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hassan nasrallah
'Not for Long,' Says Israeli Defense Minister After Hezbollah Names New Leader
"The road to your arrest and The Hague won't be long either, you genocidal war criminal," one observer retorted.
Oct 29, 2024
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday on social media that Hezbollah's pick of Naim Qassem to lead the Lebanon-based political and paramilitary group would be "temporary"—a remark seen by many as an assassination threat.
Hezbollah tapped Qassem, its longtime deputy chief, to lead the group following Israel's assassination of former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last month.
"Temporary appointment. Not for long," Gallant said on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, in response to Hezbollah's move.
The state of Israel's official Arabic X account said Qassem's "tenure in this position may be the shortest in the history of this terrorist organization if he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors."
"There is no solution in Lebanon except to dismantle this organization as a military force," the account added.
Since earlier this month, when Israeli forces launched a ground invasion accompanied by a massive ongoing bombing campaign against Lebanon, nearly 2,800 Lebanese have been killed and more than 12,700 others injured, the country's Ministry of Health said Tuesday. The ministry added that 82 Lebanese have been killed and another 180 injured over the past 24 hours alone.
Since shortly after October 7, 2023—when Hamas led the deadliest single attack on Israel in its history—Hezbollah has been launching rockets and other projectiles at Lebanon's southern neighbor, killing and wounding scores of Israelis.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands is currently
weighing whether to approve Prosecutor Karim Khan's application for warrants to arrest Gallant—who responded to the Hamas-led attack by ordering a "complete siege" of Gaza that has been blamed for the starvation and sickening of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians—and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Khan also sought ICC arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, at least two of whom have been assassinated by Israel.
Over 388 days, Israeli forces have killed at least 43,020 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. At least 101,100 others have been wounded. More than 10,000 Palestinians are also missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the ruins of Gaza. Almost everyone in the embattled Gaza Strip has been forcibly displaced, often multiple times.
Responding to Gallant's threat, Somali-Australian journalist Najat Abdi said on X that "the road to your arrest and The Hague won't be long either, you genocidal war criminal."
Gallant's remarks came amid reports that Israeli and Hezbollah negotiators are "in the advanced stages" of hammering out cease-fire agreement that would lead to Israeli troops withdrawing from Lebanon, where they have been suffering high casualties at the hands of Hezbollah fighters.
One important unanswered question is whether Hezbollah will accept a deal to end hostilities with Israel without a cease-fire in Gaza.
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Lebanon Foreign Minister Says Nasrallah Agreed to Cease-Fire Before IDF Assassination
One anti-war group called the minister's remarks "proof (if it was needed) that Netanyahu is hell-bent on initiating an all-out war in the Middle East."
Oct 03, 2024
Lebanon's foreign minister said in an interview aired Wednesday that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed to a three-week cease-fire proposal led by the U.S. just days before the Israeli military assassinated him with airstrikes on Beirut—an attack that also leveled residential buildings and killed or wounded dozens of civilians.
"He agreed," Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN's Christiane Amanpour of Nasrallah's position on the proposed cease-fire, which was also backed by France, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other nations.
"We agreed completely," Habib continued. "Lebanon agreed to a cease-fire but consulting with Hezbollah. The [Lebanese House] Speaker Mr. Nabih Berri consulted with Hezbollah and we informed the Americans and the French what happened."
Habib said that U.S. officials communicated to Lebanon that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also agreed to a cease-fire along the Israel-Lebanon border, seemingly setting the stage for a pause after roughly two weeks of devastating Israeli bombings and Hezbollah rocket fire.
But Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, including the country's foreign minister, proceeded to publicly reject the proposed cease-fire, undercutting the Biden administration even as it continued to arm the Israeli military. The 2,000-pound bomb used to kill Nasrallah was reportedly supplied by the United States.
The Israeli strike killed Nasrallah two days after the U.S. and allied nations issued a joint statement calling for "an immediate 21-day cease-fire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy."
The Associated Press reported at the time of the statement's release that "the U.S. officials said Hezbollah would not be a signatory to the new cease-fire proposal but believed the Lebanese government would coordinate its acceptance with the group."
"They said they expected Israel to 'welcome' the proposal," the AP added.
Watch the Lebanese foreign minister's full CNN appearance:
You can watch my full interview with Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib here -- we spoke a few hours before Iran's strikes on Israel on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/kNYt1WjQ17
— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 3, 2024
Stop the War, a U.K.-based peace group, called Habib's remarks "proof (if it was needed) that Netanyahu is hell-bent on initiating an all-out war in the Middle East to protect his precarious position and draw the U.S. into fighting alongside Israel."
In the days since assassinating Nasrallah, Israel's military has invaded Lebanon with ground forces and intensified its massively destructive and deadly bombing campaign. On Thursday, CBS News reported that "at least seven health and rescue workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Beirut overnight."
"The strike in Beirut's residential Bashoura district hit a multi-story apartment building that houses an office of the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders affiliated with Hezbollah," the outlet added. "It was the second airstrike to hit central Beirut this week, and the second to hit the Health Society in 24 hours. The Associated Press said no Israeli warning was issued to the area before the strike. Residents reported a sulfur-like smell, and Lebanon's state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using phosphorous bombs in the strike, which are prohibited by international law for use near civilian populations."
Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, the CEO of Mercy Corps, said in a statement Wednesday that "the expanded new front of war in Lebanon is already having a catastrophic impact on civilians as tens of thousands of families have been forced to flee their homes over the last week with what little they could carry."
"World leaders should be appalled that we have arrived at this apocalyptic level of chaos, conflict, and misery," said McKenna. "All those with influence and power must take urgent action: to deescalate and halt the unrelenting violence across the region; to do everything possible to achieve an immediate and lasting cease-fire; to release the hostages to their families; to restore life-sustaining services to Gaza; and to facilitate safe, sustained access to aid for millions trapped or on the move. Any hope for peace in the region depends on it."
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Israel Has Successfully Provoked Iran to Enter War
An interview with Lebanon expert Mireille Rebeiz, who says that "I would like to believe that Lebanon will not turn into a second Gaza," but now finds itself "in the middle of a major storm."
Oct 02, 2024
After nearly a year since the Hamas-led terror attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of close to 1200 people (roughly 800 civilians and nearly 400 security forces though some Israeli civilians and soldiers may have been killed by friendly fire as the controversial “Hannibal Directive” was deployed on that date, according to reported testimonies of soldiers and officers), Israel’s destruction of Gaza continues unabated.
Israel has rejected calls from the international community for a ceasefire/prisoner swap deal and blatantly ignored an International Court of Justice ruling not to engage in any military offensive in Rafah where the situation in the southern Gaza city was already “disastrous.” Now, however, after having killed more than 41,000 Palestinians (though the toll could reach up to 186,000 dead according to a study published in early July in the prestigious medical journal Lancet) and making Gaza practically unlivable, Netanyahu’s neo-fascist government that makes Europe’s right-wing extremists seem like little farceurs has turned its focus to Lebanon. A joint operation between the IDF and Mossad spread terror by exploding walkie-talkies and pagers that people in Lebanon used, killing many and severely wounding thousands, while the Israeli military carried out massive airstrikes across southern Lebanon that have already killed more than 1,000 people, including many children, and wounded thousands.
