The Party of God
Selectively Terrified
How Hezbollah became a terrorist organization in Canada
By Mary Foster, 23/01/2007
Throughout much of the Arab world, Hezbollah is being celebrated
as the champion that was, at long last, able to establish a victory
over invincible Israel and its omnipotent western backers. In the
Middle East, Hezbollah's victory has energized movements against
imperialism and its system of client regimes.
In Canada, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. It is thus illegal
to "participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any
activity" of this Lebanese political party or even to urge anyone to
act in a way that could be construed as benefiting Hezbollah.
Some explanation for the distance between these starkly different
approaches to the same organization can be found in the story of how
Hezbollah's political wing came to be placed on Canada's list of
terrorist organizations in December 2002. Examined in detail, this
brief history provides insight into how key Canadian foreign policy
decisions are made.
Hezbollah's ideological roots lie in the 1970s "movement of the
deprived," which advocated for the rights of Lebanon's historically
marginalized Shi'a population and for all oppressed groups. In 1982,
Israel invaded Lebanon, killing as many as 14,000 and wounding
another 20,000–the vast majority of whom were civilians–in the first
two weeks alone. Hezbollah emerged out of the popular Shi'a militias
resisting the Israeli occupation and participating in the civil war,
formally announcing itself in an open letter to "all the oppressed
in Lebanon and the world," published in 1985. The letter endorsed
Khomeini and the Iranian revolution and proposed an Islamic state
for Lebanon "which, alone, is capable of guaranteeing justice and
liberty for all." It was stipulated that this should be achieved
only through the will of all the people, however, and not by force.
"Confessional privileges [the domination of one religious group over
others] are one of the principal causes of the great explosion which
ravaged the country," the letter noted. Since 1992, when the party
first ran for national elections, Hezbollah's leadership has
publicly endorsed the importance of co-existence and pluralism
within a multi-religious, diverse Lebanon and the vision of an
Islamic state has faded into the background.
Today, Hezbollah is at once a political party with 14 seats in the
Lebanese Parliament, the main provider of social welfare throughout
the poor areas of Lebanon, a social movement voicing the aspirations
of the Shi'a, and a fighting force. It receives financial and
logistical support from Iran and political support from Syria and,
lately, Venezuela. Its ideological underpinnings blend Lebanese
nationalism, Islamism, social justice and pan-Arab nationalism.
It would be a serious challenge to substantiate the claim made by
Canadian Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day; that the "stated
intent of Hezbollah is to annihilate Jewish people." An examination
of official texts and speeches indicates, rather, that Hezbollah's
opposition to Israel is based on Israel's history as a European
colonial movement that occupied Arab lands, established an
exclusionary state at the expense of the original inhabitants and
has subsequently pursued a persistent pattern of settlement and
expansion.
Hezbollah's military operations wound down in 2000 with the end of
the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, but a military wing was
maintained on the grounds that Israel continued to violate the "blue
line" established by the UN, illegally held Lebanese prisoners in
their jails and occupied a tract of what Hezbollah considered to be
Lebanese land in the Golan Heights.
By 2002, Canada had arrived at a typically Canadian,
middle-of-the-road position: Hezbollah's armed wing–the Hezbollah
External Security Organization–was classified as a terrorist group,
while its political wing was not.
A campaign to list the Hezbollah political party started in July
2002, when the government failed to include the party in an expanded
list of designated terrorist organizations.
Pressure to list Hezbollah came from the Canadian Alliance Party
(the precursor to today's Conservative Party), senior Liberal
politicians Irwin Cotler and Art Eggleton, B'nai Brith (a Jewish
human rights organization, staunchly pro-Israel in orientation), and
the Canadian Jewish Congress.
A series of articles by Stewart Bell published in the National
Post–replete with terms like "terror suspects," "clandestine cells"
and "masterminds," and based largely on information obtained from
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), dating from the
1980s–documents the campaign. The National Post at the time was
owned by ardent Zionist Israel Asper. Stewart Bell himself has been
questioned about his role in CSIS's practice of selectively leaking
information to the media.
