29-Apr-15: Iran's terrorists-by-proxy: getting on with what they do - in quiet neighbourhoods near you

Yes, still wanted [Image Source]

Some of the killers of a bus-load of Israeli tourists bombed at a Burgas airport in Bulgaria in 2012 are still free.

If Burgas has slipped off your radar, here's a reminder of two reports we posted at the time: "20-Jul-12: US says Hezbullah and its primary sponsor Iran executed the Burgas, Bulgaria, killings" and "21-Jul-12: How involved in terror against Israelis and Jews are the Iranians?"

Authorities in the US announced on Tuesday that three Hezbollah agents, two of them accused of being behind the murderous attack on Israelis in Bulgaria, have just been put onto an official terror watch list [source: Hezbollah suspects placed on special US terror list | AFP | April 29, 2015]

The State Department named Meliad Farah, Hassan el-Hajj Hassan and Hussein Atris as "specially designated global terrorists." The terror designation makes it illegal for US citizens to engage in any transactions with the three men, and freezes any property they might possess within the United States. All three men are Lebanese by birth, but Farah was identified as an Australian national, while Hassan el-Hajj Hassan is Canadian. Meliad Farah and Hassan el-Hajj Hassan were placed on the list for their alleged role in the July 2012 suicide attack on a bus at the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed six people, including five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian citizen. Hussein Atris, who the State Department said has Swedish nationality, was identified as a member of Hezbollah's overseas terrorism unit. He was arrested in 2012 in Thailand as a suspect in a plot to carry out a bombing in Bangkok and was sentenced by a Thai court to two years and eight months in prison for possessing illegally possessing explosives. He was released in September 2014, and is believed, like the other two men, to currently be in Lebanon. Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah, which is backed financially and politically by Iran, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

The formal State Department announcement is online here.

Many people may mentally dismiss the dangers posed by terrorists, like these, who spend their days and nights in far-off non-threatening Lebanon. Keep away from Lebanon, we figure, and everything's cool. But it is not entirely like that. What might not be fully appreciated is that when they are not plotting, planning and re-equipping in that lawless viper's nest of Islamist bombers and other terrorist thugs, these people - as the AFP report points out - move freely in their second homes: Australia, Canada, Sweden.

A Sydney Morning Herald report ["Australian Meliad Farah will be tried for Israeli tourist bus bombing in Bulgaria", September 13, 2013] suggested a little misleadingly that the suspected killer named as Meliad Farah was going to be indicted and tried real soon. But in reality, the 32-year-old better known in Australia (where he holds citizenship and - contrary to the FBI statement - where he was born) as Hussein Hussein, has not actually been arrested. Yet.

The other murder-by-terrorism fugitive, Hassan el-Hajj Hassan, lived in Canada from the time he was eight years old [source]. Chances are he looks and seems more like an ordinary resident of Winnipeg than a Middle Easterner.

Speaking of terrorists: Mohammad Khazaee, Iran's
ambassador to the United Nations, [Image Source]

How much simpler life would be if jihadis and Islamism-fuelled killers had posters glued to their foreheads saying who they are and what they plan to do. Unfortunately figuring out who they are and when and where they next intend to attack unsuspecting victims can be a serious and complicated challenge.

As for connecting them with the government of Iran's burgeoning terrorism wing, the Iranians themselves say that's unfair. No less a personage than Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations His Excellency Mr Mohammad Khazaee said it was Israel, not his own country. that actually carried out the Burgas airport bus bombing attack. How so? Because of this compelling argument:

"Such [a] terrorist operation could only be planned and carried out by the same regime whose short history is full of state terrorism operations and assassinations aimed at implicating others for narrow political gains..." [Telegraph UK, July 26, 2012]

The Iranian added for good measure that there were many examples of when Israel had killed "its own citizens or innocent Jewish people in order to blame others", and said it was "suspicious" that Israel had accused Iran of masterminding the bombing so soon after the attack.

There are some additional insights into this charming man's approach to diplomacy in a revealing February 2013 article on the Forbes Magazine site: "Meet Iran's Ambassador to the UN":

With his neat mustache and well-cut jackets, Khazaee looks like the very model of an earnest diplomat... Khazaee is one of the Iranian ambassadors described in the complaint as having directed the activities of the Alavi Foundation, starting soon after his 2007 arrival as Iran’s envoy to the U.N. in New York... Protected by diplomatic immunity, he remains an urbane presence at the U.N., with access to Manhattan, making connections, peddling propaganda, turning up last year on TV’s Charlie Rose talk show... If Khazaee, with his mannered inflections and his buttoned vest, appears worlds removed from Iran’s goose-stepping Revolutionary Guards, or Iran’s boorish President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (threatening in his lounge suit to wipe Israel off the map), that’s because Khazaee’s job is to cover for them on the diplomatic stage. [Forbes]

We happen to have written in the past about the Alavi Foundation that's mentioned in the Forbes quote. See "18-Sep-13: Striking back at the money that enables the terrorists" and "19-Apr-14: One small step for civilized society; one substantial leap in the fight against the terrorists"

A small measure of how insane some aspects of international relations have become in this terrorism-rich age: Khazaee - who on 14 September 2011 publicly accused Obama and the US of deploying "nuclear blackmail against a non-nuclear-weapon state", namely his country, Iran - was elected Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly.

22-Jul-13: One of Hezbollah's "wings", the terrorist one, is finally outlawed in Europe

Hezbollah, one of Iran's proxy armies in the complex Middle East and beyond it, was today officially designated a terrorist organization by the European Union. 

A gathering of EU foreign ministers in Brussels this morning made the decision unanimously. We can now finally expect the process of seizing and freezing their assets to get underway, and to see their officials subject to travel bans and unable to meet with EU officials – and not before time. How effective this will be is a subject arousing considerable disagreement.

