If there were any doubt as to just how toxic sectarian politics has become in the Middle East, the latest statement from the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah should clear things right up.
Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of a group that has been fighting Israel for decades, declared on Tuesday that “Wahhabism is more evil than Israel,” Lebanon’s Al Akhbar newspaper reported.
Wahhabism is the ultra-fundamentalist strain of Sunni Islam that Saudi Arabia’s government promotes and that strongly influences the ideology of Sunni jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.
In other words, things have gotten so bad that Hezbollah, Israel’s mortal enemy, now considers Wahhabis — that is, fellow Muslims — to be worse than Israel. Bear in mind, this is coming from the same man who has described Israel as “a cancerous entity and the root of all the crises and wars” and pledged that Israel’s destiny “is manifested in our motto: ‘Death to Israel.’”
