The terrorist group Hezbollah is using crowded residential areas in the Lebanese capital of Beirut to store massive amounts of explosives and missiles, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday revealed.
The Iran-sponsored terrorist militia used “Lebanese civilians as human shields” by locating weapons depots amid the civilian population, the Israeli leader said in a video message to the United Nations General Assembly.
“I say to the people of Lebanon, Israel means you no harm. But Iran does,” he said. “Iran and Hezbollah have deliberately put you and your families in grave danger. And what you should make clear is that what they have done is unacceptable. You should tell them, tear these depots down.”
Netanyahu’s disclosure comes against the backdrop of the deadly blast on August 4 that killed more than 200 people and left thousands injured in Beirut. Western intelligence linked Hezbollah to the explosion, which reportedly shipped large quantities of ammonium nitrate explosives from Iran and stored it near the city’s port.
With Hezbollah continuing to use Beirut’s residential areas for storing weapons and explosives, Netanyahu cautioned against similar disasters in the future and urged world leaders to “insist that Hezbollah stop using Lebanon and Lebanese civilians as human shields.”
Substantiating Netanyahu’s claims, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted the GPS coordinates of three such Hezbollah weapons depots in an apparent attempt to alert reporters to their location.
On Wednesday, the Times of Israel reported the details of Hezbollah’s weapons depot in downtown Beirut:
The Israel Defense Forces identified two alleged Hezbollah missile sites in Beirut Tuesday night, on top of another one Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to reveal during an address to the United Nations earlier in the evening.According to the military, all three sites are tied to the terror group’s precision-guided missile project, an effort to convert its massive arsenal of simple rockets into highly accurate missiles, which present a far greater challenge to Israel’s air defenses and would potentially be a game changer in the conflict with the Iran-backed militia.Israel has repeatedly threatened to take action to prevent Hezbollah from completing this so-called precision project. Hezbollah denied the claims Tuesday, taking journalists on a tour of sites in a bid to dispel the unconfirmed Israeli allegations. (…)According to the military, one of the sites is an underground facility built beneath four seven-story apartment buildings in which 70 families live, east of Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport. A church is located nearby, as is a medical center.The second site is also a subterranean facility, located under a complex of five apartment buildings in which some 50 families live. According to the IDF, the missile production site is located approximately 90 meters from a mosque.
Legal Insurrection has often reported on Hezbollah’s use of Lebanese civilians as human shields. The pro-Iranian terrorist group deliberately hides among civilians while staging attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon.
As Israeli military, the IDF, in a report, explains: “Hezbollah militants and arms are systematically embedded in civilian areas and urban population centers. Hundreds of arms depots, thousands of militants, and tens of thousands of rockets are distributed throughout Southern Lebanon alone.”
The terrorist outfit Hamas deploys a similar tactic as it regularly fires rockets at Israeli civilians from launch sites in Gaza’s residential areas.
Their objective is often to force the IDF to target terrorist hideouts and rocket launching sites located amid the civilian population. Even though they’re active terrorist fighters, the resulting casualties are declared as civilian losses, only to be used against Israel in their unabated propaganda war.
“Israel goes to extraordinary measures to comply with the laws of war, but it doesn’t matter to the media and the anti-Israel propaganda machine,” Professor William A. Jacobson explained in 2016. “Hamas and Hezbollah deliberately store and fire rockets from civilian areas for this very reason.”
By appealing to the Lebanese people, Netanyahu is tapping into the country’s growing public disaffection with the Iranian regime and its proxy, Hezbollah. Since last October, Lebanon has been rocked by protests against the Hezbollah-backed government.
In the wider Arab world, too, the popular opinion has long turned away from the ‘Palestinian Cause’ championed by Iran-funded terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, opening up the possibility of further normalization of diplomatic and commercial ties between the Arab states and Israel.
PM Netanyahu Addresses the UN General Assembly
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