Hamas & Hezbollah: "Freedom fighters again?"

Zvi Bar'el, in Haaretz, here

"No other organization has known such reversals, it seems, as the Mujahideen Khalq. While France warmly embraced the activists, Washington gave them the cold shoulder. The American approach did not disturb the Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. The organization operated as one of his arms, and he allegedly used thousands of these Iranians in his war against the Kurds.

The decision to take the organization off the terrorist list, which originally met with opposition from France, does not merely stem from the recommendations of the courts in Europe. It is a clear hint to the regime in Tehran, a kind of "sanctions substitute." It is also a warning light for Israel. The politics of defining terrorist organizations could also mean a new examination of the definitions with regard to Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel cannot be immune to the possibility that the European Union will decide to take "its" terrorist organizations off the list. Not because Europe believes that Hezbollah is a charity organization or that Hamas is the Arabic acronym for WIZO, but because Israel will get on the nerves of the EU. A kind of "sanctions substitute."