The Party of God can claim with some justice that it is the only Arab outfit to have dealt Israel a genuine military defeat. However, it is worth emphasizing that with their struggle to "liberate Jerusalem" Hezbollah is essentially exploiting generalized anti-Israel animus in order to disguise its patently Shia roots. For over fifty years it is the Sunnis who have led the charge against Israel, and now Hezbollah has picked up the banner of Arab nationalism and effectively out-Sunni'd the Sunnis. That is to say, Hezbollah's current trajectory can only be understood in the context of the region's Sunni-Shia issues.

Make no mistake, as Nasrallah's gloating over Israeli corpses proves, Hezbollah takes real joy in killing Jews. However, the organization's deepest fear is not of the Zionist state founded in 1948, but of the Sunni sea that has engulfed the Shia for 1400 years. Remember that shortly before he was killed in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi accused Hezbollah of collaborating with the Zionists and protecting Israel from the "real" resistance - i.e., the Sunni resistance.

In a letter captured by US forces in the spring of 2005 Al-Qaeda lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahiri chastised Zarqawi for his anti-Shia campaign, fearing that their supporters around the region would neither understand not approve of killing fellow Muslims. As it turned out, Zawhiri had misunderstood the depths of sectarian loathing in the region, for mainstream Sunnis all over the Arab world cheered on Zarqawi's relentless bomb attacks on Shiite marketplaces and mosques. And when Sunni Arabs or Pakistanis either in the region or in countries like Britain demonstrate against the killing of "Muslims" they are certainly not referring to the deaths of Shiite heretics but members of the formerly hegemonic Sunni minority.