Hezbollah Down, Not Out: The Backstory.

You'll be hearing a lot about something called Unit 910 in the coming months.

For my Hebrew comrades: Shana Tova Yoteir. A Better Year Ahead. And good luck to all of us, while we’re on about it.

In the National Post I’ve got a piece on the misfortunes that have lately befallen Hezbollah, the Party of God, with an enumeration of Hezbollah’s overseas outrages that was merely a representative sampling: Hezbollah's murderous terrorists are a global problem, not just Israel's.

You might take from it that I have some ideas about something awful that may be coming down the road.

I don’t want to give the impression here that what the Israel Defence Forces and Mossad have managed to accomplish is no big deal. It is a very big deal. Over the space of two weeks, the political and military entity that had been the most ruthlessly effective and powerful terrorist organization in the fratricidal Islamist dystopia of the Greater Middle East had been reduced to a scattered, broken and humiliated shell.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is joined in paradise by 19 of his uppermost consiglieri following an Israeli strike on the bunker where he was holding court. This welcome news comes after hundreds of Hezbollah fighters had already been decomissioned by means of the surprise explosions of their own pagers and walkie-talkies.

The latest: Just a few hours ago, the Israelis pounded a location in Beirut in an apparent targeting of Nasarallah’s cousin, fellow cleric and presumed heir, Hashem Safieddine. Everybody’s waiting to hear whether they got him.

The is history-making stuff. But what comes next is the thing to think about. And for that you will want to acquaint yourself with Hezbollah’s External Security Organization (ESO), also known as the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), also known as Unit 910, which is how I’ll refer to it here.

Unit 910

Almost all the overseas terror operations I mention in my National Post column are the handiwork this single shadowy division within Hezbollah’s organizational structure. Overseas terrorism is Unit 910’s job.

Unit 910 works hand in glove with the Quds Force, the vast external operations branch of Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Unit 910 maintains “sleeper cells” all over the world, but mostly in North America, where at times it’s been “even more active in Canada” than in the United States.

For Hezbollah’s architectural blueprint and for profiles of the Hezbigshots lately expired and those still very much alive (at this rate it will require constant updating) I highly recommend the Foundation for Defence of Democracy’s David Daoud and Ahmad Sharawi, here: Analysis: The impact of Israeli operations on Hezbollah’s organizational structure.

A couple of things jump up at me from the pages of that analysis.

Here’s one.

From my Post piece: Last December, federal prosecutors in New York finally brought charges against the Hezbollah plotter behind the 1994 suicide bombing of the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, that resulted in the deaths of 85 people. Justice department lawyers identified the Hezbollah commander Salman El Reda as the key figure in the operation. El Reda remains at large.

El Reda is Hezbollah’s very own Carlos the Jackal (currently serving the third of three life sentences in France). The AMIA bombing was just one of numerous atrocities El Reda plotted or carried off personally for Unit 910. He’s just got a huge promotion back in Lebanon. He’s now heading up the Radwan Force, which is the front-line Hezbollah branch responsible for infiltration and direct ground attacks across Israel’s northern frontier.

Here’s the other thing that leaps off the page.

El Reda’s old boss at Unit 910, Talal Hamiyah (Hamya, Hamia), has also been promoted up Hezbollah’s attrition-thinned leadership ranks, and he was pretty high up there to start with. Hamiyah may still be running Unit 910, but in any case he’s a hardened veteran of decades of overseas terror operations. While he may not have his hand directly on Hezbollah’s tiller, he’s in the wheelhouse now.

Hamiyah may be the “lone surviving commander” from Hezbollah’s old guard central command. Specialty: “kidnappings of foreigners, hijackings of airplanes, the killing of journalists, and so forth.” There’s a $7 million U.S. State Department bounty on Hamiya’s head, and for good reason.

I see Shaked Sadeh at the Jerusalem Post has been thinking what I’m thinking: Hezbollah Unit 910 ready to target Israeli, Jewish communities worldwide. “Operatives who have undergone rigorous security training and have often held foreign citizenships, have operated under civilian cover and exploited connections with Hezbollah supporters and foreign governments for logistical and operational purposes.”