Airstrikes have killed scores of senior Hezbollah figures, including its long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah. But the airstrikes on Lebanon did not stop even after Nasrallah’s death despite calls for de-escalation, raising fears of a regional war between Israel and Iran. The Israeli military has even targeted central Beirut, and up to one million people may have been displaced. And as even further evidence that Israel is seeking to provoke a regional war, it launched a ground offensive in the south of Lebanon where heavy fighting is apparently taking place between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters. Indeed, Iran seems now to have been dragged into a regional war by launching a major missile attack on Israel.
What is Israel after in Lebanon? Has Nasrallah’s death altered the direction of the conflict? Are we on the brink of a full-blown war in the Middle East? In the interview that follows, Mireille Rebeiz, a Lebanon and Hezbollah expert tackles these and other related questions. Rebeiz is Chair of Middle East Studies and Associate Professor of Francophone Studies & Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dickinson College (Pennsylvania).
C. J. Polychroniou: Almost a year after launching its devastating attack on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice, scores of international human rights organizations and leading international law scholars and historians have called a genocide, Israel has turned its focus on Lebanon. It blew up communication devices that the armed group Hezbollah had ordered months before the explosions, killing dozens and wounding thousands, and the Israeli military launched a wave of deadly attacks on Lebanon’s capital, one of which struck Hezbollah’s headquarters killing its long-time leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel’s war objectives in the Gaza Strip are to wipe Hamas off the earth and make Gaza unlivable. What is Israel trying to accomplish with its attacks on Hezbollah and Lebanon?
Mireille Rebeiz: From Israel’s point of view, the on-going war on Lebanon falls under its right to self-defense against terrorism.
Last week, we saw a series of attacks on Hezbollah fighters including the explosions of pagers and other wireless devices and the assassinations of several leaders. Although Israel has not officially commented on the attacks, evidence suggests that it has been planning this action for some time now.
Escalation continued with the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and several other commanders. Israel dropped at least fifteen-times, American – manufactured, 2,000-pound bombs on south Beirut. Dubbed the “bunker busters” for their ability to pierce the ground before detonating, these bombs leveled several concrete buildings.
More recently, Israel started a ground invasion on south Lebanon and bombed Damascus by air.
The announced goals are clear: eliminate Hezbollah at all costs and send a message to Iran and Syria that Israel will no longer tolerate Iranian-backed militias in the region.
On the surface, one may look at these facts and consider that Israel is justified in its actions. However, international law tells a different story for Israel is piling violations of several rules and regulations related to armed conflicts. Furthermore, the war on terrorism is never innocent and always carries other motives.
Article 7 of Amended Protocol II on the Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices, to which Lebanon, Israel, and the United States are parties, explicitly bans these types of weapons and methods of warfare. Article 2(4) of Amended Protocol II defines “booby-trap” as “any device or material which is designed, constructed, or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act.”
Clearly, the pagers and other wireless devices have been tampered with to cause harm irrespective of its holder. As a result, at least 32 people, including two children were killed and thousands more were injured, and it is impossible to argue that every single person killed or injured is a Hezbollah fighter.
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions specifically states that persons not taking part in the hostilities and those placed “hors de combat” should not be targeted and shall be treated humanely. The wireless communication device explosions and the intense bombing of south Beirut cannot guarantee any protection to civilians and those unrelated to Hezbollah. Many civilians -- Lebanese citizens, Palestinians and Syrian refugees -- live in south Beirut for its affordable housing.
Beirut itself ranks as the 6th most expensive city in the Arab world, coming after Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Riyadh, and Jeddah. Globally, it ranks as the 113th most expensive city out of 178.
According to the World Bank 2023 report, inflation rate in Lebanon is in the triple-digit. There is serious decline in income as the Lebanese pound lost over 90% of its value. This led to the erosion of the middle class, and half of the population plunged under poverty line with unemployment nearing 30%.
Major events aggravated the financial crisis in Lebanon: the collapse of the infrastructure, the severe shortage of fuel, the pandemic that put a lot of stress on medical care, and finally the Beirut port explosion of 2020.
These factors pushed many Lebanese and others to rent apartments in south Beirut, and Israel cannot guarantee that every resident of this part of town is a Hezbollah fighter.
There is no doubt that these tactics imply a major escalation and a serious violation of international law. Former CIA director Leon Panetta labelled these attacks in Lebanon as terrorism: “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism.”
Since the United States of America is the one providing many of these weapons, there might be criminal implications under U.S Law as the violation of Article 7 (2) could amount to federal offense. This prompted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to quickly dissociate the US from the attacks and call for restraints. This comes at a time when the Biden Administration is under investigation for the export of billions of dollars in arms to Israel in assistance of a foreign government accused of committing gross human rights violations including blocking humanitarian aid.
Furthermore, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a strategy that goes beyond the Israel – Hezbollah war. His political survival is dependent on him staying in power.
Before the October 7 attacks, Netanyahu was on trial for corruption. After winning the election, he aligned himself with extremists, forming a far-right government, one that sought to transform Israel into an autocratic theocracy. For instance, his government proposed a contentious law to reduce minority rights, make it harder to file complaints against corruption, and legalize the annexation of the West Bank. His plans triggered massive protests around the country.
The October 7 attacks were heinous, and they provided Netanyahu with the perfect excuse that would allow him to stay in power: he shifted the narrative to Palestinian rights – including the right to self-determination – as an existential threat to all Jews, justifying thus the need for a long war in Gaza.
In other words, it is in Netanyahu’s interest to keep Israel in a permanent state of war. To do so, he must reject all diplomatic negotiations and place the blame of their failure on the other party.
At this point, Netanyahu is buying time to present the messianic radicals, on whom he relies on to stay in power, with concrete results, ones that would save his image and political career. His undeclared goals would be the annexation of Gaza, the West Bank, and possibly south Lebanon. The hostages are not among his primary concerns.
Under international law, annexation of territory is illegal. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) said Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal and ordered Israel to stop its illegal settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip. The United Nations even declared these settlements as “settler-colonialism.” Netanyahu’s response was that the ICJ’s decision is based on lies.
The occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights is equally illegal, and the on-going ground invasion in Lebanon is not only a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and an act of war, but also may be the excuse to occupy south Lebanon and annex it.
C. J. Polychroniou: Hezbollah emerged in Lebanon largely in response to the Israeli invasion of that country in 1982. It is an Iran-backed Shiite Islamist militant group and political party with lawmakers in the Lebanese parliament and is seen in fact as something like “a state within a state.” What does Hezbollah do in Lebanon and how much support does it have?
Mireille Rebeiz: Over time, Hezbollah’s popularity shifted inside Lebanon. Hezbollah itself was born in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon and imposed a brutal two-months siege on Beirut killing an estimated number of 17,000 to 19,000 people. While Israel retreated from Beirut, it kept south Lebanon under occupation till 2000. During this period, it illegally detained thousands of Lebanese resisting the occupation. Over 200 were detained and tortured in the Khiam Detention Center.
From 1982 till early 2000, many Lebanese supported Hezbollah and saw it as the guardian of Lebanon’s sovereignty and its liberator. The shift began in 2000 when Israel withdrew from the south. Many Lebanese started speaking up against Hezbollah’s armed presence in Lebanon, its alliance to the Syrian regime, and its commitment to Iranian ideology.
