Speaker 1: Already and this is the dailyas this is the Daily OS. Oh,
Speaker 1: now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: the first of October. I'm zara, i'm emma. Over the weekend,
Speaker 2: Hesbolla's longtime leader, Hassan Nastralla was killed by an Israeli
Speaker 2: air strike in Lebanon. It marks a significant shift in
Speaker 2: the region, with Nastrala having been in power for over
Speaker 2: thirty years. In today's deep dive, we'll explain how we
Speaker 2: got here and what it means for the conflict between
Speaker 2: Israel and Hesballa moving forward. But first em what's making headlines.
Speaker 1: The federal government has appointed After Malik as the Special
Speaker 1: Envoy to combat Islamophobia in Australia. Malik will begin a
Speaker 1: three year term on the fourteenth of October and will
Speaker 1: report to the Prime Minister and the Multicultural Affairs Minister. Malik,
Speaker 1: who has spent over a decade working in the New
Speaker 1: South Wales premiers Department, said he doesn't tend to advocate
Speaker 1: that quote one form of hatred is more important than another.
Speaker 1: Both antisemitism and Islamophobia are unacceptable, he said. This week's
Speaker 1: appointment comes nearly three months after the government appointed Gillian
Speaker 1: Siegel as the Special Envoy to combat antisemitism.
Speaker 2: The death toll of Hurricane Helene in the US has
Speaker 2: risen to about one hundred people. Strong storm winds and
Speaker 2: rain conditions have led to the destruction of homes and
Speaker 2: businesses across the country's southeastern states. It's been reported that
Speaker 2: supplies have been airlifted to areas heavily affected Due to
Speaker 2: hundreds of road closures. More than five hundred people are
Speaker 2: unaccounted for as the search continues and survivors wait for
Speaker 2: phone towers to be reinstalled.
Speaker 1: The University of Melbourne has appointed its first female Vice Chancellor,
Speaker 1: with Professor Emma Johnston to take on the role. Johnston's
Speaker 1: appointment comes after former Vice Chancellor Duncan Maskel announced in
Speaker 1: April that he would be stepping down from the role.
Speaker 1: The new VC will move on from her role as
Speaker 1: Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research at the University of Sydney
Speaker 1: to begin working at the University of Melbourne from February
Speaker 1: next year.
Speaker 2: And today's good news, Paleontologists have uncovered the fossilized skull
Speaker 2: of a giant dinosaur. It's estimated to be seventy two
Speaker 2: million years old. The dig was conducted by the Philip J.
Speaker 2: Curry Dinosaur Museum in Canada. The dinosaur uncovered is believed
Speaker 2: to be a Packy Rhinosaurus as Emma has just instructed
Speaker 2: me more than four times, and the uncovered skull is
Speaker 2: the second adult skull found by researchers, weighing in at
Speaker 2: a hefty two hundred and seventy kilograms. The skull has
Speaker 2: been nicknamed Big Sam nailed it. Over the weekend, the
Speaker 2: leader of Hezbala, his name was Hassan Nasralla, was killed
Speaker 2: in Lebanon by an Israeli air strike. In a statement,
Speaker 2: the group said in Australia had been killed in a
Speaker 2: strike on its central headquarters in the center of Beirut,
Speaker 2: Lebanon's capital. He was killed alongside a number of other
Speaker 2: high ranking members of Hesbela.
Speaker 1: Okay, so before we go into what happened on the weekend,
Speaker 1: the impacts of that, why it was significant, I think
Speaker 1: it's really important to take a step back, particularly when
Speaker 1: stories like this develop. A lot of us can feel
Speaker 1: left behind. Maybe we're missing pieces of the puzzle. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you to give us a little
Speaker 1: bit of background on Hesbela before we go any further.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, Hesbela, the word itself is derived from the
Speaker 2: Arabic term hizb Allah, which translates roughly to party of God.
Speaker 2: It was established after Israel's invasion of Lebanon in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two, as the country itself was grappling with a
Speaker 2: civil war. Hesbela is based in Lebanon and receives funding
Speaker 2: and training from Iran. Australia, alongside a lot of other
Speaker 2: Western nations, lists Hesbela as a terrorist organization and its
Speaker 2: manifesto specifically calls for the destruction of Israel.
