IDF commander says Israel is 'too merciful' to Hezbollah, stresses jihadist group still a threat

IDF Col. Avi (Avraham) Marciano, the outgoing commander of the 769th Hiram Brigade stationed on the Lebanon border, says he is “ashamed” that Israel allowed Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist militia, to grow into a significant military threat to the Jewish state prior to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

“I hope that a decade from now, when someone tells the story of the awful and unimaginable reality we faced here, they’ll point to this place as a reminder of what we must never allow to happen again. The next war will certainly look different – we don’t know who we’ll face or how the enemy will challenge us – but it’s critical to understand the enemy, his determination, and his way of thinking," Marciano said.

After Israel severely degraded Hezbollah’s military capabilities and decapitated its leadership in late 2024, the jihadist group agreed to a ceasefire that technically remains in place.

However, the 38-year-old IDF commander, who lives with his wife Dovrat and their four children in a small community in northern Israel, warns that Hezbollah still poses a serious threat.

“We were an armed team set out to capture the terror operatives, but before we got to them, they managed to drop their weapons and escape. That was the moment it hit me – if they feel comfortable enough to sit on a balcony, smoking a hookah the day after a ceasefire begins, we cannot afford to pause," Marciano said.

"I realized that if the enemy felt so secure in Markaba, it meant we hadn’t finished the war properly. We had to deepen the achievement and destroy their capabilities," he added.

Looking back, the outgoing IDF brigade commander praised the IDF’s successful military counteroffensive, which stopped Hezbollah’s plans to invade northern Israel and massacre Israeli civilians. 

"Hezbollah’s invasion plan into Israel has been dismantled. That’s the major achievement,” Marciano assessed. “But we could have done more."

He believes that Israel has been “too merciful” to Hezbollah, given its genocidal intentions towards the Jewish people and its desire to wipe Israel off the map. 

“We should create a collective memory within Hezbollah which would lead them to relinquish the very idea of eliminating the State of Israel,” he argued. “Hezbollah should have a collective memory of the next hundred years, which will show them what the price they will pay if they plan to carry out an ‘October 7’ against Israel,” he warned.

Hezbollah, which is Iran’s main terrorist proxy, was widely considered one of the world’s most powerful non-state actors prior to the Oct. 7 war. The Hamas invasion and massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 251 people in southern Israel were modelled on Hezbollah’s own invasion and massacre plans for northern Israel.

Due to a lack of coordination between Hamas and Hezbollah during the Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli military succeeded in preventing a much larger Hezbollah invasion in the north, which would have likely resulted in a far larger number of fatalities.

Israel has been under intense U.S. and international pressure to end all the conflicts that were unleashed on its borders since October 2023. However, the IDF commander warned against short-sighted solutions, which ignore the continued threat to Israel’s security. 

“If you want a long-term result, which will leave a mark on the enemy’s consciousness, the war will have to be long. There’s no other way to achieve that," Marciano assessed. While stressing that Israelis seek peace, he argues there is currently no peace partner across the border. 

"We are a nation that needs to embrace struggle, not because we don’t love peace, but because there’s no one on the other side to talk to."

Marciano draws a parallel between Hezbollah’s ideology and that of the Nazi Third Reich.

“Would we tolerate seeing the Third Reich flag of the Nazi army in front of our eyes, dismissing it as ‘just a flag’? There's no doubt who put it up; It was not the Lebanese army but Hezbollah. And if they put it there, it means they’re still here. As long as Hezbollah is not reduced to a social-political movement, but an armed group committed to our destruction, and as long as its flag still features a weapon, they should not be allowed to return here. Not even with just a flag. The psychological war is no less critical than the physical one,” he explained. 

Looking ahead, he vowed that Israel would not permit Hezbollah to become the threat it was prior to the Oct. 7 attack. 

“We will not let them reestablish themselves here like before. That won’t happen,” he stated. 

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Iranian ayatollah regime has stepped up its efforts to rebuild Hezbollah and other regional terrorist proxies, which have been severely degraded after 22 months of war with Israel.