An Israeli online advertising company implicated in spyware attacks targeting internet users was heavily active on SpaceX’s Starlink service, Japanese researchers have found, bolstering claims that the firm was running a “targeting and tracking” operation masquerading as a commercial advertising business.
Earlier this month, Canadian cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab and New York-based ad security firm Confiant published extensive investigations identifying Discover-Tech, an Israeli advertising technology company, as a middleman helping spyware firms, including Candiru and Intelos, as well as a little-known US-linked operator known as Dark Cartographer, track internet users and potentially infect their devices without their knowledge.
Discover-Tech’s operation involved purchasing advertising space on hundreds of thousands of websites and apps, using ads to collect information about users who viewed them, and making the data available to spyware companies. Those firms could then identify specific targets and potentially install spyware on their devices through malicious advertising code.
Despite presenting itself as a commercial operation, Discover-Tech concentrated much of its advertising spending on markets that would be of limited interest to conventional advertisers. Of 228 countries and territories examined, Palestine was the most heavily targeted, despite its population having severely limited access to Western goods and relatively little purchasing power.
In more than 100 countries, Discover-Tech was the leading bidder for advertising space targeting Starlink users, according to researchers at TrendAI, a unit of Japanese cybersecurity firm Trend Micro. The company was also the largest advertising bidder in Syria, Libya, Yemen and South Sudan, and the second-largest in Afghanistan.
TrendAI published its findings on October 15, identifying the suspicious advertiser only by the codename Shadow-Earth-79. Six people familiar with the research subsequently told Reuters that the codename referred to Discover-Tech.
Noting that “the demand for legitimate Western advertising in sanctioned or active-conflict states is effectively zero,” the researchers concluded that the company was running “targeting and tracking infrastructure rather than a commercial advertising operation.”
The findings suggest that Discover-Tech may have been attempting to identify, geolocate or monitor Starlink users. However, they do not establish that the company successfully infected Starlink users’ devices with spyware.
Who runs Discover-Tech?
Founded in 2020 by Israeli entrepreneur Dekel Boni, Discover-Tech appointed Eric Banoun as its director. Banoun co-founded Circles, a surveillance company affiliated with Pegasus spyware developer NSO Group, and Senpai Technologies, a company known for developing and selling surveillance software to governments, including those of Angola, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Banoun also founded Intelos, which uses advertisements similar to those placed by Discover-Tech to surveil and geolocate individuals. He attempted to sell the technology to Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency, according to Haaretz.
Haaretz also identified Sara Hamou, through her holding company, as a shareholder in Discover-Tech. Hamou is a former manager at Intellexa, the company that marketed Predator spyware in Greece. Earlier this year, she was sentenced to eight years in prison for her role in the Predator scandal.
Is Discover-Tech linked to the Israeli government?
It remains unclear who purchased the services of Candiru, Intelos and Dark Cartographer after the companies obtained user data through Discover-Tech. However, as RT previously reported in its ‘Wired for War’ series, Israel treats domestically developed spyware as a controlled defense export and retains authority over where such technology may be sold.
According to a 2021 investigation by Haaretz, export licenses for Pegasus were often granted when sales were considered beneficial to Israeli foreign policy interests, including in connection with trade agreements or diplomatic support for Israel at the UN.
Other Israeli spy-tech companies covered in the series, including Black Cube, BlackCore and Paragon Solutions, have also been linked to activities aligned with Israeli interests, even when they were not directly contracted by the Israeli government.
Discover-Tech’s advertising infrastructure was used to target at least 45 devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru spyware in 2024 and 2025, according to Citizen Lab. Researchers confirmed that some devices were infected through malicious advertisements that required no interaction from users.
The attacks occurred during a period of heightened tensions between Israel and the Qatar-based broadcaster, which Israeli authorities have accused of threatening national security. Candiru was founded by two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence veterans and operates under Israeli defense export controls.
While the Israeli government has not been accused of ordering Candiru to surveil Al Jazeera journalists, the targeting raises questions about whether the company’s clients shared interests with the Israeli authorities. The investigations have not identified the government or client responsible for commissioning the attacks.
Is Discover-Tech still operating?
