Janine Jackson interviewed NYU’s Mohamad Bazzi about Israel’s terror attacks in Lebanon for the September 27, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Leon Panetta on CBS (9/22/24)
Janine Jackson: Speaking of Israel’s remote detonation of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies of suspected Hezbollah members in Lebanon, former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta told CBS, ”I don’t think there is any question that it’s a form of terrorism.”
Panetta’s remarks were widely reported, mostly straight, but for Fox, where Sean Hannity said Panetta “had the gall to say Israel is engaging in terrorism against the terror group Hezbollah.”
It seems worth noting: Just before Panetta, CBS viewers heard from a former FBI analyst who said of the explosions in stores, cars and homes that killed some 39 people and injured more than 3,000, including children:
Tactically, what Israel has done has been brilliant. They have severely degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. They’ve severely degraded Hezbollah’s ability to respond to Israeli things. They’re really hoping that, strategically, Hezbollah gets the message: Stop firing rockets into our country.
That “tactic” has led to more death, more destruction and, some say, more chance of a still wider, more devastating war.
Joining us now to talk about unfolding events and U.S. media’s depictions is Mohamad Bazzi. He’s director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and journalism professor at New York University, as well as former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. He joins us now by phone from here in town. Welcome to CounterSpin, Mohamad Bazzi.
Mohamad Bazzi: Thank you for having me.
New York Times (9/18/24): “The attacks…demonstrated Israel’s prowess at using military technology in ways that suggest it can strike anywhere and at any time.”
JJ: CBS segued from the “brilliant tactic” guy to Leon Panetta by saying that some saw Israel’s action as a “deception one step too far. The United Nations labeled the operation a violation of international law, and it’s raised some eyebrows here at home too.” It’s equally hard to imagine that this wasn’t a violation as that it wouldn’t immediately be condemned as such, had anyone else carried it out, would you say?
MB: That’s an excellent point. It would certainly have been condemned, let’s say, if Russia had carried out a similar operation, or even something a fraction of this kind of attack, in Ukraine.
I think one of the things that struck me, and I suspect it struck you and others who watch the Western media, is the sense of marvel over the ingenuity of Israel’s technological prowess. So what we had is a lot of the coverage framed as, “Oh, this is taking a page out of a spy thriller, or a dystopian movie.”
And in some ways, what unfolded in Lebanon last week was something dystopian, but it wasn’t a movie. It affected real people’s lives. And so many in the Western media were fixating on the novelty of Israel’s attack, and sometimes celebrating it, but they neglected to acknowledge or even consider the sheer terror experienced by tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians. And this is a society that suffered through years and years of trauma, and this was the latest attack that unfolded in this incredibly pernicious way.
A lot of the coverage also didn’t get into the question of whether this constituted a war crime. And, on the face of it, it seems to meet the definition of a war crime: Human Rights Watch, a few other rights organizations, issued statements noting that international humanitarian law forbids the use of booby traps, especially with objects that have such important use for civilians. I think it would fit the definition of a war crime, beyond just being an act of terrorism that’s meant to instill terror in a civilian population.
JJ: Hezbollah, like Hamas, is for many U.S. media consumers almost like a sports team, or like a kaiju, a monster like Godzilla. And I think it might sound strange to some to think that they aren’t solely a military force in Lebanon, but in fact have a much broader role.
NBC (2/12/24): “In at least three recent instances, Biden has called Netanyahu an ‘asshole.’”
MB: Yeah, a lot of media consumers and listeners in the U.S. don’t get the context. They don’t get the background that Hezbollah is not only a militia, it is not only the militia that’s labeled a terrorist group by the U.S. and by many countries in the EU, but it’s also the most dominant military force in Lebanon, and it’s also the most powerful political party and political movement in the country.
So Hezbollah runs an extensive social service network. It operates schools and hospitals and supermarkets and credit unions.
One of the things that became clear fairly quickly after the first wave of pager explosions on Tuesday—Hezbollah issued a statement after that wave of explosions saying that it had issued pagers to employees of various units and institutions, meaning they had distributed the devices not only to fighters, but to many civilian workers. That was one reason there were so many civilian casualties in this attack, but there are other reasons as well.
