To paraphrase Casablanca's Captain Renault, the Lebanese government is "shocked, shocked" to find that foreign powers have spies in the country. An article by Robert Worth in today's NY Times noted that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is calling for the death penalty for 21 recently arrested alleged Israeli spies. The article, in portraying the Lebanese reaction to the event, might have noted the irony, if not the gross hypocrisy, in the fact of the arrest of alleged Israeli spies just weeks after the release of four pro-Syrian generals implicated in the assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. The Lebanese government has apparently complained to the UN about two of the alleged spies escaping across the border into Israel with their families. Perhaps the Lebanese government might urge the UN instead to more vigorously pursue the investigation into the brazen assassination of their prime minister and members of the government by.
This bodes ill for the upcoming June 7 elections, and for Lebanon. The permeation of the Lebanese government by Hezbollah and domination of the country by Iran and Syria are proceeding apace, and the anti-Israel propaganda fueled by these arrests will only serve to distract Lebanese voters from the true threat that they face.
