Journalist From the Frontlines Responds to Israel’s Attempt to Assassinate Him on Camera

and works in Beirut Lebanon, was in southern Lebanon attempting with a cameraman to document

“what the Israeli military is doing to the southern part of that country, which is leveling”

it, moving people wholesale out, including Christian villages across the area. And as he was preparing his report, he was targeted by an Israeli-owned American-made aircraft that fired

a missile at him in an attempted assassination. Here's what it looked like.

That wasn't an accident. It was intentional. The jet that fired it had flown over his position, attempting to assassinate him as the Israeli government has assassinated. Unpurposed on accidently, assassinated murdered so many journalists, including Western journalists trying to cover its atrocities, atrocities that are spreading. Even now, under the cover of the Iran War, a massive land grab across the region, killing of Christians, desecration of Christian holy sites. That's all happening.

“It's all real. And one of the reasons you may not know about it is because the people trying”

to record it to chronicle it have been assassinated. But Steve Sweeney was not assassinated by luck

or the grace of God, by a quirk of the landing of that missile he survived. He joins us now to explain what happened. Steve, thanks very much for doing this. I'm grateful your whole life. Can you just play the tape of the moment where you were almost killed? Can you add context to that and describe what was happening? Well, yeah, you've seen the footage and we incredibly lucky to come out of that situation alive. It was only purely by luck that the missile

ended up as you've seen on the footage. It went through the hole and the bridge had already been

destroyed. So just to give you some context of why we were there, Israel had issued these evacuation

orders. It said that it was going to bomb every single bridge in South Lebanon. So the bridges across the Littani river, this connects the south of Lebanon to the rest of the country. So this

“was a hugely important news story. This is essentially cutting off a whole swath of the country.”

And they'd started abomin the night before. It was a Thursday when we went to the bridge. On the Wednesday evening and into the early hours of the morning, they'd started targeting bridges. So as a journalist and as a walker respondent, we were there to report on this huge news story. So we drove down. This is in sort, a strip or a tire district as other people will probably better know it. And as we approached, the Lebanese Army have a base there.

They just, just ahead of the bridge. So we approached them and we said to them, okay, is it safe to film? And they assured us it was perfectly safe for us to go on that bridge. And they would know because if Israel is about to bomb a bridge, which they had already bonded the night before, then they would get a message to the Lebanese Army via Unifill, the United Nations peacekeepers. They don't have direct communication. So there was no pre-warning that this bridge

was about to be struck again. There was no military objective in striking the bridge again. It was already destroyed. You could barely even walk across it. Let alone take a vehicle across it. So this was the, the Kazmea bridge. This was the, the smaller bridge. So these kind of link villages and settlements in South Lebanon and together. So, okay, we, we approached the bridge. We set up our camera. We started filming. There were fighter jets roaring overhead. And again, this isn't

uncommon in, uh, in the south of Lebanon. Uh, but we knew that the fighter jets were flying away from us. So they were roaring overhead. But they were heading, um, further south. And they were bombing what they would describe as Hezbollah positions, uh, around that area. So we weren't still unduly concerned. And we went on to the bridge. And we started filming. So it wasn't live. Some people have said it was live. It was what we call it as live. So we were, um, filming that, um,

Annie Rida, who is, uh, my colleague was at the moment. Um, we arrived on the bridge. I was doing my piece of camera. He went to, uh, film some b-roll. He went to film, uh, in the hole, uh, where the bridge had been struck. And it was, I mean, we talk about luck and we talk about, you know, chance and we talk about, um, God's will. But, uh, as he was filming, there was a gust of wind on the camera, uh,

the camera's shaking. I need you to study it. As he came over, I, I guess, around 15 seconds later,

then we heard this tremendous roar and the, is ready to struck the bridge again. And, um,

“I mean, the immediate aftermath. I mean, I remember just thinking,”

thought we're dead. That was it. It was, it was, uh, it was like this earth-shattering sound. The explosion was, it was an almighty blast. And then there was just dust and I couldn't really see anything on your, uh, from the footage you can hear the soldiers maybe. They started saying to me, Yala, Yala, I couldn't see anything. So I was, uh, where, where. And they, they took me into there, um, their barracks, they put tourniquets on my arms. I thought, again, with a, a adrenaline rush,

I just thought I got some minor cuts. Um, you know, I couldn't really feel too much pain,

but then I looked, um, when they put the tourniquet, there was blood coming down my arms,

there was blood on my, uh, on my clothes, uh, but it was alive. And, um, it's, um, again, completely by chance that we were alive. This was a very heavy munition that they used a GB, uh, GBU 38,

“um, missile that we believe was used. It was fired from an F-16 fighter jet. So after the”

Lebanese army were, uh, you know, they put these tourniquets on and give us some water, uh, then they called an ambulance. And the ambulance came and they put me on a stretcher and they, uh, off, off, they took me on. And I shouldn't know, really, that the, you know, the, the paramedics and the emergency workers and the doctors and the nurses and all of the medical, uh, team that attended to us, uh, uh, are the real heroes of, of, of this, uh, story. Um, as we were traveling from the bridge to

the hospital, uh, I'm not sure the distance may be about 10 minutes probably less than that, but they had the blue lights on. Now, in any normal country, anywhere in the world, having the blue lights on a being transported somewhere by ambulance, you would be safe, right? Not in Lebanon, because, uh, the Israelis are now targeting, uh, medical staff, more than 50 have been killed, um,

