Hezbollah Hemorrhaging Its Fighters

With Hezbollah’s leader Hasan Nasrallah, and then his successor Hashem Safieddine both killed by the IDF, with many of its commanders killed, including ten of the twelve members of its ruling Jihad Council, with thousands of its members severely wounded — with many losing eyes and hands — as a result of those “exploding pagers,” with the IDF having pushed its way into southern Lebanon and into southern Beirut, too, blowing up command-and-control centers, finding and demolishing dozens of tunnels that snaked from Lebanon into Israel, and destroying weapons in their warehouses, Hezbollah fighters are demoralized, and many are in despair. Of those 150,000 missiles and rockets that Hezbollah had in its arsenal before October 8, 2023, the IDF estimates that only 50,000 are still intact, and their number is being reduced every day.

It is no wonder that below the bluster and bravado of its spokesmen, Hezbollah is hemorrhaging. Many of its members are no longer appearing when called upon to fight; they simply don’t show up, and instead go into hiding, or manage to move with their families to safety in Syria. More on this latest blow to Hezbollah can be found here: “Hezbollah beginning to crack: Wave of desertions threatens Lebanese terror group – report,” Jerusalem Post, October 28, 2024:

After over a year of launching aerial attacks against northern Israel, Hezbollah has reportedly begun to crack as the Iran-backed terror group has experienced a wave of desertions, sources told the Arabic independent online newspaper Elaph in a report published Sunday….

Those defecting, according to the source, are not reporting when summoned by senior terrorists and not waiting in their assigned locations. Other terrorists have reportedly fled to Syrian territory with their families, attempting to avoid any confrontation with Israel at close range.

Trying to survive its members’s abandonment, sources told Elaph that the terror group has begun sending reinforcements to southern Lebanon to confront Israeli soldiers.

As a result of combatants abandoning their posts, Hezbollah is now reportedly struggling to communicate with its men on the ground. There are also fears that the defections, now mainly a phenomenon in southern Lebanon, will spread to terrorists throughout the country, the source claimed….

There is nothing surprising about these defections by those in Hezbollah who have seen the losses inflicted on the group, by Israeli airstrikes, tank fire, snipers, and “exploding pagers,” and have decided that they don’t want, after all, to become “martyrs” fighting an implacable enemy and dying as a result. So increasing numbers of Hezbollah members don’t show up when called upon to do so, and some have even taken their families and fled to Syria, to avoid having to serve.

Hezbollah is hemorrhaging troops who quite understandably want to avoid being killed. It’s another undeniable sign of those combatants’ increasing despair, as the IAF systematically destroys the group’s weapons warehouses, its command-and-control centers, its “bank” known as Al-Qard Al-Hasan. This is no time to be a martyr, many of them are thinking. If others choose to fight and likely die, that is their affair. We want to live. And thousands are deserting. Hezbollah is not only losing present members who are choosing flight over fight, but the group is having a terrible time trying to win new recruits, for the young people too can see the confusion and chaos and despair and loss of life in Hezbollah ranks.