RSS
What Is Hezbollah? Even After Three Tries, the New York Times Is Stumped
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
How many tries, by how many reporters, will it take the New York Times to explain accurately what Hezbollah is?
The newspaper has been fumbling and bumbling its way toward an answer in a way that illuminates some of the challenges the Times has faced in covering the wars of Iranian aggression.
Our story begins in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. “What Is Hezbollah, the Group That Poses a Threat to Israel From the North?” a Times article published October 19, 2023, tried to explain. That article, by a Beirut-based British freelancer for the Times, Euan Ward, and a staff writer for the New York Times magazine, Nicholas Casey, did not use the word “terrorist” or describe the U.S. government’s designation of Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization. Instead the newspaper described the group as having “an expansive security apparatus and social services network.”
Then the Times Cairo bureau chief, Vivian Yee, took a fresh attempt at answering the question, for a piece published on September 17, 2024. That article appeared under the headline, “A Look at Hezbollah and What a Wider War Would Mean for Lebanon.” What a wider war would mean “for Lebanon” seems a somewhat narrow framework for analysis in a war with wide international consequences on everything from oil prices to the U.S.-Iran conflict and the American presidential elections. For our purposes, though, the Yee piece was a modest improvement over the October 2023 Times effort. This time around, at least, the Times acknowledged that Hezbollah is “considered a terrorist group by the United States and other countries.” It also noted that “many Lebanese see the group as an obstacle to progress that keeps threatening to drag the country into an unwanted war” and that the group uses “authoritarian tactics” to “quell any dissent.”
Perhaps concern about those “authoritarian tactics” help to explain why the Beirut-based Ward was reticent about using the term “terrorist.”
On September 18, 2024, the Times tried yet again, with a piece by an Israeli-born reporter fluent in Hebrew, Ephrat Livni. That one appeared under the “Jeopardy”-game-show-style headline “What Is Hezbollah, the Militant Group Based in Lebanon?” Livni’s article calls the group an “Iran-backed militia — which the United States designated as a foreign terrorist organization decades ago.” The “decades ago” makes it sound like Hezbollah’s terrorism is a thing of the past rather than an ongoing problem. Later, the Times offers some more detail: “Hezbollah was involved in the suicide bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in 1983, drawing the enmity of the United States. The United States designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 1997, and has long sanctioned people and companies with ties to the group to try to cut off its funding.”
Livni’s piece also credits Neil MacFarquhar and Ben Hubbard as having “contributed reporting,” bringing to a whopping six the grand total of Times journalists— Ward, Casey, Yee, Livni, MacFarquhar, Hubbard—mustered into action to attempt to answer the “What is Hezbollah?” puzzler.
Even on the third try, even after having rustled up a half dozen bodies to tackle the issue, the Times can’t quite seem to get a grip on the facts of the situation.
Neither Yee’s article nor Livni’s for example, make any mention of Hezbollah having killed a dozen Druze, mostly children, in July 2024 in an attack on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in Northern Israel.
Livni’s article, after a subhead asking “Why are Hezbollah and Israel fighting now?” reports, “Hezbollah’s military wing has been targeting northern Israel for nearly a year in solidarity with Hamas and its war with Israel in Gaza.” Yet the Hamas war with Israel hasn’t been only “in Gaza” but included rocket attacks and deadly raids into Israel. The same article describes Hezbollah as having been “formed in the 1980s from the chaos of Lebanon’s long civil war to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000.” The Lebanon civil war began not to fight the Israeli occupation but the rather Palestinian domination. The Council on Foreign Relations explains, “Hezbollah emerged during Lebanon’s civil war, which broke out in 1975 when long-simmering discontent over the large, armed Palestinian presence in the country reached a boiling point.” The Times, because of its anti-Israel tilt, can’t bring itself to talk about armed Palestinians in Lebanon. Instead it has to frame everything as a response to Israeli “occupation,” even if that’s inaccurate.
The idea that Hezbollah is mainly a response to “the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon” or to the Hamas “war with Israel in Gaza” is a misunderstanding. Like revolutionary Iran, Hezbollah has a goal of imposing its version of militant Islam worldwide and wiping Israel off the map. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has stated that if Jews “all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them world-wide.”
Maybe by the fourth or fifth or sixth try, the Times might work its way up to including that Nasrallah quotation in its explanation to its readers of what Hezbollah is. Maybe the seventh or eighth or ninth Times reporter assigned to the job will figure it out. Until then, readers will be better off looking elsewhere, to more trustworthy sources than the Times, for an explanation of the terrorist organization and its goals.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post What Is Hezbollah? Even After Three Tries, the New York Times Is Stumped first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel Says Missile Launched by Yemen’s Houthis ‘Most Likely’ Intercepted