Following the investigations by Citizen Lab and Confiant, several major advertising companies took action against Discover-Tech. Google, Comcast-owned Beeswax and Eskimi blocked the firm from their platforms, while Vungle suspended its access pending a review. Industry association IAB Europe also suspended Discover-Tech from its list of approved vendors.
Discover-Tech’s website, which markets the company as a “tailored digital advertising agency,” remains active. The firm has not publicly responded to the findings reported by Citizen Lab, Confiant or TrendAI.
The US military killed five people in a strike targeting a vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Thursday, marking the latest operation in Washington’s expanding military campaign against alleged drug trafficking networks across Latin America.
US Southern Command said the vessel was targeted along what it described as “established narco-trafficking routes.” However, despite citing “confirmed intelligence”, the military did not publicly provide evidence that the boat was transporting narcotics at the time of the attack.
Footage released on social media showed a vessel in the crosshairs before being struck and engulfed in flames.
By media counts, the operation is one of over 70 such attacks carried out since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term, with the combined death toll now topping 240.
The operation comes amid a broader escalation ordered by the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has increasingly framed anti-drug operations as part of an armed conflict against what it calls “narcoterrorist” organizations.
Critics, however, have questioned both the evidentiary basis for many of the strikes and the classification of those targeted as “narcoterrorists”.
The US administration has yet to offer conclusive proof that the targeted vessels were carrying drugs, and the strikes have fueled a dispute over whether they are lawful.
Extrajudicial executions
The growing campaign has attracted increasing scrutiny from lawmakers, military legal experts, and human rights organizations.
Human rights organizations contend that the killings may qualify as extrajudicial executions, since the people hit appear to have been civilians who posed no imminent danger to the United States.
US senators have repeatedly called on the Pentagon to release unedited footage of the strikes, citing concerns regarding transparency and accountability.
Legal scholars have also challenged the administration’s justification for the operations, arguing that Washington has yet to clearly establish the legal framework underpinning the repeated use of lethal military force outside conventional battlefields.
On February 28, the US and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, killing its Supreme Leader alongside many other officials—and around 160 civilians, mostly schoolgirls, at Minab. The attack was an extreme case of the supreme war crime: aggression. Attacks on civilian targets are, of course, also highly illegal. The US and Israel routinely target civilians and civilian infrastructure, and Trump even brags about it.
Western media, dominated by co-ethnics of the genocidal pariah state of Israel, paints black as white, up as down, freedom as slavery, ignorance as strength, and victims as perpetrators. Though the media won’t say it plainly, Israel is the world’s worst outlaw nation in every possible way, including its de facto national mission of the genocide of Palestine and invasion of neighboring states, its outrageous terrorism and torture, its hundreds of ongoing violations of UN resolutions and international law, notably its flaunting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its threatening the whole world, including ostensible allies, with the nuclear “Samson option”—while whining about Iran’s NPT-compliant civilian program.
The US, too, is a serial international outlaw, kidnapping and murdering leaders of sovereign nations, shredding the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, refusing to recognize ICC jurisdiction, repeatedly threatening dozens of nations with aggression, refusing to allow delegations access to the UN, and on and on.
By contrast, Iran is one of the most law-abiding states in the world. It hasn’t attacked another nation in centuries. It signed and complies with the NPT, despite being repeatedly attacked, and threatened with nuclear weapons, by the US and Israel.
But Iran insists on the equal application of international law. If Saddam’s attack on Kuwait (and before that Iran) was aggression, so are US attacks on Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, and elsewhere. If Iran must abide by the NPT, so too must Israel. If Turkey can charge service fees at the Bosporus and Dardanelles, Iran and Oman can charge similar fees at the Strait of Hormuz. If apartheid was unacceptable in South Africa, its vastly worse equivalent is unacceptable in Occupied Palestine. And if “Responsibility to Protect” law enforcement interventions are necessary, obviously the first group on Earth that needs one is the Palestinians.
In a recent seminar I argued that Iran should do its best to highlight the fact that it supports and abides by international law, while the US and Israel do not. It’s a true, powerful message, and it isn’t getting through the deaf ears of Western mainstream media. But if Iran repeats this talking point often enough and loudly enough, some of it will penetrate the world’s consciousness through social media and other alternative channels.