“hospitals, including the one we attended, uh, the juggle ammo hospital part of that is, um,”

it has been destroyed in Israeli air strikes. And we've been working in the field for many years now, we're very experienced, uh, journalists and we take safety very seriously. We've spoken to a lot of medical workers, um, and they told us that the, the logo on the top of the ambulances, which is supposed to give them protection under international law under the Geneva conventions, and this kind of thing, uh, instead of giving it, giving them protection, in our places,

they're at risk. So many of them have removed those logos from, uh, their, their emergency vehicles. Now, Betty, a day goes by now that, when we don't hear of a medical worker being struck the, um, the IDF, the Israeli defense force soon after they carried out a massacre of 12, um, emergency workers in, uh, in the South, uh, targeting their, their station. They put out a statement saying that the, um, that has belong is using medical facilities and ambulances for military purposes.

Now, of course, they didn't back that with any kind of evidence. This is a statement that they've reissued again quite recently, but, you know, we've been on the ground. We've been in the back of the ambulances. We've been in the hospitals. We've met the, um, the civil defense workers. We've met the paramedics. And we've been to these stations. And all that you can see there are the kind of things that you would find in any hospital, in any medical station, in any ambulance, anywhere in the world.

These are, um, medical facilities. There, and they should be protected under international law. Of course, targeting these deliberately is a war crime, but it's just one of many that we're seeing, uh, here on the ground in, in, in Lebanon. You're probably thinking about where to shop for Mother's Day cozy earth. Obviously, the answer designed for moms who make houses feel like homes, cozy earth creates comfort for the entire day between bedding, sleepwear towels, loungewear,

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You sound Irish. You live and work in Lebanon. How long have you been there?

So it was a week or so after the assassination on the sidehouse in Nassurada, the former Secretary General of Hezbollah. So I came then, we quite often joke and say, "It's Steve Sweeney, right, arrives in your country, then it's not good news." I came during that period.

“Lebanon, as you know, and I think I've heard you say Tucker if I'm not. If I'm corrected,”

it's a beautiful country. The most wonderful place. You look at the rich culture tradition and history of this country. Even in the South now, which is the area coming under heavy bombardment,

this is the area of Jesus. It's canner is where Jesus performed what I believe was his first

miracle turning water into wine. There's the tube of Shumu Nassafah. This is Peter Simon, St. Peter, who I think for many Catholics, they believe that he was the first pope. Now he's that's where his some Christians believe that that's his burial site. Of course, this has been destroyed by Israel. They bombed it. This is an important site. Actually, Shumu Nassafah, for both Muslims and Christians. That's been bombed. It may ask you to stop for a second and

I'm ashamed by my ignorance as usual. The Israeli military bomb St. Peter's burial site.

Yes. When? This was back in 2024. This wasn't an accidental bombing. The Shumu Nassafah,

“I think it's protected under World Heritage Law as well. It's a very important site. It's”

of course the burial place of St. Peter. It's also a holy site for Muslims. What they did during that period was they brought and is ready. What they call a researcher. The Israeli defense force brought him in. The purpose of that really was to, I guess, reinvent history. The aim of it was to say, "Well, this is a Jewish holy site and this land belongs to Israel. This was the kind of narrative that they were trying to spin. That researcher who was actually a very well-known settler activist

was killed during that time." We visited the site in early 2025 after the ceasefire period and

missiles have gone through the domes. The whole area was destroyed, bullet marks. Across all of the buildings, including the area of the shrine of St. Peter himself. This wasn't like accidental targeted. It wasn't kind of collateral damage. This was a deliberately targeted attack on the tomb of St. Peter. It's not the only church or religious building that has been attacked. Of course, we were in a place called Derde Gaien. This is a Greek Catholic church. And again, that was

destroyed during the 66-day war. They killed eight people that had taken shelter inside there. A lot of those were emergency workers, the civil defense team, and they taken shelter in there, and they bombed it to oblivion. It was completely destroyed. And again, in Yaron, this is another border town. And there were two buildings there. There's the Imam Ali Mosque, which is a very well-known mosque in the south of Lebanon. But there was also the church of St. George. And St. George, of course,

the patron saint of England. And this was a Catholic church. And they're very close by each other. And you may have seen a footage circulating on social media. But there's footage of an Israeli soldier, I guess, with a body cam or something, a helmet cam, destroying the statue there to some George. But both of those were completely destroyed. So what's interesting is this. And across the south of Lebanon. Hesbalah is, and I'm not defending Hesbalah, it's not my fight.

“But they're designated, I believe, by the US government as a terror group. They've controlled”

big parts of Lebanon for many, many years, more than 20 years. And has Hesbalah blown up Christian holy sites, has Hesbalah targeted ambulances? I mean, maybe they have it. You live there. You tell me. No, they haven't. In fact, the opposite. And again, there's plenty of footage on all this that people can check for themselves online. But Hesbalah was, in fact, protecting the Christian churches and protecting the these kind of symbolic areas of religious importance to Christians.

you know, protecting the Christian faith. If you listen to the speeches of Hesbalah,

Hesbalah, he again, he said, the Hesbalah are the main defenders of the Christian faith in Lebanon. So it's, so no, they're not destroying ambulances. They're not destroying churches. They're not destroying mosques. They're not destroying people's homes. But Hesbalah is, and it's doing it with American and Western supplied weapons as well. And it's happening without anybody, pretty much anybody in

