Hezbollah: Retraining, Rearming and Rebooting Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah: Good afternoon and welcome to yet another informative and insightful EMET webinar. Today’s session addresses the complex and rapidly evolving situation in Lebanon. Focusing on the influence of Hezbollah, the state of the Lebanese government and the broader security implications for the region. Last Sunday, the US envoy to Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey, Thomas Barrack offered a stark assessment of Lebanon’s current situation. He described Lebanon as a failed state, noting the absence of an effective central bank and a collapsed banking system. The head of the Central Bank of Lebanon is currently indicted across Europe and Lebanon faces an overwhelming $130 billion in state debt. Barrack elaborated questioned the very nature of the state of Lebanon and said, “the state is Hezbollah.” You go South Hezbollah gives you water education a stipend, and maintains a force of 40,000 soldiers. In comparison, the Lebanese armed forces has 60,000 soldiers, but the average Hezbollah soldier earns $2,200 a month while an LAF soldier earns just $275 a month.

He continued by highlighting Lebanon’s prolonged instability. “Lebanon is a foul state.” You’ve had abject chaos and war for 40 years. Four failed governments and six wars in recent memory. I’m not sure what the state is. In September, 2024, a little over a year ago now, Israeli intelligence conducted a major operation Assassinating Lebanese leader Hassan Nasrallah, along with multiple Hezbollah operators through this amazing pager and beeper operation. Although this operation inflicted heavy damage on Hezbollah’s leadership arsenal and infrastructure, the organization has demonstrated unphenomenal resilience. One year later, Hezbollah is retrenching, rebooting, and regrouping. According to a recent article in Al Jazeera, Hezbollah is adapting by shifting to a leaner meaner organization dispersing geographically and embedding itself more deeply within Lebanon’s political and social fabric. Naim Qassem, the current leader of Hezbollah reaffirmed the group’s commitment to arm resistance in late sub September stating “we will never abandon our weapons, nor will we relinquish them.” And added “we will confront any project that serves Israel.”

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has publicly expressed his intention to disarm Hezbollah a stance that’s been most welcomed in Western circles. However, despite official statements and cabinet decisions reports indicate disparity between public pronouncements and private assurances. In private meetings with Hezbollah allies, President Aoun has reportedly conveyed that he does not intend to initiate any military confrontation with the group. This divergence underscores the gap between declared policy and actual implementation. President Aoun has secured an annual international commitment of $1 billion to strengthen the Lebanese armed forces, underscoring ongoing efforts to bolster national defense. But again, there does not seem to be any implementation. On Sunday, the IDF eliminated eight Hezbollah operatives, six of whom belonged to the elite Radwan forces.

Another sign of rising tensions President Aoun recently instructed Lebanese armed forces to respond to any new Israeli incursions on the South. To further explore these pressing issues we’re joined again today by one of my favorite people on this planet, Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Zehavi. Sarit is the founder and president of Alma, a nonprofit independent research and education center focusing on Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. She has extensive, extensive experience briefing US senators, congressmen, senior journalists, and VIP groups both in Israel and internationally. Sarit brings unparalleled insight into the region’s security dynamics. She’s served for over 15 years in the IDF specializing in military intelligence and holds an MA in Middle Eastern studies from Ben Gorian University, and is a member of the Forum Devora, which promotes the equal representation of women and key national security and forum policy roles. Her exceptional achievements were recognized by the Jerusalem Post, which named her one of the top 50 most influential Jews. Sarit resides with her family in the Western Galilee. Again, it’s a profound pleasure to welcome Sarit Zahavi. So I’ve outlined several questions and the most important one is, is the IDF headed towards war with Hezbollah.

Sarit Zahavi: Hey, thank you Sarah for having me. It’s always a pleasure. I have a long answer and I made some kind of a presentation that will address almost everything that you mentioned. I want to start with kind of the end, but I think it’s important to start with that everybody’s talking about an escalation in the past week. You brought what Thomas Barak said, but actually it’s not an escalation. It’s getting to a conclusion. It’s been almost a year since the cease fire. Kind of a status quo we got used to in Lebanon. Which almost every day Israel is attacking in Lebanon and Hezbollah is trying to recover. The Lebanese government is still playing the same old games that they used to play since 2006 with a lot of nice intentions and declarations and statements, but very little deeds on the ground. Really, we ask ourselves when they are saying that they found 10,000 rockets of Hezbollah. We ask, where are those rockets? What are those rockets? Where did they find those rockets? Did they search in homes, private territories, Olive or shades? The answer is no. What was done with those rockets?

