Wednesday, a Lebanese imam affiliated with Hezbollah told MSNBC’s Matt Bradley that there were thousands of “martyrs” in Lebanon prepared to join Hamas and “sacrifice themselves against Israel.”
Bradley spoke Arabic with the imam then translated.
Bradley said, “He said he doesn’t wait for a signal from anyone. But when I asked if the Lebanese people feared a war, he said no. Telling me Lebanon has hundreds, even thousands of martyrs prepared to sacrifice themselves against Israel.”
He continued, “And that’s the exact reason that there’s so much anxiety both here in Lebanon and across the border behind me in Israel. Because if Hezbollah does decide to enter the war, it would be a game changer. Hezbollah is so much more powerful than Hamas because it has partial governance over the entire country of Lebanon. It enjoys so much more support from Iran and other actors in the Middle East, and its people have freedom of movement, they can leave the country, they can come and go, unlike Hamas, which is stuck inside that blockaded enclave on the Mediterranean coast.”
Bradley added, “They have real weapons, real training, and they are bloodied in the fight in Syria for much of the past decade, fighting against Islamists, Sunni Islamists, there. So, they are an experienced, organized group organized militant group that really more resembles an army, and that’s why the U.S. and Israel, they are so concerned that Hezbollah could possibly weigh in, even as they plan what could be a major ground incursion into the Gaza Strip.”
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