What follows is an extract from a seminar I recently joined on this topic.
-KB
ODVV Online Webinar With Prof. Alfred De Zayas & Dr. Kevin Barrett; War, US Sanctions, And Human Rights: The Humanitarian Impact On Iran
On Monday, 19 October 2026, the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence (ODVV) held an online webinar titled “War, U.S. Sanctions, and Human Rights: The Humanitarian Impact on Iran.” The discussion examined the humanitarian consequences of U.S. sanctions and military attacks against Iran, the question of international accountability, possible avenues for legal action, and the role of media narratives in shaping public understanding of war.
Dr. Kevin Barrett, an American writer, journalist, and political commentator, holds a Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His work has addressed the Middle East, international politics, media narratives, and the political and humanitarian consequences of war.
Professor Alfred-Maurice de Zayas is an international lawyer and Professor of International Law and History at the Geneva School of Diplomacy. From 2012 to 2018, he served as the United Nations Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order. He previously held senior positions at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and served as Secretary of the UN Human Rights Committee and Chief of its Petitions Department. His contribution to the webinar focused on the legal status of unilateral coercive measures, their humanitarian consequences, and possible avenues for accountability.
The views expressed by the speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Organization for Defending Victims of Violence.
Kevin Barrett: Sanctions, Civilian Harm, and the Definition of Terrorism
Barrett began by discussing the definition of terrorism. He described it as violence against civilians intended to create fear and achieve political or ideological objectives. Applying this definition to the issues under discussion, he argued that U.S. sanctions and military attacks on civilian targets should be examined in terms of the harm they inflict on ordinary people. He maintained that restrictions affecting access to medicine, medical equipment, and food place pressure directly on the civilian population. Barrett said he viewed these measures as an effort to make life increasingly difficult for Iranians and to pressure them into accepting political change.
Addressing the 40-day war against Iran, Barrett referred to the attack on the Minab school and the deaths of schoolchildren, as well as reported attacks on residential buildings, bridges, railway stations, communications towers, desalination and water facilities, wheat storage facilities, healthcare sites, and energy infrastructure. He characterized these as attacks on civilian infrastructure. He also described public threats by Donald Trump against Iran’s bridges, electricity grid, water facilities, and energy infrastructure as threats to commit war crimes.
During the question-and-answer session, Barrett was asked whether international courts could provide a meaningful path to justice when powerful states refuse to comply with international law. He criticized the practical limitations of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in compelling the United States to accept adverse decisions. However, he clarified that this did not mean the courts should be abandoned. In his view, submitting evidence and pursuing legal cases remain important because they document alleged violations and bring them to the attention of global public opinion.
Barrett also emphasized the importance of presenting Iran consistently as a party seeking the equal application of international law. He argued that documented accounts of civilian harm, supported by independent reporting and public advocacy, could help challenge selective media narratives and strengthen demands for accountability…
Both were detained when trying to cross into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and one "was found to be wearing a Russian military identification tag around his neck," SBU said.
Russian authorities committed war crimes and crimes against humanity through attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said in a report to the UN General Assembly on 26 October.
International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, issued in June 2024, already covered alleged crimes linked to Russia’s 2022–2023 strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The UN commission’s new report reaches into last winter, 2025–2026, and the cumulative toll since 2022, documenting what the attacks did to civilians living through outages in freezing temperatures.
“As the cold season approaches, the attacks have intensified once again, raising serious concerns about the threats to civilians’ lives and health,” commission chair Erik Møse said.
Russian commanders knew heating facilities were vital
The commission said Russian commanders knew that heating facilities in large cities were indispensable to civilians, particularly during winter. Russian authorities also made official declarations about further attacks and referred to a plan to carry them out, it said. It found that Russian authorities intentionally directed attacks against civilian objects, constituting war crimes.
The commission also concluded that the attacks were carried out under a state policy aimed at depriving civilians of electricity and other essential energy-dependent services and causing suffering. It classified these acts as crimes against humanity in the form of “other inhumane acts.”
