BEIRUT: This time last year, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was consumed by rage over Israel’s detonation of pagers worn by members of his group throughout Lebanon, according to his son. Days later, Nasrallah himself was assassinated by Israel.
The pager explosions and Nasrallah’s killing in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut in September 2024 turned out to be the opening salvos of an Israeli assault that killed more than 4,000 people across Lebanon and destroyed swathes of the country’s south.
The war, which Israel said it conducted to end Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, shook Hezbollah’s hold on power in Lebanon, where the group is now under pressure to give up its arms.
Those developments were unimaginable a year ago when Hezbollah’s then-leader was confronted with the major intelligence breach in the communication devices that killed dozens of the group’s members and maimed thousands of others.
“He was upset, angry, resentful – there was a lot of resentment and thinking, ‘How could this happen?’ He considered himself entrusted with those lives,” Jawad Nasrallah, Nasrallah’s second-oldest son, told Reuters in an interview at his father’s grave.
Security was tight around Nasrallah at the time. Jawad, like more than a million Lebanese, had been displaced by Israeli air strikes and had not seen his father for three months.
“You can say we took it day by day. Nothing was certain,” Jawad said.
Nasrallah’s last televised speech was on September 19. Eight days later, a string of Israeli bunker-busting bombs on a Hezbollah complex in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed Nasrallah, who had led the powerful Shiite religious, political and military group for more than 30 years.
“We found out on the news like everyone else. It was shocking but we couldn’t cry — no one in the house could scream or express their feelings,” Jawad said, explaining that other tenants in the apartment building where they were temporarily staying were unaware of their links to the Hezbollah leader.
At the time, Israeli strikes targeted displaced Shiite Muslims dozens of kilometers from Lebanon’s southern border, raising the specter of civil war as Sunni or Christian towns regarded fleeing Shiite Muslims with open suspicion.
“We felt a moment of alienation like everyone else, in addition to the horrors of that time, which was terrible for everyone: war, bombing, brutality — and on top of that, alienation,” Jawad said.
With Israel escalating strikes across Lebanon and sending ground troops into its south, Nasrallah’s body could not be moved into a morgue for several days before a temporary burial. A formal ceremony was held months later during a truce.
The war with Israel that left Hezbollah badly weakened was followed by the toppling of the group’s Syrian ally Bashar Assad and a new government in Lebanon that has pledged to enforce a state monopoly on all arms.
Hezbollah has refused to give up its arsenal — a stance that Jawad, a businessman with no formal position in the group but who is sanctioned by the US, reiterated.
“Never in your fantasies or dreams,” he said, adding that he still asks his father for guidance.
“I ask him to solve some dilemmas. I tell him: ‘You have to solve this problem for us and help me with it,’” he said.
Son of Lebanon’s slain Hezbollah chief says his father’s final days were filled with rage
https://arab.news/jczxu
Son of Lebanon’s slain Hezbollah chief says his father’s final days were filled with rage
- The war, which Israel said it conducted to end Hezbollah’s cross border attacks in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, shook Hezbollah’s hold on power in Lebanon, where the group is now under pressure to give up its arms
- Nasrallah’s last televised speech was on September 19, eight days later, a string of Israeli bunker busting bombs on a Hezbollah complex in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed him
Arab, Muslim countries slam US ambassador’s remarks on Israel’s right to Middle East land
- The backlash widened sharply on Sunday as more than a dozen Arab and Islamic governments issued a joint statement denouncing the US diplomat’s comments as “dangerous and inflammatory”
JERUSALEM: Arab and Islamic countries issued a joint condemnation on Sunday of remarks by US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who suggested Israel had a biblical right to a vast swath of the Middle East.
Huckabee, a former Baptist minister and a fervent Israel supporter, was speaking on the podcast of far-right commentator and Israel critic Tucker Carlson.
In an episode released Friday, Carlson pushed Huckabee on the meaning of a biblical verse sometimes interpreted as saying that Israel is entitled to the land between the river Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Syria and Iraq.
In response, Huckabee said: “It would be fine if they took it all.”
When pressed, however, he continued that Israel was “not asking to take all of that,” adding: “It was somewhat of a hyperbolic statement.”
The backlash widened sharply on Sunday as more than a dozen Arab and Islamic governments — alongside three major regional organizations — issued a joint statement denouncing the US diplomat’s comments as “dangerous and inflammatory.”
The statement, released by the United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry, was signed by the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Syria and the State of Palestine, as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
They said the comments contravene the UN Charter and efforts to de-escalate the Gaza war and advance a political horizon for a comprehensive settlement.
Iran joined the chorus with its foreign ministry accusing Huckabee on X of revealing “American active complicity” in what it called Israel’s “expansionist wars of aggression” against Palestinians.
Earlier, several Arab states had issued unilateral condemnations.
Saudi Arabia described the ambassador’s words as “reckless” and “irresponsible,” while Jordan said it was “an assault on the sovereignty of the countries of the region.”
Kuwait decried what it called a “flagrant violation of the principles of international law,” while Oman said the comments “threatened the prospects for peace” and stability in the region.
Egypt’s foreign ministry reaffirmed “that Israel has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory or any other Arab lands.”
The Palestinian Authority said on X that Huckabee’s words “contradict US President Donald Trump’s rejection of (Israel) annexing the West Bank.”
On Saturday, Huckabee published two posts on X further clarifying his position on other topics touched upon in the interview, but did not address his remark about the biblical verse.
The speaker of the Israeli parliament, Amir Ohana, praised Huckabee on X for his general pro-Israel stance in the interview, and accused Carlson of “falsehoods and manipulations.”
Carlson has recently found himself facing accusations of antisemitism, particularly following a lengthy, uncritical interview with self-described white nationalist Nick Fuentes — a figure who has praised Hitler, denied the Holocaust and branded American Jews as disloyal.
