‘My’ Terrorist

I wasn’t born in Israel, but since I arrived, Nasrallah became “my” terrorist. We all end up with a face of fear. His was in every rocket, every siren slicing through the night’s stillness. For Americans, it was Bin Laden. For me, here in the north, it was Nasrallah. He wasn’t a distant shadow; he sent messages through explosions, casual reminders that we were all within reach. Terror doesn’t respect distance.

What happened in the south on October 7th, with Hamas attacking civilians and bases, shook the world. But what followed, starting on October 8th, changed the lives of more than 60,000 people in the north. Rockets fired from Hezbollah forced families to flee their homes, leaving them in limbo. We’re used to running for cover, but this time it was different. Entire villages were emptied, and lives were put on hold. And every time a rocket flew overhead, I thought: one day, it will be here. It wasn’t just imagination anymore. It was real, and it could happen again at any moment.

Nasrallah wasn’t just a name. He was a monster, the kind that turns terror into a craft, scattering deaths like a gambler throwing cards on a table. Hezbollah, under his command, made violence a trademark. Buenos Aires, Beirut, Burgas—each place was a canvas, and every attack was a signature. He wasn’t content with killing. He wanted fear to leave a scar in history. And he succeeded. Fear was his masterpiece.

Now he’s dead. And what should I feel? Relief? Maybe. But instead, there was an emptiness, as if the air had thickened. His death doesn’t undo what he did. The sirens still ring, and the terror he planted still grows in our minds. Dead or alive, his shadow remains, and we carry the weight of what he left behind.

Even monsters die. In the end, they crumble like everyone else. Nasrallah thought he could outlast time through fear. He believed history would remember him, but history has a way of sweeping away tyrants. His fate was oblivion, like all the others. And here we are, left with scars that will take a lifetime to forget.

Should I celebrate? I smiled briefly when I heard he was dead. But it was a fleeting satisfaction, one that vanished quickly. His death doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t heal wounds, doesn’t bring back those we lost. In the end, death is just a period at the end of a long, bloody sentence. And we’re the ones left to deal with the mess.

Here, we live, always waiting for the next disaster. Not because we want it but because we’ve learned to expect it. When terror arrives, we shrug and say: I knew. Maybe that’s the cruelest part—the certainty that fear is always on time. But we go on. We plant trees, raise children, and dream of peace because life insists. It finds cracks to grow in, even between the ruins.

I look at the northern mountains. They’re still there, unmoved. They know time passes for everyone, even monsters. Maybe that’s the lesson: terror passes, too. And what we do while fear lingers is what truly matters.

I don’t miss Nasrallah. He was long overdue. If the Qur’an is right, those who kill without remorse will face the fires of Jahannam. Let him burn. Meanwhile, we live on because here, between the sirens and the wreckage, life, stubborn as ever, continues to bloom.