Speaker 1: And just to clarify, Lebanon as a country is governed
Speaker 1: by a parliamentary democracy of elected officials, despite Hesbela's presence
Speaker 1: in the region, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So while there are members of parliament who
Speaker 2: do represent Hesbela, it is not the governing party, as
Speaker 2: for example, Kamas is in Gaza. It's a different situation there. So,
Speaker 2: following its invasion in the nineteen eighties, Israel officially withdrew
Speaker 2: from Lebanon in two thousand. At the time, the UN
Speaker 2: drew up what it called a provisional border that was
Speaker 2: between the two countries, and they called it the blue line.
Speaker 2: That blue line has been monitored by UN peacekeeping forces
Speaker 2: ever since that time. And I should say that the
Speaker 2: relationship between Israel and Hesbela, it's a long and a
Speaker 2: checkered one, and it would take its own podcast to
Speaker 2: explain what has happened since that to how we got
Speaker 2: to here. But for the sake of understanding these most
Speaker 2: recent events, I think that where we need to begin
Speaker 2: is on October eighth of last year, and that is
Speaker 2: the day after Hummas's attack on Israel, and it is
Speaker 2: the day that Hesbelah began firing rockets into Israel. At
Speaker 2: that time, I'm quoting directly from Hesbala here it declared
Speaker 2: to hum Us, our souls are with you, our history
Speaker 2: and our guns and our rockets are with you. Now.
Speaker 2: Since that time, the eighth of October last year, there
Speaker 2: have been escalating cross border attacks between Israel and Hesbeala.
Speaker 2: They've been continuing for much of a year. We are
Speaker 2: now approaching that same timeline a year later, but they
Speaker 2: have certainly escalated in the past few weeks.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Hesbela began launching rockets on October eighth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. We're now in October, nearly a year later,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, So what has the escalation looked like?
Speaker 2: So for a while it was much of the same.
Speaker 2: I said, it was those rockets, and then Israel was
Speaker 2: retaliating and sending rockets back into Lebanon. But it kind
Speaker 2: of looked that same way for the past eleven months,
Speaker 2: and then last month Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu said
Speaker 2: that his cabinet had updated its war objectives to include
Speaker 2: returning the residents of the north securely to their homes.
Speaker 2: What he is referring to there is the residents in
Speaker 2: the north of Israel who have been displaced due to
Speaker 2: those rockets that we were talking about earlier, and so
Speaker 2: according to the Natanyahu government, an objective of the war
Speaker 2: was now to return those residents home, and that was
Speaker 2: essentially saying that they were going to escalate their war
Speaker 2: against Hesbolah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we knew that this escalation was going to
Speaker 1: be imminent. What form has that taken? How have things changed?
Speaker 2: So, I mean it's taken a few different forms. The
Speaker 2: first was just a day after the Israeli government updated
Speaker 2: those war objectives, and that was when we saw those
Speaker 2: pager and walkie talkie attacks happen across le So if
Speaker 2: you weren't familiar with that story, the first of the
Speaker 2: two attacks was targeting pages that were used by Hesbella members.
Speaker 2: According to the group, those pages all exploded at once.
Speaker 2: We understand that there were a couple of beeps and
Speaker 2: then they exploded. That attack appeared to be targeting members
Speaker 2: of the group, as I said, who owned those pages,
Speaker 2: And through all of the reporting it appears they had
Speaker 2: obtained those pages in an effort to not have their
Speaker 2: communications tracked by Israel. Lebanon's Health ministry said that after
Speaker 2: that attack, nine people, including some Hesbeala members, were killed
Speaker 2: in the attack, and then thousands more were injured. It
Speaker 2: was then just a day later that walkie talkies exploded
Speaker 2: across Lebanon, killing twenty people, also including members of the group,
Speaker 2: and injuring hundreds of others. And so those were the
Speaker 2: two recent significant escalations and from there it's really grown.
Speaker 2: It was just days later after those two attacks that
Speaker 2: the Israeli military launched a campaign of air strikes, said
Speaker 2: we're also targeting Hesbela members. Those strikes killed more than
Speaker 2: five hundred people, in what became the deadliest day in
Speaker 2: Lebanon since two thousand and six. The IDF said that
Speaker 2: those strikes were quote proactive and extensive, and that they
Speaker 2: were targeting both members of Hesbela but also basis so
Speaker 2: the infrastructure of Hesbala. At the time, authorities didn't really
Speaker 2: confirm how many of those killed had been members of Hesbala,
Speaker 2: But what we did see happen was that Hesbela really
Speaker 2: increased the number of daily rockets that they were firing
Speaker 2: into Israel.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've seen this significant intensifying of tensions, firstly
Speaker 1: with those really targeted attacks in Lebanon you mentioned the
Speaker 1: pages and the walkie talkies, to those more widespread, deadlier
Speaker 1: strikes across Lebanon, and then the retaliation of more rockets
Speaker 1: into Israel. So that pretty much brings us to last week.
