There a new day rising in France, as the new Socialist government is bending over backwards to appease France's Muslim minority because of the role their votes had in bringing President Hollande and the Socialists to power.
As my friend ace reporter Benjamin Weinthal reports in today's Jerusalem Post, it is the Hollande government that is preventing an EU consensus on declaring Hezbollah a terrorist group:
The EU has not reached a consensus among its 27 members to include Lebanon-based Hezbollah in its list of terrorist organizations, a spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry in Paris said on Wednesday.
“The designation of a terrorist organization by the European Union implies that precise legal conditions are met,” spokesman Philippe Lalliot said, according to the translated answer obtained by The Jerusalem Post.
“Under the common position of the Council of the European Union of 27 from December 2001 on the application of specific measures to fight against terrorism, any application on the list of terrorist organizations in the EU particularly is subject to a consensus among Member States. This consensus is not currently met,” he said.
A reporter at the Foreign Ministry briefing asked Lalliot about a January Israeli newspaper report detailing Israel’s new efforts to convince Europe to outlaw Hezbollah because of the group’s terrorist activities. The reporter cited Ma’ariv saying that “this failure is particularly the position of France, which would be opposed to such an initiative.”
France, the home of Liberté, égalité, fraternité is now protecting the genocidal, anti-semitic Hezbollah from being truly labeled for what it is.
It's a piece of particularly obscene hypocrisy on the part of France to oppose EU labeling Hezbollah as a terrorist group. One of Hezbollah's first major terrorist operations was the murder of 248 U.S. Marines along with 58 French paratroopers and 6 civilians at the US and French barracks in Beirut, Lebanon in 1983.
There's also Hezbollah's providing fighters to Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria,several airline hijackings including TWA flight 847, the kidnapping of Israelis, Hezbollah's defiance of UNSC Resolution 1701, their involvement in numerous assassinations in Lebanon including that of Prime Minister Hariri, solid evidence pointing to Hezbollah involvement attacks on Israeli civilians at the Jewish Community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, the recent bombing of a tourist bus in Bulgaria, and Hezbollah’s involvement in the international narcotics trade, just to name a few items.
None of it means anything to the present French government. Not only are they obsessed with placating France's Muslim voters, they're also afraid of losing what little influence they have left in Hezbollah-ruled Lebanon and with Hezbollah's sponsor, Iran. And of course, they certainly don't want to appear pro-Israel in any way.
So thanks to the French, Hezbollah will continue to wear a blood stained hat of legitimacy in Europe.
Some things never change.
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