By Wyatt Reed<\/p>\n\n\n\n The occupying Israeli army targeted a prominent Lebanese journalist when they pillaged and demolished his painstakingly-constructed family home located outside Israel\u2019s so-called \u201cbuffer zone\u201d in southern Lebanon. Was it retaliation for his widely-viewed documentary on Israel\u2019s notorious pager attacks?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cThe Trap.\u201d The film<\/a> exposes<\/a> the surreptitious network and planning behind Israel\u2019s notorious pager attack, which left hundreds of Lebanese citizens wounded and maimed, and has become one of the channel\u2019s most-watched in recent history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel\u2019s 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<\/a> declaring that it \u201cstrongly condemns the Israeli military\u2019s demolition of journalist Radwan Mortada\u2019s 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\u2019s work, marking another dangerous violation of international law and disregard for the press.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking to The Grayzone, Mortada recalled how he learned that Israel\u2019s military forces destroyed the estate he and his family had painstakingly constructed over almost a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pillaged and burned<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2060The 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\u201d to the building as well, Mortada recounted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, \u201cat around 4 am on Saturday, they blew it up. I woke up to phone calls from neighbors in the village telling me, \u2018The Israelis have blown up your house.\u2019\u201d Cell phone photos and footage confirmed the distressing news, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy village, Aita al-Jabal, is not under Israeli occupation, and my house is not within the so-called yellow line,\u201d 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, \u201ca purely residential area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost importantly, the house was not destroyed by an airstrike or during any military confrontation,\u201d he continues. \u201cIsraeli soldiers physically entered the property, planted explosives inside the house, and deliberately blew it up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Mortada acknowledges he has no \u201cconcrete evidence\u201d that Israel destroyed his family home in retaliation for the success of his documentary, he tells The Grayzone, \u201cI do have suspicions, mainly because of the way the house was destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat makes this particularly suspicious is that my house is not in an Israeli-occupied area, nor is it within the so-called yellow line,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is nowhere near a frontline or an active combat zone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He lamented, \u201cIsraeli hatred and vindictiveness seem to know no bounds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mortada\u2019s home in Aita al-Jabal was located approximately 4 kilometers outside of the so-called \u201cYellow Line,\u201d a supposed buffer zone Israel unilaterally declared in Lebanese territory which it claims to be clearing of Hezbollah. If Israel\u2019s soldiers didn\u2019t simply rob and demolish the estate out of spite, it could signal an expansion of the areas Israel is targeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. \u201cIsraeli soldiers launched a stun grenade at him to force him and his family to leave the property.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The grenade \u201cwas 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,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a familiar feeling for hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians who\u2019ve been forced to flee the region. Meanwhile, senior Israeli officials have spent months openly boasting of their efforts to destroy every Lebanese home<\/a> south of the Litani River, and compare the campaign favorably to their systematic annihilation of Gaza. \u201cAll houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in \u200baccordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza,\u201d Israeli defense minister Israel Katz declared in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In August, Katz deemed his mass displacement project \u2013 dubbed \u201cOperation Silver Plow\u201d \u2013 a success, crowing<\/a> that residents of 24 villages in southern Lebanon now \u201chave nowhere to return to; everything there has been destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, the boasts have grown even bolder. With blue-and-white flags continuing to appear throughout swathes of occupied southern Lebanon, Israel\u2019s leaders have eagerly provided live commentary of the slow-motion genocide. As an adoring audience cheered inside Israel\u2019s Channel 14 studios on October 17, 2026, Katz declared<\/a> that the number of villages annihilated by his forces had grown to 60. \u201cEvery single village \u2014 we\u2019re talking about 23,000 homes \u2014 is in ruins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Mortada, Israel\u2019s aggression speaks for itself. \u201c\u2060I believe Israel is undoubtedly carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon,\u201d he says. \u201cThe objective, in my view, is clear: to prevent the people of southern Lebanon from returning to their villages and their land.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the past, \u201cIsrael 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPerhaps, ultimately, this is also part of a broader ambition to realize the ideological vision of a so-called \u2018Greater Israel,\u2019\u201d Mortada adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018More than a home\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis house was much more than a home to us. It was a place where three generations of our family\u2019s memories came together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Mortada\u2019s father, Nizar, returned to Lebanon after two decades spent working in Libya, \u201chis 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With his golden years approaching, Mortada\u2019s father expressed a desire to build his home beside those same trees. \u201cFor him, it was a way of returning to his childhood, his roots, and the memory of his own father,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mortada explained that the home also \u201ccarries the memory of my brother Ali,\u201d who died in 2016 at age 29. Ali suffered medical malpractice after having contracted a bacterial infection during Beirut\u2019s garbage crisis, a tragedy which Mortada says \u201creflected the corruption and failure of Lebanon\u2019s political system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. \u201cUntil then, my siblings, Jawad and Nada, and I had never felt such a deep connection to the village,\u201d Mortada said. \u201cLosing Ali changed that. We wanted to be close to him, and building the house became our way of keeping that connection alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The family broke ground on the house in March 2016, shortly after his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having \u201calways loved traditional Lebanese architecture,\u201d Mortada wanted the house to preserve as much as possible of the country\u2019s rapidly-disappearing aesthetic traditions. \u201cAt a time when beautiful old houses were being demolished to make way for concrete buildings, we did the opposite,\u201d he says. \u201cWe collected stones and architectural elements from ruined heritage homes and used them to create something beautiful again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The family spent nearly eight years working on it, carefully considering every detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI approached the process as though I were painting a picture,\u201d Mortada recalls. \u201cIt was a labor of love, and we poured so much of ourselves into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His wife, Nahod, recalled her husband\u2019s excitement in a social media post explaining the significance of the home that Israel demolished later that day: \u201cWhen 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. \u201cWhen you give birth, the house will be finished,\u201d he said with an enthusiasm I had never heard before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe 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 \u201cso my children can experience village life.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor 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,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compounding the pain of the loss of the family home, Mortada says, is \u201cthe feeling of abandonment\u201d by the country\u2019s leaders, who were imposed<\/a> on Lebanon\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/image-35.png\")
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