Naim Qassem’s second speech as secretary-general of Hezbollah, delivered on November 6, was as predictable in content as timing. It came, as is the group’s custom, to commemorate 40 days since the passing of a senior figure—in this case, the assassination of former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. In themes and content, Qassem repeated and summarized his four prior speeches since becoming Hezbollah’s official voice after Nasrallah’s death.

A raspier Qassem—flanked again to the left by the Lebanese and Hezbollah flags and to the right with Nasrallah’s portrait—began by eulogizing his predecessor at length. Nasrallah’s death, Qassem explained to his audience, was God’s will and one of two equally desirable blessings—victory or martyrdom—that the Almighty could grant His faithful followers. He then proceeded to heap praise upon Nasrallah and his accomplishments, including “building a party that brings together all of society’s factions,” for several minutes. Qassem sought to demonstrate continuity and derive continued legitimacy for the party under his new leadership from Nasrallah’s legacy. He, thus, emphasized that Nasrallah, like all martyrs, “is alive, but you do not sense it. He will continue with us, and we will continue with him. The Resistance will remain and grow grander.”

As Qassem did in his previous speeches—and as Nasrallah always did with his addresses—he then turned to fitting current events into Hezbollah’s metanarratives: its narrative regarding the current war and its broader narrative on the course of history.

Israel’s war on Lebanon and its significance

Hezbollah, Qassem said, was now confronting an Israeli ‘war of aggression’ on Lebanon that began a month and 10 days ago. This framing, constant in Hezbollah’s narrative, seeks to present all of Israel’s campaigns in Lebanon, including the current one, as gratuitous and with far-reaching, nefarious ambitions. The corollary idea is that Hezbollah, rather than provoking the Israelis, is always acting in self-defense on behalf of Lebanon to repel this unprovoked aggression.

Qassem suggested Hezbollah was separating this fight from the “support front war” the group had launched on October 8, 2023, in support of its allies in the Gaza Strip, whom he said, “will be victorious, God willing.” What started the war and its justifications, he said, were “unimportant. What’s important is that we are facing an Israeli aggression.” The goals of this war, Qassem falsely claimed, were a “grand project” aiming “to change the face of the Middle East.” He made this claim despite admitting in the past that Israel’s far less ambitious goals were to restore displaced Israelis to their homes in northern Israel and vowing Hezbollah would foil those objectives.

Israel’s “very grand project,” Qassem alleged, “extend beyond Gaza, Palestine and [even] Lebanon, [spanning] the entire Middle East.” Israel’s war on Lebanon, he claimed, was merely one preparatory step that would proceed in three stages, the first of which is Hezbollah’s destruction. The Israelis meeting that goal would pave the way for the second stage, Israel’s “occupation of Lebanon […] that would make Lebanon like the West Bank.” Here, Qassem hedged due to the falsehood of his claims, saying this could occur “even from a distance,” and so would be “an invisible occupation.” From there, the third stage of Israel’s apparent plan, “reworking the map of the Middle East,” would proceed.

Qassem was thus trying to reframe the current conflict along the lines of Hezbollah’s propaganda on the causes of the Syrian Civil War and the opposition’s intended outcomes. Syria was not the organic uprising of abused Syrians against brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad to attain a better life, Hezbollah argues. Rather, it was a Western-orchestrated war against the central pivot of the noble Resistance Axis aimed at breaking that alliance and, through doing so, paving the road to subjugating the region. Qassem was reframing Israel’s current war along similar, diabolical lines of cosmic significance.

“These are the stages that Netanyahu wanted, and he began them with his war on Lebanon to achieve the first step,” Qassem stressed.

‘Hezbollah in the breach’

Hezbollah anticipated that this war “would occur one day” and has been thoroughly preparing for it for 18 years, Qassem claimed. Now, he said, Hezbollah was in “a defensive posture to confront this aggression and its desired expansionist goals.”

Qassem claimed Israel had sought to “end Hezbollah” with its telecommunications device attacks on September 17 and 18, and its subsequent assassinations of Hezbollah’s military and political leadership to “facilitate its invasion of Lebanon.” But Israel, he said, in its ignorance and hubris, “did not know they were facing a party and resistance that possessed three basic components of strength” ensuring the failure of Israel’s plans. “First, the resistance fighters and the party adhere to a “solid/rigid [salba], entrenched Islamic doctrine” that makes them unyielding in their commitments, Qassem argued. “Second,” he said, “the resistance fighters have surrendered their minds [literally, “skulls”] to God,” so they do not seek worldly pleasures, and resistance is their sole path to reward in this life and the next.

