October 14, 2024
Nasser Kandil
• Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war to free himself from the psychological grip of a formula crafted by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who declared, in his 2000 Liberation Day speech in Bint Jbeil, that “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web”. Through this war, Netanyahu seeks to forge new realities that would liberate him and the settlers, from this equation, which planted the psychological and cultural seed of the existential crisis now engulfing the occupying entity. Al-Aqsa Flood only deepened this crisis by reinforcing the validity of Sayyed Nasrallah’s equation. All the significant operations targeting the resistance – from rigging communication devices to assassinating leaders, up to the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary General the one who laid the equation – were designed to flip this equation onto the resistance, to claim that the resistance and it’s party are “weaker than a spider’s web”.
• Only two weeks after Sayyed Nasrallah’s martyrdom, the resistance was creating heroic and exceptional epics along the border. It succeeded in destroying occupation tanks and killing or injuring its officers and soldiers, whether through IEDs, guided missiles, or direct combat. By doing so the resistance was declaring that it rose from the ashes, fragments and rubble, and that despite the intensity and ferocity of the strikes, it did not fall. These blows, had they been inflicted on great powers, would have caused them to reel and collapse. The resistance lost 1% of its base, which is equivalent to 3.5 million Americans and relative to Japan, it would be equivalent to 650,000, which is more than double the figure of the 250,000 dead and injured following the atomic bombings in World War II that caused Japan’s surrender. In addition, the resistance lost its leader, its military leadership, and its field command all at once, and yet, within two weeks, the resistance was targeting settlements and military sites with several times the intensity it had before. On day thirteen, it continued to prevent the occupation from advancing southward, inflicting over 300 casualties, including dead and wounded, and destroying ten tanks in the process.
• On the most critical day of the ground battles, the resistance unleashed a swarm of attack drones toward the Binyamina base, killing and injuring nearly a hundred, with rumours circulating that a high-ranking military official was among the casualties. These drones travelled more than 70 kilometres, evading air defences, which failed to bring them down. This shows that a group capable of such achievements, even after suffering such blows, is stronger than steel. The resistance fights with exceptional skill, launching rockets under the assault of the region’s most advanced air force, all while executing this precise and complex operation in terms of location, timing, and target. The resistance’s ability to achieve all of this despite suffering significant losses shows its strength even more than if it had accomplished the same feats during a period of recovery, with its leadership and beloved leader still alive.
• For the occupying entity, the problem is that these catastrophes were all experienced in a single day: a dismal failure in the ground war, hundreds of rockets raining down on northern settlements and military positions, and then, this devastating strike to the head. All after Netanyahu had boasted that Hezbollah had been eliminated and that it was only a matter of time before the final victory. He had once more begun speaking about reshaping the Middle East. The shock, however, is even greater since the entity believed it had successfully dealt a fatal blow to Hezbollah and basked in this triumph. The blow is more powerful when it comes from a force that the entity had already eulogised, and discussed its funeral rites. Here, the story of Samson from the Torah and the Phoenix from Greek mythology
merges with that of the story of Hezbollah. The natural result is a growing certainty in the validity of Sayyed Nasrallah’s equation: “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web”.
• It could be said that a rational leader within the occupying entity would immediately sneak out at night to seek an agreement with the resistance leadership in Gaza to end the war, to save himself and the entity along with its army from further disaster. Hezbollah’s elite forces and its most advanced missile arsenal – long-range, precision, and heavy weapons – have yet to make an appearance. Who can guarantee that the chant of “Labayka Ya Nasrallah” meaning “At your service O’ Nasrullah”, won’t soon echo in a march across the Galilee?