Because in the past it was kind of a circle that they ended up in the hands of Hezbollah at the same day. If it’s a 10,000 rockets that were already bombed by Israel so they’re not useful anymore, or these are rockets that were actually found in storages. None of those questions have answers. Except for one that we truly understand that the Lebanese army is not searching for Hezbollah weapons inside private territories. This means that it doesn’t disarm Hezbollah South to be returning[?]. Basically what we’ve seen in the past few days is an understanding inside Israel as well that the efforts to disarm Hezbollah are happening only by Israel, and maybe those efforts are not enough. Maybe Hezbollah succeeds slowly in building its power. And why am I saying that, and to tell you the truth, when I saw all the statements coming out of Lebanon and Thomas Barrack, I thought that it’s kind of a game to use Israel as a threat on the Lebanese government to say, if the Lebanese government will not wake up and do what it has to do, Israel will do it.

But yesterday it was published in Israel that the IDF briefed one of the committees in Knesset, the Security and Foreign Committee in Knesset which is the most senior committee Knesset, that there is assessment in the IDF that Hezbollah succeeding some of these recovery efforts. Now I think that maybe it’s not just a threat maybe we come to the conclusion that we gave it a year and basically nothing is happening. I say usually to Israelis, but I think it’s also important to say it to Americans, I don’t mean that we’re going to have necessarily full scale war tomorrow or going back to fighting and all of that. I truly don’t believe that this is the case. But we may see a development. We may see an evolution of the conflict. I’m not even sure whether this evolution of the conflict will be in a way that we can imagine now. It could be intensifying of the airstrikes or I don’t know. I don’t know exactly. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are going to send divisions to Beirut. To give some kind of a balanced picture here. If I will try to share with you how this status quo look like, I want to start from the Israel maneuver in Lebanon. This is where Israel maneuvered in Lebanon. You can see the border. I hope you can see my clicker. Can you see my clicker?

Sarah: Yes.

Sarit: That’s the Israeli Lebanese border. The green areas are the areas where we maneuvered, and the blue line here, that’s the Litani River. So basically this is the area that’s supposed to be empty of any illegal weapon. As you can see, we didn’t clear those areas. We airstrike them but we didn’t clear them. What we clear are the areas which are really close to the border. Afterwards, in the end of November we had redrawn from those places and we are keeping now five points. There were demands by the Lebanese government that said Israel should regrow those five points. Israel is interrupting the Lebanese army to deploy. Now this is a lie. I don’t have any other way to say it because the green circles on my map are much bigger than what they are in reality. They’re covering a very, very small hill, which is watching the area below whether from the Israeli side or from the Lebanese side. It is difficult to imagine and that’s why I took pictures. And this picture, I took it from Shlomi, which is the second biggest town that was evacuated for a year and a half. It is right between the green trees that you can see. I didn’t picture the houses. You will have to believe me because I wanted everybody to see the Israeli flag on top.

You can see the wall here. Basically this position is inside Lebanon, but very close to the wall. And when a woman in Shlomi that was evacuated for a year and a half afraid that Hezbollah will invade to their houses and kill their daughters. Now see an Israeli flag on top of the hill it’s a different way of feeling. And you can also monitor what is happening below between those bushes, but that by the way, were burned because between them Hezbollah hide its weapons to be used in an invasion. Here is another example, and the reason it was important for me to show you another example, it’s because this is my home there. I live in one of those red roof houses there, and the hill that you see in the horizon line this is another IDF position. The one second from west. On top of the hill used to be in the past the Hezbollah position. Then after the Israeli redrawn maybe even before used to be IDF position. Then when Israel had redrawn, became Hezbollah position. Then after 2006 became Lebanese army position. Then around 2010, 2015, we started to see more and more activity of Hezbollah over there. Today again, it’s an IDF position where you see the antenna and you also see a wide spot there. This is a UN position. This is 10 kilometers from the border. If Hezbollah wanted to kill me with its anti-tank missiles, it could launch them from this hill towards my community.

