Hizbullah has carried out wars and terrorist attacks against Israel and Jews for 21 years, but Lebanon’s nationalist party charged this week he is turning his “resistance” on them instead of Israel.
The Hizbullah terrorist organization has grown into a full-fledged political party and army that increasingly dominate Lebanon. The United States and Britain have defined it as an organization, but the European Union still has held out, despite Bulgaria’s declaration last week that Hizbullah was directly behind last year’s attack on a bus of Israelis in the country.
The IDF’s blog this week summarized 21 years of activities of the “resistance” Party of God”:
— A mere three weeks after he became the organization’s leader, Nasrallah had already orchestrated a major terror attack against the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 civilians.
— Two years later, Nasrallah ordered another terror attack in the Argentinean capital – this time against the Jewish Center of Buenos Aires, murdering 85 men and women and wounding more than 300 others. During the same period, Hizbullah terrorists fired hundreds of rockets at towns in northern Israel.
— In 2000, after then-Prime Minister Ehud ordered a sudden withdrawal of Israeli solders from the southern Lebanon security zone, Nasrallah readily filled the power vacuum and carefully prepared for the offensive on Israel in 2006 by carrying out groundwork – and work underground. Nasrallah built a network of underground bunkers, camouflaged by vegetation and trees that covered up communications equipment and missiles.
He also placed thousands of rockets in villages before Hizbullah carried out the kidnap-murder of two Israel reservists, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, in late June 2006, setting the stage for the 34-day Second Lebanon War. Israel’s casualty toll was 119 soldiers, 43 civilians and hundreds of northern Israel residents.
— Since the 2006 ceasefire that was supposed to disarm Hizbullah, it has stockpiled more than three times the 20,000 missiles it possessed before the war. The IDF stated that Hizbullah now has “the largest weapons arsenal of any terror organization in the world today.”
— In July 2012, a Hizbullah suicide bomber boarded a tourist bus in Burgas, Bulgaria and killed five Israelis who were in Bulgaria on vacation, as well as their Bulgarian bus driver.
So much for “resistance.”
But Lebanon’s Future Movement is worried the “resistance” is targeting them as Nasrallah tries to solidify his political position in Lebanon and take advantage of the Syrian civil war to be the kingpin in the axis of terror headed by Hizbullah’s ally Iran.
In a speech last Saturday, Nasrallah uttered one of the most chutzpah remarks possible, stating that the former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said a few months before his assassination by Syrian operatives that he supported Hizbullah’s maintaining its arsenal, even if there would be an overall Israeli-Arab peace settlement.
The Future Movement accused Nasrallah of attempting to twist the facts for saying that the slain leader, unlike his son, Sa’ad, supported Hizbullah’s arsenal, according to the Beirut Daily Star.
“What is most important [in Nasrallah’s speech] is that he frankly confessed that his resistance against the Israeli enemy has turned into a resistance against the Future Movement, as if the Future Movement has become the enemy,” the Future Movement stated.
“[Hizbullah’s arms] are a major bone of contention among the Lebanese,” it said, adding that “Lebanon is suffering [from] the predicament of the illegitimate arms which Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah insists on retaining as a tool to blackmail the Lebanese and the state and control its institutions.”
For his part, Nasrallah didn’t miss the opportunity in his speech to say he has not forgotten Israel.
“I warn Israel and those behind it that the resistance in Lebanon will not remain silent to any aggression against Lebanon,” he said. “I would like to remind them that only a few rockets are needed to [target] their airports, ports and power plants.”