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Exposed: Anti-Israel Group Under Fire for Using Name of Raphael Lemkin, Zionist Who Coined the Term Genocide
Raphael Lemkin being interviewed on Feb. 13, 1949. Photo: Screenshot
Members of the family of Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and pushed for the passage of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, say they are outraged that a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit organization is using the Lemkin name to pursue an agenda of extreme anti-Israel activism.
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention was initially registered as a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation on Aug. 19, 2021, and won US federal tax-exempt recognition in September 2023. In recent months, it has veered into strident anti-Israel political advocacy, supporting anti-Israel campus protests and reaching millions of viewers with social media posts that falsely accuse Israel of genocide.
Less than one week after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, the institute released a “genocide alert” calling the onslaught an “unprecedented military operation against Israel” while decrying the Jewish state’s actions against Hamas as “genocide.” The Oct. 13 message came before Israeli launched its ground offensive in Gaza.
Then on Oct. 18, 2023, the Lemkin Institute called on the International Criminal Court “to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the crime of #genocide in light of the siege and bombardment of #Gaza and the many expressions of genocidal intent.” The social media post accumulated 1.3 million views, according to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The institute’s vocal anti-Israel advocacy has continued unabated for the past year. In September, for example, it described Israel’s war against Lebanese Hezbollah as “terrorism” and “the slaughter of Arab peoples” leading to “the wanton slaughter of all mankind.” The post did not mention that Hezbollah is an internationally designated terrorist organization that began firing rockets at Israel the day after the Oct. 7 attacks.
‘Totally Outraged’: Lemkin Family Disavows Institute
Joseph Lemkin, a New Jersey lawyer who is related to Raphael Lemkin, said he was unfamiliar with the institute until being informed of it by The Algemeiner.
Lemkin, who represented the family at a UN event marking the 65th anniversary of the genocide convention, described himself as “totally outraged” to see his late relative’s name used to push an anti-Israel agenda. His father was Raphael Lemkin’s first cousin.
“Members of our family were killed in the Holocaust, and Rafael Lemkin would be outraged by the use of his name and the abuse of the word genocide,” Joseph Lemkin said in a statement to The Algemeiner that was copied to eight of his family members. “Our family fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself and are fully in favor of US policies to support Israel. Indeed, we have many family members in Israel; family members who have served in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and others that have been impacted by the terror of Hamas.”
The family is discussing possible steps ranging from a joint public statement to a cease-and-desist letter aimed at getting the Philadelphia organization to drop the name.
The co-founder and executive director of the institute, Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, was previously an assistant professor and director of the masters program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in New Jersey.
Joeden-Forgey did not respond to two emails and two cellphone voicemail messages from The Algemeiner left both last and this week seeking comment. Her co-founder, Irene Victoria Massimino, told The Algemeiner that Massimino is no longer with the Lemkin Institute and “cannot speak on its behalf.”
A Pathbreaking International Lawyer Dedicated to Zionism
Lemkin was born in Poland in 1900 and eventually escaped the Nazis to America, where he joined the War Department, documenting Nazi atrocities and preparing for the prosecution of Nazi crimes at the Nuremberg trials. He dedicated much of his life to making the world recognize the horrors of the Holocaust and designating mass murder as a crime which could be prosecuted through international law. Forty-nine members of his family, including his parents, were killed in the Holocaust. He died in 1959 in relative obscurity.
Raphael Lemkin’s grave, Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, New York. Photo: Oberezny, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A 2017 article by James Loeffler, who now teaches at Johns Hopkins University, described what he called “the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin.” Loeffler noted that while “dead international lawyers rarely become celebrities,” Lemkin “has emerged as a potent symbol for activists and politicians across the world.”
