Contrary to what any pundits or politicians might tell you, Israel did not start this war with Hezbollah, the Iranian-funded terror proxy that controls Lebanon.

On Oct. 8, 2023, while Israel was trying to count the dead, the kidnapped, and the brutalized, and was still battling the Hamas terrorists that invaded the country the day prior, Hezbollah opened a “second front” against Israel to help Hamas and hasn’t stopped firing rockets since. For 10 months, over 60,000 civilians have been forced to flee from their homes in the North and live in hotels in central Israel, displaced and unfortunate casualties, as Israel worked to crush Hamas in Gaza. //

In the middle of a slow Tuesday, just weeks after Israel thwarted a massive and deadly rocket attack minutes before it was set to happen, thousands of beepers began blowing up throughout Lebanon. Incredibly, Israel appears to have learned of Hezbollah’s attempts to use low-tech forms of contact and entered the supply chain that the terror organization used to obtain its illicit communication devices. Then they waited for Hezbollah to distribute the pagers to the terrorists and incapacitated their ability to harm Israel. The next day, they repeated the operation, this time with walkie-talkies. And when the leadership of Hezbollah met days later to discuss their plans to invade Northern Israel, the IDF struck and eliminated essentially all of the terror organization’s leaders, evil people who were responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. In the days since, Israel has struck thousands of military targets and dealt a significant blow to Hezbollah’s ability to terrorize the world.

But Israel wasn’t finished. On Friday, minutes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finished addressing the United Nations General Assembly — to a hall voluntarily emptied of the world’s worst actors, who had wandered out of the room in a show of support for Hamas and Hezbollah — Israel destroyed the headquarters of Hezbollah, in Beirut. The operation successfully eliminated terror chief Hassan Nasrallah, the mastermind and architect of the murder of thousands of innocent Jews, Christians, and Muslims in countries around the world. //

This is not a war between Israel and the Lebanese people. Rather, it is a war between Israel and a heavily armed terrorist group that has hijacked Lebanon and is acting on orders from a different authority: the mullahs sitting pensively in Tehran.

In the pursuit of their master’s goals to destroy Israel and ultimately the United States, Hezbollah has provoked and attacked Israel for months, which stoically did not respond. Israel warned dozens of times for Hezbollah to stop and retreat to the Litani River in accordance with the United Nations resolution agreed to in 2006, which would allow the citizens of Northern Israel to return home.

Instead, Hezbollah decided to destroy Lebanon. They planted weaponry inside population centers, determined to exploit the Lebanese people as human shields, and escalated tensions into a full-blown war with Israel that the people of Lebanon overwhelmingly rejected. Their constant and deadly indiscriminate attacks have killed and injured dozens, most tragically seen by the massacre of 12 Druze children playing soccer in Majdal Shams in July.

Israel’s relative restraint in the face of Hezbollah’s ongoing aggression can largely be attributed to the miraculous protective capabilities of the Iron Dome. This advanced defense system, while reducing the immediate human toll of rocket attacks, has inadvertently created a perception internationally that Israel can absorb such violence indefinitely. The world, witnessing Israel’s ability to intercept most incoming threats, has grown accustomed to this scenario, often ignoring the deeper implications of allowing sustained aggression to persist unchallenged. This dynamic has led to a dangerous normalization of terrorism, where Israel is expected to continually endure hostilities without any response, which has only emboldened its many adversaries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, much maligned on the international stage as dangerous extremists, have displayed a consistent and conciliatory tone in the face of Hezbollah’s war of attrition. For a year now, they have repeatedly attempted to tone down the conflict, even as Hezbollah leadership promised to continue to escalate and broaden the conflict.