BREAKING: Barrage of over 50 rockets from Lebanon targets Israel | LiveNOW from FOX

we know that at least four people have reportedly been injured in Israel after a barrage of more than 50 Rockets was fired from Lebanon targeting the area of naharia now the video that you're looking at was posted on social media by former Israeli government spokesman Alon Levy and it shows some of those rocket interceptions overhead we've seen a lot of similar scenes over the past several months now this of course comes as Sirens are sounding across Israel almost daily amid the rocket fire from the Hezbollah terror group over in Lebanon those barges getting larger and

even more intense and we learned earlier this week that Israel had killed hezbollah's next leader in a strike just days after the killing of hesan nzala the head there of Hezbollah and just last week Israel did eliminate Yahya sinir the leader of Hamas but there are still questions there about who will lead the terror group Next obviously a lot of different topics to discuss this morning so I do want to bring in a friend of the show John straon an ameritus professor in the Department of Law Justice and policing at University of East London thank

you so much as always for taking the time to be here with us today good morning Josh good morning well first off I do want to ask you about this barrage of rockets because it does seem like this now is a daily occurrence regardless of whether it is a Jewish holiday there in Israel you see these barrage of dozens of rockets fired by Hezbollah well this is a significant Day in Israel because it's in the Hebrew calendar it's the anniversary of what was the October the 7th massacre in the um in our in the common

calendar so that's a very important event look on the whole we've had about just over 200 Rockets a day being fired um at Israel uh even since the assassination of hisbah Hassan nazala um and the and definitely the organization has been degraded but the this 200 seems a great deal but it's not exactly what the um Israeli intelligence and Military thought would be taking place they imagined that there would be an attempt to what they called a swarm attack perhaps several thousand rockets at once uh in order to try to overcome the Israeli uh air

defenses and missile defenses so in fact it's been quite significant that that this has not happened so I think we have to say that that's um uh that this looks extremely serious but it's not quite what the Israeli intelligence and Military are prepared for so for us it looks a terrible result and of course it's terrible for the injured Israelis but it's not quite the disaster which many had predicted and I do want to pop up this image that we do have coming in from the Israel Defense Forces as well as we talk about some

of the findings there in Lebanon because the IDF does say that uh they were releasing photos here showing these grenade launchers shoulder fired missiles RPGs other weapons that uh the military does say were found inside of a mosque in a civilian neighborhood there in southern Lebanon what does that say to you as you look at the photos and and you hear that information because this is not the first time that we've seen weapons found in an area like a mosque this doesn't surprise me at all I think that hisbah is very much rooted amongst the

particularly the Shia population within the Shiite Villages within the southern Lebanon area undoubtedly they have become military encampments probably not the desires of the civilian population who live there at all but nonetheless that's what they' had to deal with and put up with and I suspect that they will uh will find that military caches of arms and other headquarters are in um uh houses flats uh schools and other institutions and definitely including mosques um so I think that hisbah has has has integrated itself of course it's part of the population and therefore it would see

this as being perfectly understandable but of course course it is a major breach of the laws of war which says that you cannot use uh civilian U buildings for the per for military purposes I wanted to ask what is your overall assessment of when you talk about Lebanon the people there and their thoughts on Hezbollah because we're talking about a terror group that has embedded itself inside of this area with civilians and and things of that nature so what are the overall thoughts on uh the Le people when it comes to Hezbollah well of course

Lebanese population is very split between different factions different religious communities the Shia population is probably about 40 to 45% of the population at the most there are also a large number of Christians particularly marinite Christians there are Sunni Muslims and there are ad Drew population so it is not the case that um there is one view of hisbah today the prime minister of Lebanon um najib MTI has actually said that he is prepared as part of a ceasefire deal to deploy 8,000 troops in the south of Lebanon to prevent hisbah from operating under that resolution

