Hezbollah did not appear out of nowhere. It was born in the wreckage of Lebanon after Israel’s 1982 invasion. Many Lebanese Shia had not been especially ideological before that, but seeing foreign troops on Lebanese soil, the siege of Beirut, the departure of the PLO under international guarantees, and then the infamous massacre at Sabra and Shatila while civilians were left behind convinced many that nobody was going to protect them. Ronald Reagan condemned the massacre and pressured Israel to withdraw from Beirut, but for many Lebanese the lesson was that outrage changed little. The atrocities in the wake of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon are also one of many reasons why nobody trusts Israel when it claims to want a ceasefire. When fighters agree to leave, Israel murders their women and children. With the IDF using flares to light up the night’s sky to make the slaughter easier. Hezbollah’s message was simple: if nobody will defend us, we will defend ourselves. That is why it became popular. Not because everyone loved Iran or Islamism, but because many people saw Hezbollah as the only force willing to fight back against occupation and humiliation. Israel has never been willing to see that its occupation, its assassinations, its thirst for destruction in the name of self-defense will always give rise to tougher enemies. That’s why Israel can’t defeat Hamas nor Hezbollah, even though it has a staggering military advantage in technology, money, support, supplies, almost any metric, except that its pig-headed attitude gives its outgunned enemies only one option: never back down, cause seeking peace with Israel is agreeing to sneaky annihilation.