In the press, the phrase “Hezbollah militia” is very often encountered. When I tested a database for appearances of the phrase “Hezbollah militia” in major newspapers of the last seven days, I got more hits than I did with “Hezbollah terrorist.” This sort of thing can lead some people to wonder if perhaps there is some ambiguity as to what exactly Hezbollah is. This piece will argue that there is no ambiguity. Hezbollah is not a ‘militia.’

Susan Taylor Martin published in the St. Petersburg Times an article about Hezbollah that I think is useful. She writes,

[Quote from St.Petersburg Times begins here]

“After Lebanon’s terrible civil war ended in 1990, central Beirut went through a building boom that helped restore its image as the ‘Paris of the Mideast.’ Today, the Beirut that my interpreter and many other well-to-do Lebanese know is a city of luxury hotels, smart shops, fast cars and trendy restaurants.

Much of the credit for Beirut’s transformation went to the late Rafik Hariri, a Sunni entrepreneur who started out in the construction business in Saudi Arabia and returned home to become one of Lebanon’s richest and most influential citizens. He twice served as prime minister, favoring friends and relatives, critics say, and largely ignoring the Shiites who populated the slums of south Beirut and the villages in southern Lebanon close to the Israeli border.

Hezbollah stepped into the gap left by the government, starting schools and health care clinics and building a base of support among the Shiites... The organization now has 14 seats in Lebanon’s Parliament and, along with Amal, another Shiite party, controls about a third of the Cabinet.

Thus, part of the reason Lebanon’s government will find it difficult to disarm Hezbollah is that Hezbollah is a substantial part of the [Lebanese] government.”[1] (my emphasis)

[Quote from St.Petersburg Times ends here]

The real power in Lebanon is Syria, and Hezbollah is Syria’s pet, as HIR has argued.[2] So Hezbollah is a growth on the Lebanese state, and soon it will consume it.

What will the Hezbollification of Lebanon bring? Here is a preview, also from the St. Petersburg Times, of what Hezbollah is doing to Lebanon:

[Quote from St.Petersburg Times begins here]

“When I was in Lebanon last year, I had an interview with one of the leaders of Hezbollah, the radical Shiite organization that kidnapped two Israeli soldiers this week.

...As we drove to Hezbollah’s headquarters in southern Beirut, home to hundreds of thousand of poor Shiites, the streets got more crowded, the buildings more decrepit, the women more modestly dressed to the point many wore Iranian-style black abayas and head scarves.

My interpreter, eyes widening as a truly foreign scene unfolded before her, had a confession: Even though she was born in Beirut, she had never seen this part of the city.

‘I had no idea,’ she kept repeating.”

[Quote from St.Petersburg Times ends here]

Now this is interesting. The ruling elite in Syria is Alawite; the government is run by the secular Ba’athist party; and the majority of the population -- 74% according to US Intelligence[4] -- is Sunni Muslim. So, if Hezbollah is Syria’s pet we must ask: Why is Syria trying to create an Iranian-style Shiite terrorist state in Lebanon?

Resolving the apparent contradiction
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The St. Petersburg Times explains that,

“Though it has moved into politics and social services, Hezbollah has never abandoned its raison d’etre, which is the destruction of Israel...”[5]

Ah.

It seems to me that the following is relatively straightforward. If Hezbollah’s raison d’etre -- which is to say its reason for existing -- is “the destruction of Israel,” then the Islamization of Lebanon is instrumental to Hezbollah’s most important goal. In other words, the Lebanese Shiites are being transformed into Islamist fanatics so that they will kill Jews. The schools and social services are a shiny lure with which to maul these people with a horrific ideology (this appears also to be the Hamas strategy).

Further down in the same article we are told by “Kenneth Stein, professor of Mideast and Israeli studies at Emory University,” that

“Hezbollah does not want to disarm. What is Hezbollah if it can’t use force as a tool for perpetuating its goal of trying to destroy the state of Israel? Does it merely want to be a political party within the Lebanese Parliament? And the answer is no.”

“What is Hezbollah if it can’t ...destroy the state of Israel?” The question is rhetorical. To Stein it is obvious that a world in which Hezbollah cannot destroy Israel is intolerable to Hezbollah -- in such a world its political activities have no meaningful purpose. This -- together with the fact that Hezbollah’s officially ‘polite’ reason for existing is a total phony (as HIR has shown [6]) -- forces the conclusion: destroying Israel really is Hezbollah’s entire mission.

