It's time for Europe to follow Germany's lead and ban Hezbollah

Germany justified the decision to ban the terrorist movement because of its call for armed struggle and rejection of Israel’s right to exist.

By JPOST EDITORIAL
A Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla looks at a fire rising from a burning object in a Beirut suburb, Lebanon July 17, 2006. (photo credit: REUTERS/ISSAM KOBEISI/FILE PHOTO)
A Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla looks at a fire rising from a burning object in a Beirut suburb, Lebanon July 17, 2006.
(photo credit: REUTERS/ISSAM KOBEISI/FILE PHOTO)
The Jerusalem Post’s Benjamin Weinthal reported Sunday that Switzerland might follow the decision made in April by its neighbor Germany and ban all Hezbollah activities within its territory.
Last week, the Swiss Federal Council agreed to review a “Report on the activities of the Shi’ite Islamist Hezbollah in Switzerland.” The initiative was launched by Marianne Binder of the Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland in June.
The proposed anti-Hezbollah legislation notes that Germany justified the decision to ban the terrorist movement because of its call for armed struggle and rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
The initiative reads: “The EU previously banned the [military] arm that engaged in terrorist activities. It is not known which activities Hezbollah is developing in Switzerland. In view of the neutrality of Switzerland, however, the activities of Hezbollah cannot be legitimized and a report is also advisable for reasons of security policy.”
This highlights the ridiculous European Union approach to the terrorist organization, whose deadly tentacles have reached around the world. In July 2013, EU governments agreed to partially blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but they made an artificial and dangerous distinction. The EU outlawed Hezbollah’s “military arm” but allowed its “political arm” to continue to operate, raise funds and recruit members. This financial pipeline and recruitment system keeps Hezbollah alive.
It is absurd to promote the illusion that there is a difference between the “political” and “military” activities of an organization whose terrorists have caused hundreds of deaths and vast suffering globally. The terrorist organization itself does not make a distinction between its political and military operations.
As we noted after the welcome German decision in April, Hezbollah’s record as the perpetrator of major terrorist atrocities around the world has been known for decades. Its deadly acts include the bombings, orchestrated by Imad Mughniyeh, of the US Embassy and the military barracks in Beirut in 1983; the bombing attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and the AMIA Jewish center there in 1994; the bombing attack against US military forces stationed in Saudi Arabia in 1996; the murder of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri; the bombing of a tour bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, in 2012; not to mention the myriad attacks against, and kidnappings of, Israelis, Europeans and Americans; its role in provoking the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and its part in the Syrian civil war, where it helped Iran – its sponsor – create a corridor of terrorism from Tehran to Beirut.
The devastating explosion that destroyed the Port of Beirut earlier this month – killing at least 180 people and leaving a quarter of a million homeless – can also be pinned on Hezbollah. Although the exact cause is not yet certain, it is clear that Hezbollah is responsible either through negligence, corruption or stockpiling of explosive material with malevolent intent, or a combination of all these factors.
Hezbollah’s efforts to obtain precision-guided missiles and the discovery of the warren of terrorist attack tunnels crossing from Lebanon into Israel are additional indications that it has not given up its deadly goals.
For years, the US and Israel urged Europe to ban Hezbollah, but it was only after Hezbollah carried out the attack in Burgas that the EU moved to partially ban the organization. This newspaper has reported on many Hezbollah activities in Europe and its open support of terrorism. It has also been reported that the Mossad provided intelligence that helped thwart attacks on European soil.
In Europe, apart from Germany, the UK, Lithuania and the Netherlands have also outlawed Hezbollah in its entirety. Elsewhere, the Arab League, Israel, the US, Canada and many Latin American countries have designated Hezbollah’s entire entity a terrorist movement.
We hope that Switzerland follows suit. A full ban on Hezbollah everywhere is long overdue. It is not only Israel that is at risk. Hezbollah’s terrorism – funded by its Iranian sponsors – affects the whole world. This is not just an Israeli concern. Terrorism cannot be tackled in halves, with artificial distinctions between “military” and “political” wings. The only way to stop Hezbollah is to universally recognize that it is a terrorist organization whose heinous acts cannot be tolerated anywhere in the world.


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