Head of Hezbollah Media Relations Unit: We’re Responsible for ‘Caesarea’ Op

By Staff

Speech of Hezbollah Media Relations Chief, Hajj Mohammad Afif, during a press conference in Rawdat al-Hawar Zainab (PBUH) Cemetery in Ghobeiry in the southern suburbs of Beirut [Dahiyeh]

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

I stand among you in Rawdat Al-Hawra Zainab (peace be upon her) cemetery. Behind me, the souls of the martyrs and a fragrant scent from this holy paradise ascend and a rope extends from the earth to the sky. Here lie the shrines of the martyrs, especially the martyred leaders, including the lion of the resistance and the man of great strength, Hajj Mohsen, the towering rock of the south, Hajj Abu al-Fadl, the brilliant leader and exceptional mind, Hajj Abdul Qader, the divine scholar, His Eminence Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, and my two brothers who were by our side for a long time in the service of Sayyed [Hassan Nasrallah] (may God Almighty be pleased with him) – Hajj Nabil, Sayyed’s guardian who was always seen smiling, and Hajj Jihad, Sayyed’s shadow and the keeper of his secrets. May God Almighty have mercy on them all.

O Yahya! Hold firmly to the Scriptures and strike with your stick the drones. They will collapse. What is fighting within us is the spirit, or rather the sweetness of the spirit. Peace be upon you, upon Ismail, and upon your two brothers, Fathi Shaqaqi and Yahya Ayyash. Peace be upon you. How beautiful your image is when dead, and how great your rifle is when alive! He lived as a hero and became a legend.

1. When the people of truth kept silent about falsehood, the people of falsehood thought they were right.

I strongly condemn the bias of MBC, its partners, and sister channels towards the criminal killers, Netanyahu, and the occupation army. If the “Israeli” Channel 12 wanted to prepare a report about the martyr Yahya Sinwar, it would have been fairer. Describing the martyrs as terrorists makes you the terrorist. Glorifying the murderer while condemning the murdered and describing them as evil, make you, your station, and your television channel the evil ones.

What the brave Iraqi intellectuals, media professionals, and artists have done to expose this shameful, abhorrent, and unacceptable behavior is a step that deserves praise and commendation, especially what the Iraqi Media Authority and Iraqi government agencies have done. We hope that our country follows suit and take measures against that malicious channel.

Freedom of the press does not grant you immunity for incitement or complicity in murder. You shed forbidden blood and call it freedom of the press! You sow sedition from all sides and call it freedom of the press! You give coordinates to the enemy at every crossroad and in every direction and call it freedom of the press! Your reports on Qard al-Hasan, you mouthpieces of banks and haram money, are the worst examples. If only you had a little shame left in you, but it is impossible, impossible! You deserve an award for all your work, and you got it. Congratulations!

For a moment, you thought that it was over and that a political system run by Awkar had been established – a new political, security, and judicial system in Lebanon. You thought that the same high-ranking envoy was coming to present to you, with blood, gunpowder, and the remains of children, the promised plate of power and the promised presidency. Is it like what someone in an interview with this malicious channel said that this war will not end with debasement, but rather with a killer and a killed, a victor and a defeated? You are wrong, and you misunderstood our situation as well as the political, sectarian, and social structure in the country.

I know what’s making you angry:

1. The most wonderful scenes of heroism the Islamic Resistance is displaying in Ramieh, Qawzah and Aita al-Shaab, and inflicting a humiliating defeat on the enemy as they burn its tanks and kill its soldiers. Meanwhile, you cover your eyes with your hands and say we did not see anything.
2. You see missiles falling in Haifa and beyond Haifa as well as in Tel Aviv and its suburbs, and the enemy acknowledges it. However, you cover your ears and say we did not hear. I do not know why you get upset when Tel Aviv and Haifa are hit. What do you have there?
3. You seeing and hearing the displaced people, the people of loyalty and honor, the people of resistance and true faith, and those displaced from their homes destroyed by the aggression, saying: I make sacrifices for the resistance; what happened to me is easy because God sees it. Yet, you do not believe.
4. ??You knowing, with the admission of the enemy, that Hezbollah has regained its health and a large part of its capabilities and field control on the front, and you do not believe it. This is the reality that the lighting in the studios, the gloomy faces, the paid TV extras, and your boring and repetitive statements that no one believes, not even your audience and supporters, will ever hide.
5. The United States is a full partner in the aggression against Lebanon and its people. It is the one supplying “Israel” with weapons and ammunition, including phosphorous, cluster, and perhaps radioactive weapons. It is the one extending the aggression and is primarily responsible for the horrific massacres that are being perpetrated against our people. The arrival of its envoy to Beirut will not change the statement that America is the mother of terrorism and that the ideas he put forward were nothing more than a preliminary fire survey of the resistance’s position in light of the massacres and bloodshed. We have complete and total confidence in Speaker Berri, and we support his firm position: no negotiations under fire, and what you don’t get under fire, you won’t get through politics.
6. The enemy continues its insane bombing of and senseless and criminal killing in cities, villages and towns in the south and the Bekaa, and especially in the southern suburb [Dahiyeh]. It is killing people and destroying buildings. Its pretexts have fallen one after the other. The narrative of the warehouses and weapons development centers is nothing but flimsy justifications with no basis.
7. The enemy's insane bombing on Sunday evening across the country and in Dahiyeh, particularly targeting Qard Al-Hasan centers (of course, the “Israelis” not work for the malicious channel, it works for them), has no justification at all except a desire for more killing and destruction. The goal is clear, as an “Israeli” official said. It is to affect the mutual trust between Hezbollah and its community. We would like to emphasize first that the Qard Al-Hassan Association is a purely civil institution licensed by law. Its services reach all Lebanese, and it has branches in most Lebanese regions.

I say on behalf of the management of the Qard Al-Hasan Association that it has anticipated such aggression and taken all precautions. It will do everything necessary and required to fulfill its obligations towards depositors and beneficiaries.

5. The Zionist Minister of War [Yoav] Gallant says that there are no negotiations except under fire. This is understandable. Have you ever held negotiations in Gaza or elsewhere except while killing, destroying, and committing massacres? Did you think that we would hand our necks you and sign a surrender document for you? Did you think that we would raise the humiliating white flags? Has your imagination gone wild to the point that you’re dreaming of Zionist settlements on the land of the south or an agent state like in the past? Our answer to you is fire for fire, blood for blood, and iron for iron.
6. It is the nature of battle that we kill the enemy and the enemy kills us, we get wounded by the enemy and the enemy is wounded by us, and we get captured by the enemy and the enemy is captured by us. But regarding the issue of the prisoners currently being held by the enemy, I say the following:
7. 1. I know that the enemy is not committed to the ethics of war and international conventions, but it bears the responsibility of preserving the lives and health of the prisoners, and we demand the International Red Cross to verify this.
8. 2. Our captured fighters are very faithful, loyal, and devoted. They joined the ranks of the resistance with this awareness and certainty. Therefore, the statements extracted from the prisoners under pressure are absolutely worthless and violate international laws. They should not affect the morale of their honorable families and their mujahideen brothers. We ask the media, especially social media, not to delve into this matter and to preserve the privacy of their families.
9. 3. It will not be long, God willing, before we have captured enemy soldiers. At one point in the past few days, we were close to doing that. Then, after the war, there will be indirect negotiations to recover our prisoners because we are a people who do not leave our prisoners in prisons.
10. The enemy has committed a series of massacres over the past few days, but the most horrific of them all, and they are all horrific and criminal, is the destruction of an entire village, the small, peaceful village on Mhaibib. It sits on the shoulder of Palestine, directly adjacent to its holy religious shrine, right on the dividing line. It has no strategic military value for the fighters, but the enemy’s lust for killing and destruction has exceeded all imagination. We bombed the Binyamina base with drones, and they responded by destroying the shrine of the Prophet of God, Benjamin, in Mhaibib. What a paradox!

