Hezbollah Evolution Opposition Proves Constant | The Jewish Exponent
It's from a Jewish source, but the tone it uses would suggest it's basically accurate.
What surprised me was the amount of funding from Iran for civilian services: $60 million a year. A radical organisation can sure curry a lot of favour with the locals with funding like that. This presumably led to its electoral success:
Running in June 2005 elections, Hezbollah won 23 seats in Lebanon's 128-member Parliament, and holds the Energy Ministry. Some hoped that political power would moderate the group and compel it to act more responsibly, but there has been little indication of a change in Hezbollah's outlook or behavior.
This involvement with government certainly complicates the moral issues over what are legitimate targets and what aren't.
What about US funding of Israel. You can buy a lot of up to the munte weaponry with that.
ReplyDeleteGeoff
Not entirely sure what to read into your comment, so it makes it rather dangerous for me to respond. I will have a go anyway.
ReplyDeleteFirst, more on my post: the New York Times has a story about Iranians not being entirely happy about their government funding Hezbollah.
Surely the difference between the two cases of funding (regardless of how massive the US funding is) is that the Iranian funding is to an organisation that is ideologically devoted to causing instability in the region (by its insistence that Israel should not exist).
You can argue that Israel causes instability by being too harsh in its self defence, but at the end of the day, it does always justify its actions on self defence.
It seems to me that Iran has exactly one issue on which to fear Israel: limited military action to prevent acquisition of nuclear weapons. This is entirely avoidable, if it would agree to the various deals that the rest of the world has offered to allow a well regulated civil nuclear program to proceed.
I therefore do not count it as an issue of self defence that Iran should fund Hezbollah.
The US funding of Israel has meant that it is still here to talk about.