Here’s what it’s like living under Hezbollah’s constant attacks
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Summary
There is another front that has been active since October 7th on Israel s northern border, and one that hasn t received as much attention, but has started to warm up recently. And the question is, how long will Israel allow Hezbollah to continue firing rockets and missiles across that northern border before they start to retaliate in a more fulsome way? To talk more about this and discuss where things are at and where they might go, Zvi Sahavi is a retired IDF officer and the founder and president of the Alma Center, a group that helps displaced people return home.
Transcript
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The war in Israel, the one between Israel and Hamas, is something that has caught the world's
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attention, but things are about to shift and shift quite dramatically. Hello, I'm Brian Lilly. Welcome
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to the Full Comment podcast. There is another front that has been active since October 7th
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on Israel's northern border. It's one that hasn't received as much attention, but has started to
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warm up recently. And the question is, how long does Israel allow Hezbollah to be shooting rockets
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and missiles, among other weapons, over that northern border before they start to retaliate
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in a more fulsome way? To talk more about this and discuss where things are at and where they
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might go is Zaret Sahavi. She is a retired IDF officer and the founder and president of the
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Alma Centers. Sari, thanks for the time today. Thank you for having me.
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You're situated in Galilee. You are near the northern border. When I visited you a few months
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ago, you took myself and others up to the border. We could see into Lebanon. And at that time,
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there was indiscriminate missiles, rockets, different weapons being fired across the border.
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What's the situation like now on the northern border?
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Today specifically was a rough day. Since yesterday morning, Israel eliminated one of the
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most senior commanders of Hezbollah, which is like a commander of a division of one of the three
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divisions of Hezbollah in South Lebanon, and he's the second one to be killed. And Hezbollah retaliated
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with around 30 attacks in the past 48 hours. And it caused a lot of fires over here up north since
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it's a hot summer day and every heat of a rocket in open areas, in an area that relatively to the
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rest of Israel, and there are more trees and it's more green than elsewhere. Today, it is becoming more
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Yes. And now it's black. Now the forests are burned.
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Are these fires just being started by the missiles and rockets coming across? Or is Hezbollah also
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purposely starting forest fires as part of their military operation against Israel?
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All of the above. It is purposely starting fires by launching rockets to these places. This is
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exactly what it is doing. We had today, only this morning, a barrage of 200 rockets that were launched
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from Lebanon to Israel and 20 drones to all over northern Israel in a range of all along the borderline,
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which is around 100 kilometers. And the range into Israel was maximum of 30 kilometers.
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In Israeli terms, that's a lot. That's a lot of people that went to shelters today.
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The area right next to the border has been evacuated. But my understanding is that's only about
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the first five to six kilometers. Less. Is that correct? Zero to five, yes. Less.
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60,000 people. They were evacuated just after October 7th. Have they been back to their homes at all?
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Most of them didn't go back to their homes. Very few came back to live. Very, very few.
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Some of those who stayed are farmers that have to take care of their orchards that are now being
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burned by Hezbollah. Or cows or chickens, many of them. Agriculture is one of the main providers here.
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And I agreed that out of the 60,000, maybe a third or a quarter stayed in hotels.
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Many others, they didn't come back. They just rented apartments elsewhere or find other residential solutions.
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And they have tons of problems around that with education and providing us. Israel is compensating them,
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but there is no compensation for the loss of an educational system, school, the friends, the family problems,
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the feeling that you are meaningless. You don't have a job. You cannot provide for your family.
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We tried to support them. Many of them left everything behind. Most of them left everything
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behind. Even if they rented apartments, they had to start from scratch.
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So let me ask you who these people are, because we've got the protests in our streets here. We had an
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encampment just a couple of blocks from where I'm sitting right now at the University of Toronto that
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was just recently dispersed. And if you listen to the protesters, they will tell you that, well,
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Israel is an apartheid state. Israel grants no rights to anybody else except Jews.
