Israel's war with Hezbollah looks imminent
Israel's war with Hezbollah looks imminent
As the genocidal Israelis refuse to see reason, another war bugle is blaring. It will likely not end the way the Israelis want.
On Tuesday, June 18, Hezbollah released a bombshell of a video. The nine and a half-minute footage shot from a reconnaissance drone showed that the Lebanese resistance had completely mapped out the Israeli port city of Haifa, including all its military installations, fuel reserves, warships, submarine stations, weapons manufacturing factories, the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, the whole nine yards. This release was an unmistakable message to the Israelis: Hezbollah is fully aware of your capabilities, their locations, and, more ominously, they are all within our striking distance.
The drone that Hezbollah used for this operation was also rich in symbolism. It is named after the bird hudhud (hoopoe), which is mentioned in the Qur’an. According to the Islamic holy book, the hudhud was a messenger bird of the Islamic Prophet Sulayman (Solomon in the Bible), whose supposed temple the Jews are trying to rebuild at the site of the third holiest site in Islam. To complete the rich religious symbolism, the Hezbollah drone video concludes with a fragment of a verse from the Qur’an: “And the birds as they soar.” (An-Nur: 41).
The video sent shockwaves through the Israeli administration. A military correspondent for the Hebrew outlet Walla was indignant:
The Israeli Air Force must answer the Israeli Ministry of War the following question: How was Hezbollah able to reach and fly over the battleships of the Israeli army in Haifa Bay?
The official Israeli response to the reconnaissance footage came the same day. In the typical Israeli fashion, it wasn’t an appeal for calm and de-escalation in hostilities, but an announcement of the approval of battle plans on the Lebanese front. The Times of Israel reported:
The head of the IDF’s Northern Command Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin and head of the Operations Directorate Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk approved Lebanon battle plans on Tuesday, the military said, following a recent intensification of cross-border fighting with Hezbollah.
In a statement, the IDF said the generals held an assessment, during which “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved.”
The top commanders also made decisions regarding “accelerating the readiness of the forces on the ground,” the military added.
Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, joined in on the chest-thumping, tweeting a threat:
We are very close to the moment of decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon. In an all-out war, Hezbollah will be destroyed and Lebanon will be severely hit.
Nasrallah speaks
Hassan Nasrallah, the revered leader of Hezbollah, spoke a day after the release of the footage and the corresponding Israeli response. He remarked that the released video was a carefully edited version of hours of drone surveillance footage collected over several parts of Israel. In his speech, which was meant to mark the Israeli assassination of a high-ranking Hezbollah official named Taleb Sami Abdullah, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Talib, Nasrallah announced:
We will not spare anything we can reach, and we have a vast amount of information. What was published yesterday was selectively minutes from Haifa, while the drone flew for hours.
Notably, the Hudhud drone video ended with an unmistakable: “To be continued...”
Israeli officials have been crying for months about the psychological warfare being waged by Hezbollah. In keeping with the intrigue, Nasrallah remarked that the Israelis shouldn’t rest in peace thinking the Lebanese resistance only had its eyes and ears on the Haifa grounds. In the same speech, he added:
Some in the enemy entity claimed that Hezbollah has spies in Haifa to obtain the footage. But what will they say when the resistance later releases episodes from the second, third, and fourth cities?
We have long hours of footage of Haifa and its surroundings, before and after Haifa. Our resistance fights based on vision and information.
He spoke directly about how after eight months of incessant bombardments, which Hezbollah initiated on October 8 in support of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, have served to completely cripple Israeli surveillance capabilities and have rendered them practically “blind and deaf” to the threat posed by the Lebanese resistance:
There are no electronic and technical barriers on the borders like those on the borders of Lebanon and Gaza. Therefore, in the past four months, the resistance in Lebanon has been working to blind the enemy and close its ears, and now we are capable of striking the Meron base whenever we want.
