welcome to the socialist program, i'm your host brian becker. today we're talking with gody francis. she is a lebanese writer, a war correspondent and host of the tv show, the west asia post. gotty, welcome to the show. thank you for having me. this morning, gotty, there's images on the front page of the new york times of israeli bulldozers going mile after mile after mile, knocking down homes

and businesses in the west bank, the same front page has images of uh israeli bombs paid for by the united states dropping again on the people of gaza, and of course uh the carnage, as the lebanese health minister has described it in lebanon, so many have died, you're in beirut, just let's get started by helping americans especially, but we have a global audience understand what's going on in lebanon. today, the same media that you're talking about, the same... mainstream american media newspapers shared that americans or the american policy makers are concerned because hizbullah hit a mosad base, mosad base around tel aviv that was responsible for a terrorist attack on 500 or more civilians, bystanders, lebanese children, women, and non combatants of hizbullah last week, the same regime that...

more than 400 lebanese within 30 minutes, how do you think are we as people supposed to defend ourselves? we did not go anywhere, this is our land, our ancestors land, we are here and there are these kinds of terror attacks and massacers happening to our people, the response of the lebanese resistance is to attack mosad base, and the americans and their media is concerned over this... attack on the mossad base and they did not tell you that the pajor attack is a terror attack, it is against every human law and every geneva convention state statement and every single law demonizes and and actually convicts people who attack civilians in daytime, they don't tell you about that, but they tell you they're concerned when eritaliatory strike hits military bases from lebanon, you have... have seen the countless

faces of children, of little girls and boys of families who have been massacred in that so-called supremacy of technological warfare and that terror attack on lebanon, and audaciously the mainstream media glorifies that. what if that happens in anywhere else other than beirot? imagine that happening in paris or norway or america or canada or new of zealand. or to any different kind of native indigenous people, what would that mainstream media do? they are still justifying all these massacers over a lie on one day in occupied palestine called the october 7 mass rapes, it has been debunked, babies beheaded, there are no babies, no names, no pictures, tens of palestinians babies have been beheaded over that lie and they're still carrying it and repeating it, so i think it is time that the american population thinks, beyond that

mainstream brain wash of media and tell me as a lebanese person, i'm not a hizbullah person, tell me how i supposed to defend my children from an f35 or an f16 or a technological cyber warfare that has all kinds of impunity from the world, i supposed to sit, they they expect us to sit down and wait for our death? i want to get your your thoughts. about this and help people understand what the mood, not just the mood in lebanon, but the capacity of resistance forces in lebanon to actually fight, on that day when they carried this steaded attack, the other 100 thousand of people pro hisbullah that were tired were adrenalized in a way, they were all ready to fight back, and you could see everybody who was tired and asking, do i really want to go into a solidarity war? with gazza has now a personal

vengeance with the israelis, on another tactical win for hizbullah, the lebanese differences in politics had people divided. way too divided on the day when you attack children in lebanon, every lebanese, christian, sunni, shia, durzi, left, right, and center was donating blood, some people went into donating their eyes, do you imagine the kind of national solidarity that takes tens of people to send their phone numbers and stand at the doors of hospital, saying, "i am here to give one of my eyes to a hizbullah fighter because he is going to..." do better with it, he's going to defend my country more with it. how are you harming hizbullah when you're not harming him military wise? and tactically as well, you just told every person in the world that's carrying any kind of technological device that they are, they are a target and it's

okay to kill them, if it's the israel is doing that today and you're considering it a win, who says that nobody else would enter the competition and other groups and want to show that they are superior in massacers even more than the israelis and they would utilize this everywhere. this is not superiority to to, no, it doesn't take strength or more power to booby trap technological devices, it just takes more criminality inside you. they think that in hizballah assassinations really shake up the organization, because they they really don't understand or really they underrate that ideology. mean, those people's b. ideologically, imam ali was killed, imam hasan, son of ali was killed, imam hussain, brother of hassan was killed, imam zain abidin was killed, all their imams, all their leaders are marters, and this is like the

