According to the pro-resistance camp's manner of writing history, Israel was dealt three momentous defeats in the period between 2000 and 2008: In the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, in the war with Hezbollah in 2006, and then in the war with Hamas in Gaza in 2008. Those defeats were met by victories for those who fought Israel. Their victories, like the defeats for the Israelis, were earthshattering, historic, exceptional, and even divine, according to the terminology used successively by Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah. This hyperbole in describing defeats and victories spread even to the realm of songs, including one that proclaimed Nasrallah's victory had “shaken the whole world." Yet the simple question this history raises is this: Is it possible for the Jewish state to suffer three such major defeats in no more than eight years, and still survive? Can even the mightiest empires in history meet three such resounding defeats in eight years and still remain alive? No doubt, the way these events were recorded exposes something awry about the definitions used by the members of the pro-resistance camp for victory, defeat, and several other terms. This renders it important to review the whole matter, especially since Israel, the receiving end of all these defeats, managed only a few weeks ago to direct a deadly airstrike against Syria, and a response has yet to be made. Another thing that makes it necessary to reassess these claims, is the fact that Nasrallah himself has promised his party and his supporters, once again, another victory, this time in Qusayr in Syria. To be sure, this promised victory is unattainable, but more importantly here, will be impossible to tout as a new victory. Without delving into technical military disputes, it will be utterly impossible to defeat a people in their country, which means that the only achievement available in a war like this is fueling and expanding the scope of sectarian warfare. Since Hezbollah has now crossed the border, in the quest to triumph over the people of Qusayr and other Syrian regions, crossing the border is now something available to all, in an open-ended bloody conflict. Among other things, this means that the party and its supporters will soon be forced to call a spade a spade, and the discourse will increasingly shift away from challenging Israel, the United States, and the extremist Takfiri groups, to a Shiite discourse that is explicit in its hatred for the Sunnis, met on the other side by a Sunni discourse that is no less explicit in its hatred for the Shiites. Such a discourse shift, caustic as it may be in reality, is now required so that we may believe what is being said. Did Hezbollah not fight alongside the Takfiris in Iraq (and Bosnia and Herzegovina as we learned recently) before it fought against those same Takfiris in Syria? By the same measure, did an infamous conference in Tehran not deliberately translate “Syria" as “Bahrain"? ''We want a strong Lebanese state...we are fighting Israel...we have defeated Israel once, twice, and thrice...we are confronting the Takfiris...we are engaged in the political process in Lebanon...we are defending the Syrian people...we love Michel Aoun and his movement'': All these are claims made on a multitude of occasions with varying importance, but they all have one thing in common, namely, their complete lack of honesty. If honesty must be sought, then it can only be found in sectarian aspirations and their toxic cross-border extensions.
