Naim Qassem, chosen the week to replace Hassan Nasrallah at the helm of the jihadist terror organization Hezbollah, delivered his first speech as leader of the group on Wednesday evening, promising to “remain on the path of war” against Israel and threatening to the genocidal removal of the Israeli people from their country.
Qassem used his first address to honor both Nasrallah, who led the Iran-backed terrorists in Lebanon for decades, and Yahya Sinwar, the slain mass murderer who led Hamas this summer after former Hamas “political” leader Ismail Haniyeh died in an explosion in Tehran.
Qassem dismissed the reality that the current war between Israel and Hamas was triggered by the jihadist terrorists invading Israel and massacring 1,200 people, insisting that Israel’s existence was itself a provocation: “Have we forgotten 75 years of killing Palestinians, displacing them, seizing the land and sanctities, and committing massacres?”
He also insisted that Hezbollah was in fighting shape and prepared for a prolonged war against Israel despite its high-profile losses in the past four months, including both top leaders and a vast network of associated targeted in what was believed to be an Israeli attack weaponizing pagers, walkie-talkies, and other low-technology communications devices. Hezbollah also lost one of its main coordination centers to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) airstrikes in Lebanon, where Hassan Nasrallah is believed to have met his demise.
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The leadership council of Hezbollah announced this week that Qassem would take over as “secretary general” of the terrorist organization. He is a second choice to replace Nasrallah. Hezbollah initially announced Nasrallah’s cousin, Hashem Safieddine, as the leader’s replacement after he died in a September airstrike, but Safieddine, Israeli authorities confirmed weeks later, also died in an airstrike in early October. Qassem has been described as a founding member of Hezbollah but takes the job with less religious clout than the other two leaders, as he does not appear to claim to be a direct descendant of Muhammad.
In his remarks on Wednesday, Qassem insisted, “We will continue to implement the war plan laid out by Seyed Nasrallah, and we will remain on the path of war within established political directions.”
“You will surely be defeated because the land is ours, and our people are united around us. Leave our land to reduce your losses, or you will pay an unprecedented price,” Qassem said, addressing Israel and its ally, the United States.
The Hezbollah chief praised Nasrallah for his decades of terrorist activities and commanded his jihadis not to be discouraged by his death.
“They wanted our secretary general’s killing to defeat our spirit of resistance and shatter our will to fight. But his blood continues to boil in our veins and strengthens our determination,” he vowed. “We fight on our land and liberate our occupied territory; no one asks us for anything, nor does anyone impose anything upon us.”
Qassem described Israel’s counterterrorism operations, which have expanded into Lebanon after Hezbollah invaded northern Israel and displaced tens of thousands of people, as a “global war … American, European, and global in nature” seeking to eliminate “resistance,” by which he meant genocidal Islamist terror movements.
Multiple media outlets outside of Iranian and pro-Hezbollah propaganda focused in their reports on the speech on the fact that Qassem appeared to contemplate the potential of a ceasefire with Israel. Qassem mentioned it as a possibility only in the event that Israel concedes all of Hezbollah’s demands, which appear to include the elimination of the Israeli state.
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“If the Israelis decide that they want to stop the aggression, we say we accept, but under the conditions that we see as appropriate and suitable,” Qassem said. “Get out of our land to reduce your losses. If you stay, you will pay more than you have ever paid in your life.”
“We will not beg for a ceasefire,” he added emphatically.
Despite Qassem’s bluster, Hezbollah has seen its terrorist capabilities significantly reduced in the past year. The fact that Qassem’s speech appears to have been pre-recorded and designed to make it impossible to identify his location indicates that Hezbollah leaders are taking Israel’s threats to eliminate him seriously, particularly given how much of its leadership structure Jerusalem has dismantled recently. The September detonations of hundreds of electronics – including pagers Hezbollah used to avoid wiretapping, walkie-talkies, mobile phones, laptops, and other devices – targeted high- and middle-ranking Hezbollah terrorists, as well as complicating the terrorists’ ability to remotely communicate.
Airstrikes targeting key Hezbollah assets reduced the terrorists’ rocket capacity to 20 percent of what it was before the war, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday.
“His tenure in this position may be the shortest in the history of this terrorist organization,” the Israeli government said in a statement this week following Qassem’s appointment, “if he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine. There is no solution in Lebanon except to dismantle this organization as a military force.”