The fact of Hezbollah’s fingerprints on the callous murders of Israeli tourists at Bulgaria’s Burgas airport in 2012 was one of the factors that evidently pushed the EU Ministers over the edge. Another factor was the conviction in Cyprus earlier this year of Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, a confessed Hezbollah agent traveling on Swedish and Lebanese passports, who had been engaged in preparatory work in advance of a terror act on that island. And probably the Nigerian case on which we recently commented. And there's this too, as the NYTimes points out

Support for the sanctions against Hezbollah grew in recent months because of the group’s strong support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria... 

Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party (and foreign minister until recently) was critical of the EU choosing to ban Hezbollah's so-called "military wing" only:

The military wing and the political wing of Hezbollah are two sides of the same coin. At the head of each stands Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. The attempt to present the group as if it is partially extremist and partially moderate is like asking whether a cannibal can be a vegetarian. [Ynet]

The Christian Science Monitor's analyst sees the point. The distinction

allows officials and diplomats from European countries to continue meeting with Hezbollah’s “political” leaders, such as parliamentarians.[CSM]

Hezbollah's fuehrer, Nasrallah, adopting a customary tone of hubris and contempt, said

If Europe sees that Hezbollah is so significant to change regional equations then we are more than proud of this. As for their terror list, I have one thing to say to them: you can soak your list and drink its water... [CSM]

Hezbollah fuehrer Nasrallah holding up his two wings.
One of them was outlawed in Europe today

He may yet have his defenders: for instance, the director of the CIA, John Brennan. Back in 2010, Reuters quoted these statements of Brennan's about the Hezbollah leadership when he was assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism and had just come back from Lebanon:

"Hezbollah is a very interesting organization," Brennan told a Washington conference, citing its evolution from "purely a terrorist organization" to a militia to an organization that now has members within the parliament and the cabinet. "There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they're doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements," Brennan said. He did not spell out how Washington hoped to promote "moderate elements"... [Reuters, May 18, 2010] 

Brennan's assessment that Hezbollah is "interesting" is borne out via some selected quotations:

• "There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel" [“Little choice for a defiant Israel", in The Age, Melbourne. July 15, 2006]
• "Israel is our enemy. This is an aggressive, illegal, and illegitimate entity, which has no future in our land. Its destiny is manifested in our motto: 'Death to Israel'." [Al-Manar television, February 2, 2005]
• "Even if [an agreement] is signed, we will continue to view [Israel] as an illegitimate and illegal entity” [Al-Hayat, January 2, 2000]
• "I am against any reconciliation with Israel. I do not even recognize the presence of a state that is called "Israel." I consider its presence both unjust and unlawful." [The Washington Post. February 2, 2000]
• "As we see, this is an illegal state; it is a cancerous entity and the root of all the crises and wars and cannot be a factor in bringing about a true and just peace in this region. Therefore, we cannot acknowledge the existence of a state called Israel, not even far in the future, as some people have tried to suggest. Time does not cancel the legitimacy of the Palestinian claim." [On Egyptian television, February 6, 2000
• "I promise Israel that it will see more suicide attacks, for we will write our history with blood." [Speech at a Hezbollah rally in Beirut. December 31, 1999. [Source: Associated Press]
• "If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." [Daily Star, Lebanon, October 23, 2002]
• "A few years ago, a great French philosopher, Roger Garaudy, wrote a scientific book. He did not offend, curse, or insult anyone. He wrote a scientific research of an academic nature, in which he discussed the alleged Jewish Holocaust in Germany. He proved that this Holocaust is a myth." [Al-Jazeera. February 03, 2006]
• "Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute [...] Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America." [Al-Manar, September 27, 2002
• "It is our pride that the Great Satan (U.S.) and the head of despotism, corruption and arrogance in modern times considers us as an enemy that should be listed in the terrorism list." [United Press International. November 4, 2001]

We don't know how hard or effectively Brennan and others of similar views tried to bring about greater moderation inside the Nasrallah-led, blood-soaked Party of Allah. What we do know is there will always be people (call them political figures) who will manage to stare the hatred-driven, violence-addicted jihadists right in the eye and - notwithstanding the vast pile of evidence in front of them - see the ongoing potential for making them, or at least one of their wings, more moderate.

11-Jun-13: Bulgaria reaffirms Hezbollah are indeed the terrorists who bombed a busload of Israelis last summer

Aftermath of the July 19, 2012 airport bus bombing
in Bulgaria [Image Source: Dano Monkotovic/Flash90] 

We quoted here yesterday a report that, with a recent change of government, the Bulgarians were now backtracking from their earlier assessment that Hezbollah stood behind the July 2012 terror attack on a busload of Israelis at Burgas airport. [See "10-Jun-13: Will appeasing Hezbollah work better now than it did with Nazi Germany?"]

Evidence of the retreat? See this Reuters report from last Wednesday for instance: "Bulgaria now says Hezbollah's role in bus bombing unproven". And the New York Times: "Bulgaria Pulls Back on Blame for Hezbollah".

Now Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin has clarified, in the wake of those reports of a retreat, that they are untrue and Reuters, the NYTimes and others have it wrong. Bulgaria has not reassessed its conclusion, he said [Sofia Globe]. Bulgaria continues to believe Hezbollah was behind the attack and responsible for the killings.

This is important because, as noted yesterday, the government of Ireland - along with Sweden, Finland and Italy - are shamefully blocking efforts by the UK, France and others to blacklist Hezbollah. (Ireland currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.) Bulgaria carried out an extensive investigation over the past year into the terror bombing at their airport, and their view obviously carries weight.