“the United States even noticing. I don't, I think people's attention is drawn to what's happening”

in Iran and the unfolding disaster there. And they don't even, this is happening. So back to what happened to you specifically. You said that the missile that almost killed you in your camera and was launched from an American aircraft and is really owned American aircraft. Do you believe was that one of the planes that had flown over you? Do you think it was targeting you? Undoubtedly, we believe it was, it was targeting us. There could be no other explanation for what

happened now. Of course, because people have asked this question, you know, one why were you on the bridge and, or were you deliberately targeted? And we're on a quivicle about that. This was an assassination attempt by Israel to silence the voices on the ground to silence the truth. Now, the reason we say that is because, like I said, we've been working in the field for the last

“two years. So our vehicle is very well known in the south of Lebanon. We were in a clearly”

identified press vehicle. We had, as you can see in the footage, we had our press jackets on Israel has the most advanced military technology anywhere in the world. It has the most advanced surveillance technology anywhere in the world. It knows everything that happens in the south of Lebanon. It knows every vehicle. It knows every number plate. It reads our messages. It listens to our conversations. This is why we say it was deliberate, because there's no doubt that they knew we were there.

And the other issue has been raised by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zaharov, says that this can't have been accidental. There was no military objective in targeting that bridge. It was already destroyed. So we believe it was a deliberate assassination attempt. Absolutely. And it's only by luck, really, that we survived. There was a lot going in our favor that day. Let's say, had the missile not entered the hole in the bridge, had it exploded on the bridge.

We've spoken to military experts, weapons experts who have told us that if it had been maybe a few inches or a foot the other way, then there wouldn't even be bodies to recover.

We'd have just been incinerated. These are incredibly powerful militants that they were using.

And there was no military objective, as I said, in targeting the bridge. So we say that we were deliberately targeted by the Israelis without a doubt. You go into the grocery store and there are endless snacks and protein bars. Paleovali superfood bars are we think the best. Most nutrition bars seem healthy, but then you read the labels and it turns out they're packed with all kinds of bizarre stuff, processed syrips and ingredients you can't pronounce. There are essentially candy

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purchase. So what I mean because you are a Westerner you do have a certain advantage. I mean you're an English-speaking Westerner from the British Isles and you're on television. So the subject of it is assassination attempt by a supposedly Western government one that's armed by Western

“governments. What's your recourse? What do you do after they try and kill you but they fail?”

Well that's a very good question. Obviously I am an English-speaking white Westerner which gives me a certain advantage, a certain privilege. I mean I have to say that just over a week after our very close shave, our dear colleagues and friends in the field weren't so lucky. I have Fatima Fatuni, Alishweb and Muhammad Fatuni were killed in a targeted strike by the Israelis just after they've been reporting in the South. So I mean this is the kind of the conditions that

which of course means that my own government do the British government don't like me. In fact

“they have already, instead of supporting me they've been putting their persecuted me. I was detained”

on a family visit last July, the Heathrow airport. I was met by counter-terrorist police off the airplane. They took me away for interrogation. They quizzed me over my relations to Russia, the Russian state working for Russian state television. Also about my work here in Lebanon, my associations or connections to Hezbollah, my connections to Ansar Anur in Yemen because I've reported from Yemen, Hashtal Shabby and my work in Donbass. I spent two years in the field in

in Donbass on the Russian side so they were very interested in that and they're still now

currently investigating me for potential terrorist activity based on my journalism. So I don't expect

anything from them. And some friends of mine at D-Plastified UK, media British media organisation,

“well they inquired. They asked the British government for comment after this assassination attempt.”

And they just simply said, and I'm summarizing here, paraphrasing that they said something along the lines of, the foreign secretary has given Britain's position on the Middle East in a statement to the Commons on Tuesday. That was all they said. They didn't address the specifics of my case. They haven't commented on it. They haven't offered any kind of support whatsoever. Even the British embassy here in Lebanon hasn't contacted me. The only support that I've had, I've had lots of

love and well wishes from individuals and organisations across the world for which we're incredibly grateful and thankful for. But the only people, the only country that's actually given me strong and solid support has been Russia. Are you a British passport holder? Ambassador? I'm a British passport holder, yes. So you're a British subject. So this is even though you don't live there most of the time. You have family there. You are a citizen, but the British government

“is taking the side of the Israeli military over its own citizens? Well that's how it seems to”

me, yes. Not only taking the side of the Israelis, but they're helping provide the weapons and the ammunition and the political and military support to carry out such strikes. So somewhere along that chain, we know it was an F-16 and a G-B-U-38 American made American supply, but Britain is well involved in that supply chain. So some of the kind of the add-on equipment that enabled them to carry out that strike against me is almost certainly provided by the British government

without a doubt. How does that? I don't understand. I don't understand since you know both Britain and the United States fought against the Nazis and lost hundreds of thousands of their own men doing it. I don't really see where the moral culpability is here. Why would Britain and the United States have some duty to become subjects of these really government? Where does that come from? Well I mean there's a long history of the two biggest

supporters of Israel. I'll have traditionally been the United States and Britain and you can trace this back to the formation of the state of Israel. Now of course they have their own interests in the region. They use Israel as a proxy force for its colonialist imperialist expansion for the region. If you look at what's happening on the ground now for the reason that we

reported on the bridges is what you're seeing now is the fourth expulsion of 1.2 million Lebanese

people that have been forced from their land, forced from their homes and they're now forcibly displaced. We describe this in Lebanon. We talk about it as an ethnic cleansing operation on a scale far larger than the Nakhbar. That's the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that were forced from their homes on the creation of the state of Israel. So the situation here is it's simply astonishing and you know the 370,000 of those four simply displaced children. So

behind that is this attempt by Israel to grab that land. Now not only are they forcing people out of that area south of the Retarney River, they've extended that now to south of the surrounding River. So we're talking some 40 kilometers from the Israeli border that they push people out of that area. Now the Israelis have been very open. Israel cat the defense secretary has said that we want the land. They've said that they want to create a security buffer zone or have one.

