In June, Hashem Safieddine, the possible heir to the now dead Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, threatened Israel by saying, “Let (the enemy) prepare himself to cry and wail.”
But for quite some time, and especially since October 7, Israel has not been content to just mourn its dead, to watch idly as bombs rain down on its cities, or to be the world’s scapegoat for all the troubles in the Middle East.
After the very public horror and evil of October 7 by Hamas, Israel has gone on the offensive. And lately Israel has been sending a very clear message to its enemies: we know where you are, we know how to get you, and we will.
On Friday, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of terror group Hezbollah for 32 years, was killed in a massive airstrike on a Beirut suburb, along with other commanders, including Ali Karaki, the head of the so-called Southern Front who survived an assassination attempt days earlier.
Nasrallah is just the latest of Israel’s most senior enemies to be eliminated in the last few months.
In July, Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, was killed in an airstrike on a guesthouse in Tehran while attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president.
The same month, Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, was killed in an airstrike in Gaza. Deif was believed to be one of the chief architects of the October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people and triggered the Israel-Hamas war.
In January, Saleh al-Arouri died in an explosion in a Beirut suburb. He was a founder of the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas that carried out the October 7 attacks.
And in April, Mohammed Zahedi, the senior commander in Iran’s Quds Force for Syria and Lebanon, was killed when Israel struck the Iranian consulate building in Damascus. Zahedi was extremely close to Nasrallah and was believed to be the coordinator for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah who are acting as Iran’s proxies in the region.
The killing of Nasrallah comes as conflict between Israel and Hezbollah threatens to become an all-out war.
Since October 7, Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has responded by carrying out attacks in Lebanon, but militarily matters were low level (Israel had its hands full in Gaza).
But this month, the conflict escalated.
Pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded killing dozens and injuring thousands. The explosions happened hours after the Israeli cabinet decided that a new war goal would be to return citizens displaced from their homes in the north because of Hezbollah attacks.
Days later, an airstrike in the Lebanese Dahiyeh neighbourhood killed more than a dozen senior Hezbollah terrorists. Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Kassem declared it was the start of an “open-ended battle” with Israel.
This week, Hezbollah fired deeper into Israel than ever before with the Israel Defense Forces intercepting a missile aimed at Tel Aviv.
Now, with the death of Nasrallah, Hezbollah has suffered major losses among its leadership, its commanders and its rank-and-file.
Israel knows that cutting the head off the Hydra will only see it replaced by someone new and possibly more militant, someone like Safieddine.
After the death of Haniyeh, for instance, Hamas named Yahya Sinwar, a hardliner who masterminded the October 7 horrors, as its new head.
But how much more militant can any of the new leaders be? If the stated genocidal aim of Hamas is to wipe Israel off the map, how does Sinwar up the ante?
It’s more likely to be a case of: meet the new terrorist leader same as the old terrorist leader.
But while Israel’s targeting of the terrorist leaders is grabbing the headlines, the significant damage is being done by eliminating other less senior commanders, or, as with the pagers, the low-level operatives.
Get rid of the actual workers – or terrorists in this case – and any organization tends to crumble.
It is unlikely that Hezbollah was quite prepared for the fury, the sophistication, the intensity and the determination that Israel has shown recently in its pursuit of the terrorists.
Hezbollah may respond with a new leader and new rocket attacks. It may decide to escalate the conflict (Hezbollah is believed by the IDF to have 200,000 rockets, mortars and missiles as well as hundreds of explosive-laden drones).
But it knows it is also going to have to be prepared to suffer more assaults, in unexpected ways, and with ever more ferocity.
Hezbollah has fired 8,000 rockets into Israel since October 7. Now it is finding out that there is a price to be paid.