Why Nasrallah’s assassination is a Pyrrhic victory for Israel – Kashmir Observer

From Nader Hashemi

The assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is a Pyrrhic victory for Israel. It is also an illusory victory for the United States and for Arab dictators in the region, who are also quietly celebrating. The assassination of Nasrallah – in a massive Israeli airstrike that leveled several homes in southern Beirut – will make Israel less safe while further damaging the reputation of the West, and particularly the US, in the Arab and wider Islamic world. Arab autocrats who sought an alliance with Israel will themselves suffer a setback.

To understand why, one must analyze Middle East politics outside the proverbial framework of Western national security, which focuses exclusively on Israel while ignoring the rest of the region. The reality is that Israel has long been viewed by many Arabs and Muslims as a settler-colonial state. This image also exists in large parts of the Global South, which have a collective historical memory of the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, which has become increasingly brutal in recent years, has reached its climax in the context of a genocidal war in Gaza. It is now spreading to Lebanon, where Israeli bombing has killed over 1,000 people in a week, including many women and children, and has reportedly displaced nearly a million people.

Israel is increasingly seen in the Middle East as far worse than a settler-colonial state. It is now seen as a genocidal and therefore irredeemable state. Can there be coexistence with such an entity in the eyes of most people in the region, but not the dictators who rule them? There has been too much death and destruction of Palestinian life, and now Lebanese life, to ignore this new reality. Israel's legitimacy crisis can no longer be solved. Current and future generations of Arabs and Muslims will now view Israel as a rogue state addicted to mass violence that makes a mockery of international law.

Security for Israel in the Middle East now takes on a new meaning. You cannot live in safety and stability if the neighborhood you live in sees you as an existential threat. Israel's ongoing war of collective punishment in Gaza in retaliation for October 7 and its expanded assault on Lebanon with a threat of ground invasion will deeply entrench this view.

As for the West, US President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken have consistently supported Israeli policies in Gaza and Lebanon over the past eleven months. “The goal that Israel is initially pursuing in Lebanon is important and legitimate,” Blinken said after the Israeli bombing of southern Beirut. Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have made statements supporting the assassination of Nasrallah; Biden called the Israeli airstrike “a measure of justice.”

The lesson for the Middle East is that “justice” can be achieved through total war and extrajudicial killings, regardless of the cost to civilians. International law and the legitimacy of courts play no role. The West's unwavering solidarity with Israel and its complete rejection of the recent rulings of the International Court of Justice and the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will certainly be invoked by militants who will justify their own political violence with the actions of Israel and its main patron in Washington.

Meanwhile, from their palatial and heavily guarded mansions, Arab dictators secretly rejoice as Israel destroys Hamas – and now Hezbollah. But they are celebrating what the ancient Greeks called a Cadmean victory, an illusory triumph that brings their own downfall. Weakening the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – the various militias Iran supports across the region and led by Hezbollah – will not change the underlying causes of instability in the Middle East. These factors, based on mass poverty and impoverishment of the average citizen, lack of political freedom and the absence of basic civil rights, not only persist but have significantly worsened since the brutal suppression of the popular uprisings of 2011 with the acquiescence of the West.

Measured by key indicators such as civil and political rights, freedom of the press, censorship, political accountability, representation, status of minorities, protection of human rights and state-sanctioned executions, the Middle East has some of the lowest scores in the world. Data on global inequality also shows that despite its great oil wealth, the region is among the countries with the highest wealth inequality in the world. The World Inequality Lab, a global research center, reports that the Middle East is “the most unequal region in the world,” with the top 10 percent generating 61 percent of the national income. The United Nations estimates that 31 Arab billionaires – all men – own almost as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the region's population. An Oxfam study found that these trends have been significantly exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

These regional socioeconomic trends intersect with Israel's ongoing destruction of the Gaza Strip. Together they will create another political fault line that will contribute to a societal explosion rooted in despair, helplessness and humiliation, and fueled by the fact that the horrors in Gaza have taken place before the eyes of the world and with “ironclad” Western support have.

This anger will initially be directed against Israel, for obvious reasons. But Arab regimes will not be able to escape this social anger. Despite their wealth of weapons, they could not fire a single bullet to defend the people of Gaza. States like the United Arab Emirates, which normalized relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords, remained largely silent and did little to pressure Israel to end its war, while deporting students for expressing solidarity with Palestine brought. But when Iran sent a barrage of missiles and drones toward Israel in April in retaliation for the Israeli bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the same Arab regimes rallied to use their missile defense systems and intelligence capabilities to protect Israel.

This anger will also be directed against the US, which wants to maintain an authoritarian regional order supported by armed force and client states.

As Israel and its Western supporters celebrate their Pyrrhic victory, it should not be forgotten that Israel has murdered its opponents for much of its modern history. This policy is rooted in the basic Zionist belief from before the founding of the State of Israel that Arabs only understand the language of violence. The eminent Oxford historian Avi Shlaim has written that both rival wings of the Zionist movement, led by David Ben-Gurion and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, “concluded early on that only insurmountable Jewish military strength would ultimately make the Arabs despair of fighting.” would let and let come.” to deal with a Jewish state in Palestine.”

Did this policy work? Beyond endless occupation and apartheid rule, what has it really produced? One result is October 7th, the bloodiest day in Israel's history. I fear that more atrocities of this magnitude are to come, perhaps an inevitable consequence of Israel's all-out war in Gaza and now Lebanon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Western-backed policies are not making Israel safer. Instead, everything Israel does today threatens its place in the Middle East.

• Nader Hashemi is director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. The article first appeared on