Matthew Levitt: Why Hezbollah is Europe's Problem too (Berlin, Nov. 6, 2012)
Channel: Stop the Bomb (Germany)
Date: 2012-11-27

More information and mp3 download: 
http://www.mideastfreedomforum.org/index.php?id=346&L=1 

The Hezbollah, whose yellow banners can be seen regularly in Berlin waving over Islamist rallies like the annual Al Quds march, is responsible for numerous terrorist attacks around the world. Hezbollah's cadres are active within all important European countries. The latest report of Germany's intelligence service counts 950 supporters of Hezbollah in Germany. In July 2012, the EU rejected to add the Lebanese jihadists to the list of terrorist organizations. Yet, since then voices were being raised to revise the decision.

Hezbollah, which was established, and up to the present day is being armed and financed by the Iranian regime, is a terrorist organization that is active worldwide. It advocates a clearly anti-Semitic ideology, aiming at the extermination of Israel, and propagates the sociopolitical ideas of Islamism: The systematic discrimination of woman, persecution of homosexuals, violence against dissenters and the establishment of a Shiite theocracy. At the moment, Hezbollah actively partakes in the suppression of the revolt against its longstanding ally, Assad's Baathist dictatorship in Syria.

The lecture will outline how European countries serve Hezbollah as an area of retreat and operation, and discuss the alarming amount of donations that are being collected by Hezbollah in this area. It will be shown how dangerously near terror, money laundering and drug-tafficking of Hezbollah has become and why a ban of the Lebanese Islamists would be a decisive blow to the Iranian regime.

 

Dr. Matthew Levitt is senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and heads the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at theU.S. Departments of the Treasury. His teaching activities include appointments at the John Hopkins University and his book "Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God" will be published by Georgetown University Press in 2013.

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A Berlin Middle East Talk (B'EMET) by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) and the Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin (MFFB).