Scholarly and popular attention to Lemkin has blossomed in recent years, with his story featured everywhere from the alumni magazine at Duke University, where he taught, to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” A search of one database of academic articles, JSTOR, turned up 1,515 references to Lemkin, of which 1,133 were from 2005 or later. Samantha Power, a Harvard professor who served as UN ambassador during the Obama administration and administrator of the US Agency for International Development during the Biden administration, highlighted Lemkin’s story in a 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning book; she is said to have kept a framed portrait of Lemkin on her office wall while serving as a White House staffer.
Loeffler traced Lemkin’s work as an editor and columnist of a Jewish publication, Zionist World. “The task of the Jewish people is … [to become] a permanent national majority in its own national home,” Lemkin wrote in one such column.
“It is not enough to know Zionism,” Lemkin wrote in another column quoted by Loeffler. “One must imbibe its spirit, one must make Zionism a part of one’s very own ‘self,’ and be prepared to make sacrifices on its behalf.”
‘A Genocidal State That Is Completely Out of Control’: The Institute’s Relentless Critique of Israel
The Lemkin Institute’s social media account has been persistent in defending anti-Israel activists that the US government defines as antisemitic. For example, the American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, posted on Oct. 29, “As UN Special Rapporteur Albanese visits New York, I want to reiterate the US belief she is unfit for her role. The United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights.”
The Algemeiner has reported extensively on how Francesca Albanese has used her position as the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’s attacks on the Jewish state.
Nonetheless, the Lemkin Institute’s account jumped into the replies of Thomas-Greenfield’s post with a defense of Albanese and an attack on the American diplomat.
“Your attack on UN special Rapporteur Albanese is so clearly intended to hide your criminal complicity in an ongoing genocide that you truly should be embarrassed,” the institute wrote in a post which, according to X, garnered 294,000 impressions. “Is there any trick from the genocidaire’s playbook that you will refuse to carry out?”
The post continued, “Francesca Albanese is an upstander. She will be remembered as a hero. You will be remembered as a perpetrator and an apologist. As experts on the crime of genocide, we can say this with certainty.”
The institute’s 2023 annual report listed only $10,300 in revenue. Yet in addition to the outsized social media footprint, the institute has also generated press mentions, with coverage and placements in media outlets including Newsweek and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Its website lists a seven-person leadership team that includes personnel devoted to outreach, education, research, communications, and operations.
A Facebook post from September by the Lemkin Institute accused Israel of “sexualized violence,” asserting, “This sexualization alone is indicative of genocidal violence, as it indicates a desire to destroy Palestinians as such by desecrating symbols of generation and undermining the ability of Palestinians to reproduce biologically and culturally.”
An August post from the organization criticized the elimination of Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh. “The Lemkin Institute strongly condemns this attack … We condemn Israel’s decision to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, which sends a clear message that Israel is not interested in any peace, much less the ongoing peace process,” the institute said.
In April, the group issued a statement expressing solidarity with anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University and criticizing the Columbia administration for calling in police to clear a pro-Hamas “encampment.”
“Expressions of opposition to the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s apartheid policies are not the same as expressions of antisemitism or hatred of Jews and the Jewish faith,” the statement said. “What is being labeled as ‘antisemitism’ is, in large measure, the visceral outrage that many young people feel toward the State of Israel and its military for the deadly occupation of Palestinian land and the mass-murder genocide they see every day in the news.”
When Israel in September targeted Hezbollah terrorists by exploding their pagers and other communications devices, the Lemkin Institute issued a post with more than 700,000 views condemning what it called “Israel’s terrorist attacks against Lebanese people.”
“Hezbollah, the ostensible ‘target’’of the attacks, is not a simple ‘terrorist organization’ engaged in criminal activity. It is also a political party and a service provider for southern Lebanon, so it includes civilian doctors, nurses, teachers, and so forth. Are they terrorists?” the post asked. “What we see is a genocidal state that is completely out of control and supported by a Western world that is, in large measure, too racist and Islamophobic to care.”
“Shame on you for appropriating the Lemkin name to spread propaganda,” replied the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Robert Silverman.