1701 which was passed at the end of the last Lebanon war in 2006 and at the same time quite interestingly president macron of France has announced a 100 million euro investment in Lebanon which obviously would go some way towards um helping that kind of deployment so I think the International Community has to step up to the plate because the key thing to marginalize hisbah is to build a strong Lebanese state which can act in the interest of all the people in Lebanon and that simply has not been the case over the past few years and

that's precisely why hisbah has become so powerful I want to pop up uh the images here as we talk a little bit more about the classified document leak because Fox News Now reporting via a senior us defense official that those classified documents that were leaked and posted at telegram were actually not Israel's specific plans for an attack on Iran but instead that the documents are descriptions of satellite images showing Israeli war planes that are preparing for a strike in practicing air refueling now the official does say there's no information in the documents about any Targets

or anything of that nature that could harm the plan so my question for you what do you take away from that information and that assessment there from Fox News well this looks like a a Department of Defense uh appraisal of what Israel's capacities are in any response to Iran or the likely response to Iran rather and I think that what one that's the weing thing what one really sees in these documents as you say there's no mention of targets and what you really see is the way in which the Israelis would launch an attack which

is not surfac to surface missiles but in fact the use of two uh air to surface missiles which would be launched from aircraft um which are the Rocks missile and also the golden horizon missile and we did not know until these documents were published that Israel had the second the golden horizon missile system which is very very accurate and we did not know precisely of course how Israel was thinking of attacking Iranian targets so what it appears to be that the Israelis want to do this from the air which gives them two things much more

flexibility and also of course uh a greater degree of surprise and actually with these um missiles greater accuracy but of course this is not a good thing to have warn the Iranians about because whatever the target is the Iranians now know that what they need to do is to upgrade their anti-missile systems would you have expected that weeks later we would have seen that attack on Iran from Israel already because of course that is in response to the uh 180 that barrage of ballistic missiles that was fired by Iran at Israel earlier this month so

do you think that we would have normally seen the attack the retaliatory attack by now or does this make sense to you it makes sense in this because what the Israelis have been doing in Lebanon is trying to degrade hisbah because as far as the Iranian military strategy is concerned hisbah was the front line one of the front lines they had so in any attack by Israel uh on Iran a serious attack um hisb was meant to use it strategic weapons against Israel which meant that there would not just a reply from Iran but also

from hisbah so I'm not surprised that the Israelis have been going after the arms caches they say they've destroyed 2/3 of them but we have to take that with a pinch of salt but that would still leave by the way 50,000 missiles left and also we don't quite know what missiles have been destroyed I do also want to ask you about reports that indicate the deputy chief of hamas's political Bureau arrived in Moscow to meet with Russian officials what is the relationship there between Hamas and and Russia overall are they are they allies well the

the don't forget the Russians have big interests in the Middle East they have a a naval base in Syria they have been armed wrestling um with over over what the future of Syria will be with the Iranians they quite quite like meddling in the Middle East they think it's strategically important for them and therefore I don't think they have any love for any islamist organization whatsoever because of course they have their own islamist Insurgency um out of originally CH and now more broadly speaking so I don't think they have a love for hisbah but what

they find it is a is a is a tactical convenience for them to be able to um have some influence and to continue to keep up the heat on the west basically by by making sure the Middle East is not as is not secure and is not calm so I think that's why they're doing that that's why they have those those kind of relationships all right John ston as always thank you so much for taking the time to join us and break down some of the latest developments there anything else you want to add really

about any of this before I let you go well you know of course we've been talking about a CA uh for a very long time in Gaza and now we actually do have quite interesting debate developments about a ceasefire in Lebanon it's quite clear that the Israelis feel they've done quite well in Lebanon because unlike in Gaza where they didn't have much intelligence in Lebanon they've had very good intelligence they think it's going much better it's certainly gone much better than 2006 all the predictions of a land incursion were going to be a disaster Amos

Hawkin the UN special Envoy to to Lebon was in the region this week and I think that what his discussions with um Nabi Berry the the Shia but not hisbah a speaker of the um Lebanese Parliament uh does actually begin to show that there the Israelis are preparing themselves uh for at least a separate deal to end the conflict in uh in Lebanon and that obviously would be a very good thing for everyone concerned all right John St and as always thank you so much for being here with us we really appreciate it have a

good rest of your day thank you byebye for now