Israeli blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon have been so devastating that the Jew-hating group — and its backers in Tehran — made it clear Nov. 18 that they are willing to withdraw to some 20 miles north of Israel’s border in exchange for a cease-fire. They also dropped the demand that Israel first agree to a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hezbollah hopes to buy time to work with Tehran to rebuild its forces in Lebanon, rearm and prepare for a war to destroy Israel and kill or expel Jews from the region. To that end, Tehran is increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium, bringing it closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists there can be no cease-fire until Hezbollah is disarmed and agrees to “shutting down the supply routes used to transport weapons” along with eliminating “its missile capabilities.”
Israeli advances in Lebanon — including the killing of much of Hezbollah’s central leadership — is helping to defend the safety of Israel, the only country that unconditionally offers Jews a refuge. Israel has also largely dismantled Hamas’ death squads in Gaza and destroyed much of Iran’s anti-aircraft systems and a key nuclear weapons site.
Hezbollah began firing hundreds of missiles at northern Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Gaza-based Hamas murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands, took 250 hostages and raped and mutilated numerous women. Hezbollah aimed to reinforce the impact of the worst anti-Jewish pogrom since the Holocaust in World War II. As a result of its bombardment, more than 60,000 Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, were forced to evacuate their homes near the Lebanese border.
According to a 2006 U.N. brokered agreement, Hezbollah is supposed to stay north of Lebanon’s Litani River. Instead, Hezbollah — which is far better armed than the Lebanese National Army — built a network of military tunnels in the south and prepared to launch its own pogrom against Jews in Israel. Israeli troops found weapons and even rocket launchers placed in almost every Lebanese home near the border.
Origins of the Party of God
Hezbollah — Party of God in Arabic — was formed in Lebanon at the initiative of the reactionary capitalist regime in Iran, part of consolidating a counterrevolution that pushed back gains made by working people and the oppressed during the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed shah of Iran. Tehran sent money, weapons and 1,500 trainers to Lebanon. Hezbollah became the central force in Tehran’s efforts to extend its influence throughout the region.
Hezbollah took its name from a paramilitary thug group that was formed in Iran in 1979 to help target the millions of working people who entered political life during the upheaval that ousted the shah, including vanguard workers and communists. Its slogan was “The only party is the Party of God, the only leader is Ruhallah [Khomeini].”
Members of Iran’s Party of God, armed with chains, clubs, brass knuckles, knives and firearms physically broke up political meetings and demonstrations. On May 1, 1979, Party of God thugs destroyed the Workers House, the union headquarters in Tehran. They shut down newspapers; destroyed political organizations, from bourgeois rivals to Stalinist groups; and were central to the consolidation of the reactionary bourgeois-clerical regime.
While Hezbollah — based on Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim population, like the regime in Tehran — never had majority support there, its Tehran-supplied funding and weaponry made it the dominant political and military force. Several bourgeois parties based in the Druze and Christian communities became its allies.
But the Israeli advances into Lebanon and its attacks on Hezbollah positions in Beirut have opened rifts in Hezbollah’s alliance, and emboldened others to speak out.
“Hezbollah can no longer claim it is defending Lebanon,” Gebran Bassil, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, a former Hezbollah ally based on Christian Maronites, said Nov. 14.
Hezbollah, like Hamas, puts its command posts and bunkers in civilian neighborhoods. And like in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces often warn civilians in Lebanon to evacuate before a strike. Still, hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured.
Anti-Zionism a cover for Jew-hatred
Apologists for Hamas, Tehran and Hezbollah claim that they are not anti-Jewish, just anti-Zionist. But Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Mohammad-Jafar Asadi let the truth slip out on Iran’s state-owned national TV Nov. 10. He told a reporter that “the evil Jews have been perpetuating” a huge massacre.
Surprised, the interviewer tried to correct him, saying he must be “referring to the Zionists” since “there are anti-Zionist Jews.”
But Asadi didn’t back down. The Koran, he claimed, “says that the Jews are our biggest enemies.”
The attempts by the reactionary regime to whip up support for its war moves against Israel are falling on deaf ears. Protests and strikes have grown in Iran and are spirited and confident. At a Nov. 16 action in Tehran, some 300 retired women school teachers waved 10,000 toman notes — worth about 15 cents — in the air, smiling while chanting that their pensions are like a boat that is stuck in the mud.
The following day retirees led by the Haft Tappeh sugar cane workers union marched through the streets of Shush, demanding freedom for imprisoned union leaders and activists, including Ismail Gerami and Sharifeh Mohammadi. “Our rights are only gained in the streets,” they said.