back in history and Israel has invaded and tried to take that area. They think it's a biblical

right. We're talking about the greater Israel project, which I know you know you know for what up out of your conversation with Ambassador Huckabee. And you know it's kind of reappears in different guises over the years. The most latest was the Trump economic zone. This was announced back in,

“I think August last year around that time, Tom Barak, the US envoy arrived here in Lebanon. And”

you might remember this sound bike from him because he spoke at the presidential policy, a group of journalists and there was a bit of a melee and he described them as animalistic. And he was condemned for, you know, this was seen as a incredibly racist comment to make

towards Lebanese journalists who were doing their job in the field holding people to account

questioning him. But behind that, he laid out this plan for the Trump economic zone, which meant that hundreds of thousands of people would be forced from their homes permanently. Now it is dressed up. This is going to be a regeneration project. We're going to create new homes. We're going to create jobs. We're going to create rows. We're going to create infrastructure. We're going to make the area safe. But it meant that people that have lived on this land for generations,

even their homes. These are not just, you know, dots on a map. These are homes where people have lived on that land for generations. I'm going to be turfed out. And nobody really paid attention to it at the time. Of course, we did as journalists on the ground. And, you know, people talk about, they say that the Gaza model is now coming to Lebanon. Yeah, they've spoken about it in terms,

“I think Smottrich said, we're going to turn that here, the southern suburbs of Beirutin,”

our units, and then they've used Beirutin and Rafa. Israel can't say that they're going to destroy all of these villages that they call frontline villages. And I can tell you now, we've been here for two years. Those villages are largely already destroyed. The south of Lebanon already looks like Gaza, whole villages completely lying ruins, no reconstruction plan. And over the last 15 months, we've seen Israel break that ceasefire. And we call about, talk about a ceasefire from November 2024,

but there was never a ceasefire. You can't have a ceasefire when only one side stops firing.

And okay, 15,000, more than 15,000 violations over the last 15 months. And this has includes included the rigging and destroying of homes. The drone strikes targeted assassinations. The use of chemical spray to destroy crops. We've witnessed and filmed on this. The use of white phosphorus in a, there's a place called bleeder, a village very close to the border. And now, during olive harvesting season, we went to make a film there. The Israelis refused to allow

the farmers to tend to their land. And Nesse gave them all of the contact details and the names of whom was going into the fields. While we were there, and they started bulldozing the olive grows. These are olive grows that are older than the state of Israel. So this isn't something new. This is what we're seeing now. The escalation on March the 2nd has been going on for a very, very long time. Now, you asked me why Britain and the United States would support that.

Well, they use Israel as their kind of proxy force in the area they refer to as the Middle East. We call it West Asia here. And they use it to, to, to, to grab the land. The greater Israel project suits Israel, but it suits Britain and the United States because this is a land of, of great wealth and resources. And they want to extract that, that wealth. And they want to extract the resources and use it for their, for their own game. And of course, they want strategic control

across the whole of the region. And yet, we've seen that with, here, with what happened in Syria. We can see now with the bombing of Iran. We can see what happened in Gaza. All of these have taken place, not just with the connivance of the United States and Britain, but with that active involvement. So this is the kind of, you know, this is what we're happening now. We, you can see signs along the airport road here in, in Beirut that, you know, they say made it made in the United States,

“made in the USA. And that's how they see the, the bombs are falling on them here. They're made”

in the United States. They're made in Britain. And they're causing that, you know, they're the root cause of the death and destruction that's taking place across this region. Yes, Israel fires the bullets, but the guns, what ensued you loaded by Britain in the United States. So what's in your toothpaste? If you're using the brand you grew up with, you probably don't want to know the ingredients likely include fluoride, something called SLS glycerin phoming agents. It's a chemical cocktail.

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up to a thousand years old and of course they're right. They're central to the ancient economy of the Levant but they're also beautiful and they're revered almost by the people who are actually

from, they're not the ones from Poland who pretend they're from, they're the people who actually

are there. Why would these really government chainsaw or bulldoze olive trees? That seems evil to

“me. I don't understand the explanation for it. Well that's not the only way to look at it. Of course”

it is evil but I think, you know these like you said these olive growth, some of them are thousands of years old. I think the oldest in Lebanon is something like 6,000 years old but it's the lifeblood of Lebanon. It's a symbol of Lebanese cultural heritage, identity and the people here are very very connected to their land. They're deeply connected to their land and you know this is the lifeblood not just for the south of Lebanon where the farmers will harvest their olive

gromes. Tobacco is a big a huge crop here but this is the lifeblood for all of Lebanon. Now if you can disconnect people from their land and their culture then of course you can you can take it over and that's what they've been doing. Not just by bulldozing it bombing it but by spraying these chemicals

it will make sure that these crops will never be able to grow on the land again and they can just

brush them aside. They can build houses. They can build settlements there just like they did when on the formation of the state of Israel. They're building these illegal settlements everywhere and

“that's exactly what they want to do. In Lebanon there's only Lebanon settlements?”

