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Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Why is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List?
Franklin Lamb
And Who Isn't But Should Be?
It was a sign of the times last week (March 27) when House Armed Services Committee Staff Director Erin Conaton declared in a memo to committee staffers that the powerful committee was scrapping the Bush Administration shop worn phrase, Global War of Terrorism. Conaton's boss, Rep. Ike Skelton,( D-Mo) the new Chairman of the Committee commented that "the overused label had become an embarrassment and had lost its meaning".
Recent research in Lebanon has turned up information previously unavailable which sheds light of the misapplication of the Terrorism label by the Bush administration.
The" T word" is often misapplied as former National Security Advisor Brzezinski reminds us as he tours the country promoting his new book, Second Chance and focusing on the "catastrophic leadership" crisis caused by the Bush administration's foreign policy.
And Who Isn't But Should Be?
It was a sign of the times last week (March 27) when House Armed Services Committee Staff Director Erin Conaton declared in a memo to committee staffers that the powerful committee was scrapping the Bush Administration shop worn phrase, Global War of Terrorism. Conaton's boss, Rep. Ike Skelton,( D-Mo) the new Chairman of the Committee commented that "the overused label had become an embarrassment and had lost its meaning".
Recent research in Lebanon has turned up information previously unavailable which sheds light of the misapplication of the Terrorism label by the Bush administration.
The" T word" is often misapplied as former National Security Advisor Brzezinski reminds us as he tours the country promoting his new book, Second Chance and focusing on the "catastrophic leadership" crisis caused by the Bush administration's foreign policy.
Comments on this journal
- Source: counterpunch.org, 6/4/2007.
"The truth of the matter is that there was something other than Hezbollah, called the Islamic Jihad, who kidnapped the hostages. There exist videocassettes, communiqu?s that bear the signature of the Islamic Jihad. It is independent form the party. It is absolutely incorrect that the Islamic Jihad is a cover name for Hezbollah.
Hezbollah remains on the US and Israel 'terrorism' list for purely political reasons and to punish the organization for its resistance to Israeli aggressions against Lebanon and Bush administration plans for the region."
It is time for the Bush administration to present its case and prove what terrorism Hezbollah has actually used against the American people in the 1980's in light of US government admissions that since 1999 there is no evidence that Hezbollah has engaged in 'Terrorism'.
"In America as you built a resistance to the British invaders and occupiers were all the groups neatly organized? Were some 'terrorists'? Did the ones who did operations such as the Boston Tea Party' give their names and address to the occupiers? Or did some hide their identity and even dress like natives? Did George Washington and his staff know everything that was going on or did some groups just form and decided it was better to work on their own liberation project? That is what it was like here in Lebanon during this period. We should leave that period and concentrate on working together to solve today's problems in Lebanon and the Middle East. All parties talking and meeting"
Organizations such as Islamic Jihad, Organization of the Oppressed on Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization are considered by the Bush administration and Israel to be synonymous with Hezbollah. That grouping appears to be a clumsy and inaccurate conclusion designed to support political objectives. No proof has ever been offered to establish that these groups were part of Hezbollah during this period rather than adversaries or competitors.
The view that the American Embassy was a legitimate target on April 17, 1983 cannot be summarily dismissed without careful review because principles of International law tend to support it. Once an Embassy's is used for aggressive military purposes its protection collapses and it becomes what Donald Rumsfeld calls a "legitimate target of opportunity".
Despite Hezbollah's view, which is based on the Koran's prohibitions against harming innocent civilians, was the 1983 US Embassy attack terrorism against an internationally protected structure or had the Embassy become a legitimate military target?
Given this kind of Bush administration offer, many view Hezbollah's spot on the 'T list' as a badge of honor . Yet, respect for international law would suggest that the Bush Administration ought to show their 'evidence' or remove Hezbollah from the list.
When pressed in early April, 2007 by a former House Judiciary Committee staffer, one lawyer in the State Department Office of the General Counsel commented, "Its not that Hezbollah is terrorist per say, actually we know they are pretty clean-they are ok- but you must realize that they do associate with shady characters to their East, if you know what I mean."
Would the founders of Hezbollah have heard of something on the street, village or family level of who may have been responsible for some of the high profile western kidnapping cases? One assumes so. Did neighborhood gossip attach an obligation to get involved on behalf of their viewed oppressors, including the US, and rescue their hostages? In order to avoid some future 'terrorism' list?
The evidence suggests that Hezbollah is on a "political list" called the "terrorism list" because Israel wants it there not because there is proof that it engaged in terrorism against Americans 25 years ago.
Using the scare tactic of 'kidnapping Americans' and 'terrorism' without proof, adds to the international ridicule of Bush's policies.
