Nov 16, 2015

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah gave yet another of his regular speeches on Nov. 14. This time, however, the timing was especially dramatic. It was just two days after the Islamic State’s (IS) deadly suicide attack in the Dahiyeh Quarter, a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut, and just a few hours after IS’ killing spree in Paris. After watching a live broadcast of the speech, a senior Israeli intelligence official made a remarkable comment, speaking on condition of anonymity: “[Nasrallah] sounds like he just joined [Israeli nongovernmental organization] Peace Now. How could we possibly have reached a point in which Nasrallah has become the responsible adult in the Middle East?”

This question is heard more and more in the corridors of Israel’s defense establishment. Nasrallah’s speech lasted several minutes, but this time it did not include attacks on Israel (even though Israel was mentioned more than once as the source of all troubles in the region). In contrast, it contained numerous attacks on IS. Nasrallah employed the same jargon used by the West to describe IS’ atrocities.

“The Islamic State’s attacks in Paris were intended to intimidate,” he said. “People of the region, of the Arab and Islamic countries, who are living under the brutality of [IS], including Lebanon which suffered a few days ago from it, are the most aware of and sympathetic to what hit the French nation last night. We offer our deep condolences, solidarity, sympathy [and] our moral and humanitarian stand to those innocents who are invaded by the barbaric criminal management of [IS].”

Referring to the car bomb in Dahiyeh, Nasrallah said, “We must find the people responsible for these car bombs and destroy those networks. … The Islamic State has a system. This system was implemented in Paris. They use cars and trucks because they want as many casualties and as much destruction as possible. They also want to sow fear, so they use suicide bombers. We must fight against this new wave of attacks by employing the same strategy that we used against the car bombs. We must get to the people in charge of these networks, the leadership that sends these suicide bombers. … I want to tell everyone who is following events in Lebanon and the region that the Islamic State has no future. The Islamic State has a short life ahead of it. It is a project of death and destruction. They have no plans for a state or life or recognition of the other. Their very thoughts are saturated with elements of self-destruction. The Islamic State has no future. Anyone who once supported the Islamic State is beginning to see how vicious they really are. There is no room for the Islamic State in any political arrangement anywhere, not in Iraq or Syria, not in Libya or Yemen. There is no room for anyone who bears the name of the Islamic State.”

Almost all world leaders whose countries have been horrified by IS’ atrocities could sign on to Nasrallah’s remarks. “It proves that everything in life is relative,” said a senior Israeli defense official to Al-Monitor, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Compared to what we are seeing now, Nasrallah is practically a ‘righteous gentile’ [term describing non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust]. I almost forgot,” he went on to admit, “that Hezbollah basically invented the car bomb and suicide bombers.” The Israeli defense official was referring to the car bomb attack on the headquarters of the Multinational Force in Beirut in 1983, which left 305 people dead, including 241 US Marines, and the car bomb that exploded beside the gate of the Israel Defense Forces command in Tyre, which killed 28 Israeli soldiers and border police and 31 Lebanese prisoners, etc.