best thing you can do to air leader is to kill him, because they breed, they breed many of of such leaders, ibrahim aqil was able in the 40 years that he outlived. the americans wanting to kill him, and this 40 years since the 80s, the americans wanted to kill him, and 40 years of his life, he was able to make countless ibrahim aqils in that organization, and so did all the leaders that they have assassinated, they have outlived the israelis wanting to assassinate them for 40 years, when we talk about the technological capacity, i'm a journalist that has reported, from a place called the iranian silicon valley that is made by the ministry of of foreign affairs and the presidency of rohani. was invited to tehran as a journalist and i saw it. nanotechnology, stemcell technology, all kinds of ai technology. i don't think

that the the cyber warfare is something very far or unatailable for these groups and i think the proof is that they were able to intercept the ir to to to... to surpass the iron dough many times and they were able to send drones that took footage inside the territories for for hours long footage and to come back safely to lebanon. this is a breach that in 2006 us, the lebanese people, we saw the same things, we saw the southern people, the southern population getting displaced, we opened our homes, we sat with our fellow country men and women for 33 days in the... first 20 days we thought we're going to lose everything and then when we were about to lose hope in the middle of the ground invasion we flipped the measures, we won, we kicked them out and we got back our prisoners, we succeeded in all our objectives

and the people of the south went back to the south and they rebuilt their homes and they got married and they made new fighters and some of the fighters who were born after that war today. are fighting the israelis and they are waiting for another ground invasion because one of the strongest points of this resistance is when the israelies actually enter the ground. the last idea i have to give you is a precedent, the last time that sayid nas spoke to the lebanes and the world and the israelies, in his last speech, he spoke about the possibilities of ground invasion and he actually invited the israelies, he told them you could come and enter. and we could go on for months and months and we would make you bleed non-stop as military, as army, as death, as operations in southern lebanon. i don't think the problem here if they if they get to 20000 reserves, not only 20 or 4000, because on the

other side of the scale you have tens of thousands of iraqis. sistani, the the highest spiritually. in iraq already said for the irakis, for all the irakis, go and fight in solidarity with your fellow brothers and in hisbullah, the yemanies, the syrians, the iranians and they are not reservis. but i'm telling you their ideology is not to be underrated at all, what i think is so important for for again for the us audience is to understand, people in the united states don't understand because they're getting their information from the american media, that hezbulah is part of key part of the fabric uh, this the heart and soul of lebanese society, and it's regardless of ideology or religion because of course there are different religions in lebanon, this this understanding that lebanon's life is at

stake, there's an existential issue facing all people in lebanon, and all of the resistance forces, including hesbula will be regarded as people defending the nation, if the americans or the american policy makers really want to defeat hizballah, it doesn't happen by denying the fact. will the israelis win in a ground invasion? the facts say that they never were able, will hizbullah be defeated in the president since its birth till today, they have never lost any battle, not in syria, not in lebanon, not against the israelis, not against isis, they have proven in every like we're talking about people who have won all their matches, the so so... underestimating them will not change the the the idea, speaking about the the the

popularity, because you mentioned that in your great monologue here, um, there are the most voted mp in the 128 members of parliament in lebanon, the one with the highest votes, got more than 50,000 votes, is called muhammad rad, he is the head of the hizbullah block in the lebanese parliament. his son was killed in the beginning of this war in a direct missile to assassinate him because his son is fighter in a rudwan force, a leader actually, he is an mp and his son is a leader and he got voted by the most amount of lebanese people. when you justify demonizing hizbullah like that, you are justifying, slaughtering 5000 lebanese people who voted for these people to rep represent them and this is textbook genocide, so when

you are demonizing a population that shows something, you are saying it is okay to kill them all, and you're actually doing that in your mainstream media, and we know it, i hope the american taxpayers and voters understand it from our prerogative, from our perspective, hizbullah is an idea, you cannot fill the idea, you can try but you don't. you've been trying for more than 40 years, it's time you learn and maybe you change the strategy and you listen to the voice of the land, you want them to like hizbullah less, give them other options, don't tell them you're going to kill them for that. let's talk about why or the motivations if you have any thoughts on this of the israeli regime in terms of expanding the war. israel has succeeded at killing a lot of people in gaza, but they have not... uh wiped out hamas, so so far they have not succeeded militarily in

