Naim Qassem appeared this Sunday in his familiar, grating manner – stern, sermonizing, and entirely predictable. The tone was defiant, the vocabulary recycled, the certainties absolute. Yet for all its length and theatrical confidence, the speech was as hollow as Hezbollah’s long-claimed commitment to “protecting Lebanon.” What was presented as reassurance sounded instead like repetition without substance, conviction without credibility, and certainty divorced from reality.

The timing could not be worse – or more revealing. With Netanyahu meeting Trump in Washington amid debates over Gaza’s next phase and the Lebanese front, Qassem’s sermon provides Israel with ready-made justification for escalation.

He is effectively telling the world that Lebanon is not a state with a national defense policy, but an arena governed by a parallel military structure. That is precisely the narrative Israeli officials use to argue that any strike in Lebanon is “self-defense” against Iran’s regional axis – and Qassem, knowingly or not, is reinforcing it.

Qassem likes to invoke the image of Lebanon as “one ship” – a single vessel facing a single storm, where everyone must row in unison or drown together. It is a seductive metaphor, borrowing the language of unity at a moment when Lebanon is exhausted, frightened, and desperate for something resembling safety.

But Qassem’s ship is not a ship. It is a hostage craft.

If Lebanon truly were “one ship,” then the first principle of survival would be shared rules: one captain, one navigation chart, one chain of command, one set of responsibilities and consequences. A real ship does not tolerate a parallel bridge, an independent weapons cache, and a crew that can launch “failed” adventures at sea without informing the rest of the passengers. A ship escapes storms through discipline, not improvisation. Through law, not slogans. Through accountability, not sacralized immunity.

Hezbollah has never behaved like a sailor invested in bringing Lebanon safely to shore. It has behaved like a pirate fleet – boarding the state when useful, ignoring it when inconvenient, and punishing anyone who questions the terms of captivity. In Qassem’s telling, the weapons remain a national necessity because America and Israel allegedly plot endlessly to dominate Lebanon. Yet the closer one listens, the clearer it becomes that the primary function of this narrative is not confronting Israel, but managing Lebanon – keeping the country permanently inside a state of exception where institutions are distrusted, sovereignty is postponed, and paralysis is sold as patriotism.

Qassem frames Lebanon’s predicament as a forced choice: either accept US-Israeli “guardianship” through disarmament, or cling to “resistance” as the only guarantee of dignity and deterrence. This binary is designed to corner the Lebanese public. It collapses every debate into a loyalty test, where any demand for a normal state becomes collaboration, and any insistence on monopoly of force becomes betrayal.

The problem is not only that the argument is politically coercive. It is logically hollow.

The real question facing Lebanon is not whether it should defend itself against Israel – Lebanon has a clear interest in protecting its territory and civilians – but who gets to decide the terms of war, the limits of escalation, and the price paid by society. Resistance, in any meaningful sense, must be a national strategy governed by the state, not a private franchise licensed by ideology and shielded from accountability.

Here lies the central contradiction of Qassem’s speech: he speaks the language of sovereignty while denying its basic requirements. Sovereignty is not an emotion or a chant. It is an institutional order. It means the state holds authority over arms, borders, and decisions of war and peace. It means the army is empowered, not treated as a convenient prop. It means citizens are not asked to subsidize an armed “exception” while their economy collapses, their judiciary is obstructed, and their political life is frozen.

In Qassem’s narrative, the Lebanese state is either too weak or too compromised to protect Lebanon – therefore Hezbollah must retain its weapons. But the state is weak precisely because Hezbollah has spent decades preventing it from becoming strong. This is the circular logic of the militia: weaken the state, then cite its weakness as justification for remaining above it.

Notice, too, how the conflict itself is handled. Israel remains the rhetorical horizon – the ever-present villain that sanctifies Hezbollah’s posture. Yet the conflict is repeatedly relocated inward: toward Lebanese institutions, toward critics demanding accountability, toward citizens insisting on sovereignty. The “resistance” increasingly operates not at the border, but inside the political system.

This is why the label has lost its meaning. Hezbollah may call itself whatever it wishes – resistance, deterrence, dignity – but language cannot erase lived reality. When a movement claims to defend a country while insisting that the country cannot govern itself, it is not defending sovereignty. It is suspending it.

The pirate analogy is not rhetorical flourish; it is descriptive.

Pirates do not build ports; they extract tribute from them. They do not repair ships; they commandeer them. They do not obey navigation laws; they exploit storms as cover. And they do not share risk equally – they impose danger while reserving for themselves the right to decide when others must pay the price.

Lebanon has seen this pattern long enough to recognize it. Across the region – in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – the Iranian axis does not behave like a coalition invested in stable states capable of weathering storms. It thrives on permanent turbulence, because turbulence creates dependency, and dependency creates control. “Resistance” becomes a business model, not a defense doctrine: an endless justification for arms, an endless mechanism for mobilization, and an endless escape from responsibility.

Qassem insists Lebanon is one ship. But what Hezbollah has offered is not a ship with a destination – it is a raft tied to regional battles, dragged by currents the Lebanese people did not choose. A country does not survive storms by declaring itself holy. It survives by governing itself.

Sailors want to reach shore. Pirates need the sea lawless. And Lebanon cannot be saved by those who require the storm to stay in power.