By Andrew L. Jaffee

“It’s not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism. Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics; it is an organization, however, whose roots historically are completely separate and different from Al Qaeda,” he said, according to a transcript of an interview.

- FoxNews.com

This is a quote from Mark Malloch Brown, the U.N.’s Deputy Secretary-General — or Number 2 (and I do mean the bathroom humor analogy). How far can political correctness go? Why is the U.S. funding the U.N. toilet, even after the U.N.’s Number 1, Kofi Annan, continually refuses to rebuke Brown for his incredulous and historically false whitewashing of Hezbollah? And why won’t the U.N. enforce its own Resolution 1559 calling for the disarming of Hezbollah? Really. The evidence for Hezbollah’s terrorist activities is obvious and easily found.

Here’s a few of Hezbollah’s well-known atrocities — tactics, if you will:

July 19, 1982: The president of the American University in Beirut, Davis S. Dodge, is kidnapped. Hezbollah is believed to be behind this and most of the other 30 Westerners kidnapped over the next ten years.

April 18, 1983: Hezbollah attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut with a car bomb, killing 63 people, 17 of whom were American citizens.

Oct. 23, 1983: The group attacks U.S. Marine barracks with a truck bomb, killing 241 American military personnel stationed in Beirut as part of a peace-keeping force. A separate attack against the French military compound in Beirut kills 58.

Sept. 20, 1984: The group attacks the U.S. embassy annex in Beirut with a car bomb, killing 2 Americans and 22 others.

March 16, 1984: William F. Buckley, a CIA operative working at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, is kidnapped and later murdered.

April 12, 1984: Hezbollah attacks a restaurant near the U.S. Air Force Base in Torrejon, Spain. The bombing kills eighteen U.S. servicemen and injures 83 people.

Dec. 4, 1984: Hezbollah terrorists hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane. Four passengers are murdered, including two Americans.

Feb. 16, 1985: Hezbollah publicizes its manifesto. It notes that the group’s struggle will continue until Israel is destroyed and rejects any cease-fire or peace treaty with Israel.

June 14, 1985: Hezbollah terrorists hijack TWA flight 847. The hijackers severely beat Passenger Robert Stethem, a U.S. Navy diver, before killing him and dumping his body onto the tarmac at the Beirut airport. Other passengers are held as hostages before being released on June 30.

Feb. 17, 1988: The group kidnaps Col. William Higgins, a U.S. Marine serving with a United Nations truce monitoring group in Lebanon, and later murders him.

Oct. 22, 1989: Members of the dissolved Lebanese parliament ratify the Taif Agreement. Although the agreement calls for the “disbanding of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias,” Hezbollah remains active.

Feb. 16, 1992: Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah takes over Hezbollah after Israel kills the group’s leader, Abbas Musawi.

March 17, 1992: With the help of Iranian intelligence, Hezbollah bombs the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 and injuring over 200.

July 18, 1994: Hezbollah bombs the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires again with Iranian help killing 86 and injuring over 200.

October 1997: The United States lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

May 23, 2000: Israel withdraws all troops from Lebanon after 18 years patrolling the “security zone,” a strip of land in the south of the country. The security zone was set up to prevent attacks on northern Israel.

June 2000: United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan certifies Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon. Shortly thereafter, the U.N. Security Council endorses Annan’s report. Hezbollah nonetheless alleges Israel occupies Lebanon, claiming the small Shebaa Farms area Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 war as Lebanese territory.

Oct. 7, 2000: Hezbollah attacks an Israel military post and raids Israel, kidnapping three Israeli soldiers. The soldiers are later assumed dead. In mid-October, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah announces the group has also kidnapped an Israeli businessman. In 2004, Israel frees over 400 Arab prisoners in exchange for the business man and the bodies of the three soldiers.

March 1, 2001: The British government adds Hezbollah’s “military wing” to its list of outlawed terrorist organizations.

Dec. 11, 2002: Canada lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

June 5, 2003: Australia lists Hezbollah’s “military wing” as a terrorist organization.

Sept. 2, 2004: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 calls for “the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias,” a reference to Hezbollah.