As a matter of fact, Hezbollah explicitly supported the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad despite the numerous reports of severe human rights violations in Syria. As to Iran, in its 1985 Manifesto, Hezbollah vowed its allegiance to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini and made explicit its wish to create an Islamic state in Lebanon.
And many paid a heavy price for speaking out. Former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005, and fingers pointed at Hezbollah and Syria. Many Lebanese journalists and political figures were also assassinated: a blast killed the anti-Syrian journalist, Samir Kassir. The former Communist party leader George Hawi and the journalist and lawmaker Gibran Tueni were also killed in car bombs.
This wave of killings sparked the Cedar Revolution, which clearly expressed the Lebanese’s opposition to Hezbollah and Syria.
In the past two decades, this opposition continued and took different forms.
In 2005, the anti-Hezbollah and anti-Syria bloc won the parliamentary elections.
In 2015, the environmental movement “You Stink” was born. It criticized the State’s inability to sustainably manage waste, and it opposed all political parties, including Hezbollah. In 2019, massive protests erupted all over the country under the slogan of “All Means All” to denounce the corrupt elites.
There is no doubt that Hezbollah operates as “a state within a state.” In light of the weakness of the State of Lebanon, Hezbollah offers its own healthcare, education system and other social services to the Shiite community. It functions inside and outside the governmental structure and unilaterally holds the decision for peace/war.
In 1992, Hezbollah participated in parliamentary elections and won several seats in the Parliament. In 2005, it entered the government. Alone, they were never a majority. However, their presence was strong enough to oppose any parliamentary or governmental decision that would go against their own interests.
C. J. Polychroniou: Nasrallah was being considered as something of a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. It is now quite conceivable that the next Hezbollah leadership might be more driven by revenge than Nasrallah was. At any rate, what does Nasrallah’s death mean for Hezbollah, Lebanon, and the Middle East? Will Iran become directly involved in the conflict?
Mireille Rebeiz: Nasrallah’s death is a definite blow to the group, and it did not take long for Iran to respond. In fact, Iran launched several missiles into Israel to avenge the killing of three of its top leaders: Hamas Chairman Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and Deputy Commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Abbas Nilforushan. Iran made it clear that this is a self-defense attack and that it will respond further should Israel attack Iran.
Ironically, Hezbollah started this war to support Hamas and the Palestinian cause. Now, the attention has completely shifted from Gaza and the West Bank to Iran, Israel, and the United States.
C. J. Polychroniou: Under president Joe Biden, US foreign policy in the Middle East has been a complete failure. Over the past several months, Biden has said on countless occasions that “we are closer than ever” to a Gaza ceasefire only to see Netanyahu turn Gaza into a graveyard. Biden called for a 21-day ceasefire along the Israel-Lebanon border only to see Netanyahu make him look again like a bumbling idiot. How do you explain the US-Israel relationship?
Mireille Rebeiz: The US is Israel’s closest and proudest ally. However, the failure of US foreign policy in the Middle East is in large part to blame for the recent events. At no point in the past two decades did the US lead any serious diplomatic dialogue on Israel – Palestine.
President Biden continues to support a far-right government in Israel irrespective of the consequences in the region and the major escalation we are witnessing. Many Americans are horrified by this support and the US’ potential complicity in atrocities in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s’ visit to the United Nations, his rejection of the 21-day cease-fire, and the immediate attacks that followed in Lebanon indicate a clear separation between what the US would like to see and what Israel wants.
Stephen Collinson speaks of a humiliating pattern indicating American impotency in curtailing Israel’s defiance, and the results are obvious: Gaza is leveled with over 41,000 civilians killed, of which 17,000 are children. Lebanon is under attack with a ground invasion in progress, and violence is escalating in the West Bank.
C. J. Polychroniou: Gaza is gone, and there are fears that Israel could turn Lebanon into a second Gaza. In your view, what does the future hold for Lebanon?
Mireille Rebeiz: So far, the rhetoric is that Israel will only bomb areas where Hezbollah fighters are located or areas suspected of storing Hezbollah’s weapons.
The level of destruction is massive, and the number of casualties is on the rise. I would like to believe that Lebanon will not turn into a second Gaza. However, the situation is fluid, and it depends on on-going diplomatic negotiations and the arrival of other actors on the scene such as the Houthis in Yemen or Kata’ib Hizballah in Iraq or even Iran.
In any case, I pray that Lebanon will be spared. Lebanon is in the middle of a major storm. As US-backed Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants are exchanging fires and settling debts, the Lebanese people are caught in the middle of the crossfire.
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Ultimately, Israel's Treatment of Its Neighbors Will Come Back to Haunt It
Netanyahu, more than anyone else, is persuading the Arab world that an Israel that behaves like this, does not belong to this region.
Oct 02, 2024
A ritual is performed every time Israel starts another war, before the white phosphorus rains down, before the fear and panic of people fleeing their homes, before the footage of stunned survivors sifting through the rubble of collapsed apartment blocks.
It’s called the cease-fire ritual—a public display of handwashing. It’s the charade of pretending that there are honest diplomats out there trying to search every avenue, stretch every sinew, to stop this bedlam from starting.
Much of it is choreographed. Other parts are improvised. But be sure about one thing: It is pantomime. It bears no relationship to reality.
Nothing can persuade its Arab neighbors that Israel cannot live with them in peace more than the course on which Israel is currently set—a course that targets and threatens Christians, Muslims, Shia, and Sunni alike.
Hours before Israel declared that its ground attack on Lebanon had begun, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot was vainly insisting in a media conference in Beirut that his proposed 21-day cease-fire was “still on the table.”
As he was doing so, the U.S., France’s co-sponsor, was briefing journalists that cease-fire talks had stopped. This position went through several iterations as the afternoon wore on, and the contradictions accumulated.
The U.S. simultaneously wanted a diplomatic solution, while describing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination as an “unalloyed good.” It claimed to have restrained Israel to a limited operation on the border, while also expressing anxiety about the humanitarian aspect of the operation. And it pledged to continue to work on de-escalating tensions while acknowledging that Israel was a sovereign country that made its own decisions.
If this charade sounds horribly familiar, that’s because it is.
Cut through the verbiage and the bottom line—as the Pentagonhas confirmed—is that the U.S. supports a ground invasion of Lebanon, and cease-fire plans can go hang.
Desire for Vengeance
The same happened in Gaza a year ago. Israel’s “right to defend itself” is shorthand for flattening every neighborhood unfortunate enough to live next to it.
This macabre dance serves a purpose: Virtually every media outlet in the Western world on Tuesday described the unfolding operation in Lebanon as “targeted” or “limited”—precise commando raids that go in and come back out—just as they did during the initial phase of the Gaza war.
“We do not expect it will look like 2006,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, Israeli diplomats and generals could not stop themselves from blurting out the truth. Mike Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said: “The American administration… did not limit us in time. They, too, understand that following Nasrallah’s assassination, there is a new situation in Lebanon and there is a chance for reshaping.”
A “reshaping” of Lebanon does not mean a targeted operation limited to the border. Nor was limitation in the thoughts of one Israeli army commander, who noted: “We have a great privilege to write history as we did in Gaza here in the north.”
