Israeli F-35 fighters entered Iranian airspace for the first time in raids earlier on Saturday, an informed Israeli source told Iran International, adding that they flew over Tehran and bombed targets in the area.
Pledging allegiance to the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Supreme Leader, chanting death to Israel, death to America, is part of the daily routine for Lebanese kids going to schools linked to Hezbollah, said Hussein El Hajj Hassan.
Speaking over Zoom from Ottawa, Hussain recalls how young boys in his community were initially targeted by Hezbollah for religious indoctrination.
After being scouted, they would learn how to operate guns and weapons and taught that dying was a worthy cause of their mission, according to Hussain.
According to a report by the Anti-Defamation League, Hezbollah- run educational institutions and their umbrella organizations appear to reach more than 100,000 children a year in Lebanon.
"To believe in the culture of death. They want them to believe that their path is to die," he said.
They would start out by training in Lebanon and then some would go to Iran for what Hussain described as "intense training."
Some of these boys, who were in their early teens, died while training in Iran, and were later being adorned with ‘Martyr posters' and death announcements throughout his Beirut suburb, according to Hussein.
"Sometimes they would shoot while they were running during training, and some would be injured...others would get killed. But it's a risk they were willing to take."
“The society believed that Iran is the source. That they are providing all goods to Lebanon and to Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah was painted as a resistance movement existing to serve Lebanon, he said.
'A society within society'
Hussein said the structure of Hezbollah was very deep and secretive, but at the same time, its operatives and supporters in his Beirut suburb were open and obvious.
He described seeing men with weapons like Kalashnikovs in the streets, guarding buildings that were clearly used by Hezbollah agents. Hezbollah even had their own jails and religious courts, he recalled, saying it was like Hezbollah had created its 'own society within a society. '
"What we're seeing today in the war, Israel's hitting buildings. Hezbollah is hiding inside. We know that. When I saw that, I knew, I saw these buildings before."
"Hezbollah operatives owned gas stations and restaurants, all connected to a private landline network, separate from the rest of Lebanon," Hussain said. He added that they relied on pagers and walkie-talkies until September, when thousands of these devices, rigged by Israel, exploded, killing scores and injuring thousands of militiamen.
Hussein's mother, a Shia Muslim, sent her sons to a Christian school to receive a formal education, that included learning in Arabic, English and French. His dad, a supporter of Hezbollah, was absent from his life. He recounts himself as being lucky for that.
He said some of his uncles and cousins were – and may still be – Hezbollah members.
Hussein believes his cousins and other community members joined the ranks for either money, religious purposes or the desire for power.
Despite his mother’s efforts, he still wasn’t completely shielded from indoctrination, with the media he watched and society he lived in advocating against Jews and Israel.
"On television shows they would show Jews as evil, as a state or as people who just want to kill or want to conquer."
His mother is now dying of cancer, and Hussein can’t be with her. He feels like Hezbollah robbed him of a life in his motherland.
How Hezbollah held him hostage
While Hussain has gratitude for his new life and new beginnings – he admits he didn’t want it.
“No one wants to start from scratch. That's the cost I'm paying for. What Hezbollah has done to Lebanon.”
He recounts terrifying moments with Hezbollah that he described as life changing, leading to his decision to flee and seek political refugee status in Canada.
Hussain was protesting Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria in 2013, rallying outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut with his friends, when he says Hezbollah forces stormed out of the Iran embassy, indiscriminately attacking while the Lebanese army allegedly stood by and did nothing.
“We were protesting peacefully. We were attacked. And one of the leaders of these protests was shot in the abdomen and killed,” said Hussain.
His friend Hashem Salman was killed.
He watched it all unfold, pleading for help.
In another incident, he says he was talking outside his friend’s Beirut home, when a Hezbollah operative threw an explosive device at the two men. Hussain and his friend escaped unharmed, but he knew it would likely happen again – and the next time he might not be so lucky.
The assassination attempt, he believes likely resulted from his work as a journalist and as a peace activist, advocating for friendship between Lebanon and Israel.
After escaping near death, he said he received a call from the Lebanese army, telling him to stop writing articles as a journalist if he wanted to survive. He said the problem runs deeper than Hezbollah.
“It's not just Hezbollah. It's the absence of safety provided by the state, the government, from the police.”
The killing of Hassan Nasrallah
While Hossein doesn’t want war, he believes that military intervention was the only way to deal with Hezbollah. At least as a first step, he said.
He sees Iran as a wild card and can’t predict what move the Islamic Republic will make.
Does Iran want to move more towards nuclear negotiations and give up on Hezbollah as a bargaining tool in talks with the West or is the country weak, and unable to withstand Israel?
Whatever the answer is, will determine, how to further dismantle Hezbollah after Israeli military intervention, he said.
He believes that Hezbollah had become powerful through Iran, and its fundraising through crime. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), critical of Iran and its allies, Hezbollah’s overseas revenue streams include drug trafficking, blood diamonds, illicit timber and even human trafficking.
The killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, who was assassinated in an Israeli air attack on Beirut last month, brought Hossein both shock and relief.
He felt Nasrallah was always “untouchable” but gained a sense of calm knowing he was really gone, feeling that it brought justice to his friend Hashem who he said was killed by Hezbollah operatives in the 2013 protest.
"We saw the police standing and just watching, looking. And there was a moment where I tried to run towards them. I came to the soldiers, and I was like, please take us from this area. And he pushed me back. He said, we don't have the orders to intervene to do anything."
Hossein told Iran International he is seeing a therapist to heal his wounds, but the wounds of his homeland Lebanon, cannot heal, until Hezbollah and Iran cease to coerce Lebanon into the failed state it has become, he said.
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.
