Despite What You Heard-Europe Did NOT Ban Hezbollah

They are so proud of themselves. After years of negotiation The European Union's Counsel of Foreign Minsters have declared that Hezbollah's military wing is a terrorist organization, proving that these minster's don't understand or don't give a damn that the "military wing" is part of the entire Hezbollah terrorist organization.

A council of EU foreign ministers reached the decision at their monthly meeting Monday. Putting an organization on the terrorist blacklist required a unanimous vote from the 28 member nations.

Ahead of the vote, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that “the great majority” of the 28 EU member states supported the plan, and hoped for the necessary unanimity.

The EU has long avoided a vote to declare Hezbollah’s military wing a terrorist organization, despite US pressure, for fear that such a move would destabilize Lebanon and its neighbors.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni welcomed the EU decision. “Finally, after years of discussions and deliberations, [they] have failed, and rightly so, in their attempt to claim that they are a legitimate political party,” she said.

Now the world knows that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, added Livni, a former foreign minister. The “just and correct decision” shows that even if Hezbollah is a political party, they can’t launder their terrorist activities, she said.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin praised the decision and told Israel Radio that the vote was the result of many years of work by the Foreign Ministry.

Observers said there had been a steady change of heart within the EU, particularly in Germany, which has in the past resisted calls to list the Islamist group.

Apparently it was the Hezbollah attack on European territory (Bulgaria) which united the  EU into this action.

“We should name names because time comes to tell the truth,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Antanas Linkevicius, who chaired Monday’s meeting. “What was done by the military wing in the region and elsewhere I would say, there should be some reaction.”

In February, an official Bulgarian report said investigators had “well-grounded reasons” to suggest that two men suspected in the attack belonged to the militant wing of Hezbollah, and on Wednesday, Bulgaria’s prime minister said that new evidence has bolstered its case implicating Hezbollah in the deadly bombing, which targeted a group of Israeli tourists arriving at the Burgas airport.

Here's the real problem. Years ago Hezbollah started "playing" Chicago politics. That is in between killing innocent women, children and other non-combatant civilians, they set up organizations to help people in Lebanon (charity, building projects, etc.) There is however, no real separation between the two.  Its kind of like saying the US Joint Chiefs of Staff run the military wing of the United States. 

Hezbollah, by its leaders' own admission, is a single organization without any separation between the different "arms": The Deputy Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said in an interview on the Lebanese al-Mayadeen television network (May 24): "We (Hezbollah) have no military arm without a political arm."

The blacklisting means imposing visa bans on individuals and asset freezes on organizations associated with the group. But the implementation will be complicated since officials will have to unravel the links between the different wings within Hezbollah’s organizational network and see who could be targeted for belonging to the military wing.

Hague said that blacklisting Hezbollah’s military wing would not “destabilize Lebanon or have serious adverse consequences.”

“It is important for us to show that we are united and strong in facing terrorism,” Hague said.

In the end this does little. The "political wing" of Hezbollah will find a way to represent their operational terrorist buddies in international affairs.  The terrorists will still have the same international links, money, programs etc.  But now they will have to hide behind the "political wing." It may make things a bit more difficult but that's why they created the two designations, and the EU fools just stepped in to that trap.