Sticks and Stones

The death of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s most secret operative who for decades managed to elude attempts by US and Israeli spies and special forces to capture or kill him, has raised many questions as to those responsible. Hezbollah, naturally, blamed the “Israeli Zionists,” in conjunction with Satan and Satan’s step-brother, Ehud Olmert for the assassination of “a great jihadist leader of the Islamic resistance.”

“Syria, which condemns this cowardly terrorist act, expresses condolences to the martyr family and to the Lebanese people,” Interior Minister Bassam Abdul-Majeed said in a statement. Iran also condemned the killing, praising Mughniyeh as a martyr and describing the attack as “yet another brazen example of organised state terrorism by the Zionist regime”.

Mughniyeh was among several suspects indicted in the US for the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a US Navy diver was killed. Israel believes he was involved in planning the 1992 bombing of Israel’s embassy in Argentina in which 29 people were killed, and the blast at a Buenos Aires Jewish centre two years later that killed 95. A former head of Israel’s Mossad secret service, Danny Yatom, summed it up quite succinctly when he called the killing “a big achievement for the free world against terrorist organisations.”

Today, at the funeral of Mughniyeh (peace hell be upon him) in Beirut, Lebanon, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said the war against the Jewish State was not over: “Zionists, if you want this sort of open war, then let the whole world hear, so be it!” he declared, to a crowd of armed intellectuals and notable camel-herders.

On this glorious day of romanticism, I wait eagerly for the moment Hassan Nasrallah joins his fellow martyrs amongst 100 (other) virgins, and wish Imad Mughniyeh a Happy Valentine’s Day.