On Tuesday’s PBS News Hour, the network’s Middle East-based “special correspondent” Simona Foltyn, who has a virulently anti-Israel X feed and a journalistic history to match (including reporting for Qatar-regime mouthpiece Al Jazeera English) reliably boosted a reliably blame-Israel, pro-Hezbollah perspective. Israel’s reasonable motivations for its strikes over Beirut -- to push back the terror group Hezbollah from the border – are inevitably treated with scorn in Foltyn’s hands in a report from Tyre, near the border with Israel.
Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: On Easter Sunday, Israel carried out a fresh wave of airstrikes on Lebanon's capital, Beirut. At least 11 people were killed across the country that day, with dozens more injured. Israel says it's targeting the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. The total death toll in Lebanon has reportedly now exceeded 1,500….
Simona Foltyn: Sixty-three-year-old Mirvat Arnaout is living Through Israel's fifth war with Lebanon, but this is the closest it has felt to home.
The report seethed with barely repressed disdain for Israel's side of the story.
Foltyn: In a statement to the News Hour, the IDF said it was targeting a Hezbollah weapons storage facility. But this was a residential building. Mirvat knows the two families who live there and says neither had links with the Shia militant group….Tyre is a historic coastal city founded by the Phoenicians almost 5,000 years ago, its ancient ruins designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But now the tourist destination has earned a more sinister distinction. It's among dozens of towns and villages in Southern Lebanon placed under forced evacuation orders by the Israeli army, which has told residents to flee. Mirvat and her sister have decided to stay.
Arnaout (through interpreter): We were raised here. We have aged here. Our house and our land is here entire. Lebanon is our country. And now they want to occupy us?
Foltyn: That occupation has already begun. IDF ground troops have advanced around five miles into Lebanese territory and have taken hills just south of Tyre, battling with Hezbollah fighters who are trying to slow their advance. Last week, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said the IDF will occupy Lebanon up to the Litani, a river that runs around 20 miles north of its border.
She blatantly rebutted Israel's position herself, not even relying on the usual tactic of using a sympathetic source.
Foltyn: ….As part of these plans to occupy the south, Israel has destroyed at least seven bridges spanning the Litani....Now, Israel claims that the destruction of bridges like these serve to prevent Hezbollah fighters and weapons from reaching the border. But, in reality, what it has done is to isolate the south and impede the movement of civilians. Only one bridge is left to connect Tyre to the rest of the country. The town's deputy mayor, Alwan Sharafeddine is preparing for the worst.
"Israel claims that the destruction of bridges like these serve to prevent Hezbollah fighters and weapons from reaching the border. But, in reality, what it has done is to isolate the south and impede the movement of civilians." pic.twitter.com/VDXrYGWDsG
— Clay Waters (@claywaters44) April 9, 2026
Bennett also interviewed Foltyn for Wednesday’s News Hour, and he drew out more of Foltyn’s ideologically motivated cynicism regarding Israel’s defensive intentions.
Foltyn: ….The IDF says it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and fighters, which it said had moved outside of Hezbollah's typical areas of control. But what we have really seen are horrific scenes of people, including children, being pulled from the rubble of a residential building, grocery stores, shops, pharmacies and bakeries….
She also voiced encouraging words for Hezbollah.
Foltyn: ….Let's remember that the IDF has never been able to defeat Hezbollah militarily in the previous wars and occupations. Now, on top of that, the IDF appears to have broadened its targets to include Hezbollah's political, financial, as well as media institutions, institutions that are considered legal here in Lebanon and the attacks on which international rights groups have called war crimes….
