{"id":8896,"date":"2016-03-14T16:08:58","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T16:08:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=8896"},"modified":"2026-01-02T16:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:53:13","slug":"saudis-call-hezbollah-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/saudis-call-hezbollah-terrorists\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudis call Hezbollah Terrorists!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Abdullatif<\/a>
Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, from Bahrain, Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pots were calling kettles black this weekend according to ynetnews<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0as Saudi Arabia and their Gulf State allies declared the militant Hezbollah group a ‘terrorist organisation’.<\/p>\n

The six-member ‘Gulf Cooperation Council’ made the announcement on Friday to the backdrop of a fall-out between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon over Hezbollah influence in the Levantine state. \u00a0Saudi Arabia decided to\u00a0stop\u00a0security assistance to the Lebanese army and Lebanese security forces. \u00a0To back up the decision, the GCC’s secretary general said:<\/p>\n

‘Hezbollah\u2019s incitement and terrorist acts in Syria, Yemen and Iraq are contrary to morality and human values.”<\/p>\n

That will be the morality and human values the UK’s <\/span>friends from Riyadh practice so assiduously at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

The announcement was swiftly followed by a denouncement of Hezbollah by the Arab League<\/a><\/strong>, with reservations expressed by Lebanon and Iraq. \u00a0Iran is not a part of the twenty-two member Arab League<\/a><\/strong>, which includes ‘Palestine’ and is led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

\"Hassan<\/a>
Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Those of us with long memories will\u00a0recall that no such condemnation of Hezbollah came\u00a0from either the GCC or the Arab League when Hezbollah militants were raining rockets from their Lebanese bases into northern Israel leading to war with Israel in 2006. \u00a0(In fact, missiles were launched as recently as December 2015.) \u00a0So what is different\u00a0today?<\/p>\n

The clue is in the statement about Hezbollah’s activities in ‘Syria, Yemen and Iraq’ (not Israel, of course). \u00a0In each of the three theatres of war, the Shia Hezbollah are defending their co-religionists from Sunni Muslim aggression.<\/p>\n

The GCC states<\/a><\/strong> are the Kingdom of Bahrain, the State of Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, the State of Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. \u00a0Five are ruled by Sunnis, in Bahrain over a Shia majority, and Oman is ruled by the home-based\u00a0Ibadi sect.<\/p>\n

With the exception of Iraq and Lebanon, all of the other Arab League states are Sunni Muslim, as this map from Colombia University shows<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0The self-styled Islamic State are also Sunni Muslims.<\/p>\n

\"In<\/a>
In this photo taken on Sunday, April 20, 2014, and released on the official Facebook page of the Syrian Presidency, Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, visits\u00a0a damaged church during his visit to the Christian village of Maaloula, near Damascus, Syria.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Syria’s President, Bashar Al-Assad, is from the minority Alawite sect of Shia Islam. \u00a0He has consistently defended the Syrian Christian minority<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Supported by his allies, Russia, Shia Iran and Shia Hezbollah, he is now making considerable advances to recapture land occupied by the Sunni rebels. \u00a0The Saudis don’t like that.<\/p>\n

In Yemen, the Shia Houthi militia led by\u00a0former president Ali Abdullah Saleh<\/a><\/strong> are fighting Sunni\u00a0forces loyal to the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who has fled to\u00a0Aden. \u00a0Hezbollah, funded by Iran, have given assistance to the Houthis, according to a bombastic letter allegedly sent<\/a><\/strong> by Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah to President Hadi. \u00a0The Saudis don’t like that either.<\/p>\n

Saud Arabia have been actively bombing the Houthi rebels<\/a>,<\/strong>\u00a0causing a humanitarian crisis. \u00a0The United States, the United Kingdom, and even Israel are said to backing up the Saudi campaign against the Shia rebels, according to Iran’s PressTV news outlet<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Hezbollah are also active in Iraq, and the Jerusalem Post reported only last month<\/a><\/strong> that the Shia militants have made clear they will take exception to any Saudi Arabian troops sent to Syria under the pretext of fighting Islamic State.<\/p>\n

Let us make no mistake. \u00a0If Hezbollah were doing badly the Saudis would not have bothered organising a wholesale denouncement of them. \u00a0The GCC and Arab League pronouncements indicate that the Saudis feel themselves, particularly in Syria, to be increasingly on the losing side. \u00a0That is why the Saudi pot is now so concerned with the Hezbollah kettle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pots were calling kettles black this weekend according to ynetnews\u00a0as Saudi Arabia and their Gulf State allies declared the militant Hezbollah group a ‘terrorist organisation’. The six-member ‘Gulf Cooperation Council’ made the announcement on Friday to the backdrop of a fall-out between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon over Hezbollah influence in the Levantine state. \u00a0Saudi Arabia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3996],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terrorism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":3,"rttpg_category":"Terrorism<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Pots were calling kettles black this weekend according to ynetnews\u00a0as Saudi Arabia and their Gulf State allies declared the militant Hezbollah group a ‘terrorist organisation’. The six-member ‘Gulf Cooperation Council’ made the announcement on Friday to the backdrop of a fall-out between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon over Hezbollah influence in the Levantine state. \u00a0Saudi Arabia…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}