Nasrallah to Israel: You lost in Gaza, so who can you defeat?

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah congratulated the Palestinians in Gaza on their "first victory" over Israel's armed forces.

In a televised address on Friday, the ninth day of the Shiite Muslim festival of Ashura, Nasrallah said, "The first victory of the resistance was that it prevented the enemy from achieving his goals, the greater victory was that it did not let the enemy impose his conditions, and the greatest victory was that it imposed its own conditions.

"The resistance, which lost a martyr, was able to fight efficiently (…) resistance movements in the region no longer depend on individuals," Nasrallah said according to the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar website.

"It is enough to look at the faces of the tripartite, Netanyahu, Obama, and Lieberman to see their defeat, they were similar to the faces of Livni, Peres, and Olmert after the July war (Second Lebanon War)," he said.

Nasrallah claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "did not put high goals for this war. He rather put low goals so that he would achieve them and announce his victory, but even these he failed to achieve.

"The first goal was to destroy the Palestinian resistance's leadership. He failed in that. The second goal was to destroy the resistance's missile system. He also failed in that. The third goal was to reinforce Israel's deterrence power. This war rather weakened this power," he added.

The Hezbollah leader said Operation Pillar of Defense proved that the Israeli air force "is not capable of putting an end to the battle with Gaza," and claimed that "it was clear that when the Israelis called the reserve soldiers, it was for imposing a psychological war, because they were scared of engaging in a ground war."

Nasrallah continued to mock Israel, saying "if you failed to win a war against Gaza which has been under siege, what would be the case if you engage yourself in a war with someone else?"

Nasrallah is right, they won. Hamas committed an act that would have been considered so outrageous 50 years ago that any sovereign country would not have tolerated it one iota. After firing hundreds of rockets into Israel, Hamas still occupies its territory, solidified its relations with Egypt (instead of Syria), and brought the US in to help protect them diplomatically. All accomplished through the use of unmitigated aggression. Israel let them off the hook, and backed down. They went to war in the past over a lot less, but not this time.

The Muslim mind only understands one thing, overwhelming force. Any thing less is interpreted as weakness and defeat. Look at Afghanistan for proof. The Afghan people know we are unwilling to unleash total war on the Taliban, and have announced when we are going to leave. Thus they perceive us as the eventual losers of this conflict. They will not support us for this very reason. They will make their peace with the winners down the road. Their mentality only respects the iron fist. Give them a total thrashing, they will respect you. Try to be nice with force restraint and nation building they will perceive you as weak, and the eventual loser. That is how they think in Kabul, and that is how they think in Gaza.

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