Iran’s forward jihadist militia tries to show it can still strike after Israel’s onslaught degraded its capabilities and decapitated its leadership.
Hezbollah fired over a hundred missiles at Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, in two barrages over the course of about a half hour early this afternoon (local time).
The Times of Israel reports that a 70-year-old woman was lightly-to-moderately injured, and some buildings were damaged. For the most part, though, Israel’s air defenses shielded the northern coastal city from significant harm.
The attack appeared to be an effort by Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese-based forward militia, to demonstrate that it is still capable of striking despite the IDF onslaught. In the past few weeks, Israel has destroyed much of Hezbollah’s arsenal and launching capabilities, killed or incapacitated thousands of its jihadists, and decapitated its leadership, including both Hassan Nasrallah, its emir of over 30 years, and Hashem Safieddine, who lasted about a week as Nasrallah’s successor.
The Hezbollah barrages were obviously planned to follow a speech by Sheikh Naim Qassem, the terrorist organization’s current deputy chief. Putting on his brave face, Qassem inveighed that Hezbollah had “overcome all the blows that have been dealt to us,” and would soon announce new leaders to replace those who’ve been eliminated.
Well, sure . . . but the attacks that followed were a dud, it’s not possible that the newbie jihadists will be as capable as the well-trained jihadists whose boots they’ll fill, and one couldn’t help but notice that Qassem did not proclaim himself Hezbollah’s new leader. At least for now, Qassem remains No. 2, and no one seems to be tripping over himself to succeed Safieddine in succeeding Nasrallah.
As I’ve observed a few times, Israel suffers a competence penalty, assessed by the Biden-Harris administration, other transnational-progressive governments, and their media fellow-travelers: Because it is exceptionally good at national defense, we’re supposed to dismiss massive jihadist missile attacks at Israeli civilian centers as if they didn’t happen because the damage they do is negligible, then condemn Israeli retaliatory strikes — against terrorist enemies who operate within and below densely populated civilian centers — as “disproportionate” war crimes.
Naturally, this is a double distortion: the law-of-war principle of proportionality is not a comparison of the effectiveness of attacks, and the war criminal is the terrorist organization that uses non-combatants as human shields even as it indiscriminately fires missiles at civilian areas.
Competence penalty case-in-point this morning: In the New York Times, the lead story is not that Hezbollah’s fired off over 100 missiles at Haifa (the latest bombardments in a campaign that Iran and Hezbollah started one year ago today, in solidarity with Hamas’s October 7 barbarities). Instead, the Times leads with reporting that “at around the same time,” Israeli air strikes “pounded the densely populated neighborhoods south of Beirut” that are — okay, okay — “a stronghold of the militant group Hezbollah.”
As Israel continues contemplating next steps — including retaliation directly against Iran for its missile attacks last week, against Iran’s Houthi proxies who launched a long-range missile at Israel yesterday (to no meaningful effect), and to Hamas over its marking of October 7 by firing off about 135 rockets at south and central Israel — it has learned to tune out the noise.