Hezbollah gave Israel no choice

In the year since Hamas’s terrorist massacre inside Israel on October 7 last year, Lebanese-based Islamist militant group Hezbollah has fired more than 8800 rockets towards the Jewish state. As the Israeli ambassador to the UN told the General Assembly on Sunday: “Last night, hundreds of thousands of Israelis slept in bomb shelters as Hezbollah, a terrorist organisation, which holds Lebanon captive, fired upon them.” More than 70,000 Israelis have been forced to flee their homes in the north of the country, becoming refugees in their own land. The constant attacks, often repelled by Israel’s Iron Dome, left its government no choice but to defend its people, as should any state in the same circumstances. It deserves the support of whichever candidate wins the US presidential election.

Equally intolerable were the plans of Hezbollah commanders to launch a replica of the October 7 massacre, “burning Israelis, butchering them, raping their women, taking hostages, old people and little babies”, as Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. Those horrors were prevented when Ibrahim Aqil, head of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah military operations, and 10 operatives were killed on Friday in a powerful, well-targeted Israeli attack on Beirut. The coterie was ensconced under a residential building, contemptibly misusing Lebanese citizens as human shields. Israel’s well-directed bombing attacks, coming after the ingenious detonation of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies, should blunt the terrorists’ fighting machine. Nothing less was needed to prevent a repeat of October 7 when 1200 Israelis died and 250 were kidnapped. But what happens next will depend on Iran.

In the hate-riven cauldron of Middle East conflict, the lost lives and suffering of bystanders, including children, will be catastrophic. On Monday, 500 people died and more than 1600 were wounded in the onslaught of Israeli bombings across Lebanon. Roads out of cities were jammed as families struggled to escape. They needed more time. But self-defence was in play, with the Israeli military publishing evidence of sophisticated weapons, including missile systems, stockpiled in the attics of Lebanese homes. Israel’s assault on Hezbollah is the start of a prolonged campaign to shift the balance of power on Israel’s northern border, chief international correspondent Cameron Stewart writes: “No doubt Israel will overreach at times, just as it did in its war with Hamas in Gaza, and let’s hope these instances are rare, but the moral culpability for everything that is unfolding in Lebanon right now belongs with Hezbollah.”

The group has the capacity for a long war. It is heavily armed with tens of thousands of troops and 150,000 rockets and missiles supplied by Iran. The conflict will directly touch more than 250,000 Australian residents – Christian, Muslim and others who indicated Lebanese ancestry in the last census. An estimated 15,000 Australians are in Lebanon, too many for the government to rescue, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Tuesday. Those people should heed the government’s advice to take commercial flights out of Lebanon while they are still available. Some Greens sided with the terrorists, despicably. Senator David Shoebridge erroneously compared Israel’s action to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Senator Wong said the government was alarmed by the escalation and loss of civilian life. She and Anthony Albanese should bear in mind that the conflict is about Australia’s long-term, loyal, democratic ally defending itself from an existential threat. It is entitled to give its northern residents the opportunity to return to their homes, securely, free from terrorist attacks.