By the way, and rockets were launched from this hill to all over the area. These are the five points that we are keeping and it’s really not all of South Lebanon. It’s really doesn’t matter for the Lebanese army to this Hezbollah in those places that Israel didn’t maneuver and basically it’s just a nice excuse. You mentioned this guy Naim Qassem. Naim Qassem is saying yes, we will keep our weapons because if you look at the flag here, the weapon is part of what Hezbollah is. And you know what else is part of what Hezbollah is? This globe over here. It’s a global idea to distribute the Islamic Revolution values by force if needed no problem. We are not going to give up our weapons. It’s who we are. It’s our identity. He is saying that very clearly, trying to present a small excuse saying yes, but Israel is holding those five years or occupying areas. But if we will decide some way for some an understandable reason to withdraw, he has already prepared the case for more and more demands from Israel to give up land.

Like seven villages that you can see in red in my map. This is like for decades. Hezbollah is talking about those villages that have nothing to do with Lebanon. These are villages in the area of Israel because the border was marked by the British and the French. And those villages were eventually inside the British mandate of the land of Israel. But at the beginning it was a discussion. It was unclear. I’m talking about the twenties of like more than 100 years ago. Nice excuses for Hezbollah. Let’s talk about the political situation of Hezbollah today. The base of strength of Hezbollah is not the weapon. The weapon is the outcome. The base of strengths of Hezbollah is the people. This is an example for the base of strength of Hezbollah. This is a demonstration for the Memorial of Nasrallah in Beirut. It’s a big soccer field on the ground in the middle. It is Nasrallah’s picture and it was full of Boy Scouts children that you can see how their hands are positioned and what does that remind all of us. They have on their shirts a picture of Khomeini. It’s not something unusual what you see here, what’s unusual is that they still have the support that they are interested in after a year, after this war that eliminated all the leadership.

Clearly it’s a sign of threats. That’s why they made this demonstration. This is another example. There was another ceremony for Nasrallah and his successor that was killed a week later, and Hezbollah insisted on screening their pictures on this rock. Now it sounds like what is she talking about is just tactics. This is not tactics. Because this rock is a symbol of the tourism of the beauty of Beirut. The Lebanese government said, no, you are not going to do that. And they did it. They insisted they didn’t, there was a clash there with the security forces of Lebanon and Hezbollah won this small clash. I’m saying that because it’s just a showcase to understand the situation as you described it in your opening presentation. I talked about the attacks. Here you can see that even though it is clear to us that Hezbollah prioritized this area, in a minute I’ll show it to you in another map. North to the Litani River. Understanding that it’ll have to consider different kind of activity if ever south to the Litani River.

Still, every day there are Israeli attacks south to Litani River. Half of the attack since the ceasefire started are south to the Litani River. Look at the numbers. We had attacked only, less than a year since the ceasefire started more than 600 airstrikes. Either military operatives you mentioned last week. So here are the pictures. Radwan brigades, logistics, anti-tank commanders squads rockets weapon manufacturing infrastructures like for drones for accurate weapons, smuggling of weapons from Syria storages of rockets, you name it, everything is there. This is an example for the past week. Only past week, Monday to Monday or Sunday to Sunday. This is another example which is important that Israel is also doing, is attacking the reconstruction facilities which are allegedly civilian. These are collateral[?]. But no, it’s not civilian. It is civilian in the service of the military effort of Hezbollah to rebuild the tunnels, to rebuild the warehouses and the factories. Israel is not enabling that. Smuggling of weapons. It’s funny, I have more pictures like this from the Syrian Lebanese border of weapons that was seized by the Syrians, weapons of Hezbollah that was seized by the Syrian than pictures of the Lebanese army seizing weapons of Hezbollah in South Lebanon.

