American Jewish Committee (AJC) is today launching a global campaign to press the international community to hold Hezbollah accountable for its terrorist activities and designate the group in its entirety a terrorist organization.
Timed to coincide with the recent 36th anniversary of the Hezbollah attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, in which 63 people were murdered, the new campaign calls for efforts to end Hezbollah’s terror activities around the world.
In 2013, following sustained efforts by AJC, the European Union designated Hezbollah’s “military wing” a terrorist organization. The group’s leaders, however, have stated that there is no distinction between its military and political wings and in practice both continue to facilitate acts of terror around the world.
Today AJC is calling on the EU to complete the task it began in 2013 and designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization, as the United States, Canada, UK, Japan, the Arab League, Netherlands, Gulf Cooperation Council and Israel have all done.
AJC’s global campaign will include broad public awareness activities, the encouragement of a U.S. congressional bill calling on the EU to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist group, and a massive social media effort aimed at increasing awareness of Hezbollah’s pernicious activities around the world.
“Saying that Hezbollah’s military wing is a terrorist group but its political wing is not is akin to finding the hand of a murderer guilty but exonerating his head,” said AJC CEO David Harris. “There is no merit to such a false distinction, which Hezbollah’s own leaders have said does not exist. The time has come for the EU to finish what it started and designate all of Hezbollah a terrorist organization.”
For more information about the AJC’s efforts please visit: AJC.org/StopHezbollah.
