Swedish and Dutch experts call for action against Hezbollah

BERLIN – Since Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, a Lebanese-Swedish man, confessed to membership in Hezbollah last week in a Cypriot criminal court proceeding, close observers of the radical Islamic group have been warning of new dangers if the group is not sanctioned.

”Terrorism is terrorism. But where it concerns the terrorist organization Hezbollah, Europe has been, and still is, a giant ostrich,” Wim Kortenoeven, a former Dutch MP and one of the Netherland’s leading Middle East experts, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. “I fear that the European citizens are going to pay a very heavy price for this dangerous policy.”

Kortenoeven added that Hezbollah and its terrorist Iranian masters are not only the enemies of the Jewish people and the Jewish State, but also of Europe and Western civilization as a whole.

“If these menacing forces are not defeated by us, they will eventually defeat us. The next Hezbollah bombing target might not be Jewish, but the Channel Tunnel or Disneyland near Paris,” he said.

Hezbollah provided financial payments, as well as weapons training, to Yaacoub to carry out tracking of Israeli flight and tourist movements on the Island, according to his own testimony. Cyprus authorities allege Yaacoub sought to mount terror attacks against Israelis. The defendant denies planning to participate in terror acts against Israelis.

Lisa Abramowicz, secretary-general of the Swedish-Israel Information Center, told the Post that it’s time for the “EU to call a spade a spade.”

“Hezbollah is a terror organization and should be listed as such by the EU, same as the USA and Canada. It is especially important for Sweden to push for this, as two Swedish citizens have been charged with being responsible for the attack and the planning for a similar attack,” she said.

The EU’s refusal to designate Hezbollah a terror entity attracted attention last week in the US media.

The New York Daily News editorialized on Saturday “Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, plain and simple,” and asked and answered its own question: “Should the continent’s authorities systematically choke off Hezbollah’s extensive European fund-raising networks? A trial in Cyprus screams the answer louder than any white paper or hearing could: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”

Writing in his New York Post column, the Mideast commentator Benny Avni noted last week, “Not all Europeans are so wishy-washy. The Netherlands, for one, unilaterally put Hezbollah on its terrorist list back in 2008. And Britain is now lobbying the entire EU to do the same. As are Canada and the Obama administration, which deserves some kudos.”