Where’s the Coverage? Hezbollah Helps Hamas Build Terror Camps, Israel Calls for U.N. Help

Well equipped Hamas operatives

Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based, Iranian-backed terrorist group is helping Hamas build rocket factories and terror training camps in southern Lebanon, according to a Jerusalem Post report. Hezbollah’s assistance violates several United Nations Security Council Resolutions. But it does not, apparently, merit news coverage.

A June 10, 2018 dispatch by Jerusalem Post military correspondent Anne Ahronheim noted that Israel has called for the U.N. to intervene. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said:

“Hamas is strengthening its ties with Hezbollah. With the approval and support of Iran, Hamas is working to establish its capabilities in Lebanese territory as well. The cooperation between Hezbollah and Hamas crosses borders. Israel does not intend to sit idly when facing new and old threats and will do whatever is necessary to protect its citizens.”

Like Hezbollah, Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Both groups call for Israel’s destruction and are fiercely antisemitic and anti-American.

Israel noted that Hezbollah’s decision to aid the Gaza Strip-based Hamas violates UNSCR 1701 which, among other things, calls for the “full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of 27 July 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State.”

That is, Hezbollah’s decision—indeed the existence of Hezbollah itself in Lebanon, where it exerts de facto control of the government—is a violation of the Taif Accords, and other United Nations resolutions.

As CAMERA noted in a March 28, 2018 Washington Examiner Op-Ed entitled “Israel may be facing a five-front war,” Iran and its terror proxies, including Hezbollah and Hamas, may be preparing to attack the Jewish state from several different fronts. Yet, the media has largely ignored this growing security challenge. Many major U.S. news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, Politico, and others, failed to report Israel’s request for U.N. intervention.

Hezbollah has a long history of working with and training Palestinian terrorist groups. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) trained Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as CAMERA documented in a May 16, 2018 Jerusalem Post Op-Ed (“How the PLO Helped Create Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards”). The IRGC itself trained—indeed, largely created—Hezbollah, which later worked with the Guards to train operatives from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and al-Qaeda in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley. As Ronen Bergman recounted in his 2018 book Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, Hezbollah passed its knowledge of suicide and car bombings—employed in Lebanon in the 1980s—to the other terrorist groups.

The head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, declared on May 22, 2018 that his group had “excellent” relations with Hezbollah. The press—which at the time was busy omitting Hamas’s role in orchestrating violent demonstrations at the Israel-Gaza border—largely failed to report Sinwar’s comments and also downplayed Iran’s support for the violent “protests” which themselves mimicked a tactic employed by Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border on May 15, 2011 (“The Palestinian ‘Return March:’ A Futile Publicity Stunt,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 28, 2018).