Everyone is always voraciously consuming news. No one ever casually consumes news. Or indifferently consumes news.
I have no idea who is actually in charge of Hizballah these days, but I know this (which Naim Qassem more or less said himself): Hizballah would love for Israel to launch a ground invasion of Lebanon right now.
I donât want to tempt the fates, but it really is remarkable how Iran and Syria have done precisely jack shit to relieve this pressure on Hizballah â an organization that has happily sacrificed hundreds of fighters for both of them over the past decade.
Assassinations often donât work because the next guy is worse, or smarter, than the guy you killed (e.g., Musawi â> Nasrallah). But there have been times in Lebanon where the assassination of a key leader has set a sect or group back an entire generation (e.g. Bachir Gemayel, Rafik Hariri).
The New York Times in particular was slow to realize the gravity of what was happening because they mistakenly thought that a New York City mayorâs corruption would be major news to the other 320 million people in the country.
Folks are hating on journalists for saying Nasrallah was warm and charismatic in the eyes of his followers, but ⊠he was. In his speeches, he was often funny, too. But he also led a brutal organization that slaughtered thousands of innocent Syrians and terrorized thousands more. Both can be true.
If the Biden Administration really wanted to pump the brakes on what Israel is doing â and now would be a logical time to do so, if Nasrallah has indeed been killed â itâs going to have to abandon the âall carrots, no sticksâ approach that has yielded the results we all could have predicted earlier.