Israel's Pyrrhic victory in Lebanon

The killing of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah only deepens Israel's internal crisis, from which it may not recover.

For Benjamin Netanyahu, Friday went perfectly.

Hours after the Israeli prime minister delivered a defiant speech to a mostly empty audience at the United Nations General Assembly, warplanes launched a massive attack on a block of residential buildings in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Dahiye.

Netanyahu’s office released a picture of him ordering the strike by telephone from New York, a statement meant to reinforce his image as a defiant leader of a country embattled and alone in a region dominated by ruthless enemies who act as proxies of Iran.

In reality, the attack – branded Operation New Order – was possible only because of blanket support from the United States, which provided the 83 one ton bunker buster bombs Israel used to reduce an entire block to smoldering rubble – a radical departure from the “targeted assassination” policy Israel had used to kill leaders of resistance groups in previous decades. 

Hezbollah confirmed the death of its longtime secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Saturday morning.

Rumors of Nasrallah’s death elated the Israeli public, from Netanyahu’s staunchest critics on the left, to his most fervent supporters on the right. 

Several videos showed Israelis celebrating the assassination of Nasrallah.

Source: https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1839797946155442569

Source: https://t.me/amitsegal/38317

Source: https://t.me/amitsegal/38322

Source: https://t.me/amitsegal/38323

Media pundits celebrated on live television, clinking cups of wine and saying cheers.

Ha’aretz journalist Chaim Levinson, careful to avoid praising Netanyahu, congratulated Israel’s minister of defense and chief of staff on X, writing “Well done to Galant, well done to Hertzi Halevi,” using a diminutive nickname for the latter. He also joked that he “Hopes that Hezbollah will learn lessons and enact term limits.”

Source: X/Chaim Levinson

Source: X/Chaim Levinson

While the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah is a tactical success for Israel, a major boost for the Netanyahu government’s image domestically and among its allies, and delivered an undoubtedly powerful psychological blow to the axis of resistance and its supporters, the feelings of elation the Israeli population is experiencing are sure to be short-lived.

Hezbollah has already announced some replacements for at least one of its leadership positions, and the killings do nothing to address Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, which it has only partially deployed.

They do, however, prolong the displacement of the residents of northern Israel – the exact problem that the Netanyahu government pledged to solve when they escalated against Lebanon earlier this month, and ensures that more Israeli settlements in the north will be damaged by Hezbollah’s firepower.

Brewing economic crisis 

The same day that Israel launched the attack that killed Nasrallah, Moody’s credit rating agency downgraded Israel’s rating for the second time in its history. The first downrating, which came in February amid the Gaza war, lowered Israel’s credit rating one notch, from A1 to A2. The latest downrating kicked Israel’s rating down two notches, from A2 to Baa1 – described as “Lower medium grade.” Israel’s rating now hovers just two notches above “Non-investment grade speculative”, and the report maintains a negative outlook. Moody’s assessment was apparently written before the strikes that killed Nasrallah, suggesting an updated rating could be even lower.

“With heightened security risks (a social consideration), we no longer expect a swift and strong economic recovery as in previous conflicts,” Moody’s wrote. “In turn, a delayed and slower economic recovery in combination with a more prolonged and broader military campaign will more persistently impact public finances, further pushing out the prospect of a stabilization of the public debt ratio, compared to our earlier projections.”

“In our view, the significant escalation in geopolitical risk also points to diminished quality of Israel’s institutions and governance which have not fully mitigated actions detrimental to the sovereign’s credit metrics,” the rating agency cautions.

Israel’s brain drain

Meanwhile, newly-published Israeli government data show an unprecedented increase in emigration from Israel. 

In 2023, as the Netanyahu government pushed for a controversial judicial overhaul that would have stripped power from Israel’s supreme court and attorney general and concentrated it in the ultra-right wing Knesset, 55,300 Israelis emigrated from the country, a record 46.4% increase from the previous year. 

Preliminary data for the year 2024 shows an even more striking increase. According to the Israeli government, 40,600 people left the country for at least 275 days (just under ten months), an increase of 58.9% from the previous year. This period stretches back to the last quarter of 2024, which coincides with the October 7 attack. In other words, Israel’s population outflow was already at a record level prior to October 7, and skyrocketed even more in the first months of the war. As the war has expanded in 2024, this outflow is very likely to have at least maintained, and probably exacerbated. 

This emigrant population is more highly educated than the general Israeli population, indicating a brain drain phenomenon is in full swing. Among emigres aged 20-90, 53.7% had 13 years of schooling or more, compared to 44.2% among the total population for the same age cohort.

While the killing of Nasrallah gives Netanyahu and the Israeli public a temporary jolt of militaristic and nationalistic ecstasy, it does nothing to address the fact that Israel is hemorrhaging its educated population, has failed to achieve any of its goals in Gaza while sacrificing prisoners of war and captives, is facing a severe economic crisis from which it is unlikely to recover, remains surrounded by an array of highly motivated and capable resistance forces, and remains dependent on a declining imperial power that is in the throes of internal political chaos as an election nears.

In short, the killing of Hasan Nasrallah is a Pyrrhic victory.