Ayoon wa Azan (Hezbollah on trial)

Lebanon's Hezbollah is accused of carrying out terror acts, or planning them, in countries such as Cyprus, Bulgaria, India, Azerbaijan and Kenya, and earlier in Argentina. I support Hezbollah against Israel and oppose it everywhere else, including Ras Beirut. When the party launches a strike against an Israeli military or economic target (and not against people), it is acting as a national liberation movement against a racist, neo-Nazi government that occupies the land of others. However, if Hezbollah attacked Israeli tourists abroad, or a Jewish center in a third country, it will be guilty of terror that in no way can be defended. I am writing with a verdict imminent in the case of Husam Yacoub, who was arrested in Cyprus on 7 July 2012, while monitoring the movement of Israeli tourists, and after the killing of five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, along with their bus driver, when a terrorist put a bomb to kill everyone on the bus on 18 July 2012. The foreign minister of Bulgaria, Nikolay Mladenov, cited a statement earlier this month by the interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, about there being a "hypothesis" about Hezbollah's connection to the blast. However, they did not say that the charge was firm and the prosecutor general, Stanella Karadzhova, preceded these comments a full month earlier in a magazine interview, when she linked the bombing to al-Qaeda supporters. The Bulgarian government fired her on the pretext that she had revealed secret information about the investigation. A SIM card for a mobile phone was found at the scene of the crime and was traced to Maroc Telecom in Morocco, where there is no activity by Hezbollah, but by groups of supporters of al-Qaida. Once again, there is a Bulgarian hypothesis, or theory, about the terrorist act, and there is certainly no verdict yet. Nonetheless, Thomas Donilan, the White House National Security adviser, found the Bulgarian suspicions to be sufficient to write an article in The Washington Post. It was called "Hezbollah Unmasked," but the only thing that was unmasked was his link to Israel and that country's interests. Here is the first paragraph of the article. "On Feb. 5, after more than six months of investigations, the Bulgarian government announced that it believed Hezbollah was responsible for the attack last July that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver and injured dozens more in the resort town of Burgas. This report is significant because a European Union member state, Bulgaria, explicitly pointed a finger at Hezbollah and lifted the veil on the group’s continued terrorist activities. Europe can no longer ignore the threat that this group poses to the Continent and to the world." The paragraph above condemns not Hezbollah but Donilon, who has extrapolated that the Bulgarian government thinks it likely, and is not certain, and it has not made clear, specific accusation, but only come up with a hypothesis. Donilon exaggerated when he claimed that Hezbollah threatens Europe and the world. This is Israeli rhetoric and the Israeli objective here is obvious; Hezbollah is to be considered a terrorist organization, as the United States has done. Who else is making accusations? In a long report published by The Washington Post, Joby Warrick cites Mathew Levitt, a pro-Likud American who has moved between the FBI, the Treasury and the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Affairs as a counterterrorism expert. He will soon publish a book about Hezbollah. There is also Daniel Benjamin, who recently stepped down from his counterterrorism post at the State Department, which issues an annual list of the world's terror groups that does not include Israel, which kills women and children and locks up thousands of Palestinians without trial for years. Thus, the article quotes Israel’s supporters as if they are impartial witnesses. If the charges against Hezbollah are proven, then there can be no defense. Hezbollah will then deserve a general condemnation, because it will be going beyond its purpose as a resistance movement, to serve Iran against foreign and Arab states. All I hope is that Hezbollah will not lose its political capital as a national liberation movement, and behave with absolute neutrality in Syria, without acting as a cat's paw for Iran. It should move away from Iran and its intelligence activities in Arab countries and around the world. I believe that the campaign against Hezbollah by known supporters of Israel is targeting Iran, not Hezbollah. I see no logical reason to make the party pay for the mistakes or sins of Iran; it should continue in the resistance against Israel, and only on that battleground. --- The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.