Furthermore, he apprised the genocidal Israelis of Hezbollah’s war preparedness:
We have fought with a portion of our weapons so far and acquired new weapons that will appear on the battlefield. We have developed our weapons and used new ones in this battle. We have a large number of drones because we manufacture them. We also manufacture types of rockets that we require.
We have an unprecedented human force for the resistance. A few years back, we said 100,000 [fighters] even though they were more, now we have way more than that.
A lot of our friends in the Axis [of Resistance] offered to send tens and hundreds of thousands of fighters to Lebanon. We thanked them but informed them that there is no need. We have sufficient and motivated human capacity. The number of fighters that we have is beyond the number needed for this battle, even with the theory of an all-out war.
While it is easy to classify Nasrallah’s words as bluster and brush them off as empty boasting, it is worth noting that the Hezbollah General Secretary is not a liar which is why he is taken so seriously across the region, even by his enemies in Israel. He may choose to not talk about certain things, but Nasrallah isn’t known to lie, unlike Israeli officials, who are his exact opposite.
Moreover, Nasrallah was speaking on the back of extensively documented strikes inside the Israeli territory over a period of several months. An exclusive report published in The Cradle in March revealed that the Lebanese fighters had achieved “kill ratio” — meaning they had killed a similar number of Israeli military personnel as they had lost their own (over 300). It flew in the face of the Israeli count of barely over a dozen dead fighters on its northern border.
The Israelis would also be wary of the fact that the last time they were in a direct confrontation with Hezbollah in July 2006, they were beaten handily and had to retreat back inside their border with their tails firmly stuck between their legs.
As Nasrallah pointed out, Hezbollah has added significantly to its arsenal over the past 18 years since that war. Council on Foreign Relations, which was once accurately described by Hillary Clinton as the mothership of American foreign policy, calls Hezbollah “the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.” If it weren't for Hezbollah's unquestionable capabilities, the genocidal Israelis, who have been threatening a war in Lebanon for months, would have plunged head-first into one by now.
In the eventuality of an all-out war
Nasrallah made it clear that in the case of an all-out war with the genocidal Israelis, nothing is off limits for his men. In his June 19 speech, he explicitly spoke about the possibility of marching into the Israeli-occupied Galilee. He said:
The Lebanon front has prevented enemy forces from participating in Gaza, including elite forces, due to the enemy’s fear of the resistance entering the Al-Jalil [Arabic name for Galilee], which remains a possibility if a war is imposed on Lebanon.
He further added that the Israeli rhetoric has proven futile in stopping Hezbollah, and in the event of an all-out war, the Lebanese resistance has clearly marked out the targets it will attack:
All of the enemy and mediators’ threats and warnings about a war on Lebanon do not scare us. They have sent over 200 threats over 8 months...The enemy knows well that we have prepared ourselves for the worst of days. The enemy knows well what awaits them. They were deterred for 9 months due to our unprecedented actions...
The enemy knows that there will not be a place in the entity forbidden to our missiles and drones. It will not be indiscriminate bombing; every missile has a target, every rocket has a target, every drone has a target. And the evidence is the Hudhud.
In the lead up to war
I wrote in my June 4 article about the escalating tensions in northern Israel and how May was the month of the most intensive bombardments since the beginning of the skirmishes on October 8. Lebanese bombardments have only ratcheted up since then, especially after the aforementioned Israeli killing of the Hezbollah commander, Abu Talib, a veteran of many Hezbollah operations, including the July 2006 war with Israel. He was also a leading figure in the opening of the southern front in support of the Palestinian resistance, beginning October 8.
Immediately after Abu Talib’s killing on June 12, Israeli army bases in the north came under intense bombardment by Hezbollah. Israeli Army Radio reported 70 rockets fired towards the Meron military base alone on June 12. Over a hundred rockets targeted Safad and Tabariyya in northern Israel as Hezbollah announced multiple military operations, including the bombing of several Israeli weapons manufacturing facilities in the region. The resulting fires that engulfed parts of Safad kept the Israeli firefighting units busy throughout the day.
