Lebanon, a land of hope, a land of despair. A country where the modern meets the medieval in a Mediterranean melange. How did the house of the the ancient Phoenicians does it come under the primitive control of the jihadist group Hezbollah and its Iranian puppet master?
In a colorful 21st century twist straight out of a James Bond film, how and why Israeli intelligence planted and activated explosives in the pagers and walkie-talkies carried by Hezbollah operatives, incapacitating thousands – and then success murder its legendary leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on a timely strike?
You must understand the history of this place to see what the future holds.
“The righteous shall flourish as the palm tree: he shall grow as a cedar in Lebanon,” says Psalm 92:12. When I was young, the verse looked like the biblical cedar on the Lebanese flag: Beirut was known as Paris of the Middle Easthome of the prestigious American University of Beirut and a cosmopolitan population.
But Lebanon also had problems, and the most visible of them at the dawn of the 1980s was the presence of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which, led by the terrorist Yasser Arafat, engineered the control of what was calledstate-within-state” in South Lebanon and engaged in cross-border attacks on Israel.
In 1982, Israel and its allies in Lebanon succeeded in defeating the PLO and its Syrian ally, under the family rule of the father of the current president Bashar Assad. For a while, it seemed that the region would be revolutionized as the new Lebanese president Amine Gemayel signed a May 1983. peace treaty with Israel. But Western support faltered as the war dragged on, and Syria forced Gemayel to renege on the accord in March 1984.
Meanwhile, Iran had spawned the creation of a Shia jihadist militia called Hezbollah. Hezbollah introduced modern suicide attempt to the Islamic world, especially with the suicide truck bombing of the US marine barracks that killed 241 US. service members. Since 2000, when Israel and its ally, the South Lebanon Army, withdrew, Hezbollah has been in full control of the territory north of Israel’s border.
A long night fell in Lebanon until 2005, when a popular uprising called Cedar Revolution gave the Lebanese people a new lease of hope. Outrage after assassination by Hezbollah of the popular former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri led to the withdrawal of the Syrian army from its occupation of Lebanon.
However, once again, the new openness longed for by the Lebanese people never came, as Hezbollah heavily armed the weak Lebanese state into submission and, by 2006, had launched a new hellish war on Israel, with many Israelis who spend a summer reminiscent of London. Blitz largely bomb shelters.
Hezbollah’s dark star has continued to rise as the terror organization has intervened in the Syrian Civil War on behalf of the brutal dictator Bashar Assad, who has butchered more than half a million of his own people in his attempt to cling to power. Hezbollah also developed its Radwan Forces, operatives specially trained to infiltrate Israel and commit atrocities.
A day after Hamas launched its contempt war on Israel on October 7, assassination 1,200 innocents and kidnapping 251 others, Hezbollah began its own bombing of northern Israel, forcing the evacuation of about 60,000 Israelis from their homes. One such missile attack on the village of Majdal Shams was burnwith a man heard shouting “They’re all children!” after the death of a dozen Druze children.
“The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; The Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon,” says Psalm 29: 5. On September 17, Israel activated the explosive devices that it had planted in thousands of Hezbollah pages and the day then he cleared his hand radios.
Israel then proceeded to systematically kill Hezbollah’s leadership and destroy its arsenal, estimated at more than 100,000 missiles that threatened Israeli cities. And yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu asked the people of Lebanon to free themselves from Hezbollah.
It is important to understand that Lebanon is not Hezbollah any more than the PLO or the Syrian army. Like those previous occupiers, Hezbollah and theirs employerIran, they have assumed the effective military power of a nation whose most citizens – the multi-confessional, French-speaking potpourri that is the Lebanese – find their values of “holy war” and the oppression of women abominable
This is the Lebanon that longs to breathe free again, the moment the ugly edifice of Hezbollah’s domination begins to crumble. These are the Lebanese who urgently need a new Cedar Revolution.
Yousef is the author of “From Hamas to America: My Story of Defying Terror, Facing the Unthinkable, and Finding Redemption in the Land of Opportunity.”
