Leila Ghanem is an international communist activist who organized the 2009 international forum in Beirut, whose theme was the convergence of the armed resistance in West Asia (Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Yemen), the struggles against Western predatory capitalism and the socialist experiences in Latin America. Translation from French: John Catalinotto.
On courage
To those who doubt the ability of peoples to fight forces that outnumber them, to those who ceaselessly spread the defeatist rhetoric of despair and doubt regarding the ability of the resistance — in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen — to achieve victory despite the vast imbalance in the balance of power and the scale of losses and sacrifices, here is what Ho Chi Minh said in response to those who doubted victory against imperial France at the time (1951):
“Because of the imbalance of power, some compared our resistance to a battle between grasshoppers and elephants. To a certain extent, for those who see only the physical and fleeting side of things, it really did seem that way.
“Faced with enemy aircraft and artillery, we had nothing but bamboo spears in our hands. … We look not only to the present but also to the future; we place our trust in the strength and morale of the people. Therefore, we respond firmly to the hesitant and the pessimistic: ‘Today, yes, it is the grasshopper that dares to stand up to the elephants. Tomorrow, the elephant will leave its skin behind.’”
Three years after Ho Chi Minh delivered this speech, General Vo Nguyen Giap defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. Yes, tomorrow it will be the bloodthirsty Yankees and their Zionist pawn who will be left in the dust of disappointment and defeat… .
Our fighters have already proven themselves: victory in 2000, victory in 2006, after 33 days of heroic fighting. They numbered no more than 1,000 guerrillas armed with basic equipment (Katyushas and B-7s [shoulder-fired mortars]) inherited from Fatah, against an entire Israeli armada of the most sophisticated kind — said to be the fifth most powerful army, equipped with Merkava tanks and U.S.-made air defense systems: F-35s, Stealth fighters, and “Apache” helicopters.
(Fatah is a military organization founded in 1969 by Yasser Arafat himself. In Arabic, the name Fatah stands for “Palestine Will Live Free.” Upon leaving Lebanon in 1982, the organization bequeathed its weapons to local fighters, including the nascent Hezbollah.)
Today, the Zionist entity has been supplied by the imperialist West with weapons of mass destruction, and this is the first time in history that weapons of mass destruction have been used against guerrilla fighters. One- and two-metric-ton bombs — including BLU-109 (anti-bunker) and MK-84 (approximately one metric ton) — were dropped primarily on the southern suburbs of Beirut to assassinate the military leadership of the resistance. This included Al-Radwan on Sept. 20 and the historic leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27, 2024, in Beirut, during an Israeli strike on his underground shelter.
To kill the Iranian Supreme Leader, the Iranian General Staff, and members of the government, Trump announced to the Knesset that his air force and that of Israel had used B-2 fighter jets carrying 2-metric-ton bombs. (Trump, in his speech to the Knesset on Oct. 13, 2025, added that he had just placed an order for 26 more aircraft.)
In Khiam, Bint Jbeil, Aytaroun, Arnoun and southern Lebanon, legendary fighters were seen engaging in “point-blank” combat — using only their bodies and submachine guns — against an army whose members remained huddled inside their tanks.
The Battle of Wadi El-Hojeir made history: 40 Israeli Merkava tanks were destroyed by fighters operating on foot, emerging from the thickets or tunnels to pounce on enemy tanks.
Thus, hand-to-hand combat against a cowardly and bloodthirsty enemy that kills from a distance, attacking civilians, women, and children.
Not a single Israeli battle was won in ground combat — not one.
During the 66-day battle (from Oct. 1, 2024, to Dec. 5, 2024), the Israelis deployed 150,000 soldiers in an attempt to invade Lebanon. Facing them was a handful of guerrillas cut off from their leadership, which had been decimated during “the cursed 10 Days” that shook the resistance.
(The 10 days include Operation Piger and the walkie-talkie attacks on Sept. 17 and 18, the assassinations of Hezbollah’s military leadership “Al-Radwan” on Sept. 20, of the resistance’s historic leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27, and of Hashem Safieddine on Oct. 1, 2024.)
