PBS’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war was slanted, none more than the reporting from Lebanon by PBS’s credulous pro-Palestinian war correspondent Leila Molana-Allen.
She returned to Lebanon a year after the ceasefire that ended the official war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorists to report for PBS News Weekend Saturday, as Israel was targeting Hamas and Hezbollah members there. She cast doubt on Israel’s explanation for the bombings -- to root out Hamas training camps -- while using the anti-Israel United Nations and citizen talking heads to paint the whole of Lebanon as innocent victims.
Substitute host Ali Rogin: ….Just this week, Israel launched a series of strikes in Lebanon that killed at least a dozen people. The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas members….
Leila Molana-Allen: Dust, fire, death. This has become Lebanon's near daily story in a war that the world says has ended. On Tuesday evening, a sports center in southern Lebanon's Ain al Helwa Palestinian Refugee Camp was struck by three Israeli missiles. Thirteen people died in the strike. The IDF says it was a Hamas training compound.
Residents say the only people here were kids playing. More than 4,000 Lebanese have been killed by Israel's air and ground invasion. Many thousands more still bear its scars.
She should have been safe in her home. Instead, it nearly killed her. Late last year, as Israeli bombs ravaged Lebanon south, Ivana's family was packing up and preparing to flee their home village. They left it just moments too late. A missile hit, tearing their world apart. Muhammad clung to his baby daughter, just one year old, trying to shelter her body from the blast. It wasn't enough…..
Molana-Allen reported from Dahieh, a suburb of Beirut, while it was being hit with airstrikes, and regurgitated the operationally anti-semitic United Nations line accusing Israel.
Molana-Allen: U.N. peacekeeping report Israel has committed seven and a half thousand airspace violations and nearly two and a half thousand ground violations since the ceasefire deal was agreed. That's an average of 27 violations per day. And as you move south, the danger grows.
Constantly, Molana-Allen assumed Israel to be the deceitful party, as if it were just killing civilians for sport and not rooting out the group that along with Hamas attacked its country from October 7, 2023 onward.
Molana-Allen (voice-over): The bombing killed 73 people, including 23 children. Many had fled here from the south, believing the area was safe. The vast majority were civilians, more than half of them women and children. It was the biggest single mass casualty event of the war and the highest death toll of any Israeli strike on Lebanese territory for nearly two decades. The Israeli army says the building was a Hezbollah command center. In the rubble, we found women's pajamas and hairbrushes, children's toys and coloring books. The bitterest pill to swallow is the lack of accountability.
Ashraf Ramadan (through interpreter): There's no excuse to justify what they did to a civilian building that wasn't involved in any military action.
Viewers have only an unchallenged Lebanese talking head’s word for the promise that the building was not a site for terrorist action.
Molana-Allen ended her emotional clip, full of heart-rending images of injured children, with a heavy dose of personalized pathos PBS has never showed for Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism.
Molana-Allen: A grandmother in endless mourning, still living but barely alive. This silent conflict continues to claim its victims.
This segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS News Weekend
11/22/25
7:11:09 p.m. (ET)
Substitute host Ali Rogin: Next week marks one year since a ceasefire was agreed to end the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon. But ever since, tensions on the ground have been escalating. Just this week, Israel launched a series of strikes in Lebanon that killed at least a dozen people. The Israeli military said it was targeting Hamas members. Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen, who covered the war for PBS News, traveled back to Lebanon to bring us this report.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Dust, fire, death. This has become Lebanon's near daily story in a war that the world says has ended. On Tuesday evening, a sports center in southern Lebanon's Ain al Helwa Palestinian Refugee Camp was struck by three Israeli missiles. Thirteen people died in the strike. The IDF says it was a Hamas training compound. Residents say the only people here were kids playing.
More than 4,000 Lebanese have been killed by Israel's air and ground invasion. Many thousands more still bear its scars. She should have been safe in her home. Instead, it nearly killed her. Late last year, as Israeli bombs ravaged Lebanon south, Ivana's family was packing up and preparing to flee their home village. They left it just moments too late. A missile hit, tearing their world apart.
Muhammad clung to his baby daughter, just one year old, trying to shelter her body from the blast. It wasn't enough.
Mohammed Skaika, Ivana’s Father (through interpreter): Everything was exploding around me. There was shrapnel everywhere and the roof was falling apart. But I kept holding her.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Her mother, Fatima, saved her 7 year old sister Rahaf by throwing her from the balcony as their home was engulfed by flames, then jumped herself.
Fatima Zayoun, Ivana’s Mother (through interpreter): It's incredibly hard to see your daughter burnt in your arms. She had no eyelashes. When I reached the middle of the road, I fainted.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Ivana was rushed to hospital, but seeing her tiny, blackened body, Fatima couldn't believe she would survive.
Fatima Zayoun (through interpreter): I ran into the hospital asking about my daughter. They told me there's a little girl inside and I can check if she's mine or not. She didn't look like her at all. But as I was leaving, she cried. I heard her voice in my ears and said, yes, it is Ivana. I had goosebumps all over my body.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Ivana lived, but nearly half her body was covered in third degree burns. She spent months in and out of hospital enduring multiple painful surgeries.