Silverman’s reply, seen by only a few hundred users, raised a cutting-edge legal question: Who has the right to use the Lemkin name?
“In the USA, in most states, people have rights of privacy and/or publicity based on common law or statute to the use of their own name or likeness or identity,” said Anita Allen, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on postmortem privacy rights.
“In some instances such rights descend to heirs or assignees after death. The details of a particular case would determine whether the organization in question is subject to civil liability,” she said. “They could be.”
A Burgeoning Field of Anti-Israel Critique
The Lemkin Institute’s use of the Holocaust as a weapon with which to critique Israel is not an outlier. Rather, it reflects how the rapidly expanding genocide and Holocaust studies fields, much of it funded by gifts and endowments from well-intentioned Jewish donors, have veered away from the facts and the law and toward, instead, anti-Israel activism.
In one case from earlier this year, a doctoral student at Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies reportedly confronted a visiting Israeli reservist and publicly accused Israel of genocide. Months later, in August, a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University wrote in an article for The Guardian that it was “no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocidal actions.”
That same professor, Omer Bartov, joined other Holocaust and genocide studies scholars in declaring in the New York Review of Books that “Israeli leaders and others are using the Holocaust framing to portray Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza as a battle for civilization in the face of barbarism, thereby promoting racist narratives about Palestinians.”
The post Exposed: Anti-Israel Group Under Fire for Using Name of Raphael Lemkin, Zionist Who Coined the Term Genocide first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Welcome to ‘Paddystine’
A man walks past graffiti reading ‘Victory to Palestine’ after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
JNS.org – The other day, during a discussion with a colleague about the wave of pro-Hamas, antisemitic hysteria sweeping the Republic of Ireland, I unthinkingly quipped that the people of Eire should rename themselves “Paddystinians.” I immediately regretted doing so because the term “Paddy” is an aging pejorative, conjuring up images of Irish drunkenness, the supposed Irish proclivity for casual brawling, and ingrained Irish idiocy—stereotypes any decent person should reject.
As it turns out, I needn’t have worried.
A couple of days after that exchange, I discovered that the hashtag “#Paddystinian” was being eagerly adopted on social media by Irish supporters of Hamas. The accompanying posts were variously obnoxious or downright stupid, with many of those mocking the assertion that their country is antisemitic seemingly unaware of the immortal line spoken by a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses that Ireland “has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the jews (sic)” because “she never let them in.” (There has, in fact, been a minuscule Jewish presence in Ireland for centuries, numbering the current president of Israel among its offspring, and there have been several episodes of antisemitism during that time, including the present, but Ireland is more or less an instance of the “antisemitism without Jews” phenomenon.)
One might say that Ireland is little different from the rest of Europe when it comes to the volume and the venom of its antisemitism: France, Germany and the United Kingdom, among others, are current examples of a similar trend. But Ireland stands out because of the role of its government in stoking these poisonous sentiments, as well as the fact that antisemitic depictions of Israel sit comfortably in its major political parties across the spectrum. That perhaps explains why Israel has closed its embassy in Dublin.
To my mind, the most grotesque offender in this regard is the Irish president, Michael Higgins. An 83-year-old poet who has carefully cultivated an avuncular image with his three-piece tweed suits and swept back, thinning white hair, Higgins’ high-handed manner is at its most infuriating when he articulates—as he has done on a few occasions since the Hamas atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—conspiracy theories about Israel that lean heavily on the theme of shadowy, unaccountable Jewish power. Earlier this year, for example, he blamed a covert Israeli intelligence operation for leaking his fawning letter of congratulations to the Iranian regime’s newly installed President Masoud Pezeshkian and was subsequently too pompous to issue an apology when it was pointed out that the Iranians themselves had publicized his message first. Then, last week, as he accepted the credentials of the new Palestinian ambassador in Dublin, he waxed lyrically about Israeli assaults on the sovereignty of three of its neighbors: Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, where the Israelis apparently “would like, in fact, actually to have a settlement.”