Minus 21°C, weeks without heat, and shelters out of reach for older people
Last winter, temperatures fell to minus 21°C as millions of Ukrainians endured prolonged disruptions to heating, electricity, water, and gas, the commission said.
The commission relied on the accounts of 255 people from Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia, and Zhytomyr Oblasts, alongside officials, doctors, and nongovernmental organizations.
Older people and those with limited mobility were particularly affected. Fear of becoming trapped in elevators during blackouts prevented some residents from reaching shelters during air raid alerts. They remained in unheated homes, sometimes without access to life-support equipment.
A 53-year-old Kyiv resident told investigators he tried to stay awake at night because he feared he might not wake up if he fell asleep in the cold.
Meanwhile, school closures disrupted children’s education, and children fell ill in unheated homes, the report said.
Russia rejects the findings
Russia’s UN mission said Moscow did not recognize the commission’s mandate and dismissed its findings as “falsified data,” the Associated Press reported.
The commission also examined Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine. It said it could not investigate their impact fully because Russia denied access and did not respond to its requests.
Foreign recruits trafficked to the front
The same report found “compelling evidence” that Russian authorities trafficked men from 29 countries into the Russian armed forces through deception and coercion.
Recruitment agents arranged visas and travel, presenting themselves as legitimate businesses. After arriving in Russia, the men were forced to sign military contracts in Russian and were sent to the front, where many were killed or went missing, the commission said.
Svitlana Zinoviyeva, left, and her daughter, Oleksandra Buzko, mounted a tent above the bed last winter to stay warm at home amid subzero temperatures, power outages and minimal to no heat in buildings across the city in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Artem Koval suffered severe injuries in the drone strike and was taken to hospital. Despite a week of efforts to save him, doctors were unable to overcome his life-threatening injuries, the Vodolaha Village Council said.
A review of “Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisors, and Israel’s War in Gaza.” The President deferred again and again to Israel’s narrative and sold weapons that were used in war crimes.
Commanders suspected of sexual violence during the largest and fastest slaughter of civilians in more than 30 years have been subjected to travel ban and asset freeze
Senior Sudanese commanders implicated in a “campaign of rape” have been targeted by the UK on the first anniversary of a mass atrocity that saw tens of thousands of civilians killed over several days.
A year after the fall of El Fasher, the British government said it had sanctioned military leaders from both sides in the country’s ongoing conflict whom it suspected of sexual violence during the siege of the city.
Inquiry Panel Reports Sharp Rise in Air Strikes, Forced Displacement and Violence Against Palestinian Children.
On Monday, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory reaffirmed that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the civilian population in the West Bank and Gaza, including crimes such as extermination, persecution, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence.
The Commission will present a report to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), which tasked it with focusing this phase of its investigation on killings and physical and mental harm caused by state agents.
The report confirms the sharp increase in Israeli air strikes against the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, the date of Hamas’ large-scale attack on Israel.
The Commission notes that while between 2018 and Oct. 6, 2023 — the eve of the Hamas attack — six Palestinians had died in air strikes, between Oct. 7, 2023, and last Sept. 30, those killed numbered 254.
“The killing and deliberate injury of Palestinian civilians, as well as the destruction of homes in the West Bank, plus Israel’s refusal to assume its responsibility, form part of a broader strategy to exterminate and displace Palestinians and impose unbearable living conditions on them,” said the Commission’s chairman, Srinivasan Muralidhar.
"I'm not a target, I want to live like you"
Today she cries for her friend, tomorrow she fears she will be the news.
— Palestine Daily News✌️🇵🇸✌️ (@Palestinedaily1) October 25, 2026
From January 2025 through August 2026, military operations caused the displacement of over 34,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. This forced movement of people is the largest recorded since 1967, when Israel fought the Six-Day War against a coalition of Arab countries.
Children have been main victims of Israeli military violence, which has caused them “serious physical and mental harm,” not far from what minors suffer in Gaza, which for the Commission means Israel perpetrates “acts of persecution against Palestinian children on the basis of age.”
The Commission found that Israeli authorities and forces have continued to commit acts of genocide in Gaza even after the so-called cease-fire agreement of more than a year ago, and that they did so “with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part.”
🎥 "I thought they forgot about me."