spite of the almost year long bombardment of this very tiny territory, it's only five miles wide, 25 miles long, so this concentrated offensive against gaza has not succeeded except in killing so many people, uh, the israelis are bulldozing big parts of the west bank, i mean literally bulldosing. homes and and businesses uh now they've expanded the war to lebanon and hezbulah obviously lebanon is not gaza, hezbulah is not hamas, it's it's it's a bigger country, much bigger and hezbulah's military capacity is much greater, so the question is why, what's the goal? because he has zero success in gazza, because he failed to eradicate hamas, he failed to free hostages, he failed to silence the israeli anger at him, he has... disrupted internal policy, a disrupted military and security ranks, a disrupted

government, a disrupted parliament, and he is living an existential war. you want to ask me why netanyahu is leading this war? i want to ask you, what is netanyahu tomorrow if there's no war? he's fighting for his own personal salvation, and i want to remind everyone, where is youud olmart, the last president? that led war anti lebanon, he went to jail for few years right, inside israel, the israelis will eat netanyahu alive if there is no war, because he... didn't bring them any kind of success, he didn't deliver anything in ghazza, so i think i suppose he he told himself, maybe i can get them a win in lebanon, let me try and sell a win in lebanon, and this is what you see in the way the war mongering and the mainstream media happens even as the attack is happening, the pager attack, the terrorist attack, they try to sell it as a big win for netanyahu,

assassinating 70 year old leader in hizbullah, that is very important. but hizbullah has many leaders, so they're trying to sell these wins because they're looking left, right and center to play on the time. this is why you see netanyahu trying to drag iran into that war, because the best case scenario for him is that if all the west, the americans and the nato and everybody's fighting iran, the israelis will be busy with that, they will not eat him alive, and that's a great exit for him. i want to tell you, he will lose everything, not because the icj ruled that he's a war criminal. "not because the un told him to stop countless times, not because the us will tell him stop massacring and slaughtering the people of the middle east, they don't care about us, he will lose because of the rockets that will shower the israeli people that are already angry, it would be one of two, they either take him

down or they all go down together, because yesterday iraq was sending rockets and drones, yeman." and lebanon and as per the army and all the footage that has been exposed about hisbollah's capacity in the in the past years, they still have countless, tremendous diverse kinds of missiles and rockets they did they didn't use, they still did not, what still did not enter the battlefield are the directed missiles, this still like showering the targets like that, there's also global public opinion including us public opinion, which is now changed, there will be more protests and there were protests all around the country by the way, it was national day of action here in the united states. in the last 11 months, we've been organizing demonstrations in support of the palestinian people in gaza on november 4th, we had a half million people in washington dc, and then another almost the

same size january 13th, and then when netanyahu came on july 24th. uh, thousands of people were in the streets, so his whole, i mean, if you were in washington dc on july 24th, we called it fort netanyahu, because the us capital was completely surrounded with military police forces uh, to defend this foreign leader as he addressed disgracefully both houses of the us congress, but the american people were in the streets, so there's this changed uh nature of the world compared to say 56 or 67. or 82 or even 2006 where the the relationship of forces in the middle east is changed and also global public opinion has changed, including again in the united states. these protests are very important, and i always reiterate that our alliance may not have the global north, but

it has the global north future, the youth of these countries, the youth of america, the... youth of the united kingdom, the youth of europe has emerged in the streets and said it, but also we have to say that it's not only protesting, sometimes the actual action needs to happen, disruption needs to happen, the boycott needs to happen and be really harming and vocal, because regardless of all your protests, benjamin netanyahu took 52 standing ovations that day in his fortress, voted congress. men and women that you voted for, i mean, if you cannot, if you do not have the choice for the third party in your presidency elections, at least change your congress, at least do something, i don't disrupt something, change the course of that history to be less complicit as tax payers. i think in the future, this, what, what's happening in this region sir, is just the the

idea that truth always prevails. in the beginning of the 20th century, the colonial powers, the global western colonial powers who won over the ottoman empire took this piece of land that the ottoman empire was occupying as well, this piece of land, this greater natural levant is not arabia, it's not the gulf, it is syria, iraq, lebanon, palestine, this stretch of land always been unified, the french and the british cut it out and they started the idea, the zionist entity inside palestine, they cut it out into iraq, syria to the... divide and conquer lebanon, and now a century later, truth prevailed, the people are stretching like one body from southern lebanon, passing through

