What This Is All About

Why Hezbollah Attacked
In an interesting interview, the author of "The Shi'a Revival" mentioned in passing why Hezbollah were so foolhardy as to enter Israel and kill some Israeli soldiers and kidnap others. Background it seems, is everything.

Hezbollah had become heroes among the Arabs by raising the cost of Israeli occupation of the six mile wide south Lebanon buffer zone on their border to where the security gained by it was outweighed by the cost in lives of maintaining it. When Israel withdrew, Hezbollah's prestige in Lebanon soared.

Then came the assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, by Syrian intelligence forces. All Lebanon rose up and demanded the Syrian occupation of Lebanon end. The world community joined the Lebanese in pressuring Syria to withdraw, and they did.

But in the course of that political confrontation, Hezbollah publicly sided with Syria. Syria supplied their arms and money and channeled money and arms from Iran. Everyone in Lebanon rightfully saw Hezbollah as selling out the national interest in favor of their own.

The attack on Israel came as an attempt to regain the prestige they had lost by betraying their country. The destruction Hezbollah has brought upon Lebanon by their foolhardiness continues to unfold. One can hope that in addition to the physical destruction wrought upon Hezbollah by Israel will be their political destruction at the hands of the people of Lebanon.