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And Jed, I recall standing with you and you saying, well, that's a Christian village. That's a Muslim
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village. This one's mixed. That one's Jews and Christians and Muslims all together. Tell me who
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lives in this area that has been evacuated for nine months now. Who has seen their life displaced?
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The Galilee in general, which is not just the evacuees, is very diverse. Actually,
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the Jews are the minority in the Galilee. 53% of the population of Northern Israel.
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Israel. And when I'm saying Northern Israel, I mean about 30 kilometers from the border,
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up to 30 kilometers from the border. It's about 53% are non-Jewish, which is composed of Muslim
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Christians, Druze, which is a very small sect that departed from Islam 1,000 years ago. And they live
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in this region, in Lebanon, Syria, Israel, a bit of Jordan. And Jews, four sects in general.
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Among the displaced, the 60,000, we have one Muslim Bedouin town that got a lot of damages and
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Hezbollah targeted many times. And many of them came back, even though they are under fire.
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We have an Alawite town, which is another sect that departed from Islam centuries ago,
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but it is part of the Assad family in Syria. But here, they are completely against them,
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and they are citizens of Israel. And their town is also targeted all the time.
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Hezbollah is a Muslim militia, a Muslim political movement. But they don't care that they are
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No, it doesn't matter. For them, it just doesn't matter.
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Are they seen as traitors because they're inside Israel?
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Yes. In their plans, they thought they may be able to collaborate with them if they will invade
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the invasion play that Hezbollah published to occupy the Gali a decade ago. They thought they
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will get collaboration of the Arabs in Israel over here in the Gali. But at the same time,
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they don't care bombing them. In previous wars, we had casualties here in the Arab towns, just
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next to where I live. We had a few casualties from the same family, a few women that were killed.
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There is a Druze town not far from where I am that a few weeks ago, there was a drone attack
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there against IDF soldiers that were next to the town. These things happen every day.
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And we live together. And of course, there are players. I want to portray the whole reality,
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which is very complex here. We live together. We are very proud of living together here.
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And yet, yesterday, there was a stabbing attack in a town south to where I am from an Arab that
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came from the nearby Arab town. He just crossed the street to the mall, and he stabbed two soldiers,
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and he killed one of them. And the soldier that was stabbed and died from his wounds and succeeded in
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killing the murderer and actually rescuing all the other people in the mall. For us, this is a terrible
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incident because it tries to undermine the very unique way of life here of people that actually
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accept each other and live together. But these things also happen.
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Is there any indication of, well, I guess if things are warming up, there's probably not a plan to
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bring back the people who live in that first five or so kilometers. What about the people in the rest?
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You said that there are attacks going 30 kilometers deep. Will more people be evacuated? Or what is the plan for them?
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Look, I live nine kilometers from the border. We are not evacuated. And the country, my community
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absorbed displaced people from those areas that were evacuated. And we had sirens here.
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And the whole region, again, the whole region today was on fire. It was a pretty crazy day. But it's an
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example to the reality here. And most of the Hezbollah attacks are to the areas that are evacuated, like 90
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something percent. But at the same time, the attacks of Hezbollah, which are not to the areas that are
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evacuated, are attacks of rockets. And these are launched in barrages or attacks of drones that
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send many people to shelters once they cross into Israel. So it's a huge disturbance of life,
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also for those who were not evacuated and live next to the Israeli-Lebanese border. So in general,
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we can say that life is not normal here in the north since October 8. And for your question about the
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plan, we don't know what's the plan. I'm telling you the truth. We feel here that the Israeli government is
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not interested in protecting us and escalating the situation in a way that will actually bring
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the elimination of the threat on the Lebanese side and the threat posed by Hezbollah.
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And we feel that the Israeli government prefers an agreement.
