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“It's very bloody and very violent and very dangerous.”

Lebanese political scientists Bashir Saade and Karim Makdisi shed light on Israel’s attacks on Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah and more.

Since the situation is so volatile, news is constantly breaking: after we recorded the interview, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister told CNN that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a 21-day ceasefire just before he was assassinated by Israel. The temporary ceasefire, he claimed, was called for by President Biden, President Macron and other allies during the UN General Assembly. 

During the interview Karim and Bashir predict what is to come. “The cost is going to be very high,” warns Karim. “It’s going to be very bloody.” They also reflect on why Israel’s attack on Lebanon was inevitable, but not because of Hezbollah. 

“I think this is a war that has been coming,” Karim explains. “It's a war that was going to happen. And if it wasn't going to happen now, it would have happened a year from now. You have an expansionist Israel. It has always been expansionist.” And, Bashir adds, “Hezbollah is prepared for this.”

They discuss the double standards faced by the IDF, which is called the most moral army in the world, and Hezbollah, which is described by western media and politicians as terrorist. As Karim explains:

“Hezbollah could target civilian areas. But it's just not in their doctrine, in a sense, to hit civilian areas for the sake of it. In the way that for the Israelis, with the Dahiya Doctrine, you can level the entire civilian area if you think there's some kind of military target inside. This is something the Israelis have been doing since 1948.” Coming tragically full circle, Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine, which calls for disproportionate military responses and the targeting of civilians (war crimes), was named after a Beirut neighborhood where Nasrallah wound up being murdered. 

The West justifies Israel’s war crimes by claiming that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. But this week, when Iran launched a missile attack on a Mossad weapons base, CNN itself admitted that the base was embedded in a civilian area.

“The Mossad headquarters and military and defense ministry,” Karim explains, “are in various very civilian areas inside main Israeli cities. So does that mean they’re targets? Does that mean all the civilians working there and around there are targets? Does that mean that it's legitimate under self-defense or any other kind of doctrine? Does it mean that Hezbollah can blow up cell phones and pagers?”

Notably, the very same western politicians and media who accuse Hamas of using human shields are absolutely silent when it comes to Israel’s documented use of Palestinian and Israeli human shields.

Subscribe for the full interview with Bashir and Karim on the state of Hezbollah after the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, how corporate media is constantly working to cover up Israel’s crimes, how martyrdom is portrayed differently based on who does it, and what Bashir and Karim are calling “political suicide” for the Democratic Party.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: John Kerry Wants to Save Democracy (By Ending Democracy)

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“It’s really hard to govern today,” complained former Secretary of State John Kerry at the World Economic Forum. “The referees we used to have to determine what’s a fact and what isn’t a fact have been eviscerated.”

We don’t think he’s talking about the referees who let him lie about WMDs in Iraq in order to justify his own vote for the Iraq War, but let’s let him slide on that one and keep listening…

Today, he mourns, “people self-select where they go for their news and information, so it’s much harder to build consensus.” And when the government can no longer shape information through corporate media, officials like Kerry need to “curb those entities” that provide the public with alternatives to CNN or Fox News.

But it’s not as easy as John Kerry had hoped to ban a site like Twitter.

“Our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able hammer it out of existence.” Oh no! So what’s the solution, John? “What we need is to win the ground by winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.” If you vote for us, we’ll make sure there is an information consensus.

And if that isn’t scary enough, just wait until you watch the rest of this week’s Thursday Throwdown. As Iranian missiles rain down on an Israeli weapons base, CNN reporter Jim Sciutto explains that the base is in the center of a densely-populated civilian area. Which means, by CNN logic, that Israel is using civilians as human shields by placing its command center there.

Surely Jim Sciutto will condemn Israel for this, right? Right?

Plus, Katie and Aaron watch clips from the supremely terrible vice presidential debate, focusing in on Margaret Brennan’s very leading opening question, and wondering if JD Vance has been watching Useful Idiots after a certain Hillary-Clinton-related argument.

It’s all this, and so much more, on this week’s Thursday Throwdown. Watch with Aaron and Katie so you can laugh instead of cry at it all.

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