Jewish & World News

Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, once the undisputed stars of the Arab world, are rattled by surprise opposition from within their own ranks. The Lebanon NOW news website reported Tuesday that a new political movement is gathering followers right in the Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut's southern suburb.

Hezbollah Chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made a televised speech Wednesday, meant to refute reports suggesting he was gravely ill and receiving treatments in Iran. The speech was aired on Hezbollah's television station, Al-Manar. Nasrallah said that he "Didn't wish to interrupt the viewers," and he only came on the air "To refute the rumors that were spread over the past two days, that have left a negative impression.

The Turkish Anatolia News Agency reported Tuesday that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah became ill a few days ago, was admitted to a private hospital in Beirut and later flown to Tehran, this after a number of Lebanese news outlets reported over the past 24 hours that Nasrallah was diagnosed with cancer and is being treated in Iran. The reports have not been confirmed. The Turkish news agency quoted "knowledgeable sources affiliated with Hezbollah" as saying that Nasrallah was flown to Iran after being released from a hospital in south Beirut. His flight left from the Rafik Hariri International Airport in Beirut, they said.

In a little-noticed trial in a small courtroom in Cyprus on Wednesday, a 24-year-old man provided a rare look inside a covert global war between Israel and Iran, admitting that he is an operative of the militant group Hezbollah, for which he acted as a courier in Europe and staked out locations in this port city that Israelis were known to frequent. Breaking with the group’s ironclad discipline and practiced secrecy, the operative, Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, described being handled by a masked man he knew only as Ayman. He told of doing simple tasks at first: picking up a couple of bags in Lyon, France, taking a cellphone, two SIM cards and a mysterious package wrapped in newspaper from Amsterdam to Lebanon.

Two individuals with links to Lebanon's Shi'ite group Hezbollah were involved in a bomb attack on a bus in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas that killed five Israeli tourists last July, Bulgaria's interior minister said on Tuesday. The conclusions of the Bulgarian investigation may open the way for the European Union to join the United States in branding the Iranian-backed Hezbollah a terrorist organization since there is now a clear connection to an attack on EU territory.

Hizbullah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah told a Lebanese interviewer Monday his group does not have chemical weapons, and will not use them. One of the primary concerns facing Israel has been the disposition of Syria's massive arsenal of chemical and other weapons.

Iran could strike US bases in the Middle East in response to any Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities, the leader of Lebanon's Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said on Monday. "A decision has been taken to respond and the response will be very great," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview with the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen television.

The residents of southern Lebanon are worried. Should the brewing winds of war between Iran and Israel escalate to an actual conflict, they are likely to be caught in the middle – literally. Israel is investing in its home front readiness, but the residents of southern Lebanon have but a mere fraction of the civilian defenses available to Israelis.

The Egyptian government-backed newspaper Al-Gomhuria reported Thursday that Hezbollah held an unprecedentedly large military-style exercise this week, which included over 10,000 of its operatives. According to the report, the drill was personally supervised by Hezbollah Chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

Facebook has removed pages created by Hezbollah and its television station, Al-Manar, over incitement to violence, the Daily Star reported Sunday. The social networking giant thus followed recommendations by the US State Department. The latter included Hezbollah on its list of terror organization in 2004; adding it TV station to the list in 2006.

The leader of Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah said his group will transform the lives of millions of Israelis to "hell" if Israel attacks Lebanon. Speaking in a televised speech marking Jerusalem Day on Friday, Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah has a list of Israeli targets that it can hit with few rockets. "I tell the Israelis that you have a number of targets, not a large number ... that can be hit with precision rockets ... which we have." He said he would not name the targets and did not say whether the rockets were newly acquired weapons.

Israel’s Security apparatus is concerned that Al-Qaeda is planning a large scale terror attack on Israel’s civil aviation, Walla reported. Recently there has been an increase in the warnings within the security system about possible attacks against civilian and foreign flights by terrorists affiliated with Al-Qaeda and other groups, who are working on such an attack.

Hezbollah could attack Europe at any time and with little to no warning, US State Department counter-terrorism coordinator Daniel Benjamin said on Friday, according to AFP. “Our assessment is that Hezbollah and Iran will both continue to maintain a heightened level of terrorist activity and operations in the near future,” Benjamin said in a conference call with reporters. “Hezbollah maintains a presence in Europe and its recent activities demonstrate that it is not constrained by concerns about collateral damage or political fallout that could result from conducting operations there... We assess that Hezbollah could attack in Europe or elsewhere at any time with little or no warning.”

Israel has evidence of many telephone calls between Lebanon and Burgas in the two months before the bombing that killed six people, The New York Times reported. The volume of calls intensified in the three days before the attack on a bus carrying Israeli tourists, the newspaper reported Thursday, citing an unnamed senior government official, pointing the finger even more directly -- in Israel's eyes -- at the terror group Hezbollah.

Kuwaiti media is reporting that Tehran is concerned over the safety of the Secretary General of Hezbollah arch terrorist Hassan Nasrallah after the expected fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has demanded that Nasrallah come to Iran out of fear that there will be assassination attempts on Nasrallah’s life in the event that Syria’s opposition takes power.

The U.S. State Department's annual report on terrorism said Hamas and Hezbollah continued to destabilize the Middle East and listed attacks by extremist Jewish settlers on Palestinians as "terrorist incidents." An executive summary of the report for 2011, which was released Tuesday, highlights what the authors believe to be the report's most salient points. It is devoted to al-Qaida and opens with the assassination last year by U.S. forces of the group's founder, Osama bin Laden.

Bulgarian police have widened their investigation into last week's bombing attack on Israeli tourists to towns near the border with Romania, asking hotels for surveillance video that might have captured the suspected bomber. Hotels in the Black Sea coastal city of Varna say police have been asking for video showing a particular suspect and are giving a sketch of the suspect to management.

New York police believe Iranian Revolutionary Guards or their proxies have been involved so far this year in nine plots against Israeli or Jewish targets around the world, according to restricted police documents obtained by Reuters. Reports prepared this week by intelligence analysts for the New York Police Department (NYPD) say three plots were foiled in January, three in February and another three since late June. Iran has repeatedly denied supporting militant attacks abroad.

Smoking may have saved Lea Kovensky’s life. On a hot afternoon of March 17, 1992 – exactly 20 years ago this Saturday – Kovensky stepped outside the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, where she worked as a secretary to the military attaché, to light up a cigarette. Suddenly, a huge explosion occurred. “I was knocked to the ground by the blast and several of my teeth were broken,” the 56-year-old Israeli-Argentinean recalled in a phone interview from Buenos Aires on Thursday.

Shortly after 8 a.m. on March 16, 1984, like every other morning, CIA station chief in Beirut William Buckley left his 10th floor penthouse apartment in the western part of the city for the American Embassy. On that morning, he had decided to drive himself to work, against regulations for US officials in Lebanon at the time due to the danger of kidnapping. All non-essential staff and diplomats’ family members had been evacuated from the country a month earlier. As recalled at the time by the manager of Buckley’s apartment building, the CIA officer walked out of the building that morning and got into his car, parked in an adjacent lot. Almost immediately after leaving the parking lot, a white Renault in front of him stopped short and forced him to a stop. A gunman walked up to Buckley, pointed a pistol at his head and put him into the Renault without a fight. Aside from in two disturbing videos sent to US diplomats in the following months, he would never be seen alive again.