Rage and hate speech have reached psychotic levels in Israel. The desire for vengeance directed against the people of Gaza has swiftly found a new target: the people of Lebanon.
Nir Dvori of Channel 12 News gloated that “Nasrallah died in torment” amid reports that the Hezbollah leader had suffocated. The head of the Shlomi town council welcomed the ground invasion, saying: “It is necessary to cleanse the area.”
Political commentator Ben Caspit dreamed of the “day after” such a cleansing operation, suggesting that even the grandmothers of any fighter in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force who crossed back over the Litani River should “die at that moment.”
Funny he should mention the Litani River, whose name has often been invoked as the upper limit of southern Lebanon that Israel wants to clear of Hezbollah rockets—because that, too, is turning into a myth. The military ambitions of this operation go far deeper into Lebanon.
Barely 12 hours after the U.S. State Department said it had limited Israel’s operation, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders to more than 20 towns and villages in southern Lebanon. “You must head immediately to the north of the al-Awali River,” near Sidon, army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X (formerly Twitter).
Redesigning the Middle East
This indicates that Israel has claimed as its area of military operations the whole of southern Lebanon, almost one-third of the country. In a stroke, Israel doubled its area of operations.
This is in line with the promise that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made in the hours after Hamas’ attack a year ago.
“We are going to change the Middle East,” Netanyahu told officials visiting Jerusalem from the country’s south, where Hamas had struck on 7 October 2023.
Jared Kushner, former U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and real estate investor who has apparently spent hours studying Hezbollah and considers himself an expert on the subject, wrote similarly on X: “September 27 [the date of Nasrallah’s killing] is the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough… Anyone who has been calling for a cease-fire in the North is wrong.
“There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. They will never get another chance.”
Netanyahu and his American backers will change the Middle East by invading Lebanon, that is for sure. But not quite in the way they imagine.
After leading the liberation of southern Lebanon after 18 years of occupation, and having led the battle against Israel in 2006, in Hezbollah’s eyes successfully, Nasrallah kept the northern border quiet for nearly two decades.
Under Nasrallah’s rule, Hezbollah was totally absorbed in another fight altogether: the civil war in Syria. This had many consequences. It downplayed the primacy of the struggle to liberate Palestine. And Hezbollah, as it grew in size and political importance, became easier for Israel’s Mossad to infiltrate.
Some of the major operations over the past month, such as the supply of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies, were years in the making. The exact locations of Hezbollah’s bunkers, and the movement of targets between them, were also the result of years of work and research.
Dramatic Contrast
None of what transpired to deliver a body blow to Hezbollah was unprepared, which is why it contrasts so dramatically with the difficulties Israel has experienced in attempting to decapitate Hamas in Gaza.
But Israel was also helped by Hezbollah and Iran’s “strategic patience,” or their lack of response to its mounting attacks on their commanders and leaders. Hezbollah never took revenge for the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the leader of its military wing. Nor did it reply in kind to the assassination of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri earlier this year in its heartland of Dahiyeh in Beirut.
The meekness of the response from Hezbollah and Iran only gave Israel the confidence to redouble its blows on Lebanon and Syria.
Every time this happened, both Hezbollah and Iran went out of their way to say they did not want to start a war with Israel; and that their campaign was in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza and would stop the moment a cease-fire was reached.
And when they did strike, it was generally, although not exclusively, on Israeli military targets. Hezbollah’s rockets and propaganda videos were demonstrative, designed to show its power, not to use it.
In hindsight, this strategy has proved to be a strategic mistake, for which Hezbollah is paying today—because it gave Israel the confidence to do what it is now doing to Lebanon.
Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah have outnumbered Hezbollah’s replies by five to one.
This is not just the miscalculation of those who are routinely dubbed hardliners in Lebanon and Iran. Reformist Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said he was lied to by the Americans, who promised a cease-fire in Gaza if Iran could restrain itself from replying to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination in Tehran.
It was the failure of Iran’s strategic restraint that led on Tuesday night to the bombardment of more than 180 missiles on targets across Israel. After the attack, Pezeshkian still maintained that Iran did not seek a war with Israel, but the policy of restraint has clearly been dumped. One can expect Hezbollah and all armed groups in Yemen and Iraq to be more active.
But an even bigger miscalculation is being made by Israel in its desire to strike while the iron is hot.
Untamed Aggression
Israel is reengineering the entire Middle East to hate it, while the Palestinian issue remains unresolved. It is reverse engineering a period of three decades, since the Oslo Accords, when the Palestinian conflict lost its supremacy and centrality in the Arab world.
Nothing is doing more than Israel’s untamed aggression to heal the deep divisions in the Arab world created by the counter-revolution to the Arab Spring.
When you drop 80 tonnes of explosives to kill Nasrallah and kill 300 others in doing so, you move him from being a symbol of resistance to a legend.
“The symbol is gone, the legend is born, and the resistance continues,” was how Lebanese politician Suleiman Frangieh, a scion of one of the country’s leading Maronite families, put it.
Ibrahim al-Amin, the editor of Al Akhbar, a newspaper close to Hezbollah, compared Nasrallah to Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who is regarded as the third imam in Shia Islam.
He wrote: “Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah did not imagine himself in the image of Hussain when he fell as a martyr. He is not in Hussain’s position when the world has let him down. Rather, he is in the image of Hussain who got up and fought in defence of a right that the cost of collecting is very high… [Nasrallah] has become an eternal symbol for every rebel in the face of injustice, and… he was martyred in defense of Jerusalem and Palestine.”
Nasrallah had a charismatic appeal as an orator to his Shia constituency and the pro-Palestinian masses in the Arab world, in the same way that former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had for the Arab nationalist movement in his time.
In death, Nasrallah promises to do that much.
Profound Consequences
Of course, this is not the view of the Arab elites who have spent so much of their careers cozying up to the U.S. and Israel. But even they have to acknowledge the passions coursing through their people.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman used Israel as a path to being taken seriously by Washington. But even he is brutally candid about his limits as a leader.
“Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” the 39-year-old ruler reportedly told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this year. “For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”
A Saudi official disputed this account of Mohammed bin Salman’s conversation with Blinken, but it bears the ring of truth.
Yes, the region is being redesigned by an Israel that has broken its leash.
Nothing can persuade its Arab neighbors that Israel cannot live with them in peace more than the course on which Israel is currently set—a course that targets and threatens Christians, Muslims, Shia, and Sunni alike.
Netanyahu, more than anyone else, is persuading them that an Israel that behaves like this, does not belong to this region.
This will have profound strategic consequences for the future. So is Nasrallah’s death truly an “unalloyed good” for the region?
Beware what you wish for, because it just may happen.
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On the Dangers of Israel's Assassination of Nasrallah
Israel has a history of decapitating Hezbollah, and the approach has not gone well for Israel.
Oct 01, 2024
The most immediate and visible consequences of Israel’s rapidly escalated assault in Lebanon are being felt in Lebanon itself.
As with Israel’s year-long devastation of the Gaza Strip, Israeli military operations are claiming many civilian lives. According to the Lebanese health ministry, more than 1,000 people, including at least 87 children, have been killed by those operations during the past two weeks. More than 90,000 people have been displaced from their homes.
