In an interview with Al Jazeera, Mahmoud Qomati responds to a question about Hezbollah’s responsibility for opening and insisting on the war by saying:

“Israel does not need a pretext. This is Israel’s project, and we will continue the resistance even if they destroy, even if they blow things up, even if they kill, no matter what they do… They suffer as you suffer… Today, we hurt them, and they hurt us, but we hope from God what they do not hope for, and we hope for victory. We will not retreat, we will not stop, and we will not surrender…”

Qomati and his party attempt to present these words as a declaration of political courage and steadfastness in the face of Israel. But at its core, it is a chilling declaration of a willingness to use South Lebanon and its people as open fuel for a devastating war they were never consulted about. What is most dangerous in this statement is not only the decision to continue fighting, but the way destruction and killing are spoken of as if they were mere details on the road to “victory,” rather than the lives of people, homes, villages, memories, children, and the elderly. 

“We hurt them, and they hurt us” is a phrase that simply does not hold up, and using it as an equation of strength is deeply misleading. Yes, Israelis are suffering. There is a damaged and displaced northern Israeli population, along with fear and losses. But Lebanon is not merely suffering; it is being crushed.

A small country whose villages are being erased, whose people are being killed, and more than a million of its residents are displaced. When Hezbollah turns this enormous gap in cost and destruction into a “heroic” slogan, it becomes a distortion of reality.

No, the pain is not mutual in the same measure, and the devastation is not distributed equally.

This is a war managed by a party that claims it is hurting Israel, yet the highest price is being paid by the land of the South, its homes, the future of its people, and their collective memory, which Israel continues to crush and erase.

The problem is not in describing Israel as an aggressive power. That is a reality Lebanese people, especially those in the South, know better than anyone. Israel does not need pretexts, and it has a long history of invasions, occupation, bombardment, and destruction. But acknowledging its aggression and danger does not erase the internal Lebanese question: who gave Hezbollah the right to decide on war? Who gave it the right to turn the villages of the South into a permanent frontline? And who authorized it to tell people: we will fight “even if they destroy, even if they blow things up, even if they kill”?

Here, the statement becomes more dangerous than a mere political position. It is the summary of an entire doctrine imposed by force: that there is no cost high enough to stop the war, no destruction severe enough to demand reconsideration, no displacement capable of shaking the equation, and no death sufficient to force the question. As though the people of the South had signed Hezbollah an open-ended authorization over their bodies, homes, memories, and livelihoods.

In repeated statements, Hezbollah insists that its weapons are beyond discussion and that any call to place arms exclusively under state control is a service to Israel. Qomati himself described calls for disarmament as a “stab” in the back of the resistance, rejecting direct negotiations with Israel and arguing that the resistance is what protects the country.

Naim Qassem went even further, invoking the threat of a “Karbala-style battle” if the party’s weapons were ever placed on the state’s table. Anyone who objects, questions the cost, or says that the South cannot remain fuel for other people’s wars is immediately pushed into the category of betrayal, naïveté, or serving the Israeli project.

But the discourse is not sustained by political threats alone. It also relies on an emotional and religious language that numbs pain, even if only through illusion, and reframes catastrophe as a test, displacement as a moral station, and patience as a “duty.”

Here enters the discourse of clerics and influencers within Hezbollah’s surrounding environment, among them Sheikh Qassem Jarmaki, who has built a charismatic presence and significant influence on social media through videos that approach politics and society through a religious lens.

Recently, Sheikh Jarmaki has increasingly visited displacement shelters, addressing displaced people in a language that blends preaching, motivation, and mobilization.

Speaking before displaced families, Sheikh Jarmaki says that victory is “definitely coming,” and that this victory “does not descend upon people who are far from God, or atheists, or those living life carelessly and indulgently, but rather upon Ali, Hussein, Fatima, and Zahraa.” He then explains that the path to victory is measured through fulfilling one’s duty, before arriving at the most revealing statement: “Right now, our duty is to be patient. This is our duty.”

This is not an innocent sermon about solidarity in a difficult moment. In its political context, it is part of a machinery that transforms pain into a religious obligation. The displaced person is stripped of their reality as someone who has lost a home, security, and the right to an ordinary life, and is instead turned into an employee in a project larger than themselves, whose “job” is to endure: to sit in a school, a tent, or a shelter, and accept displacement itself as a duty.

And if the displaced person performs this “duty” well, then “the Lord of the universe,” as Jarmaki puts it, will reward them.

Here, the danger of the language becomes fully visible. Qomati tells people, “We will continue even if Israel destroys us and kills us,” while Jarmaki tells them, “Your duty is to endure.” The first declares the decision for war; the second beautifies its cost.

In another video, Jarmaki invokes the Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina, arguing that “displacement is not humiliation or weakness, but dignity if it is a prelude to victory.” He continues: “We were displaced to triumph… displaced so we can restore equations… displaced so we may return stronger, fiercer, and more powerful.”

This comparison is not without significance. The Prophet’s migration was a foundational event within a specific religious and historical context. It cannot be invoked this casually to romanticize the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. Turning forced displacement into “dignity” does not erase the fact that it is uprooting. Comparing displaced people to the Prophet does not answer the political questions: who caused this displacement? Who decided on the war? Who holds the right to continue it? And who guarantees that the catastrophe will not repeat itself after every new promise of victory?

Since March 2, Israel’s war on Lebanon has killed more than 2,700 people and displaced over one million others, while Israel says 17 of its soldiers were killed in South Lebanon, in addition to two civilians, in Hezbollah attacks. Israel occupied around sixty villages and bulldozed and flattened border towns, erasing the traces and memories of thousands of Southerners.

This is not an equal exchange of suffering. This is not “pain for pain.” This is a small country being crushed, villages being erased, and people being displaced, in exchange for Israeli suffering that exists, but does not compare to the scale of Lebanese loss.

The losses of war are not a footnote in the rhetoric of “steadfastness”; they are the core of the issue. And when mass displacement becomes merely a detail in an open-ended battle, we are witnessing the complete confiscation of the very meaning of protection.

The problem, then, is not only that Hezbollah is waging a war. The problem is that it wages this war while preventing society from holding it accountable. It asks the people of the South to die silently, to lose their homes without protest, to bury their loved ones with gratitude, and to wait for a vague promise of paradise and reconstruction.

But who said a home can ever truly be rebuilt as it once was? Who restores memory? Who restores a sense of safety? Who gives people back the years of their lives that were consumed? And who guarantees that a rebuilt home will not simply be destroyed again in the next round of war?

“We hurt them, and they hurt us” is not an equation. It is the anesthetization of catastrophe. And “our duty is to endure” is not an innocent form of consolation; it is another way of shifting the burden from the decision-maker onto the victim.

The simplest and harshest truth is that Lebanon is being drained, the South is being crushed, and the Shiites of South Lebanon were never consulted about the war whose price they are paying in the name of steadfastness. Then, they are asked to find in that suffering a religious meaning that eases the party’s responsibility for its decision.