From those pictures we could learn what is being smuggled. Anti-tank missiles, short range rockets, mines rifles, guns. Just an example of the things that they found between the cucumbers. Yes, I know you can see. Basically, if I’m trying to summarize the reconstruction efforts of Hezbollah it looks a little bit complicated, but this is what we concluded. By the way, we concluded that from two main sources. One is the analyzing of the attacks of the IDF against Hezbollah. When you analyze what was attacked from Israeli sources and Lebanese sources, you understand. And second, from what is being smuggled into Lebanon. Eventually you build this and you understand, as I’ve said, north to the Litani River white in my map. It’s the area that Hezbollah today identifies as the main focus to build its military fo powering. The area of Beirut it’s the command and control center. This is still happening and the area where they want to develop advanced weapons, and this is the attacks that we’ve seen of the IDF in Beirut. Only two attacks it was against those kinds of infrastructures and training basis were attacked in Depca. This is the logistics rear of Hezbollah. By the way logistic rear in Depca command and control in Beirut and operational forces in the South it’s the same structure of before the war, except that today North Litani is a little bit getting more attention than it used to before the war.

How does that happen with many difficulties in the cash flow in smuggling because of the regime change in Syria, but with much more involvement of the Iranians. This is just a small example of the units that are involved in different ways, the IRGC unit, Iranian units. By the way you can also learn from this visual the similarity in the ideology. It’s the same graphics of the weapon handhold in the weapon of the Iranian IRGC and the Lebanese Hezbollah. And it’s not a coincide. There is a reason that this is how it looks like. We can see that the involvement of the Iranians is not only concerning building the military trends of Hezbollah with the units, but also with making sure that Naim Qassem the new leader, is not going in the wrong direction as far as they’re concerned. Each time there is a pressure on Naim Qassem and statements of the Lebanese army or the Lebanese government allegedly in the right direction, you see Ali Larijani the head of the National Security Council of Iran lending in Beirut, meeting Naim Qassem, giving him whatever messages he is giving him and going back to Tehran and maybe even giving him more than just messages, maybe also some money.

Look, many things changed during the war. Thanks to the war. Hezbollah was damaged greatly. I don’t think that he’s going to get back to the capabilities that he used to have within a few months. It’s going to take time. But in order to make sure that it’ll never be capable of getting back to the capabilities that used to have, IDF must continue the attacks, the pressure on the Lebanese government must continue. I personally don’t have a problem with helping the Lebanese armed forces. But in this respect, we must make sure that we understand what we are giving them and we must make sure that we are giving them weapons that is not endangering the IDF if something will get wrong. Of course, if you’re giving them money to increase their salaries, I don’t see any problem with that. But again, don’t imagine a situation that the Lebanese army is completely loyal to the cause. Because there are officers in the Lebanese armed forces that are collaborating with Hezbollah. We publish their names. Everybody know who they are and I’m sorry, but they’re still there. You are on mute.

Sarah: Can you hear me now? Ahmed al-Sharaa is in control of Syria, but yet we saw there’s still smuggling roots from Tehran through Iraq through the shia controlled much of Iraq is shia controlled to Beirut. You are now finding that the Syrian armed forces are actually preventing the smuggling much more than the Lebanese Armed Forces.

Sarit: At least with what is being published, I see more traffic. More things are being published by the Syrians than by the Lebanese armed forces. For us, also what we learned from that is that probably not everything is being seized by the Syrians because it’s a border of 400 kilometers with no barrier. It’s not easy to cross it’s hills and valleys. You need to find the right ways. Some of it crosses probably, and that’s why some of it is being attacked on the Lebanese side by Israel.

Sarah: How seriously do you take president Joseph Aoun threat about the IDF attacking Lebanon and how the LAF should go after IDF soldiers.

Sarit: First, let’s give it some context and understand. I want to show you again the visual that we made about that. He said that following two attacks that Israel carried out, which were actually ground emissions as you can see here on my map. By the way, very close to at least one of the hills that I’ve mentioned. This happens when IDF understand that it needs to go boots on the ground to a specific place to search for a specific tourist activity or tourist infrastructure. In the second operation we killed somebody that was inside the building, that we had clear information that it’s Hezbollah in the building. The Lebanese are saying he is civilian. I don’t know whether it was truly a civilian or collaborated with Hezbollah. I truly don’t know. It can happen. This is exactly the problem with the way Hezbollah operates. It is operating from within the Lebanese civilian infrastructure. After he was killed, you got the statement of the commander of the Lebanese armed Forces.

