Israel has started a ground invasion into Lebanon with approval from the Biden-Harris administration.

This is following an intense bombing campaign by Israeli authorities against

Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians and leaving thousands injured. Hezbollah, the militant

group Israel, claims its targeting, has been engaged in cross-border exchange with the

Israeli military over the last year, primarily hitting military targets.

This is a defensible military action considering they are trying to prevent a full-scale genocide

in Gaza.

Joining me now to discuss is Seamus Malikovsali.

Seamus, thank you so much for coming on the Empire Files.

It's a pleasure.

So I'm happy that you're out of Beirut safely.

A lot of people are still trapped there.

The State Department has said that if you're stuck there and if you're an American, too bad.

Meanwhile, they're shelling out, I don't know, 7 to 10 grand to fly Americans home from Israel.

Yeah, I mean, after October 7th, I want to say around five days after October 7th,

the State Department was setting up charter flights for Israelis to get out of Israel,

American citizens, sorry, to get out of Israel, despite the fact that Bangarian airport was still

very much functioning. But for Lebanon, if you were an American who is in Lebanon, if you were

the many Lebanese people who are American citizens, the State Department essentially said,

well, we can give you a loan that you will eventually have to pay back if you want to leave.

But otherwise, we're just going to say you should get out and then we're going to leave this

warning there for maybe 11 months. No guarantee the evacuation, no real effort on their

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