It has allowed the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah to run a massive distinct army for decades and to sit in its parliament. It’s currency has been in freefall since the COVID pandemic and Hezbollah’s weaponry in the Beirut port exploded in 2020.
It then let Hezbollah launch a war against Israel, together with Hamas on October 7, 2023, further putting strain on its economy, even before Israel retaliated.
Currency exchange of Lebanon lira to US dollar, with spikes in February 2023 and February 2024
Yet The New York Times opted to paint the sorry state of Lebanon as a direct cause of Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah.
On December 30, 2024, the Times ran an article with a headline “Lebanon’s Economy Reels From War: ‘We Are Starting From Zero'” with a sub-title that pinned the matter on “the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”
NY Times article on December 30, 3024
Israel is surrounded by failed states with Iranian-backed militant jihadi groups waging war on the Jewish State. Even as Israel tries to live in peace and defend itself from genocidal neighbors, the New York Times falsely describes Israel as causing hardship to those around it.
Iran and its associates have long referred to the United States and Israel as “Great Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively. The jihadi extremists positioned themselves as the “axis of resistance” against western influence in what they perceive to be a purely Islamic Middle East.
The leading edge of the warmongering jihadists are rapidly fading.
Hamas, the Popular Islamic Palestinian Arab Terrorist Group
Hamas has been listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist group (FTO) since the US began the list in 1997. The Palestinian Arab group which ran Gaza and has a majority position in the Palestinian parliament since 2006, has the most antisemitic foundational charter of any country. It is sworn to the destruction of Israel.
Hamas invaded the Jewish State on October 7, 2023 and slaughtered 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages. In Israel’s response to the assault, it has decimated Hamas’s leadership including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif. Hamas’s arsenal and tunnel infrastructure has virtually been eliminated and thousands of its members are either dead or in Israeli jails.
Hezbollah in Lebanon
Hezbollah, like Hamas, is sponsored by Iran. The Lebanese-based US FTO launched an attack on Israel on October 8, and Israel began responding more aggressively over the past few months. During this time, Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership including Hassan Nasrallah, Ali Karaki, Ibrahim Qubaisi, Fuad Shukr, Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi and Ibrahim Aqil.
After Israel incapacitated much of Hezbollah’s fighting force in southern Lebanon, the group accepted a ceasefire agreement. Israel hopes that the government of Lebanon will assume military control of its territory, expunge Hezbollah from parliament and emerge from decades of being a failed state.
Hamas and Hezbollah flags, under foot
Syria
The Iranian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad has overseen a brutal civil war which has left over 600,000 dead and millions displaced since 2011. Since Hezbollah’s ceasefire, Syrian resistance forces have overtaken many of the large cities of western Syria and are closing in on Damascus. It is possible that Assad’s regime may fall as Russia is too weakened by its war with Ukraine, and Iran is too vulnerable to extend resources to its proxy.
Islamic Republic of Iran
The leading state sponsor of terrorism is fully exposed after Israel launched a massive air strike in late October. While Israel has not followed up with additional attacks to remove the Iranian nuclear weapons program at this time, Iran has pulled back on its attacks against Israel, out of fear of being highly vulnerable.
What began as a massive war of Iran and its proxies to eradicate the Jewish State and prevent its integration with Sunni Arab countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is becoming a rout of the jihadi regimes. The “axis of resistance” is vanishing into the “axis of nonexistence.”
It remains to be seen if the vanquished jihadists will repeat the “three Nos” slogan from 1967, or consider accepting the basic human rights and dignity of the Jewish State. Unlike 57 years ago, the incoming US president and Saudi Arabia will be important factors in shaping the contours of the regional relationships into the future.
The New York Times does more than obfuscate the truth in its news stories and editorials; it does it with its pictures as well.
It is a plain fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism, as so designated by the U.S. State Department. Iran’s leaders provide material support to U.S. designated terrorist groups including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those groups launched a genocidal war on Israel on October 7 and 8, 2023, while Iran put the finishing touches on its nuclear weapons program.
Pretty terrifying stuff.
But the Times doesn’t want you to think about the genocidal jihadists in a negative light. Therefore, the socialist-jihadi propaganda pages portray Iran as a sophisticated peaceful country, and cast Israel as the belligerent party.