17-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim, a U.S. citizen who was released from Israeli military prison after ten months of detainment, came to the UNGA this week to advocate for hundreds of Palestinian children still held in Israeli military detention.… pic.twitter.com/7yTTPAYxrM
More broadly, the investigation reaches the conclusion that Israel’s will since its very creation has been to expand its territory and to that end displace Palestinians, which it considers one of the central causes of this prolonged conflict.
“The appropriation of as much land as possible, while minimizing the Palestinian population in terms of size, autonomy and viability, has its origin in Israel’s colonizing policies,” Muralidhar said.
In its conclusions, the UN Commission calls on Israel to immediately end the illegal occupation of Palestine and, among other actions, return land and all confiscated property to Palestinians.
The Commission also denounces the Palestinian Authority for persecuting Palestinians with dissenting opinions and for failing to effectively and impartially investigate the deaths or injuries suffered by journalists and human rights defenders in actions committed by Palestinian security forces.
Exclusive: Coordinated airstrikes on territory held by al-Shabaab are driving the civilian population to find refuge alongside a river where rising water levels are a threat to safety. Is it a deliberate military strategy?
The water was rising rapidly. It had already reached Cayni Ali’s waist. Her home, five metres from the flooded River Juba in southern Somalia, never stood a chance. There was nowhere to go. Ali’s city of Jilib was under attack. Repeated airstrikes, said the mother of six, were pinning its population beside the rising river.
“The drones come all the time,” said the 27-year-old. “We hear them constantly. They kill animals, civilians. The town is big but destruction is everywhere.”
Much has been said about how Ukraine should treat Russian prisoners of war. Less attention has been paid to the emotional struggle for the Ukrainians tasked with that work.
Israeli soldiers have looted and demolished the family home of Radwan Mortada, a prominent Lebanese investigative journalist who directed the recent viral Al Jazeera 360 documentary “The Trap.” The filmexposes the surreptitious network and planning behind Israel’s notorious pager attack, which left hundreds of Lebanese citizens wounded and maimed, and has become one of the channel’s most-watched in recent history.
Israel’s destruction of Mortada family home on October 17 has drawn condemnation from at least one international press freedom group, the Committee to Protect Journalists. On October 21, the organization issued a statement declaring that it “strongly condemns the Israeli military’s demolition of journalist Radwan Mortada’s family home in southern Lebanon. Just three weeks earlier, Mortada released an Al Jazeera documentary on the Israeli 2024 pager attack. In the days leading up to the demolition, Israeli soldiers launched a sound bomb, a tank tore down the entrance, and soldiers looted personal belongings. CPJ fears this destruction is in retaliation for Mortada’s work, marking another dangerous violation of international law and disregard for the press.”
Lebanese journalist Radwan Mortada's investigation into Israel’s pager attacks is one of Al Jazeera most-watched documentaries
Mortada tells The Grayzone's @wyattreed13 how he tracked key players in the attack and got a hold of an unexploded pager
Speaking to The Grayzone, Mortada recalled how he learned that Israel’s military forces destroyed the estate he and his family had painstakingly constructed over almost a decade.
Pillaged and burned
“The story began on Friday, when someone sent me a photo of an Israeli Merkava tank parked right next to my house. A few days earlier, Israeli soldiers had arrived in a pickup truck and looted the contents of the house. And they destroyed the entrance” to the building as well, Mortada recounted.
“It never crossed my mind that they would plant explosives inside and blow it up, especially since my house is not in the Israeli-occupied area, there are no military positions nearby, and it is not a combat zone.”
Nevertheless, “at around 4 am on Saturday, they blew it up. I woke up to phone calls from neighbors in the village telling me, ‘The Israelis have blown up your house.’” Cell phone photos and footage confirmed the distressing news, he says.
“My village, Aita al-Jabal, is not under Israeli occupation, and my house is not within the so-called yellow line,” Mortada explains. There were no clashes or military activities in the area, he notes, and no military facilities or positions anywhere nearby. It is, he says, “a purely residential area.”
Exterior shots show the impressively detailed traditional Lebanese style home built by the Mortada family before Israeli soldiers looted the building and rigged it with explosives.
