Lebanese war correspondent Ali Mortada: “Hello, my enemies...“

On August 22, 2024, Lebanese war correspondent Ali Mortada spoke with Dimitri Lascaris in the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon. Tyre is Mortada’s base. The city lies less than 20 kilometres from the Lebanon-Israel border. Mortada has long worked for the Lebanese media organization, Al Mayadeen TV. He has a large following in West Asia. In 2012, Al Mayadeen was founded by former journalists from Al Jazeera Arabic. When those journalists quit Al Jazeera to establish Al Mayadeen, they alleged that Al Jazeera had ’deviated from professional standards’ in its reporting on the war in Syria. Last year, Israel’s military killed two journalists from Al Mayadeen, reporter Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Me’mari. At the time, Al Mayadeen accused Israel of intentionally targeting its staff. Despite this atrocity, Mortada continued to report openly from Lebanese territory that lies inches away from Lebanon’s border with Israel. Mortada’s brand of journalism is intentio