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Germany Does Not Ban Hezbollah TV
Islamist channel Al-Manar has been subjected to a prohibition that does not really prohibit anything.
It should be noted that to date reports on the supposed “ban” only make reference to the declarations of Interior Ministry spokespersons. No text of the November 11 administrative order appears yet to have been made public. No such text has been published on the Ministry website or in the latest editions of the German Federal Law Gazette [Bundesgesetzblatt]. As laws are not ordinarily supposed to be kept secret, this would mean that no such order has in fact yet been promulgated.
Hezbollah is not treated as a terrorist group by the German government and the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, is well known to maintain good relations with the organization. It is thus that the BND served as mediator in the negotiations that led to the release by Israel earlier this year of convicted murderer Samir Kuntar and four Hezbollah fighters in exchange for the bodies of Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.
According to the German domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz, some 900 known Hezbollah militants are present in Germany. Interior Minister Schäuble himself cited this figure in the aftermath of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. Responding to a report in the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Schäuble admitted at the time that the some 6,000 persons evacuated from Lebanon to Germany during the war may well have included many Hezbollah members.
In a recent interview with the German television news magazine Report München, Amir Kulic of the University of Tel Aviv estimated that the real number of Hezbollah militants in Germany must be four to five times greater than the number given by the German Verfassungsschutz. According to an Israeli indictment, the suspected Hezbollah agent Khaled Kashkush received his marching orders from leading members of the German Hezbollah network. (See here from Ynet news.) Kashkush was arrested at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport in July after flying from Frankfurt.
German terrorism experts have spoken of an implicit or “secret” non-aggression pact between Germany and Hezbollah, which permits the latter to operate freely in Germany so long as it refrains from undertaking armed actions on German territory itself. Investigations by Report München revealed that Hezbollah-linked groups are even able to raise funds in Germany in the form of tax-deductible charitable contributions.
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John Rosenthal’s writings on European politics and transatlantic relations have appeared in English, French, and German in such leading publications as Policy Review, Les Temps Modernes, and Merkur. He holds a PhD in philosophy and he taught political philosophy and classical German philosophy before turning to journalism. More of his work can be found at Transatlantic Intelligencer.
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6 Comments
1. Irish Alex:Germany turning a blind eye to an organisation that wants to kill jews? Why that’s unprecedented! I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Nov 26, 2008 - 4:51 am 2. Arthur:I do not agree with the banning of media it is very anti-American to do so. So yes that was Germany, but still it is probably good if Germany really did not ban anything at all. why be like the Castro or Chavez or Iran? why not be free and open society where there is really real free speech? Free speech has no meaning unless it applies equally to the people you disagree with. one of the things i enjoy about this site, is that people can comment about things, even if the comments are absurd or well thought out they seem to be freely posted. i think that is good way to do thing; crack-pots are petty quickly seen for what they are. when you ban something you only make it stronger and give it an undeserved legitimacy.
Nov 26, 2008 - 2:35 pm 3. WestGuard:Lebanon itself should ban hezbollah tv. Why be nice or fair and give terrorists a soapbox to poison young minds with. Heck, the Lebanese army should have helped the Israeli military hunt down and destroy hezbollah for instigating a fight and dragging a nasty and avoidable war to Lebanon.
Nov 26, 2008 - 8:43 pm 4. Steynian 291 « Free Canuckistan!:Hezbolah is large and well armed enough to be a serious military threat to their own government if they chose to. Hezbollah should be disarmed, disbanded and disowned.
Banning Hezbollah tv in Western countries should be a given, and applauded loudly!
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Nov 28, 2008 - 8:41 am 5. jonesy55:So Germany has refused to trample on freedom of speech in the media? Is this a problem? Are the ideas of Hezbollah so alluring that reasoned debate in an open society cannot win against them?
If the free nations of the world adopt the same repressive techniques as those who would want to defeat us, what is left to fight for?
Nov 28, 2008 - 9:42 am 6. Someone75:Jonesy55:
Yes! I agree. Thank you for having some perspective.
Nov 29, 2008 - 8:00 pm