Denis Coderre, Minister of Immigration at the time, recently claimed
to have played a role in the campaign as well. Indeed, the arrest
and deportation of a supposed Hezbollah "agent" took place in
October 2002, with accompanying media fanfare.
Interestingly, both Jean Chretien and Bill Graham, then Prime
Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs respectively, resisted
placing Hezbollah on the terrorist list. Chretien met with Hassan
Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, in Beirut in October
2002. On November 28, a new set of groups was banned–and Hezbollah
was still not among them. Irwin Cotler denounced the omission as
"inexplicable and, given their [Hezbollah's] murderous ideology,
unconscionable."
B'nai Brith responded the next day, on November 29, with a press
conference in which they announced a lawsuit against the government,
brought on the grounds that the government was failing to protect
Canadians by refusing to ban Hezbollah.
The following day, November 30, the National Post picked up a story
from the Washington Times claiming that, at a Beirut rally,
Nasrallah had condoned and encouraged suicide bombing. Nasrallah was
alleged to have said: "Suicide bombings should be exported outside
Palestine"; and "I encourage Palestinians to take suicide bombings
worldwide, don't be shy about it."
Two weeks later, after going to Beirut to investigate, CBC
journalist Neil MacDonald exposed the story as a fabrication.
MacDonald traced the story to journalist Paul Martin. Martin had
previously been accused of writing a false report about Palestinian
militants under an alias in the same journal, the Christian-right
Washington Times. MacDonald said that Martin, when challenged, "came
up with three quotes [attributed to Nasrallah], one of which, to be
charitable, was a gross mistranslation, and the other two were never
even uttered." Martin named his source for the quotes as Lebanese
ultra-nationalist and pro-Israel Walid Phares, currently a Senior
Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), whose
board and advisors is composed of well-known neo-con Zionists.
Phares has also contributed policy briefs to the publication of
Daniel Pipes's think tank, the Middle East Forum.
MacDonald reported on CBC on December 11 that, "Ottawa now knows
that the Nasrallah quotes in the Washington Times about exporting
suicide attacks were almost certainly never uttered."
However, the alleged comments by Nasrallah had already received
enough attention to force the government's hand; a special Cabinet
committee meeting was held the evening of December 10, 2002, in
which it was decided to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist
organization. The Canada Gazette, official newspaper of the
government, reported, "The change has been made on the basis of the
close connection between the organization as a whole and the
Hezbollah External Security Organization, and the recent statement
by Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah,
encouraging suicide bombings."
Curiously, the decision came the same day as the high-profile arrest
of "terrorist suspect" Mohamed Harkat under a security certificate,
a top news story across the country which heightened public fear
about terrorism. The security certificate was signed by Immigration
Minister Denis Coderre on the recommendation of CSIS. The decision
to arrest Harkat at this particular time may well have been taken
independently of any other considerations. However, the timing of
the arrest does not appear to have been linked to any exigencies in
Harkat's own case.
The political significance of labelling Hezbollah a terrorist
organization is extensive: it is an act of tangible alignment with
the apartheid state of Israel and its American backers, both
regionally and in Lebanese internal politics; it is a stand against
the right of Palestinian self-determination and the Palestinian
right of return; and it is an affirmation of the double-standard
under which Israel's habitual disregard for international
humanitarian law is tolerated. In Canada, the designation helps
obviate the possibility of meaningful discussion about the causes of
oppression and war in the region–witness the media storm around the
visit by three members of Parliament to Lebanon in the aftermath of
the Israeli assault, and around the participation of Quebec
politicians in Montreal's August rally against the attack on
Lebanon. It also eviscerates the political potential of the large
Lebanese diaspora community in Canada by threatening them with the
terrorist label should they dare question the official line
themselves.
No revision of the decision appears to have been made in light of
the exposure of the Washington Times' story.
- Source: www.dominionpaper.ca
