Those awaiting an Axis of Resistance critique that addresses Hezbollah's war and the reasons for its defeat, or that merely acknowledges this defeat, will likely be disappointed. Despite the catastrophic developments that have just unfolded, "declaring victory" remains the narrative on this front. The primary, and most frequently reiterated, argument for this pretense to "victory" is that the Israelis "were not able to wipe out the resistance."
The fact is that emphasizing this matter reflects the profound fear of extinction that is masked by these affirmations of survival: we are still here. This fear has many roots, chief among them the rapid and significant shift in the goalposts of slogans and promises. Since October 7, 2023, the Resistance Axis has raised slogans ranging from, as a minimum, "clearing out the prisons," to "liberating Palestine" at maximum.
Along this wide spectrum of ambitious objectives, the "extinction" seemed like a serious proposition the Resistance Axis had been offering the Israelis. Indeed, the latter, we have been told repeatedly, are not attached to the land of Palestine, and they are ready to escape the blows the resistance has dealt and will continue to deal to them.
This approach is fully aligned with a tradition that has come to include victories by Hezbollah or "the party," in 2000 and 2006, they were presented as epic and divine. According to this story we have been taught that the Jewish state is "weaker than a spider web" and that "the era of defeats is behind us," creating the impression that Hezbollah's enemy was the one on course for inevitable extinction.
In other words, in the portrait drawn by the Resistance Axis, war swings between sweeping victory and sweeping defeat, that is, between the inevitable extinction of one side and the other. To convince an audience whose certainty in such conceptions might have wavered, the party’s new Secretary-General Naim Qassem, added his voice, which could only convince those who were born convinced, to the chorus.
Moreover, the Israelis must feel the same way, in this implicit narrative, about "the party." This claim is reinforced by the notion that the Jewish state would have attacked it whether or not the October 7 attack had occurred and with or without Hezbollah’s "support war," making mere survival a victory.
Naturally, the historical connotations of "victory" and "defeat" are absent from this annihilative context. Here, victory is not a prelude to progress, prosperity, or liberation, and defeat is not something that the defeated can learn and benefit from.
This vision of war, in which it is either a sweeping victory or a sweeping defeat, is also a vision of life itself- life as a whole. The latter’s goals, which are supposed to be many, are reduced to "fighting the enemy," while its wealth of emotions and concerns are encapsulated by victory and defeat. Other emotions are reshaped and recycled to become mere extensions of this dichotomy of victory and defeat that wraps our lives.
With military clashes coming to an end a few days ago, the insistence on the fact that "we won," which is founded on piecemeal instances and statements taken out of context, was bound to continue. When we equate life with victory, acknowledging defeat is a kind of endorsement of suicide or withdrawal from life itself. This was precisely the choice made at the end of World War II by the Japanese and German officers who went too far in affirming that victory was equivalent to their lives and that, without it, only death remained.
Fortunately, the world is not so poor and barren as to be encapsulated by victory and defeat. Thus, when the killing and fighting end, the proponents of this narrative are struck by major surprises: the results, with their figures, facts, and signed documents, end up very different from what they had expected or claimed to expect, and reality - with its fluidity, complications, and many sides - begins to take revenge by going beyond them and isolating them, not necessarily as individuals and parties, but as ideas that tried to oversimplify and impoverish it. Those who possess nothing but arms and take pride in them will put them aside as the cycle of life, in all its richness, actions, and initiatives, goes on.
It seems that the scandal of this vision of victory is that it has been coupled with actions that genuine victors do not take: showing agitation, lashing out with insults and defamation, mourning the universe, and cursing life itself. Everything gushing at us from the shores of the Resistance Axis speaks to the overwhelming mediocrity that continues to trample over us, as the corrupt and corruptors, agents working for the enemy, and the weak and faint-hearted will control every nook and cranny on the face of the earth from now on.
One might say that victory and defeat should be evident, that proving them should not require all this effort. However, the question is not so simple when defeat is felt this deeply and the desire for victory is this strong. Israel, criminal and inclined to savagery as it may be, certainly deserves our hatred. However, that does not warrant granting ourselves the right to impoverish ourselves and destroy every shred of our credibility, becoming hollow beings that see the universe as a place with nothing but victory and defeat, while it reaps the former and leaves us the latter.
