WASHINGTON INSTITUTE
by Marc Sievers
February 18, 2015

On January 20, writing in the widely read London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat, veteran media figure Abdulrahman al-Rashed asked rhetorically why Arabs were applauding the previous day’s airstrike on a Hezbollah convoy on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, an attack widely attributed to Israel (read his op-ed in English orArabic). The strike reportedly killed Jihad Mughniyah and a number of other senior Hezbollah commanders, as well as Gen. Muhammad Ali Allah-Dadi of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Rashed wrote, “In my opinion there’s no doubt that if a confrontation occurs between Israel and Hezbollah, or between Israel and Iran, many Arabs will pray for the defeat of Hezbollah’s militias and the generals of its Iranian ally.” He noted that many Arabs were cheering the strike on social media and in personal comments. To explain such sentiment, he noted that while Arab public opinion a decade ago viewed Hezbollah as a defender of Arab interests in Lebanon and Palestine, the group’s Iranian-supported intervention in the Syrian civil war turned many against it and led to a new appreciation of Israeli military action against Hezbollah and Iranian personnel. READ MORE