Hizbullah as a Terrorist Group - What Does the EU Not Understand?
Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, whose country heads the 26-member EU presidency, said there is “no consensus among the EU member states for putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list of the organization,” and claimed there is “no tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism.” Jerusalem Post 29 July '12
Hizbullah, the name of a military, political, and security organization in Lebanon, is now running world public opinion.
Hizbullah terror threatens Lebanese interests, regionally and internationally. Their expansion of terror has translated into activity in the international arena as well; even though they have been active in committing acts of terror within Lebanese borders for a much longer term.
In recent years, with the advent of the internet and other media outlets, they have been able to expand and influence world politics.
The Hizbullah organization was created in Lebanon, while it receives orders and instructions from Syria and Iran as a means for Khameini to export his ideas abroad and to extend Iranian influence. Khameini chose Lebanon owing to the large Shiite presence coupled with the lack of a strong state military, and a lack of security and stability in Lebanon during the civil war.
This all aided to facilitate a sphere of society within Lebanon sympathetic to and one which would adopt Khameini’s doctrine. This was important to the Ayatollah because he was able to extend his hand far beyond the Iranian borders and allow terror to reach into other societies.
As a result of Iranian and Syrian support for Hizbullah, they were able to increase their influence in many areas in Lebanon, eventually achieving the complete domination of the Lebanese government as well as the Lebanese security forces, which in turn affects all aspects of life in Lebanon.
This far reaching control permeates all sectors of society including the power of authorizing or denying of licensing private publishing houses and all forms of media, which of course has the residual effect of censoring all literature and schoolbooks. A group that attempts to control and censor information is indeed dangerous.
The United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Israel classify Hizbullah in whole or in part as a terrorist organization, but not the EU.
Recently there has been an emergence of many who are calling for international rejection of Hizbullah, and the need to have them classified as a terrorist organization. It was striking how The European Union turned down a recent request by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to blacklist Hizbullah as a terrorist group!
The whole world must know that the classification of Hizbullah as a terrorist organization is not only an Israeli demand, albeit a legitimate one from the Israeli state, it is also a demand of many Lebanese who have fallen victim to Hizbullah terrorism, as well as the Syrian victims of Hizbullah's terror today through their participation in the Syrian regime’s killing of Syrian protestors against the Assad regime.
There have been numerous terrorist acts carried out by Hizbullah, and I will mention a few:
In 1982, Hizbullah held three operations: the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983 and which resulted in killing 63 Americans, and the bombing of the headquarters of U.S. Marines in Beirut, the killing 241 Americans, and the bombing of a camp of French soldiers in the Bekaa Valley, which killed 58 French.
And there were those who were involved in a failed attempt to assassinate the late Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah in 1983 as he left the palace and made way to Kuwait City. This was one of the major acts of international terrorism.
There was the TWA Flight 847, an international Trans World Airlines flight, which was hijacked by members of Hizbullah, on Friday morning, June 14, 1985, after originally taking off from Cairo. The flight was en route from Athens to Rome and then scheduled to terminate in London. The passengers and crew endured a three-day intercontinental ordeal. Some passengers were threatened and some beaten. Passengers with Jewish-sounding names were set apart from the others, and U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem was tortured and murdered. His body was thrown onto the tarmac.
Hassan Nasrallah in 1985, said: “Our project [demands] that we have no choice but to adopt other faithful ideologues; [it] is a project of the Islamic state and the rule of Islam, and that Lebanon is not one Islamic republic but part of the major Islamic Republic ruled by the [Iranian] religious leader ".
He also stated in his speech: "We are talking about an Islamic state. We will not forgive the Christians [ nor allow them] to hold [any] region in the Eastern Provinces [such as] Jubail and Keserouan because these regions were Muslim and the invaders were Christians who came to here [and] who were brought by the Byzantine Empire to be a thorn in the side of the nation".
Here lies the danger, in this thought planted by Hizbullah in the minds of the Lebanese Shiites to make them think that their compatriots are Christian invaders, throwing out the historical fact that many Christians preceded Muslims in Lebanon and certainly so the integration of Shiites in Christian Lebanese villages.
Slain Hizbullah commander Emad Mughnieh was behind the hijacking of a Kuwait Airways flight in 1988 and the death of two of its Kuwaiti passengers, according to Kuwait's interior minister.