On November 11, 2024 the Times headlined that “Iran’s new, more moderate government” might strike a deal with President-elect Donald Trump. Rather than show a picture of the Iranian leadership or its nuclear program, the Times showed a picture of a couple of women sitting quietly in a park reading the news.
New York Times on November 11, 2024
This absurdity is repeated over-and-again by the Iranian-apologist paper.
On October 28, 2024, the Times reviewed how the U.S. Biden Administration and the Israeli Netanyahu government were reviewing methods to stop Iran’s evil attacks against Israel. The Times thought that displaying a picture of “Iranian shoppers in Tehran” would be useful for readers to consider the threat posed by the terrorist regime.
The Times did this before the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel as well. On February 20, 2021, the Times penned a story about the U.S. trying to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. To give readers an appreciation for the seriousness of the matter, the paper included a large photo of two Iranian women in “a bazaar in Tehran.”
New York Times February 20, 2021
It’s reminiscent of when the Times used to offer vacation package “Journeys” to various countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia to make some coin. It marketed the country which executes gays and minors with “Persia. Iran. For 2,500 years, this powerful country has entranced, mystified and beguiled the world. Discover the ancient secrets and modern complexities of this influential land on a 13-day itinerary, visiting some of the world’s oldest archaeological sites and the family home of the religious leader who engineered Iran’s transition to an Islamic republic. Welcome to the once-forbidden land of Iran.“
It was a complete whitewashing of a regime which has more blood on its hands than almost any other country.
Not only does the NY Times not tell its readers that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups and that Iran is a state sponsor of terror, it deliberately attempts to reorient the story that Israel is a “right-wing” country waging war on peaceful female shoppers.
ACTION ITEM
Write to the Times to stop showing pictures of Iranian women shopping when writing articles about the leading state sponsor of terror building nuclear weapons.
After Israel’s assassination of much of the political-terrorist group Hezbollah’s leadership, people worry whether the region will be engulfed in a wider war. Hamas has been neutered and Hezbollah is rudderless, making their sponsors in Iran furious. The fear is that the Islamic republic’s ire may get them to aggressively attack Israel and thereby bring the United States into the war.
It is just as likely that the leaderless Hezbollah terrorist group and its anti-Israel supporters around the world will begin to hit ‘soft targets’ globally, much as the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group has done in the past.
The Henry Jackson Society published a Timeline of Terror in 2012 listing the various attacks committed by Hezbollah. The associate editor at that time was the now famous Douglas Murray. The attacks outside of the region included:
1984 bombing of a restaurant with U.S. servicemen in Spain, killing 18
1984 hijacking of a Kuwait airline, killing 4
1985 hijacking of a TWA flight from Greece, killing 1
1990 killing of Saudi businessman
1992 attack on Israeli embassy in Turkey, killing 1
1992 bombing Israeli embassy in Argentina, killing 29
1993 failed attack on Jewish community in Turkey
1994 bombing of Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 85
1996 bombing US air force residential tower in Saudi Arabia, killing 19
2012 failed bombing of tourist site in Thailand frequented by Israelis
2012 attack on Israeli ambassador in Azerbaijan
2012 attempted killings of Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia
2012 suicide bomb of tourist bus with Israelis in Bulgaria, killing 7
2014 failed attack on Israeli tourists in Thailand
2015 failed attempt to stockpile bombs in the United Kingdom
2015 failed attempt to stockpile weapons in Cyprus
2023 failed attempt to attack the Jewish community in Brazil
People examine a damaged Israeli embassy car after an explosion in New Delhi, February 13, 2012.
REUTERS/Parivartan SharmaDestruction of the Jewish Community center in Buenos Aires, July 18, 1994Suicide bomber blows up bus with Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, July 18, 2012Explosion in Bangkok, February 14, 2012Hezbollah hijacks TWA plane from Greece, June 14, 1985
At this moment, as the Iranian proxies get decimated, it is just as likely that they and their supporters such as Within Our Lifetime will truly launch the “Global Intifada” in violent attacks against Jews and Israelis around the world.
