It is hard to read about Hezbollah without encountering the helpful tip that it is a resistance movement "formed in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon." (See
here,
here,
here,
here,
here and
here for examples). This mantra had an effect on Ehud Barak, who made the logical step of eliminating Hezbollah's raison d'etre. The only problem is that the mantra is wrong. Hezbollah is a movement of global jihad, which is why it is expanding internationally. Today we learn that American boys are dying as a consequence of years of American pressure on Israel to give Hezbollah a terror enclave:
Lebanon's Hizbullah has trained Shia fighters from Iraq in advanced guerrilla warfare tactics, according to Mehdi army militants who have been fighting British forces in southern Iraq.
Iraqi militiaman Abu Muhannad, 39, said he had spent a month in southern Lebanon. "I was one of the experienced fighters from the Mehdi army to go for training there," he said. "We learned how to take advantage of an armored vehicle's weakness, and how to wait and kill the soldiers who try to escape."
Another Mehdi Army fighter, Abu Nasser, 26, said he and 100 other group members traveled to Lebanon in December 2005. "They showed us real tactics and taught our snipers," he said.
Speaking in Tufa in Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Mehdi Army, admitted: "We have formal links with Hizbullah....We copy Hizbullah in the way they fight and their tactics, we teach each other and we are getting better through this."
"We go [to Lebanon] and discuss what Israel's future plans are in the Middle East because we are part of whatever will happen," he said.
The true raison d'etre of the global jihad was
expressed by the representative of Tripoli to Thomas Jefferson:
that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.
