A few days have passed since Hassan Nasrallah met the same fate as the rest of Hezbollah’s military chain of command. The arch-terrorist was killed on Sept. 27, when an Israeli airstrike destroyed the terror organization’s underground headquarters, completing the decapitation of the terrorist group.
Since then, more than a few obituaries have been written about Nasrallah. Some do a better job at informing readers of Nasrallah’s reign of terror and destruction. Others do worse. Most shed some light while also casting shadows that hide damning parts of his legacy.
The New York Times, for example, did mention that Hezbollah initiated the current round of hostilities with Israel by attacking the Jewish state a day after Hamas’s massacre. It also noted that Hezbollah set off the 2006 war between Lebanon and Israel; mentioned the group’s deadly attacks on the U.S. embassy in Beirut and on barracks housing U.S. and French military members of a peacekeeping force; referenced U.N. resolutions calling on Hezbollah to disarm and leave southern Lebanon; and hinted at the group’s devastating entry into the Syrian civil war. The Times appropriately viewed these as legacy-defining points.
But the piece also uncritically shared that Nasrallah “said that Israel should be replaced by the state of Palestine, with equality for all residents.” Hassan Nasrallah, egalitarian.
The New York Times insists it’s a serious, sober news organization. So it isn’t enough that Nasrallah mouthed the word “equality” in an interview broadcast for Western consumption. A talking point isn’t a legacy.
Consider Russia — not because its propaganda news network teamed up with Julian Assange to broadcast the Nasrallah interview, but just as parallel case. Is Vladamir Putin’s legacy vis-à-vis Ukraine that he endeavored to “de-Nazify” the country, as the Russian leader has repeatedly insisted? Of course not. And it would be journalistic malpractice to parrot that claim in an obituary as if tells us about his actual motivations.
The same applies to Nasrallah’s purported philosemitic egalitarianism. This, after all, is the man who said that Jews gathered together in Israel as to save his followers the effort of having to hunt them down. It is the man who also said, “If we search the entire globe for a more cowardly, lowly, weak and frail individual in his spirit, mind, ideology, and religion, we will never find anyone like the Jew—and I am not saying the Israeli: we have to know the enemy we are fighting.”1 It is the man who called Jews “the descendants of apes and pigs.”
The New York Times, which said nothing about these statements, continues to insist that it accurately captured Nasrallah’s essence.
If a chat between Nasrallah and Assange counts as an unvarnished dose of truth, then what about Nasrallah’s statement just seconds earlier in the interview: “We don’t want to kill anyone.” Should that, too, count as a legacy-making statement? Again, of course not. Putting aside his recent deadly attacks on civilians, Nasrallah oversaw Hezbollah’s bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. Empty words don’t define a legacy. Mass murder targeting Jews does. But incredibly, the Times didn’t mention the bombing.
They aren’t alone in that egregious omission. The Washington Post, BBC, and the Wall Street Journal are among those who ignored the antisemitic bombing, although an Argentinian court just recently reminded the world of Hezbollah’s culpability for that attack.
The Associated Press and CNN at the bottom
But two obituaries — by the Associated Press and CNN — stand out among the worse.
The Associated Press said nothing about Hezbollah’s devastating attack on the Jewish center in Buenos Aires. Nothing about its attack on Israel’s embassy in that country. Nothing about its attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Nothing about its attack on the Marine barracks there. Nothing about Nasrallah’s antisemitism, or his repeated demands that Jews ethnically cleanse themselves from Israel. Nothing about Nasrallah’s defiance of U.N. resolutions that require his group disarm and hand control of southern Lebanon back to the country’s government.
Instead, there was much about how the man who brought destruction to Lebanon was “charismatic” and “shrewd,” “idolized” and “respected,” and a relative “pragmatist.” After all, he would sometimes “make jokes.”
CNN’s obituary, though, makes even the AP piece seem exhaustive. Readers would be forgiven for believing that Hezbollah never killed a single person. The Jewish center, the Israeli embassy, the American embassy, the Marine barracks, the French barracks, the launch of a war against Israel in 2006, the starvation of Syrians, the murder of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, the slaying of 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights, the assassination of Lebanese politicians — all irrelevant.
Although there is no hint of a fatal Hezbollah attack in the entire piece, the author, Sana Noor Haq, did find the space to detail deadly Israeli and American in 1982, 1992, 2020, 2023, in 2024 and again in 2024.
When it does mention Hezbollah’s use of force, CNN obfuscates. Consider its description of Hezbollah’s unprovoked attack on Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in support of Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 Israelis the previous day:
The Lebanese militant group has increasingly traded strikes with Israel since it launched its assault on Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks – inflaming tensions in the region.
Hezbollah says it has been firing on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and Palestinians trying to survive Israeli attacks in Gaza, which have killed more than 41,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health there.
Hezbollah’s initiation of hostilities is hidden behind the phrase “traded strikes.” Israel’s targeted airstrikes on Hamas on the day of and day after the massacre — before the start of its ground operations — were described as an “assault on Gaza” that left Palestinians “trying to survive.” By contrast, and though at this point there were more Israelis than Palestinians killed, the Hamas slaughter was minimized with the relatively tame word “attacks.” Israeli casualties were not worthy of mention.
CNN’s inability to see Israelis extends to the northern border, too. The author detailed the high number of Lebanese displaced from their homes, but ignores the tens of thousands of Israelis likewise driven out by Hezbollah violence.
And while Hezbollah is describe as at times “resist[ing] occupation” and “driv[ing] out Israeli occupation,” CNN’s obituary avoids telling readers that the group is openly sworn to Israel’s destruction.
It’s a shockingly one-sided piece. But the egregious slant might not come as a surprise to the network, or to anyone else familiar with the author’s social media activity. According to her X.com timeline, Haq posted on the two days before Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, but fell silent on the day of the attack. Assuming she didn’t delete any posts, she remained silent until Oct. 13, at which point she posted almost exclusively about suffering in Gaza. The victims of Hamas’s slaughter — like the victims of Hassan Nasrallah’s terror — don’t appear to matter.
1.^ Regarding attempts to cast doubt on these quotes, see here.