It’s the act of terror. It’s the imprecise nature, this deliberate setting off of detonations of thousands of small bombs that went off at the same time on a Tuesday afternoon, as people were going about their daily lives. And so the bombs went off in grocery stores and hospitals and sidewalk cafes and barbershops. The next day, on Wednesday, some of the walkie-talkie explosions went off during the funerals of people who had been killed the day before during the pager explosions.
So this was an entirely indiscriminate attack, and it puts the Western media fascination with Israel’s technological prowess into even sharper focus. We had the Western press marveling at—I’ll just quote a few of the terms—“Israel’s prowess,” “precision,” “James Bond“—type operation. And quite a few other terms that obscured the sheer terror of what Israel had carried out over those two days in Lebanon.
Responsible Statecraft (1/18/24)
JJ: Listeners will know that Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging airstrikes since October 8, and this recent escalation comes as Israel continues to target schools and shelters housing the displaced in Gaza. And Gaza is still, you say, the key here to any potential deescalation; even as eyes may move towards Lebanon, Gaza is still at the core here.
MB: Yeah, Gaza is certainly at the core here, and this is the lesson that the Biden administration is refusing to internalize. It’s the most obvious path to deescalation throughout the region, which is to pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire.
There’s been a ceasefire deal on the table for months now, that Benjamin Netanyahu keeps finding reasons to obstruct, and keeps adding new conditions, and why shouldn’t he? He’s not facing any real pressure from the US; he’s not facing pressure from the Biden administration, which refuses to use the real leverage it has over Israel. And that leverage is in the form of billions of dollars in U.S. weapons that continue to flow to Israel on a daily basis.
So Joe Biden has decided that he’s not going to use the best leverage he has at his disposal to pressure Netanyahu into a ceasefire. Instead, he’s going to do this very wishy-washy leaks in the press, where Biden administration aides keep leaking how disappointed Biden has been at, how angry he is at, Netanyahu. There’s a leak a few months ago that Biden privately called Netanyahu an asshole at least three times; I think that was ABC News that reported that, several months ago.
And it’s obscene, this level of trying to manage the story in this way, trying to get across the idea that the U.S., which has the upper hand in this situation, is somehow helpless to pressure Netanyahu into a ceasefire.
All of the Iranian-allied groups in the region, starting with Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, have made clear that they would stop their attacks if and when the war in Gaza ends. So once there’s a ceasefire, once the fighting stops in Gaza, they too would stop. I’ll remind your listeners that during the last ceasefire, the seven-day ceasefire at the end of November, when there was an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, Hezbollah and the Houthis and other Iranian-allied groups in the region did stop their attacks. So I think there’s evidence that they would stick to this promise.
Intercept (9/10/24)
JJ: And as you’ve sort of indicated, for the corporate press, it seems the role of the U.S. in the Mideast generally has ranged from “honest broker,” which used to be a term we’d hear a lot, to now it’s kind of “conflicted do-gooder.” It does seem, though, that every day, more and more people are seeing through that depiction, even though, as you would say, some people are clinging to it desperately. There is a more clear-eyed understanding of the U.S. role peeping through around the edges of that storyline, don’t you think?
MB: I hope so. And I think the evidence of that is the majority of people in the U.S. that have been telling public opinion polls that they oppose the indefinite arming of Israel in this war and enabling Israel to carry out the huge destruction, the famine, war crimes, everything in the dying Gaza over the past 11 months, and that it’s now importing the same strategy into Lebanon. There’s growing public opposition in the U.S. to this untethered support for Israel, this unconditional support that Biden has promised since October 8.
And I think that’s partly because people are consuming information from social media, from other sources beyond the legacy media, beyond the corporate media, which isn’t showing anywhere near the level of destruction that’s happening in Gaza. And that isn’t framing the story, as you put it, of the U.S. as an honest broker or do-gooder that’s simply run out of options, and that’s thrown its hands up in desperation, and just waiting for Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire.
That’s not the kind of leverage that the U.S. has, and it’s nowhere near the role that the U.S. has in all of this. The Biden administration is heavily complicit, and when we see, in the years and decades to come, hopefully when we see some form of accountability in international bodies, it’s fairly easy to expect the U.S. to go up before the International Court of Justice, or U.S. officials to be indicted before the ICC and other bodies, even though we’re not a party to the ICC, to face these kinds of prosecutions for their role in arming Israel, despite the overwhelming evidence of what the Israeli military has been doing in Gaza, and now in Lebanon.
