Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva News Staff.
A saying falsely attributed to an ancient Chinese curse states, “May you live in interesting times.” But nothing was stated about exciting times. Israelis are experiencing both following the Iranian attack consisting of nearly 200 ballistic missiles this evening. Thankfully, the vast majority of these dangerous missiles were intercepted and there are no reports of direct casualties incurred, a fact which cannot be said for Iran’s Hezbollah proxy.
Two weeks ago today, the dismantling of the world’s most powerful and dangerous terrorist organization began with the explosion of thousands of pagers Hezbollah distributed to its operatives. It is unclear how many terrorists were killed, but thousands were wounded, with many losing eyes, hands, and other body parts.
Beyond the casualties inflicted on Hezbollah, the disruption to the terror group’s communications network and the psychological impact were even more devastating. Hezbollah was reeling, cut off at the knees, and Israel had not launched a single aircraft yet.
The next day, the same thing happened to Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies, killing and maiming even more of its terrorists and proving that no Hezbollah communication devices were safe.
‘Operation Grim Beeper,’ as this intelligence coup was dubbed online, was a success of historic proportions. Never had so many terrorists been targeted at once with so little collateral damage. Never had a terrorist organization been so thoroughly compromised and humiliated.
Of course, the usual detractors tried to downplay the impact of the beeper and walkie-talkie blasts and to criticize Israel for it. Squad members like Alexandira Ocasio-Cortez tried unsuccessfully to argue that it violated international law, while others claimed that the apparent fact that a small number of civilians were affected, a tiny percentage of the Hezbollah terrorists who were killed and maimed, delegitimized the entire operation.
The New York Times published a piece citing so-called “experts” who claimed that the blasts were merely a tactical success with no long-term strategic benefit. This might have been true if Israel listened to the US and French governments and did not act to take advantage of Hezbollah’s weakened state. Fortunately, Israel ignored their orders.
On Friday, September 20, the leaders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force were meeting together in Beirut to plan an October 7-style invasion and massacre in northern Israel. These terror leaders were forced to meet in person due to the destruction of so many communication devices and Hezbollah’s inability to trust whatever communications devices remained to them. This proved to be their undoing, as an Israeli airstrike took out 12 Radwan commanders, including its highest-ranking leader, Ibrahim Aqil, a terrorist who directed the 1983 bombing of the US barracks in Beirut.
From then on, Hezbollah’s leadership has been systematically erased from existence. Ibrahim Qubaisi, commander of Hezbollah’s rocket array and mastermind of the 2000 terrorist attack on Mount Dov in which three IDF soldiers were ambushed, murdered, and abducted. Muhammad Hussein Srour, the commander of Hezbollah's aerial unit. Ali Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front. And many more.
Then, on Friday, Israel caught the biggest fish of all. Hassan Nasrallah, the monster who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, finally got his just deserts when he was killed in his own headquarters in the Beirut area.
As former White House adviser Jared Kushner noted, “Over the past six weeks or so, Israel has eliminated as many terrorists on the US list of wanted terrorists as the US has done in the last 20 years.”
While Hezbollah’s leadership was being eliminated, its arsenal was being destroyed as well. Since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Hezbollah had amassed 150,000 rockets and missiles, including thousands of precision-guided missiles, as well as thousands of attack drones. In thousands of airstrikes, the IAF has destroyed much of this capability, from destroying ballistic missiles hidden in people’s homes to warehouses full of missile launchers near Beirut’s International Airport.
The result of all of this, the destruction of Hezbollah’s communications network, the elimination of Nasrallah and nearly the entire senior Hezbollah leadership, and the degradation of its rocket arsenal, is that Hezbollah has been unable to carry out the threat the world feared for years of launching thousands of rockets a day at Israel and causing hundreds or even thousands of casualties.
There have been daily barrages, as there have been since the October 7 massacre, but the only Israeli fatality has been a 17-year-old boy who was tragically killed in a traffic accident that resulted from the Red Alert sirens. Thank God, there has been no repeat of the Majdal Shams Massacre in July, when 12 Druze children were murdered in a Hezbollah rocket attack. The number of rockets fired each day has been in the low hundreds, not the thousands and the IDF is destroying them.
Military historians will be studying the IDF’s successes in the last half of September 2024 for centuries to come. To inflict this much damage on a military force as strong as Hezbollah in such a short time without a single boot on the ground is unheard of. To accomplish so much without suffering a single direct casualty is miraculous. Hezbollah was more powerful than many nations just two weeks ago, and now it is crippled in more ways than one.
The ripple effects from Israel’s successes against Hezbollah are already reverberating across the Middle East. Just last week, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began to distance himself from the Palestinian Arabs again, when the Atlantic reported that he told the Biden Administration, “Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t.” While he stressed that his people care about the Palestinians, this admission is a good sign of things to come. The Sunni Arab countries once again see Israel as the strong horse and a reliable ally against Iran’s hegemonic ambitions. They see the reports of the Iranian Supreme Leader going into hiding for fear of his own life and know it’s because of Israel.
Unfortunately, while Israel has been making history, the American government has been attempting to freeze history and return to the status quo of October 6, 2023.
At every step, the Biden Administration has opposed Israel’s acts of self-defense in Lebanon. The absorbtion of more than 8,000 rockets in less than a year, having more than 60,000 civilians evacuated from their homes for 12 months, and having 12 children murdered by Hezbollah is apparently not enough for the US government to acknowledge that the Hezbollah threat need to be dealt with. From the start, America has been attempting to save Hezbollah from destruction, never mind that the terrorist organization has had the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands. In absurd defiance of logic and common sense, America’s actions over the last two weeks have not been to support the bringing to justice of terrorists on whose heads the US has placed bounties worth millions of dollars for their roles in the mass murder of Americans, but to save the lives of its enemies.
As it has for the entirety of 2024 in Gaza, the US has sought to handcuff Israel and save a mass-murdering, Iranian proxy terrorist organization. For the moment, Israel is not listening, thankfully. Any ceasefire now would give Hezbollah time to replace its leaders, time to rebuild its communications network, and time to rearm and prepare for another round of conflict under more favorable conditions, exactly as it did following the 2006 conflict.
Last night, Israel launched limited ground operations in southern Lebanon, again in defiance of America’s wishes, effectively beginning a new phase in this conflict. There is no way to know how long it will take to either effectively destroy Hezbollah or push it entirely north of the Litani River, even with the damage the organization has suffered in just two weeks. Israel must stay the course and not bow to the inevitable American pressure to let Hezbollah live to fight another day. To not take advantage of this opportunity would be idiotic and possibly suicidal.
For the last 30 years, Iran has been attempting to surround Israel in a “ring of fire” of terrorist proxies, all ready to sacrifice the civilians of their host countries to destroy Israel and to launch massive assaults on the Jewish State if Israel takes any action against Iran’s nuclear program. Now Israel has the opportunity to eliminate the two linchpins in this ring of fire, Hamas and Hezbollah, and to ensure that neither can reemerge as a threat.
Keep making history, Israel.
As with Menachem Begin’s strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, the US may be critical of Israel’s self-defense now, but once history has had its say and wiser people are in government, America will one day praise Israel for eliminating the Hezbollah threat and making the world a safer place.