In Egypt? Given that Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, not even the most seasoned supporter of Hamas could find actual material evidence that this is Israel’s intention. Higgins had met with his Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, earlier that week, and it’s quite possible that el-Sisi told him something along these lines or had referred to the dispute between Jerusalem and Cairo over the Philadelphi Corridor that runs along the border between Egypt and Gaza. Whatever the content of their conversation, what is absolutely clear is that Higgins has a disposition to believe the most outlandish lies about Israel and that he will respond to any criticism by saying that opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies is not the same as antisemitism—encouraging his audience to think that his beef is with Israel’s leadership and not the Jewish state itself.
But as Dana Erlich, Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, pointed out in a recent interview with an Irish broadcaster, Dublin’s goal has been to undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself by launching lawfare against the Jewish state to chip steadily away at its sovereign rights. Ireland is supporting South Africa’s false claim of Israeli genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to the point of seeking a redefinition of the term “genocide” in which to shoehorn Israel’s actions against the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and their Iranian backers. It has promoted anti-Israel measures both domestically and within the European Union. And it has either ignored or mocked the concern that its actions are encouraging the spread of antisemitism in Ireland, including the revival of racial tropes reminiscent of the Nazis.
Two fundamental questions remain. Firstly, why has Ireland adopted this stance? In part, as the Irish commentator John McGuirk recently pointed out, because Ireland is essentially peripheral in the calculations of geopolitics. “We have, for most of our existence, pretended that we can say or do what we like on the international stage because everybody loves us,” he wrote. “The truth is that we’ve been able to be liked because we are irrelevant. Nobody has ever had to choose between Ireland and a powerful ally.”
Even then, as McGuirk argued, this moral grandstanding against Israel has its limits. It was Israel that closed its embassy and not the other way around “because the Irish government knew full well that a formal break in diplomatic relations with Israel would send a signal to the US and the E.U., and Israel’s other powerful allies around the world, that Ireland is a fundamentally unreasonable place that cannot be trusted to be an honest broker when it comes to the world’s only Jewish state.”
Secondly, why the obsession with Israel alone? Not a peep has been heard from the Irish about the revelations coming out of Syria regarding former dictator Bashar Assad’s machinery of murder—something unseen, according to Stephen Rapp, the former U.S. envoy for war crimes—“since the Nazis.” According to my old friend, the Irish writer Eamann Mac Donnchada, both “narcissism,” emanating from Ireland’s belief that the Palestinian war against Israel is a mirror of Ireland’s own struggle against the British, and “ennui,” the lack of purpose that has accompanied Ireland’s growing economic prosperity in recent decades, are key factors here. “Adhesion to [the Palestinian] cause makes many Irish people feel great about themselves while running no physical or economic risks, and that’s what it’s really about,” he wrote.
How should the rest of the world respond, given that, to cite McGuirk again, “not one single thing that the Irish Government has done since Oct. 7, 2023 has impacted Israeli policy one way or another.” Israel, as the offended party, has done what it needs to do. Many Jews have reacted with disgust, but that probably won’t extend to anything more than the odd prohibition on Jameson’s whiskey being served at a synagogue kiddush or bar mitzvah.
As for the United States, traditionally a great friend of Ireland, relations will likely worsen under Donald Trump’s incoming administration because Trump and his team are convinced that Ireland—in the words of future Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—“runs a trade surplus at our expense.” Israel has nothing to do with that battle. But because Lutnick is a Jew and a noted supporter of Israel, you can rest assured that voices inside and outside the Irish government will eventually draw a connection where none exists. That it’s all so predictable is probably the grimmest joke of all.
The post Welcome to ‘Paddystine’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tradition or Tragedy?
An employee tends to a medical cannabis plants at Pharmocann, an Israeli medical cannabis company in northern Israel, Jan. 24, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Amir Cohen / File.
