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The Times of London’s sister newspaper, the Sunday Times, bungled badly when it carried, on Holocaust Memorial Day of all days, an ill-conceived anti-Netanyahu cartoon by Gerald Scarfe that’s been widely compared to a blood libel. But the centre-right Murdoch press is at core soundly pro-Israel, and yesterday’s Times carried a robust op-ed by two of Europe’s most prominent political figures, José Maria Aznar and David (Lord) Trimble.
Both founders of the splendid Friends of Israel initiative, the Spanish former prime minister and the Northern Irish former first minister caution against the perception that Hezbollah’s activities and influence are confined to Lebanon or that its political and military wings are separate from one another.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article3671013.ece
OPINION – José María Aznar/David Trimble: Don’t mince words. Hezbollah are terrorists
Jihadi terrorism is still alive and, as events in Mali and Algeria show us, poses a direct threat to us. The turmoil in North Africa reminds us that jihadism has no boundaries and that when confronting terrorism it is always better to prevent it rather than deal with its consequences. The EU, however, sometimes refuses to face the reality of terrorism. One strong case in point is Hezbollah.
In July last year a bus full of Israeli tourists was blown to pieces by a young suicide bomber in Burgas, Bulgaria — five Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver were killed. All the evidence points to it being a plot conceived and executed by Hezbollah.
Yet despite this atrocity some European governments are not willing to declare Hezbollah a security threat and put it on the EU terrorist list. This refusal is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the group. Hezbollah is not just a Lebanese militia group and political party. It is the long arm of Iran. From its conception by Tehran in 1982, it has been committed to the revolutionary goals of the international expansion of Shia Islam, as dreamt of by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The fact that it holds seats in the Lebanese Parliament and posts in the Cabinet does not mean that its leaders see themselves as just another Lebanese faction — albeit one that murders its political opponents (a UN tribunal found that the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the Lebanese prime minister was a Hezbollah plot).
