By Mohammad Raad, Al-Akhbar Newspaper

A year has passed since your martyrdom, and yet the enemy remains ever on guard for your presence. In their hands lies vast power: money, media, technology, influence, military might and the authority to twist the arms of nations, rulers, and international political and human rights organizations alike.

And still, despite all of that, we see you shattering their despair with your resounding strength: in voice, alongside the cries of Gaza’s children, the steadfastness of its people and the ongoing resistance operations against the invading occupiers and aggressors; and in action, with the growing will to endure, to defy and with our people’s refusal to bow down.

And your constant presence — in voice and image, in stance and guidance, in mobilization and incitement — bewilders them: calling people to resist injustice, occupation, and aggression; urging them to hold fast to the path of resistance, sacrifice and confrontation; to patience and victory; to reject weakness, submission, and surrender; and to sharpen their wills so as to deprive the aggressors of any hope of achieving their aims or of consolidating any temporary gains.

Because the war with our enemies is a war of wills, not merely a clash of technologies and capabilities, the reservoir of will within our people — the people who believe in God Almighty — is incomparably greater than the will of a covetous, over-armed enemy. That enemy, however, is cowardly and weak in spirit; it draws strength from resources that are powerless against peoples whose wills are bound to the Almighty, who stand ready with courage to win His favor and to uphold truth and justice — wills that cannot be exhausted.

The balance of armaments and material capabilities between us and our enemies may be difficult to achieve in many cases; in most of our struggles that balance has never been realized. But the counterweight that neutralizes the weight of the enemy’s material power has always been the surplus of will among our people — or among oppressed peoples — galvanized by their faith to lift the injustice from their lands and conditions.

This compensating factor is not disconnected from other conditions: accurate leadership assessments of the balance of forces, the level of material capabilities in reserve and ready alternate plans, and the elements and scale of surprise supply to the enemy during confrontations.

So the matter is not mystical in the absolute; rather, it is a practical, realistic one that draws spiritual and resolute strength from the unseen God grants — to steady the believers and to sow fear and miscalculation in the hearts of their enemies.

Only the people of faith possess the standing to engage with this unseen, faith-based counterweight that establishes the required balance — and it is their proper use of this counterweight, together with the other conditions we mentioned earlier, that tips the scales in favor of the resisting believers over the enemy.

On that basis, there is no room in the vocabulary of faithful resistors for despair, frustration, or submission to an unjust, shameful status quo. What always exists is a readiness to review the sources of failure, to expose weak points and enemy infiltration routes, so they can be corrected, repaired, and rehabilitated.

Successful leadership is that which judges well, adopts the appropriate equation for confronting the enemy, and balances capabilities with the necessary prerequisites that allow the unseen provision to descend — provided a set of required (or at least non-blocking) conditions are met, so that God’s mercy and victory may be granted to the believers in that battle and at that moment.

“When God saw our truthfulness, He granted us victory and cast humiliation upon our enemy.”

“[Imagine] how many devotees fought along with their prophets and never faltered despite whatever [losses] they suffered in the cause of Allah, nor did they weaken or give in! Allah loves those who persevere. And all they said was, ‘Our Lord! Forgive our sins and excesses, make our steps firm, and grant us victory over the disbelieving people.’” (Ali ‘Imran, 146–147)

This formula for victory is fixed — it does not change and does not alter. What does change, however, are the degrees to which the material and spiritual conditions are fulfilled, as well as the grounds for the unseen intervention or its withholding. Among the most decisive conditions for victory are the qualities of the leadership overseeing the confrontation.

We are convinced that victory from God descends upon the believers just as rainfall descends upon the earth: in both cases, the measure of descent is tied to conditions and requirements that must be realized in practice.

“There is not any means [of sustenance] whose reserves We do not hold, only bringing it forth in precise measure.” (Al-Hijr, 21)

Our supreme martyr, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, embodied the decisive factor that raised and fortified the conditions and prerequisites for victory — enabling it to descend upon the believers, the oppressed, and the aggressed against in Lebanon.

This stemmed from his uniqueness, a rare combination of exemplary qualities seldom found united in a single leader.

He clearly stood out as an exceptional and uncommon figure in Lebanon and across the Arab and Islamic worlds. His role was pivotal in raising the level of practical conditions required for the Resistance to achieve victories against the occupying Zionist enemy. He combined faith and sincerity with knowledge, scholarship, and serious study, and remained constantly attuned to new developments. He was marked by striking intelligence and acuity in reading reality and its transformations, powered by a sharp, dynamic mind, a visionary outlook and a systematic, scientific approach to planning and prioritizing. Added to this was his remarkable creativity in devising and selecting suitable alternatives, his persuasive ability, and his use of language — both transparent in meaning and layered with subtle hints of expectations and preparations.

