Pre-Emptive Action

"[Hezbollah]will launch between 4,000-5,000 rockets at Israel and will destroy hundreds of targets per day."
"The enemy’s leadership made a decision to carry out a crime. They did this in a direct manner, eyeing a specific target that was engaged in fighting in the Quneitra region. This is more proof that Israel is involved in the fighting in Syria. This is work that is not based on emotion or petty score-settling."
"In any event, the weapons at Hezbollah’s disposal are there to be used, and not to be stored. The response needs to match what it is that the enemy wanted to achieve."
Ibrahim al-Amin, editor, Al-Akhbar (pro-Hezbollah newspaper)

Hezbollah's Jihad Mughniyeh, 25, killed in a reported Israeli airstrike. Photo: YouTube screenshot.

What the enemy 'wanted to achieve' was the safeguarding of its citizens and its territory from the advancing threats and planned attacks broadcast well enough by Hezbollah's boast it was in possession of long-range rockets in numbers sufficient to challenge Israel's existence. There are few intelligence agencies in the world to rival those of Israel and it was clear enough that a Hezbollah attack might be imminent.

Hezbollah militias are deployed in Syria, alongside the elite al-Quds units of the Iranian Republican Guard, both working in tandem, to inspire and support the Syrian military in a triad of Shiite force against the fighting militias representing Sunni jihadis intent on pursuing their case of command over their sectarian rivals. So there is Hezbollah, the creature of Iran in its vendetta against Israel, taunting Israel from the Lebanese border, and from the Syrian border at the Golan Heights.

A convoy of three vehicles was fired upon by a helicopter gunship, killing five members of Hezbollah and a number of Iranian Republican Guard members, one an IRGC commander. Of the Hezbollah killed was a top commander whose father as head of the terrorist group's military had been assassinated seventeen years earlier. The son, then a child, grew into his father's boots, inheriting a position as a commander, and he had been busy plotting an attack on Israel that he will now never carry out.

Hezbollah guerrillas have turned from boasting of their rockets capable of hitting any part of Israel, to going on alert in towns and villages along the Israeli border. Causing the residents of south Lebanon and Beirut living in the Shiite-dominated areas to evacuate their homes in fear of an escalation of violence, should Hezbollah respond and Israel return the compliment. Hezbollah's al-Manar TV warned Israel was "playing with fire that puts the security of the whole Middle East on edge."

A typical enough accusation when the source of the violence, planned or executed, places the responsibility on the target meant to be extinguished from the geography. Israel believes in pre-emptive action when it is sufficiently convinced and concerned over its security. By taking that action it demonstrates it is capable of doing so, and that those who threaten its existence must be prepared to pay the price of an Israeli response.

As for who is involved in putting 'the security of the whole Middle East on edge' , the carnage raging in Iraq and Syria, Libya and Nigeria in North Africa, are living evidence that wholesale destruction in the name of sectarian violence in Islam and the jihadist urge to conquer and lay waste, to drench the sands of those countries with the blood of 'martyrs' is a never-ending cycle emblematic of a tribal culture infused with a religion of violent conquest.

Imad Mugniyeh paid that price of Israeli response in Damascus in 2008 and his son, aptly enough named Jihad, has now been removed from his self-assigned post replacing his father, to fulfill what his father was unable to. If he has a son, the tradition will survive, and so will Israel, in the never-ending round of threat and intent, response and resolve. Hezbollah is without doubt fully absorbed with its mission to aid Syria's Bashar al-Assad battle the Sunni Syrians who asked for the balance of equal treatment in their country with the ruling Baathist Shiite Alawites.

Hezbollah's decision to inspect Golan Heights positions close to the Israeli frontier at Mazrat al-Amal, gave Israel the opportunity to warn that it does not welcome their presence, that of the Lebanese Hezbollah nor the Iranian Republican Guard advisers in close proximity to its territory, even while those sneering threats to rain rockets down on Israel drew the IDF to their defensive and pre-emptive position.

Iran Military Vlog added 3 new photos.Iranian media have now confirmed that retired IRGC commander Allahdadi has lost his life in an Israeli missile attack while his convoy was en route from Lebanon..

"While a group of Hezbollah fighters were on a field inspection of the town, Mazrat al-Amal ... They faced rocket shelling from helicopters of the Israeli enemy, leading to the martyrdom of a number of holy warrior brothers, whose names will be announced once their honourable families have been informed", announced Hezbollah's media wing. The honourable families will doubtless feel even more honoured that they have achieved martyrdom through their holy warrior family members.

And Israel, which may or may not have been informed of the information that led to the strike, by Syrian Sunni rebels who saw an opportunity to have some of their opposition destroyed, will now deploy once again its arsenal of defense systems they name the Iron Dome.