[tadamon-l] Why is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List?

[Tadamon!]

Why is Hezbollah on the Terrorism List?
And Who Isn't But Should Be?

http://tadamon.resist.ca/index.php/post/599

By FRANKLIN LAMB

It was a sign of the times last week (March 27) when House Armed Services 
Committee Staff Director Erin Conaton declared in a memo to committee 
staffers that the powerful committee was scrapping the Bush Administration 
shop worn phrase, Global War of Terrorism. Conaton's boss, Rep. Ike 
Skelton,(D-Mo) the new Chairman of the Committee commented that "the 
overused label had become an embarrassment and had lost its meaning".

Recent research in Lebanon has turned up information previously 
unavailable which sheds light of the misapplication of the Terrorism label 
by the Bush administration.

The "T word" is often misapplied as former National Security Advisor 
Brzezinski reminds us as he tours the country promoting his new book, 
Second Chance and focusing on the "catastrophic leadership" crisis caused 
by the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Another area that would benefit from discarding the "terrorist label" is 
the Bush administration's ongoing campaign against Hezbollah. There is 
considerable doubt among international lawyers whether Hezbollah should 
ever have been classified as a terrorist organization.

At the urging of U.S. and Israel, Canada classifies Hezbollah as a 
terrorist organization, which limits the group's ability to raise funds 
and travel internationally. A Canadian peace coalition called Tadamon 
Montreal is working to remove Hezbollah from the Terrorism list in Canada.

Australia and the UK distinguish between Hezbollah's security and 
political wings, and other countries like China, Russia, and member states 
of the European Union and the United Nations have refused US/Israel 
demands to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization at all.

The process for putting an organization on the "Terrorism list" is as 
follows: The Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism in the U.S. 
State Department (S/CT) monitors the activities of groups active around 
the world considered potentially terrorist to identify potential targets 
for designation. When reviewing potential targets, S/CT looks not only at 
the actual terrorist attacks that a group has carried out, but also at 
"whether the group may be inclined toward future acts of terrorism or 
retains the capability to carry out such acts".

As of April 2007, a plurality (39%) of the organizations on the US 
Terrorism list represent Muslim groups recommended for inclusion by, among 
others, AIPAC and their friends in Congress. According to former AIPAC 
Director of Congressional Relations, Steve Rosen, soon to start his trial 
for passing classified information to Israel, "AIPAC owns the 'T' list!"

The US State Department definition of terror is a broad one: "the 
deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to 
inspire fear for political ends."

Suspected terrorist groups are thereby defined as such by the means they 
use to pursue their objectives. To describe an organization as terrorist 
is not a comment on its political goal or ends, which may be laudable ones 
such as national liberation or resistance to occupation.

The common saying that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom 
fighter' is rejected by this student of the subject because it is 
simplistic and even nonsensical. To whit, a terrorist can also be a 
freedom fighter struggling for justice and a freedom fighter can fight for 
freedom by using terrorist means.

Placed on the "T" list in 1999, Hezbollah was taken off the list a couple 
of years later following Hezbollah's strong condemnation of the 9/11 
attack on America. Hezbollah was returned to the list when Dick Cheney 
opined that a "presumed Hezbollah operative" probably met with an Al Qaeda 
representative in South America in 2001. Similar to Cheney's Saadam 
Hussein-Al Qaeda 'contacts' claim.

Lebanese officials including Lebanese President Emil Lahoud contemptuously 
dismissed reports of such a meeting as Israeli-sponsored propaganda. 
According to Lahoud: "The media campaign, which is conducted by Israeli 
circles, seeks to exploit the September 11 attacks to slander the Lebanese 
resistance by stigmatizing it with the image of terrorism". Lebanon 
continues to reject US/Israeli demands that they freeze Hezbollah's back 
accounts and force it stop providing social services.

A study undertaken at the American University of Beirut in January- 
February 2007, benefiting from research and surveys from a variety of 
international and Israeli human rights organizations, tabulated no fewer 
than 6,672 acts of Israeli state terrorism directed against Lebanon and 
Palestine between the years 1967-2007. Not only is Israel absent from the 
US State Department Terrorism list, Israel appears to determines who is on 
it.