The horrific massacre in Nabatiyeh, i.e. the destruction of the Nabatiyeh municipality, a government center affiliated with the Ministry of Interior and Municipalities, led to the martyrdom of the highly moral doctor, one of the medical cadres working in the humanitarian field, and the mayor of Nabatiyeh, Dr. Ahmad Kahil, along with a group of his comrades, including martyr Sadiq Ismail. This is in addition to the destruction of the beating heart of Nabatiyeh and its historical market. Nabatiyeh is the daughter of Karbala and the city of Imam Hussein (peace be upon him).

However, the massacre that broke our hearts, and if it weren’t for our patience, we should have burned our eyes and sockets, is the Aito massacre in the north, just like the horrific Janah massacre yesterday, which was nothing but new evidence of the desire to kill, destroy, create strife, and terrorize the displaced. This prompted the United Nations, which was silent about the massacres, to ask the enemy for a reason that explains this horrific crime. Unfortunately, a political representative from the North gave the enemy the pretext and justification and presented the United Nations with the reason and explanation. If it weren’t for the fact that we do not want to argue at this sensitive time, when we are most in need of national solidarity and healing the wounds, we would have had something else to say.

8. We strongly condemn the statements of the German Foreign Minister justifying the Zionist enemy's killing of civilians. Neo-Nazism in Germany justifies the crimes of Zionist fascism. If your memory is burdened with crimes against humanity, then you and those you represent are participating in a crime against humanity once again.
9. We also strongly condemn the American-British aggression against honorable Yemen. The sacrifices of our Yemeni brothers will remain immortal in history and in the memory of honorable free people in the world.
10. I return to the situation on the front and the developments on the ground to reaffirm that your great resistance is fine.
11. 1. The command and control system is working at its most efficient, controlling weapons, ranges, types, and simultaneous coordination of operations.
    2. The lines of military and logistical support have returned to what they were.
    3. There are more efficient fighters than the front needs and the nature of the combat maneuver in the field.
    4. The daily rate of offensive and defensive operations is constantly increasing, with an average of 25 operations per day. However, we consider the bombing of Kiryat Shmona, for example, with dozens of rockets to be one operation in the digital calculations scale. The bombing of Tel Aviv and its suburbs with drones or qualitative rockets is one operation in the digital calculations scale.
    5. The enemy has suffered heavy losses in lives and tanks, especially in the confrontations in Ramieh, Qawzah, Aita al-Shaab, and this morning in Taybeh. The enemy's admissions of some of them, despite the strict military censorship, are only a small part of the achievements on the ground.
    6. We are still bombing the enemy's military bases, barracks, camps, and gatherings of soldiers, and it responds by killing civilians.
    7. The bombing of the north and the Zionist depth will continue, and its intensity will increase in quality and quantity with time.
    8. The Islamic Resistance declares its full, complete, and exclusive responsibility for the Caesarea operation and the targeting of the home of [Netanyahu] the war criminal and leader of Zionist fascism. The resistance fighters see and hear everything. If our hands do not reach you this time, then between us and you are days, nights, and the field.

Because I am in the presence of the martyrs and their families, Sayyed entrusted us with you. From you we learn patience, solace, and consolation; you are the conscience of this resistance, its loyal heart, and its firm soul. We ask God to allow us to be faithful in serving you and that you allow us to kiss the soil on which you walk. Our battle is long, and our path is that of thorns and difficulties, for all faith has emerged to face all polytheism.

In conclusion, I say that our homes and houses in the proud Bekaa, the great Dahiyeh, and the resistant south are not made of stones and clay, but rather they are security, spirit, and dignity. You will return. The south is life, and there is no life without the south. We will certainly win.