The Hezbollah saluting. Do they remind you of the Nazis?

Internally, the point of Hezbollah is to defeat political forces within Lebanon that want peace with Israel. Last year the Boston Globe quoted “Elias Zoghby, a top official of the Free Patriotic Movement, a primarily Christian group organized around General Michel Aoun,” saying, “We have the right to make peace if that is what most Lebanese want.” But the same article reported that

“Hezbollah ... [held] a huge rally, estimated by local media and residents as gathering 100,000 and 200,000 people...

The speakers dismissed as tools of foreigners the Lebanese who want to end Syria's presence in the country and disarm all forces except the national army and police. 'We need only one voice: Death to America! Death to Israel!' an organizer shouted from the stage as the rally began, setting off waves of rhythmic chanting: 'Death to America! Death to Israel!'”[6a]

The Hezbollah, who openly admit they are a tool of Syria, accuse Lebanese citizens who want the Syrians out of Lebanon of being...what? “Tools of foreigners.” That's fun. What isn't so funny is that Hezbollah's platform is literally the destruction of a country (or two).

Now I will finish the excerpt I left hanging:

“Though it has moved into politics and social services, Hezbollah has never abandoned its raison d’etre, which is the destruction of Israel. It has been supported in that goal by Iran, a Shiite country that reportedly has funneled millions of dollars and tons of armaments into Lebanon via Syria.” (my emphasis)

Ah.

So Hezbollah is ultimately a tool of Iran? Yes. In fact,

“Some 3,000 [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards were dispatched to Lebanon in 1982 to help fight the Israeli army which invaded the country the same year to drive out Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] fighters. Since then, the Guards have stayed on. In 1983, the Guards formed Hezbollah (Party of God) and began training and arming young Shiites.”[6b]

Well isn’t Iran, like the Lebanese Hezbollah, Shiite? Why yes it is. And didn’t the Islamist president of Iran’s Shiite theocracy, like the Lebanese Hezbollah, say out loud that Israel should be “wiped off the map”? Why yes he did.[7]

Now everything fits. Especially when you add that the country between Syria and Iran -- Iraq -- is a majority Shiite country where Iran has become the power to contend with, thanks to Bush’s war on Iraq (which, HIR has argued, was carried out to obtain precisely this pro-Iranian outcome).[8] The Islamist terrorists who control Iran are stretching a poisonous tongue in a northern arc around Jordan to strike at Israel through Lebanon. Hezbollah is the stinger on the tip.

As you may recall from the previous piece, when an open microphone caught US President George Bush saying to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that “what they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over,” this still didn't answer the question of who 'they' were. According to the Times of London, “the 'they' was widely presumed to be Russia.”[8a] I think the Times says that so that you won't think the obvious: that Bush and Blair were talking about Iran.

It appears that Hezbollah was being prepared to deliver a serious blow while the Israeli public was kept distracted by the supposed ‘peace’ process in the territories.

“...the Iranians have been directly involved in helping to develop the impressive network of control towers and monitoring stations along Israel's border that enabled Hizbollah to mount its audacious kidnap plan in the first place.”[9]

And the St. Petersburg Times explains:

“Hezbollah is even better armed and far more sophisticated militarily than Hamas and other Palestinian groups. While Palestinians still use notoriously unreliable Qassam rockets, a Hezbollah missile hit Haifa, Israel’s third largest city Thursday, and scores of rockets rained down on northern Israel, killing two people and wounding at least 120.”[1]

Hezbollah is not a ‘militia.’ Hezbollah is Iran's terrorist army of extermination. But why is Syria fully cooperating by becoming Hezbollah's direct patron? Because the Syrian ruling elite, too, wishes to exterminate the Jewish people.[11]

I think, however, that Hezbollah has struck prematurely, and has generated problems for the genocidal policy of the über-controllers. This sort of thing is not entirely surprising, because trying to produce a finely calibrated political process when your weapon of choice is a pack of rabid dogs is difficult. In their fury and eagerness, they may snap the leash. I believe this is what has happened.

A future article in this series will examine that hypothesis.

Take me to the

in this series.

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Footnotes and Further Reading
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