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Well, I want to talk about should there be a fuller war in a moment. But first, let me ask you about
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something you said there. You mentioned that most of the attacks from Hezbollah are into areas that are
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evacuated. They know that they're evacuated as well. Why do you think they would be launching there instead
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of attacking your town or the next town down the street? Are they trying to see how much they can
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poke Israel? You know, poke the bear as opposed to doing something that would provoke a full-scale
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Well, two reasons. First, there are military forces in those areas, and they are attacking. Today,
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Hezbollah announced that it attacked 14 IDF bases. It's a good example to what's happening,
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what happened today, because Hezbollah says, we attacked 14 IDF bases. That's why we attack areas
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which are displaced, areas that are evacuated. But at the same time, it didn't use accurate weapon.
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So the rockets, 200 rockets spread all over the place and caused a lot of damages. Now, just before
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I came online, I heard that one soldier was killed. The second reason is that, as you said,
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Hezbollah is interested in preserving the current situation and not enabling
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those are displaced to go back to their homes and pushing Israel to the limits.
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Eventually, Hezbollah was fully prepared to war before October 6. And I think that what the strategy
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today is trying to either push Israel to initiate a war or just continue this war of attrition
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that has its own advantages in the eyes of Hezbollah with regard to the Israeli society and resilience
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and economy. And that's the overall rationality of this campaign, of this Iranian campaign,
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is to create a war of attrition against the state of Israel.
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You've used terms rockets, drones, missiles. Those of us living in the West that haven't lived in a war zone
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are going to hear these terms and say, I don't really know what that is. Or I have an idea,
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but is that really what it is? Can you help describe for us what kind of weapons they are using?
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What is a rocket as opposed to a missile or the anti-tank missiles that are fairly accurate?
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You said that they're not using accurate. I know that they do have anti-tank weapons. So what kind
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of rocket is the type of thing that Hamas uses, where they've just taken pipe that was meant for
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their water system and cut it into makeshift rockets? Is that what Hezbollah is using as well?
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Or are they kitted out with very sophisticated weapons from their masters in Tehran?
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It depends. Hezbollah is using various types. I'll start with the anti-tank missiles that you
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mentioned. There is no connection to tanks. They are not targeting tanks necessarily. They are
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targeting whatever. Homes, orchards, workers, farmers in the fields, soldiers, IDF positions,
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sometimes tanks, whatever, are very accurate. Their full range is 10 kilometers, maybe even more
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than that. Until today, they used around 10 kilometers range. We don't have a defensive answer
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to this because anti-tank missiles cannot be intercepted by Iron Dome and we don't have alerts
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before they hit. So that's a true problem and it's one of the main reasons that we cannot bring the
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people back home. There is no way they will feel safe as long as Hezbollah is launching these. And these
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are launched every game, maybe including now because I hear some blasts outside. That's one type.
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The second type I want to talk about is the drones or actually UAVs and unmanned aerial vehicles.
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Not very big, not very expensive. $20,000 to each drone like that can carry up to 40 kilograms of
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explosives. Maybe they actually carry less than that. They are very accurate.
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So that type of drone, it's not the type that we would buy in a Walmart for kids to play with.
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A camera up above. And it's also not the type the Americans have where it's manned by someone
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who is a trained fighter pilot. It's in between.
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It's in between, even though they do have the small drones that you talked about.
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But at least what is being published that Hezbollah is using here, in most cases,
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these are actually actual drones, but not the most sophisticated ones, not the biggest ones that
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you saw maybe in the media, like what we have, for example, Israel. And these are launched again
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every day. And they got better in the past few months. And there was an increase in the amount
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of attacks of drones in the past few months. And rapid increase, like from 10 attacks to
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almost 100. And something really unbelievable with the amount of drones attacks that we experience
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here. And they bypass and they are not always intercepted. And I can tell you that last Friday,
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I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the jets and the Iron Dome and everybody tried to intercept the drones
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from my balcony. And it was a beautiful sunset, but an unbelievable sight. And they missed. The drones
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fell eventually. They were not intercepted. Two drones.
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Do you mean to say that you or your area is experiencing up to 100 attacks a day?
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No, not 100 attacks a day, a month. A month, 100 attacks a month of drones. Average could be less.
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The average attacks of every month is around between 250 to 320. And we counted in every
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map. The numbers are different, but that's the average to all of the area.