Interviews with some of these now middle aged resistance fighters in Lebanon who were active in this period make plain that these groups, felt that their military actions against the foreign forces constituted legitimate self defense, protecting Lebanon's population from attacks by foreign forces.
While the military legitimacy of fighting the American and French forces was clear to the Lebanese during the early 1980's what about bombing the American Embassy? International law has protected Embassies since the 1815 Congress of Vienna extend protection to foreign plenipotentiaries.
Safe passage for diplomats is not always honored and as recently as February 2007 the United States government has been accused by Iraq and Iran of unlawfully kidnapping Iranian diplomats
The largest payment for hostages during this period was the Arms for Hostages deal worked out by the Reagan administration when it provided missiles and spare parts to Iran to use against Saadam Hussein's army after the same administration had supplied the Iraqi regime with chemical weapons to use against Iraqi Kurd, Shiites and Iranians.
Lebanese Islamist groups, and others, who in the 1980's were resisting Israel's attacks did not feel that their acts were nearly as reprehensible as the US responsibility for what Israel was doing to their people and country.
These were some of the 'main stream' groups, there were others, some for whom kidnapping was a cottage industry. Some functioned much like the current US and the UK hired mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. In some cases contracts were drawn up with individuals willing to "hire out" for certain specific abduction projects.
2) An exhaustive review, by American researchers, of the nearly 80 Western kidnapping cases, organized by a staggering variety of groups in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 concluded that more than 100 Western detainees were taken, released, killed or exchanged. As for the Lebanese themselves, thousands were kidnapped; many by Israel and their allies and hundreds are still unaccounted for.
'Operations' were sometimes carried out by part of a group without the knowledge, participation or liability or the particular organizations command.
Teams of foreign assassins were active those days including one traced to Israel which tried to assassinate one of America's most competent Ambassadors to Lebanon, John Guenther Dean on August 27, 1980. The weapons used in the failed attempt were traced to a shipment made from the US to Israel. Dean's crime was getting too chummy with Yassir Arafat and his deputy Abu Jihad, who were helping Dean to get the American Embassy hostages released from Iran.
For example, in late August 1982, as Fateh was preparing to depart Beirut for Greece and goodbyes were being said, two American researchers in Beirut were given ('for safe keeping') 250 brand new Chinese made Ak-47's wrapped in thick grease and heavy plastic. Not knowing exactly what to do with the gifts in the 'wild west' atmosphere of the time, the Americans, doing what came naturally, hastily buried them at night. The weapons were never found by the advancing Israelis but were discovered 15 years later when the Commodore Hotel in Hamra was enlarged and workers dug up that vacant lot to its south! Who has them now is anybody's guess!
Was Hezbollah involved in the attacks against Americans a quarter century ago? Hezbollah has consistently denied these charges ever since it published its "open letter" announcing its foundation in 1985, years after the first attacks.
The results of an investigation conducted entirely in Lebanon including interviews with some who claim to have been personally involved with the "rap sheet" events do not credit Bush administration claims.
What the record to date shows, pending the Bush administration release of claimed evidence to the contrary, is the following:
"Hezbollah (as of April 3, 2007): Suicide bombings, hijacked 1985 TWA Flight 847; rocket attacks against Israel in 2006."
(The latter item re the "rocket attacks against Israel in 2006", is examined in the just released volume, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons against Lebanon.)
Hezbollah is accused by Israel and the Bush administration of a type of Islamist Terrorism similar to Al Qaeda but used in the context of National Liberation, just like Hamas. Both of which have fought Israel in the Lebanese and Palestinian contexts, respectively.
A study undertaken at the American University of Beirut in January- February 2007, benefiting from research and surveys from a variety of international and Israeli human rights organizations, tabulated no fewer than 6,672 acts of Israeli state terrorism directed against Lebanon and Palestine between the years 1967-2007. Not only is Israel absent from the US State Department Terrorism list, Israel appears to determines who is on it.
The common saying that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is rejected by this student of the subject because it is simplistic and even nonsensical. To whit, a terrorist can also be a freedom fighter struggling for justice and a freedom fighter can fight for freedom by using terrorist means.
Placed on the "T" list in 1999, Hezbollah was taken off the list a couple of years later following Hezbollah's strong condemnation of the 9/11 attack on America. Hezbollah was returned to the list when Dick Cheney opined that a "presumed Hezbollah operative" probably met with an Al Qaeda representative in South America in 2001. Similar to Cheney's Saadam Hussein-Al Qaeda 'contacts' claim.
As of April 2007, a plurality (39%) of the organizations on the US Terrorism list represent Muslim groups recommended for inclusion by, among others, AIPAC and their friends in Congress. According to former AIPAC Director of Congressional Relations, Steve Rosen, soon to start his trial for passing classified information to Israel, "AIPAC owns the 'T' list!"
The US State Department definition of terror is a broad one: "the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.