JNS.org – I am writing these lines from the United States, where I am nearing the end of my latest speaking tour. I’ve been to New York, Toronto, Detroit, Philadelphia, and now Miami.
Coming from South Africa, where we suffer one of the highest murder rates in the world—more than 70 people per day are killed throughout the country—I was nevertheless shocked by the most recent school shooting here in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” In what is stated by CNN to be “the 83rd school shooting in the USA this year,”15-year-old Natalie Rupnow opened fire at a private Christian school in Madison, Wis., killing a fellow classmate and teacher, and then turned the gun on herself. Besides others who were wounded, two more students were today listed in critical condition.
What on earth would motivate a 15-year-old girl to shoot up her classmates? Where did she get a gun? Were her parents negligent? These and more are the questions Americans are asking themselves.
And in other news this week (I must sound like a news reporter), music megastar Sir Elton John, who was just named TIME magazine’s “Icon of the Year” had this to say about one of the current moral dilemmas still being hotly debated around the world: “Legalizing marijuana in the United States and Canada is one of the greatest mistakes of all time.”
The rock star, who was affected by addiction to cocaine and other drugs in the past, said that his own experience leads him to argue that marijuana is addictive and leads to other drug use. “And when you’re stoned—and I’ve been stoned—you don’t think normally.”
Quite a confession from one of the music legends of our time.
By now, you may be forgiven for wondering what on earth all of this has to do with my usual theme, the Torah portion. Well, this week in Vayeshev, Joseph is sold into slavery and, at age 17, finds himself down in Egypt working for Potiphar, the head of Pharaoh’s abattoirs and butcheries. Here is a youngster of high school age, far away from home, with no family, no support—no one to assist or guide him in life.
Quite remarkably, all on his own, he manages to stay afloat and goes on to succeed at everything he does. Furthermore, when the lady of the house tries to seduce him, he finds the inner strength to withstand temptation.
How did he do it? Day after day, she would beguile him, entice him, try to charm him. And then, when there was no one home and no one would ever know the difference, he still eludes her smooth talk and blandishments. No one knew his origins. He was a stranger in a foreign land; he had nothing to lose. And still, he stood his ground.
Elsewhere, I have written about the image of Joseph’s father, Jacob, which appeared to him at that critical moment, giving him strength and courage just as he felt himself starting to slip and succumb. Is it not extraordinary to see how powerful the influence of parents and grandparents on young minds and hearts can be! In the heat of the moment when most people lose their moral grip and stumble into sin, Joseph was able to keep his head and resist the seduction so many might have fantasized about.
I remember in my own youth struggling with personal life choices. One part of me wanted to be a journalist. But I couldn’t bear to disappoint my father and grandfather, who were devout and dedicated Chassidim, so I decided to give yeshivah a chance. The rest is history. I was inspired by Torah—specifically, by Chassidic philosophy, which answered so many of life’s questions.
The other day in Philadelphia visiting our children, I was able to spend some precious time learning Talmud with my two grandsons, Ari and Tzvi. They understood it well and made me proud. I pray that I can have the same positive influence on them that my grandfather had on me.
This Friday is the 19th of Kislev, which marks the liberation from the antisemitic imprisonment in czarist Russia of the founder of Chabad— Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi—back in 1798. His release and vindication also spelled the beginning of a much broader dissemination of the teachings of Chassidic philosophy throughout Europe.
And the Jewish world has never looked back. Today, a wide range of communities around the world will celebrate this day and are inspired to study his life-changing work—the Tanya—and other profound teachings of Chassidic philosophy.
I can’t help thinking that had young Natalie Rupnow and a younger Elton John had those same influences as Joseph did, or even as I did, they might never have fallen into tragedy and addiction.
We should be eternally grateful for our heritage, our family legacies and the teachings of Torah, both revealed and mystical, that have inspired us and kept us on track and in check throughout the generations.