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So we've talked about the anti-tank missiles, which are not used on tanks, the drones. And then
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what else do they have? Are they using the Hamas-style...
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Makeshift rockets, or what are they getting from Tehran as well?
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So when I'm talking about 200... First, we know that some of the Hezbollah arsenal
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is manufactured in Tehran, in Iran, not necessarily Tehran. Some of it is manufactured in Syria,
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to shorten the routes of smuggling. And some of it is manufactured in Lebanon.
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Maybe drones are actually composed in Lebanon. Rockets, very probable option. Anti-tank missiles are
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probably manufactured in Iran or in Syria, not even. Anyway, when we speak about the rockets that you
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ask about. They have tens of thousands of these for various ranges. They are inaccurate. This is what
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it's called statistic shooting. Some of them are at the quality of Hamas and others are better.
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And so it's really various types of arsenal with various types. But they can be intercepted by Iron
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Dome. That's the good news. The bad news is, as I've said, Iron Dome will not intercept rockets that are
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about to fall in open areas, because every missile of Iron Dome worth $50,000. And we launch two in order
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to intercept rockets and to make sure that we are not taking any chances. So eventually, you know, you're
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trying to maximize the achievement and with regard to the costs. And that's why when they fall in open
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areas like today, the Galilee and the Golan North and Israel actually burned today in so many fires. Like
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25 teams of firefighters were trying to put off these fires everywhere in the North because of rockets that
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fell in open areas and caused all these fires. And there is no 100%. We have many homes, tens of homes in
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the North that were destroyed by rockets that fell in populated areas. Mostly, I think the majority in the
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evacuated areas, meaning that there was very little damage to civilian life, but a lot of damage to property.
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I want to get into this whole idea of should Israel go into all-out war with Hezbollah. We'll talk about
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that when we come back. And also, I'll get you to, you know, give us an explainer on the connection
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between Hezbollah and Iran. A connection that many people know about, but perhaps not how deep it is.
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We'll talk about that when we come back. Sarit, I'm wondering if you could describe for us what Hezbollah
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is. It's an organization that has been in the news in the West for decades. It comes and it goes. It's
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not something that we live with on a daily basis. But this is a theocratic organization. It's an
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organization based in Lebanon, but with deep ties to Iran. Where do they come from? What is their goal?
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What are they pushing for now? Why are they attacking Israel?
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I want to start with the goal, since you mentioned what's happening in Canada.
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I don't know about Canada, but I saw in the protests in the United States,
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people holding the yellow flags of Hezbollah. And people should know what does that mean.
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When Hezbollah was established at the beginning of the 80s, it was founded as the Islamic revolution
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in Lebanon. This was the title on the flag of Hezbollah. Islamic revolution in Lebanon means
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to bring, to distribute the Islamic revolution values of Iran, of Khomeini,
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into Lebanon. By the way, a project that succeeded. In the 90s, Hezbollah also became a political
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party. And to date, it is completely embedded in the political system in Lebanon. It is a member of
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the Lebanese government. I'll give you an example. There were publications about the fact that Hariri
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the international airport in Beirut is used for smuggling of munitions to Hezbollah.
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And then the Minister of Transportation denied that and brought journalists and ambassadors to
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visit the airport. The Minister of Transportation is a Hezbollah member. He runs with the party of
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Hezbollah in Lebanon in elections. There is no Lebanese government, because they couldn't
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establish a coalition. There is no president in Lebanon. So Lebanon itself is a failed state
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with a political and economic crisis. Hezbollah changed its flag in the 90s.
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When we hear that, sorry, just a second. We hear that Hezbollah is part of the government,
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but there isn't a functioning government. So how does that work?
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It works with an interim government. There is a prime minister. There are ministers,
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but they are not elected. And so Hezbollah is part of this, but they're not controlling everything.
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No, they're not controlling everything. I wouldn't say that Hezbollah controls everything,
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but I would say that beneath the surface, there is no political decision in Lebanon
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that can be made without the concession of Hezbollah.
