Economic Warfare Is Taking a Toll on Hizballah but Stricter Measures Are Necessary

Since January 2017, the Trump administration has taken a variety of steps not only to tighten sanctions on Iran, but also to sanction directly its Lebanese proxy Hizballah. Ali Bakeer argues that these measures, if strengthened further and aimed against both the terrorist group’s own financial empire and the financial pipeline from Tehran, can significantly weaken it:

[The] organizational structure and stretched regional agenda of Hizballah require huge financial capabilities. . . . Indeed, since 2006, Hizballah established itself as the second-largest employer in Lebanon after the Lebanese state. Although ideological [and] religious factors are important in securing the support of [Lebanese Shiites], it is mostly through money that Hizballah is able to carry out its agenda and sustain the loyalty and support of a large segment of Lebanese society. . . .

Since its establishment in the early 1980s, Hizballah relied heavily on money from Iran. However, during the last two decades, it has worked hard to diversify its sources of income. . . . To that end, the Shiite party built its own parallel economy inside Lebanon and [engaged] in economic and financial activities across several continents—from Africa to Latin America to Asia. Its activities as “a transnational criminal organization” [to use the U.S. Justice Department’s term] mainly include money laundering, construction, and contracting. . . .

Aware of its financial vulnerability, Hizballah recently slashed its expenditures and is encouraging many of its members and supporters to find jobs working for the Lebanese government. . . .

[However], the sanctions against Iran are not tight enough. Since 2009, the Iranian people have become more sensitive regarding the financial support given by their government to such regional allies as Hizballah. Although more sanctions on Iran might not eliminate its financial support for its ally in Lebanon altogether, they would certainly reduce it and incite more Iranian people to protest against this kind of support. Historical experience proves that whenever the sanctions on Tehran are tight and/or oil prices are low, Iran as a state tends to reduce its support for Hizballah to a minimum.

Read more at National Interest

More about: Donald Trump, Hizballah, Iran sanctions, Lebanon, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society