A new Bulgarian government, led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the former Communists, took power a  week ago. The previous governing party, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, was regarded (says the NYT) as more attuned to the west. The previous government's interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, said in February that the Bulgarians had identified, but not captured, two conspirators, one Canadian and one Australian, both Hezbollah members of Lebanese descent. The elaborate operation leading to the cowardly attack on tourists involved a remote detonator for the bomb and travel by the conspirators from Lebanon to Warsaw, Berlin and finally Bulgaria.

Bulgaria's sensitive relations with the Islamic world and geolocation in the eastern Mediterranean are clearly part of the squeeze in which its leaders now find themselves.

But how - other than in the obvious way - do you justify the excessive 'understanding' of Hezbollah's undisguised terrorism-driven bloodlust on the part of the Irish, the Finns and the Swedes? 

Incidentally, the Bulgarian reaffirmation of Hezbollah culpability first came in a note sent to - who else - the Irish ambassador six days ago. That was reported in a Bulgarian source [FOCUS, June 6, 2013] but got zero international coverage until today.

10-Jun-13: Will appeasing Hezbollah work better now than it did with Nazi Germany?

Britain's pre-war prime minister Neville Chamberlin, engaging
in a catastrophic policy that made sense at the time
to many observers [Image Source: NY Times]

Death tolls don't attract readers. Unless you have a strategic stake in an ongoing war, you will likely avert your eyes (especially if you're mainly on the dying side, as opposed to the killing side) when the tally of dead in this conflict or that appears in the news.

Syria has been the site of an appalling state-sanctioned bloodbath for more than two years. When the UN stopped conducting its own death count there in January 2012, the senior UN human rights official Navi Pillay said the toll was more than 5,000. We went to the website of the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights earlier today. There [this page] they offer these heart-stopping updated numbers:

• People killed since the start of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad: 83,598
• Of whom the number of civilians killed is 74,993.
• Of that number of civilians, 8,393 are children and 7,686 are women. 
• The number tortured to death: 2,441.

Smaller, more human-scale numbers, are easier for some to visualize. So the same organization's home page gives these numbers for the deaths of just the past few days: Thursday June 6: 84. Wednesday June 5: 69. Tuesday June 4: 91.

Just numbers, true. But signifying dead humans and lost lives.

It's horrifying. But now please note that the leaders of Hezbollah, the Shi'ite Islamist terrorists based in Lebanon, want those numbers to become bigger and better. A Lebanese news source says its leaders vowed today

to continue to help Syrian President Bashar Assad in his two-year-old civil war against rebels, while insisting the party be involved in national government decisions... "We will not change our position on protecting our people and the backbone of the resistance [Syria] regardless of intensified pressure locally, regionally and internationally,” Hezbollah’s Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said... "The more the threats and the more the pressures are exerted on us, the more the spirit of the resistance and enthusiasm has flared..."

The bogus claim to be at the heart of something called 'resistance' has served Hezbollah well. It gets very substantial military training, weapons, explosives and money, as well as political, diplomatic and organizational aid, from Iran (Wikipedia). In fact, for all practical purposes it serves as an arm of the Iranian leadership. It gets additional cash, and support, from Shi'ites living in West Africa, the United States and the tri-border South American area where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet.

Hezbollah has not always been as open about the murderous role it is playing in the Syrian killing fields. Its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, admitted to that role in a May 25, 2013 address that MEMRI also translated to English. Hezbollah "cannot stand idly by" he said, while the Syrian regime is embroiled in civil war. It was an admission that caused outrage in the non-Shi'ite parts of the Arab world, particularly in the Arab/Persian Gulf (we don't take sides in that naming battle), with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), convening in Saudi Arabia last Sunday, deciding (see Al-Watan newspaper) "to examine taking measures against Hizbullah's interests". As with most of Nasrallah's pronouncements, it was deliberate and calculated.

Hezbollah has become a so-called 'state within a state' in its native Lebanon, but has grown lethally active in other places too, particularly in Europe. Reuters pointed out a few days ago that while there are increasingly focused efforts to outlaw Hezbollah in Europe, this

would mark a major policy shift for the European Union, which has resisted pressure from Israel and Washington to do so for years. [Reuters]

One of the factors behind the push to blacklist the Shi'ites is a terror attack carried out this past summer in a Black Sea vacation resort called Burgas. A Bulgarian bus driver was killed, along with 5 Israeli tourists. 32 more were injured. A bomb exploded on their bus at Burgas airport, minutes after they flew in on an Israeli charter flight. Two Hezbollah "activists" were fingered along with an unfortunate third man who died while putting the bomb inside the bus. The intelligence forces of Bulgaria, Israeli and the US, as well as Europol, have said Hezbollah carried out the cold-blooded atrocity. They also believe Hezbollah's Iran-driven terrorism is on the move, spreading out to other parts of the world.

Though sober voices in Europe choose to deny this enlargement of the Hezbollah terror footprint, people closer to the action know better. As we noted here, the parliament of Bahrain, for instance, decided two months ago

to label the Lebanese militia a terrorist organization, the Lebanon-based news outlet Now Lebanon reported. Tensions have been high since Bahrain accused Hezbollah of seeking to overthrow its government in 2011 ["26-Mar-13: Hezbollah is declared "terrorist group" by Bahrain's parliament"]

Also in March, a criminal court in Cyprus convicted a Hezbollah man on terrorism charges ["21-Mar-13: First conviction of Hezbollah terrorist in a European court"].

And last week, the editorial writers at (wait for this) the Saudi Gazette, said

Hezbollah needs to be seen for the ruthless terrorist organization that it really is

which we think wraps things up quite accurately.

But, sadly, not for the Europeans. A few days ago

A British request to blacklist the armed wing of Hezbollah ran into opposition in the European Union on Tuesday, with several governments expressing concern that such a move would increase instability in the Middle East [Reuters].