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Which is very different from the way it was in the 80s and 90s.
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And it's very different from the West, from any idea that we have on system of democracy,
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on system of representation of the people. It doesn't work this way. There is the law and
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there is the reality and there is a gap between them. When we talk about Hezbollah bombing Israel,
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it's not the government of Lebanon. It's not the Lebanese army bombing Israel. It's the militia
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belonging to the political party that's part of the government. Is that accurate?
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Moreover, I agree. And I want to add and double. Moreover, it is also a social movement.
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The reason that Hezbollah succeeded that much in using the Lebanese as human shields and hiding its
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munition in Beirut International Airport, for example, or in the Shiite Muslim towns of South
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Lebanon next to the border here, that's why they are being banned. It's because Hezbollah is a social
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movement that changed its name from distribution of Islamic revolution to the Islamic resistance.
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Resistance means resistance to Israel. Islamic means they want to create a Lebanese state that
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also resists to Israel. That's it. That's eventually the end goal of Hezbollah.
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What is a movement? A movement that provides every need of the population for food and fuel, electricity, water,
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every community activity. Hezbollah is there for its people, for its own base. It replaced the Lebanese
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government in this respect. And that's why it succeeded.
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So is its power base in southern Lebanon, then, along the border?
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Yes. Yes. Not only. In South Lebanon, in Beirut, and in the Baca Valley, not far from the Syrian border.
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These are the areas of the Muslim Shiites of Lebanon.
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And so there's the Sunni Muslims in Lebanon, the Shiite Muslims in Lebanon. They're about equal in terms of size.
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This was right two decades ago. Today, the assessments and its assessments, nobody knows the exact numbers,
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is the Shiite Muslims of Lebanon are about half of the citizens of Lebanon.
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Citizens. Lebanon is having between one to two million Syrian refugees that probably they are Sunnis,
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but they are not citizens. We shouldn't be misled.
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And then where is the Christian population in Lebanon?
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Most of them are against Hezbollah, but they don't have enough power to bring to a true change.
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One of the things, no, no, no, this is why we're talking to you, because it is a vastly different
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One of the things that we hear about with the war down in Gaza is constantly this discussion of,
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well, it's a war against Hamas, and Hamas is not the people of Gaza. And then you look at what the
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people of Gaza support and you say, is that really true? So I want to ask you that about the areas along
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the border specifically that Hezbollah controls. Is there a difference between Hezbollah and the people
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that they govern? Are these people held hostage by Hezbollah or are they fully supportive of Hezbollah?
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They are fully supportive of Hezbollah because Hezbollah is the people. Hezbollah is there. It's not a foreign
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militia or foreign organization. It's a local organization that grew up. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah,
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comes from a family of South Lebanon. It is completely rooted in Lebanon. It adopted
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a radical interpretation of the Shiite Islam of Iran. But it is a Lebanese organization,
00:28:00.340
Well, how deep are the ties with Iran? Speaking with Sharon Haskell, a member of the Knesset a little
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while ago, and she kept describing all of this as this is Iran's war, whether we're talking about
00:28:16.020
the fight with Hamas, the fight with Hezbollah, the fight with the Houthis in the Red Sea, said this is
00:28:22.420
Iran's war. Is Iran a controlling factor? Are they funders? Are they friends? How would you describe it?
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The boss and the architects of everything that is happening. You know, I usually disagree with my
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Knesset members, but this time I have to agree with them. Yes, the relationship between Hezbollah
00:28:44.900
and Iran are even deeper and closer than the relationship of Hamas with Iran.
