Oct. 1 (UPI) — Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Sunday that Israel’s government is “leading your nation to destruction.”
During an address from his bunker somewhere in Lebanon, the leader of the militant Shiite movement criticized the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu. “Don’t allow a foolish government to sweep you along with it,” he said, according to Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar.
“Netanyahu and his government don’t know if they have started a war and how they will finish it. They have no true picture of reality; if they did, they wouldn’t proceed to this folly of war.”‘
The Lebanon-based group’s leader urged “non-Zionist Jews” they need “to separate themselves from the Zionists, who are leading themselves to unpreventable destruction. I call on all those who came to occupied Palestine to leave and return to the countries from which they came, so as not to serve as fuel for the war that their foolish government will wage.”
Nasrallah said if Israel launched a war against Syria or Lebanon, fighters from Iran, Iraq and Yemen might join the battle.
He spoke on Ashura Day, which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in the Iraqi city of Karbala in the seventh century.
Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant responded: “Nasrallah is a dead man. We will take off the kid gloves in the next confrontation. Nasrallah speaks from his bunker with good reason. If he makes a mistake and starts a war, we will throw Lebanon back into the Stone Age.”
On Saturday night, Nasrallah accused Israel of violating U.N. resolutions and spying on Lebanon.
“The booby-trapped surveillance cameras and eavesdropping facilities on Lebanon grounds are violations of UN Resolution 1701,” he said. “It is impossible to treat Israeli violations on Lebanese ground lightheadedly.”
The resolution was approved at the end of the Second Lebanon War between Israel and Lebanon.
Nasrallah also criticized another Israeli neighbor, Saudi Arabia.
“I tell the rulers of Saudi Arabia that the separation between the Kurds and Iraq will reach Saudi Arabia later on, and it shall be divided,” he said.
Nasrallah added “the issue doesn’t derive from the referendum but from [the fact] that the region is being split up according to ethnic backgrounds. After the failure of the ISIS project, it’s now back to the project of dividing up the region, first from the area of Kurdish Iraq.”
The Hezbollah leader also blasted the United States, even though it opposed the Kurdish quest for independence.
“You can’t trust the American stance on the issue of Kurdistan and Iraq,” he said. “There are American voices that started popping up that call for support of the independence of Kurdish Iraq.”
