BEYOND THE DROPZONE

Hezbollah is a terrorist group, not an “opposition” force

Posted by W. Thomas Smith Jr. on 12 May 2008 at 1:14 am UTC

Hezbollah – an Iranian-funded Lebanon-based army of mass murderers (designated foreign terrorists by the U.S. government) – has been christened “the opposition” by several Western press organizations. And supporters of freedom and democracy in Lebanon want to know why.

“As we continue to witness the unfolding of events in Lebanon, I wonder why we are seeing and reading news stories infused with this new unsettling reference of the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis as nothing more than ‘an opposition force,’” says John Hajjar, U.S. director for the World Council of the Cedars Revolution. “Why can’t they be referred to by their proper and less-ambiguous nomenclature? They are terrorists, officially, and nothing more.”

Indeed, the so-called “opposition” – which includes Hezbollah (literally a terrorist army with a vast array of heavy weapons), members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Syrian intelligence and paramilitary operatives in Lebanon – are officially designated terrorists: As if anyone, who knows the extraordinarily dark history of these groups needs an official designation anyway.

The U.S. State Department has designated Hezbollah a “foreign terrorist organization,” and Iran and Syria as “state sponsors of terrorism.” And Treasury has designated Iran’s IRGC as a “supporter of terrorists.”

Interestingly, Al Jazeera (AJZ) – which almost always refers to Hezbollah either by its primary name or its militant-wing title, “Islamic Resistance” – has taken a deliberate approach in its recent reference of Hezbollah as an “opposition” force. It’s fairly obvious that AJZ is attempting to eradicate any negative “labeling” connotation surrounding Hezbollah; and – according to our media and counterterrorism sources – AJZ is doing so to appease sympathizers in the Arab world as Hezbollah continues to attack civilians in Lebanon. (Actually the entire Hezbollah organization is “militant,” similar to the Taliban in Afghanistan, but we’ll save that for another piece.)

Funded by the oil industry of the Qatari regime, AJZ wants to protect – and perhaps enhance – Hezbollah’s legitimacy and credibility in the Arab world. Hezbollah is occupying and brutalizing those within the Sunni and Druze communities in Lebanon. This could have a backlash in the Arab world, particularly among the Sunni populations. Hence, a softer book-cover was deemed necessary.

None of this is really new in terms of Hezbollah’s and its sympathizers’ now-legendary media manipulation efforts. According to sources within the pro-democracy movement in Lebanon:

“We indicated months ago a massive Iranian propaganda effort was able to target major Western media outlets starting with their correspondents in Beirut [those correspondents were either threatened or bought with Iranian money]. We were warning about it in November. Now it is simply happening.”

George Chaya, director of the Lebanese Information Center in Argentina, which monitors Middle East Terrorism, has previously said:

“Hezbollah’s propagandists have been able to win the battle of information worldwide. They were able to influence newsrooms around the world and impose their lexicon. Readers from Berlin to Santiago de Chile think it is a classical confrontation between an opposition movement and a government. In reality it is a terrorist organization devouring a democracy.”

Nevertheless, the Associated Press, CNN, Agence France Presse, the U.S.-sponsored Al Hurra network, and other news organizations have increasingly seen fit to use a label which – wittingly or not – soft-soaps one of the world’s most notorious terrorist groups, Hezbollah (which up until the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization in the world); and the label attempts to “clean the faces,” as my Lebanese friends like to say, of rogue states like Iran and Syria.   

The Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis, as terrorism-expert Dr. Walid Phares often refers to it, is not simply an “opposition” movement. It is an international terrorist force.

And it is trying to cut the heart out of Lebanon.

— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.

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