The Battle of Maroun El-Rass

Hizbullah has twice inflicted an ignominious defeat upon Israel, twice it has done what no other Arab army has done humiliated Israel. On the first occasion, it took 18 years of occupation before Israel was forced to surrender its position in South Lebanon, this time it took just 34 days.

The Hariri gang, the Lebanese Army and the United Nations sat idly by and impotently watched the Zionist war machine try to obliterate the Lebanon from the air, with the active support of the United States and Britain, only Hizbullah stood in the way. It was Hizbullah - labelled a "terrorist" organisation by the United States and Israel - that defeated a Zionist force of over 30,000.

The fiercest fighting took place at Maroun El-Rass. In a battle to rival the Battle of Thermopylae, where the vastly outnumbered Spartan army under King Leonidas fought to the last and held back the Persian army for seven days in 480 BC. What would Herodotus of made of Maroun El-Rass?

Eighteen Hizbullah fighters confronted an Israeli army armoured battalion and a battalion paratroopers. They were asked to hold the town for 48 hours. They held it for four days, repelling assault after assault, three fell with two missing presumed dead.

In the first engagement, three Merkava type tanks were destroyed and four Zionist were killed. Despite four days of relentless assault, when the fighting was as close as two meters, the Zionist paratroopers could not take Maroun El-Rass and the Israeli Northern Forces Command was unable to withdraw their tanks.

Israeli unable to take Maroun El-Rass adopted a scorched-earth policy with a relentless barrage of artillery and aerial bombardment. Yet still Hizbullah were able to hold Maroun El-Rass for four days. On orders they retreated, when they were ordered to retreat.

The Israeli Central Command decided to move responsibility of the operation directly to the Central Command. They again advanced into Maroun El-Rass, this time sending in a fleet of F16 and a fleet of Apachies to support their ground forces. They entered Maroun El-Rass taking the hilltops, were they were driven out by a replenished Hizbullah force. The Battle of Maroun El-Rass lasted three weeks before the Zionist invasion force retreated, unable to take the town.

So what of Maroun El-Rass, the town the IDF calls hell?

It is little more than rubble, the Zionist laid waste to the town but still they could not take it. Maroun El-Rass epitomises the war, Israel pounded built up areas targeted civillians and Lebanon infrastructure but where unable to defeat Hizbullah in the battlefield. The destruction of Lebanese cities, schools and hospitals was in vain; it achieved nothing save to demonstrate that Zionism is a nihilistic cult that is void of humanity.