up on some of the media bias conversations and points that we're making in the last segment with Rani Akhalak. I wanted to point you to a column of what is supposed to be news analysis, labeled news analysis in the New York Times by David M. Halbfinger, who is their Israel, I believe they're Jerusalem. Bureau Chief on the Israeli reaction to Trump's deal. Now, I understand that that reaction is extremely negative, so there would be a lot of negative quotes in this piece. and Halfinger has a good reputation. But this is the kind of thing that just boggles the mind to read. Because he's saying this, not his opinion, but as fact. I'm quoting the New York Times here by talking about how terrible the agreement is from Israel's point of view. I quote Halpinger verbatim here has reported. Worse still for Israel by constraining its military in Lebanon, indeed by requiring that Israel withdraw its forces from that country, the agreement seeks to handcuff Israel in a way that it was not before the war. The idea that forcing or doing a deal that requires a country to abide by international law because Israel is their illegal, that is somehow a handcuff. is the kind of phrasing, the kind of spin that helps perpetuate the brutal occupation and the brutal wars in that region. There's a lot more in that piece that's horrifying. If I have a chance, I've got so much going on, I'll try to write about it, zero hour report.com. But it's not so much that Israel sees this deal as a catastrophic capitulation, which, of course, it does. But it's that apparently the New York Times does too. We'll be right back after this.