MY INTERVIEW with Steve Sweeney was delayed because of the intermittent power supply available in Lebanon, where my former colleague at the Morning Star is now based.

It was also delayed because, Sweeney messaged me, he needed to check whether the noise he had just heard was an Israeli war plane coming in for another attack on him personally or his community more generally, or just a roll of thunder.

But Sweeney, now a broadcast journalist with Russia Today, is not, as he rightly reminded me throughout our conversation, the story.

Journalists never want to be the story. Our job is to tell people what is happening.

But trying to tell of the deliberate ethnic cleansing by the Israelis of one million people from southern Lebanon has dropped Sweeney right into the middle of the story.

The attack by Israeli forces on Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida last week as they were reporting from the remnants of the al-Qasmiyeh Bridge in Lebanon’s Tyre region, dressed in their clearly marked “Press” protective vests, was clearly no accident.

But Sweeney says this was far from the first time he has been targeted by the Israelis — so much so that he and Rida often joke that they have “nine lives.”

“We have been shot at multiple times by the Israelis. We have had sniper lasers trained on our chests.

“We have had bullets whizzing past our heads. Not warning shots you could feel passing close to your face.”

The Israeli forces always respond to these accusations by saying that they don’t target journalists.

But Sweeney tells me that he and Rida are always clearly identified as journalists.

“We always wear press-marked protective vests. The car we drive around in is also clearly identified as ‘press’ written in huge letters across the top.

“What people need to know as well is that the Israelis have the most advanced surveillance technology in the world. They know every single movement in and out of southern Lebanon.

“They are listening to our conversations. They are reading our messages. They know full well who we are. They know where we are. They know everything.”

Sweeney adds that “the interesting thing about the markings is that it should be a good thing to wear the press marking to make you easily identifiable as press.

“But with the Israelis we are not so sure because we believe it actually puts a target on your back.”

The Israelis claim they had given ample warning to the Lebanese that they intended to attack the al-Qasmiyeh Bridge at the time Sweeney and Rida were going to be filming.

But Sweeney says that “this wasn’t a particularly major bridge. It simply interlinks the villages across the Litani River. In any case the Israelis had been there days before and had pretty much destroyed the bridge, as you can clearly see in the footage we shot from the scene.

“In any case we didn’t just turn up to the bridge. We asked permission from a Lebanese military checkpoint at the bridge whether it was safe to film.

“They told us no problem and that it was important to tell the story about what was happening.

“For us this was a big story because destroying the bridges over the Litani river is about the Israelis severing the south of Lebanon from the rest of the country.”

“This is the real story,” he tells me. This is about the ethnic cleansing of one million people.

“One million people have been forced by the Israelis to flee the country. This is an ethnic cleansing operation on a much larger scale than even the Nakba. That’s the story we were trying to get across that day.”

What happened on the bridge that day “is also a side note to the fact that the Israelis are getting their arses handed to them on a plate here in Lebanon.”

Sweeney says that the story not being told is that Hezbollah launched 54 military operations against the Israelis and are striking deeper into Israel and are hitting key strategic targets including the destruction of something like 30 Merkava tanks since March 2.

“The fact is on the battlefield Israel is making no progress whatsoever,” he says.

The footage of the attack has gone viral on social media. In a message we managed to exchange soon after his release from hospital after the attack, Sweeney told me: “I thought I was dead.”

“I heard something just in time and managed to dive out of the way. It was just a split-second reaction.

“It was only in the aftermath that we realised that we had captured everything that had happened on camera.”

It was the very young Lebanese soldiers at the checkpoints who came to the assistance of the two journalists and applied emergency treatment until the paramedics could arrive to take them to hospital.

Paramedics and other emergency workers also routinely come under fire from the Israelis.

He says: “There have been more than 30 paramedics killed since the beginning of March even though they were clearly identified as emergency workers.

He adds: “These incredibly brave emergency workers fully expected to die but decided to stay and help people.

“But the people of Lebanon are used to this kind of thing. I know you shouldn’t have to get used to this type of thing but they are.”

The collective punishment meted out by the Israelis is just normal. He gives the example of what happened to the home his wife grew up in.

“The beautiful garden full of fig trees, olive trees, lemon trees built up decades by my wife’s family was levelled by an Israeli tank,” for no other reason than they could and so did.

“They also destroyed the home she grew up in. Bullet holes everywhere.”

The reaction to last week’s incident was strong from RT and the Russian government. The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova described it as “a deliberate attack,” and the ministry summoned the Israeli ambassador in for a full dressing down.

But the reaction of the British government, according to Sweeney, “was pathetic,” with just an anodyne comment to press enquiries that Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had made in Parliament about the fighting in the Middle East.

“I didn’t expect them to say anything. I am still under investigation by the government who, when I last tried to come to Britain, seized all my equipment, quizzed me about being a communist, took DNA swabs etc. I have been forced into exile from my own country.”

“What we also know,” he says, “is the British are providing much of the military intelligence that allows the Israelis to carry out their attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.

“I hold the British government responsible for the attack that took place against me.

“They are the ones that are backing Israel to the hilt. They must be held accountable not just for what happened to me but also the massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

“I believe they are actively involved in an assassination attempt against a British journalist.”

He adds: “If I find that any British component was used in that missile used against me on the bridge, I am going to sue the British government. I will sue them for this attempt on my life.”