After assassinating Hezbollah Secretary-Common Hassan Nasrallah in a devastating airstrike within the Dahiyeh neighborhood of Beirut, the Israeli army stood on Platform X to triumphantly boast that Nasrallah “would now not be capable of terrorize the world.”
After all, the target observer could be forgiven for not recognizing how Nasrallah is supposedly liable for floor terrorism when he’s not the one who has been presiding over the genocide within the Gaza Strip for nearly a 12 months. Clearly, he is additionally not the one who simply killed over 700 individuals in Lebanon in lower than per week.
Israel takes credit score for all of this, simply because it takes credit score for pulverizing quite a few residential buildings and their inhabitants within the try to kill Nasrallah, nearly as good an instance of “terrorizing the world” as any.
And whereas Israel touts the elimination of Nasrallah as a decisive blow to the group, a short have a look at historical past reveals that such assassinations, unsurprisingly, do nothing to eradicate resistance and as a substitute intensify it.
An instance: Abbas al-Musawi, co-founder and second secretary normal of Hezbollah, was killed in 1992 in southern Lebanon by Israeli helicopter gunships, which additionally killed his spouse and five-year-old son. On this event too, Israel was fast to congratulate itself on its bloody feat, however the celebration was sadly untimely. Following the assassination of al-Musawi, Nasrallah was elected secretary normal and turned Hezbollah right into a formidable pressure not solely in Lebanon, however all through the area.
Underneath his management, Hezbollah expelled Israel from Lebanese territory in 2000, ending a brutal 22-year occupation, and efficiently counterattacked through the 34-day battle in opposition to Lebanon in 2006, dealing humiliating blows to the Israeli military.
In the meantime, Israel’s continued obsession with killing Hezbollah figures did little to weaken the group. The joint Mossad-CIA assassination in Syria in 2008 of Hezbollah army commander Imad Mughniyeh, for instance, merely propelled the person to more and more legendary standing within the Hezbollah Corridor of Fame.
Then, in fact, there are the numerous assassinations of Palestinian leaders courting again many years, none of which have deterred Palestinians from desirous to exist.
The Related Press notes that a number of leaders of the Palestine Liberation Group (PLO) had been murdered of their Beirut residences in 1973 by Israeli commandos “in a nighttime raid led by Ehud Barak, who later grew to become the military’s prime commander.” and Prime Minister of Israel.”
In keeping with the AP report, Barak’s crew “killed Kamal Adwan, who was accountable for PLO operations within the Israeli-occupied West Financial institution; Mohammed Youssef Najjar, member of the PLO govt committee; and Kamal Nasser, PLO spokesperson and charismatic author and poet.”
This happened a 12 months after Ghassan Kanafani – revered Palestinian writer, poet and spokesperson for the Widespread Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – was assassinated by Mossad in Beirut alongside together with his 17-year-old niece.
These and different assassinations of distinguished Palestinian figures hardly quelled the Palestinian resistance motion. As the primary and second Intifadas within the Eighties and 2000s demonstrated, Palestinians can launch large well-liked uprisings even with out political or army leaders to arrange them.
And as Israel tried to violently defeat conventional resistance teams, new ones emerged. This was the case with Hamas, which the Israeli occupation authorities in Gaza had been pleased to encourage at first as a counterweight to the PLO.
In the long run, Hamas additionally discovered itself on the receiving finish of Israel’s assassination technique, which, as normal, failed to realize its supposed goals.
In 1996, the Israelis killed Hamas engineer Yahya Ayyash by putting explosives in his cell phone, maybe a precursor to Israel’s latest terrorist initiative during which it detonated pagers and different digital gadgets all through Lebanon.
Then there was the March 2004 assassination by helicopter strike in Gaza Metropolis of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a wheelchair-bound cleric and founding father of Hamas. His successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, was killed lower than a month later in an Israeli airstrike.
And but, regardless of enduring three apocalyptic wars, along with common Israeli army assaults and fixed assassinations, Hamas managed to develop sufficient capability to hold out the October 7 assault on Israel.
Now, the July 2024 assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh – one of many essential negotiators for a ceasefire settlement in Gaza and regarded internationally as “average” – has accomplished nothing to decrease Palestinian resistance to the genocide. , however it has accomplished a lot to underscore Israel’s dedication to derailing any alternative for a pause in mass killings.
Concerning Nasrallah’s demise, it’s price reiterating that Hezbollah’s very existence is a results of Israel’s propensity for mass homicide, particularly the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which killed tens of hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinians. .
The invasion, known as “Operation Peace for Galilee,” was apparently aimed toward ending the anti-Israeli resistance in Lebanon, however naturally it solely supercharged it.
The casus belli invoked to justify the operation was an assassination try in opposition to Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to the UK. Argov survived, a luxurious not afforded to the Lebanese and Palestinian victims of “Peace for Galilee.”
If even a failed assassination try in opposition to an inconsequential diplomat has supplied Israel with a pretext for a mass slaughter, it’s shocking that the Israeli administration doesn’t cease to consider what sort of retaliation the precise assassination of an inconsequential diplomat might provoke. bigger than life Arab icon, notably within the context of a relentless genocide of fellow Arabs.
However, laying the groundwork for a perpetual and more and more psychopathic battle is, indubitably, the aim.
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial place of Al Jazeera.