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Did Hassan Nasrallah learn a lesson from the last two days? Losing over 3,000 operatives in a 48-hour period over your own incompetent strategic planning and execution should have provided an impulse toward introspection, at the very least. Right?
Apparently not. While the leader of Hezbollah acknowledged that Israel’s Pagercide dealt them a « severe blow », Nasrallah insisted that he would continue chucking missiles at northern Israel, as his terror army has done for the last eleven months. Oh, and he also complained that exploding pagers were « an act of war », too:
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah called the two days of deadly blasts linked to electronic devices in Lebanon this week an “act of war” by Israel, as the Israeli military stepped up strikes on southern Lebanon, flew warplanes over Beirut, and approved plans for the next stage of the conflict along the border between the two countries.
“The enemy transgressed all boundaries and redlines,” Nasrallah said in a widely anticipated speech Thursday evening local time about the attacks, which killed at least 37 people and injured nearly 3,000 when pagers, walkie-talkies and other devices exploded simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday across Lebanon. The attacks were “a major assault on Lebanon, its security and sovereignty, a war crime — an act of war,” he added, and they dealt an “unprecedented blow” to Hezbollah and Lebanon.
An act of war? Certainly. In fact, it was a very specifically calibrated attack on Hezbollah, aiming at their operatives in as surgical a strike as could possibly be undertaken. While there have been reports of collateral damage, it’s at a ratio unknown in counter-terror warfare, especially against a group that purposely hides itself among civilians to prevent direct attacks.
However, Hezbollah — and by extension Lebanon, which Hezbollah governs — has conducted acts of war against northern Israel since shortly after Hamas launched its October 7 invasion and parade of ghastly atrocities. That too was an act of war, which Israel has prosecuted in Gaza because that’s where Hamas is, and where it rules. Hezbollah’s acts of war are hardly calibrated for legitimate military targets; they launch missiles indiscriminately against civilian populations, which Hamas had done routinely for 19 years. Hezbollah has killed a number of Israeli non-combatants in these attacks, including nearly a dozen children in a strike in the Golan region.
