Sayed Hassan Nasrallah Presente! “And he was a teacher”. La Lutta Continua.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah as a young militant in the early 1980s, I assume on the streets of Beirut. Thank you to @Fereshteh Sadeghi for posting on “X”.

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Judge Napolitano: Tell us a little bit about Nasrallah. Was he just the face of Hezbollah? Was he just a spokesman or was he a substantial figure like Gandhi or Nelson Mandela?

Alastair Crooke: He was the latter. He was a substantial figure.

That’s why you have people in Kashmir, Pakistan, and India on marches because he had that charisma; he was, albeit in a militant way, he was a Gandhi. He is someone who created this huge charisma. You see signs (all over the Global South) of people crying and mourning him across the world. He was something very much more than just a leader of Hezbollah. He was also a military leader and he was a teacher. And so, if you like, he brought moral teaching to the people. He was a symbol of a lack of corruption and a commitment to justice”

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1. Nasrallah is gone. He leaves a legacy of militancy, political sophistication, a moral, ethical code to live by. He was a key force in the Axis of Resistance that both Washington and Tel Aviv hope to neutralize and eliminate. Nasrallah’s spirit lives on, his example lives on. Yesterday, during a Jewish Voice for Peace demonstration targeting the offices of U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO) and U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, I was asked to read the Jewish prayer for the dead, kaddish, to remembering  the lives of those killed in Gaza, in Lebanon. It was also a preemptive Kaddish for the deaths Washington and Tel Aviv are about to unleash. I spoke of death “watering the seeds of life”, of how the sacrifices of the many are a part and parcel of the birth pains of a new society, of the need to de-Zionize Judaism. It was also a kaddish for my mother and father, my Aunt Mal and Uncle Sam, and for Ismael Haniyeh and Sayed Hassan Nasrallah.

The murder/assassination of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah – like that of many before him, among the Patrice Lumumba, Yasir Arafat (medical assassination), was meant to “decapitate” the opposition. But the world is at a point because of the level of struggle where the elimination of a leader, even one as important as Nasrallah, changes little. Yes, certainly a tactical blow to Hezbollah and the Axis of Resistance but on another level a strategic set back that will lead both the U.S. and Israel into a deeper downward spiral.

The reports coming out suggest that the underground bunker in the Dahia neighborhood of Beirut was hit by 83 (or so) 2000 pound bunker buster U.S. made bombs, bombs meant to penetrate to underground tunnels. The first one hits, chipping away at the surface; the second one penetrates more deeply. And thus the leadership of Hezbollah.

And now the worms come out of the woodwork to celebrate Nasrallah’s “elimination”, among the wormiest of them all, Trump’s real estate mogul, son in law, Jared Kushner, who has called on Israel to “finish the job”. Kushner has also rejected demands for a Gaza ceasefire deal and declared that Israel will “never get another chance” to destroy Hezbollah. Kushner boasts that this assassination will open the doors for the resurrection of the much vaunted (with little justification) Abrahamic Accords, meant to normalize Israel’s relations with the conservative Arab world and essentially end Palestinian aspirations for an independent state, an initiative that was blown out of the water on October 7 by Hamas’s breakout from Gaza.

Concerning the Abrahamic Accords, whose resurrection is what Nasrallah’s targeting is all about: Ain’t a gonna happen Jared. My sense is, that while, yes, this assassination is a set back, it will probably galvanize the Axis of Resistance in all of its elements into even more determined resistance. Your “Abrahamic Accords” – basically the program of the most fascist-like elements of Israeli-settler society introduced to the world through you, is already in history’s garbage can, where you and your pathetic clown uncle will soon I hope join it (politically).

Concerning the Abrahamic Accords, whose resurrection is what Nasrallah’s targeting is all about: Ain’t a gonna happen Jared. My sense is, that while, yes, this assassination is a set back, it will probably galvanize the Axis of Resistance in all of its elements into even more determined resistance. Your “Abrahamic Accords” – basically the program of the most fascist-like elements of Israeli-settler society introduced to the world through you, is already in history’s garbage can, where you and your pathetic clown uncle will soon I hope join it (politically).

2. A memory stirs.

It’s 1981. I’m in Beirut speaking with Palestinian leaders there. One of them tells me of his great respect for a new generation of Islamic militants. He is referring to the nexus of young militant Lebanese Shi’ites that will soon form Hezbollah. Later after Israel’s 1982 Lebanon invasion, a similar conversation – how Islamic militants worked to effectively limit the Israeli attack on Beirut (during that 1982 Israeli attack that led to the slaughter of Palestinian innocents at Sabra and Chatilla Camp). Eventually, their solid defense combined with global pressure force Israel to withdraw from Beirut and in 2000 from much of Lebanon (save a small finger of occupation).  I am again told how young Islamic militants were far better organized, far better effective in protecting Lebanese civilians than their other Lebanese comrades). I sense – it wasn’t rocket science – that a new form of Islamic resistance is being born.

That was 40+ years ago.

Since then Hezbollah has grown into a formidable political and military force. It is – literally – a part of the Lebanese government although it maintains its structural political and military independence, in classic “united front” form – “autonomy with cooperation”, a united front with a new mix.

A telling minor Hezbollah personal experience: I am at the time teaching at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies. A student comes to me; he is going to spend the summer in Beirut studying at the American University there. He suggests doing an independent study on Hezbollah. I don’t remember the year precisely but think it was around 2007 or 8. I tell him that I think it is a good idea as here in the USA there was (and still is) basically little knowledge of the organization which by then is defined as terrorist by the US State Department, and that some kind of serious academic probe and report would be a contribution to the common good. He returns in the following fall to tell me that once in Lebanon he is strictly forbidden to pursue any contact with Hezbollah and will be disciplined (I suppose expelled from Lebanon) should he pursue. this project. Somewhat (but not too much) startled by this application of academic censorship, I laugh and comment: “How dangerous could, frankly, a superficial study, interview by an undergraduate in International Studies be to U.S. interests in the Middle East?”

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Rocky Mountain Jewish Voice for Peace. September 29, 2024