[ April 19, 2024 ]
As the world now knows, in its six-week-long Operation Northern Shield, the Israel Defense Forces uncovered, and destroyed, six huge tunnels built by the terrorist group Hezbollah, that ran from Lebanon deep underground and into Israel’s Galilee. The IDF had been aware for several years of Hezbollah’s ongoing tunnel building — the precise extent of that knowledge has not been revealed — but was apparently content to let Hezbollah complete its expensive and exhausting task before destroying them. Prime Minister Netanyahu said on January 27 that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was “embarrassed” in the wake of Israel’s success in identifying and destroying the series of cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon: “He and his men invested tremendous effort in the surprise weapon of the tunnels, including digging them — contrary to what he said — in recent years and in recent months. Within six weeks we completely deprived him of that weapon.”
Nasrallah, who for weeks after Israel declared an end to Operation Northern Shield, had remained silent on the discovery and destruction of his tunnels, claimed counter-intuitively, indeed ludicrously, that the Israeli destruction of the tunnels was a victory for Hezbollah. “’The Israelis discovered a number of tunnels after many years, and it’s not a surprise. The surprise is that these tunnels, they took some time to find,’ Nasrallah said on the al-Mayadeen channel. ‘One of the tunnels discovered in recent weeks is 13 or 14 years old,’ said a smiling Nasrallah. The Israeli operation brought to light the ‘failure’ of the country’s intelligence services, he added.” So the Israelis “failed” because they did not discover these tunnels, he says, until recently, by which he implies they had been there for many years.
But the Israelis have already told us that for several years they had been aware of Hezbollah’s tunnel operations, though they may not have known precisely where each tunnel began in Lebanon, or where it emerged in Israel, or how deep underground the tunnel had been dug. They were not taken completely by surprise, as Nasrallah suggests.
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Nasrallah also claimed in his January 26 television appearance that “the tunnels were hardly central to Hezbollah’s attack plan in a future war, and that Israeli leaders had inflated their importance ‘to leave the [army] with a significant achievement’ to boast of.”
But Nasrallah’s own behavior — his stunned silence for two weeks, after the Israelis announced the finding and destruction of the six tunnels — suggest that this was a grievous loss for Hezbollah. Nasrallah did confirm the Israeli leaders’ accusations that “Part of our plan for the next war is to enter the Galilee, a part of our plan we are capable of, God willing. The important thing is that we have this capability and we have had it for years.”
No, the important thing is that Hezbollah no longer has that capability. All the tunnels it built at such terrific cost through solid rock have now been destroyed. And there is no possibility of building new tunnels that will go undetected, now that the Israels have learned so much about locating even the deepest and longest tunnels, a result of the experience they gained in Operation Northern Shield, in which they used for the first time what has been described as a new “secret weapon” in tunnel detection. The IDF is now fixed laser-like on the Northern Galilee, and any new tunnels that Nasrallah might dare to build.
But, Nasrallah claimed, “The uncovering of the tunnels does not affect by 10 percent our plans to take over the Galilee. If we decide to do it — even if they’ve destroyed the tunnels — can’t we rebuild them?” He also suggested there may be attack tunnels on the Israeli-Lebanese border which Israel has not yet discovered.
No, he will have not be able to rebuild them, now that the IDF has the Lebanese border with the Galilee under a microscope. He can allude in face-saving fashion to attack tunnels Israel has not discovered, but given his track record of lies, few will believe him. The Israelis, of course, are taking no chances. Avi Dichter, former head of the Shin Bet, and the head of the Knesset’s Defense Committee, has declared that the IDF believes it has destroyed all the existing tunnels, but is going to continue to act on the assumption that there may be more.
“To enter the Galilee, you do not need tunnels,” Nasrallah said. “Yes, tunnels can be a helping factor in entering the Galilee, in a limited and partial manner. But an operation of that degree, if it were decided for it to happen one day, would require all of the borders, valleys, hills.”
Nasrallah now attempts to downgrade the importance of these tunnels, calling them ”a helping factor…in a limited and partial manner.” But that is not how Hezbollah saw them when it devoted enormous sums and energy to excavating through solid rock these massive underground structures more than one hundred feet underground. It saw them as a game-changer that would allow 1,500 Hezbollah terrorists to suddenly appear above-ground in the Galilee, taking by surprise Israeli civilians who could be kidnapped or killed, and holding onto territory where those civilians live, and from which Hezbollah would in effect be holding the whole population hostage, making it difficult for the IDF to counterattack.
Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said in farewell interviews in mid-January that Hezbollah had planned to use its array of underground attack tunnels to carry out a surprise invasion of Israel that would “throw Israel off balance and cause an earthquake in Israeli society.” He told Hadashot TV news that Hezbollah “had grandiose notions. They were looking many years ahead, to a war or wide escalation, where they [believed they] would have a surprise, an ace in their deck.” Now that his tunnels have been destroyed, Nasrallah’s attempt to minimize the significance of the tunnels is understandable.
