Netanyahu says Israel killed Nasrallah's successor
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday suggested Israel had killed Hezbollah's most senior figure Hashem Safieddine, according to a video message he addressed to the Lebanese people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday suggested Israel had killed Hezbollah's most senior figure Hashem Safieddine, according to a video message he addressed to the Lebanese people.
If confirmed, it would represent represent another major blow to the Iran-backed group as Israel steps up its invasion of southern Lebanon.
Safieddine, a cousin of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and deemed his likely successor, was not present at the underground site where Nasrallah and several top Hezbollah commanders were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
"We have degraded Hezbollah's capabilities. We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself, and Nasrallah's replacement, and his replacement's replacement," Netanyahu said in his video address Tuesday. He did not name Safieddine.
“Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years. Now, you, the Lebanese people, you stand at a significant crossroads. It is your choice. You can take back your country, you can return it to a path of peace and prosperity,” Netanyahu said.
Israel has repeatedly killed top Hezbollah leaders in air strikes after maiming and killing hundreds of its rank and file members in explosions targeting their pagers and walkie talkies.
The Israeli military said that it had targeted Safieddine had been killed in an airstrike on Beirut. Hezbollah has yet to comment on his fate.
Safieddine led Hezbollah's executive council. His brother, Abdullah, is Hezbollah's representative in Iran, and his son Redha is married to the daughter of Iran's Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a US drone strike in 2020.
Over 1,000 Lebanese have been killed since Israel stepped up its attacks last month - a death toll that is already higher than that of a 34-day war the foes last fought in 2006.
The story of Oded and Yocheved Lifshitz
Daniel Lifshitz's grandparents, Oded and Yocheved, are believers in peace.
As lifelong human rights activists, they regularly transported patients from Gaza to Israel for medical treatments in their golden years.
In 1972, Daniel said Oded challenged the Israeli military and Ariel Sharon to protect Bedouin Arabs in Rafah.
“He was a journalist, peace activist, human rights activist; he was with the Doctors Without Borders in Rwanda. They believe education is the only thing that will save Gaza,” said Daniel.
Their abduction casts light on a brutal irony: having spent their lives trying to unite both sides of the conflict, they were taken hostage and used as pawns in a war that they opposed.
Daniel’s grandmother Yocheved was released after 16 days in captivity, but his 83-year-old grandfather Oded is still a hostage, one year on.
His best friend, a medic murdered on Oct. 7, and more than a quarter of the Kibbutz Nir Oz where he grew up with 400 members, were either kidnapped or murdered by Hamas.
His grandparents' home in Nir Oz, close to the border with Gaza in Southern Israel, burned to ashes. Daniel was in France and luckily his mother Rita and daughter were in Tel Aviv on Oct. 7, escaping potential death and abduction.
While he marks the tragedy and the pain of not knowing the fate of his grandfather and other hostages, he believes his nightmare started with the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“Everything started from the green light of Iran, and they pushed for it.”
Daniel said Iran could end everyone's suffering and push Hamas for a ceasefire and release of the hostages, but he believes the clerical establishment is more interested in escalating the conflict.
If Israel had confronted Iran directly, Daniel says, instead of invading Gaza, the situation may have ended by now.
“I believe that if we started it with that, maybe with answering Iran and not Gaza on October 7th, things could be different.”
Israeli forces have killed 41,000 people in Gaza according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.
Since Hamas's surprise attack, Israel has said its goal is to destroy Hamas and that it aims to minimize civilian casualties.
Israeli official figures estimate that about 1,200 of its people have been killed since Oct.7, including about 800 civilians, 346 soldiers and 66 police officers.
Judi and Gadi
Judi Weinstein Haggai and Gadi Haggai were soulmates.
They were pro-peace activists who abhorred war, said their daughter Iris Weinstein Haggai.
She described her parents as hippies with her father playing the flute in the Israeli military orchestra, making meals in his kibbutz as a chef and her mother teaching English and mindfulness.
"They had a band together called the Jazz Alliance, and they played all over Israel."
They were murdered by Hamas on October 7 after taking their morning walk outside the Kibbutz Nir Oz fields. It was something they did every day, except that day didn’t end like it always did.
Their routine ended in tragedy.
Judi witnessed her husband being killed. She called medical emergency services, describing in detail what had happened over the phone.
Their daughter, Iris, heard the tapes and shared it with the media.
Iris said paramedics tried to send an ambulance, but the wheels of the ambulance were shot by Hamas who then burned it.
Her mother died after that call, but Iris doesn’t know exactly what had happened. They had both been shot by Hamas on motorbikes, with Gadi being "hit badly" according to his desperate wife on the phone, and Judi sustaining wounds.
“All I know is that my mom witnessed my dad's murder. And that she was either murdered after or died from her wounds because they were both shot by terrorists on a motorcycle that day.”
Their bodies were taken to Gaza where they are still held hostage. Judi, who grew up in Toronto and was born in New York, held Canadian, American and Israeli citizenship. Her husband held American and Israeli passports.
It’s been a year, and Iris said she still doesn’t have a grave to go to.