First, just to give it a context. Israel has no interest in clashing with the Lebanese armed forces clearly. There is a mechanism of that enables us to dialogue. We transfer violations to the Lebanese armed forces and they supposed to go and see what’s going on with those violations. Clearly we cannot report every violation because sometimes it’s a operational opportunity to seize them or to prevent them. From among those we reported about a half or maybe a little bit more than a half were treated by the Lebanese armed forces. It is an impressing number, but at the same time, as I said, there are places that are not entering. So that’s why I wanted to present a balanced picture here that things are happening there are difficulties on Hezbollah, but in the past two days I feel like this competition between preventing the rehabilitation process of Hezbollah and the efforts of Hezbollah to recover, maybe the balance is changed a little bit. That’s why you see all these travelers inside Israel and what Thomas Barrack said and all this escalation. It’s not exactly an escalation on the board.

Sarah: Could you comment on the utility or lack of usefulness of Unifil?

Sarit: I have no words anymore. What can I say? It is disturbing the effort. Truly. They published very few photos of weapons that allegedly they found after the ceasefire started, like very, very few. Where have they been in the past 17 years since 2006 until 2023. I don’t know. They were completely harmful during the war, and after the war we don’t see them bringing anything again. Few pictures means less than 10. Just for everybody to understand what I’m saying. What happened last week is incidents that they clearly attacked the Israeli activity in Lebanon, such as an Israeli drone. They succeeded in intercepting an Israeli drone, small drone in Lebanon. We understand that they’re following what we do and they’re deliberately interrupting the efforts that we are doing to disarm Hezbollah. If everything was good and Hezbollah would be disarmed by both UNIFIL and Lebanese armed forces, so fine. We don’t have to be there. But it’s not the reality. That’s why this mission should end as quickly as possible.

Sarah: Also for the first time in over a decade, Hezbollah does not control the cabinet but it does control the Lebanese parliament because approximately a third are members of Hezbollah. How does that interact with the decision making processes of the Parliament?

Sarit: We are going to have elections in Lebanon in the next spring. We’ll see what happened there. In previous elections what happened is that Hezbollah lost some of those who were allied with him. Those who were allied, like the Christian party that was allied with Hezbollah, lost some of its power. More independent members entered into parliament and everybody thought that this would bring a change in the balance of power inside the politics of Lebanon. I think that what brought the change eventually was the war. Was the elimination of the leadership and not the politics inside Lebanon. I don’t know what will happen in next election, but everybody should bear in mind that the freedom of electing nominees has a limitation in Lebanon. Because half of the Parliament always by constitution will be Muslim and half of the parliament will always be Christian. The Muslim half has a specific amount of seats for the Muslim Shiites, the Muslim Sunnis, and a little bit of seats for the Jews. So in order to create a vast majority of a coalition, you need to create a coalition between the different sects.

In this respect, Hezbollah lost some of its power that among the Shiites, it doesn’t have too much of alternative. Because there are two Muslim Shiite parties in Lebanon. One is Hezbollah and the other is Amal. Amal is the one man show of Maya Benberry and he is collaborating with Hezbollah. He is running with Hezbollah in those elections. So if you look at the average shiite that gets the support of Hezbollah limited, not limited, good, bad, used to be better. Who am I going to vote for? They have some independent candidates. We’ll see what will happen with that. In previous elections, Hezbollah threatened those independent candidates and we even saw Valentine clashes against him. So we’ll see. We have a few months to see how this will go.

Sarah: Sarit you showed us the photographs of the Ahmed Al-Mahdi[?] youth thousands of them in that stadium. How does Hezbollah exploit the poverty of Lebanon to maintain its rosters and indoctrinate the social fabric of its society?

Sarit: To answer you I’ll give you an example from a video that Hezbollah published during the elections of a few months ago to the municipal elections in Lebanon. Let’s see if I will be able to find it within a second. Yes, I did. When you look at this video in the metel screen, it is just running. You understand that Hezbollah is involved in giving the services anything that you can imagine and what it is expecting back is for people to vote for Hezbollah to support Hezbollah. If this is the video, I believe now you can see it. This is the end of it. In a minute it’ll run again. They are saying very clearly. We are providing you the fuel. This is El-Amana gas station there are sanctions in United States. We are providing you the ambulances. We are providing you the grocery shop. It’s in Iranian flag them. We are providing you the pharmacies, the medicines. We are providing you everything that you can imagine. Even the banks. That’s the logo of the Hezbollah bank. You should vote for us. This is exactly how it happened. And if you add Imam al-Mahdi boy Scout, it means that they are providing also the indoctrination of the ideology of their ideology by this education system. Which was not closed. It still exists.

