it's a war that neither side can really afford still the saber rattling grows louder between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon finally a breakthrough in a legal case with huge implications for journalism around the world Julian Assange is a free man and the radical information activists whose name says it all about the state of British politics led by donkeys with the eyes of the world on Gaza it's been relatively easy to overlook the low level war that Israel has been waging on a second front an escalating confrontation with Hezbollah the Shia paramilitary and political group based next door in Lebanon ever since October 8th there have been strikes and counter strikes with tens of thousands of civilians now displaced on both sides of the Border recently there's also been a ratcheting up of the rhetoric that bodess badly for the prospects for peace an allout War should it come to that could prove devastating both for a militarily overstretched Israel and an economically crippled Lebanon and with Iran being a primary backer of Hezbollah chances are the fighting could spread still many voices on the Israeli Airwaves are making the case for war and one Western news Outlet in particular a British one has injected itself into this story feeding Israeli propaganda into the news mix helping to lay the groundwork for a war with Lebanon that Israeli Hawks have been calling for scroll back through three weeks of coverage of the war on Gaza to June 6th Benjamin Netanyahu reveals combat operations in the strip are winding down that Israel's forces would head north to the Lebanese front where crossborder fighting with HB was picking up isra media Outlets let the authorities in Lebanon know they are playing with fire but the news report that really Drew attention came out of a British paper the telegraph it quoted Anonymous Lebanese and Israeli sources alleging that Beirut Airport was being used as a storage Depot for weapons supplied by Iran the sourcing was questionable even more telling the telegraph report did not even include a by line no journalist put their name to it still the article spread it was the kind of story designed to travel across other news outs the article suffers from various uh problems first of all the the author is unknown uh secondly some of the sources we don't know if what they're saying is opinion or based on evidence this is clearly a problematic way of doing journalism the telegraph article has caused critics to be concerned that the newspaper may be manufacturing consent for a potential Israeli strike on the airport which is this is typical Israeli propaganda and the purpose of it is very clear uh first to scare the Lebanese uh public but also it's targeting Western audiences and Israeli uh audiences by justifying what Israel intends to do which is targeting civilian installations the Lebanese government is on the defensive following a damning report by the British Daily Telegraph this is a typical Israeli attempt to justify up front the targeting of civilians and to committing more war crimes now in Lebanon as they are doing in razza since early October the crossb skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah have been understandably overshadowed by the Carnage in Gaza with casualties on the Lebanese side of the frontier including journalists killed clearly targeted by Israeli forces while across the border Israel says it has evacuated 8 ,000 citizens getting them out of Harm's Way but that's been the story for months now what has changed videos such as these recently posted online by Hezbollah showing the shooting down of Israeli drones the destruction of Israel's surveillance cameras along the border and Drone footage of potential targets taken deep inside Israeli territory Israel's military has posted similar material of air strikes on Drone operator crews in Lebanon and other attacks all of it unfolding as Israeli News Studios churn out warnings to Lebanese leaders of what lies ahead Israel's not happy that hisb seems able to send drones over Israel and film stuff from a height with near impunity clearly but I don't think they believe hisb has discovered any State Secrets not really they're particularly proud of their uh footage of Israeli bases but I think the main message is suggesting that we will attack your cities and that as I say is a very dangerous game to play against a much stronger military force there is a genuine fear in Israel that hisbah backed by Iran is a threat to the security of especially the villages and towns in the north and they've all been evacuated and the Israeli government has promised that they will return them to their homes by the 1st of September this year that's when um Israeli schools uh commence and in order to live up to that promise some are advocating military action in order to push hisbah 8 to 10 kilomet north of the Border after almost 9 months of uh absolutely no tangible successes no tangible victories in razza that the Israelis uh uh can claim they have been put in a very difficult Corner they cannot win the war uh they cannot declare that they lost the war they cannot ceasefire uh they are stuck so what they're trying to do is try to distract from their losses or at least from a rhetorical media point of view by directing the attention to South Lebanon Hezbollah which translates to party of God is an iran-backed movement