by Giulio Meotti
Sometimes it seems that the UN Secretary General draws inspiration from George Orwell’s “1984” for his press releases. Like when he said that October 7 did not happen “out of nowhere”. In short, Israel was asking for it.
Regarding the explosions against Hezbollah in Beirut, Antonio Guterres asked “not to turn civilian objects into weapons”. It is not right to detonate pagers and walkie talkies in the pockets of Lebanese Shiite terrorists. It goes without saying that the Secretary General did not ask himself why the Iranian ambassador to Beirut, Mojtaba Amani, also had a Hezbollah pager. The UN does not do well on asking itself such questions.
And so many Westerners are too busy criticizing evil Israel to ask themselves why a high-ranking Iranian official was so close to a Hezbollah pager. We all know why.
Nor has Guterres ever asked Hamas not to “turn civilian objects into weapons,” as it has done every day since October 7 and with every civilian resource in Gaza: schools, homes, UN offices, mosques, water and electricity systems, hospitals, ambulances.
Guterres simply cannot say “Hezbollah,” not even when they fired a missile at the Majdal Shams soccer field in the Golan Heights at the end of July, killing twelve children. The secretary’s statement leaves no trace of who launched the missile.
After October 7, it was clear how well Hamas had cultivated public relations in the West. The same goes for Hezbollah.
The flags of the Lebanese “party of God” (a yellow banner with a Kalashnikov and a verse from the Koran in the center) now fly openly on American campuses, from Columbia to Hunter College in New York, to marches for Gaza in European cities from London to Berlin. Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s second-in-command, encouraged student protests in the West, as did his godfather, the Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei.
Noam Chomsky, the famous American linguist and godfather of so much Western antagonism, even visited Hezbollah’s headquarters and met its leader Nasrallah.
“I think Nasrallah has a reasoned and convincing argument that they should be in Hezbollah’s hands (the weapons) as a deterrent to potential aggression,” Chomsky said. “Hamas and Hezbollah are progressive movements that are part of the global left,” said Berkeley philosopher Judith Butler in a video that caused a scandal. George Galloway, leader of the radical independent left in England, worked for Al Mayadeen, the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese channel (one of the many Islamist channels to which Galloway has lent his services). And with Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn’s group, which he called Hamas and Hezbollah “friends.”
Officials close to Hezbollah represent the group at meetings of the World Social Forum. An Italian academic delegation also left from Rome’s University of La Sapienza to meet Hezbollah.
And how much Hezbollah has been able to build bridges in the West was seen at the most prestigious Canadian university, McGill in Montreal.
First the partnership with the University of Tehran. Then McGill professors, like Soroosh Shahriari, who tweeted in support of the Islamic Republic’s brutal repression of the women-led uprising against the forced use of the hijab in response to the murder of Mahsa Amini. Then, in 2024, the university that was occupied in the name of Gaza, displaying Hamas and Hezbollah flags and even setting up student summer camps where they learned to fight Israel. Finally, the disinformation experts who found that the anti-Israel protests at McGill University were fueled by a social media campaign with ties to Iran.
And like Hamas, Hezbollah also benefits from the double standards of some of the press.
In late July, the Washington Post apologized for its front page the day before, which juxtaposed an image of family members grieving for a child killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack on the Golan Heights with a headline that read: “Israel Strikes Targets in Lebanon”. The subheading that accompanied the image didn’t even mention the Hezbollah rocket attack that killed twelve Druze children playing on a soccer field in Majdal Shams.
And with thousands of rockets fired by Hezbollah into Israel since October 7, with 43 Israelis killed, and 60.000 Israelis forced to evacuate northern Israel, one can imagine many more Western Nasrallah fans on the way.
Ed. note:
But facts are facts. Famed Syrian-Druze journalist, Faisal Al-Qassem, who has millions of followers on social media, including a program on Al-Jazeera, wrote the following about the pager operation: “What happened to Hezbollah today can be classified as the largest preemptive strike in modern history. It can be compared to Israel’s preemptive strike on the Egyptian Air Force before the Six-Day War. Today, Hezbollah has thousands of paralyzed members among its senior leaders and operatives.” And he adds: “If Hezbollah enters a war now, its wounded will not find a single available bed in Lebanon’s hospitals, as they are currently full of casualties. Worse yet, Hezbollah has lost its most important security and military communication devices. Checkmate.”
Hezbollah’s many friends in the West | Israel National News – Arutz Sheva