This was followed by Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes on the south, in preparation for the invasion of Lebanese territory, which resulted in an unprecedented bloodbath of 623 deaths in a single day, without any possibility of a ground advance.
However, despite Israel’s military supremacy across the board, the resistance fighters — trained to act as neighborhood committees in each village in the event they lose contact with the leadership — switched to “Plan B,” waging guerrilla warfare, and succeeded in preventing the enemy from advancing with their tanks, not even by a single kilometer. One of the Iranian chiefs of staff, Ismael Quaani, described the battle at the time as “the most important in history.”
On the 66th day, Israel requested a ceasefire, and Hezbollah accepted it to allow refugees to return to their villages and to reorganize — namely, to change its communication system, neutralize infiltration within its ranks, and acquire new weapons suitable for a new combat concept.
This ceasefire, established under U.S. supervision, was intended to enable the enemy to achieve through peace what it had been unable to achieve through war. During this sham ceasefire, which lasted 15 months, Israel occupied the five highest hills overlooking southern Lebanon and destroyed 39 villages; and caused nearly 70% of the damage sustained during the Isnad War (the Gaza conflict) that broke out in October 2023. Israel wanted to take advantage of the ceasefire to create, with U.S. approval, a yellow buffer zone similar to that in Gaza, extending 30 km inland — that is, all the way to the Litani River.
Starting on March 2, 2026, following the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran, Hezbollah broke the ceasefire and launched a guerrilla campaign that is still ongoing, using simple techniques and methods that largely evade the enemy’s electronic surveillance systems and satellites, while employing new, low-cost, handcrafted weapons such as undetectable fiber-optic FPV attack drones. Later, they introduced the Al-MAZ-3 (drones with a range of 16 km that Hezbollah captured from the Israelis in battle and subsequently upgraded.)
Despite the heavy losses, Hezbollah members, here with banners, continue to resist the Israeli invasion and bombing.
Three battles must be etched into the memory of anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist militants: First, those of Khiam, nicknamed “Stalingrad” because the city was impregnable despite the relentless airstrikes that destroyed its northern side; despite this destruction, fighters familiar with the terrain emerged from the tunnels at the right moment to wage street combat and prevent the enemy from establishing a foothold.
Bint Jbeil
In Bint Jbeil, the town closest to occupied Palestine at 3 km, though it has been nearly destroyed, guerrilla fighters in the tunnels carry out daily operations against the occupier. Bint Jbeil, the capital of Jabal Amel, is no stranger to battle: In 1978, Israel besieged it for three months; 14 PFLP fighters managed to break the siege by carrying out a suicide operation against the enemy’s main headquarters.
Bint Jbeil was chosen by Nasrallah in 2000 to celebrate the victory of Israel’s withdrawal after 22 years of occupation (from 1982 to 2000). It was in its stadium that he delivered his iconic Mao Zedong-style speech, declaring that “‘Israel’ is more fragile than a spider’s web,” and “isn’t imperialism ‘a paper tiger’?” Netanyahu has never forgotten that iconic phrase. He has repeatedly ordered the Israeli military to enter Bent Jbeil to tell Nasrallah, “We’re back,” but he has failed.
Thirteen Israeli tanks and Hammer Breakers were destroyed by resistance fighters who emerged from beneath the rubble. Bint Jbeil is nicknamed by southerners as the “miracle city of history”; the resistance has established an unprecedented culture of resistance and bravery: a resistance fighter never surrenders, no matter the sacrifices required.
A third battle was that of East Zawtar, which astonished military strategists: the fighters had booby-trapped the passage that Israeli tanks had to take to cross the Litani River toward Nabatieh, and it became a graveyard for Merkava tanks, Breaker Hammer vehicles, and dozens of casualties, including the general of IDF Unit 93. He was the second such casualty after the general of Unit 36.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force is striking civilian targets and destroying infrastructure in Nabatieh north of the Litani River, in Tyre, and even in the capital Beirut — but behind them, pockets of resistance remain along the entire stretch of border villages.