I do hope I don’t need to add all this to my Notes on the coming disturbances, but things aren’t looking sunny.

Speaking of Hezbollah fanciers with foreign citizenships. . .

Well, well. This is an interesting development.

Toronto Police have arrested two people following a “demonstration” last Saturday that “involved Hezbollah flags.” Ahmad Sheikhani of Oakville and Hamad Khalid Menshed of Mississauga, both 34, were observed carring the flags, police say, and now they’re both charged with Public Incitement of Hatred.

I think this may be a first. Hezbollah flags have been a common sight at anti-Israel protests in Canada going back years. Since last October 7 they’ve become commonplace at all those gruesome celebrations of death that are so routinely described as “pro-Palestinian demonstrations.”

Following the Israel Defence Forces cancellation of Hezbollah Supreme Leader Hassan Nasrallah along with most of his high command last Friday, the flags have been everywhere.

This photo goes all the way back to 2006, in Montreal.

Jewish advocacy organizations have been calling on Ottawa to amend the Criminal Code to prohibit the “glorification of terrorism” and to ban the public display of terrorist flags. In the absence of laws like that, promotion of hatred is, I guess, what the Toronto police are going with.

The Toronto Police Services’ announcement was brief, noting that Hezbollah is a listed terrorist entity in Canada, and that Sheikhani and Menshed were cautioned that the flags threatened the public peace but they kept waving the flags anyway.

“Wilful promotion of hatred and advocating genocide are hate propaganda (hate speech) offences which require the Attorney General’s consent to lay charges,” The TPS statement points out.

Reading between the lines: ‘People keep telling us to do something about these obscene public disturbances, so we’re going to see if a hate crime by way of hate propaganda by way of advocating genocide by waving a flag will work. Over to you, Ontario Attorney-General Doug Downey.”

We may know as soon as October 8 how the B.C. Attorney General will fare in its effort to act without the benefit of a law prohibitimg the glorification of terrorism. October 8 is the inauspicious date that the Samidoun Network’s Charlotte Kates is scheduled to appear in a Vancouver courtroom. She’s expected to face charges under Section 319 of the Criminal Code for public incitement or wilful promotion of hatred. We’ll see.

The charges arise from Kates’ stomach-turning speech at an April 26 Vancouver rally when she uttered these words: “We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic and brave action on October 7 . . . Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Islamic Jihad is not a terrorist organization. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is not a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization. These are resistance fighters. These are our heroes.”

In the TPS news release yesterday, there was also this: “In the coming days there will be an increased presence of both plainclothes and uniformed officers, Public Order Sections, Mounted Units, and Police Liaison teams to manage demonstrations across the city. Four command posts will be deployed.”

Reading between the lines: ‘We anticipate that the attacks on Jews, synagogues, and Jewish business will intensify as we approach the October 7 anniversary of the Hamas atrocities in Israel. We’ll be watching things very closely.”

“A vehicle with suspicious occupants parked near a synagogue. . .”

Just another day in the The Peaceable Kingdom of Canada: Five people arrested with incendiary material near Montreal area synagogue. Two cars, several kilometres apart, same incendiary materials, same night.

There’s also this: Anti-Israel protest leaves seniors feeling 'unsafe to be identified as a Jew on the streets of Ottawa', and this, which is magistrial but maddening as hell: Are Canada’s Jews at a tipping point? Most are anxious, many are fearful, and some have moved away

I really don’t like being a buzzkill on New Year’s, but holy cow.

A boast

Rosh Hoshana isn’t a big deal in my family, although I will brag that my beloved and perfect daughter Zoe was in Philadelphia Wednesday evening with Klezmer God Michael Winograd and some of the Honorable Menschen crew to kick things off for the New Year with Temple Beth Zion Beth Israel at a local park.

I better stop here because if I start bragging about Zoe I’ll never shut up.