Dear Hezbollah

I am driving north on Road 90. To my right, the Golan Heights tower over fields of wheat and orange groves: golden, fertile, alive. Straight ahead and on my left, the border with Lebanon. And war.

To the right: peace. To the left: war. To the right a world where it is hard to imagine anything other than tranquillity. To the left an ideology intent on violence and conquest at any price.

Today, eight IDF soldiers were attacked with a drone: one killed, two critically injured. And in Lebanon, no doubt, countless more dead and maimed as Israel continues its campaign to restore security in the north of Israel, lost since the 7 October 2023.

So, Hezbollah, what exactly is this for? We have been fighting this futile war of attrition for decades. We captured Beaufort Castle in 1982, forty-four years ago and here we are in 2026, having just taken it again. Forty years ago, we fought you on this same blood-soaked earth. And here we are again, fighting the same demonic ideology on the same hills, along the same rivers, in the same villages that were already ruins the last time we withdrew from Lebanon.

Lebanese fathers and Israeli fathers fought each other then. Now their sons are being sent to kill each other in the same senseless war.
Nothing has changed. Nothing at all.

It’s really so simple, Hezbollah. Just look over the border. Look at what we have built here: fields of thriving agriculture stretching to the horizon; towns where children play, learn and laugh; industry and enterprise and creativity everywhere you look. Life in every form, being lived with energy and purpose, joy and love.

I understand that glimpsing into the world that lies on the other side of the wall must be terrifying, because by looking over that wall you confront your worst fears: a world where hard work, creativity and human ingenuity have achieved what your primitive and backward ideology cannot. While we have invested every ounce of our energy in building, you have invested yours in destroying. While we have cultivated life, you have cultivated hatred.
That contrast must be both infuriating and deeply confronting. You reach for the usual explanations, of course: the Jewish lobby, Jews controlling the world, conspiracies and antisemitic fantasies centuries old. These stories are comfortable for you. They explain away the gaping chasm between what we have achieved, and what you haven’t.

But the truth is far simpler and far sadder than any conspiracy. A culture that dedicates itself to destruction cannot build. A people whose highest purpose is the annihilation of their neighbour cannot create. You have taken the extraordinary human capacity for energy, passion and determination and pointed it entirely in the wrong direction. What a waste. What a tragic, catastrophic waste. How primitive. How utterly, heartbreakingly pathetic
We know you want us gone, Hezbollah. Your ideology demands it. Your slave-masters in Tehran insist on it. We understand all of that. But I want to ask you something honestly and simply: Why can’t you find the courage to simply look over that border wall and contemplate that the same beauty could be yours. That wealth, that creativity, that life, you too could have. With determination and hard work, you could build that. Like a failed startup, you could “pivot”. Right now. Today.

It is not complicated. It is not even difficult to imagine. On one side of that wall: life, prosperity, children growing up without the sounds of rockets, fearless and safe, sons who come home unharmed, houses built without bomb shelters. On the other side: an ideology that has given you nothing, nothing except decades of war, grief, poverty and funerals.

So, as I head back south, down Road 90, out of range of your missiles and drones, I wonder whether my children will one day be able to look over the border wall to Lebanon and see the same immense beauty I can see to my left, as the sun sets over the orange orchards and the fields of wheat.

Anna Pasternak is the director of The AJN.