Within Our Lifetime leader Nerdeen Kiswani calls for an “Intifada Revolution” wherever these are Israelis and Israel supportersWOL protest outside a New York City exhibit on the massacre at the Nova music festival in Israel, with signs “Zionists are not humans”Within Our Lifetime mourns death of Nasarallah by “zionist entity” in a tweet “The martyrdom of such a figure may generate feelings of despair, but resistance does not rest in one man’s hands — it is in the hearts of millions who refuse to abandon Palestine. Thousands will rise from his place in the earth to challenge this cruel world and carry on our people’s task. The weight of his martyrdom will crash down on the heads of the settler colony.“
Just two months after Israel assassinated one of the leaders of a U.S. foreign terrorist organization in Iran whom The New York Times called a man of peace, the facts repeated.
In July 2023, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, one of the heads of Hamas, an organization sworn towards the destruction of Israel, while he visited Iran. In September, Israel took out Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, also dedicated to destroying the “Zionist entity.” Just as the Times called Haniyeh the key towards peace in the region, it extolled Nasrallah.
The Times called Nasrallah a “towering figure… across the Middle East.” He “was opposed to Israel… and maintained that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians.”
I kid you not.
The Times painted a fictitious narrative that Hezbollah “opposes” Israel, maybe like dueling political parties. Perhaps the organization disliked Israeli policies on a couple of issues, or maybe simply wanted a “Free Palestine” with equality for all.
That is a disgraceful whitewashing of the genocidal intent of the jihadist group. Hezbollah wants Israel destroyed and to bring shari’a law throughout the Middle East.
As relayed in a number of articles and speeches, Nasrallah’s Hezbollah sought the destruction of the Jewish State:
“our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine.” – February 1985
“Our people in Palestine, you have the chance to decide on your own destiny, and you can get your land back. O people of Palestine, your way to Palestine and to liberty is through serious resistance and a real insurrection, not through “The Oslo Accord” or the unfair negotiations held in Stockholm. You should choose insurrection and resistance and never let go of your rights. Do what the Lebanese do: They refuse to keep even a small part of their land occupied.” – May 2000
“[Israel] is an aggressive, illegal and illegitimate entity, which has no future in our land…. It’s destination is manifested in our motto, ‘Death to Israel’.” – 2005
“Hezbollah congratulates the resisting Palestinian people and the heroic fighters of the Palestinian factions, especially our dear brothers in the al Qassam Brigades and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, for the wide-ranging and divinely supported heroic operation, promising complete victory. This triumphant operation is a decisive response to the ongoing crimes of the occupation and continuous violations against sanctities, honors, and dignities. It is a renewed confirmation that the will of the Palestinian people and the rifle of the resistance is the only choice in confronting aggression and occupation. It sends a message to the Arab and Islamic world, and the international community as a whole, especially those seeking normalization with this enemy, that the Palestinian cause is an everlasting one, alive until victory and liberation.” – after October 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas
Nasrallah repeatedly stated that Hezbollah will never negotiate with the “Zionist entity.” That its goal was converting all Christians in the region to Islam and bringing shari’a law as soon as Islam crossed the majority. As it is not currently in the majority, the jihadi group will not force conversion by the sword and asked the Christians in Lebanon to therefore not use violence against them, even as they run a completely distinct army from the government of Lebanon.
Part of Hezbollah’s statement of purpose from 1998
The NY Times description of the removal of leading terrorists who were actively gunning for civilians as an unjust assassination of peace, is designed to mark Israel as blood-thirsty murderers who crave war. Expect the hashtag #HitlerWasRight to accompany reposts to Times’ articles.
The New York Times is deliberately lying to its readership that jihadi terrorist groups which seek the complete destruction of Israel are really seeking coexistence. It is a subtle incitement to antisemitism and hatred of Israel, even in the shadow of the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and in the midst of a multi-front war.
ACTION ITEMS
Write to the New York Times to state clearly that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations that seek the destruction of Israel, and not benign actors looking for religious coexistence.
The escalation of the war between Iranian Proxies and Israel continues to lay bare the alias armies of Iran embedded around the region.
