Joe Lieberman’s Legacy: The Battle Against Hezbollah

To the very end of his distinguished career as the four-term Senator from Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman has remained true to his credentials as a leader in the fight against terrorism.

Only days before he delivered his farewell address on the Senate floor in December, Lieberman pushed the White House to take greater action against the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, and pressure the European Union to do the same.

In a resolution that garnered support from over 50 of his Senate colleagues, Lieberman urged President Obama to provide the European Union with more information about Hezbollah’s terrorist activities, in hopes of persuading Brussels to designate the group as a terrorist organization.

While Hezbollah may seem a faraway threat to most New Yorkers, Rep. Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.) recently co-sponsored a bill to combat Iran in the Western Hemisphere. Speaking in Congress in September, Higgins said, “We also learned that Hezbollah has an active presence in four cities in Canada and 15 cities in the United States.”

“This is of particular concern to Western New York,” Higgins added, because “one of the communities in which Hezbollah has a presence is Toronto, which is 90 miles north of Buffalo.”

Higgins’ bill would compel the State Department to produce an assessment threat study on Hezbollah’s presence throughout the Western Hemisphere. President Obama signed the Higgins sponsored- bill into law in December.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, joined Higgins in his efforts to crackdown on Hezbollah’s global terrorism. On New Year’s Eve, she urged the UN in Congress to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization because “the Europeans could deprive Hezbollah of access to millions of dollars in European banks and other financial institutions, while making an enormous contribution to regional stability, saving hundreds of lives that will otherwise be Hezbollah's future victims.”

Today, Hezbollah operates as a legal political organization in every one of the EU’s 27 member states except the Netherlands, enabling it to raise funds, recruits members and spread propaganda. The United Kingdom banned Hezbollah’s military wing for killing British soldiers in Iraq, but still allows the rest of the group to function as a political organization.

Hezbollah has waged a terror campaign against the U.S. since its inception in 1982, when it bombed in 1983 the U.S. military barracks in Beirut, killing 243 Marines and 58 French paratroopers. In 2007, Hezbollah operative Ali Musa Daqduq played a role in the murder of five U.S. soldiers in Iraq, according to U.S. military officials.

But even the U.S. did not designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization until 1995.

All of this helps to explain why David Cohen, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in August, “Before Al Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, Hezbollah was responsible for killing more Americans in terrorist attacks than any other terrorist group.”

The EU lists Al Qaeda and the Iran-backed Hamas faction in Gaza as terrorist groups, but has so far declined to designate Hezbollah, even though it blew up a bus full of Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian village of Burgas in July 2012, resulting in the deaths of five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver.

“Our British friends would like to put Hezbollah’s military wing on the terror list,” French Ambassador to Israel Christophe Bigot told me last month. The UK appears to be pushing the EU to label only the military apparatus of Hezbollah as a terrorist entity.

The primary driver of that decision, Bigot continued, is “the outcome of the inquiry in Bulgaria.”

This in spite of the fact that Hezbollah has a long record of killing French troops and civilians — including the terror group’s bombing campaign on French soil in 1986.

Hezbollah was connected to 13 bombings on shopping stores and train stations in Paris, which resulted in the murders of 13 people and wounded more than 250.

In a separate interview, Spain’s deputy foreign minister Minister Gonzalo de Benito confirmed that the results of the Bulgarian inquiry “will be essential” for a ban of Hezbollah.

London’s decision to distinguish Hezbollah’s military wing from its political organization simply makes no sense. Even Hezbollah’s Number Two leader, Naim Qassem, says British policy is drawing a distinction without a difference. “Hezbollah has a single leadership,” Qassem said in an interview with an American reporter in 2009; “all political, social and jihad work is tied to the decisions of this leadership.”

“The same leadership,” Qassem added, “that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel.”

If the EU fails to include Hezbollah on its terror list, the U.S. should consider freezing talks over U.S.-EU free trade zone agreements. The pre-condition to move forward with a U.S.-EU free trade zone ought to be a terror-free EU environment, including a ban of Hezbollah.

Egypt’s recent outreach in late December to Hezbollah ought to sound counter-terrorism security alarm bells in Washington. After all, Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government receives more than a billion dollars in US aid. In an interview with the Lebanon paper Daily Star, Egypt’s Ambassador to Lebanon Ashraf Hamdy said his country aims to create “tight” relations with Hezbollah.

Thanks to pressure from legislators like Higgins and Lieberman, the White House continues to push the European Union to change its mind about Hezbollah.

In a visit to Dublin in late October, Obama’s counterterrorism czar John Brennan blasted the Europeans.

“Even in Europe,” many countries “have not yet designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Nor has the European Union. Let me be clear: failure to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization makes it harder to defend our countries and protect our citizens.”

For more than two decades, Senator Lieberman has understood that. When will the Europeans catch up?

Weinthal is a Berlin-based fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.