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In a speech that monotonously and mindlessly emphasized the word “victory,” new Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem declared last week: “As we won in July 2006, we will win today.” But Lebanon never won in 2006, and there’s no victory to be obtained for the Lebanese people in 2024.

Qassem was unable to cite a single benefit that might accrue to Lebanon as a result of the current carnage. He boasted about the ability of the “resistance” to strike at an expanded range of Israeli cities, but for every building Hezbollah rockets hit, Israel destroys another dozen Lebanese villages: about a quarter of those in the south have been razed to the ground, and the destructionis spreading northwards.

As in Gaza, civilians have been forced to move numerous times, thousands of people a day displaced as Israel incessantly widens the number of communities subjected to relentless bombing. What victory awaits these poor families who have lost everything, including their children under the debris?

There was a time when many Lebanese would ridicule Hezbollah’s self-aggrandizing, bellicose rhetoric, but nobody was laughing last week when Qassem declared: “If the Israelis want to stop, it will be on our terms,” and Hezbollah “will come out of this even stronger.” Such nonsensical language left Lebanese physically repulsed, after so much of the country had been left homeless and destitute.

Grasping at straws to cite every conceivable encumbrance and annoyance inflicted upon the enemy, Qassem gloated at a statistic........

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