December 2004: Both the United States and France ban Hezbollah’s satellite television network, Al Manar. A U.S. State Department spokesman notes the channel “preaches violence and hatred.”

March 10, 2005: The European Parliament overwhelmingly passes a resolution stating: “Parliament considers that clear evidence exists of terrorist activities by Hezbollah. The (EU) Council should take all necessary steps to curtail them.” The European Union nonetheless refrains from placing the group on its list of terror organizations.

July 12, 2006: Hezbollah attacks Israel with Katyushas, crosses the border and kidnaps two Israeli soldiers. Eight other soldiers are killed. Israel launches operation to rescue the soldiers and push Hezbollah from its border. Hezbollah attacks towns across northern Israel with rocket fire.

Here are a few facts about Hezbollah:

• Hezbollah is committed to the destruction of Israel. From the Middle East Quarterly:
  

  Here, then, is Nasrallah on the future intentions of Hizbullah:

  One of the central reasons for creating Hizbullah was to challenge the Zionist program in the region. Hizbullah still preserves this principle, and when an Egyptian journalist visited me after the liberation and asked me if the destruction of Israel and the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem were Hizbullah’s goal, I replied: “That is the principal objective of Hizbullah, and it is no less sacred than our [ultimate] goal…

  See also: Parliament of Australia, ADL, and the BBC:

  The party’s rhetoric calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.

• Even the BBC admits the cause of the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah:
  

  The crisis was triggered by the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants on 12 July.

• Hezbollah is using Lebanese civilians as human shields. Source: Houston Chronicle. See also the San Francisco Chronicle.
• Hezbollah is specifically targeting Israeli civilians by launching rockets at urban centers. Source: BBC.
• Hezbollah is indiscriminate in targeting civilians and has killed Arab children with its rockets. Source: Reuters.
• Hezbollah has hidden weapons in mosques. Source: Fox.
• Israel regularly warns Lebanese civilians before attacking Hezbollah tagets. Source: Daily Mail. See also Bloomberg.
• Hezbollah is defying U.N. Resolution 1559, calling for the disarming of all militias based in Lebanon. See the BBC.
• Hezbollah is a proxy for two of the world’s most active state sponsors of terrorism, Syria and Iran. See the Council on Foreign Relations.
• Hezbollah has an immense arsenal of weaponry at its disposal. In its own words, from the Middle East Quarterly:
  

  “They say [we have] 12,000 rockets … I say more than 12,000 rockets.”

• Israel has the right to exist as a sovereign, secure democracy. Information about the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not that hard to find. For example, take the World Almanac and Book of Facts, available in any mainstream bookstore and at most public libraries. Its profile of Israel states:*
  

  … The Hebrews probably arrived early in the 2d millennium BC…

  … Arab invaders conquered Palestine in 636. The Arabic language and Islam prevailed within a few centuries, but a Jewish minority remained…

  … Jewish immigration, begun in the late 19th century, swelled in the 1930s with refugees from the Nazis; heavy Arab immigration from Syria and Lebanon also occurred. Arab opposition to Jewish immigration turned violent in 1920, 1921, 1929, and 1936. The UN General Assembly voted in 1947 to partition Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Britain withdrew in May 1948.

  Israel was declared an independent state May 14, 1948; the Arabs rejected partition. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia invaded, but failed to destroy the Jewish state, which gained territory. …

  So we have ancient evidence of a Jewish presence in “Palestine” since 2000 BC, which can easily be found in any reputable archaeological journal. We have evidence of a continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land. We have evidence that Arabs, not just Jews, were immigrants into the Levant. Finally, we see that Arabs violently rejected the hallowed concept of a Palestinian homeland in 1948. *Source: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2002, World Almanac Education Group, Inc., New York, NY, 2002, pp. 808-817.

• Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, and plans to withdraw from the West Bank. Source: Wikipedia.

Please, Mr. Brown, why should we not “couch this war in the language of international terrorism?”

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Related: Israel, War Against Islamo-fascism, Palestinians, Political Correctness, Terrorist Groups

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