Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed for New York, ostensibly to mislead Hezbollah’s leader regarding his safety, according to a high-ranking Israeli official who spoke with The Telegraph. Netanyahu’s UN speech served as a component of a strategic misdirection, aimed at convincing Hassan Nasrallah that Israel would refrain from major actions while the prime minister was abroad.
Yours truly was part of a very large group of Israeli journalists and politicians who became furious with Netanyahu’s seemingly agreeing to a ceasefire when Israel was enjoying a rare opportunity to kick Hezbollah while they were down. I even accused President Joe Biden of misleading the world with his suggestion that Netanyahu had agreed to this rotten deal (Netanyahu Rejects US-Engineered Ceasefire with Hezbollah – But Did He Originally Support It?).
Nasrallah took the bait, hook, line, and sinker, and boarded an armed convoy to the Hezbollah headquarters, where he sat down comfortably to watch Netanyahu’s speech. It was going to be the proof of the Hezbollah leader’s doctrine of Israel being nothing more than spider webs, torn and split on the inside and ripe for the taking. He would never have left his bunker otherwise – he was the most careful murderous mastermind in the region, who spent the past 18 years safely ensconced in the safety of his bunker.
The offensive began shortly after Netanyahu’s UN address, where he pledged ongoing action against Hezbollah. In his speech, Netanyahu asserted Israel’s determination, stating they would persist in weakening Hezbollah until achieving all their goals. Netanyahu largely overlooked the US-spearheaded peace initiative, which proposed a 21-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah. That was disappointing enough for Nasrallah, and then, boom…
Six apartment buildings came down as the IAF dumped dozens of tons of explosives on the Hezbollah headquarters in Dahia, the predominantly Shia Muslim suburb in the south of Beirut. Like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah also likes to use local civilians as their human shields, knowing that Israel, a democracy under the scrutiny of valiant institutions such as the ICC in The Hague, would not dare kill civilians to get to the head of the snake below.
Wrong thinking.
The decision to kill Nasrallah was made last Wednesday, and Netanyahu debated whether to fly to the UN assembly. He finally decided to fly, to project business as usual. On Thursday night, the cabinet convened for a long phone discussion conducted by the prime minister from his hotel room in New York. The discussion ended at 4:00 AM Israel time, 9:00 AM Eastern, and in the end, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense were authorized to move forward with the assassination plan.
The picture above was taken early Friday morning in Netanyahu’s hotel room, as the PM was giving the order to eliminate Nasrallah.
“Our enemies thought we were spider webs, that’s how one of them used to say,” Netanyahu said in his UN speech, which was his farewell note to the murderer in the -2 basement in Dahia. It’s possible that the last thing Nasrallah heard, maybe translated into Arabic, was, “Am Israel Chai, and when necessary, they also kick.”
Kaboom.