It goes on to say that "several EU governments questioned whether there was sufficient evidence to link Hezbollah to the attack in Bulgaria" and that there were 

"concerns that such a move would complicate the EU's contacts with Lebanon, where Hezbollah is part of the coalition government, and could increase turmoil in a country already suffering a spillover of civil war from Syria... More discussions on the issue will be held in Brussels in the next two weeks, with a decision possibly taken by the end of the month, diplomats said.

Italy's Foreign Minister Emma Bonino says her government needs more evidence from Bulgaria. Also, that it is concerned for "the fragility of Lebanon", which may surprise some Italians. According to Herb Keinon at the Jerusalem Post, Israeli officials said last week that the Irish are playing a dominant role in the effort to protect Hezbollah. Ireland currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency. In last Tuesday's working group discussion, the Irish pro-Hezbollah position was backed by Sweden and Finland.

Note that France, which has for years been one of the group covering Hezbollah's back in these efforts to outlaw the terrorists, has lately stopped objecting to blacklisting them. The French have said (presumably because they see the reports that many others do, including the Lebanese report we quoted above) that thousands of Hezbollah men are fighting alongside the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They are up to their arm-pits in gore and murder.

As for the Bulgarians, Jonathan Tobin writing in Commentary Magazine a few days ago ["Hezbollah’s European Appeasers"], says

The new Bulgarian government, which is led by the country’s former Communist party, is now claiming they are no longer certain that Hezbollah was responsible for the Burgas attack. It should be noted that the Bulgarian switch is not the result of the emergence of new evidence about the attack or even a change of heart by Hezbollah, whose terrorist cadres are now fighting in Syria to try and save the faltering Bashar Assad regime, another Iranian ally. There is no more doubt today that Burgas was the work of Hezbollah than there was in the days after the attack when the identities of the terrorists were revealed. It is simply the result of a political party coming to power that is hostile to the United States and friendlier to Russia and therefore determined to undermine any effort to forge a united European response to Middle East-based Islamist terror.

Tobin makes articulately a point that we wish we had written:

International unity on terrorism is illusory. The willingness of some Europeans, whether acting out of sympathy for the Islamists or antipathy for Israel and the Untied States, to treat Hezbollah terrorists as somehow belonging to a different, less awful category of criminal than those who might primarily target other Westerners is a victory for the Islamists... The effort to appease Hezbollah is not only a sign of Russian influence but also a signal to Iran that many in Europe are untroubled by its terrorist campaign against Israel. That alone is worrisome. But, as history teaches us, the costs of appeasement are far-reaching. Those who are untroubled by Hezbollah’s murders of Jews in Bulgaria or Cyprus may soon find that the vipers they seek to ignore will one day bite them too.

Or to paraphrase Chamberlain's successor as prime minister, Winston Churchill: Europe has a choice between terrorism and shame. Choosing shame, it is likely to get terrorism too.

26-Mar-13: Hezbollah is declared "terrorist group" by Bahrain's parliament

Objects of adoration: Syrian holds poster with portraits
of Syrian president/tyrant Bashar al-Assad
and Hezbollah chief Nasrallah during pro-Assad rally
Damascus January 11, 2012 [Image Source]

, 

Benjamin Weinthal, writing in the Jerusalem Post, today:

Bahrain’s Parliament declares Hezbollah a terrorist group | March 26, 2013 | Bahrain’s lawmakers voted on Tuesday to label the Lebanese militia a terrorist organization, the Lebanon-based news outlet Now Lebanon reported. Tensions have been high since Bahrain accused Hezbollah of seeking to overthrow its government in 2011. According to a report sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2011, the ruling Sunni Khalifa family asserted that Hezbollah trained insurgents in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran to topple its government. The move to designate Hezbollah a terror entity comes on the heels of EU talks about banning Hezbollah within the 27-member body because of terror operations. Last week, a Cyprus criminal court convicted a Hezbollah member for plotting to kill Israeli tourists on the small Island. In addition to the foiled Cyprus plot, Bulgaria’s interior minister issued a report last month asserting  two Hezbollah operatives participated in the terror attack on an Israeli tour bus in the Black Sea resort of Burgas. The bombing in Burgas resulted in the deaths of five Israelis, their Bulgarian bus driver, and severe injuries to 32 Israelis.
Major EU countries Germany and France have resisted including Hezbollah in the EU terror list because of insufficient legal evidence. JTA reported on Friday that Karl-Matthias Klause, the spokesman for the German Embassy in Washington, said “Our position is that we've always said that if we have proof that holds up in court, we can enter the procedure. There is a general readiness into looking into forbidding the military wing of Hezbollah.”
It is unclear if the legal verdict in Cyprus will influence a change in the German and French positions opposing a ban. The Netherlands is the only EU country to designate Hezbollah’s entire organization a terrorist group. The United Kingdom classifies Hezbollah’s military wing a terrorist   organization. Proponents of a ban of Hezbollah  argue a terrorist listing would freeze Hezbollah’s capability to fund-raise and procure weapons in Europe, as well as mount new terror attacks on European soil.
Germany has a large contingent of Hezbollah operatives. According to the country’s domestic intelligence agency, 950 Hezbollah members operate legally in the Federal Republic.

The Times of Israel, quoting Israel Radio, says tonight that Bahraini legislators called on the other Persian Gulf states to do the same. The US and Israel have been pressing Europe's governments to outlaw Hezbollah as a terrorist group. President Obama repeated the call here last week during his visit to Israel. Hezbollah gets its backing from two major sources: the government of Syria and the government of Iran.

There's some sharp and useful background in a recent New Yorker magazine profile entitled "AFTER SYRIA: If the Assad regime falls, can Hezbollah survive?", by Dexter Filkins. He writes:

In an Arab world dominated by Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah agitates on behalf of Shiite identity—forming, along with Syria and Iran, a column of resistance sometimes called the Shiite Axis. With Syrian and Iranian help, Hezbollah has become the most powerful force in Lebanon. Too strong to be challenged even by the government, it has set up its own mini-state and built one of the world’s most sophisticated guerrilla armies. It has kept up a relentless campaign to confront Israel, even provoking a war in 2006... [But] the issue of Hezbollah’s role inside Syria raises fundamental questions about its identity and purpose. Is it really a “resistance” organization, dedicated only to fighting Israel? Siding with the Assad government has already left Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah alone in the Arab world.