Guerrilla tactics
The key lesson learned by the resistance since the Gaza Solidarity War — which took a heavy toll — is a return to guerrilla tactics and the concept of protracted people’s war.
This bravery draws its strength from several elements:
- From the organic relationship, as [Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio] Gramsci put it, between fighters and the masses; the fighter blends into the masses and puts himself in danger to protect them. ([Martyred Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar’s staff has become legendary; it symbolizes the leader who falls in battle). In South Lebanon, as in Gaza, the resistance leadership was decimated during the fighting, killed along with their families and children. (Ismael Haniyeh lost five children, Khalil al-Hayeh four, Nasrallah one.) Thus, the leaders of Al-Qassam and Al-Radwan participated personally in the fighting.
- Guerrilla tactics — or the “Vietnamization” of armed resistance — a strategy inherited by fighters worldwide and borrowed from the Vietnamese, Koreans, Latin Americans, Algerians, and Palestinians, had a significant impact on the fighters.
- The doctrinal concept of the martyr — “To choose to exit historical memory without honor or to sanctify oneself as a martyr” — is not necessarily a religious concept: “This doctrine, which encourages one not to fear death, is not intended to foster indifference toward life; on the contrary, the idea is to respect life.” It is also found among the anti-imperialist communist freedom fighters. Che [Guevara] said, “One must choose between a withered and servile life or sacrificing oneself for a noble and just cause.”
The slogan of the Palestinian fighters was “victory or death,” was inspired by Che’s “Hasta la victoria siempre. Patria o muerte.” (“To victory always, homeland or death.”)
All the speeches by Abu Obayda, the spokesperson for the Al-Qassam Brigades, broadcast by Al Jazeera and eagerly awaited every evening, had this phrase as their leitmotif. “This is a jihad: victory or martyrdom.”
This doctrine is a source of extraordinary courage: “The tyrant dies and his reign ends, but the martyr’s death is the beginning of his reign,” said the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard.
In Lebanon, the “Vichy government” vs the resistance
It is undeniable that the war against Gaza and against Lebanon is a U.S. war, including at the level of political decision-making. It would not have been possible without the U.S. and Western military armada, without the $54 billion in U.S. funding. Trump has already announced that he intends to recoup this cost of war by exploiting the offshore gas fields in Gaza and Naqoura (Lebanon).
Since December 2023, Lebanon’s government has accepted a ceasefire requested by Israel following the 66-day war. This ceasefire is supervised by a commission chaired by the U.S.; Trump appointed U.S. Commissioner Tom Barrak as a special envoy to “oversee” political affairs in Lebanon, before expanding his authority to Syria and other countries in the Middle East (Türkiye). Beirut was inundated with visits from other envoys such as Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
Since then, the center of decision-making has shifted from Baabda to Washington: we [Lebanon] have come under “U.S. mandate.” It was Washington that organized the presidential elections and appointed the government, the chief of the armed forces, the governor of the central bank, etc.
Hezbollah, needing to reorganize, allowed this to happen for 15 months without responding, even though Israel violated the ceasefire 11,000 times and murdered 500 Hezbollah members. On March 2 this year, the resistance decided to break the ceasefire (at the time of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination) and resume the fight against Israel; this panicked Washington, which encouraged Netanyahu to attack Beirut, not far from the government headquarters, on D-Day. On April 8 Israel’s military massacred 365 people in civilian buildings.
That was the price to pay, Trump decided, unless Lebanon signed a peace agreement with the Zionist enemy.
Thus, official Lebanon has entered a pivotal phase reminiscent of the era of the “Vichy government” in France [which collaborated with the German Nazi occupiers] during World War II, where the characteristics of the current authority appear to be as a tool used by and dependent on eternal powers.
The presidents of the republic and the government have agreed to bow to U.S. pressure, beginning by renouncing the oath of office without which they would not have attained their respective positions. The government has announced a series of directives dictated by Washington:
– Declare the military wing of Hezbollah, which defends the country, a terrorist organization.
– Close Hezbollah’s offices and institutions in Beirut.
– Expel the Iranian ambassador from Lebanon, declaring him “persona non grata.”
