An eyewitness to Hezbollah’s 1982 founding paints a different picture of the group’s origins than the MSM’s conventional wisdom. Hussain Abdul-Hussain writes in the Baltimore Sun:
This was an Islamic republic in formation. Hezbollah’s slogan at the time was “the Islamic Revolution in Lebanon.” But the Syrian regime was in control of most of Lebanon, including Baalbek, and was unwilling to see an Iranian seed sprout in its backyard. Syria therefore inspired its loyalist Shiite group, Amal, to wage battles against Hezbollah, and these continued until the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, when Iran and Syria reached a deal over the role of the party. According to the deal, Hezbollah would be allowed to maintain its arms, but its role would be limited to “resistance.”
Hezbollah became a joint Iranian-Syrian venture and turned its slogan into “the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.” Hezbollah was also integrated into the Lebanese political fabric. Later, it would win a parliamentary bloc and gain a say in all of the nation’s affairs.
Its history was rewritten. Today, most academics have it that Hezbollah was founded in Beirut in 1985 as a resistance movement against Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The truth is that Hezbollah was founded in Baalbek in 1982 as the nucleus of a hoped-for Islamic republic in Lebanon.
Hezbollah is often depicted as having stayed away from the Lebanese civil war, which is also a fallacy. The truth is that Hezbollah clashed with Amal, the Lebanese Communist Party and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party during the war.
The history of Hezbollah and its intentions for Lebanon should be reexamined.
