With Israel’s September 27 assassination of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s voice has been subdued. But it has not, unfortunately, been entirely silenced. The mantle of Hezbollah’s spokesman is a heavy one to take up, made all the more difficult by Israel’s continued elimination of the group’s top leadership cadre. For now, however, Hezbollah seems to have settled on Nasrallah’s deputy, the soft-spoken philosopher idealogue Naim Qassem. An intellectual, Qassem lacks any of the charisma or presence around which Nasrallah’s hold over Hezbollah’s flock and cult of personality were built, and therefore his ability to inspire and rouse the base remains in question. But for lack of any other options, he now appears to be Hezbollah’s placeholder voice.
To date, Naim Qassem has given two speeches in this capacity with nearly identical themes: the first on September 30, two days after Nasrallah’s assassination, and the second on the October 8 anniversary of Hezbollah opening its “support front” for its allies in the Gaza Strip. Appearing in a dark room, curtains drawn, bathed in an eery light to obscure his location which at once looks like an underground bunker lit by a lamp or an above-ground apartment with limited sun breaking through the curtains, Qassem began his speech by eulogizing Nasrallah and saying he did more to terrify Israel in his death than in his life.
Qassem then turned to recapping the events of the past year in a framework that, typical of Hezbollah, heightened the alleged successes of the “Resistance” and dismissed Israel’s accomplishments while concentrating on how the war has demonstrated Israel’s bloodlust. Here, there was nothing new to Hezbollah’s narrative, except the backdrop of Israel’s rapid decimation of much of Hezbollah’s leadership and the fact that Nasrallah, the master of spinning failure into success, was substituted with his lackluster deputy.
‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ was an “extraordinary event,” he said and “the beginning of the change of the face of the Middle East.” He alleged that it would increase the “presence and influence of the Resistance,” despite the decimation of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezbollah’s drubbing in Lebanon over the past three weeks.
Then he moved to another mainstay Hezbollah theme, that of Israel’s murderous nature. To set that up, he defended the legality of the October 7 assault as Palestinian self-defense against a 75-year occupation. He claimed that Israel’s reaction, however, was not just to the assault itself but aimed to liquidate the Resistance and exterminate the entire Palestinian people. To that end, he said that the murderousness and crimes Israel was employing to achieve these goals have been “unparalleled in all of history.” Rather than being engaged in fighting, he said, Israel was engaged in murder, “the murder of humanity and free peoples.” “This Israeli entity,” he later returned to the theme, “has thus proven it is a danger to humankind and humanity, and to Lebanon and the region…they want to exterminate anyone who stands in their way and says ‘we have rights.’”
This claim had a double-purpose. First was reinforcing the image of Israel promoted by Hezbollah. The second was to devalue Israel’s military accomplishments, to frame them as having been achieved through sheer and wanton brutality, rather than military prowess. This dual purpose was repeated in his claim that Israel’s objectives inside Lebanon were to hurt civilians in an effort to induce them to turn against Hezbollah, but that in ground clashes, which had begun seven days ago, Israel had failed to advance. “The Zionists shocked at their army’s inability to advance at all confronting the resistance,” he claimed, despite the fact that Israeli forces had succeeded in planting their country’s flag in the Iranian Garden of Maroun al-Ras, a Hezbollah stronghold village in south Lebanon. “This is proof of the resistance’s endurance and capabilities. I tell you now, there’s no value to the mere meters they will gain.” Even at the frontlines, he claimed, Israel has “failed to accomplish anything.”
He then added that anything Israel had achieved, it didn’t achieve alone but only due to open-ended American support. Here, too, this element of the narrative had a dual purpose. It first reinforces the view promoted by Hezbollah that the United States, not Israel, is the group’s primary enemy and should be considered as such by its support base and all Lebanese. Qassem subsequently said, “We consider the United States a primary partner in all of the crimes.” But it also serves to detract from Israel’s own accomplishments and strength, which he articulated explicitly by saying “had it not been for this American-Western support, this war would have stopped within a month, because Israel isn’t capable of facing this resistance. But now, it is not confronting – it is killing. And this killing isn’t considered confrontation.”