The United Nations is demanding diplomatic negotiations commence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority while only narrowly condemning the Hamas (not Palestinian) savage massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023. For the UN, Hamas is at once distinct from Palestine, and simultaneously a legitimate Palestinian political group, as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
Does the UN think that Hamas is a separate group inside of Gaza or does it acknowledge that Palestine launched a genocidal war against Israel?
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has vast military capabilities, estimated to be around 150,000 missiles. In conjunction with Hamas’s October 7 war, Hezbollah began its attack on Israel. Israel’s response to Hezbollah has been characterized as an attack on Lebanon rather than Hezbollah.
The shifting nouns makes Israel appear to be the aggressor against a neutral party: while Hamas attacks Israel, Israel attacks Gaza; while Hezbollah attacks Israel, Israel attacks Lebanon.
Hamas controls Gaza and has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian parliament. Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon and has 48% of the Lebanese government.
In no other sphere can a country claim that its military is not a functioning arm of the government. Such fictitious divide affords the government a veneer of peaceful intentions while its army wages war.
Simultaneously, both are proxy groups of the Islamic Republic of Iran, colonial outposts on the borders of Israel.
Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel are either 1) a rogue third party terrorist group attack on the Jewish State, 2) a Lebanese attack, or 3) an Iranian attack. If it is a separate entity, than a diplomatic solution must a) have the Lebanese government confiscate all its weapons, b) strip the group of all seats in parliament, and c) expel it from Lebanon. If the attacks on Israel were from Lebanon, than Israel has full right to attack all of Lebanon. If the attacks were spearheaded by Iran, than we have long been in a regional war.
Multiple countries issue a release calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon (people and government), making no mention of Hezbollah or Iran, tacitly accepting that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon and that Lebanon launched an unprovoked attack on Israel.
The same should hold for Hamas and Palestinian territories: Palestinians launched a war against Israel, not Iran or a limited wicked entity.
Labeling armies with unique names distances the governments and population from the violence they perpetrated. It falsely shields the attacking government and people from fault and casts the defensive response as unwarranted and sinister.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls members of Hezbollah “innocent civilians” and Israel’s attack a violation of “international humanitarian law,” which implies that she believes that the people and government of Lebanon started a war with Israel and Israel is acting in self defense.
The anti-Israel world does not believe that non-Hamas Gazans who are killed by Israel’s defensive war are civilians caught in a war that its government started, but defenseless targets of an Israeli initiated attack. The “Hamas attacks Israel / Israel attacks Gaza” (not Hamas) narrative obfuscates the culpability of the people and government of Gaza.
The antisemitic jihadists in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish State using alias armies, attempting to shield the people and governments as uninvolved bystanders. Much of the world has ingested the red herring and is defaming Israel’s just war in the latest incarnation of a blood libel.
There are two competing narratives of the war between Lebanon and Israel, one being promoted by the liberal media, the United Nations and Muslim-majority countries (the “Anti-Israel Camp”), and the other by Israel and its supporters. How each side sees the framework of the war will continue to direct the commentary as the war unfolds.
Anti-Israel Narrative
According to one telling of the story, Hezbollah is a “Lebanese militant group” which is “supported by Iran.” The group attacked Israel on October 7, just after the Hamas massacre, “to show support for its Palestinian ally,” and will stop fighting Israel as soon as there is a “ceasefire agreed to by Hamas.”
In this telling of the events, Israel has opened up a new front against Hezbollah for virtually no reason, as the key to stopping the Hezbollah attacks is to end the fighting in Gaza. Israel’s “ferocious assault on Hezbollah” is not only unwarranted but infuriating the United States President Biden who has sought to confine the fighting to Gaza.
NY Times article bemoaning Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, creating a rift between the U.S. and Israel
Hezbollah is portrayed as only a Lebanese ally of the Palestinian group Hamas, whose mission and intentions are unstated. Israel’s mission is seemingly a folly, destined to repeat the “mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”
Pro-Israel Narrative
The same events are seen very differently by Israel supporters and those who appreciate a truthful account of current events.
Hamas has majority support of Palestinians, with 58% of parliament. It’s goal to destroy Israel is to enable 6 million Palestinians to overtake the Jewish State. Hezbollah is slightly less popular than Hamas, with 48% of parliament and seeks to expel the 490,000 Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) who reside in Lebanon to a new state of Palestine.
