Israel announced its decision to invade Lebanon on September 30—and so far, it does not seem to be going well. Israeli media has been largely silent on the state of ground operations, but Hezbollah has claimed a number of significant victories that suggest Israel has been unable to find its footing. Despite the assassination of General Secretary Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah and the Lebanese resistance appear to be unbowed. After all, this is an organization that was forged in the successful struggle to expel Israeli soldiers during the occupation from 1982-2000, and once again defeated Israel in 2006. 

Hezbollah’s ability to deter Israeli advances on the ground are significant, but this has not stopped Israel’s daily bombing of Lebanon, particularly in the Dahiye suburb south of Beirut. Dahiye and Lebanon’s south are now in the spotlight of international media—which often reduce these places, the communities within them, and their histories of resistance to one-dimensional caricatures. Yet the people of these communities and Lebanon at large deserve far better, particularly now as they face the same genocidal war tactics Israel has unleashed in Gaza over the past year. Roqayah Chamseddine, an independent journalist based in Beirut and co-host of the Delete Your Account podcast, joins The Real News with updates from the ground and a portrait of the proud people of Dahiye and Lebanon’s south informed by her own roots and years of experience in these communities.

Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Welcome to The Real News podcast. This is Ju-Hyun Park, engagement editor at The Real News. Today we’re speaking with Roqayah Chamseddine, an independent journalist based in Beirut. Before we begin, I’d like to extend our gratitude on behalf of The Real News team to you, our listeners and supporters.

We are proud to be a nonprofit newsroom that tells the stories corporate media will not. And as part of that commitment, we don’t take any ad money or corporate donations ever. We depend on listeners like you to make our work possible. So please consider becoming a sustainer of The Real News today at therealnews.com/donate.

For the past two weeks, Israel has unleashed a series of increasingly bloody attacks against the Lebanese people, heavy bombing of the South of Lebanon, the notorious pager attack which killed dozens and wounded thousands, and a series of carpet bombing strikes around the country, one of which killed the longtime leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, along with at least 500 residents of an entire apartment block in the Dahieh suburb of Beirut.

We are speaking today on Friday, October 4th. After last night, Israel unleashed the most punishing and destructive bombing campaign in the Dahieh neighborhood yet, and now Israeli troops have invaded Lebanon as of September 30th. While much of international media is focused on the question of whether a regional war involving the United States and Iran is imminent, there is considerably less attention being given to the people of Lebanon.

Lebanon is, in fact, a real country of real people whose roots in the land run deep. It is a nation that has seen its share of strife in recent decades, including a brutal civil war, an Israeli occupation from 1982 until 2000, and another failed Israeli Invasion in 2006. Yet for all its challenges, Lebanon is also a place of triumphs, of dreams, and its people deserve to be known to the world as more than the one dimensional caricatures that our media has to offer.

Joining The Real News today is Roqayah Chamseddine, an independent journalist based in Beirut and the co-host of the Delete Your Account Podcast. Roqayah, welcome to The Real News and thank you for joining us.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

Thank you very much for having me today.

Ju-Hyun Park:

I want to start by asking you to just introduce yourself a little bit further, if you could discuss your work, your history with Lebanon itself.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

So I am from Southern Lebanon. That is my family history. My family is from two villages, but originally from the village of Masjid al Salaam, which was part of occupied Palestine. The South, also known as Jabal Amil, is where all of us Southern Lebanese people originate from. Another village that my family is also from is Arabsalim. Both these villages have been hit during the last few attacks on the South.

I am a writer and a journalist. I’ve been reporting on this region since I was very young. I’ve also attempted to get into Gaza, and that was back in 2009 as a part of the Gaza Freedom March. Did not get into Gaza, but I’m hoping that with things going the way that they’re going now, we all might be able to go to Gaza. But that’s just a bit about me.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Thank you so much for that introduction. Now, you are in Lebanon at this moment.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

Yes.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Specifically in Beirut. And I want to ask if you can describe the scenes where you are for people who are listening. What are you and those around you seeing and feeling right now?

Roqayah Chamseddine:

So it is very tense at the moment, especially because in the last few days there have been over 15 Israeli attacks on our southern suburb. And when people say the southern suburb, they mean the Dahieh, and that is what the Dahieh is. And since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on us, these on the Dahieh have only grown exponentially. You mentioned how severe the attack was yesterday.

