In contrast to the United States, the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin does not see Hamas and Hezbollah as genocidal terrorist organizations bent on a second holocaust, but as democratic and “legitimate societal-political forces” that they can get along with.
On Monday, the Moscow Times reported the following:
Russia does not consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told a press conference Sunday, the Interfax news agency reported.
“We maintain contacts and relations with [Hezbollah] because we do not consider them a terrorist organization. They have never committed any terrorist attacks on Russian territory,” Bogdanov was cited as saying.
Bogdanov said Hezbollah and Hamas — the main Palestinian armed resistance group — had both been democratically elected and were “legitimate societal-political forces.”
However, both groups have been blacklisted by the United States as terrorist organizations.
“The Americans consider Hamas a terrorist organization. But we don’t agree, because they [represent] an integral part of Palestinian society,” Bogdanov was cited as saying in the report.
Both organizations hold onto power at gunpoint and have been very vocal about their desire to destroy America and kill all Jews.
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, famously declared in a speech to his Islamic terrorist army:
The Jews will gather from all parts of the world into occupied Palestine, not in order to bring about the anti-Christ and the end of the world, but rather that Allah the Glorified and Most High wants to save you from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place–they have gathered in one place–and there the final and decisive battle will take place.
He has also said:
Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan is absolute… I conclude my speech with the slogan that will continue to reverberate on all occasions so that nobody will think that we have weakened. Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America.
The same is true of Hamas’s leaders. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a founder of Hamas and one of its current leaders, has said: “There is no place for you Jews among us, and you have no future among the nations of the world. You are headed for annihilation.”
Ahmad Bahar, acting chairman of the Gaza Parliament and a member of Hamas said, “Be certain that America is on its way to disappear. Allah take hold of the Jews and their allies. Allah take hold of the Americans and their allies. Allah count them and kill them to the last one, don’t leave even one.”
The ties between these terrorist groups and Russia have been longstanding and deadly. During the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, Israel found that the weapons cases abandoned by Hezbollah were marked: “Customer: Ministry of Defense of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.”
Russia is the biggest international supporter of the Islamic regime in Iran, which is well known to be the puppet-masters behind Shia Hezbollah, but they are also major backers of Sunni Hamas—so much so that a spokesman for Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades publicly thanked Iran for their assistance during last year’s war with Israel in Gaza:
Since Allah graced us with this development [of the Al-Qassam Brigades], and with this victory and this humiliation of the enemy, we have only to thank those whom Allah enlisted to take part in this development… first and foremost the Islamic Republic of Iran, which did not withhold from us funds, weapons and other [forms of aid] and helped us in our resistance by supplying us with missiles that pulverized the Zionist strongholds during the attacks and battles we waged against the occupier, and also supplied us with quality anti-tank missiles that crushed the legendary Zionist Merkava [tank].
Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has also publicly acknowledged that they have come to the assistance of both of these terrorist organizations: “We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 and in the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.”
Russia is also the world’s chief supporter of Iran’s nuclear program and has committed anti-aircraft missiles to its defense.
It is noteworthy that anti-semitism and anti-semitic conspiracy theories are a staple of Putin’s reported paid online troll army.
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