Seems like a good time to remind readers of these earlier posts:

• 29-Jan-13: What their view on Hezbollah tells us about Europe's counter-terrorism strategy
• 9-Feb-13: Hezbollah and Europe: Decisions need to be made as if people's lives were on the line
• 5-Feb-13: Now that the Bulgarians have fingered Hezbollah, what happens next in Europe? 

21-Mar-13: First conviction of Hezbollah terrorist in a European court

Larnaca International Airport is a popular
Arkia Israel Airlines destination in Cyprus;
interesting to Hezbollah as well

Keep in mind as you read the following that (as we have pointed out here numerous times) the Hizbollah terrorist group is not yet outlawed in Eruope.

Jerusalem Post's European correspondent Benjamin Weinthal filed this report about 90 minutes ago:

Cyprus criminal court convicts Hezbollah member  | BERLIN- A criminal court on Thursday  in the city of Limassol convicted Hossam Taleb Yaacoub of membership in a criminal organization. The dual Swedish-Lebanese citizen admitted last month that he was a membership of Hezbollah and engaged in surveillance of Israeli tourists. His conviction is the first time that a Hezbollah member has been found guilty of criminal activity with respect to the targeting of Israeli citizens in a European court... Cyprus reduced the charges against Yaacoub from terrorism charges to criminal charges last year... The court is slated to sentence him on March 28. Hezbollah is not listed a terror organization within the EU. Yaacoub admitted that Hezbollah's job was to observes Jews across the globe and he watched Israeli flights land in Cyprus. A few weeks after his activities, two alleged Hezbollah operatives engaged in similar activity and participated in the bombing of an Israeli tour bus in the Black Sea resort of Burgas.

A UPI report a month ago noted that his trial received

little public attention, but a conviction could put pressure on the European Union to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization... Yaacoub admitted he scouted locations Israelis would patronize, in the service of the militant group Hezbollah [but] that he had not taken part in plots to target Israeli tourists visiting Cyprus... "I'm only trained to defend Lebanon," he said... Yaacoub admitted in court he had been a Hezbollah member since 2007... [UPI]

The limited attention paid in the media to this trial of a self-confessed Hezbollah operative has been, in significant ways, a lost opportunity. As a revealing article ["The Perks of Working for Hezbollah"] in The Atlantic Wire pointed out a few weeks back, it has actually provided a rare window into the inner workings of a global terror organization:

Though he described himself as "an active member of Hezbollah," Yaacoub didn't even know the faces of the men he reported to. "In general, the party is based on secrecy between members," he told the Cyprus court. "We don't know the real names of our fellow members."
If that's a drawback, there are at least a few advantages to doing the bidding of would-be terrorists. Yaacoub said that he was paid $600 a month since 2010 for doing relatively simple tasks, like carrying discrete packages between European cities, taking trips to exotic locales like Dubai or recording the activities of buses that carry Israeli tourists. (The latter assignment is of particular interest to the court.) Yaacoub said that he was also asked to buy SIM cards discretely so that he and his fellow operatives could communicate with their Hezbollah bosses and to record arrival times of flights from Israel. In case anything went wrong along the way, Hezbollah had trained Yaacoub how to use RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades, the PK machine gun and the AK-47.
Regardless of the motives of all these other activities, the young operative maintained that he didn't actually have to commit any acts of violence. "If I was asked to participate in attacks, I had the right to refuse." Not that he necessarily would. "I work for my party," Yaacoub added. "Whenever they asked me to do something, I delivered."

If parliamentarians and law enforcement leaders in Europe are not paying attention, or - worse- choosing to ignore it because of the political implications of these admissions then they ought to be ashamed of themselves. People are certainly going to die because of European indulgence of the Hezbollah terror machine.

15-Feb-13: Quote of the day: Hamas heavy, speaking on the morning of his colleagues' expulsion, says Europe is ready to un-ban Hamas

From a news report published today on the website of the non-governmental, European-funded Bethlehem-based Ma'an News Agency, Hamas official Ahmad Yousef' is quoted today saying

that his party's visit to Bulgaria could presage moving Hamas off the EU terrorism list. Saying he had specific information, which he could not yet reveal, Yousef told Ma'an that EU countries had "no reservations against removing Hamas from the terrorism list," with the exception of Germany and the Czech Republic. "There is more than one country in Europe that welcomes Hamas MPs, and this is a good sign," he said. [Maan]

It appears his optimism was expressed before three Hamas figures were ignominiously expelled from the territory of one of those European Union states this morning.

According to a Bulgarian source, that expulsion (we posted about it earlier today) was carried out in Bulgaria by its State Agency for National Security (DANS), after they arrived there on Wednesday. DANS received information "after the group arrived" that they pose a grave threat for Bulgarian national security.

But in the larger sense, the Hamas man has a point. We'll write about how the Europeans are dealing with the sanctioning of Hamas.

9-Feb-13: Hezbollah and Europe: Decisions need to be made as if people's lives were on the line

Since our principal focus here is terrorism and what it is doing to the lives of people like us, it's natural that we deal regularly with the ongoing dangers posed by one of the meanest, best equipped and demonstrably committed terror armies in the Islamist firmament: Hezbollah. 

Just a few days ago, we posted here [see "5-Feb-13: Now that the Bulgarians have fingered Hezbollah, what happens next in Europe?"] about how things look now that the murderous Hezbollah attack on Israelis in a Bulgarian seaside town has been investigated and the key culprits identified. And we pointed out how the European role is central to what gets done next.