founded in 1982 to fight Israel's occupation of Southern Lebanon Part paramilitary Group part political party it has joined Coalition governments since 2005 and has grown into such an integral influential Block in lebanon's factionalized political system that it has been dubbed a state within a state as a Shia Muslim organization Hezbollah benefits from its ties to Iran which funds the party and arms its military Wing So when its leader Hassan Nala appears on hezbollah's TV channel Alman AR and bangs the drums of War he does not necessarily speak for the Lebanese people that is one of the challenges when covering this story determining where the power really lies in Lebanon and who is speaking for whom although the way prime minister Netanyahu puts It ultimately Israel's conflict is n with Hezbollah or even Beirut it's with tan Israel America's closest Ally fighting for its life fighting against Iran I'm very very fearful the people of Lebanon could end up uh being dragged into a conflict that they do not desire and that could be devastating it's the last thing Lebanon needs after 15 years of civil war that ended a few decades ago and after absorbing millions of Syrian refugees and they know the government of Lebanon can barely collect the trash much less uh compel Hezbollah to to stop using its territory to attack a neighboring nuclear power isah is a party um in Lebanon but is distinct from the Lebanese Army and the US have asked Israel to fight hisbah and ensure that the Lebanese Army isn't targeted and that the Lebanese people are not targeted and the Israelis said well hisbah is now a part of uh Lebanon and that's why one has to ensure that a war doesn't happen among the Lebanese Medias uh we can see a division that is connected to the division on the political uh scene Lebanese media being uh for their vast majority connected to different political parties political parties opposing hasah are putting the blame on he's action while political parties more connected or allied with hasah are largely putting the responsibility of a potential new war on uh the Israeli States this would not be a good time for Lebanon to go to war the country is 5 years into an economic crisis that has pushed more than 2/3 of its population into poverty but with its own forces stretched thin involved in Gaza the West Bank and up north another conflict may also prove to be more than Israel can handle nevertheless the rhetoric is on the rise in the media spaces of both countries we could be one miscalculation away from another very costly War what does not help is journalism like that report in the telegraph the one with no reporter's name attached an exercise in propaganda reminiscent of Western news outlets and the crimes they have committed against journalism in the past at the expense of those in the Middle East let me first remind the audiences of not Israeli propaganda but uh American propaganda everybody rememberers uh colum Powell at the uh un Security Council and claiming that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction which was a clear lie to justify uh the war against Iraq and eventually the destruction of Iraq this is exactly the same and we can neither trust Israeli media nor British media nor Western media they regurgitate Israeli propaganda whether it's the BBC calling Israelis killed while Palestinians somehow die whether it's the Washington Post or the New York Times uh lies about Mass rape or the 40 babies that were beheaded all of these now are in the history books the main element missing uh from Western dominant um Medias is the fact that the main actor creating instability in the region is basically the Israeli State Israelis josal war against the Gaza Strip has created instability with its Regional neighbors but more widely threatening potential war with Iran the only way to really stabilize the region long term is to achieve the rights of the Palestinians and the people of the region Julian Assange has finally been freed from prison he's back home in Australia with family and friends however the case against the Wikileaks Founders still has some scary implications for journalists the world over Johanna H is here with more on Thursday Julian Assange was met with an emotional welcome by family and supporters in Australia his arm country after he reached a plead deal with the US authorities now San's homecoming followed a hearing at a US federal court on the island of saan in the South Pacific a location Assange insisted on since he refused to set foot on the US Mainland he pleaded guilty to just one of the 18 counts he had been charged with in exchange for a 62-month sentence but because he had already spent 5 years in a UK prison that meant a Sange was free to go it's the end of a 12year ordeal after taking asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 he was forcibly removed in 2019 and jailed in the UK's highest security prison through all this he sought to avoid extradition to the United States where he faced charges that could have resulted in a jail term of 175 years the case against the Sange centered on Wikileaks publication of classified us documents which exposed American war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq no one involved in those war crimes has ever been charged just those who revealed them while Sange is now free the plea deal is problematic both for him and