The free fall of Lebanon

By Engr. Edgar Mana-ay

 

In my August 17 column, I explained that the horrendous explosion equivalent to 1.1 kiloton of TNT in the pier in Beirut which claimed more than 200 lives, wounding 7,000 more and rendering 300,000 homeless, is just the culmination of decades of how Lebanon is sliding into the abyss due to entrenched government corruption and the evil influence of a shadow government, the Hezbollah. To explain further the debilitating effect of the Iran backed, financed and armed Hezbollah on Lebanon, I quote hereunder from the column of Shmuley Boteach as published in The Jerusalem Post.

“Hezbollah is known to use the Port of Beirut to receive weapons from Iran and to ship explosives to terrorist cells throughout the world. Many of those watching the slow crumble of Lebanon knew it would explode but no one imagined it could be so literal. The explosion of 2,700 tons ammonium nitrate stored at the pier punch a crater 499 ft. across and 140 ft. deep causing half of Beirut residence without livable homes. The evidence so far implies that the explosion was unplanned and accidental, a fruit of corruption and negligence for which Lebanese bureaucracy is well known. The explosion began with a large fire at an adjoining warehouse then caused the ignition of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate stored for the last 6 years- an incredible amount of time considering the chemicals has a real use.

Considering Lebanon’s potential food shortages and faltering economy, the fact that it was never used or sold is especially strange! Somebody, we must consider, wanted this chemical kept at the port in order to ship overseas. Who would want to do that? In Lebanon, it’s easy to know. Hezbollah, the Iran-backed genocidal terrorist group and the “most formidable group non-state actor in the world” is known to use the port of Beirut to receive weapons from Iran and to ship explosives to terrorist cells throughout the world. The most incriminating evidence lies in the fact that ammonium nitrate is Hezbollah’s chemical of choice when it comes to murdering Jews. Just this year, German police discovered hundreds of kilograms of ammonium nitrate hoarded throughout the country by Hezbollah to be used in terrorist attacks. The discovery pushed Germany to completely blacklist Hezbollah. Ammonium nitrate explosives were also stored or used by Hezbollah in England, Cyprus, and Bulgaria.

Kuwait also discovered 2 tons of ammonium nitrate which investigators likewise attributed to Hezbollah. While 2 tons may not seem a lot, that was the amount used in the Oklahoma City bombing of April 1955 that killed 155 people. Tragically, Hezbollah doesn’t just store ammonium nitrate – it uses it, too. In 1994 Hezbollah operatives drove a truck toward AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina and detonated their load. It would be the greatest anti-Semitic attack since the Holocaust, leaving 86 dead and hundreds were wounded. Two years before that, Hezbollah members set off a bomb at the Israeli Embassy in the same city, killing 29 and wounding 242. The chemical ingredients of the two bombs were, according to the New York Times, exactly the same ammonium nitrate.

 

There’s MORE: Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah genocidal aspirant leader, has mused in the past about blowing up the ammonium nitrate being stored at Israel’s Haifa Port. Nasrallah’s choice of words was eerily prescient for what would occur in Beirut. “A few missiles on a few ammonium plants equals the same amount of death as an atomic bomb.” According to Israeli investigators, Hezbollah was using Cyprus as a “point of export” from which to move explosives throughout Europe to be used in a series of attacks. It makes sense that Beirut- much of which Hezbollah controls- would figure into the terrorist supply lines the organization uses to murder Jews. Now that “a labyrinth of tunnels” has been exposed by Australian journalists directly beside the blast site, Hezbollah’s involvement is impossible to deny, which is, of course, exactly the case.

This isn’t the first time that the world failed to confront a terrorist organization targeting Israeli civilians while ransacking Lebanon in the process. That it straddled Israel’s northern border and was fundamentally unstable made Lebanon a priceless destination for bands of terrorists obsessed with murdering Jews. As far back as 1968. Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) militants were crossing in from Lebanon to carry out attacks against Israelis such as the horrific school bus massacre at Avivim on May 22, 1970. Eventually, the PLO moved its headquarter in Lebanon, fielding its own army and running a state within a state.

Hezbollah is doing the same. Only on a significantly larger scale. Funded, equipped and trained by Iran, Hezbollah has taken terrorism to the next level. In 1983, its members murdered 63 diplomats and workers at the American Embassy in Beirut with a single bomb and then with another bomb killed 241 American marines and 59 French military personnel in their barracks. Like the PLO, Hezbollah fields an army of its own, except far larger and visible for all to see. Already in control of Lebanon’s south, Hezbollah capitalized on the $700 million it gets annually from Iran, offering social services, and forming a political party- which is now one of Lebanon’s largest. Hezbollah now controls much of the parliament, the Port of Beirut and Beirut International Airport. It has transformed Lebanon into the staging ground for Iran’s never-ending war against Israel, amassing an army tens of thousands strong proudly participating in Lebanon’s Holiday parades, while stockpiling rockets in the hundreds of thousands all aim to destroy Israel”.

Mindanao (where I was born and grew up) today, is somewhat like a little image of Lebanon when it comes to the peace and order situation. Just to achieve that elusive peace in Mindanao I cannot understand why the Muslims should be given an autonomous region, further dividing Mindanao like Lebanon, when we are all the same Filipinos by blood and descent with the same equal rights, privileges and aspirations, hence can peacefully co-exist if we want to. The suicide bombings months ago in Jolo proves that emphasis on ethnic and religious division is not the solution to the Mindanao problem. My 8 years stay in the hinterlands and no man’s land in Mindanao (where one can be shot by the military, Muslim and the NPA without questioning) exploring for coal resources in the ’80s showed me that for as long as the military enjoys the full support of the rural folks and the ordinary civilians, no harm will come to them.

Note: The writer is a retired Exploration Drilling Manager of PNOC Coal Corporation.