Well they want to, that's their aim. Yeah I mean you look at the greater Israel project itself. Now I mentioned Yarun earlier this is the place where the mosque and the church were destroyed. Now earlier this year a few months before the escalation on March the second this group of settlers came in across the border into or very close to Yarun and they planted trees and the message was this I caught them. The exact terminology that they use but this was them planting

their roots in Lebanese territory and they believe that Lebanese territory, biblically belongs to them. Now you know you look back a few years ago and this could have been seen as a conspiracy theory or a or a fringe kind of movement but this is now right at the heart of the Israeli government. Smottrich and Ben Gavir are advocates of the Greater Israel project. Ben Gavir and Netanyahu himself is a supporter of the Greater Israel project. This isn't kind

of like a fantasy. This is happening now. It's unfolding in real time, in front of our very eyes. And they have some some rabbising Israel that justify this religiously as well. They will say that this is the land that belongs to them according to Holy Scripture and

“this is why we're seeing this this whole scale destruction. That's what it was around over the”

last 15 months. They say it was about destroying Hezbollah but it's not it's not these that you're seeing whole kind of settlements lying under rubble. My beloved is from a village in the south and her entire village has pretty much been reduced to rubble. Her family home rebuilt destroyed, rebuilt destroyed so many times. And this is you know very common for the people in in that part of the world. And again this is one of the occupied Lebanon and after the ceasefire in November

2024 it built five military bases inside Lebanese sovereign territory. We filmed them and rather than skating them back Israel was expanding the construction of those military posts illegally. In breach of UN resolution 1701, in breach of international law, the Lebanese government asked

further and further into Lebanese sovereign territory. Now the interesting thing and I don't

“know whether your viewers will be aware of this and many people don't don't know but there isn't”

really an official border between between Israel and Lebanon. There's no officially agreed border. We have the blue line which was established by the United Nations. This was after Israel was forced out in 2000 and this line is supposed to be the demarcation point that Israel is not supposed to encroach further upon you know further across this line. So Israel sees a lot of this land as as belonging you know there was the 1923 mandate line when it was the British mandate of Palestine

that there was a kind of border drawn up then which Israel inhabited in 1948 but there's never

really agreed to. The arms this in 1949 didn't again agree those borders. So Israel sees fit to push forward. Yeah that will and it's done so with total impunity of course. There's no

“kind of international outcry about the destruction of these villages and settlements or the use”

of chemical weapons. The use of white phosphorus or the assassination of individuals in drone strikes or the kidding of paramedic, the murder of journalists all of these things have been happening for for many many years. The world is maybe paying more attention to it now. We've had

the Western journalists arriving in the country since March the second of course the major news networks

have arrived and they're kind of surprised at what they're seeing. They're seeing this for the first time. But this has been going on for a very very long time and I say this is a bit of a fading I would say of the major media organizations because they've been on the ground in Lebanon for the past 15 months. They would have seen this unfolding and you know maybe the situation would

“be very different from what it is now. As it is they weren't there and the Lebanese journalists”

were reporting the people that live on that land were trying for help and nobody was listening. I have to ask so you are covering this on the ground in Lebanon living and working at the center of all this and has noted almost got killed for it. But you're working for a Russian news agency. You've clearly been a journalist a long time. You look over 40. So probably a long time. How did you wind up working for a Russian news agency like why aren't you a BBC reporter? How did

what was your path? Am I fired would never claim to work? No chance. I mean I wouldn't work

for the BBC on a personal level. We've met some BBC journalists here and they've been very present at very nice and I have all the concerns from the major networks as the individual journalists you know have no problem with them. But how I ended up working for our team for Russia today is I was working for a newspaper before I entered the world of broadcast journalism. I was at the international editor of a national dating newspaper in Britain for many years. When the Ukraine

conflict started, the special military operation, I was covering that and I went to the Western part of Ukraine to pick up. There was a couple of stories I was chasing there. I ended up in Levolve. The Ukrainians tried to to kidnap me and I managed to make my escape from from there, back out through Poland and then to Germany. I'm going to ask you to post what? Why don't do that? Why did they try to kidnap you, the Ukrainians? Simply because I was a journalist,

it wasn't their narrative and Ukraine conflict is the most propagandised war in history in my view. You look at what happened, even the Iraq war there was kind of that space within the media field to criticise your government's policy. When it came to Ukraine, that window or that gap narrowed to the point where it was impossible because there was no space to offer anything that was different from the narrative of the Western government, the British government, the Ukrainian

government. If you were going there to actually do some propagandism and I say that because with all due respect to those organisations, the BBC, CNN, Sky News, the Times and Telegram channel before, they were doing these kind of, they were all saying the exact same thing, they were taking it in terms of staying on the top of the same hotel roof in Kiev or Levolve and repeat the line, but they weren't actually seeing the reality on the ground. They were just denographers essentially,

it was the same with the United States, but Britain started demonising Vladimir Putin. One of the craziest reports I saw was that Vladimir Putin has an assistant that follows him around with a briefcase and every time he goes to the toilet, they collect his feces and urine, so his opponents can't do it, not any kind of tests on them. I mean, it got to, you know, in the same levels, and any time you were reporting, so I ended up rushed today after that because I saw that my

independent as a journalist and my ability to report on the truth had completely disappeared.

“It was impossible. The only way to do that was to, you know, it was to go to Russia and work”

for RT, now we have one of our logos, a question more, and that's what we do, and I always say,

yeah, question more, question us, that's the role of a journalist, so I ended up working for RT, I ended up working for two years in Donbass on the Russian side, and I was seeing something completely different from the narrative that was being played out in the West. I was seeing the war crimes committed daily by the Ukrainians against a civilian population. When I was there, they called it Donyetst Roulette. You never know when a missile might strike you, and I was seeing, you know, attacks on market places,

for example, 27 people killed body parts everywhere. These were like bubbles because Dadoosh because old men, old women, the poorest people in, you know, in that part of the city selling,

“you know, homemade fruit and vegetables from their home, just obliterated, you know, arms and legs”

everywhere. I was seeing hospitals that were that were struck at bus stops that were being attacked. You know, I could talk about that for a long time, I spoke about it at the United Nations Security Council. I gave testimony of what I'd seen in the failures of Mint's One and Mint's Two, and, you know, the path to peace. So what we're seeing and what I was saying is what we were seeing in that part in Donbass. It's the same playbook that we're seeing in Gaza,

the same playbook that we're seeing here in Lebanon. These are the most powerful countries in the world,

waging war using the most sophisticated technology and the most powerful weapons against some of the poorest most vulnerable people in the world. They can't fight back. You know, they don't have

“the, they don't have the arms, they don't have the weapons, they were, you know, the people of Gaza,”

the people of Lebanon, they weren't sent climates or storm shadows or, you know, these advanced weapons. These were sent to their represses to massacre them. You know, this is, this is what's happening. It's the very same forces. In Donbass, it was, you know, it was very simple for me as a journalist. It was a, a people that wanted peace. A people that wanted to be able to speak their own language, Russian, people that wanted to be able to practice their own cultural and traditions, if they identified

as, as Russian. And pretty much that was it. You could put it as, as, really, as simply as that. But then the Ukrainian government decided to wage a war against its own people. I know for some, this went back to, you know, the start of the SMO. But this has a much, much longer history, starting way back in 2014, the MIDA. Yes. You know, all of these things people forgot about now. Convenient, including the media, the media has actually made them forget about it, because, you know,

one day there was a neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine, you know, the ads off in the right sector were carrying out these horrific actions, these horrific killings. They were terrorizing the people. And the next day, all of a sudden Ukraine is a paragon of liberal democracy. It's incredible. But people are getting the truth. So, this is my, I ended up at RT, because the space to do proper journalism just wasn't afforded to me anywhere else. None of the British press. I, like

I said, I kind of semi-joke, but am I five would never allow me to work for the BBC or for any of the

other major news organizations. And, you know, I have to say with Russia today, with RT, I have complete freedom to report exactly what I want. And nobody tells me what to say. Nobody tells me where I can feel, nobody tells me who I can speak to, who I should speak to. And, you know, I have total journalistic freedom. So, and I'm very happy working for RT. I'm very proud to work for RT. And, we always say that here on the ground, because, you know, obviously,

I came kind of sprung into the limelight after what happened to me. And, but it's not about me.

how a job is to raise the voices of the people of the of this land. And, we always say that

our mic is attributing for the people. And, it will continue to be attributing for the people, as long as we remain in the field. It must be such a strange experience for you, since you've been in the British sounds of here in the British media for a long time, conventional media, a newspaper in a country that, you know, reads newspapers famously. All of a sudden, to have this perspective where you have more freedom to do journalism,

just straightforward journalism at Russia today than you had at a British newspaper. I mean,

“what is that as someone who I assume you were raised in the UK, right?”

Yeah. What is that like? It's, well, you know, I, the British, the media field in Britain,

and I think it's not just in Britain, but I know, we look at the Western countries. Yes, it's, it's kind of, yeah, it's very concentrated, it's owned by a very small group of people who, who own and control the media, they control what you say, they control the narrative. So, but I think that the change was that the, the owners of these media organizations are now more and more forcefully pushing their view and their narrative. And you see it permeating through

every word that's spoken on British television. You see written in every single word in every single newspaper. There's no divergence. They're all uniform. So, you know, of course, Russia,

“people in the West think that Russia's some kind of authoritarian dictatorship that we're living under”

the jackpot of Vladimir Putin, but you've been to Moscow, you know, you know, anything but the, the truth, it couldn't, it couldn't be further from the panel. You know, you see people, I mean, there are very educated people there, you know, rich again. We was talking about Lebanon earlier, having this rich culture in history. I mean, Russia, come on, I mean, I don't know any other nation on earth that has such a rich culture in history, you know,

foster COVID, foster ASCII, pro-Coffee of Yuri Gagarin, they put, you know, the first

human being in space, Medley of the founder of the, you know, the table of the elements. Huge, these huge figures in the field of science, of literature, of art, of music. And you go to any bar in Moscow, and you can sit down there within five minutes, you've had one of the most intelligent, political or cultural conversations that you've ever had sitting over a coal point of, of Guinness. And for those that think that people are too afraid to criticize Putin,

let me tell you, they're not. They're not. I've heard it myself. I'm picking you out of the same, the same kind of criticism, you hear in every country anywhere in the world. They're not afraid to express those use. They don't necessarily hold them, Vladimir Putin is incredibly popular, and he's incredibly popular, very good reason, is that people remember the days before Putin became president, and they remember it was a very, very dark time in the country. And after the

collapse of the Soviet Union up until Vladimir Putin came to power, there wasn't that really that

“kind of national stability, because Russia's obviously a huge country, 11 times owns. I think it is”

to hold it together, is incredibly difficult, but Vladimir Putin bought that stability. He made Russia into what it is today, and this is a strong, economically thriving, independent country that is actually despite what the West says, you know, it still has these good relations with other countries on the world stages, not isolated by any stretch of the imagination. It's only isolated if you think the world is the Western powers. So, you know, there is this freedom to criticize, but of course,

it's hugely popular. And, you know, I think people in the West find that very difficult to understand that, you know, he's, you know, that just how popular Putin is in Russia. Everything you're saying is true. I've seen that even multiple times, even, for example, RT is banned in the United States. It's banned in Europe. In Russia, you've probably seen that Vladimir Putin holds every year. He holds a Q&A for journalists, for members of the public.

Every year, the BBC is there. Steve Rosenberg asked a question. He tries to get a gotcha every year. He fails every year, but he keeps giving it a go. But the BBC is allowed to operate freely inside Russia. I couldn't do the same in Britain. They'd try and arrest me.

in your home, if I took it, yes, if I took an RT microphone into London and started trying to interview people, or if I stood in front of a camera with an RT microphone and started trying to give a report, I would be arrested. We're banned. We're treated as, I don't know, like, foreign agents. So it's, we're unlawful for us to work there. We could be jailed, sanctioned, a whole host of things could happen. So we don't have that freedom to operate inside Britain. This is something

that always amazes me because the Russian state television was banned in Europe and America because

we're propagandists or whatever. The Kremlin media machine, or things kind of tied all tropes that we hear, which is deeply rooted in Russia, phobia, but they're really saying, is the people of Europe and Britain and America are stupid. People are able to disseminate fact from fiction. They're able to watch a news report and decide whether it's propaganda or whether it's true. They can make that decision themselves, and they should be able to make that decision

themselves in a free and democratic country that operates with freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So, you know, it strikes me as quite bizarre that they keep saying, "Well, we uphold freedom of the press." Well, in fact, the European Union has sanctioned a journalist, someone on you, no, he's a senator who is a journalist for red media. They sanctioned him because of his work.

“They said he's closed, or I think they accused him of something to do with the Russian state,”

but it was because of his reporting on Palestine. So there's no way that they uphold freedom of the press. I myself am being investigated for potential terrorist activities based on my journalism, nothing else. That's it for my journalistic report. So, you know, where's the press freedom? Can I walk into the United States? Can I, can I, you know, freely walk around and start interviewing people? Can I interview Donald Trump? Can I sit down and speak to the people on

the ground? Of course, not with that. It's an absurdity. It is an absurdity. It is an absurdity. Freedom is a life and kicking. And it's also a little bit bewildering. It's surprising for me, and it's an ominous sign I would say, as an American, to see people arrested and Britain for criticizing Israel. Why would it be illegal for a Britain to criticize Israel? What is Israel have to do with the UK? And by the way, it was Israeli terror groups who murdered British citizens

British soldiers, British diplomats. Exactly. The King David said that. That's exact and many others. Yes. And they murdered a lot of breads and murdered them with their hands. Slowly, in some cases, blew them up with bombs. But true terrorist acts, and the guy who did it later became the Prime Minister, but I couldn't make it. So actually Israel owes a great debt to the UK, which is

responsible for its formation in the first place, as you know. So why in the world would British

“citizens be banned from criticizing Israel? They own nothing to Israel. What is this?”

Well, it's a bizarre, dystopian situation. You've probably seen, but in Britain, I guess maybe six months ago the government moved to Barnagreek called Palestine Action. These were protesters that were throwing airplanes or whatever. They were trying to stop a genocide. And Britain prescribed as a terrorist organization. I think against all the legal advice that they were given, they ignored that and they went ahead. And it became illegal to even support or

hold up placards saying, "I support Palestine Action." So they were resting like 80, 90-year-old women. They were dragging them away and charging them as terrorists, on the terrorism offensive. So I mean Britain has, obviously it's invested in Israel heavily invested in Israel, clearly, because it was Britain really. It was behind the formation of the state of Israel in the

first place. And you can trace it back to the Balfour Declaration where they drew a line in the

sand and gave a land that didn't belong to them to another people whose land it wasn't. They gave

“way the land that belonged to the people indigenous to that land. So I think they talk about this”

historical debt owed to Israel. Of course, you can go to Germany in some of the European countries. And of course, they talk about the Holocaust and they bear a heavy burden and responsibility for that or they feel that. And again, there's this historical debt that they feel. But in Britain now, it's kind of moved way beyond that. And like you said, they were in the early days in the formation

ramble support where you can't even criticize Israel. You can't, there's no space. Any criticism