We have just now seen an editorial that ran in the Washington Post on the same day as our blog post. We are reprinting the whole text below in the hope of contributing to understanding of why the conduct of the EU leadership - and especially that of the political heads of France and Germany - ought to be criticized and changed in how they deal with Hezbollah and its activities on the continent.

European Union must respond to Hezbollah’s attack in Bulgaria

Washington Post Editorial Board,February 05, 2013 

ON TUESDAY the Bulgarian government confirmed what most of the world has known for months: The bombing of a bus carrying Israeli tourists in the Black Sea resort of Burgas last July 18 was carried out by members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization. The results of an official investigation present leaders of the European Union with a reality that will be difficult to ignore. They must decide whether to allow a terrorist attack on E.U. territory to go unpunished or to sanction a movement that is both an Iranian proxy and the dominant party in the Lebanese government. 

The case for sanctions is a strong one. The Burgas attack, which killed five Israelis and wounded more than 100, was not an isolated incident but part of a campaign of terrorism against Israeli, U.S. and gulf state targets by Hezbollah and the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to a new report by Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the two groups decided in January 2010 to launch a campaign of violence aimed at punishing Israel for the assassination of Iranian scientists and deterring an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. 

Since then the Quds Force has, among other things, plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington and the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, and it has attacked an Israeli diplomat’s wife in India. Hezbollah has attempted attacks on Israeli tourists in Cyprus, Greece and Thailand as well as in Bulgaria. Mr. Levitt says that more than 20 terror attacks by Hezbollah or the Iranian force were detected between May 2011 and July 2012; fortunately, almost all failed or were disrupted. 

Israel participates in this shadow war, too: Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years. The United States has sponsored cyberattacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. But nothing justifies Hezbollah’s attempts to murder tourists; one of those killed in Bulgaria was a pregnant woman. Nor should a democratic community such as the European Union tolerate terrorist attacks on its territory by an established organization such as Hezbollah, which seeks recognition as a legitimate political movement worthy of governing Lebanon. 

The United States, which long ago designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, has been pressing European leaders to do the same so that the group’s funds in European banks and other financial assets can be targeted. Several governments, led by France, have resisted; they worry that sanctions could further destabilize Lebanon or subject European peacekeepers in the south of that country to reprisals. Bulgaria’s findings should end the debate. Inaction would mean accepting that Europe can be a free-fire zone for Iran and its proxies.

Meanwhile, a Herb Keinon article in the Jerusalem Post ["Hezbollah will gain immunity without EU blacklist"] quotes an Israeli official who points out that current European policy on the Hezbullah terrorists amounts to providing them with a free pass:

'Europe needs to decide whether it will allow itself to be attacked with impunity', an Israeli diplomatic official said on Wednesday, explaining the argument Israeli representatives will now use to get the EU to place Hezbollah on its terrorist blacklist. Since it is clear Bulgaria is not going to respond to Hezbollah attacks on its soil by bombing training bases in Lebanon, according to this argument, if there is no strong European diplomatic reaction, then Hezbollah will essentially have immunity.

30-Jan-13: In fighting terrorism, fear cannot be a substitute for moral clarity: Two political figures speak from personal experiences of terror

Trimble and Aznar [Image Source]

We posted here yesterday ["29-Jan-13: What their view on Hezbollah tells us about Europe's counter-terrorism strategy"] about the European Union's pusillanimous stance on banning one of the world's most dangerous and active terror organizations, Hezbollah.

The Times of London has a leading op ed column today written by two former political figures who have deep first-hand experience of terrorism. In their essay, entitled "Don’t mince words. Hezbollah are terrorists", José María Aznar who was was prime minister of Spain from 1996 until a few days after the Madrid railway massacre of 2004, and Lord Trimble, First Minister of Northern Ireland between 1998 and 2002 and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1998, begin with the antithesis to yesterday's Guardian op ed about which we blogged last night: "29-Jan-13: Is the threat of terrorism greater now, or less?". They open with these words:

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. 

As we noted yesterday, the EU prefers not to face the reality of terrorism. Trimble and Aznar point to what is and is not being done about Hezbollah to make their case. About last summer's terrorist bombing in Bulgaria of a bus-load of Israelis, they point out that

despite this atrocity some 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. The fact that it holds seats in the Lebanese Parliament and posts in the Cabinet does not mean that its leaders see themselves as just another Lebanese faction — albeit one that murders its political opponents (a UN tribunal found that the assassination of Rafic Hariri, the Lebanese Prime Minister was a Hezbollah plot). On the contrary Hezbollah 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. It has been involved in illegal but very lucrative activities in Latin America and West Africa. 

They then address a dimension of this issue that often drives us crazy - the willingness of many to make an artificial distinction between the so-called "military wing" of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and their political, charitable and who-knows-what-other front activities. People who think like that, say the authors, are wrong. Hezbollah is a single body and needs to be condemned and blacklisted in all its manifestations:

...Every part plays a role in the overall strategy. The leaders in charge of its hospitals and schools, the military leader and the political representatives all sit together under the secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. His deputy, Naim Qassem, was quoted as recently as October, saying: “We don’t have a military wing and a political wing. We don’t have the Party of Allah and the Party of Resistance. These differences do not exist and are rejected.” 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... We know from our own experience in Spain and Northern Ireland that terrorism cannot be defeated unless you tackle all the tentacles that serve the purposes of the terrorists, and that includes the political and financial front organisations. Make no mistake — terrorist groups use all the means at their disposal to survive, flourish and achieve their plans.

About the claim by certain European governments that this is somehow not the right time to put Hezbollah on the EU terrorist list, they correctly ask:

But what more is needed to let us take such a decision? Official bodies, private research, parliamentary inquiries, one after another, have revealed the terrorist connections.