Speaker 1: Talk me through the weekend. What happened.
Speaker 2: So over the weekend, as I mentioned at the time,
Speaker 2: Hesbala's leader, Hassan Nasralla was killed, and he was killed
Speaker 2: by an Israeli air strike that hit Hesbala's central headquarters.
Speaker 2: To give you a bit of background into Nasralla and
Speaker 2: to I guess just emphasize how significant this is. He
Speaker 2: was elected as the secretary General of Hesbala in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two. He was at that point aged thirty two,
Speaker 2: so he had held this position for over three decades.
Speaker 2: When he assumed the leadership, Hesbala was growing in dominance
Speaker 2: in the south of Lebanon, but it was by no
Speaker 2: means the power that it is today. In the decades
Speaker 2: since he was appointed leader, the group had grown its
Speaker 2: influence not just in Lebanon, but also across the Middle
Speaker 2: East more generally. We know that Hesbala has fought alongside
Speaker 2: Syria's President Bashah al Asad against the popular uprising back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eleven. What we also know is
Speaker 2: that Nasrela had avoided public appearances since two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a long time, an.
Speaker 2: Incredibly long time. I mean, he had been doing televised events,
Speaker 2: and he had been doing all of that, but out
Speaker 2: of fear of assassination, he had not been seen publicly.
Speaker 2: And so I guess that just paints a picture as
Speaker 2: to how significant it is that he was both found
Speaker 2: and targeted in this air strike over the weekend.
Speaker 1: And a man who has spent the majority of his
Speaker 1: adult life at the hell of this group. So, given
Speaker 1: the significance of Nozraala as a senior figure in this conflict,
Speaker 1: what has the reaction been.
Speaker 2: Well, I think as expected, the response has been very
Speaker 2: varied depending on who and where it is coming from.
Speaker 2: So if we start with the US and Israel, who
Speaker 2: of course are close allies to one another, they both
Speaker 2: described Nostralla as a terrorist. Prime Minister Benjamin Natanier, who said,
Speaker 2: and I'm quoting directly here, he said, we have set
Speaker 2: alled accounts with someone who was responsible for the murder
Speaker 2: of countless Israelis and many nationals of other countries, including
Speaker 2: hundreds of Americans and dozens of French. Nosrala was not
Speaker 2: just another terrorist, He was the terrorist. US President Joe
Speaker 2: Biden said in a statement following the announcement of Nasralla's
Speaker 2: death that his death from an Israeli air strike is
Speaker 2: a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands
Speaker 2: of Americans, Israeli and Lebanese civilians. And one of the
Speaker 2: points that Joe Biden made quite clear in his statement
Speaker 2: was that he believes that Nasralla miscalculated on October eighth
Speaker 2: in beginning to send those rockets over, and that's what
Speaker 2: was really echoed by Kamala Harris in her statement as well.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned Zara that Hesbela is controlled, resourced, directed by Iran.
Speaker 1: So what has the Iranian response been.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd say starkly different to what we saw from
Speaker 2: Israel and from the US, which is of course to
Speaker 2: be expected. So Iranian state media reported that Iran's Supreme
Speaker 2: Leader Iatollah Ali Khmani declared five days of national mourning
Speaker 2: for Nusrala. He described Nosralla as quote a path and
Speaker 2: a school of thought that would continue through Hesbella's activity
Speaker 2: of significance. He said that Iran would continue its fight
Speaker 2: to confront the enemy and that Israel would face crushing
Speaker 2: blows as all regional resistance forces are ready to become involved.
Speaker 2: And I think it's important there to just explain Hesbalah
Speaker 2: is not the only proxy army that Iran has. We
Speaker 2: have also seen the Huthis in Yemen be equipped, resourced
Speaker 2: and directed by Iran. And there is also, of course
Speaker 2: the connection between Hamas and Iran. On the latter point,
Speaker 2: Hamas's previous political leader, Ismail Hania, was killed in Iran
Speaker 2: on Iranian soil, and all of this really just shows
Speaker 2: how deep this kind of regional conflict goes. Speaking now
Speaker 2: of Lebanon, it has declared three days of mourning following
Speaker 2: Maasrala's death.
