By Jonathan Cole, St Anne’s College

On 3 November, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, delivered a fiery televised address to commemorate “the martyrs on the road to Jerusalem” of the 2023 Gaza War. With supporters gathered in Dahieh, the predominantly Shi‘i southern suburb of Beirut, he stated that his party had been at war with Israel since 8 October. Nasrallah announced a policy of “constructive ambiguity”, leaving open the possibility that Hezbollah’s operations on Israel’s northern border could escalate depending on developments in Gaza. He warned the United States that “if you wish to steer away from a regional war, you must hurriedly act towards ending the aggression in Gaza,” and that “all options are open on the southern front, they can be adopted at any time.” While some commentators had predicted Hezbollah would open a second front against Israel in the event of ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Nasrallah appeared to stop short of that, claiming that the party had been at war since 8 October. Despite this,  major risks of escalation remain.

The speech, preceded by a series of slick teaser videos published by the organisation’s media apparatus, was couched in language and symbolism specific to the Shi‘i transhistorical narrative employed by Hezbollah in mobilising the party’s support base. The master narrative of Hezbollah’s discourse is embedded in the moral dualism posited by the Karbala narrative, in which a cosmological battle between right and wrong, justice and injustice, the oppressed and the oppressors are in a perennial state of conflict. 

The Battle of Karbala (680 CE) represents a historical trauma for the Shi‘a community. At Karbala, in present day Iraq, Imam Hussein, who from a Shi‘i perspective should have led the Ummah after the death of the Prophet and his two successors, was put to the sword by the Umayyad Caliph Yazid I. According to Shi’i doctrine, Hussein, being the infallible and divinely chosen Imam of all believers, was aware of his impending death, but willingly went to his fate. Today, ‘Ashura is commemorated by the Shi‘a as a day of mourning for Hussein and his final act of self-sacrifice. 

This interpretation of Karbala provides discursive tools routinely employed by Hezbollah to tie contemporary political issues to the cosmological battle between right and wrong. A famous religious slogan is “Every day is ‘Ashura, and every land is Karbala.” In his speech, Nasrallah tied the ongoing war in Gaza to Karbala and the perennial state of cosmological conflict between justice and injustice. He dubbed the conflict a battle of “right against false,” in which the Axis of Resistance, consisting of Iran, the Syrian regime, and other armed factions aligned with and supported by Teheran, are fighting the “Great Satan” (US) and the “Zionist entity” (Israel) as the “most evident, honest, and most worthy cause of God.” 

At Karbala, Imam Hussein provided a paragon example of self-sacrifice on the path of God to be emulated by the future generations in fighting tyranny. Hezbollah’s conception of  jihad constitutes a willingness to fight not only for God’s cause, but to die for it knowingly by being martyred. Accordingly, Nasrallah celebrated “the memory of fallen martyrs,” declaring that those who had been killed, both fighters and civilians, in the current conflict against Israel, had “won the honour of martyrdom.” He “renewed [the party’s] pledge to follow on [their] path, on the path to a Jerusalem,” like Hussein at Karbala, who died on the Path of God (fi  sabil Allah).

Opposite Hussein at Karbala, Caliph Yazid I provided a template of tyranny and injustice; in the current conflict, Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom are recast as modern Yazids. In describing Israel and the US, Nasrallah repeatedly pointed to the “barbarity, ferociousness, and brutality,” of the occupation of the Palestinian people. He made the claim that Hamas’ success on 7 October was made possible by IDF personnel being “drunk on the sabbath” and that in their inebriation “perpetrated massacres against Israeli settlers” thereby casting the IDF as a cruel opponent against which a holy war must be waged, a modern Yazid. In referring to the US, “the Great Satan” (Ash-Shaytan al-Akbar), he criticised US President Biden “falsely claiming that Hamas had decapitated babies” and denounced the US’ hypocrisy in “preaching about democracy, human rights, and the rule of law,” whilst being “totally responsible for the war raging against an unarmed, defenceless people.” Thus, in his speech Hezbollah’s leader cast the war between Israel and the Axis of Resistance as an event of exceeding historic importance and as a battle between justice and injustice, stressing the moral obligation of all to denounce and oppose Tel Aviv. 

Despite Nasrallah’s discursive framing of the conflict hinting at a modern-day extension of the battle at Karbala, this remains implicit throughout his speech to avoid violating the ‘sectarian taboo’.  Overt sectarian references, in this case to Karbala, are noticeably absent from the majority of Hezbollah’s communications due to the negative connotations associated with sectarianism, a phenomenon observed in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. As highlighting Self/Other cleavages along confessional lines has been historically associated with the external meddling of colonial powers’ divide-and-rule tactics, a form of self-censorship occurs in elite political discourse, culture, and academia in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. In his speech, which was broadcast live on al-Jazeera, Nasrallah appealed to a wide audience to mobilise support for Palestinians. Therefore he avoided explicit references to Shi‘i symbols of political mobilisation that would have alienated listeners.

The Lebanese government, meanwhile, shows no appetite for war. Caretaker Prime Minsister Najib Mikati indicated on Monday 30 October that he was working to ensure that Lebanon is not dragged into a regional conflict. How he would do so is unclear, given that it is estimated that Hezbollah’s armed wing is more powerful than the Lebanese Armed Forces. Meanwhile the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, reported that the conflict has displaced almost 29,000 people in southern Lebanon, where a large part of Hezbollah’s support base is situated. On the other side of the border in northern Israel, over 40 communities have been evacuated. While Nasrallah stopped short of announcing a major military operation against Israel, his speech highlighted the ongoing risk of escalation.

Note: all text in italics direct quotes from Nasrallah’s speech on 3 November.

Sources:

Ezzati, Abolfazl. ‘The Concept of Martyrdom: A Shia Perspective’. In Witnesses to Faith? Martyrdom in Christianity and Islam, edited by Brian Wicker, 117–22. Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Halverson, Jeffry R., H. L. Goodall, and Steven R. Corman. ‘The Battle of Karbala’. In Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, edited by Jeffry R. Halverson, H. L. Goodall, and Steven R. Corman, 81–93. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2011.

Hurted, H R. ‘Karbala Made Immediate’. In Jihad and Martyrdom, edited by David Cook, 1st ed., 2:48–63. Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies. London: Routledge, 2010.

Malmvig, Helle. ‘Allow Me This One Time to Speak as a Shi’i: The Sectarian Taboo, Music Videos and the Securitization of Sectarian Identity Politics in Hezbollah’s Legitimation of Its Military Involvement in Syria’. Mediterranean Politics 26, no. 1 (1 January 2021): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2019.1666230.