Despite Arouri Strike in His Backyard, Nasrallah Is Trying to Avoid War with Israel

Winfield Myers

After Israel (allegedly) took out senior Hamas commander Saleh Al-Arouri in the heart of Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold on Tuesday night, attention shifted immediately to Hassan Nasrallah, the charismatic leader of the capable Iran-backed terrorist army in Lebanon.

Since October 7, Nasrallah has been waging a bloody but decidedly low-level conflict with Israel. It hasn’t gone particularly well for the Shiite organization — it has publicly acknowledged almost 150 fighters killed by the IDF, and has been forced to withdraw much of its elite force from positions along the border with Israel.

Nasrallah likes to establish clear, if unwritten, rules of the game in the fight with Israel, and has tried in the past to escalate when he feels Israel has broken them.

Read the full article at the Times of Israel.

Lazar Berman is the Times of Israel‘s diplomatic reporter and a Middle East Forum Writing Fellow.

Lazar Berman is the diplomatic correspondent at the Times of Israel, where he also covers Christian Affairs. He holds an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University and taught at Salahuddin University in Iraqi Kurdistan. Berman is a reserve captain in the IDF’s Commando Brigade and served in a Bedouin unit during his active service.
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I recently witnessed something I haven’t seen in a long time. On Friday, August 16, 2024, a group of pro-Hamas activists packed up their signs and went home in the face of spirited and non-violent opposition from a coalition of pro-American Iranians and American Jews. The last time I saw anything like that happen was in 2006 or 2007, when I led a crowd of Israel supporters in chants in order to silence a heckler standing on the sidewalk near the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts. The ridicule was enough to prompt him and his fellow anti-Israel activists to walk away, as we cheered their departure. It was glorious.