Mission Accomplished, Four Decades And Countless Deaths Later

U.S. owes a debt of gratitude to Israel for eliminating a Hezbollah chief

‘Let Peace Take Root’: A Tree of Lebanon grows at Arlington National Cemetery as a memorial to the Americans killed in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.

Overshadowed by the assassination Wednesday night in Teheran of Ismail Haniyeh, a major leader of Hamas, was the elimination by Israel a few hours earlier of a top Hezbollah commander long pursued by the U.S.

Fuad Shakr, second in command of Hezbollah, was targeted and killed by an Israeli missile in Beirut. He played a major role, most recently, in the bombing last Saturday that killed 12 Druze children in the Golan Heights playing soccer, but also for countless terror attacks against Israel for the last four decades.

The IDF, in explaining why it pursued Shakr, asserted that he was responsible for the majority of Hezbollah’s most advanced weapons, including precise-guided missiles and cruise missiles, and “for building, planning and the execution of terror attacks on the state of Israel.”

Perhaps most notably for Americans, and woefully under-reported in the mainstream media, Shakr had “a central role”in the Oct. 26, 1983 bombing in Beirut that murdered 220 U.S. Marines, 18 U.S. Navy sailors and 3 U.S. Army soldiers serving as peacekeepers during the Lebanese civil war, according to the State Department. 

It was the largest loss of life in a single day for the Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.

Following the attack on the U.S. barracks, the State Department issued a bounty of $5 million for information leading to the location of Shakr. 

It took almost 41 years, and the strategic and precise expertise of Israeli intelligence, to put an end to his reign of terror. 

“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but exceedingly fine,” according to an old saying suggesting that the guilty pay for their crimes in the end. No tears should be shed for the death of Fuad Shakr, who brought about the death of thousands of innocents. The U.S. government and the American people should be grateful to Israel for making sure he will not strike again. 

P.S. After posting the above as a Note on Substack earlier today, I received a number of positive responses including a suggestion I heartily agree with: The State Department should give Israel the $5 million that was set aside for information on Shakr, and Israel in turn should donate the funds to the families of the Druze youngsters murdered by the Hezbollah bomb on a community soccer field.