“Most importantly, the house was not destroyed by an airstrike or during any military confrontation,” he continues. “Israeli soldiers physically entered the property, planted explosives inside the house, and deliberately blew it up.”
While Mortada acknowledges he has no “concrete evidence” that Israel destroyed his family home in retaliation for the success of his documentary, he tells The Grayzone, “I do have suspicions, mainly because of the way the house was destroyed.”
Unlike other houses in the area that were damaged by airstrikes or shelling, Mortada notes, his house was deliberately blown up with explosives planted inside it. Israeli soldiers had occupied the house for several days before looting it and destroying it, video reviewed by The Grayzone shows.
“What makes this particularly suspicious is that my house is not in an Israeli-occupied area, nor is it within the so-called yellow line,” he says. “It is nowhere near a frontline or an active combat zone.”
He lamented, “Israeli hatred and vindictiveness seem to know no bounds.”
Mortada’s home in Aita al-Jabal was located approximately 4 kilometers outside of the so-called “Yellow Line,” a supposed buffer zone Israel unilaterally declared in Lebanese territory which it claims to be clearing of Hezbollah. If Israel’s soldiers didn’t simply rob and demolish the estate out of spite, it could signal an expansion of the areas Israel is targeting.
Interior photos provided by the Mortada family show the intricate stone archways which adorned their home prior to its demolition by Israel.
The first sign of trouble came when Israeli occupation forces assaulted a caretaker who had been living at the house with his family, looking after the garden, Mortada noted. “Israeli soldiers launched a stun grenade at him to force him and his family to leave the property.”
The grenade “was essentially a warning to the caretaker to leave the property with his family. Around the same time, Israeli forces also targeted a water tanker that was delivering water to the house. These incidents made it clear that they wanted him and his family to leave,” he says.
It’s a familiar feeling for hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians who’ve been forced to flee the region. Meanwhile, senior Israeli officials have spent months openly boasting of their efforts to destroy every Lebanese home south of the Litani River, and compare the campaign favorably to their systematic annihilation of Gaza. “All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza,” Israeli defense minister Israel Katz declared in March.
In August, Katz deemed his mass displacement project – dubbed “Operation Silver Plow” – a success, crowing that residents of 24 villages in southern Lebanon now “have nowhere to return to; everything there has been destroyed.”
Now, the boasts have grown even bolder. With blue-and-white flags continuing to appear throughout swathes of occupied southern Lebanon, Israel’s leaders have eagerly provided live commentary of the slow-motion genocide. As an adoring audience cheered inside Israel’s Channel 14 studios on October 17, 2026, Katz declared that the number of villages annihilated by his forces had grown to 60. “Every single village — we’re talking about 23,000 homes — is in ruins.”
For Mortada, Israel’s aggression speaks for itself. “I believe Israel is undoubtedly carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon,” he says. “The objective, in my view, is clear: to prevent the people of southern Lebanon from returning to their villages and their land.”
In the past, “Israel at least attempted to justify its actions by claiming that it was targeting Hezbollah fighters or military positions. Today, however, it has become utterly brazen. Israeli officials openly speak about displacing the population, while their forces systematically destroy homes, infrastructure, and even bulldoze roads.”
“This is not simply about military operations. I believe it is a deliberate attempt to make entire villages uninhabitable and force their residents off their land permanently.”
“Perhaps, ultimately, this is also part of a broader ambition to realize the ideological vision of a so-called ‘Greater Israel,’” Mortada adds.
‘More than a home’
Combined with his testimony, photos of the now-destroyed home give a small glimpse of the loss incurred by the Mortada family when occupying Israeli soldiers seized everything of value and carried out a controlled demolition of the building.
“This house was much more than a home to us. It was a place where three generations of our family’s memories came together.”
Three generations of the Mortada family enjoying the home before its destruction by Israel. Pictured are Radwan Mortada; his daughter, Faya; his wife, Nohad, and his father, Nizar.
When Mortada’s father, Nizar, returned to Lebanon after two decades spent working in Libya, “his dream was to build a peaceful home where he and my mother could grow old together, surrounded by family and the land he had always loved.”