All these traits granted him an extraordinary, magnetic leadership charisma that allowed him to face new challenges with confidence and a mastery of possibilities. With this charisma, the martyred Secretary General was able to compensate for the Resistance’s limited material means, enabling its level to correspond to what the enemy was presumed to possess on the other side.

There is no doubt that the heavy burden of detailed administration and organizational and executive follow-up carried by His Eminence the martyred Sayyed Hashem Safieddine gave the Master of the Resistance great assurance in the soundness of performance, the precision of approach, and the freeing of more time to focus on the pressing priorities that demanded his constant and close attention.

The complementarity of their roles was strengthened by their shared temperament, method, conviction, belonging and deep sense of responsibility, along with the fulfillment of defined duties by their other brothers in the leadership structure. Sayyed Hashem (may God be pleased with him) was the faithful guardian, the steadfast support, the loving and sincere adviser, and the safe channel of communication when avenues narrowed and options diminished.

History will do justice to this pure Sayyed, who always cherished humility, preferred quiet and serious work away from noise, and lived in gentleness and love for the believers, the resistors, and the families of martyrs, the woundedmand the prisoners — in the very spirit and example of his commander, Sayyed Hassan, may God’s mercy be upon them both.

In the support war, His Eminence the Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah strove to compensate for the resistance’s shortfalls — both materially and morally. Yet two new, fundamental developments negatively affected those efforts:

First: the scale of direct and rapid Western involvement, especially American, in the war alongside the usurping Zionist entity — without reservation — something rare in the past and only explainable by a genuine, serious fear for that entity’s survival and its assigned role in securing arrogant Western control over the region.

Second: the technological advances — notably in cyber capabilities — recently acquired by the enemy, which, when combined with the West’s resources and its states’ intelligence and information stockpiles, and with the facilitation of the enemy’s access to them, produced a level of exposure of the resistance that was practically difficult to conceal from the foe during that period.

The supreme martyr tried to minimize these risks as much as possible, but the dominance of objective realities and God’s law in events and history are stronger than can be reversed or bypassed.

His Eminence was martyred, yet he left the resistance a rich jihadi legacy that, God willing, will enable it to repair its condition and correct the flaws and gaps revealed during the confrontation. He placed on them the duty of review and obedience to His words: “And all they said was, ‘Our Lord! Forgive our sins and excesses.’”— particularly in the process of self-examination. (Ali ‘Imran, 147)

The Resistance’s first task and responsibility today, after completing its thorough and comprehensive review, is to move swiftly to rebuild its capacities at all levels; to rethink its plans for confronting the Zionist enemy in light of the consequences of the recent invasion and the political and security climates it created in Lebanon and the region; and to work with all possible effort to close the gap left by the martyrdom of the supreme Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah across the organizational, mobilizational, moral and rallying dimensions, to address its impact on political relations with allies, rivals, and enemies, and to restore the balance needed to continue pursuing the goal of toppling the Zionist entity’s objectives and thwarting its bullying project at this stage.

The Islamic Resistance, which today persists in shouldering its jihadi responsibility with diligence and speed and performs its necessary role always and out of necessity given Lebanon’s realities, will not be prevented from fulfilling its national and humanitarian duty by all the disgraceful authorities’ obstacles that cater to the enemy and its supporting allies. As it assumes this role, the resistance exercises its human, moral, international, legal, constitutional and charter-based rights — contrary to the flimsy and shallow excuses offered by those who sought to deny the resistance’s merits and achievements, to whitewash their own submission and the ugliness of their acts, and to downplay the urgent need to rebuild and strengthen national capabilities in the face of the enemy. Their suspicious rush to perform the rituals of submission and to fall before the Zionist enemy’s will and tyranny will inevitably see that tyranny broken; the resistance will seize every weapon of the aggressors and those who market their projects.

Frankly and boldly, we must recognize that the Zionist enemy, sheltered by the tyrannical support of the American administration on every level, has gone beyond merely feeling capable of invading regional capitals and disciplining their authorities; it has entered a stage of growing determination to continue humiliating our Arab and Muslim peoples so that their main concern becomes earning a living after surrendering to the enemy and yielding to its security and military domination and his power to decide the fate of the region and its countries.

Toppling the arrogance that grips the occupying Zionists today is the duty of all honorable and free people in our region and the world. History’s logic confirms that insisting on supremacy is the quickest route to crashing into the abyss.

In closing, it should be reaffirmed that what strengthens confidence and hope is also our people’s—and our nation’s—conviction in their legitimate rights and their commitment to the effective resistant option to defend their homelands and protect their sovereignty against the schemes of covetous enemies and their resolute rejection of the flattering accusations and assaults by those who boarded the vessel of betrayal, defeatism and denigration of the resistors and who attack the legitimacy of their arms to curry favor with the enemy and its masters and to obey the dictates of the appeasers trying to impose their guardianship over our country and its policies.

Mohammad Raad is head of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc