Israel is trying to stop terrorism, Hezbollah is trying to kill civilians - editorial

At least some people get it.

A few days after the still-unbelievable electronic device onslaught against Hezbollah that injured between 3,000 and 4,000 fighters and commanders of the terrorist group and killed dozens – as well as the subsequent Israeli bombing of a Beirut building that killed Hezbollah Radwan chief Ibrahim Aqil and around 16 other commander – most of the world is aghast.

Instead of welcoming the demise of murderers aimed at wreaking world chaos, Western countries – which label Hezbollah terrorists – and bodies like the UN are blaming Israel for a needless “escalation” of the war in the North that has been ongoing for 11 months.

Even the United States – which had a $7 million bounty on Aqil’s head for his role in the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut that killed over 270 US servicemen – has had a muted response to the decimation of the Hezbollah leadership hierarchy.

But US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, for one, seems to understand.

Sullivan calls the killing of Ibrahim Aqil “a good outcome.”

“That individual has American blood on his hands and has a reward-for-justice price on his head,” Sullivan told reporters over the weekend. “He is somebody who the United States promised long ago we would do everything we could to see brought to justice.”

Sullivan also correctly pointed the finger at who’s to blame for the current war between Israel and Lebanon.

“Israel didn’t start just randomly attacking Lebanon. Hezbollah and its allies, its terrorist allies in Lebanon, started attacking Israel, and tens of thousands of Israeli citizens had to leave their homes,” he said.

The differences between how Hezbollah has conducted itself since October 7 and the tactics that Israel has been accused of – the mass explosions last week of pagers and other electronic devices that Hezbollah operatives carried and the targeted blast killing some of its top leaders on Friday – couldn’t be starker.

Israel targets terrorists. Period. President Isaac Herzog said on Sunday that the meeting of senior Hezbollah officials in Beirut on Friday that was bombed was intended to plan a ground invasion of the Galilee in response to the blasts of pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon. According to Israeli intelligence, they were also the officials who were planning an October 7-like invasion of northern communities even before the events of last week.

That Israel was able to take them out with minimal civilian casualties is an incredible feat of intelligence and implementation. No less so were the pager/walkie-talkie attacks, which Hezbollah blames Israel for.

Whoever devised the complex scheme that targeted only Hezbollah operatives with minimal threat to the population at large should be lauded and held up as fighting the noblest form of warfare.

In contrast, look at what Hezbollah has done.

 Even before last week and this past weekend’s assault on their forces and rocket launchers, the Iranian proxy’s aim – just like Hamas’s goals in the South – was to kill Israeli civilians. Period.

Rocket barrages from Lebanon

Since early Sunday morning, Hezbollah fired over 150 rockets, cruise missiles, and drones in four rounds into northern Israel, the Jezreel Valley, and the Haifa area, deeper into Israel than they’ve targeted in the previous 11 months. Two houses in Kiryat Bialik were directly hit, and fires broke out.

Among the casualties from shrapnel were a 76-year-old man in moderate condition, as well as a 70-year-old man, a 60-year-old man, and a 16-year-old girl in moderate condition.

Although Hezbollah stated it was targeting the Ramat David IAF base near Haifa in retaliation for the IDF airstrike on Friday, the rockets were indiscriminately fired at civilians.

Israel’s conduct in wartime isn’t perfect – no country’s is. Yet anyone looking from the outside at the strategies and targets of the IDF compared to those of Hezbollah can only come to one conclusion. Israel is trying to preemptively stop terrorism against its people; Hezbollah is trying to kill as many innocent civilians as possible. Sometimes, things are that black and white.

 Anybody who doesn’t get it and concludes that Israel is the aggressor that is escalating the situation is either gravely misreading the situation or wants to see Hezbollah succeed in its goals.