Massive crowds assembled on the outskirts of Beirut on Sunday for the delayed funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and political party, who was killed in September by an Israeli airstrike after his forces attacked Israel.
Nasrallah was killed by a precise Israeli strike on his supposedly invulnerable bunker on September 27, after months of Hezbollah rocket attacks against Israeli civilian targets. The Israeli military said ending Hezbollah’s attacks, and making it safe for some 60,000 Israeli civilians to return to their homes, was a major military objective.
Although Western media often hailed him as a “pragmatic” leader, Nasrallah was a mass murderer many times over, not just against Israelis but also against Syrians, as Hezbollah forces fought to support dictator Bashar Assad at the direction of Iran. Under Nasrallah’s three decades of dictatorial control over Hezbollah, Lebanon collapsed into poverty, apathy, and violence.
The Hezbollah boss was also supposed to be untouchable, so his sudden demise came as a major shock to Hezbollah, which had just seen much of its leadership killed and maimed by exploding pagers. Nasrallah’s immediate successor, Hashim Safieddine, was promptly killed by another Israeli airstrike before he could assume office. Safieddine was memorialized in Lebanon on Sunday along with Nasrallah.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chose to remind Hezbollah of this series of unfortunate events by conducting a flyover of Nasrallah’s funeral on Sunday with the very same type of warplanes that took out Hezbollah’s senior leadership:
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the planes circling over Nasrallah’s funeral were “sending a clear message” that “whoever threatens to destroy Israel and attacks Israel – this will be his end.”
Israel also launched airstrikes against Hezbollah rocket launchers illegally present in southern Lebanon on Sunday. Hezbollah agreed to withdraw all such weapons from the area in its November ceasefire deal with Israel.
Nasrallah’s funeral had a large turnout, which was important to Hezbollah as a demonstration of its enduring strength in Lebanon. There were enough mourners to fill the Camille Chamoun Sports City stadium, which nominally seats 50,000, and spill over into the streets.
Representatives from Iran, Iraq, and Yemen attended the funeral, although current Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem decided it would be safer to address the crowd by video link from an undisclosed location.
Iranian officials praised Nasrallah as a “hero” of the “resistance” against Israel.
“The funeral ceremony in Beirut symbolizes the gratitude of the Lebanese people, and the ceremonies throughout Iran represent the appreciation of the Iranian nation for these noble individuals,” Iranian armed forces chief of staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqeri said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not attend the funeral, but he issued a statement praising Nasrallah as a “great holy fighter and prominent leader.” He likewise lionized Safieddine as a “close confidant and an inseparable part of the leadership.”
“The enemy should know that resistance against usurpation, oppression, and arrogance is never-ending and will continue until the desired goal is achieved,” Khamenei said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was in Beirut for the funeral, said Nasrallah’s death was “not the end of the road,” but rather “a new point in the ongoing struggle against oppression and occupation.”
Iranian state television offered live nonstop coverage of the Nasrallah funeral and also played up tributes to the Hezbollah leader in Tehran and other Iranian cities.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which lost a few senior officers to the same bunker-busting strike that eliminated Nasrallah, issued a statement on Monday that said Nasrallah’s funeral created “a global echo of anti-Zionist resistance.”
“This great historical event in the Muslim world and in Beirut demonstrated that Hezbollah, the heroic and victorious Resistance of Lebanon, and the Islamic Ummah continue to move forward with vitality, strength, and determination to dismantle the occupation of al-Quds al-Sharif and Islamic lands,” the IRGC said.
According to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen news service, “representatives from approximately 79 countries” participated in Nasrallah’s funeral, although that figure included “popular delegations” as well as government officials.
Jerusalem Post correspondent Michael Starr spotted some prominent pro-terrorist activists from the United States, Canada, and Europe at the funeral.