Israel was attacked by both Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah on October 7, 2023 and is fighting a defensive war it does not want against each. The threat of Hezbollah is much greater than Hamas, which has an estimated 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Over 80,000 Israelis in the north have been internally displaced to the south because of the Hezbollah attacks and ongoing threats.
These narratives are very different. The anti-Israel camp thinks that the United States waged wrongful revenge attacks after 9/11 and Israel is going down the same ill-advised path. But the pro-Israel view is that the American response wasn’t the problem: it waged the war terribly, first by attacking Iraq which was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, and then spending twenty years in Afghanistan fighting a terrorist group that could not pose an existential threat to the US, for the action al Qaeda took on a single day. That dynamic is not remotely similar for Israel fighting two clear and obvious enemies on its borders that are constantly attacking its citizens.
If the reports you consume tell you that Hezbollah is simply helping its beleaguered Gazan allies who are being crushed by the powerful Israeli army against the wishes of the United States, know that you are absorbing a toxic anti-Israel fake account of the just defensive war Israel is waging against genocidal foes next door.
Around 2,800 members of the Hezbollah terrorist group were injured in an exploding pager incident on September 17, 2024. The tally was almost exclusively Hezbollah militants, as it would appear that the pagers had been purchased by the group some time prior and distributed to its team as a measure to avoid eavesdropping.
Scene from video of Hezbollah terrorist shopping in grocery falling to ground after pager explodes
The world has long known that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the major sponsor of Hezbollah, as well as other jihadi terrorist groups like Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. To see that the involvement of Iran goes beyond sending money and protecting it at the United Nations, but is an integral part of the terrorist militancy is alarming.
But not surprising.
The world saw that many members of the United Nations agency for Palestinian wards, UNRWA, are members of Hamas. It makes one ask how many UNRWA employees would have been injured had similar pagers been distributed by Hamas?
The line between “legitimate” state actors and countries to murderous jihadi groups is blurred. The question is what to do with those “legitimate” agents of death.
The war between Israel and Iran’s proxies is taking place in the media as much as the battlefield. Just review how Israel and Hezbollah published reports of the battle on August 25, 2024.
Israel claims to have thwarted Hezbollah’s attack with preemptive strikes at missile launching sites in Southern Lebanon.
Jerusalem Post headline on August 25, 2024
The Jerusalem Post called Hezbollah’s attack a “failure” and that Israel foiled the attack.
Readers in Lebanon got a very different message from Al-Manar, the Hezbollah media outlet.
Al-Manar online, August 25, 2024
Hezbollah claimed that it’s “military operation has been completed successfully” and that Israel’s claims about a preemptive attack are false [Hezbollah doesn’t recognize Israel and calls it “Zionist”].
It added that Hezbollah’s “offensive drones… crossed the Lebanese-Palestinian border towards intended targets” was successful. [Note again that Hezbollah considers Israel to be occupied Palestine.]
Al-Manar website
The US-designated terrorist group listed various military targets in Israel, which were the focus of the operation.
Al-Manar website lists solely military targets in Israel, in the hope of minimizing Israeli attacks on civilian locations
People in the radical Islamic and anti-Zionist world were told of Hezbollah striking at the Zionist entity in revenge of the assassination of a jihadi leader, complete with a narrative that dismissed any legitimacy of the Jewish State. Zionists were told of the tremendous intelligence of its military, which foiled a potential deadly attack.
Both Hezbollah and Israel had experienced terrible failures of their defensive forces, and each is now fighting a war of propaganda as much as missiles to reclaim the trust of their respective populaces.
In a shocking display of partisanship for a terrorist organization over a member state, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres posted publicly that he is concerned about Hezbollah but not Israel.
On June 21, 2024, Guterres posted on X that “the people of the region & the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.” In other words, the world cannot allow a member state of the United Nations defend itself from Islamic radicals who are launching attacks. Specifically, the Jewish State must not be allowed to prosecute defensive wars that it never wanted, against foes dedicated to its destruction.
Guterres has shown himself to be completely unfit for the office he holds. The global agency should immediately fire him from office and put in place a person who prioritizes humanity over barbarism, and liberal nation states over jihadi terrorist groups.
First One Through 