Amid widespread condemnation of Israel’s massive strikes, Syrian communities persecuted by Hezbollah forces voiced cautious, and sometimes exuberant, celebration.
Even as most of the Middle East is overtaken by outrage at weeks of destructive Israeli strikes against Hezbollah and its leaders, some communities are celebrating the disarray of the powerful militia that persecuted them.
Nowhere is that sentiment as strong as in parts of Syria, where Hezbollah has played a key role in helping President Bashar al-Assad wage a brutal crackdown on opponents of his family’s decades-long rule, and where news of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah neighborhoods prompted singing in the streets of rebel strongholds.
Hezbollah’s origin story is in fighting Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000, and fighting Israel is the mission central to its followers’ identity. But one of its biggest military roles over the past decade had actually been in Syria, helping its patron, Iran, keep Mr. Assad in power.
Hezbollah forces played a part in some of the most brutal chapters of the Syrian civil war, including sieges that starved encircled communities for months, as well as operations that expelled many Sunni Muslims, who were the backbone of the anti-Assad revolt, from neighborhoods and towns.
As Israel launched strike after successful strike against Hezbollah in the past two weeks — starting with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, and culminating in the airstrikes on Friday that killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah — many Syrians from the opposition have posted celebratory messages on social media. Some used the hashtag “ana shamtan,” which translates roughly into, “I have schadenfreude.”
Unlike Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which most of the Arab world strongly condemns and often describes as genocidal, its strikes on Hezbollah have exposed the fractures within the region’s political landscape.
