Michael Young (@BeirutCalling) / X

Michael Young

23.4K posts

Michael Young

@BeirutCalling

Senior editor, Carnegie Middle East Center. Author of The Ghosts of Martyrs Square: An Eyewitness Account of Lebanon's Life Struggle (Simon & Schuster 2010).

Beirut

beirutcalling.substack.com

Joined January 2011

Pinned
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Jan 12
In 1984, I shot a militiaman. Story at the Lebanese Without Frontiers substack, to which I highly recommend you subscribe. It's full of fascinating material aimed at creating a collective Lebanese memory through personal recollection (and it's free): lebanesewithoutfrontiers.substack.com/p/how-i-shot-a…
43K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Jan 5, 2024
Absolutely. A shameful interview and interviewer @JuliaHB1. Covering her ineptitude by an ad hominem suggestion that Barghouti, an Arab, cannot deal with the fact she's a woman. Most anchors would be fired for such a train wreck.
Jean Riachi
@riachi_jean
Jan 5, 2024
« Maybe you are not used to a woman speaking » A filthy racist statement from a hysterical incompetent and disgraceful journalist @JuliaHB1 @TalkTV
Talk
00:00
Talk
134K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Oct 3, 2024
The notion that Israel is now engaged in targeted attacks against the southern suburbs of Beirut is a joke. It is now pursuing the systematic destruction of Shia-majority quarters—the so-called Dahiyeh Doctrine—to exacerbate a humanitarian crisis for Hezbollah, and for Lebanon.
171K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Oct 16, 2024
Israeli forces in South Lebanon dynamiting an entire village (Mhaibib). Like the attack against the Nabatiyyeh municipality building today, killing several members of the municipal council, it shows Israel is in the process of depopulating parts of the south, with U.S. approval.
00:00
314K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Sep 27, 2024
Throughout the present bombings of the southern suburbs, the silence of Hezbollah is deafening. No statements, no recommendations to targeted neighborhoods, no comments on the assassination attempt against Hassan Nasrallah, nothing. This speaks (or rather doesn’t) volumes.
586K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Sep 30, 2024
Recall that Israel’s incursion in 1982 was also billed as a limited incursion. But as Sharon understood, there will always be someone shooting at you from the next hill, so self-defense mandates taking that hill…until they reached Beirut.
522K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Aug 15, 2021
Pretty devastating piece by @LizSly on how U.S. allies are appalled at the rout in Afghanistan and the absence of U.S. consultations with them, as well as the growing doubts about U.S. credibility with regard to its allies:
Afghanistan’s collapse leaves allies questioning U.S. resolve on other fronts
From washingtonpost.com
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Dec 5, 2024
In the end, the Axis of Resistance was an Axis of Misery, and now the pieces are falling one by one, because Iran failed to understand that it was building a network of alliances on fragile, impoverished societies, only there to serve as cannon fodder for Iran. Rather remarkable.
156K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Jun 15, 2025
The impression on Sunday morning is that this Israeli attack on Iran is very far from being decisive and is now morphing in multiple directions (mutual bombings, threats of assassination of most senior leaders, attacks against economic infrastructure, etc.), making clear-cut
76K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Oct 26, 2023
What seems to be happening (I could be wrong) is that the U.S. is slow walking Israel away from a full Gaza invasion, because they don't feel it will work, its objectives are unclear, civilian deaths will turn opinion against the U.S. and Israel, and it may spur a regional war.
175K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Oct 8, 2024
Israel sought to use the Gaza war to discredit UNRWA, and now appears to want to do the same to UNIFIL. Israel wants to dismantle any UN body or force that does not serve its purposes, with the help of its political allies and mouthpieces in the United States.
Alex Tiffin
@RespectIsVital
Oct 7, 2024
The IDF has set up a Foward Operating Base (FOB) right outside UNIFIL outpost 6-52 in Southern Lebanon, currently manned by Irish Peacekeepers. The UN has protested FOB, saying it endangers UNIFIL troops. Hezbollah has told Irish Defence Forces they will not fire on the area
78K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Jan 8, 2025
Neemat Frem announces his support for Joseph Aoun. The deal is done, as more MPs back him. And the PM in all likelihood, as Hochstein made quite clear, will be Fouad Makhzoumi.
Le député Neemat Frem annonce qu'il soutiendra la candidature de Joseph Aoun à la présidentielle
From lorientlejour.com
24K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Sep 23, 2024
There is much talk of Israel wanting an all-out war in Lebanon. In fact, what we're seeing today was long expected for when Israel redeployed its troops to the north. We're in an escalation to affect the outcome of negotiations, not to provoke an all-out war.1
160K
Michael Young
@BeirutCalling
Nov 16, 2023
So, after Israeli and U.S. officials told us that a Hamas command center was under Al-Shifa Hospital, suddenly that talking point has gone stone dead, after Israeli troops spent a day, in a “precise and targeted operation,” finding nothing. Admire the precision.
155K