Sarah: If God forbid, the IDF will have to strike at the heart of Hezbollah, which is in Beirut and in the Bacca Valley, what kind of dangerous unforeseen consequences could such actions entail for the state of Israel and IDF soldiers?

Sarit: The people that are living up north here, next to the border closer than where I live are very much worried of death. This situation brings to delays in recovery. If you travel in the Upper Galilee you see that most small businesses were not reopened. Even though the majority of the people came back to live in the Upper Galilee people are still confused what to do, whether to reopen businesses, especially businesses that need an investment like restaurants, for example or hotels. You see that there is high unemployment. You see that for instance, last week when detention rose and there were a lot of rumors that it’s about to happen, so people started to go and buy food. They needed somebody to calm down a little bit. You cannot go back to normal when you hear jets in the sky all the time and blasts all the time. Whether you’re Lebanese or Israeli by the way, doesn’t matter or drones. I woke up this morning from a high sound of drone. I always told my husband, it’s war wake up. It’s not. It’s not, it is happening. That’s part of what it is to live next to the border. But for people who experience that for so many months and just trying to go back to normal it depends where you live. Not everybody got back to normal. It’s really a challenge to live like that. People need stability. I think the same challenges in the south of Israel. We all understand that Hezbollah was not eliminated. We all understand that those blasts and jets and drones that we hear are good news, are better than hearing the quietness that we got addicted to before the war and quietness that will enable Hezbollah to recover.

Sarah: Some of our questions from the audience are can Israel lead any gorillas, covertly versus Hezbollah? Are there forces being trained for gorilla warfare?

Sarit: Forces being trained for gorilla warfare in the IDF all the time. Not necessarily just against Hezbollah. It’s part of the IDF. They have a command of brigade.

Sarah: Thanks. Where does Hezbollah get all of its money to pay its forces such enormous salaries?

Sarit: There is no unfortunately updated research about the sources of the money after the war. I can say like in a general way that we knew before the war that Iran is providing almost a billion dollar a year to Hezbollah in various ways, various types of weapons and and money, et cetera. But at the same time when Iran was sanctioned, Hezbollah developed or invested more in developing self income sources such as maf[?] money, drug money, businesses around the globe and the donations from diaspora, which again, I want to emphasize, I don’t say that the old Lebanese diaspora is Hezbollah of course not. But there are Lebanese in the diaspora that are supporting Hezbollah. We know that after the war, Hezbollah had difficulties in the cash. It has difficulties in rebuilding. In financing the rehabilitation of the houses that were damaged. I’m very happy for that. I hope the Lebanese government will do that. We saw that they told their people not to go and deposit the cash after they didn’t have any cash in their banks. They had a problem. I’m not sure that this is still the case.

We saw that the Lebanese government made changes in Hariri airport and caught some suitcases with cash. Hezbollah adapted the same way it adapted with the weapons and it is more self manufacturing than smuggling. It is adapted with the cash flow and it is using exchange in different places like in Turkey or for example. How to say it in English. By using the exchange without true transfer of any cash you can transfer money, you can transfer currency. This is basically what they’re doing now to solve this problem. As I’ve said, there are difficulties. They are very creative to bypass those difficulties and gradually and slowly they are building their force again.

Sarah: Is there a process of Dawa of conversion from Sunni Islam and Christianity to Shia Islam out of pockets? You don’t know.

Sarit: I don’t know. There is no good research around it, so I don’t know.