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But yet, all of it is part of the same campaign that the Iranians announced that they will open
00:29:02.180
against the State of Israel, and they named it, they branded it, other than name the Unification of
00:29:08.020
Fronts, before the War started, long before the War started. They said, they published that they are
00:29:15.220
building proxy militias all over the Middle East, in order to be capable to carry out this campaign,
00:29:24.180
Unification of Fronts, meaning to attack Israel from various fronts, South and North, East, and I
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don't know, Yemen and Iraq and whatever. During the war, these messages will continue to be delivered
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also by Hezbollah itself, and everything is with visuals and threads and videos and whatever,
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a lot of PR around that. The relationship between Hezbollah and Iran is, you can compare it to a
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relationship between an international company that Hezbollah is its most senior CEO. That's the
00:30:00.260
relationship. So they trust Hezbollah. They are a very good relationship. They listen to its needs,
00:30:08.420
to its considerations, to its interests. But at the same time, Iran is the boss. And it's a plan that
00:30:15.940
these proxy militias, especially Hezbollah, truly believe in. The leader of Hezbollah truly believe
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in this ideology. He is ideologically motivated and his combatants are the same.
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You mentioned earlier that there were a series of attacks over the last little bit because of
00:30:39.860
a senior Hezbollah leader being eliminated by Israel. They had a strike and took him out.
00:30:46.020
They appear to have taken out several senior Hezbollah. About 30.
00:30:50.900
Is that making a dent when you're taking out 30 members of a leadership team? Or are they just
00:30:57.940
so quickly replaced? It's a good question. I think it's too soon to say. But I must say that most of
00:31:06.180
those who were eliminated, or many of them, were senior that much that they were holding in their
00:31:13.220
positions for many years, which is very different. For example, if you compare it to the IDF,
00:31:20.100
officers are changing their positions every two, three years maximum. In Hezbollah, these guys were more
00:31:27.300
than 10 years in their positions. So definitely it's a loss and it has a meaning. And yet what we saw,
00:31:35.140
as I've said today, is that the same unit that its leader was assassinated yesterday, was killed
00:31:42.340
yesterday, executed these barrages of fire against us today. So they are capable of continuing the fire
00:31:52.340
against Israel. And it's not a solution. Killing commanders is important. It is damaging the
00:31:58.980
military capability of a terrorist organization like Hezbollah. But it is not eliminating the threat
00:32:07.140
from the Israeli-Lebanese border, the threat of rockets and everything we discussed, and the threat of
00:32:13.860
invasion for the long run. Maybe for now Hezbollah would not be interested to carry out a full-scale
00:32:19.460
invasion like Hamas had done in October 7th. But this motivation will exist. These capabilities
00:32:26.100
can be recovered once the fires stop. And I am very much worried of a scenario that after a few months
00:32:33.140
of a ceasefire, Hezbollah will take his turn to invade into Israel, according to the Iranian plan.
00:32:41.060
Are you able to fight the fires, actually, while the war is going on? Are they able to get in
00:32:50.740
there with water bombers or fire crews and deal with the fires? It's a challenge. There are areas that
00:32:57.700
the planes cannot fly, and it's a huge challenge. And that's why we have a lot of damages.
00:33:02.820
And as we speak, there are many fires that are still on the line, since the morning.
00:33:09.460
Okay. We had a statement come out from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, urging the Trudeau
00:33:16.500
government to speak out against the expansion of Netanyahu's war. That Netanyahu started a war,
00:33:26.660
in their view, in the South against Hamas. And now they're going to expand that war into Lebanon.
00:33:37.620
That obviously is the view of some people around the world. That is obviously not your view,
00:33:43.540
because you don't think that the Israeli government is doing enough for the people of Lebanon.
00:33:49.700
No, it's not my view, because we didn't start that. 1,200 Israelis were killed in October 7th. We didn't
00:33:57.220
start that. I understand that. I'm telling you what is being said here by people that have the ear of
00:34:04.260
the prime minister, unfortunately. But is Netanyahu or the Israeli government, are they doing enough for
00:34:14.420
the people of Northern Israel right now? No, they don't. They're not doing enough. People have been
00:34:21.220
away from their homes nine months. Nobody's doing enough. The world is not doing enough. Nobody's
00:34:25.700
doing enough. Lebanon is not doing enough. So what has to happen then? Does there need to be an invasion
00:34:33.620
of Southern Lebanon to beat back Hezbollah? Does there need to just be an air campaign to flatten
00:34:41.300
positions and essentially say, don't make us come back? Look, to tell you that I support a
00:34:51.300
full-scale war with boots on the ground, it's very difficult for me and I think for every Israeli to
00:34:58.500
say that, because we send our kids to the army. We are all soldiers. It's compulsory service in Israel.