JJ: I have to ask you, as a journalism professor and journalist, your thoughts about free speech and assembly, not just Israel’s direct targeting of journalists, the recent raid and shutdown of Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank, the unaccountable killing of activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, but also Cornell University moving to deport a graduate student who took part in a pro-Palestinian protest. It all feels like an attack on witnessing, on knowing what’s going on and what’s being done in our name.
Al Jazeera (9/12/24)
MB: You’re right, there’s a widespread attack on the act of bearing witness to what’s being done. There’s a widespread attack on the ability of people of conscience to protest, and to disagree with the policies of their governments, especially the policy of the U.S. government to support Israel in this unconditional way. And it’s a sign of the bravery of students, certainly, that have been operating and protesting at campuses across the country, at private universities, at public universities. It’s a sign of their moral commitment to this cause that they’ve persevered despite these threats, despite being suspended, despite some of them, as in Cornell, now facing deportation, because that graduate student could well lose his U.S. visa, and would have to leave the country because of his political actions supporting Palestine and Gaza.
And so we’re seeing average people taking tremendous risks to be able to express themselves and to say: “No, not in my name. I’m not going to accept my government and my institution supporting this.” And I hope that that’s the start of the turning point here. And I think it’s one of the things that’s contributing to the change in public opinion, where public opinion is turning against the idea of the U.S. arming Israel and supporting Israel indefinitely.
JJ: There are calls now for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, to resign after it’s been reported, I believe by ProPublica, that he was in receipt of assessments, from both USAID and the State Department’s Refugees Bureau, that Israel had blocked deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza. He had that information, Blinken did, when he went before Congress, and said there was no evidence of that.
Short even of his resignation, though, how many times do U.S. officials need to lie or hide or dissimulate before journalists stop quoting them credulously? Isn’t it just insulting to readers and to the public at some point?
MB: We certainly have many decades of this, going back to Vietnam, of course, U.S. officials lying about war and lying about U.S. support for allies who commit atrocities.
The report from ProPublica has been an exception. It’s an excellent report. It just came out in the last couple of days, based on internal leaks, because there are officials in the State Department, and elsewhere in the Biden administration, that find all of this unconscionable, and don’t want to see this continued support.
ProPublica (9/24/24)
And it’s a very important leak, not just because of what it tells us about Blinken and others in the administration, and their ability and willingness to lie to the U.S. public and to lie to the U.S. media, but it also shows us that there’s actually a fairly straightforward path for the Biden administration to stop its weapons transfers to Israel, because those weapons transfers violate U.S. laws. And if they were honest, and they had admitted it, they would’ve had to stop sending weapons, because that’s what U.S. law requires. It’s what the Biden administration’s own guidelines require.
So that was a tremendously important leak by ProPublica. And, unfortunately, I’ve seen some references to it in the past few days, but it’s not getting the widespread attention in the corporate media and in the legacy media that it should be getting.
It’s certainly getting a lot of attention on social media. People are sharing it, and sharing the documents, and it’s creating these calls for Blinken to resign, or for Biden to do something. But it’s certainly troubling to see the legacy media ignore this as well.
And it all raises the question, what more do you want? What more can be presented to the media for it to change its approach to covering this war?
JJ: In addition to the appropriate engagement of that piece of information from that leak, are there any other things that you would like to see more of in U.S. media coverage, or things you’d like to never see again in that coverage?
MB: I would certainly like to see more humane coverage. It’s a basic ask, and it’s unfortunate that we have to make this ask, but I would like to see more humane coverage of Palestinians, of Lebanese, of other Arabs and Muslims.
I think one of the things we’ve seen, just in this past week, in the way that the pager explosions and the walkie-talkie explosions were covered—this marveling over Israel’s ingenuity, it ignores the reality on the ground, but it also contributes to the dehumanization of Palestinians and Lebanese and Arabs, this widespread dehumanization that we’ve seen, certainly for decades, but we’ve seen it ramp up to an extreme since Israel launched its war on Gaza.
LA Times (9/23/24)
So it’s a basic ask, but I would like to see some greater humanization, and just covering those attacks like they would cover other attacks on civilians. It’s not too much to ask for.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and journalism professor at New York University. His piece, “Israel’s Growing War With Hezbollah Is Traumatizing Lebanon. There’s Only One Path to Peace,” appeared in the September 23 Los Angeles Times.
Mohamad Bazzi, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
MB: Thank you for having me.