The death toll sharply increased Friday with the Israeli attacks south of Beirut that killed Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Those attacks, on a densely populated neighborhood, flattened several residential buildings.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel’s fight is with Hezbollah, not Lebanon, but Lebanon is suffering from the fight. Even before the recent attacks, Lebanon was in a deep economic crisis. Its accompanying political crisis will not be made any better by attempting to disembowel an organization that is one of the Lebanon’s major political parties, which has ministers in government and lawmakers in the parliament, and has been a member of coalitions including Christians and others.
The Israeli assault, including the killing of Nasrallah, will not eliminate the ability, and certainly not the willingness, of elements within Lebanon to respond forcefully to Israel’s actions. Israel’s operations — like those against Hamas — are based on the false rationale that threats of violence against Israel originate with the malign nature of certain groups, and that the only appropriate response is thus to kill as many members, and preferably leaders, of those groups as it can.
The principal driver of anti-Israeli violence is anger over Israel’s own actions. This does not depend on the nature or even the existence of any specific group. As the long history of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians illustrates, if any one resistance group is beaten down or fades into irrelevance, the anger and desire to strike back will find other channels.
It should be recalled that Hezbollah’s establishment and rapid rise in strength in the early 1980s owed much to widespread anger over an earlier Israeli attack on Lebanon — a full-scale invasion in 1982 that, among other ugliness, featured the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Hezbollah won much popular support by presenting itself as the chief defender of the Lebanese against Israeli depredations.
Israel has a history of decapitating Hezbollah, and the approach has not gone well for Israel. In 1992, it used an attack by helicopter gunships to kill the secretary-general of Hezbollah at the time, Abbas al-Musawi. The most significant effect in Lebanon was to open the position for Nasrallah, who proved to be a more effective leader of the group than Musawi was.
Additional history relevant to the kind of violence likely to grow out of the current fighting includes two lethal bombings in Buenos Aires, each of which probably was a reprisal for Israeli attacks on Lebanese Shia interests back in the Middle East. In March 1992, a truck bomb with a suicide driver exploded at the front of the Israeli embassy, killing 29 and wounding 242. A claim of responsibility by the Islamic Jihad Organization — widely perceived to be a cover name for Hezbollah — stated that the attack was reprisal for the killing of Musawi the previous month.
In May 1994, Israeli commandoes kidnapped Lebanese Shia guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani, while at the same time raiding a Hezbollah camp in southern Lebanon. Two months later, a suicide truck bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires killed 85 and injured over 300. As an official Israel report later acknowledged, the attack may have been payback for the Israeli operations in Lebanon.
The recent Israeli attacks in Lebanon — especially the killing of Nasrallah — give Hezbollah at least as much motivation as it had in the 1990s to retaliate. Regardless of how much Israeli strikes may have weakened Hezbollah’s ability to fight a conventional war in the Levant, its capacity for irregular operations elsewhere is probably undiminished. The chance of terrorist reprisals against Israeli-related soft targets during the next few months is high.
If such an attack occurs, the reaction of outside observers, especially in the United States, probably will include something along the lines of, “Hezbollah is a terrorist group, and that’s what terrorist groups do.” Such a response will perpetuate the mistake of viewing terrorism as a fixed group of bad guys rather than as a tactic that different groups and nations have used for different purposes. That mistake impedes understanding of the nature of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and its underlying causes.
Israel has long used terrorist tactics in this conflict, including car bombings and other clandestine assassinations. It added to that record with its recent use of explosive-rigged pagers. The impossibility of controlling who would become victims when thousands of the devices were detonated remotely, along with the clandestine nature of the operation, fully qualified it as a terrorist attack. That the principal intended targets were members of Hezbollah does not remove that qualification, partly because being a member of Hezbollah—a multifaceted political as well as paramilitary organization—is not the same as being a combatant involved in fighting Israel.
Even insofar as true combatants were involved, a useful comparison is with the deadliest attack by Hezbollah against U.S. interests: the suicide truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983, in which 241 U.S. military personnel died. The vast majority of Americans would consider that incident to be terrorism, despite the reservations of sticklers who say that because the victims were military personnel on an overseas deployment, the event should instead be considered warfare. If the bombing of the Marine barracks is terrorism, then Israel’s pager operation certainly is too, given that the targets were not even on a foreign military mission but were mostly in their own homes, businesses, or neighborhoods when the devices exploded.
Even more fundamental than niceties about how to define terrorism is the broader pattern of political violence that causes innocent persons to suffer. Regardless of whether the violence is inflicted by F-16s or by truck bombs, the suffering is just as bad and the relevant moral issues basically the same. If Israel uses one method of inflicting such violence — and it has inflicted far more of it than its adversaries have inflicted on it — while Hezbollah uses a different method, that difference reflects the available capabilities of each side rather than any morally or politically relevant distinction.
U.S. policymakers should reflect on all this, especially the prospect of terrorist reprisals, as they shape their responses to the escalated warfare in Lebanon. They also should reflect on the hazards of the United States again becoming a target of terrorism itself. Hezbollah will be seeking to retaliate against Israel, but with the United States already having become more of a potential target because of its association with the Israeli destruction of Gaza, that hazard will increase to the extent it allows itself to become associated as well with the Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
The attack that killed Nasrallah was one more in a long series of Israeli actions taken without even informing the United States, let alone taking into account any U.S. views. But the continued unconditional support that the United States nonetheless gives to Israel, especially including munitions that Israel uses in its lethal attacks, makes the United States also responsible, in the eyes of the world, for the resulting casualties and suffering.Keep ReadingShow Less
Signaling Next Target, Netanyahu Tells Iran Change Coming 'Sooner Than People Think'
One observer noted that the Israeli prime minister "has a habit of pretending to reach out to the people of the countries he intends to bomb next."
Sep 30, 2024
Fears that Israel is planning yet another escalation of its multi-front Middle East war mounted Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a recorded speech to the people of Iran vowing that they would soon be "free" from their current leadership.
Addressing the "noble Persian people" in English, Netanyahu accused Iran's theocratic rulers of plunging the region "deeper into darkness."
"When Iran is finally free—and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think—everything will be different," he said.
"He posted English 'addresses' to the people of Gaza and Lebanon right before bombing them."
"When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents will be bankrupt, dismantled," Netanyahu claimed, adding that Iran will then "thrive as never before."
However, critics noted that such proclamations by the right-wing Israeli leader have previously portended attacks on the people he claimed to be saving.
"He posted English 'addresses' to the people of Gaza and Lebanon right before bombing them," Zeteo News reporter Prem Thakker said on social media.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, a U.S.-based foreign policy think tank, made a similar comment.
In recent weeks, Israel has attacked Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, the West Bank, and Gaza—where its conduct is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide trial. More than 147,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Thousands more have been killed or injured in Lebanon, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Friday reportedly used U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs to kill Hezbollah leaders including Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah along with an Iranian general, and an unknown number of civilians in the densely populated southern suburbs of Beirut.
Israel has already attacked Iran, assassinating Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Israel also bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria in April, killing seven people including diplomats and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps senior commander Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi.
"There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach," Netanyahu ominously claimed during his speech on Monday.
Netanyahu's speech came as IDF tanks amassed along Israel's border with Lebanon, sparking fears of a possible ground invasion.
Addressing some of these IDF troops near the Lebanese border, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that "in order to ensure the return of Israel's northern communities, we will employ all of our capabilities, and this includes you."
