Elias Bejjani/To PM, Nawaf Salam: Hezbollah Is an Iranian Terrorist Militia That Did Not Liberate South Lebanon in 2000 but Occupies It Along with All of Lebanon/When History Is Distorted to Appease Hezbollah
Elias Bejjani/To PM, Nawaf Salam: Hezbollah Is an Iranian Terrorist Militia That Did Not Liberate South Lebanon in 2000 but Occupies It Along with All of Lebanon Nawaf Salam… When History Is Distorted to Appease Hezbollah Elias Bejjani/October 24, 2025
In an interview with Al-Mayadeen TV on October 23, 2025, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam made a shocking statement that cannot go unanswered: “If not for the sacrifices of Hezbollah and the national resistance in general, before and with the Hezbollah, the South Lebanon would not have been liberated.”
This statement not only contradicts historical truth but also constitutes a deliberate falsification of history and an insult to the memory of the Lebanese who witnessed the events of the liberation firsthand. They know very well that Israel withdrew from South Lebanon in 2000 by a purely internal Israeli government decision, having nothing to do with Hezbollah or any so-called sacrifices.
In May 2000, then–Prime Minister Ehud Barak fulfilled his electoral promise to unilaterally withdraw from Lebanon— a decision made within the Israeli government as part of a broader security realignment strategy. Hezbollah had no role in the withdrawal and entered the evacuated areas only days later, while the Syrian occupation prevented the Lebanese army from deploying in the South, leaving a security vacuum that Hezbollah later exploited to impose its control under the pretext of “liberation.”
It is worth recalling that Hezbollah’s last military attempt before Israel’s withdrawal was the Battle of Jisr al-Hamra against the South Lebanon Army, which ended in total failure and heavy casualties for Hezbollah—an event that alone demolishes the myth of “liberation by resistance.”
Politically, the withdrawal was the result of a tacit understanding among Israel, Syria, and Iran, facilitated by Arab and Western channels. Israel’s pullout from the border strip was part of regional security arrangements in which the so-called Lebanese resistance played no role whatsoever. All subsequent Israeli, Syrian, and Iranian political documents confirm that the withdrawal stemmed from security bargaining related to South Lebanon, the Golan Heights, and the future of Syrian–Israeli negotiations, not from any military victory by Hezbollah.
In another part of the interview, Nawaf Salam referred to what he called the “Lebanese National Movement,” which then included parties such as the Progressive Socialist Party, Amal, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the Communist Party, and Palestinian organizations. He described them as part of the “national resistance,” while the historical record clearly shows that they were instruments of the Syrian–Palestinian scheme that ended what remained of Lebanon’s sovereignty through the infamous 1969 Cairo Agreement, under which Lebanon relinquished control over the South and the thirteen Palestinian camps, allowing armed factions to establish a state within the state and drag Lebanon into civil war.
As for what Salam called “the Lebanese resistance before Hezbollah,” it was not a resistance at all but chaotic armed groups that liberated not a single inch of Lebanese land. They were part of the anarchy that destroyed the state and paved the way for its occupation by the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
While Salam’s interview included some acceptable points, his rhetorical bowing to Hezbollah and his plea for its approval by claiming that it “liberated the South” and “made sacrifices” represent a moral and political collapse unworthy of a Lebanese Prime Minister, who should represent the state, not the militia. His words amount to whitewashing the dark history of a terrorist organization that has inflicted oppression, abductions, assassinations, and occupation upon the Lebanese people.
Hezbollah’s Record of Terror and Crime
Since 2000, Hezbollah has brought Lebanon nothing but destruction, assassinations, Iranian hegemony, futile wars, poverty, displacement, and enmity with the world. The militia has assassinated some of Lebanon’s finest: Rafik Hariri, Gebran Tueni, Pierre Gemayel, Walid Eido, Antoine Ghanem, Lokman Slim, Wissam Eid, Wissam al-Hassan, Mohammad Chatah, Joe Bejjani, Elias al-Hasrouni, and many others among journalists, politicians, and security officers.
Hezbollah invaded Beirut and Mount Lebanon in May 2008, turning its so-called “resistance” weapons against the Lebanese.
Today it controls the state’s decision-making, paralyzes the government, blocks the implementation of the ceasefire agreement with Israel, defies international resolutions and the Lebanese constitution, cripples Parliament and the judiciary, and uses ports, airports, and crossings for smuggling weapons and drugs.
It has also dragged thousands of young Lebanese Shiites into Iran’s losing wars in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, leaving their families in misery and poverty.
Since its creation in 1982 by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in collaboration with the criminal Syrian Baath regime of Hafez al-Assad, Hezbollah has never been a Lebanese organization, a resistance movement, a liberator, or a representative of the Shiite community. It is an Iranian transnational militia and jihadist terrorist entity composed of Lebanese mercenaries serving the Iranian regime. Its goal is to establish an Islamic Republic in Lebanon subordinate to the Wilayat al-Faqih system—foreign to Lebanon’s identity, heritage, and to the free Lebanese Shiites it holds hostage.
Conclusion
Hezbollah is neither a “liberator” nor a “resistance.” It is a gang of evildoers listed as a terrorist organization by most countries in the world, practicing every form of crime, smuggling, and assassination under the banner of religion and resistance, in service of Iran’s destructive agenda.
The undeniable truth remains: the South was liberated by an Israeli decision, not by Hezbollah’s bullets. What Hezbollah did afterward was to impose a new occupation clothed in religious rhetoric, isolating Lebanon and condemning it to endless wars.
To claim, as Nawaf Salam did, that Hezbollah liberated the South is not merely a political slip — it is a betrayal of truth and history. For those who truly liberate do not occupy; those who sacrifice do not assassinate; and those who fight for their country do not hand it over to the rule of the mullahs.