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi addresses followers via a video link at the al-Shaab Mosque, formerly al-Saleh Mosque, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
The Israeli army said on Saturday that a missile fired from Yemen towards Israeli territory had been “most likely successfully intercepted,” while Yemen’s Houthi forces claimed responsibility for the launch.
Israel has threatened Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement – which has been attacking Israel in what it says is solidarity with Gaza – with a naval and air blockade if its attacks on Israel persist.
The Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group was responsible for Saturday’s attack, adding that it fired a missile towards the southern Israeli city of Beersheba.
Since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023, the Houthis, who control most of Yemen, have been firing at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting global trade.
Most of the dozens of missiles and drones they have launched have been intercepted or fallen short. Israel has carried out a series of retaliatory strikes.
The post Israel Says Missile Launched by Yemen’s Houthis ‘Most Likely’ Intercepted first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Iran Holds Funeral for Commanders and Scientists Killed in War with Israel

People attend the funeral procession of Iranian military commanders, nuclear scientists and others killed in Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 28, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Large crowds of mourners dressed in black lined streets in Iran’s capital Tehran as the country held a funeral on Saturday for top military commanders, nuclear scientists and some of the civilians killed during this month’s aerial war with Israel.
At least 16 scientists and 10 senior commanders were among those mourned at the funeral, according to state media, including armed forces chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Revolutionary Guards commander General Hossein Salami, and Guards Aerospace Force chief General Amir Ali Hajizadeh.
Their coffins were driven into Tehran’s Azadi Square adorned with their photos and national flags, as crowds waved flags and some reached out to touch the caskets and throw rose petals onto them. State-run Press TV showed an image of ballistic missiles on display.
Mass prayers were later held in the square.
State TV said the funeral, dubbed the “procession of the Martyrs of Power,” was held for a total of 60 people killed in the war, including four women and four children.
In attendance were President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior figures including Ali Shamkhani, who was seriously wounded during the conflict and is an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.
“Today, Iranians, through heroic resistance against two regimes armed with nuclear weapons, protected their honor and dignity, and look to the future prouder, more dignified, and more resolute than ever,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi, who also attended the funeral, said in a Telegram post.
There was no immediate statement from Khamenei, who has not appeared publicly since the conflict began. In past funerals, he led prayers over the coffins of senior commanders ahead of public ceremonies broadcast on state television.
Israel launched the air war on June 13, attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and killing top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
TRUMP THREAT
Israel, the only Middle Eastern country widely believed to have nuclear weapons, said it aimed to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons.
Iran denies having a nuclear weapons program. The U.N. nuclear watchdog has said it has “no credible indication” of an active, coordinated weapons program in Iran.
Bagheri, Salami and Hajizadeh were killed on June 13, the first day of the war. Bagheri was being buried at the Behesht Zahra cemetery outside Tehran mid-afternoon on Saturday. Salami and Hajizadeh were due to be buried on Sunday.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would consider bombing Iran again, while Khamenei, who has appeared in two pre-recorded video messages since the start of the war, has said Iran would respond to any future US attack by striking US military bases in the Middle East.
A senior Israeli military official said on Friday that Israel had delivered a “major blow” to Iran’s nuclear project. On Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that Israel and the US “failed to achieve their stated objectives” in the war.
According to Iranian health ministry figures, 610 people were killed on the Iranian side in the war before a ceasefire went into effect on Tuesday. More than 4,700 were injured.
Activist news agency HRANA put the number of killed at 974, including 387 civilians.
Israel’s health ministry said 28 were killed in Israel and 3,238 injured.
The post Iran Holds Funeral for Commanders and Scientists Killed in War with Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Pro-Palestinian Rapper Leads ‘Death to the IDF’ Chant at English Music festival

Revellers dance as Avril Lavigne performs on the Other Stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, in Pilton, Somerset, Britain, June 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Dylan Martinez
i24 News – Chants of “death to the IDF” were heard during the English Glastonbury music festival on Saturday ahead of the appearance of the pro-Palestinian Irish rappers Kneecap.
One half of punk duo based Bob Vylan (who both use aliases to protect their privacy) shouted out during a section of their show “Death to the IDF” – the Israeli military. Videos posted on X (formerly Twitter) show the crowd responding to and repeating the cheer.
This comes after officials had petitioned the music festival to drop the band. The rap duo also expressed support for the following act, Kneecap, who the BCC refused to show live after one of its members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh – better known by stage name Mo Chara – was charged with a terror offense.
The post Pro-Palestinian Rapper Leads ‘Death to the IDF’ Chant at English Music festival first appeared on Algemeiner.com.