The case against Hezbollah presented in a draft by AIPAC for the State 
Department is virtually identical to the one finally issued by the State 
Department. It claims that Hezbollah bombed Americans at the US Embassy, 
the Marine barracks in 1983 and held a number of Americans hostages during 
the 1980's. Or as Hezbollah's rap sheet currently appears on US and 
Israeli government computers:

"Hezbollah (as of April 3, 2007): Suicide bombings, hijacked 1985 TWA 
Flight 847; rocket attacks against Israel in 2006."

(The latter item re the "rocket attacks against Israel in 2006", is 
examined in the just released volume, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century 
of Israel's Use of American Weapons against Lebanon.)

Hezbollah is accused by Israel and the Bush administration of a type of 
Islamist Terrorism similar to Al Qaeda but used in the context of National 
Liberation, just like Hamas. Both of which have fought Israel in the 
Lebanese and Palestinian contexts, respectively.

However, unlike al Qaeda, their enemy, Hezbollah and Hamas are complex 
social and political movements. They use different types of force, 
including guerrilla tactics which are legitimate under international law. 
They are also different from al Qaeda in that their alleged terrorist 
activity aims to liberate Palestine and Lebanon, as opposed to being part 
of a 'global struggle' against the United States with undefined 
objectives.

Was Hezbollah involved in the attacks against Americans a quarter century 
ago? Hezbollah has consistently denied these charges ever since it 
published its "open letter" announcing its foundation in 1985, years after 
the first attacks.

The results of an investigation conducted entirely in Lebanon including 
interviews with some who claim to have been personally involved with the 
"rap sheet" events do not credit Bush administration claims.

What the record to date shows, pending the Bush administration release of 
claimed evidence to the contrary, is the following:

1) When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and quickly routed much of the PLO 
resistance, more than 30 local resistance groups formed. Some were no 
doubt inspired by the success of the Iranian Revolution three years 
earlier and took advantage of available political and physical training. 
Arms were available from the soon to depart PLO, and other sources, 
sometimes as gifts and sometimes for cash.

For example, in late August 1982, as Fateh was preparing to depart Beirut 
for Greece and goodbyes were being said, two American researchers in 
Beirut were given ('for safe keeping') 250 brand new Chinese made Ak-47's 
wrapped in thick grease and heavy plastic. Not knowing exactly what to do 
with the gifts in the 'wild west' atmosphere of the time, the Americans, 
doing what came naturally, hastily buried them at night. The weapons were 
never found by the advancing Israelis but were discovered 15 years later 
when the Commodore Hotel in Hamra was enlarged and workers dug up that 
vacant lot to its south! Who has them now is anybody's guess!

The goal of these new groups in the 1980's was to drive Israel and its 
foreign sponsors from Lebanon. The local and regional political situation 
of the early 1980's was very tolerant of militant modes of actions and 
many groups adapted and acted because no single force, power or obstacle 
stood in their way.

'Operations' were sometimes carried out by part of a group without the 
knowledge, participation or liability or the particular organizations 
command.

Teams of foreign assassins were active those days including one traced to 
Israel which tried to assassinate one of America's most competent 
Ambassadors to Lebanon, John Guenther Dean on August 27, 1980. The weapons 
used in the failed attempt were traced to a shipment made from the US to 
Israel. Dean's crime was getting too chummy with Yassir Arafat and his 
deputy Abu Jihad, who were helping Dean to get the American Embassy 
hostages released from Iran.

Another "operation" during this period was the CIA funded attempt of March 
8, 1985 to assassinate Sheik Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah. The car bomb 
killed eighty, mostly women and children and wounded 256. As Bob Woodward 
points out in his book, Veil, the CIA's William Casey mistakenly thought 
Fadlallah was the spiritual leader of Hezbollah. To this day Fadlallah is 
quite independent of Hezbollah although he is probably Lebanon's most 
revered cleric due in no small measure to his scholarship, his three 
decades of social service work as well as his passionate defense of human 
rights.

2) An exhaustive review, by American researchers, of the nearly 80 Western 
kidnapping cases, organized by a staggering variety of groups in Lebanon 
between 1975 and 1990 concluded that more than 100 Western detainees were 
taken, released, killed or exchanged. As for the Lebanese themselves, 
thousands were kidnapped; many by Israel and their allies and hundreds are 
still unaccounted for.

