The Bounty on Aqil

Before Vice President Harris and the Democrats start wringing their hands over the strike in which Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed, let them meditate on why he went to his reward at the Dahiyeh district of Beirut. Israel Defense Forces reports that Aqil and other commanders felled in the same strike “were those who devised plans to capture the Galilee, as Hamas did on October 7.” Aqil also had no shortage of American blood on his hands.So grave were Aqil’s crimes against America that the Department of State had a $7 million bounty on his head for leadership in the organization that “claimed the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983 that killed 63 people.” Our Benny Avni reports that Aqil was poised to accede to the second position in Hezbollah, behind only Hassan Nasrallah. There was a vacancy after Fuad Shukr was slain by the IDF earlier this summer.Shukr carried a $5 million price tag for his role in a related atrocity, the Beirut Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 American servicemen. Israel would presumably be entitled to collect a total of $12 million, possessed as it was of information that led to both Shukr and Aqil. The latter’s demise comes the same week as pagers detonated across Lebanon in one of the most astounding intelligence operations since Troy.Secretary Blinken’s urging this week of “all sides” to avoid escalation, notwithstanding that there could be no clearer illustration of the convergent causes of Israel and American than the pursuit of Shukr and Aqil — both wanted by Washington and found by Jerusalem. The conditions placed by President Biden and Ms. Harris on Israel’s waging of its wars redound against America. Restraint would not have delivered justice to Aqil.What could Israel do with that $12 million? Some could be doled out to its intelligence agents, whose successes mount by the day. Or to the families of Majdal Shams. That is the Druze village where 12 children, playing soccer, were killed by a rocket launched by Hezbollah. Or to the rebuilding of Galilee towns devastated by Hezbollah’s rocket attacks since October 8. Not to exclude the families of the Americans that Aqil and his henchmen murdered.We understand that no bounty would be able to eliminate or compensate for the losses our enemies wreaked. It is now one of Israel’s war aims to return to their homes the more than 60,000 citizens displaced from its northern frontier. The strike on Aqil and his fellow commanders signals commitment to that goal. It could be that Israel’s urgency owes to its own political deadline — the American election day of November 5.

The Bounty on Aqil

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