for freedom of the press but the charge Assange PL guilty to conspiring to unlawfully obtain and disseminate classified information could be used as a precedent for prosecuting other journalists and since Assange is not a US citizen such a president would mean journalists anywhere in the world could be prosecuted by the US assange's legal team says it will now focus on making sure that precedent does not make it into American law but for now they're spending a little time celebrating Julian assange's Return To Life as a free man thanks Joe the UK is just a few days away from a national election polls indicate that after a decade and a half of conservative rule British voters have had enough they've suffered through the economic aftermath of brexit the calamitous response to covid-19 and have watched as one prime minister succeeded another producing all kinds of stories of inaptitude and Corruption along the way with so many voters losing faith in the entire political class that has created an opening for a gorilla campaign Collective called led by donkeys it has built up a big following online by skewering the the government and exposing the lies its leaders have told and their campaigns have a way of catching the eye through satirical films Billboards projections artistic installations they even throw in some investigative journalism working undercover we spoke with some members of their team about what they do what motivates them to do it and the gaps left open by the British news media that have helped make lead by donkeys so successful [Music] go first then no I'll go first cuz then I oh yeah okay then back we're we're we're professional communicators it's fine go for it hi my name is Ollie hi I'm Ben and I'm James and we're the co-founders of lead by donkeys Billboards have been springing up across the country giant tweets highlighting hypocrisies of Britain's leaders Alexander Boris defl Johnson is born in New York his earliest recorded ambition is to become World King of go but if I were in the white house I don't think I'd ever see turnbury again meanwhile for two decades Putin's cronies been allowed to hide their wealth here well led by donkeys started back in early 2019 so we're four friends we all met at the environmental campaign Group Green Piece you have to cast your mind back to 2019 and what was going on then Britain was IM mesed in political chaos stop the stop the stop the brexit seemed to have broken everything and we felt that the people who had brought brexit about weren't being held to account for what they had promised the British public so we were all sitting in a pub and we were passing around on our phone a tweet by David Cameron the former prime minister who warned of chaos if the conservatives were booted out of power and we thought God this is just such a perfect tweet to demonstrate the failure of our political class and we looked out the window and we saw a big billboard site and we thought that's the shape of a tweet why don't we go out there blow up this tweet to be 18 square m and past it up on this billboard and we found ourselves a few evenings later doing that what this group is doing is using analog tactics to get its unique message across the reaction online was crazy I mean it just went hyperv viral and our view I think was that politics sits Downstream of culture and if we could change the narrative we could change the politics so we started doing bigger stunts we started doing huge Land Art we did Big projections anything that we thought could change the conversation and hold our leaders to account and we suddenly found that millions and millions of people were seeing these interventions it was like sort of running a TV channel you know we were reaching that many people and here we are 5 years later it's still going led by donkeys uses a a range of different tactical approaches and I suppose it's a bit like having a toolbox we use humor or satire sometimes sometimes that really works to unpack a story this is a story about Matt hanock it doesn't involve cockroaches being buried alive or inauthentic fits of laughter designed to launder a solid reputation instead it's about what he did as health sect during the pandemic we use deep investigation we've gone undercover we spend weeks sometimes months even researching a story to peel back the layers and make sure that when we present it it's understandable what kind of pay rise has the chancellor awarded himself all that has been kept a closely guarded secret until now but we also have a big toolbx of devices for taking our interventions we call them into the public space and making them really visible really eye-catching The Sweet Spot for us is when we're using the right tools that allow us to make an emotional connection with people because you know that that's really what we're trying to do that's the business of campaigning you're trying to get somebody to look at a problem or an issue in a different way and maybe just maybe change their mind on it post October the 7th we wanted to see if there was a meaningful or useful contribution we could make to this moment where a lot of people trying to understand what's going on in Gaza a lot of people in the UK think you know this is a conflict of two sides it's complicated we can't really engage with it but actually there are ways to cut through that complexity we started looking at at