Thank you, geniuses! Who would have guessed!
The military wing of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite group, was blacklisted by European Union ministers as a terrorist organization on Monday in a policy shift that reflected their concern about Hezbollah’s suspected involvement in Europe-based bombings and its growing role in the Syria war.
And about time! So close to the anniversary of Hezbollah bombing a bus in Europe:
Bulgarians and Israelis commemorated on Thursday the victims who lost their lives last July in a terrorist attack in the Black Sea resort city of Burgas. Bulgaria’s government blamed Hezbollah for exploding a bomb on an Israeli tour bus a year ago at the Burgas airport, resulting in the deaths of five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver.
Forensic work on the incident sounds interesting:
The bomber — who was also killed in the attack — was a Caucasian-looking man caught on airport cameras loitering in the arrivals hall with a big backpack on his shoulders.
Bulgarian investigators managed to recover DNA and fingerprints from his remains along with a fake American driver’s licence in the name of Jacques Felipe Martin.
Two identical driver’s licenses — made in Lebanon and used by two of the perpetrator’s suspected accomplices — allowed investigators to track down the real identities of Canadian and Australian passport holders residing in Lebanon since 2006 and 2010.
“What we can make as a justified conclusion is that the two persons whose identity we have established belonged to the military wing of Hezbollah,” the then Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said in February.
DNA recovered from one of the licenses in the name of Ralph William Rico matched that of the bomber, the minister added, supporting the theory concerning his presumed Hezbollah links.
Well, like they say, better late than never. But of course, the reason for Hezbollah’s existence is hostility against Israel, and whenever something happens they don’t like, they go back to the same venomous refrain that bores anyone who has been paying attention to tears.
Hezbollah and Iran, the group’s biggest ally, denounced the designation as a capitulation to United States and Israeli pressure. “It appears that the decision was written with an American hand in Zionist ink,” Hezbollah said in a statement from Beirut.
Sure, the DNA and fingerprint reports on the culprit were written “in Zionist ink” as well.
Whatever comes out of this, one point is clear: that Hezbollah is an extremist Shiite Islamist group with the explicit goal of mimicking Iran’s theocracy. Despite the fact that they have earned quite a bit of legitimacy (even in the western world) for fighting against Israel’s now ended occupation of southern Lebanon, ultimately, it is their ideological bearing that gets them to turn even against their own allies in the fight against Israel. In their worldview fighting occupation makes sense only in the context of removing an obstacle to ushering in the end times by expediting the “second coming” of the Shiite “hidden imam”.