golan, to jordan, to iraq, and going down and forming a circle from yemen up towards palestine again, the people are the people, they're being oppressed together, they being killed together, and after a century, they now fighting together and they're unifying their bond. because the zionist entity was man-made, but that nation was born like that, so whatever you do, no matter how much you pay, i'm not gna stop being lebanese, i'm not gna stop looking like my sister from betlan whose settlers are taking her her father's land today, i'm not gna stop looking and feeling exactly like my sister from gazza who is sleeping in a tent today, i'm not going to lose that fight, gudy as we as we move. towards the close here, i want to bring up uh, we did it a little bit while you were speaking just now, there are two maps that i have, the're the're what we call the psyche

pico maps and it's of the countries that you talked about, and there's one of them, uh, and just again for our audience that might not know, at the end of world war i, actually, before the end, the victors in world war one, particularly the british and the french, and earlier it was zarist russia, but then the russians... was overthrown by a revolution and the bolsheviks actually published the cyco treaty uh and denounced secret diplomacy, but there was a secret agreement made between the british and french imperialists to divide up, lebanon, syria, iraq, the entire region, all the countries that you see there, britain will take this and france will take that. in other words, they said the world war i, in the words of woodrow wilson. was a war uh to a war to end all wars uh or a war for democracy, but in fact this was the beginning of new war

because it was the colonial imposed system, new colonial imposed system on the arab people in this region, and the irony as you said gadi, it's so amazing when you think about this imperialist colonial division of those lands and those and that people, here we are uh 100 years later, almost, cyx pico was 1916, we're 108 years later uh, that struggle hasn't stopped, it's going through different stages and phases and iterations, but it's basically the same struggle, and now the people who have been the colonized people, in spite of divisions, in spite of being in different countries that are now legal entities with different flags and and membership at the un, they're fighting more and more as one people uh against imperialism and colonialism and i would say the israelis as an extension of that colonialism uh retain the same sort of social composition, social

political composition, the desire to dominate uh these people in these lands. anyway, when you think of it in the big picture, in a historical perspective, you can see that um, as martin luther king said, the the the arc the universe is long, but it tends to bend in the direction of justice. "i don't think sights and pico will be very happy when they see that katab hizbullah from iraq are firing rockets that are flying over jordan, syria, golan, hitting occupied palestine in solidarity with their lebanese brothers in southern lebanon who previously fought in aleppo, northern syria against isis, so this stretch of blood and stretch of fight..." in terms of the people, when you die in iraq, your lebanese, you die in iraq, your yemen, you want to fight for palestine, you are unifying this land, you are stepping over the

era of pys and pico, you know, and i think we only have the choice of believing in our causes and in our people and in our nations, and for all the costs that have been put, for all the innocent blood that has been shed in this land, for all the injustice, the prisoners, without any crimes, the raped people in the prisons, for all the atrocities that are being made and recorded and televised, for making dogs, criminals that attack and rape humans, for making technology, a war fair blast device for all the humans that are in danger in front of the these atrocities, for everything that this is telling... you we will win francis, thank you so much for joining, thank you for having me.

it was a shot that was heard around the world, the £82,000 pound bombs which destroyed the mountain that was syd hassanlah has changed many things, the clock stopped, the tears fell, the morning began, but the guns kept blazing as netanyahu is about to find out on the ground in lebanon, come and have it out with galaui, if you are hard enough.

so the actual agenda is what is you formistically called territorial expansion, but we should more accurately call it land and resource theft. the nature of the war itself, the timing, the surprising element. tune into this week's episode of economic divide where we take a look at operational flood october 7th, one year on the economic impact on the israely regime, the occupied

west bank, and of course, the gaza strap. the headlines the hisbolla resistant movement carries out new attacks on israel hitting the city of haifa in the northern occupied territories. 51 missiles, more women and children fall victim to israel's relentless strikes across gaza as the death doll from the regime's genocide nears 41,900. also coming up, iran's president says the country's retaliatory operation against israel was aimed at stopping the regime's crimes and aggression in the region.