It’s said to be even worse than the attack that killed Sayyed Hassan, which Israel used bunker buster bombs, which are between 2,000 to I think 4,000 tons. They’re meant to penetrate very hard targets into the ground. They create craters. I’ve been to the Dahieh since the attacks have begun. The Dahieh is my second home after South Lebanon, so I know it very well, very intimately.

I know the people there very intimately, and it is a disaster area. And that might be me underselling how bad things are. The Dahieh is a very densely populated area filled with over 600,000 people. And these attacks are intentionally meant to maim, kill, and destroy the entire suburb. And that is exactly what we’ve seen. And so people are very tense. You can hear the attacks on the Dahieh outside from…

Yesterday, people were saying they were hearing them up in the mountains. That’s how bad they were. So I can hear them from where I am. I’m no longer in the Dahieh at the moment, unfortunately, but it’s something that cannot escape you no matter where you go, hearing the sound of them. We also hear Israeli planes and drones oftentimes even outside the Dahieh.

So we are being surveilled at all hours of the day and night. Sometimes, like I said, you can even see the planes, the Israeli planes. And this all began outside of South Lebanon. Because after October 8th, the attacks on our southern villages began. They didn’t start hitting Beirut until later. They didn’t start hitting the Dahieh until later.

And that began with what we call [Arabic 00:05:48] which is the sonic booms where the planes fly very low and then fly up or break the sound barrier. And it was a form of psychological warfare, and then that grew into the attacks that we’re seeing now. So I haven’t heard any sonic booms. All that we hear now are the constant airstrikes on the Dahieh.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Thank you for providing us with that overview, and it’s very clear that there is an intentional campaign being waged to terrorize the population. It’s not simply a matter of going after these so-called military targets, and that’s very obvious from the way in which Israel is conducting this war thus far. I want us to take some time to talk about the people of these regions that you’ve mentioned and you have so much intimacy with, the South and the Dahieh.

You’ve spent a lot of time in these places. You just named them as two of your homes. What can you tell us about the communities in these places and help us peel back from the headlines, which really just establish them as locations in a war zone, and help us fill in the details of what life is really like there.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

The Dahieh, like many suburbs throughout Lebanon, is I would say… I say a lot in Arabic, [Arabic 00:07:05] which means it’s a poor neighborhood, but there’s life. And there is a lot of poverty in the Dahieh, but the community there is very tight-knit, very close. They know each other very well. If you’re ever lost in Dahieh, you can reference one bakery and you’ll be able to find everything around you.

People know one another like their family. They’re very, very resilient people, very humble people, helpful, grateful. And many of the people in the Dahieh come from South Lebanon and they ended up in the Dahieh because of the occupation of the South and the previous wars against the southern region. I don’t want to make the Dahieh into, oh, it’s some kind of magical place in an Orientalist sense, but the Dahieh is very…

They like to call it, what is it, a Hezbollah stronghold. It’s militaristic language used to basically make people believe that the people there are non-human. And so whenever you attack a residential building, you’re attacking somebody that deserves to be killed.

Now that’s putting aside the fact that we have the right to armed resistance, but the people of the Dahieh are very pro-resistance because armed resistance is the only way forward whenever you’re living under occupation and whenever you’ve seen the kind of brutality that is real, this entity has unleashed on us for decades. So in terms of the Dahieh, it’s a beautiful place filled with wonderful people who are trying to survive on a day-to-day basis.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Thank you so much. And as you mentioned, the people of the Dahieh, many of them are coming from the South of Lebanon where in previous decades, Israel has staged other invasions. The current invasion that we are seeing is, in fact, the third time that Israel has invaded Lebanon. Many of these people have experience with war and particularly with war against Israel. And I’m wondering if in that context you can talk to us a little bit about how people in these areas are now responding to this wave of attacks and this now third invasion of the country.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

So Israel has not invaded South Lebanon yet. The Lebanese resistance has saved them off so far. They’ve killed at least 17 Israeli soldiers, likely more because as you well know, the Israeli government puts a blackout on what the media is allowed to tell Israeli citizens to keep up morale. It’s a form of propaganda obviously to keep his colony’s enthusiasm for bloodletting going and making sure that they’re okay with their sons and daughters going out occupying, pillaging, and killing people.

