This week, during an interview BBC conducted with our own former editor-in-chief, Yaakov Katz, BBC News presenter Martine Croxall said that Hezbollah is only attacking Israel out of sympathy with Palestinian suffering.
“We know that Hezbollah is acting out in this way. [It] said so. Because [Hezbollah is] so concerned about the sheer number of Palestinian civilians who have died as a result of Israel’s actions,” she proclaimed.
There are several issues with this claim. First, yes, this is true; Hezbollah has said that it acts out of empathy with the Palestinians. However, it has also declared that the “continued struggle against the Israeli enemy” is one of its two most basic principles.
Its founding charter emphasizes resistance against Israel as a core tenet, aiming to eliminate the Israeli state and establish an Islamic one in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel predate the current Israel-Hamas war, lest we forget. These attacks are part of a longstanding enmity. They are not just reacting in solidarity with Palestinian measures. Once again, Palestinians are being used as an excuse for a terrorist organization to justify its actions against Israel.
Yet more fundamentally, Croxall’s words are illogical. According to her, terrorists are firing rockets at Israel’s North, killing a young Israeli couple last week for instance, as a show of solidarity with the Palestinian people. How do those two things align?
This argument holds no water, although it does reflect a more significant issue at hand: The international community has no idea what Israel is facing.
While solidarity with Palestinians may be part of Hezbollah’s rhetoric, its attacks on Israel are driven by purely hateful interests.
You have to hand it to Hezbollah – they are doing fantastic PR work. By framing attacks as solidarity with Palestinians, they can garner broader support while simultaneously advancing Iranian strategic interests.
Iran's interests drive Hezbollah
Indeed, many often forget that Hezbollah receives significant financial, military, and logistical support from Iran. Iran’s geopolitical interests drive Hezbollah’s actions, including its attacks on Israel.
When one goes to these rallies and encampments around the globe that call for the destruction of Israel, one thinks that they are being humane by supporting the underdog, so to speak.
Such people view Hamas and Hezbollah as resistance movements fighting against what they perceive as Israeli occupation and aggression. Both are the most active and militant “groups” attacking Israel, and their actions are consequently being romanticized as a so-called legitimate resistance against us.
The irony is that they oppose the harming of innocent civilians by supporting groups that are harming innocent civilians. Show us the logic, please.
Criticizing Israeli policies and actions is legitimate. We do it plenty here at The Jerusalem Post. But that is a far cry from glamorizing and romanticizing terrorists.
Ultimately, this is a PR failure on Israel’s part. It has been too lax on the international stage, believing it evident that people understand the importance of recognizing that these are extreme, hateful, antisemitic terrorists.
Educating people about Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s true nature, including their terrorist activities, human rights violations, and horrifying impact on civilians, can effectively shift the terrorist organizations’ new pro-Palestinian devout followers’ support.
If their impact on Israel is not enough to do this, look no further than at the citizens of Gaza and Lebanon. They suffer under the oppressive leadership of these terrorist groups.
Hamas uses human shields and hides weapon stores and rocket launchers in schools and hospitals. It suppresses freedom of speech and has been known to detain, torture, and execute its political opponents.
Hezbollah specifically not only stores weapons in residential buildings, it acts violently against opponents, and its military engagement in support of the Assad regime in Syria has led to increased instability and security threats within Lebanon itself – issues it did not question because, unlike Israel, it does not care about its own civilians.
These are terrorists. Their actions perpetuate cycles of violence that result in widespread destruction, displacement, and suffering for civilian populations.
Thereby, Israel needs to pick it up with PR. Otherwise, we may win the war but we’ll lose in the court of public opinion.