According to some who claim to have participated in one way or another, in 
some of these kidnappings, active groups sometimes declared responsibility 
and sometimes were silent. Among the groups admitting their actions at 
various times were: The Organization of Socialist Revolutionary Work, the 
Armed Revolutionary Factions in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad, the Organization 
of the Oppressed in the World, the Revolutionary Justice Organization, 
Holy Warriors for Freedom, the Khaibar Brigade, the Islamic Jihad for the 
Liberation of Palestine, the Blessed Resistance, the Islamic Liberation 
Organization, the Organization of the Mujhahideen for Freedom, the 
Revolutionary Cells, The Organization of the Islamic Dawn, The 
Organization of Militant Revolutionary Cells.

These were some of the 'main stream' groups, there were others, some for 
whom kidnapping was a cottage industry. Some functioned much like the 
current US and the UK hired mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. In some 
cases contracts were drawn up with individuals willing to "hire out" for 
certain specific abduction projects. Given the available labor pool there 
was sometimes intense competition for a contract. For some groups, 
westerners were snatched for no other reason than the ransom money was 
good. Often those involved would use the ransom money to start a 
legitimate business, pay for family needs such as medical care or their 
children's tuition fees. Sometimes Western companies paid for the release 
of their employees and in other cases governments would pay.

The largest payment for hostages during this period was the Arms for 
Hostages deal worked out by the Reagan administration when it provided 
missiles and spare parts to Iran to use against Saadam Hussein's army 
after the same administration had supplied the Iraqi regime with chemical 
weapons to use against Iraqi Kurd, Shiites and Iranians.

Lebanese Islamist groups, and others, who in the 1980's were resisting 
Israel's attacks did not feel that their acts were nearly as reprehensible 
as the US responsibility for what Israel was doing to their people and 
country.

For example, once it became clear to them that the US Marines had 
abandoned their initially claimed neutrality as 'peace keepers' and 
instead began the shelling of Lebanon with 2,700-lb shells from the USS 
New Jersey most of these groups felt it their duty to repulse the US 
attacks.

Interviews with some of these now middle aged resistance fighters in 
Lebanon who were active in this period make plain that these groups, felt 
that their military actions against the foreign forces constituted 
legitimate self defense, protecting Lebanon's population from attacks by 
foreign forces.

While the military legitimacy of fighting the American and French forces 
was clear to the Lebanese during the early 1980's what about bombing the 
American Embassy? International law has protected Embassies since the 1815 
Congress of Vienna extend protection to foreign plenipotentiaries.

Safe passage for diplomats is not always honored and as recently as 
February 2007 the United States government has been accused by Iraq and 
Iran of unlawfully kidnapping Iranian diplomats.

The evidence from the 1980's suggests that Hezbollah stayed out of the 
kidnapping game and concentrated on building its organization which they 
formally announced in an 'open letter' on Feb. 14, 1985.

Would the founders of Hezbollah have heard of something on the street, 
village or family level of who may have been responsible for some of the 
high profile western kidnapping cases? One assumes so. Did neighborhood 
gossip attach an obligation to get involved on behalf of their viewed 
oppressors, including the US, and rescue their hostages? In order to avoid 
some future 'terrorism' list?

The evidence suggests that Hezbollah is on a "political list" called the 
"terrorism list" because Israel wants it there not because there is proof 
that it engaged in terrorism against Americans 25 years ago.

Using the scare tactic of 'kidnapping Americans' and 'terrorism' without 
proof, adds to the international ridicule of Bush's policies.

In the nearly empty Lebanese Parliament building these days the gossip is 
that the Bush administration wants to bargain with Hezbollah to remove it 
from the 'T' list if Hezbollah gives up its objective of liberating 
Palestine and cancels its opposition to the Bush/Olmert backed Siniora 
government

Given this kind of Bush administration offer, many view Hezbollah's spot 
on the 'T list' as a badge of honor. Yet, respect for international law 
would suggest that the Bush Administration ought to show their 'evidence' 
or remove Hezbollah from the list.