So Hezbollah has so far destroyed at least four Merkava tanks and killed, like I said, 17 Israeli soldiers, and their operations are continuing. Now in the South, in Baalbek and in the Dahieh so far since the beginning of the Israeli aggression on US, Israel has killed 1,974 individuals, and that includes 124 children. Over 9,000 people have been injured. Most of this is happening in the South because they’re hitting our villages and they’re hitting them very hard.

They’re targeting houses. They’re targeting health services. They’re targeting paramedics. Israel’s been killing first aid responders in the South and firefighters. A total of 104 martyrs are among the dead, and they include emergency workers. 50 paramedics in just 14 days have been killed, many of them dying after double tap strikes, which is when you bomb an area and then you wait for the first aid responders to arrive and then you bomb the targeted area again.

And today a group of medics and journalists ended up going to the Dahieh after this morning’s latest attack and an Israeli drone fired a missile at them and injured three. So what we’re enduring in South Lebanon and in the Dahieh is a US-Israeli War that’s being waged against us and the people of Gaza. And it’s only possible with US supplied aircrafts, US supplied munitions, and US supplied intelligence.

And I want to make this point, the smirk of Matthew Miller, who is the US State Department spokesman, is the face of this war. So right now what the South is going through is months and nearly a year of constant psychological warfare through the sonic booms, which I’ve experienced these firsthand. Because of where some of these villages are situated so close to the mountains, Arabsalim is on the mountain, it sounds like you’re being bombed.

That is how deep this affects you psychologically. Some people can handle it and they’ve gotten used to it. There’s a saying [Arabic 00:12:03] We’ve gotten used to it. Other people, you can tell they have been deeply psychologically disturbed by constantly feeling as though they’re going to be killed along with their family. I know that whenever the latest attacks on the South, when they were at I would say the highest level, my family who were in the South ended up going to one family’s house and staying all together because they would rather die together than die alone.

So that is what people are dealing with. They’re killing entire families. They’re killing women and children. They’re killing our men. They’re killing people coming to our rescue. That is what Israel has been doing in Gaza and now what it is doing to the people of South Lebanon and the rest of Lebanon as well.

Ju-Hyun Park:

I appreciate you bringing in the angle of the similarity and I don’t even know if we can call it a real strategy, but tactics that Israel is pursuing in Lebanon as what it has been doing in Gaza for the past year. Of course, we’ve seen the decimation of families, the intentional targeting of medical personnel, of press, the use of these double tap strikes to maximize the amount of casualties as much as possible.

And we’re very evidently seeing that this is simply the way that Israel is intent on conducting wars anywhere. And as the question of regional war looms, it really raises the question of how much further will this go and how much further will it be permitted to go? In that vein, I do want to ask you pertaining to some of your earlier comments about support among the population for the resistance, help our audience understand that a little bit.

What is the perspective that people have on the resistance? Where does it come from? And if you can just piece this together for us, I think that would really be to the benefit of our listeners.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

So in the South, South Lebanon was known as Jabal Amin. Back whenever it was Jabal Amin, there was an intimate connection with Palestine. I have relatives who told me your great-grandmother or so-and-so used to walk into Palestine. There’s a great article I’ll share with your listeners and I’ll provide you with the link where it talks about how people in South Lebanon and Jabal Amin knew cities in Palestine more than they knew Beirut.

That’s how often they would go, and that’s how much they knew of the land of Palestine. Then French occupation and Israeli occupation helped develop the guerrilla warfare tactics that we’re now seeing employed by Hezbollah, Harakat, Aman, the two main resistance movements in Lebanon. The people of Jabal Amin also helped Palestinian resistance fighters with arms and physically as well, helping them resist Israeli occupation.

Because they knew once they come for Palestine, they will come for us, and there is a deep brotherhood that connects us to Palestine. That is why you hear so many Lebanese people say, “No matter what you do to us, you can kill us until the very last man, woman, or child, and we will not leave Palestine. Even if we are crumbs, we will not leave Palestine because we’ve seen the devastation. We have witnessed it firsthand.”

My own aunt, Hoda Chamseddine, was killed when she was only 15 years old sitting under our olive tree in Arabsalim drinking tea with her friends, and they dropped a bomb on the olive grove and she died in my uncle’s arms. Her friends were injured, and so we know the cruelty and barbarism of Israel firsthand. And many people from South Lebanon, you will hear them speak almost poetically as to how much they are devoted to resisting these colonizers until the very end.

