Ghost of Hezbollah’s Past

It’s been nearly a month since Hezbollah’s operations chief, Imad Mughniyah, was incinerated via car bomb in the Kfar Suseh neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria. His assassination, while certainly a righteous consequence for a life spent murdering innocents, will have severe regional repercussions. Evoking the sword of Damocles, Abu Dokhan, or the ‘Father of Smoke,’ as he was sometimes called, hangs like a blood soaked phantom over the Middle East, auguring war.
To call Mughniyah a simple Hezbollah operative would be to make an art out of understatement. Not only was he a co-founder of the Lebanese terrorist group, but historically he’s participated in the upper echelon of the organization’s leadership. Throughout the 1980’s and ’90s, he was credited by Western intelligence agencies with orchestrating a spate of terrorist attacks, and high profile kidnappings. Some of the highlights of his horrific rap sheet include the 1983 United States Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, the 1985 assassination of CIA station chief William Buckley, and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.
He has been described as the only man in the world who is on a friendly basis with both Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran. He was recently accused of training the so-called Iranian ‘special groups’ in Shiite-dominated Southern Iraq.
An excellent gauge of Mughniyah’s importance was Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki’s presence at his funeral. At the same event, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah, gave a eulogy in which he vowed revenge against Israel, “Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open.”
His words shouldn’t be taken as empty rhetoric. On Feb. 16, 1992, Hezbollah Secretary General, Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi was killed when Israeli helicopters attacked his motorcade. After a 30-day mourning period, on March 17, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was destroyed with a vehicle born improvised explosive device (VBEID). The team that conducted the attack was reportedly assisted by the Iranian embassy and directed by Mughniyah.
In fact, we may have already witnessed the first step of Hezbollah’s retaliatory campaign. On March 6, a lone Palestinian gunman entered a Yeshiva, or Jewish religious school, in Jerusalem, and opened fire – killing eight students.
Initially a group called “Galilee Freedom Battalions – Martyrs of Imad Mughniyah” claimed responsibility for the attack. Later Hamas claimed responsibility but denied it afterwards. Adding to the confusion, there were reports that the gunman had ties to Hezbollah.
On March 7, the day after the Yeshiva attack, IDF fighter jets buzzed Beirut for the first time since the 2006 war.
Regardless of whether or not the unconscionable Yeshiva attack was the work of Mughniyah’s cronies, Hezbollah will inevitably act – and, in so doing, take the lives of numerous innocents. Israel, like any civilized nation, won’t sit idly by while its people are slaughtered, so it will respond.
According to legend, a seer warned Caesar to beware the Ides of March, and perhaps we should too. So, raise your glass to the death of a monster – and brace yourself for another war in Lebanon.