When pressed in early April, 2007 by a former House Judiciary Committee 
staffer, one lawyer in the State Department Office of the General Counsel 
commented, "Its not that Hezbollah is terrorist per say, actually we know 
they are pretty clean-they are ok- but you must realize that they do 
associate with shady characters to their East, if you know what I mean."

Hezbollah's view of the April 17, 1983 Embassy bombing is different from 
some militia operating during this period. Hezbollah has consistently 
opposed attacks on foreign civilians. It was one of the first to condemn 
the 9/11 operation as well as the 1997 attack at the Temple of Hatshepsut 
at Luxor, Egypt which killed 58 civilians as "bloody and terrible, calling 
them crimes against Islam. Hezbollah also condemned the Cairo attacks on 
the Greek tourists, and the Algerian killing of 7 trappist monks in 
Algerian by claimed Islamists.

Despite Hezbollah's view, which is based on the Koran's prohibitions 
against harming innocent civilians, was the 1983 US Embassy attack 
terrorism against an internationally protected structure or had the 
Embassy become a legitimate military target? In the assertion of one 
individual, a former member of Islamic Jihad, interviewed by American 
researchers during the spring of 2007 his group had nothing to do with 
Hezbollah during the Embassy operation or at any other time. He claims his 
associates knew in advance (soviet intelligence passed to Lebanon via 
Syria) that the eight CIA operatives assigned to Lebanon were holding 
meetings in the Embassy and using its diplomatic protection for cover for 
plotting assassinations and attacks on Lebanon. The entire CIA contingent 
was indeed meeting on the 6th floor of the Embassy at the time of the 
attack. The same source claims that the Embassy was also being used for 
feeding targeting information to the USS New Jersey, visible offshore from 
the upper floors of the Chancery.

The view that the American Embassy was a legitimate target on April 17, 
1983 cannot be summarily dismissed without careful review because 
principles of International law tend to support it. Once an Embassy's is 
used for aggressive military purposes its protection collapses and it 
becomes what Donald Rumsfeld calls a "legitimate target of opportunity".

Where is the proof that has been demanded for more than two decades? Is 
the only reason Hezbollah is on the 'terrorism list' is because Israel 
wants it there and a desire by some in the Bush administration to settle 
old scores without proof of who was responsible?

Organizations such as Islamic Jihad, Organization of the Oppressed on 
Earth and the Revolutionary Justice Organization are considered by the 
Bush administration and Israel to be synonymous with Hezbollah. That 
grouping appears to be a clumsy and inaccurate conclusion designed to 
support political objectives. No proof has ever been offered to establish 
that these groups were part of Hezbollah during this period rather than 
adversaries or competitors.

As one Hezbollah supporter commented:

"In America as you built a resistance to the British invaders and 
occupiers were all the groups neatly organized? Were some 'terrorists'? 
Did the ones who did operations such as the Boston Tea Party' give their 
names and address to the occupiers? Or did some hide their identity and 
even dress like natives? Did George Washington and his staff know 
everything that was going on or did some groups just form and decided it 
was better to work on their own liberation project? That is what it was 
like here in Lebanon during this period. We should leave that period and 
concentrate on working together to solve today's problems in Lebanon and 
the Middle East. All parties talking and meeting"

In denying Hezbollah involvement in operations targeting American 
civilians, their leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah has stated:

"The truth of the matter is that there was something other than Hezbollah, 
called the Islamic Jihad, who kidnapped the hostages. There exist 
videocassettes, communiqués that bear the signature of the Islamic Jihad. 
It is independent form the party. It is absolutely incorrect that the 
Islamic Jihad is a cover name for Hezbollah.

Hezbollah remains on the US and Israel 'terrorism' list for purely 
political reasons and to punish the organization for its resistance to 
Israeli aggressions against Lebanon and Bush administration plans for the 
region."

It is time for the Bush administration to present its case and prove what 
terrorism Hezbollah has actually used against the American people in the 
1980's in light of US government admissions that since 1999 there is no 
evidence that Hezbollah has engaged in 'Terrorism'.

It's time for the poker players to reveal their cards, or as they say down 
in Crawford.. 'y'all show 'em er fold 'em!


[Franklin Lamb has been in Lebanon researching a book for the past nine 
months. Hezbollah: a brief Guide for Beginners in expected in early 
summer, 2007. He can be reached at fplamb at gmail.com]

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