“He chose that particular spot for a very personal reason: There were several olive trees he had planted with his father, my grandfather, when he was just a little boy.”
With his golden years approaching, Mortada’s father expressed a desire to build his home beside those same trees. “For him, it was a way of returning to his childhood, his roots, and the memory of his own father,” he explains.
Mortada explained that the home also “carries the memory of my brother Ali,” who died in 2016 at age 29. Ali suffered medical malpractice after having contracted a bacterial infection during Beirut’s garbage crisis, a tragedy which Mortada says “reflected the corruption and failure of Lebanon’s political system.”
When Mortada family buried Ali in the village of Aita al-Jabal, the family resolved to build a home that would keep his memory alive, and bring them together in their time of grief. “Until then, my siblings, Jawad and Nada, and I had never felt such a deep connection to the village,” Mortada said. “Losing Ali changed that. We wanted to be close to him, and building the house became our way of keeping that connection alive.”
Photos provided by the Mortada family show Radwan’s now-deceased brother, Ali.
The family broke ground on the house in March 2016, shortly after his death.
Having “always loved traditional Lebanese architecture,” Mortada wanted the house to preserve as much as possible of the country’s rapidly-disappearing aesthetic traditions. “At a time when beautiful old houses were being demolished to make way for concrete buildings, we did the opposite,” he says. “We collected stones and architectural elements from ruined heritage homes and used them to create something beautiful again.”
The family spent nearly eight years working on it, carefully considering every detail.
“I approached the process as though I were painting a picture,” Mortada recalls. “It was a labor of love, and we poured so much of ourselves into it.”
Stained-glass windows and hand-painted frescoes lined the home’s walls and ceilings. It’s unclear exactly which paintings and treasures were looted by Israeli troops.
His wife, Nahod, recalled her husband’s excitement in a social media post explaining the significance of the home that Israel demolished later that day: “When I told my husband that I was pregnant with my first child, he was silent for a few seconds. His pupils were shrinking, he seemed to be doing a precise calculation. “When you give birth, the house will be finished,” he said with an enthusiasm I had never heard before.”
“He meticulously attended to every detail, carefully selected the furniture, altered some of the rooms to suit his unborn child, and even built a chicken coop “so my children can experience village life.””
In addition to paying tribute to the memory of his brother, the lovingly-constructed house was also the culmination of a lifetime of hopes and dreams of the entire family, Radwan Mortada tells The Grayzone.
“For my father, the house represented the peaceful retirement he had worked so hard for. For my mother, it was a family home filled with love. And for my siblings and me, it was a place where we could feel close to Ali,” he says.
“That is what the Israeli soldiers destroyed. Not simply walls and furniture, but a home built around the memories of people we loved, including those who are no longer with us.”
Left: Radwan’s brother, Jawad, and father, Nizar, are filling the backyard pool. Right: Radwan’s daughter, Faya, with her father and grandfather.
Compounding the pain of the loss of the family home, Mortada says, is “the feeling of abandonment” by the country’s leaders, who were imposed on Lebanon’s populace by the United States and Saudi Arabia in an effort to force Beirut to normalize relations with Israel. He names Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam as among those principally responsible for the impunity enjoyed by Israel as it bulldozes dozens of villages in the South.
“The Lebanese government has done virtually nothing to protect the people of southern Lebanon or provide meaningful support to those who have lost their homes. People feel they have been left entirely on their own. We have seen no serious action capable of stopping the destruction, nor an adequate diplomatic or legal response, even at the level of the UN Security Council.”
“I believe what is happening in southern Lebanon amounts to ethnic cleansing. Homes are being destroyed, villages are being emptied, and people are being prevented from returning to their land, while the international community remains largely silent.”
Left: Nizar outside the gates of his newly-finished family home. Center and right: Radwan and his wife, Nohad, are seen playing with their daughter, Faya.
“We can rebuild a house. We have done it before, and I hope we will do it again. But how do you replace the years, the memories, and the love that went into creating it?”
“My father wanted to spend his final years beside the olive trees he planted with his father as a child. My siblings and I wanted to have a home near the grave of my brother, and I wanted my children, Faya and Azer, to grow up there, surrounded by our family’s memories. Is that too much to ask?”
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