Arguments over the Arab-Israeli conflict are basically muscle memory at this point for people who spend too much time on social media. So it was not surprising when, after the announcement that Israel had assassinated Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, a familiar debate ensued on whether it truly matters when a terrorist leader is taken out.
This is an interesting subject, I suppose, and there’s some good academic research on the effects of decapitating a terror organization. But what relevance does that have here? Israel killed the entire upper structure of Hezbollah and debilitated thousands of its worker bees in the pager plot.
This is the reality that has yet to truly set in. Hezbollah did not lose a leader; it lost everyone who mattered at all, and a great many who didn’t. It’s a new world—or, at least, a new Middle East.
“For all his faults, Nasrallah was a rational actor deeply socialized into the game of geopolitics,” wrote the Atlantic Council’s Alia Brahimi, adding: “Alongside the death of Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s obituary may well be written. Equally, this could end up being a case of, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’”
Her colleague Arwa Damon was more inclined to believe the latter: “Over history, militant armed groups have often replaced leaders with ones who are more radical and extreme than the previous ones, especially when rage and the factors that allow for recruitment of fighters is amplified by death and injustice.”
“This is not the first targeted killing of a Hezbollah leader that Israel has carried out,” warned Haaretz’s Jack Khoury. He mentioned as examples the assassination of Nasrallah’s predecessor and of Hezbollah warhammer Imad Mughniyeh: “It quickly turned out that their replacements didn’t display a more moderate or less militant attitude.”
“Israel has a history of short-run tactical military triumphs that proved strategically sterile — or even laid the basis for new conflicts… Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah, however impressive, comes unaccompanied, so far, by a plan for filling the political vacuum looming in Lebanon,” the Washington Post said in an editorial.
It’s not inaccurate to say Israel decapitated Hezbollah. But let’s not forget that Hezbollah’s torso was obliterated as well.
The stark warnings from “experts” stand in stark contrast to the celebration from actual civilians in the region, especially with reports that the IDF may have also taken out Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad’s brother, Maher. Hezbollah played a key role in the Assads’ immiseration of Syria, where over half a million have been killed in the civil war that began when Bashar al-Assad sought to violently quash protests.
As analyst Seth Frantzman summed it up: “Syrian regime destroys Syria with the help of Hezbollah, causing millions of Syrians to flee war to Lebanon; the regime turns Syria into a conduit of Iranian arms going to Hezbollah which leads Hezbollah to attack Israel…then Syrians have to flee again because Hezbollah brings ruin on Lebanon due to Iranian arms.”
The story of this part of the Levant in the 21st century is one of Iranian colonial warlords forcing civilians into a constant state of flight.
Which is why it makes no sense to treat Hezbollah as a “normal” terrorist group when it comes to predicting the effects of Israel’s targeted strikes. It’s an army and an imperial administrator in an empire of blood. Despite what campus bobbleheads in America might say or think, Hezbollah is not a resistance movement. It is the vanguard of an expansionist regime based a thousand miles away in Tehran.
And when an imperial army surrounds you and declares war on you, what’s the proper response? Do you analyze which soldiers and generals and commanders might, based on spurious comparisons with random armed terror groups, be replaceable? Do you refuse to fight back because, throughout history, so many victories have been temporary?
The premise of so much criticism of Israel’s actions seems to be that the Jewish state’s military leaders are sitting around in a bunker with cameras on every single terrorist in the world and choosing when to zap them. The reality is that Israel was invaded less than a year ago, and Hezbollah has since joined forces with the invading army.
That’s what this is: an extensive, multi-front defensive war. People seem confused by the magnitude of Israel’s successes, as if that means the IDF brass are playing a video game. Israel’s impressiveness does not change any of the underlying facts of the conflict. It does, however, suggest that maybe invading armies ought to think twice.
