On Monday, the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon happily tweeted of his “open and substantive discussion” with the right-hand man to the head of Hezbollah, one of the world’s leading terrorist organizations.
Jan Kubis tweeted, “Grateful for an open and substantive discussion on a broad range of topics with Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem of Hizbullah. On top I received a copy of his book — a necessary reading.”
The book Kubis was probably referencing was “Hizbullah (Hezbollah): The Story from Within,” a 464-page book published roughly ten years ago. Qassem’s hatred and genocidal feelings for Israel have been documented before; he said in 2017 that Hezbollah must “liberate” all of the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
Kubis who was appointed to his current position by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, previously served as the Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and also as the Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Before that he served at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia.
The government of Israel was outraged that Kubis would meet with Qassem. Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted, “We are shocked and disappointed by this meeting with a designated terror organization’s leader, threatening Israel, Lebanon and the whole region,”
The United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and parts of the Arab world all regard Hezbollah as a terrorist group. As The Daily Wire noted in April, The Times of Israel reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned that Hezbollah was planning an invasion into Israel’s north, specifically, into the Sea of Galilee:
The new commander of the IDF’s Ground Forces said Thursday the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah was still planning to carry out a surprise invasion of northern Israel, despite the recent Israeli operation to uncover and destroy an extensive network of cross-border attack tunnels dug by the Iran-backed militia.
Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick was tapped to lead the military’s Ground Forces in February, amid increased criticism charging that Israeli troops were not prepared for war. His comments came less than four months after the IDF concluded its anti-tunnel operation along the Lebanese border.
“Hezbollah still has plans to invade the Galilee,” he told the Ynet news site in an interview, referring to entering Israeli territory through a cross-border tunnel network. “Of course we won’t allow that to happen, we will thwart these plans.”
The State Department declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 1997. At a State Department briefing in October 2017, Nick Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, stated:
Lebanese Hizballah has repeatedly demonstrated for the world its true character. It is an organization that relies on terrorism as well as other forms of violence and coercion to achieve its goals. And this takes place in spite of the group’s attempts to portray itself as a legitimate political party. Prior to September 11th, I think everybody knows Hizballah was responsible for the terrorism-related deaths of more U.S. citizens than any other foreign terrorist organization.
Now, for many Americans, their introduction to the threat posed by this group came after Hizballah’s attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April of 1983. That horrific attack killed 63 and wounded an additional 120 individuals, and it was followed by an even more deadly attack on our Marine barracks in October of 1983 which killed 241 Americans and wounded an additional 128 Americans.
So Hizballah’s penchant for violence has not changed over the last three decades. We’ve seen time and time again with its international terrorism unit, the External Security Organization, also known as the IJO, the Islamic Jihad Organization, and Unit 910, 9-1-0. But its deployment of operatives to nearly every corner of the globe continues to engage in terrorism-related activity.