Hashem Safieddine, the Head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, promised that retribution for Abu Talib’s killing will be swift. He said:
“Our definitive and inevitable answer after this pure blood is that our operations will increase in intensity, strength, quantity and quality. The enemy will see who the brothers and sons of Abu Talib are.”
Hezbollah attacked areas that it had previously left untouched during its months-long bombing campaign, forcing the Israeli squatters to flee from the areas they hadn’t yet evacuated.
Haaretz reported June 12 as the most intense day of firing from Hezbollah since October 8. The Israeli occupation forces counted 215 rocket strikes from southern Lebanon as sirens kept blaring incessantly throughout the Israeli north.
Hezbollah’s video releases from the day, showed it attacking the Meron base, and the headquarters of the Northern Corps of the Israeli army, among other military targets:
There was no let up in the Hezbollah escalations for the next few days before it slowed down during the three-day Eid festivities.
As Nasrallah remarked in his June 19 speech, these incessant attacks have completely blinded the Israeli surveillance capabilities, so much so that the Lebanese fighters are now able to attack sites in the northern Israel with impunity and at will.
Why Hezbollah is attacking Israel
Hezbollah’s opening of the front on its southern border with Israel was in support of the Palestinian resistance. Nasrallah in his latest speech remarked that it has largely served its purpose. The Hezbollah chief said:
According to enemy leaders, the Lebanon front has occupied more than 100,000 soldiers and several brigades of the enemy forces, while the enemy is in need of forces in Gaza, the West Bank, and Rafah.
A senior Israeli leader said that without this front, “there would have been enough forces to defeat Gaza.”
We continue to inflict human, material, and psychological losses on the enemy.
Hezbollah has maintained since day one of its entry into this battle that its attack on the Israeli settlements will cease the day the criminal Israeli state stops its genocide in Gaza.
However, driven by their insatiable lust for blood, the Israelis have shown no appetite for a ceasefire despite Hamas’s readiness to accept one — in fact, it already accepted a ceasefire proposal which the Israelis promptly rejected before invading Rafah.
Israeli bluster
Into their ninth month of terrorism in Gaza, the Israelis have slaughtered over 37,000 people, over 15,000 of them children, but have merely made a dent to the Palestinian resistance’s capabilities. The resistance fighters are still able to confront the Israelis everywhere they show up in Gaza and have consistently devised new methods to make life hell for the Zionists in the tiny strip. They are consistently killing occupation’s foot soldiers in huge numbers and have severely crippled the capabilities of the once-vaunted army to reveal it for the paper tiger that it is.
In the early days of the ground invasion, Palestinian fighters showed unparalleled bravery by hand-delivering explosives on Israeli tanks, then they made extensive use of shoulder-fired RPG shells on the invading tanks, and have for the past few months they are booby-trapping empty houses and detonating them on the heads of the Israelis, killing them in large numbers.
About the latest Palestinian resistance tactic, one Israeli military correspondent wrote on X about the challenges the occupying force is facing:
“The preferred method of operation (for the resistance) is booby-trapping houses. Once the resistance understands the direction the forces are moving, they arrive at the building, dig underground traps, and leave small cameras or microphones (even a car’s reverse camera) to know when the forces arrive and then detonate. This is quite a challenge for the IDF.”
While the numbers are clearly fudged to represent a gross undercount, the Israelis have reported just over 300 of their personnel have perished in the Gaza quagmire since the beginning of their ground invasion. Further, more than 8,000 have been disabled, over 35 percent of whom are suffering from mental issues.
After taking severe losses and getting stuck in Gaza, even the Israeli occupation forces are saying that eliminating Hamas, which was the ultimate goal of their ongoing genocide, isn’t a realistic target.
“This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear — it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said. “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people — whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”
Soldier shortfall for Lebanon war
The battle in Gaza and the ongoing fight against Hezbollah has left the Israeli army with a severe staff shortage.
