How Madison Avenue Helps Hezbollah

As an industry, advertising ranks somewhere between used car salesmen and pedophiles. Having been associated with the advertising profession for almost 30 years I can tell you that we do our job to a much higher moral standard than much people think..at least in most cases. In Lebanon there are advertising agencies working to sell Hezbollah as a legitimate political choice. That is not surprising. What is strange is that the there are international advertising agencies HELPING the Lebanon shop sell the Hezbollah message. One of them is Saatchi and Saatchi founded by two Jews, Maurice and Charles Saatchi:

Selling Terror
Madison Avenue meets the Bekaa Valley.
by Jonathan Schanzer

HEZBOLLAH, THE RADICAL Shiite terrorist organization in Lebanon, is best known for attacking Israelis. But the organization also attempts to gain the support of Lebanese citizens with a sophisticated network of social services, political outreach, and financial aid. And recently, the militia has turned to advertising campaigns to bolster its image.

Hezbollah owns or controls at least two known advertising companies: Ressalat and Media-Publi Management. The U.S. Department of the Treasury should designate both as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities (SDGTs) immediately as part of its ongoing campaign to cut off Hezbollah from the global financial system.

According to a recent article in the Lebanese al-Nahar, Ressalat is a "Hizbullah-funded organization that handles advertising and cultural events for the group." The company does not appear to have a web presence, but al-Nahar identified Mohamed Noureddine as Ressalat's creative director. One French report also identified Noureddine as the director of a think tank tied to Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah. His name can also be found alongside pro-Hezbollah videos on YouTube. After the car bombing that killed Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh on February 13, Noureddine and his team launched a sophisticated advertising campaign to lionize the slain terrorist leader. Within hours of the bombing, colorful stencil drawings of Mughniyeh's bearded and bespectacled face appeared on huge billboards throughout Lebanon. The stenciled portrait was similar to the iconic drawing of Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. These Mughniyeh billboards--some of which read: "Prophecy of the Final Victory"--now line the road from the Beirut airport to the city's downtown district. According to Mohammed al-Amin, managing director of a billboard company that rented space to Ressalat, the entire network of billboards along the airport road and within the group's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut cost at least $100,000.

In 2006, following Hezbollah's war against Israel, the group reportedly paid an unnamed public relations firm some $140,000 to design an ad campaign called "Divine Victory," glorifying the 34-day war that ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire on August 14, 2006. Last year, Hezbollah posted a huge billboard in southern Lebanon, facing northern Israel, with the faces of two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Additionally, near the coastal town of Naqura (where the U.N. peacekeeping force maintains its headquarters), Hezbollah posted a large mural portraying an Israeli warship that had been hit by the terrorist group during the 2006 war.

Was Ressalat behind all of these billboards? The answer is still unknown. There may be other unidentified Hezbollah advertising companies lurking in Lebanon.

However, Hezbollah's advertising operation is not limited to billboards. As first revealed by analyst Avi Jorisch, a Lebanon-based company called Media-Publi Management handles ads and promotions for al-Manar, Hezbollah's television station. Media-Publi is now listed (complete with address and phone number) with the Lebanese Advertising Agencies Association. The company also openly operates a website (www.mpmlb.com), which actually lists al-Manar's scheduled programming and boasts of serving as "the exclusive media representative of al-Manar T.V. station...We are responsible of reservation and monitoring of the ads on al-Manar [sic]."

Media-Publi reportedly worked with numerous advertising agencies, including the world-renowned Saatchi and Saatchi, selling ad space to numerous multinational corporations. After the SDGT designation of al-Manar in March 2006, however, many advertisers pulled their products from al-Manar's airwaves.

Media-Publi has four known employees: Saeed T. Fadel (Marketing Coordinator), Hussein Nassour (Account Handler), Ahmad Haidar (Account Handler), and Ibrahim Farhat (General Manager). Farhat identifies himself as the public relations manager for al-Manar. It is unclear whether the others are Hezbollah members.

It is equally unclear whether either of these two advertising companies belong to the Lebanese Media Group, the parent company of al-Manar, which was also designated by the U.S. Treasury as an SDGT in March 2006. If these companies are part of this broader network, Treasury's designation already applies to them. The designation must simply be enforced.

If these companies are not subsidiaries of the Lebanese Media Group, the U.S. Treasury Department should consider a new round of designations to include Media-Publi, Ressalat, as well as the four Media-Publi employees listed on the site. Similarly, other banking systems and companies around the world should be encouraged to cease doing business with them. Hezbollah's Lebanese advertising operations must not be allowed to continue.

Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department, is director of policy for the Jewish Policy Center and author of the forthcoming book, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave, November 2008).