He then sought to counter critics of Iran’s meager intervention by first contrasting Iran with the United States. Khomeini’s Tehran, he said, “had directed for the removal of this cancerous bacteria [i.e. Israel]” while keeping alive the Palestinian Resistance and highlighted the Islamic Republic’s missile attacks on Israel as proof that “Iran is determined to be present in the way that it sees appropriate.” Iran “gives what it gives,” he said with contentment, before redirecting the question to his patron’s detractors. “what have you doubters and naysayers given?” he asked.
Turning to Gaza, he described its “resistance” as “legendary.” “They endured for a year, and are capable of enduring for longer, and longer, and longer,” he said even though they were confronting “human monsters working towards genocide.” This too was meant to deny Israel any accomplishment over the course of a year, to give the impression it has only been slaughtering innocents mindlessly while the collective Resistance Axis had denied it victory over Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He finished this theme of his speech by reframing the regional battle: it wasn’t again Iran’s influence over the region, but for the liberation of Palestine, “and Iran, Hezbollah, and others are helping the Palestinians to liberate their land. This is the battle and the measuring stick.”
He then turned to the “Lebanon Support Front,” to play up Hezbollah’s successes. “We declared the opening of the support front,” he reminded his audience with two goals in mind: to alleviate Gaza’s burden and aid its victory in this battle and “defend Lebanon and its people,” – ignoring the inherent contradiction between “opening” a front to support others and engaging in defense of Lebanon. To smooth out the discrepancy, he pointed to alleged statements by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant that could only have been made after Hezbollah had started attacking on October 8 and Israel’s current assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon, which began after enduring months of unceasing attacks by the group, as proof that the Israelis had designs on Lebanon all along.
Hezbollah, he said, had “bled the enemy for 11 months,” “expelled the settlers by the tens of thousands from their settlements, making them a burden on the Israeli Entity…in addition to hundreds of thousands who live in anxiety and insecurity throughout northern Palestine,” and had dented Israel’s economy and fractured its society. He also claimed that the IDF had suffered huge losses at Hezbollah’s hands “but is strictly censoring” that information – even though Hezbollah has imposed a total media blackout on certain areas of south Lebanon with the exception of its Al-Manar and Al-Mayadeen. “We are hurting and hitting them and expanding the footprint of our rockets and loitering munitions,” he continued, before later trying to frame Hezbollah’s underwhelming responses to Israel’s post-September 16 escalation as demonstrating the group’s discipline – rather than its weakness. “We will reach the place [we want], at the time we decide, per our battlefield military plan to achieve our goals,” he said.
Meanwhile, though, he alleged that Hezbollah’s “daily accomplishments are huge,” while Israel – which he falsely claimed “opened the war with Lebanon – “has not impacted and will not impact our will and our insistence on resistance and confrontation,” despite enjoying unlimited American support for its Lebanon war effort.
Building off this theme, he alleged that Hezbollah was intact, and that Israel was lying about damaging Hezbollah’s arsenal or making any battlefield gains. The IDF’s incursions, he alleged, had been limited and repelled by Hezbollah’s strength – and not, as is actually the case, due to U.S. pressure. Qassem also claimed that Hezbollah’s political and military leadership positions – made vacant by Israeli assassinations – had been filled per Hezbollah’s chain of succession and organizational structure and were functioning at full readiness. “We have overcome the painful blows, and many have been replaced without exception,” he said, claiming that in in many cases this was with veterans from the first generation of Hezbollah cadres, or with people close to them. “So Hezbollah is operating at complete readiness and orderliness,” he alleged. As proof, pointed to Hezbollah’s “noticeable” escalation against Israel – ignoring the fact that the Israeli escalation post- September 16 has been exponentially larger.
