Thus changed the title of Hassan Nasrallah in the minds of Arabs generally, and Syrians and Lebanese especially.
Until 2006, the majority of Syrian people highly respected Nasrallah beacsue he successfully forced Israel to withdraw from south Lebanon after a long war fought by the Lebanese resistance.
Hezbollah, led by Nasrallah, was the key force of this resistance movement during the final years of the occupation, especially after the exclusion of other Lebanese resistance factions during the period of the Assad regime's domination over Lebanon, and as a result of Iranian financial and military support for the party whose sectarian background would later be used to serve the Iranian national project in the region.
Every Syrian, Lebanese and Arab citizen felt joy when they watched the Israeli army withdrawing from the south, leaving his agents of the army terrified behind. The withdrawal was used by the Syrian regime and Hezbollah's media to paint the party and its leader as heroes, at a time when Arabs and Muslims where in desperate need to a victory against the enemy who had previously defeated them in all their battles.
When Hezbollah confronted the Israeli invasion in 2006, hundreds of Lebanese refugees came to Syria, just as Syrians used to do with anybody fights their enemy, they received those refugees with welcome, and without any consideration to their religious or sectarian background.
The people of al-Tal, Yabroud, Nabak and all Qalamoun cities and villages provided everything necessary for the refugees. Pictures of Nasrallah were hanged almost everywhere, marked with the title of "Commander of the Resistance". Only few Syrians mentioned the sectarian background of the party and the ideology that had gathered its audience. The majority of Syrians ignored this fact, based on a tradition of religious tolerance which dominated a region occupied by various religions and sects.
Syrians perspectives did not change, despite the ceasefire agreement Nasrallah accepted, which turned him into the guardian of Israel's border, just like his ally in Damascus agfter ceasefire agreement in Golan in 1974.
When Hezbollah stormed west Beirut on 7 May, Syrians stopped calling Nasrallah the "Commander of the Resistance". He became merely the General Secretary of Hezbollah, and Syrians became less enchanted with his speeches and justifications for his actions.
His frequent attempts to deny his party's involvement in the assassination of Hariri were less effective than his speeches during the liberation of the south, or the release of detainees. However few Syrians could not criticize Nasrallah and his party because he remained the enemy of Israel, which had occupied their lands and displaced their people. The sectarian structure and ideology of Hezbollah remained a margin.
Everything changed after Hezbollah declared its support for the Syrian regime against the ambitions of Syrian people for freedom and democracy – especially after the secret military intervention which Nasrallah and his media were too ashamed to admit at the beginning of the revolution.
When the situation of the regime deteriorated so far that it lost most of the Syrian territory to the opposition forces and the Free Syrian Army, Tehran ordered the party and all its militias to engage in a confrontation with the Syrian people. The party which Syrians thought of as an ally, which had fought their Israeli enemies, had turned into one of the most cruel militias fighting against them.
The lie of the "resistance party" which Syrians and Arabs used to believe wholeheartedly had turned into a sad and shocking reality: That Nasrallah boasted about killing Syrians, while Netanyahu visited the wounded Syrians who fled their country to escape Hezbollah militants and the gangs of its ally.
I heard from some western political analysts that the favor what Nasrallah did to Israel in his intervention in Syria; it is said that it makes him the first servant of its policy in the region, as he succeeded in achieving what Israel had always wanted, to divide the region on religious and sectarian basis in order to justify its existence as a Jewish state.
For all these reasons, the title of Nasrallah has changed from Secretary General of Hezbollah to the leader of Hezbollah sectarian militias which are the counterpart to the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) sectarian extremists. Has any other organization serve the Israeli racist project as much as Hezbollah and its leader?
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