“of Israel is now deemed either anti-Semitic and act of terror, unlawful. And it can mean that you're”

ostracized from society. You're labeled an anti-Semitic. You're labeled a racist. And I mean, the Britain's objective is, I mean, Israel is an outpost for Anglo-American imperialist. They're there. What they want to gain out of the region. So it acts as this kind of Anglo-imperialist outpost. And it will back Israel military to their health. It will back them politically to their health. But of course, they're using it to strategically control the entire of the

of the Middle East. I mean, this is, this is their historical myth. I mean, everything that happens

in this region is because of the historical mess of the British and the French, you know,

back in the time of the Sykes Pico, carving up of that part of the world, just arbitrary drawing lines. Okay, you can have this part, you can have this part. And, you know, the legacy of that lives on today, which is in fact why is a British journalist. I say of Irish origin, but as a Western journalist, I have a historical debt to the people of this land because of what my country has inflicted upon them. And, you know, I see that as part of my, my duty as a journalist,

not to just fall in line behind my own government, not to be a stenographer for power. But to expose to the world, what's happening here on the ground in Lebanon and in other countries. And, you know, for every bomb that falls on Lebanon and there have been many of them, I can tell you for every bomb that falls on Lebanon is a bomb that is supplied by the United States. Yes, a bomb that is supplied by Britain. Israel just simplifies the bullets that they're supplied and it's been,

you know, carrying out these actions with the support and complicity of Britain and the United States and other Western countries. Do your former colleagues in the British media feel shame

“as they continue their stenography and see you speaking freely and risking your life to do it?”

They should do. Yeah, they should, they should feel a great sense of shame. But now, I don't know whether that whether they do, like I said, on a personal level, I've met the individual journalists from the major news organizations and they've been very, very gracious and very pleasant as individuals. But, you know, they all fall in line with the same narrative. Even the journalists that are coming here, they'll describe Daher, which is the southern suburbs of Beirut. That entire

area has been evacuated. We're talking an area between 500 and 800,000 people. And that whole area has been evacuated. It's bombed every single day without fail, fight to jet roaring overhead, drones overhead, civilian buildings, being destroyed. Now for them, this is the southern suburbs of Beirut. They call it a Hezbollah stronghold. Now, okay, that use of language is not an accident. It's deliberate. They call it Hezbollah stronghold because it justifies the bombing of that area. But this isn't

a Hezbollah stronghold. This is where we live. These are the coffee shops where we meet our friends. These are the places we go shopping. This is an area vibrant, full of life. People's homes, this kind of thing. And the western media play a very pernicious role, in fact, in what I believe is this manufacturing of consent. Because outside of that, Daher is just a place on a map that

“gets bombed. The Lebanon is a war zone. That's how they describe it. Lebanon isn't a war zone.”

As we already discussed, Lebanon is a land of rich culture, rich tradition, rich history, full of

the most amazing people. You could ever meet anywhere in the world. The same with the south of Lebanon.

They say, well, all these areas, south of the Latani, all Hezbollah supporters. I mean, of course, a strong support for Hezbollah in those areas, because they see them as the only organization that is standing up on fighting against Israel. There's defending their land, their territory. Hezbollah was only born in, depending on, for it was born in the mid 1980s. Now, the people of Lebanon don't have like a dereliction or a fantasy or a predisposed to using weapons and guns.

It's not that they enjoy going around shooting people that were formed as an online militia exactly to defend that land. The same as in Ireland. The same was in, in fact, you couldn't pick any country that's come under attack from, you know, from the western

but to call it Hezbollah land, which is some of the description that we're finding. This is,

as we said, the land that Jesus walked in, it's a land rich in culture and history, and but the western journalists are kind of seeing it very much more speaking about it or writing about it very much in those terms. We hear the same kind of, it's like, that is dog whistle, frigor words, you know, a ran-backed, the Iranian-backed militia, you know, the Hezbollah strongholds,

you know, these kind of things, that they all, the terminology that they use, and it's absolutely

deliberate to justify Israel bombing those lands. That's, you know, that's all it is. So whether they're

“embarrassed about writing that or not, I don't know, I think it's very difficult to get a job”

in the British media if you don't write those kind of lines or you don't speak them into a camera. Now, known Tromsky, who, back in, I guess, the 90s was interviewing a British journalist Andrew Martin, he, I think he hit the nail on the head when he said, okay, I'm not necessarily saying, you don't believe what you're saying, but if you didn't believe what you said, you won't be sitting where you are now. I think that's true, right? I mean, you know, you're not going to get a job

unless you believe those things unless you're prepared to say them or write them. So whether they're

“embarrassed or not, I don't know, and to be honest, I don't care very much. I think they may not be”

capable of it. So my, my last question I need only talking about yourself, but it is about you. So Israel tried to assassinate you. They failed just barely. I can't imagine interviews like this make them less inclined to assassinate you to try again. Are you going to stay in Lebanon? Absolutely. 100% without without doubt, I'll stay in Lebanon. Lebanon is my home. I have my,

you know, my beloved is here in Lebanon. My life is here in Lebanon. I always, I look, Lebanon

isn't my country, but Lebanon and the Lebanese people belong in my heart. Yes. And yeah, I'll forever be in the service of the Lebanese people. They've been good enough to host me in their country. And I hope that my journalism does them justice and I hope my presence

“does them justice. I always remember and it's always important to remember that I'm, I'm a guest”

in, in, in this land. So no, I have no intention of leaving. I have no intention of stopping reporting. We've already been back to the front line just two days after the attack. We make sure that we went out because we're not going to be silent and you know, if they think that we're going to be leaving the field, then they're very much mistaken. What a remarkable conversation. It is one of the great countries and most beautiful countries in the world. Top five, in my opinion, top three.

So I'm grateful you're there to chronicle what's being done to it in our name with our weapons. It's really evil. So anyway Steve Sweeney, thank you very much for doing this. I appreciate it. That pleasure. Thank you.