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese have evacuated their homes due to cross-border fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah, which began attacking Israel with rockets, drones, and other weapons in solidarity with Gaza after the October 7 Hamas-led attack and Israel's massive retaliation.
When asked during a Monday press conference if he was "comfortable" with Israel invading Lebanon, U.S. President Joe Biden—whose administration has provided Israel with diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in weapons—said: "I'm comfortable with them stopping. We should have a cease-fire now."
Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, 1982, and 2006, killing and wounding tens of thousands of civilians. Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said during a Sunday government meeting that Tehran must give a "decisive" response to Israel's assassination of Nasrallah.
"This crime once again proved that this criminal regime does not adhere to any of the international principles and rules," Pezeshkian said of Netanyahu's far-right government, according to Iranian media reports.
On Monday, Pezeshkian visited Hezbollah's Tehran office and signed a memorial guestbook honoring Nasrallah.
"The U.S. and supporters of the Zionist regime showed the world how human rights, human dignity, and international regulations are violated," he wrote.
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IDF Reportedly Used 2,000-Pound Bombs Supplied by US in Attack That Killed Nasrallah
The American-made bombs leveled several apartment buildings and killed dozens of people, with others still believed to be trapped under rubble.
Sep 30, 2024
Video footage analyzed by weapons experts indicates that Israeli forces used U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs in their massive attack on Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and flattened several residential buildings.
The Friday night attacks, which killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds, included more than 80 bombs dropped over a period of several minutes, unnamed Israeli officials said. Footage published by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) shows eight fighter jets armed with more than a dozen 2,000-pound bombs, according to munitions analysts.
The U.S. has provided Israel with thousands of 2,000-pound bombs since the Hamas-led October 7 attack but has been withholding the munitions since May after the IDF repeatedly used them to assail densely populated areas of the Gaza Strip.
One unnamed Pentagon official told The Washington Post on Sunday that "he had never seen so many bombs used against a single target as in the Nasrallah strike."
Trevor Ball, a former explosive ordnance disposal technician for the U.S. Army, told the Post that "it's possible dozens of 2,000-pound bombs were used," pointing to a video showing extensive damage from the Israeli attack.
"It is a mess of a site," said Ball.
The New York Times reported that "at least four residential buildings on one street were destroyed" by the IDF strikes Friday night.
"All four of the destroyed structures were residential buildings along the same street," the Times noted. "Two neighboring apartment buildings that were at least seven stories tall were hit. About 100 yards away, two neighboring buildings that were also at least seven stories were also hit."
In his statement on the strikes, U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledged neither the apparent use of American-made weaponry nor the civilian toll. Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, said Sunday that the U.S. was "complicit in this crime" and warned that "the countries of the region and beyond must recognize that the situation is extremely dangerous, and anything could happen at any moment."
"We are on high alert," he added.
Since mid-September, Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than a thousand people and wounded more than 6,000, according to Lebanon's health ministry. Najib Mikati, Lebanon's prime minister, said Israel's large-scale bombing campaign has displaced around 1 million people.
Abbas Alawieh, a Lebanese American from Michigan and a co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, said over the weekend that "by failing to mention much less condemn the scores of civilians [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu illegally killed this week," Biden and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris' "recent Lebanon statements aren't just ignoring Arab, Muslim, and anti-war voters in Michigan—they're actively pushing them away."
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The Path to Nasrallah's Assassination and What Lies Ahead
The Israeli government had long been determined to go into Lebanon and to wipe out Hezbollah—and perhaps to reoccupy the Lebanese south.
Sep 29, 2024
The Israeli assassination of Hassan Nasrallah has implications for the struggle of Iran and its alliance of resistance against Israel and the United States. But I would like to step back and look at how we reached this juncture.
I lived in Lebanon on and off in the 1970s, when the Civil War (1975-1989) began. Lebanon is a country full of minorities, with no majority. Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shiite Muslims are the major groups, but there are some smaller communities of great importance, including the Druze (an offshoot of Twelver Shiism) and the Eastern Orthodox Christians. Religious ethnicity, what the French call “confessionalism,” plays a role in Lebanon similar to that played in American society by racial ethnicity.
During the Civil War, each community threw up militias, usually more than one, and these militias often targeted one another as much as their enemies. In the south, East Beirut, and the Bekaa Valley, Shiites predominated. They were the poorest of the Lebanese religious communities, often consisting of tobacco sharecroppers and other impoverished agriculturists in the countryside. In East Beirut, they did day labor. Shiites back in the 1950s and 1960s had not been very involved in Lebanese politics, concentrating on the affairs of their villages. A few great landlords were in Parliament, but they had almost feudal relationships to the farmers.
In the 1970s, an Iranian cleric named Musa Sadr, transplanted to Lebanon, helped organize AMAL (an acronym for Troops of the Lebanese Resistance, but with the literal meaning of “hope”). It was a charity, a political party, and a militia. AMAL appealed to the new Shiite middle class, people who had relatives that had emigrated to West Africa or the Oil Gulf and sent back remittances. The incoming wealth allowed them to found banks and other businesses and to fund the activities of AMAL.
The idea of a party-militia was not new. Among the Maronite Christians, the Phalangist Party had modeled itself on Franco’s brown shirts and Mussolini’s black shirts. I used to see them doing drills in the street when I lived in Chiyah, Beirut.
Hezbollah... should have followed the rest of the militias into the Ta’if accords, laying down their arms and becoming solely a parliamentary political party.
Sadr was kidnapped by Moammar Gadhafi when he visited Libya in search of funding for AMAL. Maybe Gadhafi felt he hadn’t delivered on some promise. Maybe Gadhafi was increasingly deranged.
The 1979 Islamic Revolution radicalized some young Lebanese Shiites. Abbas Musawi hived off from AMAL and formed Islamic AMAL. They were in touch with the Iraqi Da’wa Party and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in a quest to extirpate the Palestine Liberation Organization, subjecting Beirut to indiscriminate shelling. Among those who were appalled was Osama Bin Laden, who later said that he began aspiring to bring down U.S. skyscrapers on seeing what the Israelis did to those in Beirut.
The Islamic AMAL saw the Israeli invasion and occupation as a U.S. project, blew up the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 and then targeted the U.S. Marines (on a peacekeeping mission) with a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. service personnel.
In 1984, Musawi and others formed Hezbollah. The organization mobilized the poorer and more radical Shiites in East Beirut, Tyre, and the Bekaa for guerrilla warfare to get the Israelis back out of their country. Israel occupied 10% of Lebanon 1982-2000, but suffered increasing casualties from Hezbollah sniping and suicide bombing, a technique they picked up from the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
In 1989, the Saudis sent Saad Hariri, a Lebanese Sunni who had made billions as a contractor in the kingdom, to try to end the war. That year at Ta’if most of the armed factions pledged to lay down their arms, which they did, and Hariri became prime minister. He began the process of rebuilding Beirut, a process that made his companies rich.
The only group that did not disarm was Hezbollah, on the grounds that it was fighting the occupation of the Lebanese south by the Israelis.
By 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew from Lebanon.
