Who is Hassan Nasrallah?
Born in 1960 into a poor Shia family in East Beirut, Nasrallah and his family were forced to shift to their ancestral home in the south Lebanon village of Bazzouriyeh during the Lebanese civil war in 1975.
Nasrallah joined the ‘Amal’ movement, a political and paramilitary organisation representing the Shia community in Lebanon at the age of 15. After completing his education, Nasrallah taught at the school run by ‘Amal’ leader Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi’ who later founded the umbrella organisation called Hezbollah.
Hezbollah was founded in 1985 to resist the Israel invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Hezbollah is funded by Iran.
“When we entered Lebanon, there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted by perfumed rice and flowers by the Shi’a in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah,” former Israel PM Ehud Barak once noted.
In 1992, the Israeli military assassinated al-Musawi along with his wife and three children.
Nasrallah then took over the leadership of the movement, after which it flourished and went on to become the largest political party in Lebanon’s recent history.
In October 2021, Nasrallah said that Hezbollah had 100,000 fighters, making it among the most powerful non-state armed organisations in the world.
Why is Nasrallah considered the biggest enemy of Israel?
Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah became a major and powerful opponent of Israel in Lebanon. It succeeded in forcing the Israeli army out of the Lebanon territory in 2000, ending an 18-year-long occupation which began in 1982. Nasrallah’s eldest son, Hadi, was killed in 1997, fighting against Israeli forces.