There have also been many assassinations carried out by Hizbullah against the Lebanese intellectuals, the only reason being their intellectual opinions, as if there is a desire not to have any voice of opposition. The great thinker and prolific writer Suhail Tawileh was assassinated in 1986, after he was kidnapped from his home next to the Iranian Embassy in Beirut.
The intellectual writer Dr. Hussein Mourouwe had his appointment with the obscurantist ideologies on 17 February of the following year in his home, where his pen was silenced with bullets from a gun equipped with a silencer; so he never attained eighty-years of age.
Insofar as the Mahdi Aamel (Hassan Hamdan), who held a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Sorbonne, he met baseball bats in the darkness on 18 May 1987, which succeeded in assassinating him in cold blood on his way to his university lectures in Beirut.
Then, let us move forward to January 15th, 1992 (after the Lebanese war) when these terrorists assassinated Lebanese thinker and writer Mostafa Geha, my father.
The attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was a suicide-bombing attack on the building of the Israeli embassy in Argentina located in Buenos Aires which was carried out on the 17th of March, 1992. Twenty-nine (29) civilians were killed in the attack and 242 additional civilians were injured.
The AMIA bombing was an attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA; Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) building. It occurred in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, it killed 85 people and injured hundreds.
On October 7, 2000, three Israeli soldiers – Adi Avitan, Staff Sgt. Benyamin Avraham, and Staff Sgt. Omar Sawaidwere – were abducted by Hizbullah while patrolling the Israeli side of the Israeli-Lebanese border. The soldiers were killed either during the attack or in its immediate aftermath.
On the 14th of February 2005, the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri occurred. Hizbullah was implicated by the International Tribunal in charge of looking into the assassination. Hizbullah's involvement in the assassination of Hariri, in coordination with some of the leaders of the Syrian army, has been made clear.
It yielded the court the names of four leaders belonging to Hizbullah, who, allegedly, were the plotters of the assassination: Mustafa Badr al-Din, Salim Ayach, Asad Sabra and Hussein Noaisi.
Hizbullah’s attack on Israel caused a war of aggression in 2006 ,claiming the lives of many victims and resulting in huge material losses in Lebanon and Israel.
On May 7, 2008 Lebanon was on the verge of a new civil war when Hizbullah and other pro-Syrian militias entered west Beirut and wreaked havoc. In the following days, Hizbullah and the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) went on a rampage in Aley and the Chouf.
Another Lebanese-Swedish man has been accused of plotting attacks against Israeli targets. In January 2012, Thai authorities arrested Hussein Idris, a Lebanese- Swedish national, together with another Lebanese man on suspicion that they were plotting a series of bomb attacks against Israeli targets in Bangkok.
This planned attack against Israeli tourists in Cyprus appears to have been preempted by the arrest of this Lebanese man who had been tracking Israelis on the island.
Regarding the July 18th, 2012 bombing in Burgos, Bulgaria, American officials confirmed Israel's assertions that the suicide bomber who killed five Israelis on a tour bus was a member of a Hizbullah cell.
Hizbullah terrorism and intimidation pose a huge threat to Lebanese society through the group's control of the security network, where false accusations and charges can be levied against those who oppose the fabrication of files putting them in prisons or worse - for example, Shiite cleric Mohammed Ali Al-Husseini, and Sheikh Hassan Mouchaymech.
The list goes on and on Hizbullah’s terrorism in Lebanon, terrorism against Israel and terrorism against the Syrian people, as well as sponsorship of drug cultivation, manufacturing, trafficking, and money-laundering operations carried out by the organization, is well-documented.
Terrorism and its support for organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the export of terrorism requires that the international community as a whole, unite to fight Hizbullah, an act which will reflect better on Lebanon, Israel and the whole world.
The fight against this terrorism is the duty of moral individuals and humanitarians. It is a demand of the people who want to live in peace with each other and who wish to benefit from freedom, this being a human right that everyone deserves.
Special thanks to IsraelNationalNews.com for editing Mostafa's original article.
The writer, political activist, journalist and publisher survived a Hizbullah assassination attempt on 14 April 2012. The son of the Lebanese author, Mostafa Geha who was assassinated by Hizbullah in 1992. Mostafa Geha has co-founded the Lebanon Israel Peace Project with Israelis.
http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/2012/08/hizbullah-as-terrorist-group-what-does.html
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