A June 19 report in France24 said that the Israelis are thoroughly unprepared for a war in Lebanon:
“In terms of soldiers, tanks and quality of equipment everything is fine on paper for a short war. But in terms of a long war with Hezbollah, no, Israel isn’t ready, and it’s mainly about morale,” said Omri Brinner, a Middle East analyst at the International Team for the Study of Security Verona (ITSS).
The Israelis are embarking on a failing quest to fill the shortfall in their soldier count as they prepare for a full-scale assault on Lebanon. The Israeli parliament has prepared a bill to extend the retirement age of reservists by one year. Another way to increase the fighting force is to end the exemption for the ultra-Orthodox (Haredim) Jews, but it is a touchy subject in Israeli politics.
Israeli media reported another plan to extend compulsory military service:
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to schedule an urgent meeting to discuss extending compulsory military service to three years, Hebrew news outlet Makan reported on 21 June.
There is also the issue of high-profile military resignations as the Gaza genocide appears to have no end in sight.
One Israeli journalist recently wrote that exhaustion has set in among the Zionist troops:
This is a topic not often discussed but one which greatly troubles the IDF's top brass: the physical and mental exhaustion and burnout of the soldiers, particularly those in regular service, alongside a severe shortage of commanders.
Intimate observers have noted that the Israeli army is on the brink of collapse.
Yet, the genocidal Israelis appear to be all in for a Lebanese invasion.
Fears in Israel
Other than its challenges on the military front, the personnel in charge of civilian infrastructure aren’t too enthused by the prospect of a war with Hezbollah.
One report in the Israeli outlet Ynet, quoted the highest functionary of the national electricity company as saying the country wasn’t ready for war:
“We are not in a good state; we are not prepared for war,” declared Shaul Goldstein, CEO of Noga – the National Electrical System Management Company. He warned Hezbollah could easily cripple Israel’s power grid, adding: “After 72 hours without electricity, living in Israel will be impossible.”
There are also fears that the much vaunted American funded Iron Dome won’t be able to withstand a barrage from Hezbollah in the event of a war.
Israel’s western benefactors
The Israelis, however, can always count on their Western benefactors to have its back in any war they want to drag them into. The United States and its European vassals, chiefly the United Kingdom, are already indiscriminately bombarding the Yemenis for daring to open an opposition front in the waters surrounding Israel in an unprecedented moral stand against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
However, they have failed to deter the Yemenis from carrying out their missions against ships bound for Israel as well as the US, UK, and European Union warships that have declared war against Yemen. Nasrallah remarked about the effectiveness of the Yemeni resistance is his June 19 speech. More importantly, he directly pointed to how the American and British are fighting the Israeli war for them:
The American fleets that came to the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea to prevent Yemenis from targeting Israeli ships have failed to protect these ships or those heading to the entity, despite all their capabilities. This is a significant failure for the two most important naval fleets in the world.
The Israeli enemy, unable to fight on these fronts, has left the Yemen front to the British and Americans.
The Israelis will be banking on more direct support — boots on the ground kind —from its loyal Western attack dogs when they go full throttle against Hezbollah. There appears to be little appetite for a major escalation in the Middle East in the United States due to fear of Iran joining in the act. Way back in December, Wall Street Journal reported that Joe Biden personally intervened to stop Netanyahu from pre-emptively attacking Hezbollah for the fear of a regional escalation.
However, if the Israelis change their mind now (and they appear to have done so), it is abundantly clear who wears the pants in the relationship between them and the US. If the Israelis want it, they will get it. And the Israelis want a war.
On war footing
On June 20, the Zionist outlet CNN reported that one of America’s dishonest brokers, Antony Blinken, told one of his Arab counterparts that Israelis are itching for another war:
During Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent trip to the Middle East, he told an Arab counterpart that it appears Israel is intent on launching an incursion into Lebanon, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
The Zionist mouthpiece quoted another US administration official as insinuating that a war with Hezbollah is imminent:
“We’re entering a very dangerous period,” another senior Biden administration official said. “Something could start with little warning.”
