Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avigdor Liberman said on Monday, June 10, that Israel should stop allowing the European Union to meddle in its diplomatic affairs.  He called an EU decision not to add Hezbollah to its list of terrorist organizations “hypocrisy incarnate,” which would “make the EU irrelevant, as far as we’re concerned, when it comes to dealing with the region,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

Liberman was irate at what seemed to be indications that the EU planned, yet again, to refrain from placing the Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah on the EU’s official list of terrorist organizations.

In a letter Liberman sent to Lady Catherine Ashton, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Liberman recounted many terrorist acts committed by Hezbollah, including the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and its support for the brutal regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“The current exclusion of an organization, which incites to and is actively involved in murder and hatred, on the list of terrorist organizations is hypocrisy which cries out to the heavens. It begs the question as to what other requirements, beyond the facts that are well known, are necessary for Hezbollah’s inclusion,” Liberman’s letter reads.

Senator Bob Casey, Jr. (D-PA) is the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs.  Last week Casey reiterated his call to the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Casey pointed out that Hezbollah is closely allied with Iran and urged the EU to join the U.S. in cutting Hezbollah off from international financial and support networks.

In February, Thomas E. Donilon, who was at the time President Obama’s director of the National Security Administration, penned an op-ed in the New York Times making clear this U.S. administration is not taken in by Hezbollah’s charade of being merely a political entity.

Over the last decade, Hezbollah has worked assiduously to obscure its terrorist pedigree and convince the world that it is interested only in politics, providing social welfare services, and defending Lebanon. But it is an illusion to speak of Hezbollah as a responsible political actor. Hezbollah remains a terrorist organization and a destabilizing force across the Middle East.

In a press conference after the Knesset committee meeting on Monday, Liberman asked questions many Israel supporters frequently ask, but few politicians do: “How does Europe contribute to Israeli security? I keep saying we need to cut them off. There are problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea. Why focus on the Palestinians? They need to broaden their diplomatic horizons,” Liberman said.

Liberman stated that the EU made the decision not to place Hezbollah on the terrorism list at a meeting on June 4.  According to the Jerusalem Post report, however, EU representatives said that the June 4 meeting was only a preliminary one, and that the matter would be discussed again at another meeting next month.

Originally published at The American Thinker.

Has Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terror organization, bitten off more than it can chew in Syria? Could the transnational terror group have fond its own Vietnam in backing Alawite dictator Assad?  Michael Young, writing in Now, makes the case:

Hezbollah’s deepening involvement in the Syrian war is a high-risk venture. Many see this as a mistake by the party, and it may well be. Qusayr will be small change compared to Aleppo, where the rebels are well entrenched and benefit from supply lines leading to Turkey. In the larger regional rivalry between Iran and Turkey, the Turkish army and intelligence services have an interest in helping make things very difficult for Hezbollah and the Syrian army in northern Syria, particularly after the car-bomb attack in Reyhanli in May. (snip)

Syria’s army is preparing to launch an assault on Aleppo, aimed at driving rebels out of the northern city and surrounding province, the Daily Star of Lebanon reports.

Preparations for the new battle come five days after the Syrian army and its ally Hezbollah—which is an Iranian brigade based in Lebanon—retook Qusair in center-west Syria, a year after the bulk of that region had fallen into rebel hands.

“It is likely the battle for Aleppo will start in the coming hours or days, and its aim is to reclaim the towns and villages [under rebel control] in the province,” a source in the Syrian security apparatus told AFP.

“The Syrian Arab army is ready to carry out its mission in this province,” the source said.

The pro-Assad daily Al-Watan reported on Sunday that the government army had “started to deploy at a large scale in Aleppo province, in preparation for a battle that will be fought in the city and its outskirts.”

The rebels took Alepo in July, 2012, and since then this major industrial center had been bombarded regularly by Army forces.

Al-Watan also said “the Syrian army will take advantage of its experience in Qusair and Eastern Ghouta [near Damascus] to advance in the [central] province of Hama and Homs” nearby.

“The consequences of the battle for Qusair will … map out the contours of Syria’s political future,” the daily added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Friday that the regime was deploying “thousands of soldiers” near Aleppo, among other things to try and cut off the rebels’ weapons supply routes from Turkey.

Al-Manar, Hezbollah’s media channel, reported that the army’s “Northern Storm” operation had started Sunday morning, with the goal of “regaining Aleppo and its countryside.”

Battles raged on Sunday near Al-Nubul and Zahra, two rural Shiite enclaves outside Aleppo, in Syria’s north.

“The aim is to use the two villages as forward bases to make advances in Aleppo and its countryside,” said Brigadier General Mustafa al-Sheikh, a rebel commander who used to be a senior officer in Assad’ military.

“The regime considers that it has received a shot in the arm after the Qusair battle, but they will find that it will not be easy to advance in Aleppo,” al-Sheikh told The Daily Star.

