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. lifter mile knocking down homes and businesses in the west bank, the same front page has images of 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 beirot, 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 policymakers are concerned because hizbullah hit a mossad 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 massacred more than 400 lebanese within 30 minutes, how do you think are we as people supposed to defend ourselves? we did in 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 pager 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 a retaliatory strike hits military. faces from lebanon, you 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 of anywhere else other than imagine that happening in paris or norway or america? or

canada or new 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 palestinian's 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 of population..." thinks beyond that mainstream brain wash of the media and tell me as a lebanese person, i'm not a hizbullah person, tell me how am 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, am 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. that day when they carried this terror attack, the other 100 thousand of people pro hisbullah that retired 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 hospitals saying, i am here to give one of my eyes to a hiz. fighter because he's 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 uh they are a target and it's okay to kill them if it's the israely is doing that today and you're considering it a win, who says that nobody else would enter the competition? and other groups and armies 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. i mean those people's boss ideologically, imam ali was killed, imam hassan, son of ali was killed, imam hussain, brother of hassan was killed, imam zain al 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. in 40 years of his life, he was able to make countless ibrahims 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... analist 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 ruhani. 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 unable for these groups and i think the proof is that they were able to intercept the to... to to surpass the iron dome 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 countrymen 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 the fighters who were born a 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 israelis actually enter the ground. the last idea i have to give you is a precedent, the last time that sayid nasarallah spoke to the lebanes and the

world and the israel is 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... think the problem here if they if they get to 200 thousand reserves, not only 20 or 400, because on the other side of the scale you have tens of thousands of iraqis, sistani, the the highest spiritual leader in iraq, already said for the irakis, for all the irakis, go and fight in solidarity with your fellow brothers in in hizbullah, the yemanies, the syrians, the iranians. "and they are not reservists, 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 hezbollah is part of key part of the fabric uh, this the heart and soul of lebanese society, and it's regardless of ide. 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 will be regarded as people defending the nation, if the americans or the american policy makers really want to defeat his. happen by denying the facts, will the israelis win in a ground invasion? the facts

say that they never were able. will hizullah be defeated in the precedent 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 50000 votes is called muhammad rad, he is the head of the... buullah 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 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 50 thousand lebanese people, who voted for these people to 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 kill the idea, you can... but you don't succeed, 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 uh or the motivations if you have any thoughts on this the israeli uh regime in terms of expanding the war, uh israel has succeeded at killing a lot of people and gaza, but they have not uh wiped out hamas, so so far they have not succeeded militarily, in spite of the almost yearl bombardment of this very tiny territory, it's only 5 miles wide, 25 miles long, so this concentrated offensive against gaza has not succeeded except in killing so many people, the israelis are bulldozing big parts of the west bank, i mean literally bulldozing homes and and businesses uh now

they've expanded the war to lebanon and hezbulah obviously lebanon is not gaza, hesbolah 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 and... at him, he has a 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 ehod 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'. 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 ic. 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 rocket. and drones, yeman and lebanon, and as per the army uh and all the footage that has been exposed about hizbullah's capacity in the in the past years, they still have countless tremendous diverse, we're going to cross over right here in tehran where that international conference dealing with palestinian kids

taking place, and uh the head of the parliament, mr khaf is about to speak, uh, let's take a listen.

before god almighty is the paradise and it's being together with the prophets of god with the prophet. and there is other goal in life.

for itself,

all of the elements of the survival of this regime, this criminal regime had mapped out all of those survival elements and its existential philosophy has been endangered and jeopadized all of its military doctrine that it had drawn up throughout these. arab government to agree to disgraceful agreements, today we can see that nations who

believe.

conflict and the fighters are engaged with israeli forces and the israeli regime is is even targeting them with air strikes, the regime issumed that today it would conquer gaza within a few days, year has gone by, and it has neither conquered gaza, and as you saw that. the regime with rockets, it has not succeeded in releasing a single captive. israel hasn't even succeeded to occupy one step in southern lebanon and move there.