Hezbollah at that point should have followed the rest of the militias into the Ta’if accords, laying down their arms and becoming solely a parliamentary political party. Hassan Nasrallah, by then the leader, however, refused that path. He began pressing claims on the Shebaa Farms villages of Syria, which Israel had illegally occupied. These lands had been owned by Shiite Lebanese, and Syria said they could have them back if the Israelis would leave. Nasrallah had the Israeli settlements there shelled indiscriminately, which is a war crime since it puts civilians in harm’s way.
Moreover, Hezbollah planned terrorist operations, even in Europe. Had it stuck with a purely military struggle with the Israeli army, it might have avoided being listed as a terrorist group, which cost it all legitimacy in the industrialized democracies.
In 2004-05 a crisis unfolded in Lebanon over Syrian political meddling in the country. Hariri and most Maronite Christians demonstrated against the Syrians, and Hariri was killed in a truck bomb in February 2005—probably by Hezbollah, or by Hezbollah field officers working for Syrian intelligence. The March 14 coalition managed to convince the Syrians to pull their troops out of the country. Nasrallah’s March 8 coalition, joined by Michel Aoun’s Christians, held huge counter-demonstrations in favor of Syria but lost.
In 2006, Hezbollah attacks on Israel for the sake of getting the Shebaa Farms back were taken as a pretext by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who launched a wide-ranging war on Lebanon. Israel of course won, but it did suffer setbacks owing to Hezbollah guerrilla tactics. In the aftermath, Nasrallah apologized for dragging the country into a destructive war that set back its economy.
In 2008, Hezbollah fought Lebanese Sunnis over a number of issues, including control of telecommunications at Beirut airport. Nasrallah had earlier pledged never to use his arms on fellow Lebanese, but he reneged on that promise.
From 2013 on, Nasrallah sent Hezbollah fighters into Syria to help keep Bashar Assad in power, allying with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Russia against the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and more radical, al-Qaeda-adjacent groups. Hezbollah’s name became mud among many Sunni Arabs, as it lost the popularity gained in 2006.
Hezbollah as a party did well in Lebanese elections and played an increasing role in the national cabinet.
Hezbollah built up a rocket arsenal with Iran’s help. It was only useful for defensive purposes, as a deterrent against Israeli aggression. Few rockets have guidance systems and so can’t be used in a targeted way. The U.S. Iron Dome anti-missile batteries made these rockets relatively useless and so removed their deterrent effect.
The outbreak of war after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel put Nasrallah in a difficult situation. His only source of popularity and legitimacy was resistance to Israel. Iran pressured him to keep a low profile and avoid provoking another war. Although 80% of the attacks at the Israeli-Lebanese border were launched by Israel, Hezbollah was baited into a tit-for-tat. Tens of thousands of Israelis were displaced from the north, just as tens of thousands of Shiites were displaced from the Lebanese south by Israeli airstrikes.
The Jewish Power government of contemporary Israel aims at a Greater Israel, ethnically cleansing Gaza and the West Bank and southern Lebanon in preparation for Israeli hegemony.
The fascist Israeli government of Benajmin Netanyahu-Itamar Ben-Gvir-Bezalel Smotrich, receiving unstinting backing from the Biden administration, has adopted a policy of Miloševićism. Slobodan Milošević aimed for a Greater Serbia after the breakup of Communist Yugoslavia, coveting much of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo and being willing to deploy the tools of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Jewish Power government of contemporary Israel aims at a Greater Israel, ethnically cleansing Gaza and the West Bank and southern Lebanon in preparation for Israeli hegemony.
Despite Biden’s feeble and risible cautions against a wider war, the Miloševićist Israeli government had long been determined to go into Lebanon and to wipe out Hezbollah—and perhaps to reoccupy the Lebanese south. Unbeknownst to Nasrallah, his high council had been penetrated by agents working for Israel, so that the latter could booby trap their pagers and could determine Nasrallah’s whereabouts in real time.
Nasrallah left behind a Lebanon in shambles, its government so corrupt that it let the port explode and allowed the chairman of the National Bank to embezzle all the country’s money. Poverty skyrocketed to 40% of the population in what had been a prosperous country.
In the end, Nasrallah led a small organization of some 45,000 fighters that was attempting to punch above its weight. The Syrian intervention overstretched its resources and made it vulnerable in the Lebanese south. Its rockets were rendered ineffectual by the Iron Dome. Its cadres grew corrupt and open to Israeli shekels. It transitioned from a light, mobile guerrilla group with no return address to a quasi-governmental body with an HQ that could be struck by bunker-busting bombs.
Possibly Hezbollah will be forced now to go back to its guerrilla roots and a more secure cell structure. The Jewish Power and Religious Zionism fanatics who dream of re-occupying southern Lebanon and siphoning off the waters of the Litani River will likely discover, if they do so, that the potential for guerrilla resistance has not been and cannot be eradicated.
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Tlaib Slams US-Funded 'Bloodbath' as Biden Calls Israel Bombing Lebanon 'Justice'
"The U.S. government are conspirators to the war criminal Netanyahu's genocidal plan," said the Michigan Democrat.
Sep 28, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Saturday had notably different responses to Israel's intense bombing campaign in Lebanon over the past 24 hours, which killed hundreds of people including key Hezbollah leaders.
"Our country is funding this bloodbath," Tlaib (D-Mich.) said on social media Saturday morning, sharing a post from Zeteo's Prem Thakker with videos of the Israeli assault on Lebanon that began Friday, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly.
"Sending more of our troops and bombs to the region is not advancing peace," added Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress and a leading critic of Israel's yearlong genocide in the Gaza Strip. "The U.S. government are conspirators to the war criminal Netanyahu's genocidal plan."
In the post shared by Tlaib, Thakker noted that "the U.S. was reportedly informed of this mass Israeli attack on Beirut in Lebanon shortly beforehand," which "comes just one day after [the] U.S. released $8.7 billion more in aid to Israel."
Tlaib also shared that her office is fielding "desperate calls" from U.S. citizens who are struggling to leave Lebanon. She declared that "the mission of the U.S. Department of State is to protect Americans, and they are failing AGAIN."
Biden, meanwhile, began his Saturday afternoon statement by noting that Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which the Iran-backed Lebanese political and paramilitary group confirmed earlier in the day—a development that elevated fears of a broader regional war.
"Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror," Biden said. "His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians."
The president continued:
The strike that killed Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas' massacre on October 7, 2023. Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open what he called a "northern front" against Israel.
The United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups. Just yesterday, I directed my secretary of defense to further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war.
Ultimately, our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means. In Gaza, we have been pursuing a deal backed by the U.N. Security Council for a ceasefire and the release of hostages. In Lebanon, we have been negotiating a deal that would return people safely to their homes in Israel and southern Lebanon. It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability.
While the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) thanked Biden "for standing with our democratic ally Israel," journalists from around the world and other critics highlighted that his statement "has not a word on civilian casualties."
Ali Abunimah, director of The Electronic Intifada, was among those who pointed out that Biden said the "assassination of Nasrallah, in an Israeli massacre that killed hundreds, 'is a measure of justice for his many victims.'"
"Utterly depraved, and by this twisted, criminal Biden logic, those who tried to assassinate Trump were also instruments of 'justice," Abunimah said, referring to former U.S. President Donald Trump, Republican nominee for the November election.
