hizbollah is a broad political party in lebanon, not simply a paramilitary group
i know blonde hair blue eye people with relatives involved, so you are just making false inferences
i know blonde hair blue eye people with relatives involved, so you are just making false inferences
One of the "victims" was an Iranian ambassador to Syria. They are an arm of Iran serving their interests within Lebanon which are in conflict with the interests of the Lebanese people. They fight Israel but then hide behind civilians within tunnels.
For once they became a direct target without the ability to hide behind anyone. Just recently there was declassified intel on them planting bombs within Israel trying to assassinate politicians. They already bootstrapped a phone in the past too.
The reason they have popularity is due to funds they get from Iran which they use to provide loans to poor people. To make this even more attractive they push for a situation of dependency and poverty so the poor would be even more dependent on their loans. Lebanon is in deep distress (financially and politically) and these are the a*holes pushing for it on the behest of Iran.
But overwhelmingly Shia, and has token Christian and Sunni membership due to Lebanon's constitution.
Hezbollah is not Lebanon, and Lebanon is not Hezbollah.
Lebanon is an equal 3 way split between Sunni (Future Movement/Hariri), Shia (Hezbollah), and Christian (Kaateb and smaller parties).
All 3 fought a vicious civil war from the 1970s into the 1990s, and then multiple invasions and interventions by Israel and Syria lead to factional conflicts.
The Sunni bloc and Christian bloc both oppose Hezbollah in Lebanon, and this helped the Israel-Saudi rapprochement, as it is Saudi that supports Hariri and Israel supported the Christian bloc during the civil war and occupation.
Edit: Love the downvotes from idiots who can't even find Tripoli or Beqaa on a map for pointing out how Lebanon is a very complex and split country.
Yep. I made a broad strokes statement because it gets complex very fast.
The Christian community appears to be split between anti-Hezbollah and anti-Palestinian groups like Kaateb (that were also historically pro-Israel during the civil war and intervention), and historically Syrian supported parties who supported Syria during their intervention in Lebanon such as Tashnag, Marada, etc.
FPM was historically opposed to Syria but Michel Aoun made a strategic deal with Hezbollah in order to become M8's face in Lebanon, and because Hezbollah was never going to get Sunni support.
Hezbollah will only accept Shia and are Shia-first, but allied with Syrian-then-Iranian backed parties because they all fought together on behalf of Assad in the Syrian Civil War, along with the alliance of convenience with FPM.
The Pro-Syrian/Iranian coalition is the March 8th Coaliton (of which Hezbollah is the lynchpin), and the anti-Hezbollah/Saudi-funded coalition was the March 10th coalition before it splintered due to political infighting, corruption, and the Syrian Civil War.
Furthermore, now that the Syrian Civil War is largely over, a LOT of battle hardened nuts from all sides in Lebanon have started returning, plus the economic collapse exacerbated an already tense political environment.
Which accounts are you listening to? The accounts that I've heard is that they set every single one of these off all at once with no targeting and they blew up all over Lebanon in markets, theaters, schools, public transportation, etc.
If thousands of bombs were distributed to members of a large criminal syndicate in the US or other western country and then all detonated as these people went about their lives and interacted with normal citizens, we would be absolutely horrified.
They were distributed through and to the Hezbollah network of members and collaborators. As far as they're 'randomly distributed through the country' it depends where Hezbollah members go in the country with the pagers in their pockets.
We have literally zero evidence of this. Either way. If you think you can pierce the fog of war by looking at one side's official announcements, you're going to spend a lot of time confused.
To be fair, so were the Nazis. (Trying to think of a less-combustible example.)
We're speaking within the fog of war. It's unclear, for example, what fraction of Hezbollah's ranks had a pager or walkie talkier. And what fraction of those were military. I'd still challenge that the collateral damage from such an attack constrained to Hezbollah members--even arbitrarily--is less than a conventional strike on suspected militants.