“Calling Hezbollah a charity is like calling al-Qaida an urban-planning organization because of its desire to level tall buildings,” Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor told a UN Security Council open debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict.
He denounced the fact that Hezbollah is still not on the list of EU terror organisations despite last week’s statements by Bulgarian authorities that identified the Lebanese Shiite group as being behind the July 2012 bus bombing in Burgas, which killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian citizen.
The bombing was the deadliest terror attack on European soil since 2005.
“The terrorist attack demonstrated once again that the organization's activities are not limited to the Middle East and that its fingerprints can be found on five continents - from Kenya to Argentina, Thailand, India, Europe and the United States.”
"Hezbollah's sole purpose - its raison d'etre - is to commit terrorist acts both inside and outside the Middle East," the Israeli ambassador said.
He stressed that the only ‘difference" between the military and political wings of Hezbollah "is that the political wing negotiates the sum of drug cartel money that the military wing later uses to purchase weaponry."
"It does not take a Nobel Peace Prize laureate to realize that we are not exactly dealing with a selfless humanitarian organization."
He urged the EU "to find the moral and political courage to place Hezbollah on its list of terrorist organizations."
"The EU must send a clear message that Hezbollah can no longer target its citizens with impunity. The voices of the victims of Hezbollah terror call on us to take collective action - and work together to bankrupt the world's most dangerous charity."
Bulgaria's findings on the responsibility of Hezbollah in the Burgas attack, announced last week, have brought renewed pressure on the European Union from the US, Israel, Canada and Jewish groups to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization and to crack down on its operations across Europe.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov is set to brief his European Union colleagues on the findings at a February 18 meeting in Brussels.
He said that the EU should also send a "clear message" to Hezbollah.