Nearly 20 years have passed since 2006 when Hezbollah launched an attack on Israel for which Israel to this very day has been plotting revenge. Israel got that chance with its recent assassination of top Hezbollah leaders, but now Israel is making the same mistake Lebanon did the first time around by failing to develop a plan for victory and an eventual exit.
Back then, it was Hezbollah that had the upper hand, resulting in Israel being overtaken by Hezbollah forces. Now, Israel has the upper hand since Hezbollah did not expect the attack. The problem is, will Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be able to come up with a plan for victory or is this all a dead end?
"Nonetheless, after the technically impressive (if humanly questionable) opener, with the land invasion, Tel Aviv finds itself heading down the path that could well prove a repetition of Hezbollah’s mistake," reports Free West Media's Marko Marjanovi?. "It is now Israel that is launching a war that doesn’t come with victory conditions or an exit plan."
"Other than to deliver an October surprise and supercharge swing-state Evangelicals for Trump, what is the land offensive supposed to accomplish, and how may the success of such an enterprise be distinguished from failure? As in Gaza, the IDF will go forward, inflict some losses, sustain some losses, capture some ground, then sooner or later vacate it. Okay, great. So what's the point? What does it accomplish?"
(Related: Major retaliation is underway after Israel took out Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's top chief, in a recent air attack.)
Hezbollah helped protect Christians against Western-led aggression
What many people do not realize is that Hezbollah fought against Western-led forces in the Middle East that sought to expel Shiites, Allawites and Christians from Syria, and turn the area into an Islamic state.
The names of these various groups can get confusing, especially since allegiances are always changing – remember ISIS and Al-Qaeda? It is complicated to say the least, but Hezbollah has actually functioned as a deterrent against Western-led regime changes in that particular corner of the Middle East.
In 2013, Hezbollah stepped in to stop the Western-led assault on Syria's then-secular government. Lebanese Hezbollah not only provided what Marjanovi? describes as "the most cohesive units of the war, but also helped arm, train, and organize self-defense units for vulnerable Shiite, but also Christian, enclaves."
"That today there remain Christians, Allawites, and Shiites in Syria is in part thanks to Hezbollah," she says.
"Thus, while there are Muslims in Al-Qaeda-held Idlib who detested Nasrallah, there are also Christians in the same country who regarded him as a friend and benefactor in the greatest hour of need. Indeed, it would be interesting to know of the people celebrating in Idlib how many are upset with Hezbollah chiefly for getting in the way of their sectarian cleansing of the country."
Hezbollah's apparent plan in the face of Israel's newfound aggression was simply to play along "in a performative manner," according to Marjanovi?, "seeking no more than a half-phony, symbolic war." The assumption was that there would be an eventual ceasefire, which has not yet materialized.
The fighting is likely to continue in the coming weeks and months with a lot of back-and-forth. There is also the possibility that a much larger war erupts not just in the Middle East but worldwide, culminating with World War III.
In 2024, the only remaining serious militia in Lebanon is Shia Hezbollah. The West wants everyone to believe that this group is a "terrorist" group, but the truth is that it is a Shia ethnic militia in Lebanon that has about 50,000 Hezbollah fighters in its ranks, which pales in comparison to the size of Israel's army.
The latest news about the Middle East powder keg can be found at Prophecy.news.
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