“All of our resistance fighters,” said Qassem, “are martyrdom-seekers,” explaining that this did not mean they were suicidal. “No, the martyrdom-seeker is the one who does not fear death,” but, nevertheless, is not one who actively desires it. “On the battlefront, do you see the frontline fighters exposing themselves to be killed by the Israelis so they may meet God Almighty? No, they kill and fight and endure and ensure to cause [Israeli] casualties while remaining alive,” he explained. What makes them martyrdom-seekers was their lack of fear and their desire—like the Vikings of old—that their end, if it should come, should come “on the battlefield, while they are in battle.” The third component of Hezbollah’s strength, Qassem said, was the group’s military preparations, including weapons and training.

Qassem then turned to discuss the foundations of Israel’s strength, blending this part of his speech with Hezbollah’s metanarrative about Israel’s inherently ‘evil’ nature. He argued that Israel’s strength rested on these equally ‘diabolical’ natural foundations. “They have three factors of strength,” Qassem told his audience. “The first is extermination/genocide [ibada], killing civilians, oppression, occupation, and monstrous behavior. We’re seeing this in Gaza and Lebanon,” he said.

Qassem argued that the second component of Israel’s strength, less inherently malicious, was its “air superiority.” He explained that this air dominance depended on several factors, but “especially the unlimited support of America, the Great Satan.” Qassem said that the United States gave Israel “tens of billions” in military aid, alongside direct involvement in the current conflict by deploying its “ships and planes and advisers, alongside everything America gives for Israel.” Qassem’s purpose in raising this point was two-fold. The first was to exaggerate the odds that Hezbollah was facing—not just a war with Israel, but a war by proxy with the United States. This, too, is part of Hezbollah’s larger historical metanarrative: that every Israeli war launched against Lebanon was actually an American proxy war. The second reason Qassem tied the conflict explicitly to America was to feed into the enmity towards the United States that the group seeks to inculcate in its followers.

Israel’s third strength factor, Qassem explained, was deploying five IDF divisions on the ground. Regardless, he claimed Israel’s only true advantage was in its airpower, “whereas the army and the killing and murder components are entirely disadvantageous,” he said. “Murder and extermination have negative repercussions for the Israeli entity’s future,” he explained, “while the army, we see it—it’s standing on the border and can’t advance,” he claimed, raising another constant Hezbollah argument: that the Israeli army’s soldiers are incompetent cowards, and Hezbollah’s fighters are brave warriors.

“The level of confrontation” Hezbollah’s fighters have put up, claimed Qassem, foiled Israel’s true plans of quickly reaching the Litani River, forcing the Israelis to lie publicly and minimize their objectives. Israel “fears direct clashes, and so far, has sufficed with fighting on the frontline. They now declare they have no additional goals because they faced stiff resistance,” Qassem said. This was meant to emphasize Hezbollah’s strength and ability to deliver on its promise of defending Lebanon.

‘Hezbollah will bring the war to an end’

Qassem then turned to explaining how the war would end by extending the theme of Israeli aggression—that Israel’s campaign can only stop, and will only be stopped, by Hezbollah’s military actions. “We will not beg for an end to the aggression,” Qassem said. “We will force the [Israeli] enemy themselves to seek to request an end to [their] aggression. […] We believe only one thing will end this aggressive war—the battlefield,” Qassem stressed, saying Hezbollah was not even betting on the outcomes of the US elections to change matters. The group, he said, would make it clear to Israel “on the battlefield that it is defeated,” preventing it from achieving its goals.

Hezbollah’s victory, Qassem claimed, would only come from two things. The first was Hezbollah’s stiff resistance on the border, which he claimed the group could reinforce with “tens of thousands of trained resistance fighter mujahidin” and a sufficient supply of war materiel “that can last us for a very long period, God willing.”

The second source of victory would be the pain Hezbollah was allegedly inflicting upon the Israeli home front with “rockets and loitering munitions, forcing it to pay a true price and understand Israel will not be successful in this war,” he said. Qassem argued these attacks would lead Israel to “scream,” since Hezbollah’s projectiles can reach everywhere in the country, and he promised “more and more” escalation as the war progresses.

