What is Hezbollah?

[Minstrel Boy]

I think we need some precision in our language.

Hezbollah's attacks before the recent escalation have been upon military targets. They engage the IDF in pitched battle. Unlike Hamas and others, their tactics do not include suicide bombers against a civilian population. When it has, in several instances, abducted Israeli citizens for prisoner exchange, they have been released alive soon thereafter.

This isn't about chosing sides, this is about chosing our words. "Terrorist" is thrown around too glibly these days, sometimes even in our own faces, to refer to the enemy, whoever that is. A non-state army, even that of an enemy, is not necessarily a terrorist organization.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. talk to the ones who elected them and they say,

a political party
a social organization
builders of schools, hospitals, roads and housing
a militia to defend against Israeli incursions
part of the Lebanese parliament.

[izzie]

5. I see it as that also but it is also terror to shoot bombs at Israel

I find this a very hard one to get a hold of when you pick it all apart.

[barb162]

7. Talk to the ones who have Hez shooting next to their homes

without their permission

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. an Islamist political party with an armed militia that has at times

used terrorist tactics. It is supported by somewhere between 35% and 40% of the Lebanese population

to get some further insight:

Nasrallah Talks With Former Ambassador: watch, listen or read transcript on Democracy Now- This interview took place in February this year. "Edward Peck. Former U.S. Chief of Mission in Iraq and ambassador to Mauritania. He served as deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan Administration. "

Listen/Watch/or read transcipt:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/28/1440244

"The US government considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, but several former former US diplomats sat down with the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon earlier this year. In a US national exclusive, we play excerpts of the interview, and speak to former US Ambassador and White House Terrorism Task Force Director Edward Peck, who took part in the meeting.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Although the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, three former U.S. diplomats had a chance to meet with Nasrallah this past February in Lebanon. The diplomats were members of a delegation organized by the Council for the National Interest.
During the meeting, Nasrallah discussed Hezbollah’s strategy to free Lebanese prisoners being held in Israel. He also spoke about the origins of Hezbollah, and recounted an event that is back in the news this week—Israel’s bombing of a UN observation post in the southern Lebanese town of Qana in 1996 which killed 106 Lebanese refugees.
One of the retired diplomats who met with Nasrallah in February was Edward Peck - he joins us from our Washington studio. Edward Peck is the former U.S. chief of mission in Iraq and ambassador to Mauritania. He served as the deputy director of the White House Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan administration."


Listen/Watch/or read transcipt:

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/28/1440244


.

[ForrestGump]

3. I don't know a ton about them, in any great detail, but in response to

your three poll choices I'd tend to say "all of the above."

[snappyturtle]

4. I voted militia.............

but I realize they're multi-faceted.

[Maine-ah]

6. I went with something else.

they have really supported the Lebanese population with hospitals & medical care & schools, they're also a political party, and have used terrorist tactics. Kind of sounds like our own government and several others.

[Marie26]

8. A terrorist group.

It's true that Hizbollah became less active after Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, but before that they executed many terrorist attacks on Israel & the US. This includes bombing the Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires & London, bombing the Marines barracks in Beirut (killing 241 Americans), bombing the American embassy in Beirut, kidnapping many Westerners, and highjacking a TWA flight. They're not nice guys. Hizbollah does have a political wing & a social services wing, but it's the militia wing that's the problem. They've employed terrorist tactics in the past.

[in_cog_ni_to]

9. Terrorist group.

Hezbollah has murdered many Americans, French, Lebanese and others over the years. The group kidnapped more than 200 foreign nationals in Lebanon, most of them Americans or Western Europeans. Hezbollah also organized suicide attacks against U.S. and French targets, killing almost 1000 people, including 241 U.S. Marines and 56 French paratroopers sent to Lebanon to enforce peace. Hezbollah blew up a Jewish community center in Argentina, killing over 80 people. The group hijacked TWA Flight 847 in 1985, beating to death a US Navy diver and dumping his body on the tarmac. The group blew up the Israeli Embassy and cultural center in Argentina, killing over 30.