When watching the long awaited first public speech of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah last week I tried to follow the Arabic YouTube comments on the Al Mayadeen livestream. Unsurprisingly a large portion of the audience of a Hezbollah affiliated TV station were impatient to hear when he would finally declare an all-out war (and got disappointed). Others gave some generic religious phrases of praise, waved Palestinian flags, thanked the “Sheikh” for his prudence and wisdom or complained about the Israeli YouTubers with their Hebrew “Am Yisrael Chai” comments. Some called for friendship with Israel or warned against the destruction Nasrallah might bring. What I enjoyed most were the comments pointing at the fact that judging from Hezbollah’s deeds he is much more interested in killing children in Syria than caring about the children being killed in Gaza. One listener did not fail to notice that for Nasrallah the path towards the liberation of Jerusalem leads through Aleppo and Idlib, a strange detour geographically speaking, which, however, can certainly be explained by the Sheikh’s supreme wisdom. Of course there were also people just making fun of his look. There was broad interfactional agreement that the 1½ hours speech was for too long, too much talk about nothing, with all the tiring theatrical alternation between serenity of the wise man and angry shouting. Luckily he had a glass of water for his refreshment.
Concerning the content of his speech: He tried to justify Hezbollah’s actions against criticism from all directions. Against those blaming Hezbolla for not going into an all-out war he said that Hezbollah has been at war since October 8th, that they have to be careful, but also that this is not just some confrontation as usual and that he is hopeful that further escalation will lead to a decisive war against Israel. Against those Lebanese warning against risks for Lebanon which he causes he tried to pose as a considerate defender of the Lebanese border. Concerning October 7th he denied that Hamas murdered civilians and stressed that the Hamas attack had been planned in secrecy without his knowledge, but that they welcomed the attack by Hamas and fully agree with Hamas’ decision to have prepared it in secrecy even towards its allies. Otherwise not that interesting.
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