FALCON POWERS – The extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Tuesday evening for the assassination of the Lebanese Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
This came in a post on the “X” platform published by Smotrich, who heads the “Religious Zionism” party, in response to a speech by Nasrallah in which he pledged an “effective and active response” to Israel’s assassination of the prominent Hezbollah leader Fouad Shaker.
Smotrich said, “Israel should not respond to (Nasrallah’s) speech, but should assassinate him.”
There is a state of anticipation and concern in Israel, awaiting a expected response from Hezbollah to its assassination of Shaker in an attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut last Tuesday evening.
Israel is also awaiting a response from Iran, which accuses Tel Aviv of assassinating the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in an attack in Tehran last Wednesday morning, and from the Houthi group in Yemen after Israel’s bombing of Hodeidah Governorate on July 20.
In his speech this evening, Nasrallah confirmed that his group’s retaliation for Shaker’s assassination “is inevitable” either individually or in conjunction with the Iranian and Yemeni axis, considering that the state of waiting for this retaliation by Tel Aviv is “part of the punishment” for it.
He added: “The party is obligated to respond to the assassination of Shaker, and Iran is also obligated to respond after the assassination of Haniyeh, and Yemen after the bombing of Hodeidah.”
He stressed that the three “will respond, and they have the ability to respond, but they are acting with restraint.”
He emphasized that “for his group, no matter the consequences, what happened (the assassination of Shaker) cannot pass without a response,” noting that the response will be “strong, effective and influential.”
He pointed out that his group can “within half an hour or an hour” destroy the chemical, technology and food factories in northern Israel, which took about 34 years to build.
Since October 8, 2023, Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon, led by Hezbollah, have been exchanging daily shelling with the Israeli army across the “Blue Line” separating the two sides, resulting in hundreds of casualties, mostly on the Lebanese side.
The factions link the cessation of the shelling to Israel’s ending of a war it has been waging with American support on the Gaza Strip since last October 7, which has left more than 131,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, mostly women and children, and more than 10,000 missing.