The only vacancy that remained was the position of Secretary-General, which he claimed the group will fill in time per its own internal procedures – while ignoring the fact that Nasrallah’s successor, Hashem Saffieddine, is likely dead and the latter’s own successor Nabil Qaouq has been eliminated.
Channeling Nasrallah, he then framed Israeli operations as a total failure, attributing a proof quote to IDF Chief of Staff Herzi HaLevy – which he mispronounces as “Helfi” – that the Israeli military has failed for a year in protecting its citizens. “Helfi,” he said, “you will fail even more and more so long as you continue.” The Israelis, he scoffed, were seeking to establish a New Middle East when “they can’t even take off in Gaza or Lebanon. Let them try to rescue their situation, but they won’t be able.” In fact, insisted Qassem, the more Netanyahu pushed to return Israeli citizens to the north through military means the more “exponentially larger numbers will be displaced,” and the deeper Israel’s crises will be come. So long as Israel was hurting as much as Lebanon, Qassem said, then the situation was acceptable.
Hezbollah, he therefore insisted, has no intention of ceasing its fight. The group’s support base remained steadfast, he said, and understood that the current hardships were only part of the battle and necessary sacrifice. “We heard your calls…expressing your readiness to endure and continue, on the condition of perseverance and victory. We are persevering, and we will be victorious, God willing.”
Which brings to the theme of Qassem’s speech which has attracted much undue media attention: Hezbollah’s allegedly new acceptance of a ceasefire. This was refers to Naim Qassem’s expression of support for the ceasefire initiative announced by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri that decoupled a Lebanon ceasefire from a prior cessation of hostilities in Gaza. However, Hezbollah has favored a ceasefire for months, and his words on Berri’s initiative were slightly more nuanced than the headlines are making out. Starting off by saying “Hezbollah and Amal are one,” and both children of Imam Musa al-Sadr, aligned to “deal the enemy a huge blow to prevent them from accomplishing anything,” he said Hezbollah put complete trust in its “elder brother” Nabih Berri. He continued:
We support the basic formulation [emphasis own] of the political initiative undertaken by Parliament Speaker Berri, which is a ceasefire.” After that takes hold, “all other details will be discussed, and appropriate decisions will be taken through cooperation. Do not rush to details when the principle has yet to be accomplished. And before a ceasefire, there is no place for any other discussion for us. If the enemy continues their war, then the battlefield will decide, and we are the people of the battlefield. We will not beg for a solution. This is a war of who screams out in pain first. We will not yell out in pain. We will continue, we will sacrifice, and God willing you will hear the screams of the Israeli enemy…our only solution is resistance, endurance, our people embracing us. This is our option to achieve victory. We will defeat Israel, God willing. [Israel] will not accomplish its goals. Did not our martyred commander sayyed Hassan Nasrallah say ‘the era of defeats has past, and the era of victories has dawned?’ Do you not believe him? He was an inspired person, and this will happen, God willing. Just as you proved during July 2006 to be people of endurance, and as you have proven over a year to be a people of endurance and patience. O people, we trust in victory, through the endurance of the resistance and the patience of our supporters and their backing. The prophet Mohammad says that victory comes through patience, and salvation through anguish, and through hardship emerges ease…we want direct clashes to occur with the Israeli enemy – at the frontline or further…through direct clashes, we will prove on the battlefield that the Israeli army will suffer heavy losses, and they may be the preface to ending the war. The ground will quake, God willing, under their feet….Through hardship comes ease. We must endure in the battlefield, we are the people of endurance, and no one should think we will leave our positions or our rifles. And Israel will fall.
This, therefore, was not the ode to pacifism some had made it out to be. Nor did Qassem explicitly say Hezbollah was now accepting the decoupling Gaza from Lebanon – only the principle of a ceasefire, which has been the group’s position for a year.
