With Israel’s September 27 assassination of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s voice has been subdued. But it has not, unfortunately, been entirely silenced. The mantle of Hezbollah’s spokesman is a heavy one to take up, made all the more difficult by Israel’s continued elimination of the group’s top leadership cadre. For now, however, Hezbollah seems to have settled on Nasrallah’s deputy, the soft-spoken philosopher-idealogue Naim Qassem. An intellectual, Qassem lacks any of the charisma or presence around which Nasrallah’s hold over Hezbollah’s flock and cult of personality were built – and therefore his ability to inspire and rouse the base remains in question. But for lack of any other options, he now appears to be Hezbollah’s placeholder voice. Read more →