"European Governments Must Move Now To Stigmatise Hezbollah & Its Activities, Vision & Goals"

It sure gets around: the Hezbollah flag on display in Sydney

The Times of London's sister newspaper, the Sunday Times, bungled badly when it carried, on Holocaust Memorial Day of all days, an ill-conceived anti-Netanyahu cartoon by Gerald Scarfe that's been widely compared to a blood libel.  But the centre-right Murdoch press is at core soundly pro-Israel, and yesterday's Times carried a robust op-ed by two of Europe's most prominent political figures, José Maria Aznar and David (Lord) Trimble.

Both founders of the splendid Friends of Israel initiative, the Spanish former prime minister and the Northern Irish former first minister caution against the perception that Hezbollah's activities and influence are confined to Lebanon or that its political and military wings are separate from one another.

They deplore the unwillingness of some European Union member-governments to consider Hezbollah a terrorist organisation:

 'Jihadi terrorism is still alive and, as events in Mali and Algeria show us, poses a direct threat to us. The turmoil in North Africa reminds us that jihadism has no boundaries and that when confronting terrorism it is always better to prevent it rather than deal with its consequences....

[S]ome European governments are not willing to declare Hezbollah a security threat and put it on the EU terrorist list. This refusal is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the group. Hezbollah is not just a Lebanese militia group and political party. It is the long arm of Iran. From its conception by Tehran in 1982, it has been committed to the revolutionary goals of the international expansion of Shia Islam, as dreamt of by the Ayatollah Khomeini....

[H]ezbollah has a global vision and reach. It has perpetrated attacks in places as distant as Argentina, Georgia, Israel, Thailand, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, as well as Lebanon....

Hezbollah is committed to violent revolution. It sees itself as being in total confrontation with our way of life. The idea that engaging Hezbollah through the Lebanese political process and institutions would moderate it has proved to be a dangerous illusion. And today it is actively intervening in Syria on behalf of Bashar Assad; we will know soon about the atrocities conducted by its militants there....

 According to Israeli intelligence, Hezbollah’s arsenal of 10,000 rockets was halved by the war [of 2006]; but today it has been expanded to five times the original figure despite the UN mission. 

As Iran gets more nervous about the impact of sanctions, the possibility that Tehran may counter-attack through its terrorist proxies has to be considered more serious by the day.... Putting Hezbollah on the terrorist list will diminish its ability to serve the sinister purposes of the ayatollahs in Tehran. ...

Hezbollah is already present and active on European soil; its illegal activities and networks cover the continent. It has shown that it is willing to strike in Europe. That is why European governments must move now to stigmatise Hezbollah and its activities, vision and goals...."

(The Times article is behind a pay wall, but the full text appears here)


Meanwhile, still on the subject of the European Union, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, which is funded by it, the British, Dutch, and Danish governments, and by UNESCO, has been hosting an antisemitic article authored by Sawsan Najib Abd Al-Halim, who says, inter alia:

".... Historically, it is known that the lives of Jews have always been war and fighting. The only reason for this is that they have been outcasts in every corner of the earth, and not one nation in the world respects them, for they cause strife, and scheme everywhere they settle. We know that they have been defeated in every war they have fought throughout history, and they have been dispersed in every direction, but Allah’s curse upon them and his fury at them cause them to continue with their transgression and tyranny....

Psychologically, they have been defeated through the ages and feel inferior to the nations and societies in which they live, because of the hostility and evil rising in their hearts towards others and for their plots and schemes against the nations who know with certainty that the Jews are the root of conflict in the world, wherever they reside....

Therefore, the only way we can deal with them, when we are weak militarily compared to Israel’s power, is to stick to the threat to annihilate Israel, not to submit to its [Israel's] desire for a cease fire, and keep the flame of resistance burning. Rather than [violently] resist and then back off somewhat, whereby we give them the impression that we are afraid of them. There is nothing wrong with our sitting with them to talk, but the resistance must always continue...."

For more on that, click here