Letter from Art Eggleton, MP, Toronto (Canada). to the National Post
Friday, November 29, 2002
National Post: The National Post has recently published a number of stories related to Hezbollah's ability to conduct fundraising in Canada. I want to join the chorus of voices calling for a complete fundraising ban on this terrorist organization. Hezbollah is an insidious group that has been engaged in acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians for many years. Their katusha rocket attacks on northern Israeli cities, as well as their guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, are infamous.
But Hezbollah's long-term perseverance is largely due to their remarkably successful effort to fill the political vacuum in southern Lebanon and create a social infrastructure network that entrenches this organization in local communities. This so-called "social wing" directly helps Hezbollah to recruit terrorists by inducing brainwashed people to join its cause of evil and financially secure their families in the process. Although this "social branch" does not carry out attacks directly, it is instrumental in the campaign of terror that Hezbollah wages and it answers to the same terrorist masterminds who order the murders of innocent women and children.
But this "social branch" cannot operate without funds. Towards that end, I believe that it is crucial for Canada to ban Hezbollah from conducting all fundraising activities on our soil and seal a gaping hole in our country's ban on terrorist fundraising. At the moment, Canada distinguishes between the "military branch" of this terrorist group and its "social branch." We should not separate the two branches of this terrorist organization. We should ban its fundraising completely and prevent this group from operating in Canada altogether. We have done so with Hamas in the past and we should do so with its sister-organization, the Hezbollah. I have already made my views on this important topic known to the government and I will continue to press this cause.
At the end of the day, it was a gesture of goodwill from the former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, that removed Israeli military presence from southern Lebanon, not Hezbollah's terror tactics. Now, it is important for the Arab world to reciprocate that unilateral concession to peace and stop the funding of all terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Canada must lead by example and do its part in this important effort.
Art Eggleton, MP, Toronto.