There’s a fantastic interview where a man says that the Israelis think that they are the masters of the air because they love to bomb us from the air because they’re so weak on the ground. He says, they think they’re the masters of the air, but we are the masters of the earth. Because Hezbollah, specifically because of their hybrid complex rural warfare tactics, are able to stave off this colonial entity.

As we speak now, they’ve conducted probably more operations in the last few days than they did during the height of the July war of 2006. So the people of Lebanon, specifically the people of South Lebanon support the resistance because they know that armed resistance is the only way forward. Anyone you speak to in South Lebanon will talk to you very poetically about how devoted they are to resistance until the very last one of us, until the very last brick, until the very last person.

We know that this is the only way armed resistance is the only way to combat a colonial entity which has… I mean, look at what’s happening in Gaza. In Gaza, they’ve killed at least 5.4% of their population, and that’s according to a report that was released today. This is the kind of cruelty that the breadth of which cannot ever be quantified. When you read that entire bloodlines, over 900 bloodlines in Gaza have been wiped out, what should the response be?

What should the response be to the fact that Palestinian journalists like Hossam Shabat have described the death hole in Gaza being so profound that they’re running out of dirt to bury their dead. So armed resistance, that is the only answer.

Ju-Hyun Park:

That’s a very powerful response, and I think what is really being put on the table for our listeners is that this is really a fundamental matter of survival. It’s a matter of the future in the most bare immediate terms that is really driving the support and the kinds of strategies that are undertaken by people to resist the occupation and the expansion of the occupation, which we are seeing Israel attempt at this moment.

I think one topic that I do want to broach, given how close we are to this major event, which has been one of the biggest political developments so far in this war, is of course the assassination of Nasrallah, and US media has always painted Nasrallah as a kind of boogeyman along with Hezbollah.

But I’m wondering if you can say more building on what we’ve already been discussing about support for the resistance, the reasons for that as to how do people in Lebanon, particularly in the South, in Dahieh, see Nasrallah as a figure and how are folks responding to his death?

Roqayah Chamseddine:

Well, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, he was a father figure to many people because he helped liberate South Lebanon. Hezbollah began with genuinely a handful of people in South Lebanon with nothing but the mindset and the dedication to the path of resistance and has grown. There’s over 100,000 people in Hezbollah, if not more. He helped free almost the entirety of South Lebanon. Now what Israel occupies is Shebaa. We were under nearly two decades of brutal Israeli occupation.

Then defeats Israel once again in 2006. And on top of that, look at how dedicated the Hezbollah was in joining in support of the Palestinian resistance the day after October 7th. The day after October 7th, the Hezeb committed all of their martyrs not just to the path of resistance, but every time a martyr falls from South Lebanon or from the Hezeb, because some of them don’t come from South Lebanon, they’re dedicating their lives to the path, to the liberation of Jerusalem. That is how we dedicate our martyrs.

And every single time an operation is committed, they begin by saying, “In support of our steadfast people in Gaza and their resistance.” So the reason why Sayyed Hassan is so loved is not just for his charisma, not just because of his pluralism, not because of his outlook on Lebanon that is open to all people regardless of where they come from and who or what they worship or don’t worship, but it is because of his resilience, his steadfastness, and his ability to speak so eloquently, and also put words with deeds, combine them together.

He was known as the true promise, because everything he promised he committed to and did. And one thing that made me emotional was the leader of Harakat Amal, Nabih Berri, said, “You broke one promise,” which is him passing away because Sayyed Hassan had promised to go pray in Al-Quds and he didn’t get to. And so that was the one promise that he broke. But the era of Hezbollah helped define the future, not just of South Lebanon, but all of Lebanon.

Without the Lebanese resistance, we would be under US-Israeli boots. We would be submitting to the whims of the occupier now. So that is why Sayyed Hassan is so beloved, not just by Shia, not even just by Muslims. Whenever I found out that Sayyed Hassan was martyred, I was in a cafe and every single person around me was crying. Everyone. It was one of the most moving moments and heart-wrenching moments I had ever experienced in my life.

It was a nation mourning. There are a lot of people who did not agree with the politics of Hezbollah, but they saw Sayyed Hassan as an honorable and steadfast person who would not… He faced the occupier and said, “We are a nation of people with a faith unlike any other you’ve seen before, and we refuse to submit and we will not be humiliated. You will not walk in our villages. You will not walk among the people who toil this land and act as if you own everything. We refuse.”