Mohammed Skaika (through interpreter): They suffered so much and so did we. They were moaning in pain constantly.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Today, Ivana is a shy but light, lively 2-year-old, full of giggles and curiosity. She doesn't know she looks different. Her favorite games are playing makeover and painting nails. But she has a long road ahead and needs many more surgeries. Rahaf hasn't been to school in a year. Displaced with no income, the family gets by barely on donations. They desperately miss their home in the south. But the fear of returning is too great. Even in relative safety here, north of Beirut, the trauma follows them.
Mohammed Skaika (through interpreter): When we hear planes, they scream and come running to me. They haven't forgotten what they've been through.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): The war is not over for those who lived through it, and for many, the danger is still all too real. A ceasefire deal was signed late last year. More than 100 Lebanese civilians have been killed since the official end of the war. And many here say the idea they're now safe is simply an illusion. The war displaced at least 1.2 million people, a quarter of Lebanon's population. In the capital, the hardest hit area was Beirut's Hezbollah governed southern suburbs.
We're here on the edge of Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut that are now being hit by waves of airstrikes all hours of the day and night. Just behind me you can see a black plume of smoke rising from the high rise building that's just been hit. Another strike just hit directly behind me and it's starting to catch fire now. There are these plumes of smoke all over these neighborhoods of Beirut where tens of thousands of people.
Displaced families were packed into schools like these. A stone's throw from the falling bombs.
Woman (through interpreter): We can hear the sound of the Israeli drones circling above us constantly.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Up to two dozen piled into a room and hundreds sharing a single bathroom. And they were the lucky ones. Others, including families with small children, resorted to living on the streets. Mirna's home in Dahieh was flattened shortly after they fled. After the ceasefire, they came back and found this damaged but still standing apartment to rent. With houses in short supply in this destroyed neighborhood, rent prices have more than doubled.
They don't have any running water after an airstrike destroyed the building's water tank and rarely have electricity. Worst of all, Mirna is living just yards from the ruins of her former home. The view from her balcony haunts her daily.
Mirna Hijazi, Dahieh Resident (through interpreter): The war has taken so many memories from us. I cry a lot when I remember my house. It's my home, my past. It's agony for me to lose everything.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Surrounded by the echoes of war, healing is a distant dream. And with the bombing ongoing, Mirna says the so called ceasefire is little more than empty words.
Mirna Hijazi (through interpreter): I'm always prepared. I have an emergency bag just in case I have to flee at any time. Even after the ceasefire, they targeted a family nearby. And when we heard the sound, we thought it was our house. You're always in constant fear, knowing you may die any minute.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): U.N. peacekeeping report Israel has committed seven and a half thousand airspace violations and nearly two and a half thousand ground violations since the ceasefire deal was agreed. That's an average of 27 violations per day. And as you move south, the danger grows.
Leila Molana-Allen: During the war, this road was completely deserted after the Israeli military said it might strike any car moving south.
We met Ashraf last year, distraught and still in shock after losing his younger sister Julia in an Israeli airstrike.
You still send her text messages.
Man: Yes.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Israeli forces sometimes send out warnings about areas they're about to hit. Not this time. The strike on their home in Ain ad-Delb came out of the blue, bringing the entire residential building crashing to the ground. Ashraf and Julia lived on the top floor.
There's nothing here left to remember her by except the rubble of their home, under which Ashraf lay trapped for hours awaiting rescue. And Julia and her mother died.
Ashraf Ramadan, Julia’s Brother (through interpreter): Every joy feels lacking without them. My mom and I used to argue a lot, but now. I wish I could just have one argument with her. I just want her back.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): The bombing killed 73 people, including 23 children. Many had fled here from the south, believing the area was safe. The vast majority were civilians, more than half of them women and children. It was the biggest single mass casualty event of the war and the highest death toll of any Israeli strike on Lebanese territory for nearly two decades. The Israeli army says the building was a Hezbollah command center. In the rubble, we found women's pajamas and hairbrushes, children's toys and coloring books. The bitterest pill to swallow is the lack of accountability.
Ashraf Ramadan (through interpreter): There's no excuse to justify what they did to a civilian building that wasn't involved in any military action.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): Ashraf has begun to rebuild the broken parts of his soul by investing all his energy in a charity named for his sister that helps families left homeless by the war. But their grandmother, Jamila, can find nothing to console her emptiness.
Woman (through interpreter): My life is no good without them. I haven't stopped crying in a year. It leaves a scar in your heart. It leaves your life meaningless. You can't act normally anymore. They stay in your mind. They never leave you. They never leave you.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): For her home is now little more than a tomb, a constant reminder of all she's lost.
Woman (through interpreter): I miss having everyone together, my sons, daughters and grandchildren. We were so happy back then. I keep thinking about Julia. I wanted to see her get married and be proud of her. So did her mom. But none of that happened. And she never got the chance to see it.
Leila Molana-Allen (voice-over): A grandmother in endless mourning, still living but barely alive. This silent conflict continues to claim its victims. For PBS News Weekend, I'm Leila Molana-Allen in Ain ad-Delb, South Lebanon.
