Over the last few weeks Israeli forces have decimated the leadership of Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah; destroying thousands of its rocket launchers; disrupting much of its communication systems; and began pushing it out of the southern part of the country.
These blows advance the fight to defend Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews and the fight against Jew-hatred worldwide. It has also deepened demoralization of supporters of Tehran, Hamas and their “axis of resistance.”
In retaliation the Iranian rulers fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel Oct. 1, but the reactionary regime in Tehran is responding from a position of weakness. It faces widespread opposition by workers and oppressed nationalities at home to its military adventures abroad.
Israeli air defenses shot down most of the projectiles — with some help from the U.S. military. Some of the missiles made it through. A Palestinian in the West Bank was killed by shrapnel. A school and more than 100 houses were damaged, along with minor damage to a few military bases.
Hezbollah began daily attacks on northern Israel Oct. 8, in “solidarity” with Hamas’ Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust during World War II.
Hezbollah — much better armed than Hamas — has lobbed more than 9,000 missiles and rockets at northern Israel over the last year, forcing more than 60,000 Israelis to “become refugees in their own land,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly Sept. 27 in his speech.
Hamas and its allies — financed, trained and facilitated by Tehran — “savagely murdered 1,200 people,” he said. “They raped and mutilated women. They beheaded men. They burned babies alive. They burned entire families alive … in scenes reminiscent of the Nazi Holocaust.” Hamas promised to repeat the pogrom “again and again.” A year later it still holds a hundred or so hostages in atrocious conditions.
Netanyahu noted the danger to Jews and to people worldwide if Tehran develops nuclear weapons. He said that “Israel will do everything in its power to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
On Sept. 17 some 3,000 booby-trapped beepers had blown up, followed by dozens of walkie-talkies the next day, killing at least 32 and wounding thousands of Hezbollah operatives.
Not long after Netanyahu finished his U.N. speech, the Israeli air force destroyed the Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, killing Nasrallah.
With Hezbollah’s leadership and communications in disarray, Israeli troops began a limited ground offensive in southern Lebanon Oct. 1. In fact, over the last year Israeli special forces had already carried out more than 70 raids there, blowing up rocket launchers, arms depots and tunnels located inside residential neighborhoods and in forested areas.
Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari reports that Hezbollah had been preparing for what the Nazi-like group called “Conquer the Galilee,” an Oct. 7-type attack on Israel.
If not stopped, Tehran and its axis of resistance will continue preparing a new Holocaust aimed at completing the Final Solution of the Nazis — killing all the Jews.
Netanyahu: No choice but to win
That’s why Israel continues to defy demands from Washington and other imperialist governments to end its war on Hamas, to not “escalate” in Lebanon and to avoid combating Tehran.
Netanyahu concluded his speech at the U.N. saying, “Israel will win this battle. We will win this battle because we don’t have a choice.”
President Joseph Biden issued a statement after Nasrallah’s death that Washington “supports Israel’s right to defend itself.” But in the next paragraph he said, “Our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means,” reaffirming a course that would leave Hamas wounded, but still intact.
The Jerusalem Post reported Sept. 29 that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was furious that Israeli officials didn’t inform him about the attack on Hezbollah headquarters until it was underway.
Washington’s starting point is not defending Jews. All it cares about is defending U.S. imperialism’s economic and political interests, including stability in its relations with governments in the region and for maritime shipping and oil production.
But the capitalist government in Israel refuses to subordinate the need to fight Jew-hatred to its alliance with Washington. By refusing to back down and making real progress, Israel is striking a blow to U.S. imperialism.
The liberal bourgeois press, while admitting that Nasrallah’s goal was destruction of Israel, printed obituaries painting him as a charismatic leader “loved” by Shiite Muslims. The Washington Post said he “was seen as a father figure, a moral compass and a political guide” by his followers, and as “the man who empowered Lebanon’s once downtrodden and impoverished Shiite community.”
A Sept. 27 New York Times article claimed that even though Nasrallah “referred to Israel as ‘the Zionist entity,’ maintaining that all Jewish immigrants should return to their countries of origin,” at the same time he was for “one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians.”
The murderous actions of Hezbollah throughout the Middle East belie these bouquets from the U.S. press.
Hezbollah was a direct creation of the regime in Iran in 1982. The Iranian rulers sought to extend their influence into Lebanon as they consolidated a counterrevolution at home aimed at reversing gains made by working people during the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed shah of Iran. Hezbollah works to advance Tehran’s goal of destroying Israel and killing or expelling all the Jews there.