The gloves are off

Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, seen on a screen in Baalbek, Lebanon, in 2018.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

Nasrallah is dead, courtesy of a precise Israeli airstrike killing him and 6 others in opening up another chapter in an widening war threatening to engulf the entire Middle East thanks to the intransigence of Bibi and the never ending stupidity of US policy unconditionally supporting the entangled alliance America has with Israel.  

With this horrific event in mind, yours truly watched Lawrence of Arabia yet again, David Lean's masterpiece for the ages while also thinking about Lawrence's 7 Pillars of Wisdom, a visionary book written by the only Westerner who truly understood the Arabs and their deep connect to land, religion and tribe. With this being said, Israel has ventured onto a path both existential and terrifying thanks to a leader devoted to staying out of jail while leading his country into an abyss of his own making. 

Why Nastrallah was respected.

He has long called for the liberation of Jerusalem and referred to Israel as “the Zionist entity,” maintaining that all Jewish immigrants should return to their countries of origin and that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians.

Mr. Nasrallah is believed to live modestly and rarely socializes outside Hezbollah’s ruling circles, eschewing public appearances and the telephone since the 2006 war against Israel. That war, which was set off when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during a cross-border raid, ended after 34 days of combat with both sides declaring victory. Afterward, Hezbollah was lauded across the Arab world, and took on an increasingly active role in conflicts around the region.

Mr. Nasrallah is a powerful orator with a robust command of classical Arabic. He laces his speeches with references to restoring lost Arab virility, a message that resonates across the region.

Enter Lawrence and how his take links to Nastrallah & Arabia

T. E. Lawrence

“They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and color-blind, for whom body and spirit were forever and inevitably opposed. The Semitic mind was strange and dark full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardor and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. The were unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail.”

 “To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin. I was unable to take the professional view that all successful actions were gains. Our rebels were not materials, like soldiers, but friends of ours, trusting our leadership. We were not in command nationally, but by invitation; and our men were volunteers, individuals, local men, relatives, so that a death was a personal sorrow to many in the army. Even from the purely military point of view the assault seemed to me a blunder.”

“We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives.”

Why this will not end well as no one is innocent.

“History is often the tale of small moments—chance encounters or casual decisions or sheer coincidence—that seem of little consequence at the time, but somehow fuse with other small moments to produce something momentous, the proverbial flapping of a butterfly’s wings that triggers a hurricane.”

“Certainly, blame for all this [turmoil in the Middle East] doesn't rest solely with the terrible decisions that were made at the end of World War I, but it was then that one particularly toxic seed was planted. Ever since, Arab society has tended to define itself less by what it aspires to become than by what it is opposed to: colonialism, Zionism, Western imperialism in its many forms. This culture of opposition has been manipulated—indeed, feverishly nurtured—by generations of Arab dictators intent on channeling their people's anger away from their own misrule in favor of the external threat, whether it is "the great Satan" or the "illegitimate Zionist entity" or Western music playing on the streets of Cairo.”

Remember, it's all about the money, always has been, always will be.