• Why Jihad Watch?
  • About Robert Spencer and Staff Writers
  • FAQ
  • Books
  • Muhammad
  • Islam 101
  • Privacy

Jihad Watch

Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Hezbollah Emerging as the Terrorist A-Team

Mar 8, 2004 11:06 am By Robert Spencer

028g3o72.jpg
Palestinian militants demonstrate behind a poster of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah (Insight)

Who has been telling you ad nauseum that it isn’t all about Al-Qaeda? That’s right: Jihad Watch. Now hear it from the great Ralph de Toledano in Insight, with thanks to EPG:

To read the public prints – or the blasts that come from the Defense Department – the leaders of international Islamic terrorism are al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. But is this factually correct, or have we been gulled by astute propaganda? True, the disaster at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and other depredations were the work of al-Qaeda. But why has Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stated that Hezbollah, not al-Qaeda, “may well be the A-team of international terrorism”?

The evidence is incontrovertible that this is an understatement. Rachel Ehrenfeld’s Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed And How to Stop It brings together chapter and verse from the public record to make an overwhelming case. What is significant is that this record has been so signally ignored. Consider that in March 2003 Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah could threaten: “When the Marines were in Beirut, we screamed, ‘Death to America!’ Today, when the region is being filled with hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, ‘Death to America!’ is still, and will always be,our slogan.”

Yet the Arabist wing of the State Department insists that Hezbollah’s target is only Israel and that its threat to America is “insignificant.” Intelligence assessments, firsthand reportage and think-tank studies are all at hand. Hezbollah operates worldwide, with an annual budget estimated at $500 million. The intifida, launched in collaboration with Yasser Arafat, and its terrorist attacks on Israel from Lebanon, are but one of Hezbollah’s activities.

Founded in 1982, Hezbollah pulled together smaller terrorist groups and operates under a variety of names. Its program calls for the destruction of the United States, Israel and any government standing in its way; worldwide resumption of the Holocaust; and the liberation of “occupied Arab lands” such as Jordan and Morocco. Its camps in Lebanon’s Beka valley have trained al-Qaeda terrorists, Chechen rebels, the Medellin drug cartel, Hamas, the Japanese Red Army, Muslim “insurgents” in the Balkans, and the Irish Republican Army. It has organized “cultural” and “religious” groups worldwide – actually for recruitment and fund raising – in the United States.

Hezbollah has more than 5,000 trained terrorists in Lebanon and Syria alone, armed with some 10,000 missiles, tanks and antiaircraft artillery, according to European Union intelligence sources. In addition, Hezbollah has another 15,000 to 20,000 members in the United States, Latin America, Europe and East Asia. Its TV station broadcasts its death-to-America message to an estimated 10 million Muslims. And its leaders have the affection of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Hezbollah’s operational budget is $500 million. Its reserves reportedly are greater than bin Laden’s fortune or what he collected from the Saudi royal family. Since 9/11, less and less comes from Arab governments. Ditto from Islamic “charitable” organizations – a result of U.S. restrictions on financial transfers and the USA PATRIOT Act.

One example of how Hezbollah works: Its operatives bought with cash thousands of cartons of cigarettes from tobacco companies in North Carolina. The tax in that state is 5 cents. The cigarettes were smuggled to Michigan, where the tax is 70 cents per pack, and sold illegally at less than the regular price. Until Hezbollah operatives, led by Muhammed Yussef Hammoud, were apprehended and convicted, they had made many millions for Hezbollah. This money buys radar, mine-detection devices, laser range finders, naval equipment and other supplies hardly needed for Hezbollah’s terrorist war against Israel.

Hezbollah also has been involved in merchandise counterfeiting, forging driver’s licenses and green cards, and looting Social Security funds. The loss so far to financial institutions in credit-card fraud alone has been more than $17 million. The U.S. Treasury Department in 2002 seized some $16 million in currency and cashier’s checks that were being sent illegally to Lebanon. Hezbollah coordinates the traffic of drug-smuggling networks, facilitating operations for cash on the barrelhead.

Under Imad Mugniyah, Hezbollah’s external security head, the group has been involved in the Balkan fighting, an area that serves as the route for 40 percent of the heroin trade in the United States and 80 percent to Europe. With al-Qaeda, it is a dominant factor in the Latin American drug trade. And it has set up terrorist-training and teen-age indoctrination camps in the Latin American jungles – as well as “making fortunes” in the forgery of passports, counterfeiting, trafficking in human beings, smuggling stolen vehicles, and running export/import businesses with Indian and Hong Kong traders.

While al-Qaeda licks its wounds, with many of its leaders captured or killed, Hezbollah is actively taking over the business of destroying America and the West. But who would have known this from listening to the TV news?

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Skype (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Follow me on Facebook

Filed Under: Al-Qaeda, Hizballah, Lebanon, United States


Learn more about RevenueStripe...

FacebookYoutubeTwitterLog in

Subscribe to the Jihad Watch Daily Digest

You will receive a daily mailing containing links to the stories posted at Jihad Watch in the last 24 hours.
Enter your email address to subscribe.

Please wait...

Thank you for signing up!
If you are forwarding to a friend, please remove the unsubscribe buttons first, as they my accidentally click it.

Subscribe to all Jihad Watch posts

You will receive immediate notification.
Enter your email address to subscribe.
Note: This may be up to 15 emails a day.

Donate to JihadWatch
FrontPage Mag

Search Site

Translate

The Team

Robert Spencer in FrontPageMag
Robert Spencer in PJ Media

Articles at Jihad Watch by
Robert Spencer
Hugh Fitzgerald
Christine Douglass-Williams
Andrew Harrod
Jamie Glazov
Daniel Greenfield

Contact Us

Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Archives

  • 2020
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2019
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2018
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2017
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2016
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2015
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2014
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2013
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2012
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2011
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2010
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2009
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2008
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2007
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2006
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2005
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2004
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • September
    • August
    • July
    • June
    • May
    • April
    • March
    • February
    • January
  • 2003
    • December
    • November
    • October
    • March

All Categories

You Might Like

Learn more about RevenueStripe...

Recent Comments

  • janicevanguilder on New study reveals that Muslim religiosity strongly linked to hatred towards the West
  • Boycott Turkey on Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, France and UAE conduct joint military exercises amid rising Turkish threat
  • Yogi on EU Parliament members call for firing of border agency director for preventing illegal migrants from entering Europe
  • Hoi Polloi on Why so many Muslims can’t wait for Biden to get inaugurated
  • Hoi Polloi on EU Parliament members call for firing of border agency director for preventing illegal migrants from entering Europe

Popular Categories

dhimmitude Sharia Jihad in the U.S ISIS / Islamic State / ISIL Iran Free Speech

Robert Spencer FaceBook Page

Robert Spencer Twitter

Robert Spencer twitter

Robert Spencer YouTube Channel

Books by Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch® is a registered trademark of Robert Spencer in the United States and/or other countries - Site Developed and Managed by Free Speech Defense

Content copyright Jihad Watch, Jihad Watch claims no credit for any images posted on this site unless otherwise noted. Images on this blog are copyright to their respective owners. If there is an image appearing on this blog that belongs to you and you do not wish for it appear on this site, please E-mail with a link to said image and it will be promptly removed.

Our mailing address is: David Horowitz Freedom Center, P.O. Box 55089, Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.