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Contrary to what any pundits or politicians might tell you, Israel did not start this war with Hezbollah, the Iranian-funded terror proxy that controls Lebanon.

On Oct. 8, 2023, while Israel was trying to count the dead, the kidnapped, and the brutalized, and was still battling the Hamas terrorists that invaded the country the day prior, Hezbollah opened a “second front” against Israel to help Hamas and hasn’t stopped firing rockets since. For 10 months, over 60,000 civilians have been forced to flee from their homes in the North and live in hotels in central Israel, displaced and unfortunate casualties, as Israel worked to crush Hamas in Gaza.

But in recent weeks, after months of enduring attacks that other countries would have responded to by invading their neighbors far earlier, Israel has conducted perhaps the most impressive military operation in modern history.

In the middle of a slow Tuesday, just weeks after Israel thwarted a massive and deadly rocket attack minutes before it was set to happen, thousands of beepers began blowing up throughout Lebanon. Incredibly, Israel appears to have learned of Hezbollah’s attempts to use low-tech forms of contact and entered the supply chain that the terror organization used to obtain its illicit communication devices. Then they waited for Hezbollah to distribute the pagers to the terrorists and incapacitated their ability to harm Israel. The next day, they repeated the operation, this time with walkie-talkies. And when the leadership of Hezbollah met days later to discuss their plans to invade Northern Israel, the IDF struck and eliminated essentially all of the terror organization’s leaders, evil people who were responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans. In the days since, Israel has struck thousands of military targets and dealt a significant blow to Hezbollah’s ability to terrorize the world.

But Israel wasn’t finished. On Friday, minutes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finished addressing the United Nations General Assembly — to a hall voluntarily emptied of the world’s worst actors, who had wandered out of the room in a show of support for Hamas and Hezbollah — Israel destroyed the headquarters of Hezbollah, in Beirut. The operation successfully eliminated terror chief Hassan Nasrallah, the mastermind and architect of the murder of thousands of innocent Jews, Christians, and Muslims in countries around the world.

Yet despite Israel’s impressive military feats, the familiar calls for outrage and restraint from politicians and pundits were quick to pipe up. Those who for months cloaked their animosity toward the world’s only Jewish state under the guise of humanitarian calls for restraint and only the direct targeting of enemy combatants had to come up with a new smear. They accused Israel of terrorism, invading a sovereign nation, and ethnically cleansing Lebanon.

But this misguided analysis ignores the obvious facts and only impresses those who are already looking to slam Israel at any available opportunity.

This is not a war between Israel and the Lebanese people. Rather, it is a war between Israel and a heavily armed terrorist group that has hijacked Lebanon and is acting on orders from a different authority: the mullahs sitting pensively in Tehran.

In the pursuit of their master’s goals to destroy Israel and ultimately the United States, Hezbollah has provoked and attacked Israel for months, which stoically did not respond. Israel warned dozens of times for Hezbollah to stop and retreat to the Litani River in accordance with the United Nations resolution agreed to in 2006, which would allow the citizens of Northern Israel to return home.

Instead, Hezbollah decided to destroy Lebanon. They planted weaponry inside population centers, determined to exploit the Lebanese people as human shields, and escalated tensions into a full-blown war with Israel that the people of Lebanon overwhelmingly rejected. Their constant and deadly indiscriminate attacks have killed and injured dozens, most tragically seen by the massacre of 12 Druze children playing soccer in Majdal Shams in July.

Israel’s relative restraint in the face of Hezbollah’s ongoing aggression can largely be attributed to the miraculous protective capabilities of the Iron Dome. This advanced defense system, while reducing the immediate human toll of rocket attacks, has inadvertently created a perception internationally that Israel can absorb such violence indefinitely. The world, witnessing Israel’s ability to intercept most incoming threats, has grown accustomed to this scenario, often ignoring the deeper implications of allowing sustained aggression to persist unchallenged. This dynamic has led to a dangerous normalization of terrorism, where Israel is expected to continually endure hostilities without any response, which has only emboldened its many adversaries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, much maligned on the international stage as dangerous extremists, have displayed a consistent and conciliatory tone in the face of Hezbollah’s war of attrition. For a year now, they have repeatedly attempted to tone down the conflict, even as Hezbollah leadership promised to continue to escalate and broaden the conflict.

How long would the United States tolerate sustained and unceasing attacks from across the border in Mexico? How long would South Korea tolerate attacks from its North? There would be an all-out war within hours in those scenarios, yet Netanyahu and his government have demonstrated incredible restraint in the same situation and receive no credit for it. Even as this war began, the IDF has done its utmost to protect innocent Lebanese victims of Hezbollah, far more than any other army in Israel has ever done.

Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that is funded by America’s enemies and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. They have destabilized the Middle East, and the world, for four decades. They have genocidal intentions and actively work to kill every last apostate in the world.

Hezbollah is the most sophisticated and deadly terrorist organization in the world and has committed the most deadly attacks against Americans, next to Al Qaeda. Every day that Israel battles and defeats Hezbollah on its own territory is another day that we don’t have to fight them on ours. Israel is doing the world a favor, even if the world is too shortsighted to see it.

Those who have an issue with how Israel is conducting this war expose themselves as reflexive anti-Israel radicals whose opinions are to be seen through that lens. As Israel rids the world of people and organizations that have held the world hostage for far too long, the rest of the moral world will stand by our closest ally as they rid the world of a threat to us all to usher in a new dawn and chance for peace.

Yonatan Hambourger is a rabbi and writer serving spiritual seekers of all persuasions on behalf of Chabad of Rural Georgia. You can reach him at y@tasteoftorah.org.