Demanding that Hezbollah lay down its arms (in accordance with Thomas Hobbes’s famous concept of “the state’s monopoly on the use of force”[5]), as well as the defense of state sovereignty, were cited to justify capitulation to U.S.-Israeli demands. No one was willing to discuss a solution along the lines of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia),[6]; on the contrary, the ceasefire commission demanded that the government not confiscate the weapons seized south of the Litani River, but rather destroy them on the spot. These weapons would have been useful for strengthening the Lebanese army, which is incapable of defending a country, even though it claims to be “sovereign.” Washington has always opposed equipping the Lebanese army with adequate weaponry.
Despite the enormous sacrifices made by the resistance and its commitment over the past year and a half, the Lebanese authorities — lacking any sense of pride or nationalism — not only bow down to the enemy but also betray those who defend the country and who have lost more than 6,000 fighters in combat, not to mention the 33,000 civilians killed since October 2023.
Under U.S. pressure, these puppet authorities are seeking to strip Lebanon of its power in the face of an enemy that understands only the language of force — especially since this government, which is proposing initiatives for negotiation and surrender, is doing so under enemy fire as the enemy continues to wage a scorched-earth campaign and destroy any semblance of life in 65 Lebanese villages — exactly as happened in Gaza, where Israel occupies 70% of Palestinian territory.
The U.S. strategy is not satisfied with humiliating negotiations whose sole purpose is to disarm the resistance. Worse still, it has demanded that the Lebanese authorities send to Washington a delegation of Lebanese officers open to the idea of negotiating with Israel to meet with an Israeli military delegation with a view to drawing up a joint plan to disarm the resistance. The United States has announced that this is its condition for agreeing to rebuild the Lebanese army on a new foundation, which, according to Trump’s statement, would involve providing $11 billion for this mission.
Comparison with Paris Commune of 1871
Such a plan, in fact, leads the country toward “a civil war” and toward a “dismantling of the Army,” as was the case during Lebanon’s civil war between 1975 and 1993. The Lebanese Army’s ranks are composed mainly of poor peasants and workers from southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley — exactly the same recruitment areas as those of the resistance — so we may ask: Are Hezbollah fighters today the Communards against Versailles?
The Lebanese government today resembles that of Adolphe Thiers in France from 1870 to 1871. It continues to negotiate with the occupier — not to defend the country’s sovereignty or the interests of its people, but to conspire against the resistance, or even to eliminate it by force of arms.
The Iranian strike against Israel in June 2026 — intended to compel the Zionist enemy to cease bombing the Southern Suburbs — has left the government exposed, accused of treason by Hezbollah and “The National Front for Support of the Resistance.” Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun accused Iran of interfering in Lebanese affairs, while he cowardly remained silent in the face of the Israeli invasion, which continues to advance toward the major cities of Tyre and Nabatieh.
To the question of whether Hezbollah fighters would be the new Communards, the answer is yes. The comparison holds from a patriotic perspective.
Karl Marx regarded the war waged by the bourgeoisie against the Commune, on both sides of the border, as “the most terrible war of modern times, in which the vanquished and the victors fraternize to jointly massacre the Communards.”
And Marx explained how the Prussians surrounded Paris and negotiated with the [bourgeois] government in Versailles, which had ceded Alsace and part of Lorraine after their defeat.
In “The Civil War in France,” Marx explains that the Communards never succumbed to the old-fashioned patriotism of the Republic or the French Revolution, which had been attacked by all European despotisms in 1792: the slogan was: “Valmy, the fatherland is in danger.”
For his part, Russian Revolutionary V. I. Lenin returned to this point in “The State and Revolution” and explained that “Bourgeois defeatism [working-class parties supporting the defeat of ‘their own’ bourgeois regime] is precisely the continuation of the class struggle!”
The Communards’ vision of the homeland — which sought to be universal and was imbued with the hope of reconfiguring the territory of France in accordance with the achievements of the federated communes — did not come to fruition; it was drowned in blood in several French cities.
However, the comparison between the Communards and the Lebanese fighters cannot be applied from the perspective of the Commune’s social-republican program: secularism with the separation of church and state, an end to night work — especially for children — and freedoms in all areas.
