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20 Years Since the End of the First Lebanon War

 
Filed under: Hizbullah, Israel, Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
Publication: Diplomatic Dispatch by Amb. Dore Gold

Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

This video is partially based on the Israeli television series “War without a Name,” broadcast on Channel 11 in April 2020.

Former prime minister Ehud Barak once stated that when Israel entered Lebanon in 1982 there was no such thing as Hizbullah, but by the time it left there certainly was Hizbullah. This gave rise to the false claim that Israel created Hizbullah. This is a historic error which Israel’s enemies exploit to their benefit.

Iranian material reveals the historic fact that Iran established Hizbullah in 1982 as an alternative to the Shi’ite Amal movement, which refused to accept strict political and religious obedience to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.

This is the reason Iran created Hizbullah as a proxy in its own flesh, delivering absolute obedience to Iran’s decisions and spearheading its Islamist jihad against Israel. As Jerusalem Center Fellow Brig.-Gen. Dr. Shimon Shapira explains, Hizbullah was never an Israeli creation.