Sarah: Do you know what percentages of the population are Christian, Sunni Shia [crosstalk]

Sarit: That’s the $1 million question. Demography in the Middle East is in Enigma, everywhere in the Middle East by the way we have the same debate about West Bank and Gaza. But in Lebanon, our assessment, there are different assessments. Our assessment is that from the around 5 million Lebanese citizens living in Lebanon, about half maybe a little less, maybe a little more about half are Muslim Shiites. It’s a large number. Not everybody agree upon this number. We believe that this is the number. The other half is divided mainly between Christians and Sunnis and a little bit to the Jews. These are rough numbers. We don’t have enough indications to truly understand. But bear in mind that there was negative immigration from Lebanon for many, many years and Christian led this trend. Everybody immigrated, but Christians led this trend. It’s a huge question and it’s a true problem. The issue of demography. We know that about half of the combat soldiers in the Lebanese armed forces are Muslim Shiites. Maybe not all of them support Hezbollah. But they are coming from this base of Hezbollah. These are hard questions that really get answers, and I don’t even believe that polls could give us the answers. Because in our neighborhood people don’t tell the truth to those who call them and ask those questions from the poll.

Sarah: One of the questions, a very illuminating question, what can we do to eliminate Hezbollah? Is there a way?

Sarit: Americans always searching for formulas or quick solutions and I only have processes to offer. To be very consistent and very determined none of us are excellent in this. Neither Israelis nor Americans, because we are democracies. Democracies change policies with changing governments and presidents. But that’s the only way. This means to continue the pressure. Yes, you can pay better salaries to the Lebanese army, but at the same time, you need to make sure that the Lebanese are closing the Hezbollah education system, closing the banks of Hezbollah, and basically closing all the pipes that bring money into the hands of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Every route, every option should be closed. I described here a few. This is highly important. If you truly want a quicker solution, a more violent solution it’s to go to Tehran. The keys in Tehran, the Iranians are providing money, they’re providing ideology, they’re providing diplomatic pressure as I described. This not only didn’t stop it was intensified. The Iranian involvement inside Hezbollah today is bigger than it used to be. Because Nasrallah is gone and they had to step in instead of Nasan.

Sarah: Although Israel eliminated so much of the Hezbollah infrastructure in September of 2024, do you think that it is just redoubling its efforts and its rebooting itself and that the substitute for Hassan Nasrallah, Naim Qassem is as capable as Hassan Nasrallah?

Sarit: No. He is learning and improving. He is not Hassan Nasrallah. But they already nominated a new leadership and they’re working. That’s why you should look at the picture as a balanced picture. Maybe some of this balance is a little bit broken. That’s why you saw all those statements. As I’ve said, they’re not going to get back to their capabilities as they were in 2023 that quickly. It’s going to take a while. It is happening with a lot of disturbances and that’s why it is going slowly. But the rehabilitation is happen.

Sarah: What we have all learned from this very, very illuminating webinar is about the remarkable resilience of Hezbollah and how it’s enabled it to maintain its influence in both military and civilian spheres even under considerable external pressure. It continues to adapt its strategies, it leverages local alliances and provides community services to solidify its presence within Lebanon. As the regional situation continues to evolve unfortunately Hezbollah’s role remains a very crucial pivotal factor and the geopolitical dynamics of the Middle East. I don’t think there’s a greater expert on the situation than Sarit Zahavi, and we really, really appreciate your presence as always here today. I also want to say that EMET is on Capitol Hill almost every single day trying to fight the good fight against internal antisemitism within the United States and against all of the political forces weighing against Israel. We are having a dinner on November 19th.

We still have a few seats left where we’re going to be honoring Ambassador Caio Lida, ambassador Szabolcs Takács of Hungary, Senator John Federman, who is a remarkable Democrat who always votes for Israel, Léon Charel and Nahula Ali. If you haven’t registered as of yet, please join us for a raise of light in the darkness dinner. All of you should be very, very grateful to Sarit Zahavi who lives under the shadow of Hezbollah. I’m one of the border outposts of Israel and we thank her greatly. Thank you so much Sarit, for all the work that you do. You will always be one of my favorite people. Please also support israel.alma.org. They need our support and they’re doing amazing, amazing work. Thank you so much.

Sarit: Thank you for having me. I cannot say that I live in the shadows. I live under the sun. I believe in the state of Israel. I believe we will not only survive and overcome, we will get better and eventually we will have a better future here after we will win against those radicals.

Sarah: Thank you so much Sarit.