child casualties as a way to do that because if people disagree about the politics hopefully we can all agree that children are innocent and children should be protected in conflict and this installation we did at Bournemouth Beach of the 11 and a half thousand children who had been killed at that point in Gaza was one of those installations we were just trying to communicate one thing which is the scale of the killing because it had become so extreme that people could not understand it anymore and we thought well what would it be like if you walked past that many children what what would it feel like I I've got two kids and and just to imagine them being put into that position is just unbearable really so we ended up using secondhand children's clothes and laying them out side by side in a line that ended up being 6 km long when you're looking at a 6 km line that you can't even see the end of you really begin to get a sense of what's happening it should be something that everybody in this country cares about because it really is an unprecedented horror that's unfolding it's 10:00 this is Sky News at 10 live from number 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister has tonight called a general election when the UK election was called we wrote and produced quickly a biopic of Rishi sunak time before he was prime minister and what he did when he worked in finance it's been viewed I think 4.2 million times on Tik Tok 2 and a half million times on Twitter um a lot of people have seen it that's a 10minute film about someone's career in finance but it was hyperv viral this is the story of rishy sunak a man who lives on a different planet from the rest of us what you see is a man from a comfortable background who's made a lot of money who's married into more money he's surrounded by money and wealth now and very interested in money it's been the focus of of his life to some extent and I think that reveals a a a character um you know man not well suited to Leading the country through really difficult times we were interested to see whether MPS would work for a fake foreign company during the of living crisis in the UK when these MPS had their primary jobs of representing their constituents and we wanted to know how much money they would ask for so we were we were wondering do you have a daily rate at the moment I do I do yes it's 10,000 Sterling some famous names such as Matt hanock the former Health Minister and quazi Quang the former Chancellor of the exj obviously I don't need to uh create you know earn a king's r but I'm looking I would do anything less than for about $10,000 a month we thought that was really quite stunning when they should have been representing their constituents it made front page news and was on TV across the country there's a question I guess about were we doing something that other media weren't doing I think to a certain extent yes the business model for investig journalism has broken down it's expensive to do it's a lot of work it takes time and I don't think broadcasters are so Keen to fund it I think led by donkeys has been successful because it's actually properly escaped that bubble of our own side our films are viewed many millions of times they reach lots and lots of people they get big pickup when they're successful on news websites like the Daily Express Daily Mail online places where you wouldn't typically say that we were you know we were politically aligned so we're definitely Comm communicating those messages led by donkey's messages to a much broader audience we look at social media and think there is a dir of serious fact-based journalism there you know there's a lot of memes there's a lot of snark there's a lot of trolling but we want to create stuff that's just as compelling and sharable as that content but really lands a form of Guerilla journalism we rely on great journalists um for some of the stuff that we do nevertheless we think as well that there is a kind of punch and Duty aspect to uh to election coverage and political coverage it's very much who's up Who's down and we think it's important that journalists um talk about the issues this project has always been about holding those in power to account but our communication our message to the British public is don't lose hope we can do something we can all change and agitate in our own different hopefully you know creative and inspiring way ways people shouldn't lose hope and they should keep doing what they can to change things and finally this past week just as the Biden Administration ended its persecution of Julian Assange an American journalist went on trial in Russia Evan gershkovich a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal was based in Moscow when Russia invaded Ukraine he was arrested in March of last year and has been accused without any apparent evidence of spying for the C a the White House and US news outlets have championed this case demanding the reporter's release but most of those same news organizations had relatively little to say about the 12 years the Americans spent pursuing Julian Assange which is why the Biden Administration has roughly zero credibility on the gershkovich case and that's the problem when you prosecute a journalist at home then try to defend one jailed in another country you've lost the moral authority to do so we'll see you next time here at the listening post