Speaker 1: So what happens from here? Obviously we have seen the
Speaker 1: headlines for nearly a year now about concerns surrounding escalating conflict,
Speaker 1: Israel's war in Gaza expanding, you know, across the Middle
Speaker 1: East broadly, So what happens from here? Are we there now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, I mean, in the days before Nastraula was killed,
Speaker 2: there were already a number of nations calling for a
Speaker 2: seasire between Israel and Hezbala. So it was I'd say
Speaker 2: a very rare form of unity to see the US, Australia, Canada,
Speaker 2: the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the
Speaker 2: United Arab Emirates, UK and Qatar all come together and
Speaker 2: call for a twenty one day ceasefire. And that was
Speaker 2: to quote conclude a diplomatic settlement that enables civilians on
Speaker 2: both sides of the border to return to their homes safely.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's not every day you have most of the
Speaker 1: world's most powerful Western democracies joining forces with the UAE
Speaker 1: and Saudi authorities to sign a joint declaration exactly.
Speaker 2: It was quite a big step, but of course that
Speaker 2: was before what happened this weekend. Also before the weekend,
Speaker 2: the US had committed to sending forces to the region
Speaker 2: in response to what it labeled as increased tension, but
Speaker 2: all of that changed this weekend. What happens from here
Speaker 2: is unknown. In terms of hes Bala's senior leadership, it
Speaker 2: wasn't just an Australa that was killed. We understand that
Speaker 2: much of the kind of senior command has been killed
Speaker 2: by Israeli forces, and that means that the group that
Speaker 2: has reigned with such power for so long is now
Speaker 2: really at the stage of having to rebuild. And what
Speaker 2: that looks like in its newest iteration, we really don't
Speaker 2: know at this stage. We also don't know where it
Speaker 2: leaves the conflict with Israel. Hes Blah and indeed Iran
Speaker 2: have committed to retaliation, but we don't know when, how
Speaker 2: what that will look like, so we will have to
Speaker 2: wait and see. Just to bring this closer to home
Speaker 2: for a moment, over the weekend, there were a number
Speaker 2: of protests and rallies held across the country that was
Speaker 2: to mark what's called a National Day of Action for
Speaker 2: Gaza that was being run by the Australia Palestine Advocacy.
Speaker 2: At some of those rallies, people were holding signs of
Speaker 2: either Nasralla himself, photos of the leader who had just
Speaker 2: been killed, or of Hezbollah's own signage. And what we've
Speaker 2: seen now is quite a strong political response to the
Speaker 2: events of the weekend. From the government side. We've seen
Speaker 2: Penny Wog, our Foreign Minister, come out and say we
Speaker 2: condemn any indication of support for a terrorist organization such
Speaker 2: as Hesbolah not only threatens national security but fuels fear
Speaker 2: and division in our communities. All of us, including every
Speaker 2: political leader, must stand together to reject terrorism and extremism.
Speaker 2: And then on the other side of politics, we had
Speaker 2: Peter Dudden and he has come out and demanded that
Speaker 2: there be law changes and laws that are passed with urgency.
Speaker 2: According to him, that would see visas canceled of people
Speaker 2: that were seen to be supporting Hesbeala over the weekend.
Speaker 2: In response, we had Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke say
Speaker 2: that he would consider refusing and canceling visas for anyone
Speaker 2: who seeks to incite discord in Australia and that he
Speaker 2: condemned quote any indication of support for a terrorist organization.
Speaker 1: And the Australian Federal Police have also responded since the protests,
Speaker 1: They've said that they can't arrest someone for displaying images
Speaker 1: associated with an extremist group, so the legislation doesn't exist
Speaker 1: there yet. No doubt we'll see more conversation around this
Speaker 1: over the weeks to come. Zara, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for breaking that one down for us today. An incredibly
Speaker 1: complex story and one that no doubt will continue to develop,
Speaker 1: and we will keep you up to date here on
Speaker 1: The Daily Os.
Speaker 2: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 2: Bunjelung Calcotin woman from Gadigl Country. The Daily Os acknowledges
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Speaker 2: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 2: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 2: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.