Presumed Arab Solidarity With Hezbollah Belied by Millions
Lebanese and pan-Arab anger at the terror group, born of decades, was in full view for those who looked.
Reality Check
Arab Support for Hezbollah's Defeat Calls Western Coverage Into Question
Arab majorities view Hezbollah as a tyrant in Lebanon, an occupier in Syria, and the nerve center of Iran’s empire of oppression.
While Israeli warplanes moved to eliminate Hezbollah’s senior command last week, some Western media portrayed the Lebanese people and Arabs generally as rallying around the terror group. The region stands with Hezbollah in “indignation and outrage,” declared Le Monde, while “any criticism of Hezbollah has been temporarily muted.” According to the New York Times, “The Middle East is overtaken by outrage at weeks of destructive Israeli strikes against Hezbollah and its leaders.”
Yet Arabs in Lebanon and elsewhere declined to play the role these outlets assigned to them – and rather than “mute” their opposition to Iran’s top proxy, they proclaimed it repeatedly on air.
“No one supports this war and no one is in solidarity with Hezbollah,” Lebanese TV personality Mariam Lahham told CPC in one of many recent interviews. “We will condemn those who caused these missiles to be firing over our heads.”
Lahham’s view reflects widespread anger at Hezbollah which has been growing in Lebanon for two decades. In 2005, Hezbollah assassinated Prime Minister Rafic Harriri, sparking a massive popular uprising – known as the March 14th movement – against itself and allied Syrian forces which then occupied the country. Hezbollah carried out a wave of killings to silence its opponents. When protests again erupted countrywide in 2019 over years of government corruption and economic mismanagement — with some chanting, “Hezbollah are terrorists” — the militia’s fighters brutally assaulted demonstrators of all ages.
Meanwhile, in the broader Arab region, Hezbollah’s image never recovered from the spectacle of its violent intervention in Syria to protect dictator Bashar Al-Assad from his own people.
For years, pan-Arab television aired heartrending scenes of Hezbollah systematically starving one rebel-held city after another, while the terror group gloated that its fighters in Syria were eating well. The Hezbollah presence in Syria also spawned a burgeoning mafia of human trafficking and drug smuggling. More than 85% of Egyptians and 81% of Jordanians told pollsters at the time that they hold a negative view of the organization.
So it should come as no surprise that, far from closing ranks with Hezbollah, most Lebanese and Syrians are cheering Israel’s elimination of Hezbollah leadership. “They kicked people out of their homes and villages, working hand in glove with the criminal regime of Bashar al-Asad,” a Syrian refugee in Idlib told CPC. “They deserved what happened to them.”
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