At the same time as those 1,500 terrorists, as a first wave, were to have emerged from the tunnels, the plan was that from southern Lebanon, in order to cover the invasion through the tunnels, Hezbollah — according to Eisenkot — “planned a massive artillery bombardment of IDF bases. [They aimed to] gain control of a piece of Israeli territory and hold it for weeks,” he said. He did not mention still another arrow in Hezbollah’s quiver: the 140,000 missiles that Hezbollah now possesses, and that could be lobbied into Israel, complementing the artillery volleys, and the thousands of tunneleering terrorists whom Hezbollah figured would be seizing, and holding, parts of the Galilee.
Nasrallah neglected to add, of course, that thanks to the re-imposition of sanctions on Iran by the Trump administration, the Iranians have been suffering economically, and in turn, have had to cut support to Hezbollah.
His forces are also meeting with hostility in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is seen by the Christians and Sunni Arabs as unbalancing that country’s sectarian power-sharing arrangements, and physically threatening Lebanese opponents. Furthermore, by threatening aggression against Israel, and using southern Lebanon as one gigantic Hezbollah base for such aggression, Nasrallah is endangering Lebanon. In any war between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon will pay. Hezbollah claims to be “defending Lebanon” against the Israelis, but until Hezbollah showed up, there was no need for any such defense: the Lebanon-Israel border had always been peaceful. Hezbollah’s aggression led to the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War. Now its 140,000 missiles aimed at Israel are the very thing that might lead to a much larger conflict with Israel and, in the ensuing war, to the destruction of much of southern Lebanon. Many in Lebanon are unhappy with Hezbollah, but have been physically cowed by the terrorist group.
Nasrallah said in his January 26 address that “Israel is claiming that Hezbollah dug them. I don’t have to say that I or Hezbollah dug the tunnels, because we always prefer to keep ambiguity on defense. We have no reason to work for free for Israel,” he said. He added: “I won’t confirm or deny if all of the tunnels have been uncovered.”
Aside from the boys-just-want-to-have-fun mock-deniability, since everyone in the world knows who built those tunnels, Nasrallah is right to neither confirm or deny (taking a leaf from Israel’s notebook) exactly how many tunnels there are. Israel says that it has found six, but as Avi Dichter said in the Knesset, Israel is perfectly prepared to uncover more, and to destroy them.
Nasrallah said he had refrained up to this point from commenting on the IDF’s operation because he “did not wish to assist Netanyahu and Eisenkot in their media campaign.”
Nasrallah refrained from commenting for two weeks after Operation Northern Shield ended for one reason only: he was too stunned by the Israeli success in finding and destroying all six tunnels, to respond. He finally offered, with a false swagger, a dismissal of the IDF’s feat, asking in effect “what took you so long?”
He also insisted that Operation Northern Shield “has not ended, despite the Israelis having announced its completion. Digging is still going on.”
Nasrallah is suggesting that Israel has not found all of the tunnels, that their claim to have brought the anti-tunnel operation to an end is false, that they are still digging. And if they are, so what? That is very much in Israel’s favor. Put otherwise: “The IDF has ended Phase One of Operation Northern Shield. We have found and totally destroyed six Hezbollah tunnels, completely ruining their plans for a future invasion of the Galilee by thousands of Hezbollah terrorists. While we believe that all such tunnels have been destroyed, we will of course continue to monitor the border area with Lebanon for any tunneling activity we might have missed, and for any tunnels that Hezbollah tries to construct in the future.’’
Nasrallah seems to think that it matters when Israel discovered the terrorist tunnels; he even taunts the Israelis for not having discovered them sooner. But we know that the Israelis in fact did discover some of those tunnels — we don’t know which ones — several years ago, having been alerted to the sounds of digging near the Lebanese border by Israeli civilians. They could afford to wait, and watch, as over several years Hezbollah plowed money and manpower into digging its tunnels, hundreds of feet long, and through solid rock, until it had finished its task, at which point the whole project could be brought crashing down before any of the tunnels could be used. In attempting to present an obvious and colossal defeat at the hands of the IDF into a kind of victory, Nasrallah merely makes himself an object of ridicule. And when you are a terrorist leader whose effectiveness depends on being feared, that is the last thing in the world you wish to be.
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21 Comments
5 years ago
Israel hopefully will leave one of the tunnels patent and once 1500 or more terrorists are inside will gas them.????
5 years ago
Reply to
MitchHill
Gassing is against all international laws. However if they were to close the entrance with a well placed bomb and suck all the air out!
5 years ago
Reply to
Trevor Fortune
We all know hezboola adheres to international laws of Geneva conference to the letter , as does its patron , iran. But anyway Israel gets the job done is terrific.
5 years ago
Reply to
MitchHill
I take it you are as impressed as I am with beheadings and torture by Muslims.
They sure don’t adhere to “international laws” or the Geneva Convention yet we must honor it to the letter of the law as you stated. They also never agreed to it. It’s just the west, civilized people that adhere to them. I guess we didn’t have the foresight to see we would be dealing with such barbaric people.