Another rebel commander, from the Free Syria Brigade, using the name Salah, told The Daily Star there had been increased air traffic from the direction of Al-Nubul and Zahra for the last two days.

“We are forming groups to prepare but we lack ammunition,” he said in a phone conversation.

Club-wielding men wearing the yellow band identified with the Hezbollah terrorist organization killed protesters in an attack on anti-Hezbollah demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in Beirut on Sunday.

It was not known if the attackers were Hezbollah guards or were sympathizers with Hezbollah, which dominate the neighborhood of the embassy.

One man reportedly opened fire at protesters, who answered the call of the small Lebanese Option party to show their opposition to Hezbollah’s intervention on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people in two years.

Lebanon is deeply divided between anti-Syrian and pro-Syrian parties allied with Hezbollah.

After the vicious murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Muslim terrorists several weeks ago, there were several instances of vandalism against mosques, as well as a few small demonstrations organized by the English Defense League, which were met with opposition from “anti-fascist” protesters. But the predicted “wave of anti-Muslim sentiment” did not materialize.

Gordon Ross relates British reactions to another perceived ‘outrage’, one that happened in 1947.

By Gordon Ross

There can be no comparison between the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in the UK and the very recent 2013 anti-Muslim demonstrations.

In August 1947, consequent upon retaliatory actions taken by Jewish militants of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (so-called “terrorists”) against the occupying British mandatory authorities in the land of Israel, there was a serious backlash from sections of the indigenous UK population against Jews in the UK in anti-Jewish riots which were at their worst in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. Synagogues, Jewish shops, centres and individuals were attacked, and demonstrators called for violence against Jews. There wasn’t any significant protest against the riots from outside the UK Jewish community.

Daniel Trilling described them thus:

In Birkenhead, near Liverpool, slaughterhouse workers had refused to process any more meat for Jewish consumption until the attacks on British soldiers in Palestine stopped. Around Merseyside, the anger was starting to spill on to the streets as crowds of angry young men gathered in Jewish areas.

On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said, “Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for  12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: “Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

There were no Jewish clerics in the UK preaching hatred, incitement to violence, murder and treason from the pulpit, no young UK born ‘disaffected’ Jews demonstrating against the UK and burning its national flag in the streets, setting explosives here or travelling to the Middle East to join or train with the militants there, as has been the case in recent years with a number of Imams and other UK born Muslims.

In 2005 there were the 7/7 London Islamist bomb outrages, resulting in many dead and injured.  Since then there has been an ongoing Islamist terror campaign, with Islamist demonstrators calling for violence against and murder of non-Muslims, and a continuing barrage of complaints and demands issuing from the Muslim community, including the demand for the introduction of shariah law!  In 2010, a Muslim woman was put on trial for the attempted murder of an MP.  She stabbed him in the stomach because he had supported the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  She would not plead against the charge because she refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the court, and a plea of ‘Not Guilty’ was accordingly entered by the court on her behalf.  Fortunately the jury found her ‘Guilty’. In May this year, Islamist extremists murdered a British soldier on the streets of Woolwich, London, in full view of passers-by.

This latest Islamist outrage has provoked some anti-Muslim demonstrations and attacks, which the authorities here and other appeasers have been quick to condemn, but nothing that can in any way be compared with the anti-Jewish riots of 1947, and there were no significant demonstrations or protests from any section of the ‘indigenous’ UK population against the earlier Islamist extremist attacks and demands.

The only demonstrations staged here before were in support of Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah (in August 2006: “We are all Hezbollah now”) and Hamas, and those against the Jewish nation-state of Israel when it dared to defend itself against enemies dedicated to its destruction and the destruction of all Jews everywhere. Such demonstrations have often been led by prominent public and political figures such as former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone (whose inclination is to welcome and embrace known extremist Islamic cleric hate-mongers), gorgeous George Galloway (of ‘Big Brother’ fame) and senile radical left-winger, Tony Benn (complete with Arab keffiyah around his scrawny neck), and have persuaded some people in the UK to the view that ‘Britistan’ is truly on the way!

© Gordon Ross 2013

Gordon Ross is a non-practising (retired) solicitor, currently living in north London.  After practising law in London for almost 30 years, both in employment and on his own account, he immigrated to Israel in 1983 and re-qualified as an attorney at the Israel Bar.  In 1987 he returned to London, solely in order to take up employment as an in-house lawyer in commerce, which position he held until retirement towards the end of 2008.

He is keenly interested in history, both ancient and modern, and in international politics, particularly where Israel and the Middle East are concerned.

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Bulgaria has officially backed down on Wednesday from the charges it made only a few months ago, that the deadly Burgas airport bombing of a bus carrying Israeli tourists, July 18, 2012, was done by agents of Hezbollah. Five Israelis and one Bulgarian national were killed in the blast.

And in the process of dropping the ball, the Bulgarians have left a brave, conservative British government to its own devices, in the midst of their drive to get the EU to blacklist the Shi’ite terrorists.

