Israel Matzav: The price of appeasement, Part 1

Monday, April 22, 2013

The price of appeasement, Part 1

Europe continues to delude itself that Hezbullah is not a terror organization, or alternatively that it has a 'political branch' that is not a terror organization. Europe will not ban Hezbullah, partly because they fear it, partly because they don't recognize the full extent of its threat and that it cannot be bought off in the long run, and partly because Hezbullah 'only targets Jews' anyway.

But Europe's appeasement of Hezbullah comes with an ever increasing price. JPost reports that shortly after the Burgas terror attack last summer, an Iranian woman traveling on a Canadian passport was caught surveilling the Chabad Center in Sofia.

An Iranian-sponsored female agent in her 50s, holding a Canadian passport, traveled from Istanbul to Sofia several weeks after the bombing of the Israeli tour bus in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas in July 2012. She was arrested on her first day in Sofia after the Bulgarian police, on high alert, noticed she was monitoring the Chabad center.

Her mission was to survey the Chabad center – which houses a synagogue – and not the main Sofia Sephardi synagogue, as first reported.

The Canadian may be a dual Iranian-Canadian citizen.

...

Dr. Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and a leading authority on Hezbollah’s global terror operations, told the Post that, “It would not surprise [us] if Iran or Hezbollah were found to be behind this plot [against the Chabad center] last year. Recall that five years earlier Western intelligence indicated that ‘Hezbollah chiefs and Iranian intelligence officials had put Bulgaria on a list of nations propitious for developing plots against Western targets.’ “Their first attempt at killing Israeli tourists failed when a suspicious package was noticed on a bus carrying Israeli tourists from Turkey to Bulgaria in January 2012. Six months later Hezbollah operatives struck again, this time with devastating success in Burgas.”

The latest disclosure about Iran’s alleged monitoring of the Chabad center may add new weight to the EU talks about banning Hezbollah, Iran’s chief proxy in Europe.

Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an expert on Iranian terrorism in Europe and senior fellow with the Brussels-based European Foundation for Democracy, told the Post on Saturday, “Europe needs to wake up and learn from Hezbollah’s terrorism.” He said the group uses Iranian “know-how and money” to launch its terror attacks.

Islamic terror organizations have a special place in their hearts for Jews in general, and for religious Jews and especially for Chabad in particular. People who are visibly Jewish seem to disturb them more than others. And the world doesn't care.

Labels: anti-Semitism, appeasement, Bulgaria, Chabad House, designated terror organization, European Union, Hezbullah, Jews