By Chris Menahan – Information Liberation
The UK paper The Telegraph, citing exclusively anonymous sources, ran an article on Sunday with no named author claiming Hezbollah is “storing missiles and explosives at Lebanon’s main airport.”
“Hezbollah stores missiles and explosives at Lebanon’s main airport, whistleblowers claim,” The Telegraph headline stated along with the subheader, “Exclusive: Terrorists pass through ‘bribed’ customs officers unchallenged with large amounts of Iranian weaponry.”
The report reads like pure propaganda and Israel swiftly shared the report on their official X account to provide a pretext for blowing the airport up.
From The Telegraph:
Hezbollah is storing huge quantities of Iranian weapons, missiles, and explosives in Beirut’s main civilian airport, according to airport whistleblowers.
[…] In a city that has been battered economically since 2019, the whistleblower claims workers collaborating with Hezbollah “walk around like peacocks” with new watches and smartphones, and drive new cars. “A lot of money [is] being passed under the table,” he added.In a statement, the IDF said: “Hezbollah’s strategy to hide weapons and operate from civilian neighbourhoods stems from its intentions to draw the IDF to target these civilian areas in times of escalation.
“If Hezbollah were to target Israeli civilians from these sites, the IDF would have no choice but to react, potentially placing Lebanese civilians in harm’s way, causing international outrage toward the IDF.”
The Air Transport Union in Lebanon denied the accusations in a statement shared by Al Mayadeen.
From Al Mayadeen, “Lebanon denies Telegraph claims, invites officials for airport tour”:
The Air Transport Union in Lebanon (UTA) denied in a statement The Telegraph’s report in which it claimed that “Hezbollah stores missiles and explosives at Lebanon’s main airport,” saying that these clams were made without any proof offered.
The UTA called The Telegraph’s unfounded claims “mere illusions and lies aimed at endangering Beirut Airport and its civilian workers, as well as travelers to and from it, all of whom are civilians.”
Moreover, the Air Transport Union held the media outlet, as well as “those who report on it and spread its falsehoods” responsible for the safety of those who work at Beirut Airport in all its facilities “including the passenger terminal, departure and arrival, the apron, maintenance, and civil air cargo.”
Additionally, in its statement, it called on all Lebanese, Arab, and foreign media outlets to come to Beirut Airport “with their camera crews and verify for themselves, otherwise, we consider what is being promoted by suspicious media outlets as incitement to kill us.”
[…] Additionally, the caretaker minister called on all media outlets and all ambassadors or their representatives to visit the airport tomorrow at 10:30 am for a tour of all airport facilities to make sure that the airport is strictly a civilian infrastructure and that no weapons are being smuggled through it.“We have nothing to hide,” he maintained.
As a reminder, when the Russia-Ukraine war kicked off in 2022, The Telegraph ran an atrocity propaganda tale claiming Russia was using “mobile crematoriums” to “hide evidence of battlefield casualties.”
The report was pure propaganda put out by British intelligence. To this day, no evidence to back up their report has ever been produced.