The Rape of Lebanon

This week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon to throngs of thousands upon thousands of cheering supporters who threw candies and rose petals at his passing motorcade.

In a highly symbolic move, the Iranian leader went to Bint Jubail, just four miles north of the border with Israel, a southern Lebanese village that was bombed during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There, he triumphantly stated, “The world knows Zionists invaded Bint Jubail to break the resistance, but today they are nowhere to be found. Bint Jubail is still here. The Lebanese resistance is stronger than all of the swords of the Zionists. … Resistance is the key to the Lebanese nation and all the nations of the region.” He menacingly added, “The Zionists will not last long.”

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, echoed the call for Israel to disappear, labeling it a “tumor” and adding, “It is a righteous demand that the Zionist regime must be wiped off the face of the earth, but it is of course a tough stand to hear for the West.” This was followed by chants of “Death to Israel … Death to America.”

Lebanon’s army — and, indeed, its entire country — has been overpowered by an Iranian proxy, the Shiite-terrorist group Hezbollah.  Although 250 heroic members of the democracy-loving Cedar Revolution (also known as the March 14 Alliance) sent an open letter to Ahmadinejad, most of its members have gone undercover, in fear for their very lives.

As Yigal Palmor, the spokesman of Israel’s foreign ministry, has said, ”It is quite clear that Ahmadinejad is the bearer of a violent message. He comes to a highly volatile region with the intention to play with fire.” Palmor added that the visit “emphasizes that a state within a state has emerged in Lebanon over the last few years,”

Ahmadinejad, in a triumphant spirit, called Lebanon “the university for jihad.”

This university does not just teach theoretical and abstract subjects, however.

Despite United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah, 40,000 rockets are in the hands of Hezbollah, aimed against Israel from southern Lebanon. Last April, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned that “Syria and Iran have been supplying Hezbollah with Scud missiles of ever-increasing capability. … We’re at a point now, where Hezbollah had far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world.”

The triumphant tour of Ahmadinejad to Lebanon was not timed at random. It was timed to further quash the upcoming United Nations tribunal that is about to issue a report of the investigation of the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, a democratic leader who held out a brief ray of hope for Lebanon’s Christian and freedom-loving minorities. The report was rumored to have indicted Hezbollah in its findings.

Tragically, Rafiq Hariri’s own son, Saad, the current prime minister of Lebanon and once a leader of the proud March 14th movement. , has been threatened into submission, unable to see justice done for his own father.  As a Hezbollah member of the Lebanese Parliament, Nawaf al–Moussawi, has recently said, “Any Lebanese who accepts the tribunal’s indictments will be eliminated as a ‘traitor’ in cahoots with Israel and the U.S.”

Unless Saad Hariri agrees to submit to the same sorry fate as his father, he will be forced to continuously delay the disclosing of the results of the tribunal ad infinitum.

Lebanon and its freedom-loving citizenry have been thoroughly raped by Iran and its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah.

This tiny country and the suffocation of its beautiful, yet fragile, Cedar Revolution movement is a tragic example of Iran’s sweeping appetite for hegemony, and an abject test case of what awaits the rest of the Middle East, and the free world as we know it, if Ahmadinejad is not stopped.