Massive IDF drill sends Hezbollah into media frenzy

In the face of the largest IDF drill of its kind in two decades, the Hezbollah terrorist group released a series of hyperbolic threats to various media sources.

On Tuesday, the IDF was set to embark on a wide-ranging military drill near Israel’s border with Lebanon. The drill seeks to simulate an invasion by Hezbollah into Israel’s north and represents the largest drill of its kind in 20 years.

A military official told Ynet Monday that the exercise would incorporate thousands of sea, ground, and air force personnel and vehicles, and would span the course of about 10 days, incorporating cyber security capabilities and military defense technology. The exercise is widely seen as a necessary response to Hezbollah’s mounting arsenal of rockets and other weapons, all of which violate the explicit terms of the peace negotiated after the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Remarkably, the United Nations (UN) has taken no meaningful action to enforce the terms of the peace it brokered. Its interim forces in Lebanon, UNIFIL, have remained completely ineffective in halting Hezbollah’s illegal actions.

In response to the IDF’s complex drill, which will involve a number of stages and simulations, unnamed Hezbollah officials launched a press offensive in various Lebanese media outlets, reported Hebrew-language outlet Maariv and The Jerusalem Post. “We are ready for any attack or Israeli stupidity,” said an unnamed Hezbollah official.

The report noted that “multiple daily publications” in Lebanon discussed the drill, including the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar website and the Beirut daily Al-Akhbar. Al-Manar described the IDF’s exercises on Tuesday as “huge maneuvers by the Israeli army simulating an infiltration of Hezbollah [into Israeli territory].”

“We [Hezbollah] are fully alert and ready at any time for any possible scenario,” an unnamed Hezbollah official was quoted as saying. “The Israelis won’t succeed in surprising us, because Israel knows full well [what] Hezbollah’s capabilities are after the loss it suffered in 2006, which deterred the IDF.”

Notwithstanding Hezbollah’s less than truthful description of the war, Hezbollah suffered almost six times as many casualties as the IDF in the 2006 war.

By: World Israel News Staff