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After Hezbollah Supply Lines Cut in Syria, Tehran Will ‘Reexamine Options’
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
JNS.org – Iran’s arms supply lines to Hezbollah via Syria have been severed by the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, leading to an unprecedented strategic setback for Tehran and its Lebanese terror proxy, according to observers in Israel.
Tal Beeri, head of Research at the Alma Center, which specializes in Israel’s security challenges in the northern arenas, told JNS on Monday that “we’re talking about a very, very significant blow“ to Hezbollah’s Iranian supply chain.
The first reason for this initial near-term assessment, he said, is that the Syrian territory once controlled by Assad served as Iran’s primary conduit for transporting weapons into Lebanon.
“Practically all the weapons for Hezbollah were funneled through this corridor,” which encompassed land routes, air routes through Syrian airports—possibly including the Russian airbase Khmeimim—and sea routes stretching from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in Iran to northwest Syria, mainly the port of Banias, from where weapons would be delivered to inland depots.
“That’s how the Iranians moved goods to Lebanon. Meaning, effectively, the entry gate of Iranian weaponry on Syrian soil has been cut off,” said Beeri. “In the end, control throughout Syria is in the hands of the rebel factions and Kurds, who, by the way, dominate all of eastern Syria, including the land entry routes. So currently, it is not possible to transfer weapons to Hezbollah through Syria.”
The second factor, he added, is the large-scale air strikes conducted by the Israel Defense Forces, targeting the entire Syrian military and its weapons depots. This prevented “a last-minute quick transfer of relevant weapons into Hezbollah’s hands,” according to Beeri.
“For these two reasons, there is basically a nearly complete severing of the weapon oxygen line to Hezbollah,” he said.
However, Beeri cautioned that Iran and Hezbollah might yet adapt and adjust to the new situation. “I estimate they will recalculate and make new efforts … possibly by attempting direct shipments of weapons to Lebanon” by air or sea. Such efforts could see ships and planes travel to Lebanon from Iran via third-party countries to try and deceive Israeli intelligence,” he added.
In addition, said Beeri, “money trumps ideology.” The Iranians could try to establish connections with rebel factions by buying them out, thereby attempting to rebuild the weapons corridor.
Professor Boaz Ganor, president of Reichman University and founder of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, told JNS, “The biography of Ahmad al-Sharaa [aka Mohammed al-Julani, the leader of the largest rebel umbrella group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] points to fundamental hostility toward Israel. His senior membership in Al Qaeda, close to [Abu Musab al-]Zarqawi and [Ayman al-]Zawahiri, could indicate the future trends of Syria under his rule.”
Ganor warned that “we must not let the seemingly pragmatic position he presents recently mislead the world or Israel.”
Addressing moves by Turkey to exploit the situation, Ganor added, “Syria will not be able to exist without the aid of another country or countries. Those countries will become the patron of the new regime, and there is no doubt that Iran will try to bridge past hostilities with the rebels and establish ties with al-Julani through generous economic aid, emphasizing an anti-Israel ideological common denominator and concealing the religious tensions between Sunni and Shi’ite.” (The Syrian rebel factions are mostly Sunni Muslims, whereas Iran is Shi’ite.)
Ganor noted that Iran could have back-door influence on Al Qaeda through the organization’s leader, Saif al-Adel, who sought and received asylum in Iran after U.S. forces entered Afghanistan.
“If al-Julani returns to his ideological roots in Al Qaeda, Iran’s influence on him could grow stronger,” said Ganor. That might enable the reestablishment of the weapons corridor if Iran and the new Syrian regime found common ground, he added.
On Dec. 13, Israel Hayom reported that Hezbollah’s Secretary General Naim Qassem had acknowledged publicly the impact of Assad’s collapse on the terror group, including the loss of military supply routes in Syria. However, he claimed Hezbollah would work around this and look for new ways to smuggle weapons into Lebanon.
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