Thank goodness that aside from the brave IDF soldiers, Israeli intelligence yet again is keeping hope alive despite Bibi’s appalling weak leadership regarding the Gaza war. Starting at 4:45 am local time on Sunday, April 25th, 100 Israeli fighter jets bombed thousands of missile launchers in Southern Lebanon, spanning over 40 missile sites, deeper in Lebanon. Drones were also hit. This preemptive strike was acted upon after intelligence gave word that Hezbollah at 5am was about to launch over 6,000 rockets across Northern Israel and target Mossad headquarters near Tel Aviv as well as the base for Unit 8200 (the equivalent of the NSA in the U.S.), using long range missiles. In response, Hezbollah launched 320 missiles at Israel.
Hezbollah then announced that ‘their targets have been met, today’ – it was a clear embarrassment that Israel thwarted their and Iran’s terror plan.
In July, Israel killed Fuad Shukr, the most senior Hezbollah military commander who was responsible for not just the murders of Israelis throughout the decades, the most recent of which was the murder of 12 Druze children in Majdal Shams, but also of Americans. Shukr had been wanted by the U.S. for orchestrating the bombing that killed 241 American servicemen at a Marines barracks in Beirut in 1982, before Hezbollah was officially founded.
6,000 is a mere fraction of the weapons Hezbollah has in its arsenal; prior to October 7th, Hezbollah had over 100,000 missiles.
**Flush with cash due to Jihad Joe’s easing of sanctions, Iran gained more than $100 billion thanks to the liberals in the U.S. – this includes billions for a hostage exchange, and freed money just days after an Iranian drone killed American soldiers in Jordan in March of this year. Not to mention $10 billion released to Iran a mere month after the Jewish genocide. **
Since the beginning of the war, Hezbollah struck the North of the country over 8,000 times. Not many Americans are aware that large swaths of the North have been displaced for nearly a year, according to UN Watch, a watchdog group of the UN, the number of displaced is 80,000 as of this past July, and the communities still intact, have school starting in a week while at the whim of Iran’s proxies at their nearest border. The UN, the equally antisemitic Human Rights Watch, and others have been evilly silent on the displaced Israelis in both the North and South.
Israel did not need to be dealing with the Hezbollah while fighting the Arab occupiers in Jewish Gaza (among several other fronts including the Houthis in Yemen). In 2000, Israel under PM Ehud Barak, withdrew from Southern Lebanon, leaving a vacuum for Hezbollah to dig an extensive tunnel system rivaling that of Hamas, and build up a terrorist army while holding 10% of Lebanon hostage.
How Israel even ended up in Lebanon and occupying a portion of their land for 22 years, in actuality, was due to the Christians of that nation.
Prior to Islam, apart from large swaths of the Arabian Peninsula (which were Pagan before the invention of Islam), the majority of the Middle East was mainly Christian for hundreds of years. Egypt was Coptic Christian, Syria was Eastern Orthodox Christian, what would become Lebanon was also nearly all Christian. Iraq’s native population are not Arabs but Chaldeans, Assyrians, and a smattering of other early indigenous groups who accepted the Christian religion. Turkey, before the Ottomans invaded, was Christian – the native population there are Armenians and Greeks. The Turks came down from the Steppes of Central Asia. Yemen’s Himyarite Kingdom briefly adopted the Judean faith before switching to Christianity.
We all know that Islam spread by the sword, which is how Arabs ended up across North Africa as well. However, in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon), there was only a minority of Muslims, despite being under Muslim rule, with the vast population retaining their Christian identity. In the 4th century, Maronite Christians (followers of St Maron, a monk from Syria) moved into the Lebanese mountains and began converting the population, though it was a slow process as the Pagans resisted strongly. Fast forward to the late 1800s, the Maronites and Druze formed a joint government, followed by the Maronites appealing to the League of Nations post-WWI, for recognition of Christian territory under the French Mandate.
During WWII, the Vichy government in Lebanon was not against the population, unlike the British occupiers in Israel, who violated their Mandate by targeting Jews while supporting Arab occupiers and fomenting Arab aggression against Jews. Lebanon’s independence in 1943 was a fairly swift process, and the only major incident was the French imprisoning members of the Lebanese newly formed government, an event which united Christians and Muslims of Lebanon. That was the Lebanese Christians’ first mistake, to trust Muslims to share elements of governmental power.
Their most consequential misjudgment call was inviting/allowing in over 100,000 Israeli Arabs in 1948 who were not kicked out by Jews, but who fled Israel to help the Arab armies kill Jews faster. This decision was the beginning of the end of Lebanon as a safe nation.
By the conclusion of the 1967 Six Day War, the former Israeli Arabs (who originally came to Israel from 25 Muslim nations, majority of whom came between the two World Wars) made up about 12% of the Lebanese population and so the PLO was able to easily use Lebanon as a terrorist base against Israel. Until the terror group was kicked out of Jordan in 1970 (not because Jordan was pro-Israel, but due to the PLO vying for power away from the Hashemite Arab occupiers of Jewish land), those terrorists didn’t need to travel far between the two countries to attack Israelis.
Southern Lebanon became a quasi-PLO terror state. The most heinous terrorist attack was the Coastal Road massacre which occurred near Tel Aviv on March 11th 1978. On that day, 11 Fatah (Fatah terrorist group was created by Arafat in Egypt in 1958; Arafat did not invent the PLO) terrorists led by the 18-year-old female terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi, traveled from Lebanon to Israel, where they killed an American tourist at a beach before hijacking a bus on the Coastal Road near Haifa; the terrorists later hijacked a second bus that was bound for Tel Aviv. 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children were murdered. This massacre led to Operation Litani, the objective of which was to destroy PLO bases and push the terrorists north of the Litani River in order to secure the safety of Northern Israel.
