Under pressure from Israel and the United States, Germany banned all Hezbollah activity on its soil on Thursday and designated the entire Iran-backed group a terrorist organization. The European Union (EU) should follow Germany’s lead and recognize Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization.
German police also conducted early morning raids on mosque associations in cities across Germany believed to be linked to the armed Shi’ite Islamist group. “The activities of Hezbollah violate criminal law and the organization opposes the concept of international understanding,” said the interior ministry in a statement reported by Reuters.
During the raids police reportedly searched mosque associations in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bremen and Berlin, as well as the private residences of the leaders of each association.
Previously, Berlin had distinguished between Hezbollah’s political arm and its military wing, as the EU still does, but now all Hezbollah symbols are banned at gatherings and in publications or in the media, and any Hezbollah assets can be confiscated, said the ministry, according to Reuters.
German security agencies estimate that upwards of 1,050 people in Germany are part of Hezbollah’s extremist militant wing.
Now is the time for the EU to take a principled stand and also drop the artificial distinction between the political and military wings of the same organization and designate the entire Hezbollah organization as a terrorist group.
As Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, and currently also Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) explained in January in Politico:
Berlin’s action comes in the wake of continued paralysis in Brussels, where some member countries still argue for Hezbollah’s legitimacy due to its political role in Lebanon. The EU thus maintains an artificial distinction between Hezbollah’s “political wing” and “military wing,” a division the terror group itself does not recognize. The EU’s stated intent for creating this false distinction is to preserve an open channel with Hezbollah and its representatives in the Lebanese government.
The facts belie the EU’s stance. Hezbollah works for the Iranian regime, not the Lebanese people, who have protested against Iran’s influence in their country since October. It contributes to the 400,000-plus death toll in Syria and remains dedicated to the extermination of Israel. It has planned and executed terrorist attacks on European soil. And it flouts the rule of law, raising hundreds of millions of dollars in financing per year through criminal networks and transnational money laundering schemes originating in or transiting Europe. An EU-wide designation of Hezbollah is necessary to deny it the vast European recruiting and fundraising networks it needs to survive.
On April 30th, Euroreporter stated that 55 legislators from the European Parliament, national parliaments in Europe, the United States Congress, and the Parliament of Canada also called in a first-ever transatlantic and inter-parliamentary declaration on the European Union to designate Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization.
This effort was led by the Transatlantic Friends of Israel (TFI) – a cross-party, inter-parliamentary group committed to strengthening the trilateral partnership between the United States, Israel, and Europe. The EU should listen to this call.
Germany has courageously taken a stand against the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group in its country, now it is time for the rest of the EU to do the same.
As Ambassador Grenell also said in Politico, the U.S. “cannot contain the threat on our own… the U.S. requires the support of its European allies. If the EU wants to take a stand against the Assad regime’s violence in Syria and the export of that violence and instability to Europe, it should follow the German parliament’s lead, and designate all of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.”
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The United States needs to do something about these Islamic Terrorist sympathizers in the Islamic community in the United States as well. And Why are Christian Churches being closed and Jewish Synagogues being closed as all of the Islamic Mosques being allowed to stay opened to worship in the United States?Something is very wrong with this Anti-Christian and Anti-Jewish move against your own Citizens Rights to worship to a Religion that we have had from the Begining of these United States of America???
I too have wondered the very same thing…..
The world needs to place a bounty on terrorists and those in the drug trade.
Stop the Islamic Jihad against the World!
I have no doubts: We WILL have surviving future generations after this threat, and we will also overcome imminent and future challenges to our survival from evil savages who believe that they must obtain Paradise and 27 Virgins by murdering those they call non-believers. Islam is a supremacist ideology and will not be satisfied with half measures. Ask the Taliban, the Iranian mullahocracy and the Salafist/Wahhabists. Sharia law is basically a legal attack on everything that is non-Islamic. Observe that it is not religion that is the problem, but Islam is the problem. God Bless the USA!
Aloha, George Peabody
Hezebollah is an extreme and wicked organization, whose sole purpose for existence is the destruction of Israel by any and all means necessary to accomplish that goal. Accordingly, the rest of the world should employ all means legally available to destroy Hezebollah.
What has been described in this article is a good start. However, it should be kept in mind that there is not and should never be a one-world government. Every country should act on its own volition, or in alliance with other countries to defeat the Hezebollah menace. The example of one-Europe governance, as exemplified by the EU is a menace to the individuality of each member government and is doomed to failure. So too, would a one world government fail, as exemplified by the United Nations today.
Amen to that!!!
The whole attitude is like giving due process to terrorists and it’s great that Grenell pressure twisted Germany’s arm enough to force them to do what seems to be a thorough job of a raid on Islam’s Hezbollah – if everyone would just ‘see’ Hezbollah an part of the terrorist Iran Revolutionary Guard, which it is that Solemani that we killed started up to give the males in Syria ‘jobs’ (which is why they’re always out of the country ‘working’) – we must never forget that it is Hezbollah from its Yemen hub that killed our sailors on the USS COLE, at routine rendezvous parked in the harbor, that President Clinton did not go after that attack of war on us. – it’s hideous that Germany is so far into being Stalinesque that it listened to Merkel (born and raised in East Germany Communist bloc of the Russia USSR when Germany was divided.)
There’s no doubt that Grenell is doing a fantastic job as DNI – when Ratcliffe is confirmed he will surely keep Grenell on, even as a private ‘contractor’. the man is strong and brilliant.
The people in the west ought to wake up , Now see http://www.thereligionofpeace.com
Terrorists?????
I have news for you. ALL muslims will attack and kill those who are not of THEIR particular sect. It is only a matter of WHEN the imams and clerics are able to activate them.
The only muslims who will not kill are those who don’t practice their religion.