For the second speech in a row, Qassem sought to rebut detractors who claimed the losses Israel inflicted upon Hezbollah demonstrated the group was too weak to defend itself or Lebanon. He returned to this claim because it cuts to the heart of Hezbollah’s purported utility as a resistance organization. The group’s strength, he argued, should not be judged by the blows inflicted upon it because the purpose of resistance was neither to be invincible nor to achieve conventional parity with Israel. “No resistance in history ever matched the capabilities of a State, or an enemy, or an entity, or the oppressor or colonizer. […] The strength of a resistance is [measured by] its ability to endure despite the difference in military capabilities,” he stressed, as part of Hezbollah’s longstanding redefinition of victory to mean mere survival.

In the meantime, Qassem said Hezbollah was “hurting them [the Israelis] the same way they are hurting us,” somewhat illogically noting that the surplus pain on the Lebanese side of the ledger owed to “the resistance building a future, with sovereignty and independence, during this confrontation.” He then turned to a common rhetorical trick employed by Hezbollah’s spokesmen of exaggerating Israel’s losses —“over a thousand officers and soldiers killed and wounded in 40 days, though they won’t admit the true number” and “more than 45 Merkava tanks have been hit”—and Hezbollah’s successes. He boasted that Hezbollah had likely displaced more than 60,000 Israelis from the north and was able to send millions into bomb shelters with one missile.

Qassem also claimed Hezbollah was foiling all of Israel’s objectives, including attempting to turn the Lebanese public against the group through forced displacement. “[Israel] failed because these people love the Resistance,” Qassem claimed. Lebanese citizens receiving Hezbollah’s displaced supporters were not giving into Israel’s alleged desires, he said, because they realize Israel poses a collective danger to them all.

‘Hezbollah is victorious’

Hezbollah will inevitably win, Qassem insisted, because its fighting cadres were comprised of men who “bowed to God and cannot bow to another” and martyrdom-seekers entirely devoted to God. Meanwhile, the price being paid in blood and lives was “necessary to achieve victory.” In any case, he stressed, that price paled in comparison to “surrender and submission.”

Qassem claimed that all of Hezbollah’s base had long internalized this idea, including the children. “Go watch the interviews they have with children, little kids, boys and girls—listen to their logic,” he said, adding, “I swear by God, these are the ones who terrify the Israelis.” He continued, “Is it possible that a six- or seven-year-old boy or five or 10-year-old girl speaks of ‘resistance’ and ‘strength’ and ‘[military] preparation’ and ‘endurance’ and emerging victorious over Israel?” His statements revealed the depths of indoctrination to which Hezbollah has subjected the children of its support base. “We cannot be defeated,” Qassem continued, “because we are in the right, the land is ours, and God is with us.” On the other hand, “it’s impossible for Netanyahu to be victorious,” he claimed, because the Israeli prime minister is ostensibly betting on “murder and extermination, which cannot create victory.”  

“In any case,” Qassem continued, “we will walk according to God’s teachings, and we are therefore certain of victory—and he [Netanyahu] is walking according to the Devil’s teachings, and we are certain he will be defeated despite him saying he will win.” He again framed this war in Manichean terms as Hezbollah does with all its conflicts.

Moving forward, Qassem said, “Indirect negotiations—through the Lebanese state and [Parliament] Speaker [Nabih] Berri, who carries the political banner of the Resistance” can start “once the enemy decides to end the aggression.” These negotiations, he insisted, will “be built upon two matters: first, ending the aggression, and second, the ceiling of negotiations will completely protect Lebanese sovereignty, undiminished.” Here, Qassem was likely implicitly rejecting the recently leaked draft ceasefire deals, which would guarantee Israeli freedom of action in Lebanon if the Lebanese state does not diminish Hezbollah’s armed strength. Here, Qassem was insisting on undiminished Lebanese sovereignty, knowing that, absent external pressure, Lebanon and the Lebanese government will never act against the group.

Qassem ended his speech by saying that if the Israelis had bet on “extending the war” to bleed Hezbollah through attrition, then the group was prepared for a long fight. “Take your time. If you want a war of attrition, we are ready,” he stressed. “No matter how much time passes, we will remain steadfast…confronting you.” Qassem promised that Israel “will not win, no matter how much time goes by” because, he reasoned, descending into somewhat mystical absurdities, “a nation that produced sayyed Hassan [Nasrallah] can only be victorious [and] a nation that backed [Imam] Hussain will defeat its enemies.” He concluded by quoting Nasrallah, saying, “This is the era of victories; the era of defeats is gone.”

David Daoud is Senior Fellow at at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon affairs.

Tags: hezbollah, Israel, Israel Hezbollah, Naim Qassem