Terrorist Muslim factions (Fatah and the PLO, and others) were not only targeting Israelis but also Christians inside Lebanon. Syria’s interventions came in response to appeals from Maronite leaders, who were under attack by leftists and the Muslim terrorists. After a confrontation with the Lebanese Christian President Bachir Gemayel, the relationship between the Syrian forces and the Maronite leadership deteriorated.
During the 1982 War, General Gemayel played into the Israeli desperation of normalizing relations with the Christians in Lebanon – or at the very least helping to establish a pro-Israel government in Lebanon – both Israelis and the Christians have a shared enemy, but Gemayel let Israel do the heavy lifting during the war all while politically tiptoeing around Israeli security concerns.
What ensued is that Israel was essentially dragged into a drawn out Lebanese Civil War because of the weakness of the Christian forces. The First Lebanese War last from 1982 – 1985; the three main objectives of Israel were: expel the PLO, remove Syrian influence over Lebanon, and install a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel.
With barely any help from the Christian military factions, Israel led the charge of surrounding the PLO in West Beirut, with full diplomatic support of President Reagan. No public condemnations were given, and every military weapon was delivered. It also helped that at the time, Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon was still a strong leader, years before the Gaza disengagement disaster, and when Reagan’s team did express concern how the Israeli ‘aggression’ was playing out on American TV screens (after the Israeli objective in Beirut was achieved), Sharon put them in their place, diplomatically.
The PLO relocated its headquarters north to Tripoli.
Gemayel was assassinated in 1982 and with that the Christian forces brutally attacked two ‘refugee’ camps in Southern Lebanon, which at that point during the Civil War, was part of the Free Lebanon State, a self-declared Christian state within Lebanon – refugee is in quotation as Israel did not kick out any Arabs; those Arabs who did leave, fled of their own volition, with some leaving under force by Arab troops.
Of course, Israel was blamed for the massacres not just within Lebanon’s Muslim communities but worldwide.
Seeing that there was no possibility of salvaging pro-Israel government ties in Lebanon, and the Syrian influence unable to be contained, Israel began pulling out troops gradually. However, terrorist factions continued to attack northern Israeli communities for the next 15 years until Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon in 2000. The pullout initiated the collapse of the Southern Lebanese Army.
In 1994, Operation Pumpkin Hill saw the beginning of Hezbollah’s rise. Author Matti Friedman, who served in that oft forgotten operation, explains in greaqgt detail the efforts of the Israelis in Lebanon during that auspicious time. I highly recommend his book on this topic, “Pumpkin Flowers” – Flowers was a code word for those Israelis killed by Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is well known as Iran’s proxy, Iran’s mercenaries, but Syria is to blame for their position within the war-torn nation. At the official conclusion of the Lebanese Civil War in 1990, despite the Taif Agreement asking for the disbanding of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias, Syria, which controlled Lebanon at that time (technically since 1976), allowed Hezbollah to maintain their weapons arsenal and control Shia areas along the border with Israel.
Between 2000 and the Second Lebanon War of 2006, over 200 attacks were launched against Israel by Hezbollah, resulting in the murder of 31 Israelis.
In 2006, Israel near decimated southern Lebanon to the point that Nasrallah, the chief rat of Hezbollah, even stated the regret of kidnapping the two IDF soldiers, a terrorist act that instigated the Second Lebanon War. The ferocity of fighting and devastation that Israel launched, resulted in the Hezbollah rats being relatively quiet for 17 years until 2023. Of course, Iran was aiding them financially and with more advanced weaponry, but 17 years is a long time given the history of the terrorists in Lebanon attacking Israel. April of last year, when Hezbollah launched 34 missiles, was the largest attack since 2006.
The war in 2006 ended with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which called for the pullout of Israeli troops, the disarmament of Hezbollah, and for the expansion of Lebanese and UN troops in southern Lebanon to ensure the cessation of attacks against Israel. Only Israel adhered to that resolution. No Lebanese government has attempted to disarm Hezbollah nor have either of the named non-Israeli armies kept the security area Hezbollah-free.
**Therefore, Israel is not bound to UNSCR 1701 and has every right not only to fully decimate southern Lebanon once again but also to annex that security area to ensure safety for the northern Israeli communities. **
The antisemites are currently nonstop jabbering on about ‘escalation’ concerns. We are well past that point. The October 7th genocide was the epitome of escalation, full stop. And for the citizens of northern Israel, and increasingly, even central Israel, not to be held hostage by the Hezbollah terrorists, playing whack a mole with them is defeatist. Sure, it is a celebrated win for Israel to have killed the top military commander. Nasrallah would be an extraordinary trophy as well, to have him eliminated. But those are all replaceable terrorists. Iran has the money and Lebanon has the terrorists for an endless supply of devastating attacks against Israel.
Even if Israel alongside the Iranian people topple the Iranian regime (which has to be accomplished), Hezbollah will continue being a threat of varying degree as other financial backers – Syria, Turkey, Qatar – would strengthen resolve. Throw in the liberal EU for good measure and the liberals in the U.S (who have no issue supporting terrorists) as they now see Israel as an ‘oppressor’ and the terrorists as ‘freedom fighters.’
For Israel to truly be safe, Israel needs land barriers in the north, to the west (reclaiming Gaza fully; Gaza has been Jewish land since 145 BC with the League of Nations twice recognizing it as such), and eventually, clearing Judea & Samaria of Arab occupiers. A near never-ending war zone on Israel’s northern border should never again be tolerated.
For those who are interested in Zionism education classes (TBTN offers classes four times a year), please contact me at : laureen@tbtnisrael.com. It would help to determine when this fall to best teach the classes.
Also, pro-Israel organizations that are interested in Zionism education, are welcome to partner promotionally with TBTN.