@AverageJoe
It's not just in the Middle East of course, this Islamist disease is seeping out into the West and our societies....
Hamas and Hezbollah: How Iran Is Secretly Infiltrating Europe May 3, 2024 at 5:00 am
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20612/hamas-hezbollah-europe
"Hamas sees Western countries such as Germany as a refuge in which the organization can concentrate on collecting donations, recruiting new supporters, and spreading its propaganda." — Germany's domestic intelligence service, apnews.com, November 23, 2023.
In February, Belgium's justice minister confirmed that Hamas operates in Brussels... through a network of front companies raising funds for the terrorist organization... Belgian authorities nevertheless continue to allow Hamas to operate there.
"Hamas has been in Europe for about 30 years. It's an open secret. Of course, they don't call themselves Hamas... They will have names like Conference of Palestinians Abroad, Palestinians in (country name), Palestinian Students Abroad, and so on. But when you dig a bit, you find out who the people are behind these associations, and what their connections are back home. It's always the same cluster of 20-25 people. Their propaganda, their social media patterns, everything is Hamas." — Lorenzo Vidino, director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, April 12, 2024.
"This is a typical Muslim Brotherhood tactic. They come up with a million different names for their organizations, for two reasons: Firstly, they want to give the impression that it's a broad movement, so that when they organize a public event, there will be 50 participating organizations, or if they publish a public letter, there will be 50 signatory groups. Secondly, if one of these groups is taken down by law enforcement, well, there's all the other ones." — Lorenzo Vidino, April 12, 2024.
In all of this, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a central actor. As stated by the US Congress, the IRGC "trains, funds, arms, and shares intelligence with dangerous proxy forces throughout the Middle East and abroad" and has targeted both European and American civilians.
The US Congress, Israel and thousands of Iranians have urged the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Last year, by an overwhelming majority, the European Parliament passed a resolution to that effect, but the EU nevertheless refuses to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell claims there are legal obstacles; however, that claim has been refuted as a lie.
Iran has ballistic missiles that can reach Europe, and is one minute away from nuclear weapons capability, if not already there.
The terrorist threat to Europe from the Islamic Republic of Iran -- and Hamas and Hezbollah, its proxies -- is growing. European leaders, however, are absorbed with trying to prevent Israel from eliminating the military capabilities of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, even though that would diminish the ability of these terrorists to operate in Europe.
Even before the October 7 massacre in Israel by Hamas, Mossad Director David Barnea
said in September 2023 that Israel's intelligence services, in cooperation with their foreign partners,
had prevented 27 terrorist attacks orchestrated by the Iran just over the last year, "all over the world, in Europe, Africa, the Far East and South America."
Only three months later, in December, terrorists from Hamas-affiliated cells in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands
were arrested after planning to attack Jewish targets in Europe. Weapons linked to the arrests in Germany and the Netherlands were found in Bulgaria.
According to German prosecutors, the four men arrested in Germany had been gathering weapons to be "kept in a state of readiness in view of potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe."
There are, it is estimated,
450 Hamas operatives in Germany alone, according to 2023 numbers
released by Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution. In 2022, the agency
warned:
In addition,
Germany is home to at least 1,900 members of the Muslim Brotherhood network. Qatar's Al Jazeera, the Muslim Brotherhood's main media sponsor and promotor,
says of the movement: "Throughout they have always adhered to their ideal of a society governed by Islamic laws and morals." The
motto of the Muslim Brotherhood is:
"Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
In February, Belgium's justice minister
confirmed that Hamas operates in Brussels -- the de facto capital of the European Union -- through a network of front companies raising funds for the terrorist organization, along with activities aimed at improving Hamas's image in Europe. Belgian authorities nevertheless continue to allow Hamas to operate there.
Belgian MP Michael Freilich recently
said:
Hezbollah has its own organization in Europe.
According to a 2022 report by Europol:
Hezbollah has been active in Europe for quite a while. In 2012, the terrorist network
bombed a bus transporting Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, killing six people and wounding dozens of others. In Germany,
there are around 1,250 Hezbollah members.
Europe, according to experts, has simply been ignoring Iran's infiltration of the continent with terrorist proxies.
"Hamas has been in Europe for about 30 years. It's an open secret,"
commented Lorenzo Vidino, director of the program on extremism at George Washington University and an expert on the Muslim Brotherhood. "Of course, they don't call themselves Hamas," Vidino added. (Hamas has been banned in the European Union.)
The European authorities' investigations of Hamas in Europe, Vidino added, have been a complete failure.
According to Danny Citrowicz, a research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council:
In the past five years, Iran has been behind at least 33 terrorist plots in Europe alone, including against targets in Sweden and the UK,
according to Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
In all of this, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a
central actor. As
stated by the US Congress, the IRGC "trains, funds, arms, and shares intelligence with dangerous proxy forces throughout the Middle East and abroad" and has targeted both European and American civilians.
The IRGC, as
described by the
Wall Street Journal, prepared and trained Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists for the October 7 massacre in Israel.:
The US Congress, Israel and
thousands of Iranians have urged the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. Last year, by an overwhelming majority, the European Parliament
passed a resolution to that effect, but the EU nevertheless refuses to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell
claims there are legal obstacles; however, that claim has been
refuted as a lie.
In April 2023, a bipartisan group of more than 130 US Congress members signed a letter calling on the EU to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization. The IRGC, they wrote, "has freely and openly carried out plots targeting citizens in countries across the EU."
"Given the growing threat Iran poses to EU member states and their citizens, we urge you to treat this issue with the utmost urgency," the letter
stated.
European leaders are clearly not treating the issue with any urgency, which is a disaster in the making for all Europeans. As Iran continues to supply Russia with military equipment, Iranian-made drones have been raining destruction on Ukraine. Iran has ballistic missiles that can reach Europe, and is one minute away from nuclear weapons capability, if not already there.
When will the EU start to take this threat seriously?
