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Beirut Airport Tour for Reporters Cut Short Amid Hezbollah Weapons Storage Allegations
Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters through a screen during a rally commemorating the annual Hezbollah Martyrs’ Day, in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Photo: Reuters/Aziz Taher
An official tour of Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport designed to assuage fears that the facility is being used to store Iranian weapons intended for the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah was cut short as reporters were denied access to a key cargo depot.
The Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported on Sunday that Beirut’s airport is used by Hezbollah — which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon — to store an enormous number of missiles and other weapons sent from Iran, its chief international backer. An unnamed whistleblower in the report claimed that after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the airport received “unusually large boxes” on flights from Iran.
In response to these allegations, Lebanese Transportation Minister Ali Hamieh — who is affiliated with Hezbollah — denied the report and invited foreign press and observers to tour the airport. “We have nothing to hide,” Hamieh claimed at a press conference before the tour.
According to the Saudi news outlet Al-Hadath, however, reporters invited to tour the airport were not allowed to see its cargo center.
“Beirut airport security prevented journalists from entering the cargo center at the airport,” Al-Hadath journalist Ghinwa Yateem reported after the tour concluded, adding that Lebanese officials “did not let us film or enter certain areas.”
The tour of Beirut’s airport featured a specific cargo facility that “accounts for 20 percent of the import traffic,” according to Hamieh. A video of the warehouse shown on the tour revealed a near-empty warehouse of goods, as Lebanese officials denied The Telegraph‘s reporting. The facility that houses 80 percent of the airport’s imports was not shown to the press and other observers.
A video shows a near-empty cargo depot at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. Photo: Screenshot
Flight records from Flightaware — a flight tracking service — show regularly scheduled flights between Iran and Lebanon. Mahan Air flies weekly using widebody A340 planes between Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport and Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. In 2020, the US government sanctioned Mahan Air because of the airline’s “long record of ferrying weapons and terrorists around the world for Iran.”
A Mahan Air Airbus A340-300 taxis at Duesseldorf airport in Germany, Jan. 16, 2019. Mahan Air routinely flies an A340-300 from Tehran to Beirut. Photo: Reuters / Wolfgang Rattay.
In Israel’s north, Hezbollah terrorists have been firing rockets at Israel daily from southern Lebanon since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, leading Israeli forces to strike back. Tensions have been escalating between both sides, fueling concerns that the conflict in Gaza — the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas, another Iran-backed Islamist terrorist group, to Israel’s south — could escalate into a regional conflict.
More than 80,000 Israelis evacuated Israel’s north in October and have since been unable to return to their homes. The majority of those spent the past eight months residing in hotels in safer areas of the country.
Last week, Hezbollah’s Foreign Relations chief Khalil Rizk threatened both Israel and the US in an interview with Lebanon’s Al-Manar and translated by the Middle East Media Research Center (MEMRI). In the interview, Rizk claimed that Jewish “worship instructs him to oppress people, to shed the blood of the Palestinians, and to drive these people out of Palestine.” He also threatened America. “Is this war now with Israel?” he asked. “My answer is that it is not a war with Israel. Israel is merely a tool. The main war, the real war, is with America.”
Allegations of Iran using Rafic Hariri Airport as a weapons depot would not be the first time Iran has allegedly used public infrastructure to transport weapons and support terrorism. During the Syrian civil war, Israel targeted Syrian airports accused of housing Iranian weapons. Last May, for example, Syria’s Aleppo airport was hit by a purported Israeli airstrike after the facility received an arms shipment from an Iranian plane.
Hezbollah routinely stores dangerous weapons and explosive material in public spaces. In 2020, the world’s “largest nonnuclear explosion” shook Beirut when a silo of ammonium nitrate exploded at Beirut’s port. Hezbollah was widely blamed for the explosion, and a formal investigation was launched into the incident.
A general view shows the aftermath at the site of a large blast in Beirut’s port area, Lebanon August 5, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo
Rafic Hariri International Airport has seen an uptick in Lebanese and foreign nationals fleeing a potential conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The airport is Lebanon’s main transportation artery. In 2023, roughly seven million travelers used the airport.
The post Beirut Airport Tour for Reporters Cut Short Amid Hezbollah Weapons Storage Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove: How a Polish-Jewish artist told Canadians about the horrors of Nazi Germany and produced beautiful illustrations
Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) was a Polish-Jewish artist whose work reflected the historic times he lived: the two world wars, the rise of totalitarianism in Europe and the birth of the State of Israel. In 1940, with the support of the British government and the Polish government-in-exile, he visited Canada to popularize the struggle against Nazism. […]
The post Treasure Trove: How a Polish-Jewish artist told Canadians about the horrors of Nazi Germany and produced beautiful illustrations appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Biden hits Fundraising Trail in Show of Strength after Dismal Debate Performance
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., June 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo
President Joe Biden embarks on a series of fundraising events across two states on Saturday as he works to stamp out a crisis of confidence in his re-election campaign following a feeble debate performance that dismayed his fellow Democrats.
Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit the upscale New York beach enclave known as the Hamptons for a campaign fundraiser hosted by hedge-fund billionaire Barry Rosentein. Later in the day, he will travel to New Jersey for a fundraiser hosted by wealthy New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat.
Fellow hedge-fund founder Eric Mindich and his Tony Award-winning producer wife Stacey, celebrity couple Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and actor Michael J. Fox are all listed as members of the host committee at the New York event, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.
Biden told a rally in North Carolina on Friday he intended to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November presidential election, giving no sign he would heed calls from Democrats who want him to drop out of the race.
Biden‘s verbal stumbles and occasionally meandering responses during Thursday night’s debate heightened voter concerns that the 81-year-old might not be fit to serve another four-year term.
The Biden campaign on Saturday boasted it had raised more than $27 million between debate day through Friday evening, but questions remain about whether the debate performance will hurt fundraising, at least in the short term.
The post Biden hits Fundraising Trail in Show of Strength after Dismal Debate Performance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Arab League Rescinds the Classification of Hezbollah as a Terrorist Group
Mourners carry a coffin during the funeral of Wissam Tawil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces who according to Lebanese security sources was killed during an Israeli strike on south Lebanon, in Khirbet Selm, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
i24 News – The Arab League no longer defines Hezbollah as a proscribed terrorist group, an official said on Saturday.
Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite militia and a proxy of the Islamic regime in Iran, boasts the world’s largest rocket arsenal of any non-state actor. It is animated by the antisemitic ideology of jihad and is committed to the destruction of Israel.
“In earlier Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organization, and this designation was reflected in the resolutions,” Hossam Zaki, the assistant secretary-general of the Arab League, was quoted in Arab media as saying.
“The League’s member states concurred that the labeling of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization should no longer be employed,” Zaki said, adding that the regional body “does not maintain terrorist lists and does not actively seek to designate entities in such a manner.”
Hezbollah has unleashed numerous rockets, mortars and drones on northern Israel in the past eight months starting on October 8, a day after the Jewish state suffered the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust at the hands of the Palestinian jihadists of Hamas.
The post Arab League Rescinds the Classification of Hezbollah as a Terrorist Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.