It is true that Hezbollah has built “a state within a state” and established banking institutions by creating the famous barter banks known as “Le Bon Prêt,” (The Good Loan) based on a concept opposed to that of financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. It is also true that Hezbollah created the major alternative institution “Jihad el-Bina’” to protect farmers from the World Trade Organization’s agricultural policies and to encourage small-scale projects for food self-sufficiency, grain preservation, and solar energy production. These projects, however, were unable to have a widespread impact or gain nationwide traction.
Nevertheless, the first Israeli airstrikes targeted all the “Good Loan” offices, which were completely demolished, along with the ecological construction sites.
Impact on Lebanon of U.S.-Israeli war on Iran
The criminal imperialist war against Iran is not a one-on-one conflict but a Western war against Iran and the Axis of Resistance.
Israeli genocidal bombing of Lebanon left areas looking like Gaza.
This war ended in failure and failed to achieve its objectives, namely:
The fall of the Islamic Republic regime, which has not been weakened but has instead grown stronger. The proof is that it was Trump who requested negotiations, not Iran.
The U.S. and its Zionist lackey failed to provoke a civil war in multi-ethnic Iran; Persians represent only 40% of Iran’s population, and the Kurds and Azeris did not want to revolt against the central government. To counter the enemy’s efforts, since the war, Iran has embraced “street democracy.” That means fostering dialogue and encouraging debate between government officials and opponents. President Masoud Pezeshkian’s speeches, in particular, have provided clear guidance on this matter.
The aggressors were unable to break the Axis of Resistance, which was operational in Lebanon and Iraq. They were unable to eliminate the nuclear program. Consequently, Iran has grown stronger and gained a new capability: the ability to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has certainly suffered losses, but so has Israel. Although Israel possesses air superiority and some of the most advanced anti-missile systems in the world (Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors), this was a costly war for Israel; each missile shot costs several million dollars, whereas Iranian missiles cost several tens of thousands of dollars.
What factors contributed to Iran’s victory?
- Iran waged a war of attrition against its enemies by mastering the element of time, avoiding waste, and proceeding in stages.
- Iran, a country with 92 million inhabitants and an area of 636,000 square miles, has been developing for at least five decades under constant pressure from sanctions (an aging air force, massive inflation, internal tensions), which has forced it to draw on its human and natural resources. It has built a self-sufficient economy in several areas: food sovereignty, scientific development, and an advantageous role for women. (60% of university students are women, particularly in the sciences). Yet the self-centered West, with its Atlanticist left, seeks to lecture the Iranians on matters of morality.
Iran’s resolve and the failure of the U.S.-Israeli gambit have upended the balance of power and the dynamics between the Resistance and the Aggressors. The fact that Iran has carried out targeted strikes on strategic military sites in Israel, destroyed all U.S. bases in the Gulf states, and blocked the Strait of Hormuz — thereby cutting off nearly one-third of the world’s energy supply — has forced the U.S. hegemon to call for a ceasefire and open negotiations.
The 14-clause “memorandum of understanding” just signed between the U.S. and Iran places Lebanon at the heart of Iran’s demands. It calls for a ceasefire and a timetable for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories, including the “yellow zone.” While Iran includes Lebanon in its goal of ending the war in the region, Washington does not share the same interpretation of the agreement; as always, it wants to retain a clause granting Israel “freedom of movement and the right to self-defense.”
The wide gap between the two sides’ objectives makes a resumption of the war possible, according to Iranian officials, who prefer to keep their finger on the trigger.
Conclusion
This is the first time in history that a middle-power nation has defied the U.S. Today, countries such as Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt — which in turn feared being targeted by the U.S. — are beginning to reconsider their positions regarding the presence of U.S. military bases in their countries.
The financial oligarchy [in all imperialist countries] believes that its technological innovations can put an end to the resistance of the people and bury their aspirations for independence and justice, but this belief is in vain.
As one of the icons of liberation theology, Father Ernesto Cardenal, commented on the assassination of national officer Adolfo Paez and a group of his comrades:
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”
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