And where will the Israelis get the necessary supplies to wreak havoc in Lebanon? CNN stated the obvious:
A separate US official acknowledged to CNN that in the event of a full-blown war, the support Israel will need most is additional air defense systems and Iron Dome replenishments, which the US would provide.
A day later, CNN was more definitive about the US support in the Lebanon war, reporting:
Senior US officials reassured a delegation of top Israeli officials visiting Washington this week that if a full-out war were to break out on Israel’s northern border between Israel and Hezbollah, the Biden administration is fully prepared to back its ally, according to a senior administration official.
Amos Hochstein, a former IDF tank crewman now masquerading as America’s Special Envoy to Lebanon gave a “blunt” warning to his Lebanese hosts when he told them that the Israelis have a war itch that they are eager to scratch:
In his meetings in Beirut on Tuesday [June 18], US envoy Amos Hochstein delivered “blunt” warnings to Lebanese officials that Israel is preparing to launch a limited offensive on Hezbollah and will have the US’s support if a diplomatic solution isn’t found, a senior Arab official told Middle East Eye.
“The US will stand by Israel and not condemn them publicly if it launches an offensive against Hezbollah,” Hochstein warned the Lebanese officials, according to the Arab official.
The Middle East Eye report further added:
Hochstein warned that once fighting in Gaza pauses, Israeli officials intend to turn their full focus to the northern border with the aim of pushing Hezbollah back from the area so the roughly 60,000-96,000 displaced Israelis can return to their homes before the start of school in the fall.
There you have it. The Israelis are looking for a war and they couldn’t be anymore explicit about it. And since the Israelis want it, America — and its vassals — can’t say no.
Where does it all lead to?
Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese MP and spokesman Ibrahim Moussawi has welcomed the Israelis to attack his country, he recently stated:
“If they want to come to Lebanon, they are welcome. We are waiting for them. Ahlan wa Sahlan, as they say in Arabic.
“They can’t manage themselves in Gaza, and they want to come here? In Gaza, they are not fighting. They are just bombarding and sending drones. But if they do come, we are anxiously waiting for them. We have made preparations that they can never imagine,” he added.
Nasrallah, of course, has made explicit the war-readiness of his fighting force.
Rather ominously, in his last speech Nasrallah declared that in the eventuality of a war with Israel, his force will attack the enemy no holds barred:
The enemy knows that what awaits it in the Mediterranean Sea is also very significant. It must await us on land, in the air, and at sea. If war is imposed, the resistance will fight without restrictions, rules, or limits.
He also had a message for any states supporting the Israelis in their campaign against Hezbollah. Nasrallah warned Cyprus, which could assist the Israelis in their war:
The Cypriot government must be careful that opening its airports and bases to the enemy to target Lebanon means it has become part of the war, and the resistance will deal with it as such.
The warning seems to have chickened out the Cypriots. While Nasrallah singled out Cyprus in his broadcast, his message will also serve as a warning to the neighbouring Arab states which may facilitate Israel or its Western vassals during their campaign against Lebanon. Notably, Jordan had played a part in intercepting Iranian projectiles when Tehran retaliated against Israel on April 14.
Whenever it begins and whatever way it ends, the seemingly inevitable Israel - Hezbollah war, which will likely bring in other players in the US-led Axis of Evil and the Axis of Resistance in the skirmish, has the potential to change the geography of the region. Nasrallah made it clear:
“This is the greatest battle the nation has fought since 1948. It has a clear and bright horizon and will change the face of the region and shape its future.”
The Lebanese Hudhud is sending its message loud and clear, but drunk in their hubris, the genocidal Israelis are too deaf and blind to pay attention. It will only hasten the demise of the illegitimate settler colonial entity that has only brought bloodshed to the Holy Land since before its violent inception.
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DISMANTLE THE TERRORIST STATE. Long live the resistance
The Israelis are deranged and have been for many decades. It’s understandable why - the trauma. But there is no excuse for the west for a century now giving traumatised people weapons and license to harm others - instead of the emotional and mental help they need.
At this point they are literally breeding generational trauma in themselves- and battering it into other people.