Addressing one of the reasons European states have held back from condemning Hezbollah, they write

We understand the caution of nations that have citizens living in Lebanon or peacekeeping troops deployed there. But fear cannot be a substitute for moral clarity. We need to remember that Unifil II (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) was deployed in 2006 to disarm Hezbollah, not to become its hostage... 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.

What more must happen before that view is heard and comprehended?

13-Jan-13: A French contribution to stopping the terrorists

Hezbollah's fighters, fully aware of the public relations impact,
routinely salute the German Nazi way [Image Source]. What is it that
they are trying to tell us? Now let's think... hmmm. No, couldn't be that.

Benjamin Weinthal writes in today's Jerusalem Post ["French FM: No EU consensus on Hezbollah ban"] about French efforts to block the European Union designating Hezbollah as a terror entity. France, his article says, seeks "to preserve its diplomatic leverage in Lebanon" and "is also concerned about Hezbollah retaliation".

The Jerusalem Post analysis quotes a French official who refers to "the common position of the Council of the European Union" dating back to December 2001 which requires that "specific measures to fight against terrorism", including adding new names to the list of proscribed terrorist organizations in the EU, must be based on "a consensus among Member States. This consensus is not currently met”, says the official, evidently referring to his own office.

Certain voices in Lebanon (at least) might be pleased to know of France's obstructiveness. In "Should Europe Classify Hezbollah As a Terrorist Group?", published December 27, 2012 on the Washington-based al-Monitor website, Nasser Charrah, a Lebanese whose bio includes a stint at the Palestinian Research Center (formed by the PLO in Beirut in 1965 when Lebanon was the nerve-center of the Arafat-led terrorists) delivers some interesting first-person observations about what Hizbollah does and does not stand for, and likewise for UNIFIL. Some readers may be as surprised as we are by what he reveals.

• Gen. Alberto Asarta, the Spanish general who for the past three years has served as commander of UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon, calls the area of southern Lebanon under his operational control "the best and most stable in the whole of the Middle East".
• Asarta attributes the extraordinary "stability" in the area to Hezbollah’s cooperation with UNIFIL and Hezbollah’s willingness to play host to the UNIFIL presence. (It's hard to escape the conclusion that Asarta, the man in charge of the very UN forces who are supposed to keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border, and to prevent yet another massive Hezbollah arms-buildup in southern Lebanon's villages, comes across in the direct quotations of this piece as a major admirer of Hezbollah.)
• In fact, UNIFIL's "stay in southern Lebanon" is no less than "the most successful model when compared to the experiences of other UN peacekeeping missions around the world". But that's not all!
• Hezbollah has aided UNIFIL in "combating terrorist cells of Islamic extremism in the region who plot against the blue-helmeted soldiers. The best evidence of this last point can be found in the establishment of the four-pronged organization dubbed, “The Partnership against Radical Islamic Terrorism,” which includes the Lebanese army, UNIFIL, Hezbollah and its popular base." 

Actually this makes sense. Though it originates with a Spanish source, it just might persuade the French. Let's get the EU to outsource all of its anti-terrorism strategy to the ideally-named “Partnership against Radical Islamic Terrorism”, and get Hezbollah, UNIFIL and the army of Lebanon to deal with the Islamists. A sure-fire, winning European plan!

But seriously.

We can hardly expect everyone to embrace the neatness of this solution. The Bulgarian Sofia News Agency noted this past week that diplomats in Europe say 

the results of Bulgaria's probe in July's bombing of an Israeli tour bus, including a possible Hezbollah lead, will be "essential" for the EU process to list the Lebanese organization as a terrorist entity... However, Bulgarian officials, including the President, the Prime Minister, and the Foreign Affairs Minister, have been very wary of directly involving Hezbollah, reiterating it all depended on the findings of the ongoing investigation.

That bus bombing was the subject of several posts we made in July 2012, including "20-Jul-12: US says Hezbullah and its primary sponsor Iran executed the Burgas, Bulgaria, killings". Do we know who carried out the airport bombing that brought about the deaths of five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver? Hezbollah says it certainly wasn't them: see "Hezbollah on bus bombing: We wouldn't target tourists for revenge", Christian Science Monitor. And the Bulgarians are still investigating. The Washington Post said last Monday that Bulgaria had fired the leader of its investigation into the Burgas airport attack because she leaked "sensitive information" about the probe.

Stanelia Karadzhova told Bulgaria’s 24 Chasa daily that one of three suspected terrorists who carried out the attack at the airport of the Black Sea city in July has been identified and that all the suspects were foreign nationals. The office of the District Prosecutor in Burgas said in a statement Monday that Karadzhova was removed because “she spoke to the media without clearing her statement with the supervising prosecutor.”

For the record, Hezbollah was designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the U.S. State Department in October 1997, and is proscribed as a terrorist organization by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Egypt, Israel, the Netherlands and (Hezbollah's military wing only) the United Kingdom. As for the rest of the European Union, it currently does not list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization though the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in 2005 recognizing "clear evidence" of "terrorist activities by Hezbollah" (in the wake of the murder of Lebanese leader Rafic Hariri) and urging the EU Council to brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The Council has been reluctant to do this (says Wikipedia) because France and Spain fear such a move will further damage (wait for it...) the prospects for Middle East peace talks.

Assuming he has access to European cable TV, Hassan Nasrallah who heads Hezbollah from a pit somewhere in Lebanon must be thoroughly enjoying himself.

