US Will Help Israel Defend Itself Against Hezbollah, Pentagon Chief Says
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Monday (July 30) that the US will help Israel to defend itself against the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon should the increasingly deadly cross-border attacks develop into all-out war, the Jerusalem Post reports.
Claiming solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the jihadist Hezbollah group has launched thousands of rockets at northern Israeli towns from its base in southern Lebanon since the Oct.7 Hamas attack on Israel. In the deadliest Hezbollah attack so far, 12 Druze-Israeli children were killed when a missile struck a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights on Sunday (28 July).
This Majdal Shams massacre prompted Israel to retaliate by targeting and killing Fuad Shukr, the top Hezbollah military commander who orchestrated the attack, in Beirut on Monday.
The escalation has diplomats around the world scrambling to prevent a new full-blown war in the Middle East.
“We remain concerned about the potential of this escalating into a full fight. And I don’t believe that a fight is inevitable,” Austin said in a statement. “I think that you know, we’d like to see things resolved in a diplomatic fashion.Israel will do what it needs to defend itself. And it’s demonstrated that you know, time and again. Certainly that’s not a scenario that we’d like to see occur.”
“If Israel is attacked…we will help Israel defend itself. We’ve been clear about that from the very beginning, but again, we don’t want to see that happen,” Austin stated.
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