Middle East expert Assal Rad said: "Biden calls massive bombs in a densely-populated area that leveled six apartment buildings in Lebanon 'a measure of justice.' The torching of international law and the precedent that is being set should terrify us all."
Rad also slammed Biden's cease-fire call, saying: "This is nonsense. You can't provide the funding and weapons to continue the conflict *without* conditions, twist humanitarian law to give Israel total impunity, and reject every international institution that seeks accountability, and then say your 'aim is to de-escalate.'"
Others recalled Israel's 2004 assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, which also killed seven other people. The administration of former Republican U.S. President George W. Bush—who launched the global War on Terror in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks—didn't issue a forceful condemnation like some European leaders, but a spokesperson for the State Department said at the time that "we are deeply troubled" by the attack.
As'ad Abukhalil, a Lebanese American professor at California State University, Stanislus, declared Saturday that "there has been no U.S. president EVER who has unconditionally allowed unrestrained Israeli savagery in the Middle East as Biden has done."
Abukhalil warned that "the U.S. will suffer for years to come from the policies of Biden in the Middle East," which he described as "more far-reaching [than] Bush's."
Biden, a Democrat, was initially seeking reelection in November, but after a disastrous summer debate performance against Trump, he passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. After putting out Biden's Saturday statement, the White House released a similar one from Harris—which was also lauded by AIPAC.
"Hassan Nasrallah was a terrorist with American blood on his hands. Across decades, his leadership of Hezbollah destabilized the Middle East and led to the killing of countless innocent people in Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and around the world. Today, Hezbollah's victims have a measure of justice," Harris said. "I have an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel. I will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis."
"President Biden and I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war," she added. "We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region."
In response, Margaret Zaknoen DeReus, executive director at the California-based Institute for Middle East Understanding, said: "Like Biden, not a word from the VP , from the candidate of joy & freedom, about the 1,000+ Lebanese men, women and children Israel obliterated. Not a word about hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced, entire city blocks destroyed. We don't exist as human beings to this [administration]."
Responding to both statements on social media, the anti-war group CodePink said that the Biden-Harris administration "believes flattening a residential area with... bombs is 'justice.'"
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Hezbollah Confirms Hassan Nasrallah's Death as Israel Carpet-Bombs Lebanon
"Israel is committing crimes against humanity and waging regional war (while dragging international states to it) all in order to maintain its control of resources in the region," said one West Bank journalist.
Sep 28, 2024
Further elevating fears of a full-scale regional war in the Middle East, Hezbollah on Saturday confirmed the death of Hassan Nasrallah, who led the political and paramilitary group, after Israel's massive overnight assault on Lebanon.
Hezbollah
did not say how Nasrallah was killed but said in a statement that "the leadership of Hezbollah vows to the highest, most sacred, and dearest martyr in our journey filled with sacrifices and martyrs to continue its struggle against the enemy, supporting Gaza and Palestine, and defending Lebanon and its steadfast, honorable people."
The confirmation from the Iran-backed group came after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that it had killed Nasrallah—and multiple other members of Hezbollah leadership.
As of Saturday morning, at least 1,030 people in Lebanon are confirmed dead, and 6,352 people have been injured, though Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad highlighted that "there are still martyrs under the rubble, missing persons, and scattered remains."
Israel escalated its attacks on Lebanon this week after trading fire with Hezbollah for nearly a year over the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians and left many more displaced and starving. This week's death toll in Lebanon was over 700 even before the "
apocalyptic" bombing campaign that began Friday, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York City to address the United Nations General Assembly.
After
leveling several residential buildings in Beirut's southern suburbs, targeting Hezbollah's headquarters in Dahiyeh, Israel continued "conducting strikes on strategic terrorist targets" around the Lebanese capital, the IDF said, including "weapons production facilities, buildings used to store advanced weapons, and key command centers."
In response to the IDF's description of the Friday attack as a "precise strike," Adil Haque, a professor at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, said, "Reminder that the location of military objectives in civilian areas, even when illegal, does not relieve the opposing party of its obligations under international humanitarian law."
Fellow Rutgers professor and human rights attorney Noura Erakat
stressed that "Israel transforms residential areas into targets by saying 'terrorist' once [because] of work of racism and colonialism. These are attacks on civilians [without] regard to distinction [between] civilian and militants."
Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian American journalist and policy analyst based in the occupied West Bank,
said on social media that "in a single night Israeli military carpet-bombed Lebanon, carpet-bombed Gaza, invaded Jenin and Tulkarem in the West Bank."
"Israel is committing crimes against humanity and waging regional war (while dragging international states to it) all in order to maintain its control of resources in the region, while annexing Palestinian lands unabated," Barghouti added. "Israel's violence is in order to defend its ethnoreligous supremacy."
According to Reuters:
Residents have fled Dahiyeh, seeking shelter in downtown Beirut and other parts of the city.
"Yesterday's strikes were unbelievable. We had fled before and then went back to our homes, but then the bombing got more and more intense, so we came here, waiting for Netanyahu to stop the bombing," said Dalal Daher, speaking near Beirut's Martyrs Square, where some of the displaced were camping out.
The Associated Press reported that "on Saturday morning, the Israeli military carried out more than 140 airstrikes in southern Beirut and eastern Lebanon's Bekaa Valley," while "Hezbollah launched dozens of projectiles across northern and central Israel and deep into the Israel-occupied West Bank, damaging some buildings in the northern town of Safed."
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
said in a series of social media posts on Saturday that "all the Resistance forces in the region stand with and support Hezbollah."
"The Resistance forces will determine the fate of this region with the honorable Hezbollah leading the way," he continued. "The Lebanese haven't forgotten there was a time when the soldiers of the occupying regime were advancing toward Beirut, and Hezbollah stopped them and made Lebanon proud. Today too, by the grace and power of God, Lebanon will make the transgressing, malicious enemy regret its actions."
"It is an obligation for all Muslims to stand with the people of Lebanon and the honorable Hezbollah, offering their resources and assistance as Hezbollah confronts the usurping, cruel, malicious Zionist regime," he added.
Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakispointed out that the intense bombing by Israel—which receives billions of dollars in military support from the United States—came shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron "tabled a joint U.S.-French comprehensive cease-fire initiative to end the carnage" in Gaza and Lebanon.
"Today Israel killed Nasrallah," he said. "Can there be a greater humiliation for Biden-Macron? Can't they see they are a laughingstock?"
Just hours before Israel toppled residential buildings in Lebanon on Friday, Human Rights Watch director of crisis advocacy Akshaya Kumar wrote that her group "is calling on Israel's key allies, including the United States, to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses."
"Instead, the U.S. has done the opposite, and continues to approve weapons transfers and military aid without conditions," she noted. "World leaders gathered in New York held an emergency meeting on Lebanon, but words alone will not be enough to shift the Israeli government's plans. Leaders need to act."
Early Saturday afternoon, Biden released a statement on Israel killing Nasrallah. In it, Biden "praises not just his killing but how it was done—calling Israel's strike on an area full of civilians 'a measure of justice,'" said HuffPost's Akbar Shahid Ahmed. "Striking."
Biden also said that "the United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups. Just yesterday, I directed my secretary of defense to further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East region to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war."
"Ultimately, our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means," Biden claimed—though, as Ahmed emphasized, his call to reduce hostilities came "without changes to U.S. policy that's battered both."
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