And so that is why he is so beloved by people and why even now it’s very hard to say Shaheed Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah or the Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah because of how his life, his appearance, shaped all of us and will continue to shape us, because the path of resistance, it is not… I mentioned this before on another podcast. Kanafani said that bodies fall, but ideas endure, and the path of resistance will endure whether or not Sayyed Hassan was martyred.

Ju-Hyun Park:

I think the image you just painted of Nasrallah, Hezbollah, their relationship to the Lebanese people is certainly very, very different than what our audience may be accustomed to receiving. I want to focus in actually on something you said about Nasrallah’s vision for Lebanon, his pluralism.

I think that idea in particular may really stand at odds with what people are used to hearing. I’m wondering if you can expound on that point a little bit more and introduce us to a more informed and detailed take on the actual politics of this organization.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

Right. If you read Hezbollah’s manifesto, they’re committed to Lebanon that is open to all people of all faiths. Sayyed Hassan grew up surrounded by people, Christians, Jews. The reason why I don’t like talking about this specifically is because I feel like a lot of people, they want to hear a very… How can I put this? A first world take on a figure like Sayyed Hassan.

They want to hear that, oh yeah, he liked Christians too. But the way that the Hezeb was formatted was that they know that this country is not just for one group. The reason why our government is shaped the way that it is, like the Speaker of the House needs to be of this faith, the president has to be a Christian, the prime minister has to be a sheik, the reason why is because of French colonialism.

Whenever the French occupied us, they’ve set it up that way. But we do not want a country that is made up to be divided this way because Lebanon is for everybody. So Sayyed Hassan was the kind of person who wanted Lebanon that would be for everyone regardless of what they believed. If they didn’t like the Hezeb, so be it. But the future of Lebanon will be made by the people, and that’s what he stood for.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Thank you for that explanation. We are coming around to the end of our time. I’m wondering if there are any messages you want to leave with our audience.

Roqayah Chamseddine:

So one thing that people like to focus on when it comes to Hezbollah or the Palestinian resistance is how we focus on martyrdom. Because Sayyed Hassan would say that if we live, we win. And if we die, we win, because death is a shadow that follows every one of us. No one can escape the fate of death, but we know that we’ve chosen to die with dignity rather than live a moment of humiliation, because dignity is the currency that we choose to spend.

And Israel is fighting against the people that fear humiliation more than death. And you can’t defeat people like this. So by killing Sayyed Hassan, Israel believes that they’ve decapitated the Hezeb. They’ve broken our backs, as we would say in Arabic, but what’s happened is they’ve inflamed the hearts of countless more people who are like Sayyed Hassan, who will become Sayyed Hassan, and who’ve taken up the struggle that he spent his whole life pursuing.

So while we’re in the eye of the storm now, we don’t know what the future holds, but we’re going to hold tight to the rope of resistance. And we won’t kneel and we won’t submit because we know that just like South Lebanon, Palestine will be liberated and it will end likely in South Lebanon on our terms and in our arena where they cannot defeat us. They know this.

They’re killing an average of 100 Lebanese people a day or 100 people in Lebanon a day. But when they’re confronted by our men on the front lines in South Lebanon, they’re unable to fight us. They say just the same way that they said in 2006, it’s like fighting ghosts. Because when you fight against the people who are so committed to their land that every time you destroy a house, the person whose home you destroyed says, “I’m going to rebuild.”

You can’t defeat people like that. We have a faith like no one else on this earth, and we’re going to stand up like the cedars of Lebanon and not submit to anyone.

Ju-Hyun Park:

You’ve been listening to The Real News Podcast. This is Ju-Hyun Park speaking with Roqayah Chamseddine, who is based in Beirut. Roqayah, how can our audience keep up with you and your work?

Roqayah Chamseddine:

You can follow me @roqchams on Twitter. There’s also Delete Your Account, hosted by myself and Kumars Salehi.

Ju-Hyun Park:

Thank you so much again for joining us. Before we go, we’d like to thank all you listeners once again and take a moment to recognize The Real News Studio team, David Hebden, Cameron Granadino, Kayla Rivara, and Alina Nehlich, who make all our work possible. This has been The Real News, and we’ll catch you next time.

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