20-Jul-12: US says Hezbullah and its primary sponsor Iran executed the Burgas, Bulgaria, killings

Ben Gurion airport last night

From the New York Times

Hezbollah Is Blamed for Attack on Israeli Tourists in Bulgaria BURGAS, Bulgaria: | American officials on Thursday identified the suicide bomber responsible for a deadly attack on Israeli vacationers here as a member of a Hezbollah cell that was operating in Bulgaria and looking for such targets, corroborating Israel’s assertions and making the bombing a new source of tension with Iran. One senior American official said the current American intelligence assessment was that the bomber, who struck Wednesday, killing five Israelis, had been “acting under broad guidance” to hit Israeli targets when opportunities presented themselves, and that the guidance had been given to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, by Iran, its primary sponsor. Two other American officials confirmed that Hezbollah was behind the bombing, but declined to provide additional details.

Meanwhile...

Gloating Ahmadinejad hints at Iranian responsibility for Burgas terror attack  [Source] Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gloated publicly on Thursday over the deaths of Israelis in a terror bombing in Bulgaria, and hinted that Iran was responsible for the attack. Speaking hours after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly blamed the bombing Wednesday at Bulgaria’s Burgas airport on “Hezbollah, directed by Iran,” Ahmadinejad described the attack as “a response” to Israeli “blows against Iran.” “The bitter enemies of the Iranian people and the Islamic Revolution have recruited most of their forces in order to harm us,” he said in a speech reported by Israel’s Channel 2 TV. “They have indeed succeeded in inflicting blows upon us more than once, but have been rewarded with a far stronger response.” He added: “The enemy believes it can achieve its aims in a long, persistent struggle against the Iranian people, but in the end it will not. We are working to ensure that.  Ahmadinejad’s speech was interpreted in Israel as asserting that the Burgas bombing was a revenge attack for the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists, for which Iran has repeatedly blamed Israel.

Meanwhile...

This morning at Petah Tikva's Segula cemetery 

Iran condemns Burgas terror attack, calls Israeli accusations ‘ridiculous’  [Source] Iran’s state TV rejected accusations of Tehran’s involvement in the attack. A commentary on the TV website called the claims by Netanyahu and others “ridiculous” and “sensational.” The website described the Israeli charges as attempts to discredit Iran and its allies such as Syria.His remarks contrasted with a condemnation of the Burgas bombing by the Iranian Foreign Ministry earlier Thursday. “The Islamic republic, the biggest victim of terrorism, believes terrorism endangers the lives of innocents… is inhumane and so strongly condemns” it, the Arabic-language television channel Al-Alam cited foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying. “Iran’s position is to condemn all terrorist acts in the world,” he added.

Meanwhile...

Thousands attend funerals of Burgas bombing victims

20-Jul-12: Home truths from a US diplomat: "What happened in the US on September 11 can happen in any country..."

The bombed bus is towed away from the airport and chapter one has ended.
But like all acts of terror, it remains a work in progress

America's ambassador to Bulgaria delivered some comments this morning (Friday) that deserve a wider audience than the Bulgarians alone. The report below comes from the Sofia News Agency.

If terrorists can hit the US, they can strike anywhere, the American Ambassador in Sofia, James Warlick, says. Speaking Friday, in an interview for the Bulgarian National Television, BNT, the diplomat explained that no country is safe from terrorism, which is a threat for everyone across the globe. "Terrorists can strike anywhere. What happened in the US on September 11 can happen in any country. This is what happened in your country," he stressed. According to him, terrorist plots are unpredictable. Regarding the terrorist attack at the airport of the Black Sea city of Burgas, Warlick stated that it aimed at Israeli citizens, who were vulnerable in Bulgaria. "There is no country that can be 100% prepared for such situation," the Ambassador commented, adding the reaction of Bulgarian authorities has been adequate... 

Without a doubt, Bulgarians are now facing issues they would much rather not have to face. Since we believe it's a process that many other nations are going to be confronting in the foreseeable future, we want to share (for the first time in this blog's history) a Bulgarian op ed written in very accessible and cogent English-language terms. 

The article, also published this morning, is called "Bulgaria Will Never Be The Same", and the writer's name is Maxim Behar:

Terror doesn't have two faces, or any more than that. It has one face only – the face of death, horror, tragedy. To that, I would add pointlessness. Absolute pointlessness... There is nothing more savage, more inexplicable, and more shocking than terror. That is why Bulgaria will never be the same.

The full op ed is here. Our sympathy and support are offered to Bulgaria.

19-Jul-12: Turmoil all around - but the Palestinians find the time and desire to fire another rocket at Israelis

Most of Israel's attention is on the still-unnamed five killed victims of Wednesday's terrorist attack on a tour bus on the grounds of a Bulgarian holiday resort airport, as well as on the plane-load of injured Israelis (32 of them according to Times of Israel) that rushed back to Tel-Aviv and landed about two hours ago, so that those hurt in yesterday's pigua can get emergency medical treatment. Three additional victims are reported this evening to still be in danger of succumbing to their injuries: our prayers for their recovery are with them.

Then there's the unfolding debacle in Syria where the past year's daily bloodbath is - astonishingly - increasing in intensity as the al-Assad regime nears its inevitable end.

But trust the Palestinian Arab terrorists of the Hamas-infested Gaza Strip. They have the patience, the time, the desire and the passion... to fire rockets into the air in southern Israel's general direction, as they have done daily for the past decade.

Around 3:30 pm on this intensely hot Thursday afternoon, one of their rocket gangs fired off a missile in the general direction of Israel's Eshkol region. JPost says there are no injuries to people, no damage to property, and so we're left to assume it landed in an open area, which was certainly not the intention of the Gazan Palestinian Arab thugs.

Who carried out the killings at Burgas airport? Nothing to do with us, say the Iranians.

"The unfounded statements by different statesmen of the Zionist regime in connection with the accusations against Iran about its possible participation in the incident with the blown-up bus with Israeli tourists in Burgas is a familiar method of the Zionist regime, with a political aim, and is a sign of the weakness ... of the accusers." 

That's from the Islamic Republic of Iran's mission in Sofia, Bulgaria.