00:35:08.180
So we prefer not to get to a situation of another front and a full-scale war and a ground operation
00:35:19.300
in Lebanon. Lebanon is our nightmare and we had withdrawn unilaterally from Lebanon in 2000,
00:35:26.340
hoping that it would bring peace and security to our Northern border and it didn't happen. Hezbollah just
00:35:32.340
became stronger since we had withdrawn from South Lebanon. We didn't get anything out of this
00:35:38.100
withdrawal actually. They built position next to the border, next to our communities.
00:35:45.380
So Israel will go to a full-scale war against Lebanon only if there is no other choice, only if there
00:35:54.580
won't be any other solution that will enable us to bring the people back home. I think that with the
00:36:00.100
search of this solution, we need the help of international community. We need the understanding
00:36:06.820
of the international community that the solution by itself, or I would put it this way, the agreement
00:36:12.340
by itself is not a solution. Okay, the implementation of the agreement is the solution. And as I've said,
00:36:19.140
there is a gap between the two. Which agreement?
00:36:21.300
Whatever agreement we will reach. There was an agreement that ended the previous war that said
00:36:26.980
that Hezbollah should be disarmed in the areas next to the border, 25 kilometers from the border,
00:36:33.700
up to 25 kilometers from the border. It never happened. Hezbollah never respected the United Nations
00:36:40.420
Security Council resolution that said that. It just never happened. So if we want to have another
00:36:46.740
diplomatic arrangement again, we need to make sure there is an effective monitoring force
00:36:54.740
that can make sure that Hezbollah is disarmed in these areas. Now, this means that the monitoring
00:37:01.620
force will understand that it has to clash with Hezbollah because it will not voluntarily disarm
00:37:15.780
We don't know. You know, the most certain thing here is uncertainty. We can't make plans for the
00:37:21.620
summer. We don't know whether if we talk in two, three weeks, everything will get crazy here. We
00:37:29.300
don't know if we'll talk in two, three months. There will be a ceasefire, but I will be afraid of
00:37:35.300
another invasion because nobody is doing anything about Hezbollah capabilities on the other side of the
00:37:41.140
border. We don't know how we are going to bring the people back to their homes if Hezbollah is still
00:37:46.820
on the other side of the border and they are looking at the terrorist's eyes. And I saw them
00:37:50.740
every day, so I know how they look like. I saw them. They were on the border. I was there every day.
00:37:56.260
We truly don't know how all of this is going to play out. The only thing I do know, and I keep
00:38:03.220
saying that again and again and again, that this is not a threat just against us Israelis,
00:38:09.300
as we already discussed, Jewish or not Jewish doesn't matter. This is a threat against the
00:38:16.580
Iranian view this campaign. This is the Iranian campaign against the Western presence in the
00:38:23.540
Middle East. Do we want to help the Iranians eliminate the Western presence in the Middle East,
00:38:29.380
which is Israel? And West, I mean by values. We share values of democracy and human rights. Yes,
00:38:36.180
we share values of human rights here in Israel. Those who visit here know that.
00:38:42.900
What do we want? What do we share? These are very deep questions that should be asked
00:38:48.740
when we try to analyze the current campaign and what is happening now in the Middle East.
00:38:54.500
It's not Israel-Hamas war, Israel-Kizbar war. That's not the story.
00:38:58.340
It's Iran's war against the West. And if they succeed in eliminating Israel,
00:39:06.660
I don't think that they stop there. They're already not stopping there.
00:39:13.220
All right, Sarit, thanks so much for your time. Thank you for having me.
00:39:18.100
The Alma Center produces open source material that can help you understand what's going on. Do check
00:39:23.140
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00:39:29.540
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