By: Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
Canadian citizen and journalist, Laith Marouf, along with Hadi Hotait, were reporting for Free Palestine TV (FPTV) in the south of Lebanon, when the Israeli military attempted to assassinate them.
Laith Marouf described the attack to Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse.
“The Israeli military have been targeting media workers in Gaza and Lebanon, and even in the West Bank. We can remember before October 7 they assassinated Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.”
“And, now over 160 journalists have been martyred in Gaza, and of course here in Lebanon the Israelis have assassinated four journalists in the south. The enemy is vicious and they do not like people that do journalism work, because that brings the truth to the world. This is especially true for those who write in English.”
“We were alone, and nobody was around us when we were targeted. Thank God the shells fell 200 meters away from us. There was a short cement fence which partially protected us, and the wind was blowing away from us, so the white phosphorus that fell in the first shell did not injure us, thank God.”
According to Hotait, he and Marouf were near an open field taking photos when the shell landed on the edge of a house near them. Hotait told The Canada Files that this was obviously a targeted assassination attempt because there were no weapons or military assets in the area. Israel has a long history of killing journalists.
White Phosphorous was dropped by Israel, and soon afterwards an Israeli guided missile landed in the same area. The white phosphorous remains active, very toxic and flammable for much longer than previously known.
Lebanese researchers and experts are warning that Israel’s tactics are causing long-term and potentially irreversible damage to south Lebanon’s environment, agriculture and economy, potentially making it uninhabitable.
By March 6, 117 phosphoric bombs had been dropped on southern Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS).
The Israeli military knows that white phosphorus is detrimental, that it reignites even up to a month after being dropped, and is toxic to the environment.
The Lebanese side is completely barren land, but the Israelis are cultivating down to the last inch before the border. The White Phosphorus used by Israel is effectively making the south of Lebanon uninhabitable.
The continuous Israeli bombing has caused huge evacuations, but those who have to remain in their homes recognize the smell of the White Phosphorus, which is similar to garlic.
White phosphorous ignites when exposed to the oxygen in the air at temperatures above 30C (86F) and rains down streaks of dense white smoke mixed with phosphorus oxides. The fragments burn plants, houses and human flesh.
On March 19, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch reported that cited Israel’s use of white phosphorus on Gaza and south Lebanon as one in “a wide range of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law” and called on the Biden administration to “immediately suspend arms transfers to Israel”.
This isn’t new in Lebanon, as the Israeli army targeted civilians with White Phosphorus in the 1982 invasion and since October 7 there has been a lot of white phosphorus used on forests, plantations, olive and fruit trees.
Experts in the field have said that the use of white phosphorus is ‘environmental terrorism’ and ‘psychological warfare’.
Over the last 46 years or more, experts and officials say, a pattern has become clear; Israel is creating a barren ‘no-man’s-land’ in the south of Lebanon as their buffer zone.
Israel’s invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, its occupation from 1985 to 2000, and the wars between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006 and 2023-2024 have eroded the land on the Lebanese side of the border.
An investigation by Forbidden Stories and 13 media outlets, including Le Monde, suggests that some of these Israeli strikes were deliberate attacks on journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has conducted investigations as of July 12, 2024 which showed at least 108 journalists and media workers were among the more than 39,000 killed since the Gaza war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992. CPJ is investigating almost 350 additional cases of potential killings, arrests and injuries.
The Canada Files’ Editor-in-Chief, Aidan Jonah, and Marouf, co-host a weekly show called Canada and Palestine: The War on Zionism. Marouf appears on other shows regularly every week, and regularly is interviewed by prominent Canadian lawyer and journalist Dimitri Lascaris.
FPTV now does reports from the field on the border between South Lebanon and Israel/occupied Palestine and a weekly show called Wartime Café where Lebanese pro-resistance activists, artists and thinkers are interviewed, and translation of all the resistance videos coming out from Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, around the whole of the Axis of Resistance.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist
This article is originally published at Stratgic culture foundation
