"Excellency,
I am
writing to draw your attention to the outrageous threats made by the head of
Hezbollah, an internationally designated terrorist organization.
Yesterday,
in an open public statement, Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah,
issued an imminent threat to the citizens of northern Israel. He threatened a catastrophic attack on Haifa's ammonia
storage tanks, which would “lead to the death of tens of thousands of residents
and 800,000 Israelis would be affected."
Nasrallah
declared that “this would be exactly as a nuclear bomb and we can say that
Lebanon today has a nuclear bomb…we are able with only a few rockets to target
gas containers in Haifa and kill tens of thousands” of innocent Israeli
civilians.
This threat of
the mass murder of innocents comes from the head of an Iranian proxy terror
organization which is currently assisting the Assad regime to slaughter
hundreds of thousands in Syria, including by conducting a deliberate policy of
starving people to death.
The gravity of this threat is magnified
by Hezbollah’s ongoing militarization of the towns and villages of Southern
Lebanon, in clear violation of Security Council Resolution 1701. Every day, new evidence emerges that Hezbollah is using southern Lebanon as a
military encampment, and is embedding its military infrastructure in civilian
areas. Hezbollah has stationed thousands of missiles and rockets in the heart
of southern Lebanon’s civilian population.
The
goal of this buildup is clear. This is a terror organization which has
repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians from within the Lebanese civilian population-
a double war crime. Hezbollah is actively working to
expand their capabilities to carry out such indiscriminate attacks, while openly
declaring their intention to continue to do so. Nasrallah himself
boasted that “the resistance [Hezbollah] has missiles that can reach every
place” in Israel.
Hezbollah’s military buildup and
murderous threats are unacceptable. When a terrorist organization publicly
threatens the civilians of another country, silence is not an option.
I call on you to publicly condemn this
dangerous and aggressive statement and to demand that the government of Lebanon
live up to its commitments and fully implement Security Council Resolution
1701.
Allow
me, Excellency, to renew to you the assurances of my highest consideration."