Proscription of Hezbollah — House of Commons, 2018-01-25
Topic: Mixed Topics
Louise Joyce Ellman (Labour, Centre-left): It is a great privilege to follow so many excellent contributions from all parts of the House. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) for securing this extremely important debate and for her very powerful opening speech Hezbollah is a radical Shi’a Islamist terrorist organisation founded in Iran soon after the 1979 revolution. It is an anti-Semitic organisation that carries out acts of international terrorism. It should be proscribed in its entirety. Instead, the UK accepts the spurious distinction between Hezbollah’s political and military wings, banning the military wing but permitting the so-called political wing to operate. As hon. Members have pointed out, Hezbollah itself does not accept this distinction. In 2012, its deputy secretary General, Naim Qassem, said very explicitly: "We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other." The evidence that Hezbollah engages in terrorism and engenders hate is overwhelming. Hezbollah was behind the bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 people. It has murdered people—Jews, Christians, Muslims and others—in places such as Nigeria, Thailand, Bulgaria and Cyprus. It is complicit with the murderous Assad regime in Syria. Operating with Assad and Iran, it is part of the "axis of resistance" that seeks to confront Sunni power, western influence and Israel. It is a malign influence. Hezbollah specifically promotes anti-Semitism. Al-Manar, Hezbollah TV, was the first media outlet to make the false claim that 4,000 Jews or Israelis did not go to work in the World Trade Centre on 9/11, allegedly on the basis of advice from Mossad. This lie has now become a widespread anti-Semitic libel. Hezbollah’s message incites violence. Esther Webman, who has studied Hezbollah’s anti-Semitic motifs, has concluded that Hezbollah’s brand of anti-Semitism is typical of contemporary violent Islamist groups. She describes it as "combining traditional Islamic perceptions with Western anti-Semitic terminology and motifs to express its opposition to Zionism. Zionism, in turn, is equated not only with the State of Israel but also with imperialism and with Western arrogance." This issue has very serious implications for us in the UK. At the annual al-Quds march in London last June, Hezbollah’s green and yellow flag—the same flag displayed in military operations—was put on show. The purpose of the march and of al-Quds day itself is to agitate for violent resistance and the destruction of the state of Israel. At the centre of the flag, the largest Arabic word in green reads "Hezbollah", out of which emerges a globe with an upraised arm grasping an assault rifle. The letter A of Allah is linked to the upraised arm grasping the assault rifle, signifying the ideological legitimisation of Hezbollah’s armed resistance as being divinely sanctioned. That message is clear, menacing and extremely powerful. The menacing chants at the march on the streets of London this year included the heinous cry: "Zionists/ISIS are the same Only difference is the name."