On February 5, 2013, the Bulgarian interior minister said, referring to two suspects in the attack, that a “reasonable assumption, I repeat a reasonable assumption, can be made that the two of them were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah.”

They had Canadian and Australian passports and they lived in Lebanon. According to the Europol, DNA evidence left on SIM cards helped investigators to conclude that Hezbollah was indeed behind the bus bomb attack in Burgas.

What happened? A new government happened.

After months of a political impasse, on May 28 Bulgaria was endowed with a new, Socialist-led government, which won a parliamentary vote of confidence, even though it relies on a minority coalition in parliament. This means that the new government of the European Union’s poorest country will be helpless to steer the economy in new directions, or at all, and to attract investment.

The Socialist party in Bulgaria is, really, the leftover bosses from the old Communist regime but with better PR. The former governing party, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, was more pro-American. The country’s stalement—still unresolved—has lasted since the February vote.

The minority government received 119 votes in favor and 98 against. It is backed by the Socialists and their ethnic Turkish MRF allies, and it is led by Plamen Oresharski, 53, a non-partisan former finance minister.

“The evidence is not categorical” that Hezbollah planned the attack, said Bulgaria’s brand new foreign minister, Kristian Vigenin, said on Wednesday in an interview with Bulgarian National Radio.

He said it while a European Commission is debating whether to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, even as the Hezbollah is sending expedition forces into Syria, in support of the embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

France and Germany have joined Britain in calling for Hezbollah’s ouster from the civilized world. Britain formally submitted the Bulgarians’ own evidence of Hezbollah’s involvement in the airport bombing, coupled with the March conviction of a Hezbollah agent operating in Cyprus of plotting another attack there.

Back in February, correspondent Borzou Daragahi, working for the London-based Middle East and North Africa, apologized for suggesting that Israel bribed Bulgaria to framed Hezbollah. “Sincere apologies and regret for ill-conceived tweet yesterday about Israel and Bulgaria,” Daragahi tweeted.

The previous day, Daragahi had tweeted, “I don’t doubt Hezbollah/Iran could be behind Bulgaria bombing, but also think Israel could pay Sofia to say anything.”

Michael Freund wrote in The Jewish Press last February:

E.U. foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, whose pitiful response to the Bulgarian probe was to counsel “reflection.”

“We have to reflect on the consequences,” she told a press conference this past Tuesday, “we have to consult and come back.”

Ashton could not bring herself to even mouth the word “Hizbollah,” let alone utter a condemnation for its wanton brutality.

This reporter is known for mixing his private views and speculations with his news reporting, but for once I don’t see a need to speculate wildly. There appears to be a struggle within the EU over one of the vilest organizations in the world, an ally and a partner of two repressive, murderous regimes – and just last night, the supporters of that vile organization inside the EU managed to move the goal posts several yards on the decent folks who were trying to ostracize it.

The Gulf Cooperation Council took the lead against Hezbollah Tuesday and unanimously declared it a terrorist organization, a designation that the European Union is considering.

“All GCC countries are convinced that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization,” Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Ghanim bin Fadl Al-Buainain told reporters in Jeddah.

“There is no difference of opinion among the GCC countries on considering Hezbollah a terrorist organization, especially after its involvement in the Syrian conflict.”

The GCC foreign and finance ministers met in Jeddah to discuss Gulf security, “continued Iranian threats, especially the busting of Iranian spy rings” in of GCC countries.

Israel can thank Greenpeace activists for unintentionally alerting the country to a security lapse that terrorists could exploit to throw Israel into a blackout by blowing up the site, causing mass casualties and shutting down the electricity grid

Six Greenpeace activists managed to infiltrate Noble Energy’s off-shore gas terminal in the port of Ashdod Monday morning, and the pro-environment group said two of its members roamed freely within the sensitive site for an hour and a half.

They entered the 25-acre site by climbing ladders to bridge the fence around the terminal, setting off the warning system. Globes reported that the activists could have caused a shut-down of electricity to a large area of the country if they had done extensive damage.

The infiltrators were demonstrating their support for energy and opposition to Israel’s reliance on natural gas from the giant offshore energy fields discovered in the past three years off the Mediterranean Coast. Israel now produces more than half of the country’s electricity with natural gas.

Police arrested and then released all six activists, who were dressed up as the sun to show their support for solar energy.

But what if terrorists and not environmentalists had scaled the fence around the terminal?

It would have taken only a small amount of explosives to blow to smithereens the only network that carries gas to the terminal.

Anyone in the area probably would have gone up in smoke during an explosion, which would have severely crippled Israel’s dream of energy independence. Damage to the site would have forced a shut down to electricity in a large part of the country, causing financial and social chaos.

Nobel put on the stiff upper lip after the infiltration and stated, “The Greenpeace activists were handed over to the police. The matter is being investigated with the appropriate parties.”