Clive Sulish
(Reading time: 8 mins.)
Over recent months threats have been exchanged between ‘Israeli’ leaders and Hezbollah in Lebanon and also between leaders of Yemen and Saudi Arabia. The former reached its hottest pitch recently and seemed to be heralding open war.
Hezbollah and ‘Israel’
Hezbollah is an Islamist anti-imperialist resistance organisation of an estimated 50-100,000 trained fighters1 and has been characterised, in numbers and equipment, as “a medium-sized army”. Its artillery units have been firing into ‘Israeli’-occupied territory since October 8th last year.
The resistance organisation has taken action in solidarity with the Palestinians facing genocide and daily massacres and has vowed to continue it until the ‘Israeli’ Occupation Force ceases its attacks on the Palestinians.
Vast areas of Israeli settlements have been temporarily abandoned by settlers (or permanently by at least 60) as a result,2 the genocidal state accommodating former residents in camps and hotels, while the IOF occupies some buildings in the regions, enduring constant Hezbollah bombardments.
As the genocidal assault continues, Hezbolah has begun to shell settlements which it had previously excluded from its regular bombardment. In addition, the organisation has been repeatedly hitting IOF surveillance equipment and parts of the ‘Iron Dome’ air defence system.
One might say that the ‘Israeli’ army was responsible for the creation of Hezbollah; the organisation came into existence fighting the IOF’s occupation of Lebanon and its facilitation of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp by its Christian Phalangist allies.3
Hezbollah fought the IOF occupation of Lebanon in 2000 and the re-invasion in 2006, forcing the settler state to recall its army with substantial losses. They were the first campaign defeats inflicted on the IOF since its creation.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Hussein Malla/Alamy)
Threats
Recently Yoav Gallant, the Occupation’s Minister of Defence (sic) threatened Hezbollah with war and claimed that it would be “quick, surprising and decisive”, also that they could shift the focus of their war from Gaza to Hezbollah in an instant.
Certainly the most nazi part of Netanyahu’s fascist coalition threatens to resign unless the IOF attacks Hezbollah; it’s been speculated for some time that ‘Bibi’ himself would like that to draw the USA into it and as a distraction from his failed war against the Palestinian resistance.4
But it was almost certainly empty bluster from Gallant, to which Hezbollah replied, in case he were serious, that while the IOF could of course cause damage in Lebanon, that Hezbollah’s damage to the ‘Israeli’ state’s military bases and civilian infrastructure would be much greater.
Had Gallant been talking about aerial bombardment only there could have been some reality in his threat — but a land invasion? Having to cross the buffer zone they themselves created,5 meanwhile under fire from Hezbollah’s missiles? And how many undamaged tanks does the IOF have left?6
And then fighting Hezbollah on the ground? Gallant’s words might also have been bravado in the face of the shock settler society received with Hezbollah’s publication the day previously of the photographs of ‘Israeli’ military and civilian infrastructure taken by undetected drone.
Last Saturday evening, Hezbollah published more photos from a new undetected “flight of the hoopoe”7 which must have given the Israeli ruling class even more pause, this one picking out military targets including its “secure” air force base and naming commanding officers.
Indeed, Shin Bet8 was recently reported shocked to find that Hamas has an extensive database of IOF personnel at all ranks, including combat history and current addresses; they tracked the IOF commander of the Al Shifa Hospital massacre,9 field-executing him two months later.
Hezbollah published the material as a warning (and also to coincide with butcher Netanyahu’s visit to address the USA’s Congress in the Capitol, Washington DC). “If we can photograph it, we can hit it” Hezbollah said and it is known that their missiles can reach any part of the ‘Israeli’ state.
As this goes to publication we read that two Hezbollah M90 missiles were targeted at ‘Tel Aviv’. Though apparently intercepted it will be unsettling for the regime to say the least to learn that the missiles were launched from an area of proximity to a concentration of IOF vehicles invading the Gaza strip.
Recently, ‘Israeli’ threats escalated following an explosion which killed 12 children playing football in the ‘Israeli’-occupied Syrian Golan. In shocking hypocrisy considering the massacres of thousands of Palestinian children, Israeli and US representatives went into paroxysms of rage.
Aside from patently untrue claims that the victims were “Israeli children”,10 Hezbollah has also denied responsibility; it’s much more likely that the explosion was an accidental IOF Iron Dome missile strike, given the haste with which the missile remains were rushed off-site (and out of sight) by the IOF.11
But with the ‘casus belli’ established, real or not, on Tuesday the IOF sent an explosive drone on an apparently assassination attempt to a southern part of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, killing a woman and two children, injuring 68 and perhaps more inside the collapsed building.
The strike also killed Fuad Shukr, leader of Hezbollah military wing, veteran of the resistance in Lebanon to the IOF invasions and until now, sole survivor of the leadership of those days, all killed in battle or in assassination.
Hezbollah at the very least will continue its bombardment and may feel it necessary to hit some part of “Tel Aviv”. Then the USA and the UK may step in. Meanwhile the Islamist Resistance in Iraq has recommenced its attacks on US bases there, Yemen’s return serve is awaited …
And Iran is in the game, inevitably bound to respond after ‘Israel’s’ assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas and chief ceasefire/ peace negotiator for the Palestinians, who was in Tehran to speak at the inauguration of the new President of Iran..
End.
FOOTNOTES
1Many with battle experience rather than killing civilians, like most of the IOF. Hezbollah’s leader claimed 100,000 fighters in Lebanon three years ago while a western agency puts the figure at 50,000. However the genocide in Palestine and the response of Hezbollah, combined with punitive ‘Israeli’ bombing and assassinations, is likely to have brought many more recruits to the organisation. It can also call on its fighters who are in Syria helping to defending the country from ISIS and US proxies.
2https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/04/22/724134/62,000-Israeli-settlers-flee-northern-occupied-lands-out-of-fear-of-Hezbollah-strikes–Report
3 16–18 September 1982, killing of between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias.
4Netanyahu has his personal reasons too; the minute the war is over he will face his postponed trial for corruption.
5By pulling back from their borders to make it more difficult for Hezbollah to hit them, ironically.
6From Israeli analysis sources it seems that not only does the IOF not have the necessary tanks (admitted to 500 damaged) or soldiers but even the munitions for a real war against an opposing army (see short discussion on this and the source in Electronic Intifada recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loHMeAfmnxY)
7The name Hezbollah gave the drone – the hoopoe is the national bird of Palestine.
8‘Israeli’ intelligence service.
9https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hnsJ9G_fdOY
10All of the children were of Syrian Druze families in a community in which around 90% have refused to accept citizenship in the state of their armed occupiers, holding on instead to Druze and Arab Syrian identity.
11Israeli Ministers were denounced on their visits to the site with cries translating as “child-killers” and demands they “Get out! Leave!”, Netanyahu having to leave within 15 minutes of his arrival.
SOURCES & FURTHER INFORMATION
Hezbollah (a somewhat biased history): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah
rebelbreeze 