Joanna Wronecka, 65, a Polish diplomat serving as United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon since 2021, tweeted on Monday: “I thank Mr. Ammar Mousawi of Hezbollah for a discussion tour on priority issues for Lebanon, including the election of a new President of the Republic, the functioning of state institutions, and the impact of regional and international developments on the country.”
I thank Mr. Ammar Moussawi of Hizbullah for a tour d’horizon on issues of priority for #Lebanon, including the election of a new President, the functioning of state institutions and the impact of regional and international developments on the country.
— Joanna Wronecka (@JWronecka) January 16, 2023
Joshua Zarka, Head of Strategic Affairs at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, was dumbfounded, and responded (sic): “Is this real..?? An official Senior UN Representative thanks the terrorist organization responsible for the murder of a UN peacekeeper for ‘a tour d’horizon’!!! Have the world gone completely mad?!”
UNIFIL Private Sean Rooney, 23, from Ireland, was killed and three others injured on December 14 when their vehicle was attacked outside the village of al-Aqbiya which is a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon. About 10 days later, Hezbollah handed over a man suspected in the killing.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist terror organization on the State Dept. terrorist list, led since 1992 by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah declared in 2021 that the group has 100,000 fighters. Hezbollah has participated in Lebanese politics since 1990, and in the 2018 Lebanese general election, it won 12 seats, while its alliance won 70 out of 128 seats in Parliament. In other words, they own the political process, in Lebanon, which has been viewed as a failed state for years.
Ammar al-Musawi, the kindly Hezbollah representative who treated Mrs. Wronecka so nicely, is a prominent Hezbollah leader. Born in 1962 in the town of Nabi Sheet in the Beqaa Valley, he is considered one of the founders of Hezbollah and has worked in its political and military ranks. His brother, Zaid Jamil al-Musawi, was killed in a battle with the IDF in 1988 in Midoun in western Beqaa.
Al-Musawi is currently responsible for international and Arab relations and is a member of the party’s political council. He studied political science at the Lebanese University and was a deputy in the Lebanese Parliament for the Shiite seat in the Baalbek-Hermel district for two consecutive terms from 1996 to 2005 as part of the Loyalty to the Resistance bloc.
Yaki Lopez, Head of Public Diplomacy at the Embassy of Israel, Berlin, tweeted on Wronecka’s account: “So how does it feel to be indoctrinated by a terrorist? Care to share with us?”
A user named Rachid Rahme, who probably doesn’t work for Israel’s foreign ministry, noted on Wronecka’s account: “Showing your true colors… Engaging a representative of international terrorism (considered as such by many UN countries) … Discussing with him ‘the functioning of state institutions’ is hilarious and surreal. By so doing you are antagonizing all those who are resisting Iran.”
And user Rami Geagea elucidated: “A tour d’horizon on issues of priority for Lebanon with whom your court (UN) has convicted assassins of PM Hariri, Needless to say, their role in Beirut blast, drugs & other goods smuggling & countless cases of corruption. This sounds promising for Lebanon!!! we can’t thank you enough.”
One user just filled his Twitter word limit with the name Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese president who was assassinated on February 14, 2005, by a suicide truck bomb in Beirut. Four Hezbollah members were indicted for the assassination.
Elvia Saghbini Khalil asked: “The functioning of state institutions?! Did he widen your Horizon on how Hezbollah is hindering the judicial investigation into the largest non-nuclear blast of the Beirut port?”
Wronecka graduated from the Faculty of Arabic Studies at the University of Warsaw. She also studied in Algeria, Egypt, and France. In 1985, she defended her Ph.D. thesis on Arab-Muslim philosophy. She served as Poland’s ambassador to Egypt, and later to Morocco. In November 2015, she was appointed Under Secretary of State in Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland under minister Witold Waszczykowski, responsible for development aid as well as cooperation with African and Middle-East countries. In November 2017 Wronecka became Poland’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a term she ended her term on May 31, 2021.
In 2021, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Wronecka as UN Envoy to Lebanon, where she met Ammar al-Musawi and learned from him all about the functioning of state institutions.