Judi and Gadi sent a final text message to their children at around seven in the morning, saying that they were under attack from rockets. It ended with Iris asking her parents to let her know when they arrived home.
That never happened.
“It's just been like a long day since,” said Iris.
“They were just stolen from us. And it's that feeling that you can't create new memories anymore.”
She said her biggest regret was that her children would not get to grow up with their grandparents.
Iris has a lot of questions on why it took Israeli forces several hours to respond in Nir Oz.
An official probe found that it failed to properly assess and respond to the Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. The findings published in July stated that the Gaza Division sent troops to neighboring communities but not to Nir Oz itself.
It took seven hours for security forces to arrive.
While Iris wants answers from the Israeli government, she points the blame at the Islamic Republic of Iran.
She told Iran International that current events provide an opportunity to take on Iran's theocratic rulers, whom she views as the orchestrators of the attacks.
“I think it's finally time to do something about the Islamic regime in Iran. This is the time.”
Through her own pain, she has established connections with the Iranian diaspora and is trying to form a united front against what she sees as Iran's oppressive leadership.
Iris spoke of the timing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address to the Iranian people last week, delivered in English and subtitled in Persian, conveying a warning to the system and assurances to the people of Iran.
“I think that that unity is really strong. And there's a reason that, you know, Bibi spoke to the Iranian people. But I think we should unite somehow and create this front together,” she added.
“It seems that there was no earthquake but a nuclear test in Semnan two nights ago … Now [can you imagine] what would happen if that explosion occurred on the ground in Israel?” one of them asked.
The post referred to an earthquake of 4.4 magnitude on the Richter scale at a depth of 12 km, according to Tehran University’s Geophysics Institute, in Semnan Province that was felt as far as the capital Tehran.
The tremor was also recorded as an earthquake by the US Geological Survey which put its magnitude and depth at 4.5 on the Richter scale and 10 km respectively.
Despite the recorded depth of the seismic activity, many Persian-language social media users on major platforms like X and Telegram, as well as domestic platforms such as Eitaa, are calling the tremor proof of an Iranian nuclear test.
“I feel proud … Iran unveiled its magical mushroom—felicitations to all whose hearts beat for Iran,” a pro-establishment netizen tweeted.
“An Iranian bomb is our inalienable right,” another tweet with the hashtag #بازدارندگی_اتمی (nuclear deterrence), which many others have been extensively using in recent days, read.
“Our people have the right to enjoy nuclear deterrence. Have the courage to take the historical decision [to go nuclear],” a tweet addressed to the authorities that claimed the country’s nuclear program has so far cost $2,000 billion to the nation declared.
“It’s true that the decision to build a nuclear weapon and whether it is religiously banned or not lies with the Leader ... When there is talk of building nuclear weapons, it is for a balance of power and deterrence, not actual use,” another netizen tweeted arguing that Pakistan developed nuclear capabilities only after India built its bomb “to deter threats and [create] balance.”
The tweet referred to the Iranian state's official argument, based on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's often disputed nuclear fatwa, that Iran has never sought nuclear weapons because he has religiously banned all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs. Many experts have also disputed the legitimacy of this fatwa, given Iran's rapid advancement of its nuclear program raising concerns about its intentions.
Other individuals on X argued that the religious ban could and must be lifted to allow Iran to revise its nuclear doctrine.
Many other netizens, however, have refuted the claim that the tremor Saturday was the result of an underground nuclear test, pointing out that a nuclear test could not have been carried out at the depth recorded by seismological organizations.
Ultra-hardliners who fervently circulated the rumor Sunday on Telegram channels and X appear to have taken their inspiration from several tweets in English that suggested Iran may have conducted a nuclear test Saturday.
These, including a tweet by DD Geopolitics and ConflictX, based their argument on the false premise that an Armenian seismology station had picked up the tremor first and claimed that a comparison between typical earthquake vibrations and nuclear tests suggested the event resembled a nuclear test.
Several Armenian news outlets including News.am that reported the earthquake, however, had quoted Tehran University’s Geophysics Institute as their source, not an Armenian seismological station as these and similar tweets claimed.
In another tweet, DD Geopolitics displayed a graph that compared earthquake and explosion pairs, suggesting that real earthquakes were followed by several lesser tremors (aftershocks). In contrast, nuke tests by Pakistan, India, North Korea, and Soviet Union did not.
DD Geopolitics is an online media outlet run by an allegedly pro-Russian former US Navy veteran, Sarah Bills, who has been accused of running social media accounts “notorious for spreading disinformation about the war [in Ukraine]”.
“The report of a nuclear test in the desert in Semnan [Province] is not true. But it is noteworthy that many Iranians paid attention to it and in comparison, many welcomed it more than before, Mostafa Najafi, Tehran-based Ph.D. candidate in international relations at Toronto Metropolitan University tweeted.
“The idea and demand for building a nuclear weapon has grown recently following the recent increase in the level and range of threats against Iran, especially from countries with nuclear weapons, and it is being spoken of more often in official and unofficial circles,” Najafi wrote.