5 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
It is not good to return evil for evil. Just because they believe in sharia which allows them to commit crimes against humanity doesn’t mean we should stoop to their level.
Having said that, we need to know their tactics and what they’ll resort to and not be deluded enough to think they’d fight in a just way. As it is, it seems that even those in military leadership don’t really understand Islam and treat them like people of any other religious belief (it’s a political ideology!!!)… then when a Muslim, who is supposed to be an ally attacks our troops, everybody seems dumbstruck… example of this is Nidal Hasan… that should have shocked no one.
5 years ago
Reply to
created4el
the army brass knew Hassan was in contact with terrorists but they feared the Muslim in the white house above protecting their own troops
5 years ago
Reply to
Andy
Andy
The sad pathetic army brass… feckless as the UK police who are “protecting” their girls from Islamophobia. I suppose the UK police aren’t the only feckless ones “protecting” their citizens from Islamophobia… it seems to be a phenomena throughout the EU.
These useful idiots! Where do they think their appeasement will end up? With a peaceful Islamic population? With Muslims who will say, “Thank you… we finally feel equal”? Pathetic! Feckless! Useful Idiots!
5 years ago
Reply to
Trevor Fortune
Syria, another Muslim country, doesn’t care about that. Asaad loves to gas his people.
I wish we would nuke these Muslim countries but we won’t right now. Maybe later?
5 years ago
Reply to
MitchHill
Gassing will give jihadis/Left another bat to hit israel with. bombing is enough
And the clown Left/liberal Pope wants christians to take in more of these Islamic wolves http://tinyurl.com/ydy8fkhl
Insane or stupid ?
5 years ago
What few know: In Lebanon Muhammadists enslave Africans.
Today Africans are enslaved, castrated, divorced, beaten & killed in Saudi Arabia & enslaved in the UAE, Oman, Yemen, Kuwait, Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq, North-Sudan, Libya (surge), Algeria (surge), Mauritania (20 percent), Niger, Mali, Somalia, Nigeria in emulation of unjust Muhammad who started the global African slave-trade by saying his unproven deity had turned Africans black so Africans’ descendants would be slaves to Arabs & Turks (see Wikiislam).
5 years ago
Leave the tunnels, install sentry guns on the Israeli side, once the terrorists pour through, wipe them out. What could be a better way to remove these maggots apart from bombing the crap out of them?
What really irks me though is Israel’s policy of not killing terrorists. If you let them live they’ll fight another day. How does that help anyone? In war one side wins, the other side loses but only if you actually annihilate them.
5 years ago
Reply to
Ban Islam
Flood the tunnels with tear gas. or worse then destroy them.
Yes, they should kill them but that only escalates it.
Eventually they will be at full out war.
Illegals and Hezbollah tunnel like rodents – moles.
5 years ago
Reply to
felix1999
I think they flood and then fill the tunnels with concrete. They should have waited to flood then fill these tunnels until they were filled with terrorists. But I suppose that would have weakened the fill by creating weak spots wherever the terrorist bodies got trapped.
5 years ago
They are just like the rodents we have tunneling in at our southern border. I hope we also have the capability to stop that too. We should have it. I laughed at this – “but (Israel) was apparently content to let Hezbollah
complete its expensive and exhausting task before destroying them.
5 years ago
From this article I conclude that the saga of war will continue
until Hezbollah, Iran, Isis and all of the radical Islamic groups are destroyed
or overthrown .For peace loving countries like Israel, the U.S. and Europe to
conclude otherwise would be the height of stupidity. These groups represent
everything that can be bad about mankind, and not to come to the conclusion
that these groups have horror on their constant agenda is to turn a blind eye
to what will happen if some decisive action is not taken. That is why I, a
Trump supporter, am very concerned about the President’s decision to withdraw our
military from those dangerous zones. Our
own national interest will be in jeopardy from these crazies if Israel falls,
or if these groups are allowed to grow their power, as would be Europe. Not to
see that danger is to place one in harm’s way. I am not a military strategist,
but I know that history , if nothing is done, supports the determination that
only disaster results from doing nothing. Though we are up against a satanic
belief system (Islam as practiced by these groups) we cannot do nothing. I hope
the people responsible for our safety understand what we face, and that they
are setting in motion what needs to be done to stop the calamity from
happening. Let us hope!
5 years ago
Lebanon MUST be free from Hezbollah’s darkness!
5 years ago
Highly immature and childish. But these are the hallmarks of losers. And surprisingly, they KNOW they are losers and on the losing end.
Having lost their tunnels they will now get more vicious. Just look at the way Demoncraps have been acting. Like their father SATAN who knows his time is short.
5 years ago
How about a few expert marksmen/women with their rifles trained on the exits and just pick them off as they emerge
5 years ago
In my opinion, Israel has let Nasrallah breathe way too long. Need to make him die of “natural causes”.
