Update on Hemlock Park Hezbollah Fighter

There are going to be still more delays before any facts about the Houssein Ali Zorkot case see the light of day.

Zorkot, the third-year medical student who was arrested last September for deploying in Hemlock Park with loaded AK-47, has changed his mind about waiving his preliminary exam, and wants one after all. (“Accused Hemlock Park gunman back in court”).

He waived his preliminary exam in December, letting himself be bound over for trial in circuit court. But now the circuit court has granted Zorkot’s motion to come back to Judge Hultgren’s courtroom Dearborn’s 19th District Court for his preliminary exam. At a preliminary a prosecutor must show the court that there’s sufficient probable cause that a crime has been committed to warrant trial. The new hearing is now scheduled for April 18.

City officials say Zorkot has not been tied to terrorism. But Zorkot was running a pro-Hezbollah website, and posted photographs of himself in Lebanon wearing military garb, and posing in front of heroic photographs of Hezbollah Headman Hassan Nasrallah (known locally in Dearborn as “Our Leader!”). Zorkot was charged with “one count of carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent, one count felony firearm and one count of possession of a loaded firearm.”

When he was stopped by police exiting Hemlock Park he fought back so hard he had to be Tasered twice.

Frankly, this may all turn out to be nothing, or at least, nothing that ever adds up to anything. Zorkot may have become the victim of his own fantasies of himself as a fighter, and got caught playing army in the park with a loaded AK. I am interested, though, in the basis for the dangerous weapon with unlawful intent count.

Worshippers of Death

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
The Wall Street Journal
March 3, 2008; Page A17

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."

Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death?

The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.

Late last month, a young female bomber was shot as she approached some shops in central Baghdad. The Iraqi soldier who drew his gun hesitated as the bomber, hands raised, insisted that she wasn't armed. The soldier and a shop owner finally opened fire as she dashed for the stores; she was knocked to the ground but still managed to detonate the bomb, killing three and wounding eight. Had the soldier and other bystanders not called out a warning to others -- and had they not shot her before she could enter the shops -- the death toll certainly would have been higher. Had he not hesitated, it might have been lower.

As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.

We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

Mr. Dershowitz teaches law at Harvard University and is the author of "Finding Jefferson" (Wiley, 2007).

Ayatollah Khameini Fires Hassan Nasrallah, 'Our Leader'

Okay, I've had it to here with outsiders messing with Dearborn's internal affairs.

First the Saudis tell us we have to close our schools a day early.

Now I find out the Iranians are messing with Dearborn’s army.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, is firing Dearborn’s maximum leader, Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, from running Hezbollah’s military wing, and giving his spot to deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qasim. ("Khamenei appoints Qassem as Hezbollah military commander").

The Iranians say Nasrallah will still be in charge of Hezbollah intelligence, but who are they kidding?

As if there’s anything else to run in Hezbollah but the military wing. As if all those charitable contributions collected from Dearborn residents, and all that money being laundered and sent to Lebanon at risk of criminal prosecution, has any other purpose than supporting Hezbollah’s military wing. You may as well demote the Postmaster and say he’s not in charge of mail delivery any more, but he can still handle the Human Relations Department.

Dearborn residents are very proud of Hezbollah. We witnessed that last July, when, as the IDF was delivering a serious pounding to Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, “About half of Dearborn’s Arab community turned out" for rallies in enthusiastic support of Hezbollah--and Nasrallah ("Lebanese-Americans Are Angry and Anxious"):

College-age men asked, in call and response fashion, “Who is your army?” Protestors responded: “Hezbollah.” “Who is your leader?” they were asked. “Nasrallah,” the chanters responded. Many carried placards of the Hezbollah leader. A few days earlier at an even larger demonstration, more than 15,000 turned out, about half of Dearborn's Arab community.

Even Houssein Zorkot, the young man now in so much trouble for dressing up in black face and using Dearborn’s Hemlock Park to practice Hezbollah training with a loaded AK-47, was inspired by Nasrallah, whose picture adorns Zorkot's pro-Hezbollah website.

How exactly did this happen?

Details are still sketchy, but it appears that Iran (which we all know has a strict policy of respecting the internal affairs neighboring states), sent a senior intelligence officer, accompanied by master terrorist and Hezbollah leader, Imad Mugniyah, to Beirut a couple weeks ago, along with a wagonload of Revolutionary Guards. (“Iranian intelligence official visits Lebanon”).

Mugniyah's name may sound familiar. According to reports he:

has been implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut , and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks, which killed over 350, as well as the 1992 bombings of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires . He was also linked to numerous kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut through the 1980s, most notably that of Terry Anderson. Some of these individuals were later killed such as U.S. Army Col William Francis Buckley.” He is also currently Hezbollah Chief of Operations and “will continue to act as liaison between Hizbullah, the Palestinians, Iranian intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards.
(“Report: Nasrallah replaced as head of Hizbullah military wing”).

As reported by, Asharq al-Awsat, the pan-Arab daily, the Iranian decision to interfere in Lebanon's Hezbollah operations

was taken in light of a report presented by a team from the Intelligence apparatus of the Revolutionary Guards that had visited Lebanon to assess the status of Hezbollah’s military and its capabilities.

It quoted a revolutionary Guards officer in the Bekaa Valley as saying “intense differences” between Qassem and Nasrallah on “destiny issues related to the party’s military wing … led to the interference by Khamenei’s office to re-organize Hezbollah’s command structure.”

It's also notable from where details of the shakeup are leaking: from “sources within the liaison and recruitment office of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards based in Lebanon,” suggesting Hezbollah may be having a recruitment problem. Additional Iranian action includes this:

The unnamed source said Hezbollah’s annual budget of 400 million dollars was raised to over one billion dollars in the past 18 months to compensate for the losses sustained during the 34-day war with Israel in the summer of 2006.

Which indicates last year's Divine Victory by Hezbollah over Israel wiped out Hezbollah's budget, and then some. Imagine the cost if Hezbollah lost.

Fortunately, Dearborn’s Lebanese Arabs, in fact, all the world’s Lebanese Arabs, have gotten used to taking orders from non-Lebanese authorities--most notably in recent times the Syrians, and, obviously, the Iranians. And I suppose that, in spite of losing the charismatic Nasrallah, the important main thing is that Hezbollah is still there, defending Lebanon against Israel and providing social services to the poor. (“They're Muslims, And Yankees, Too”)

I believe in no time Dearborn’s Lebanese Shias will manage to transfer their loyalties to the new Hezbollah top man, so that next time there's any need to show how much Dearborn admires Hezbollah, we'll see some nice posters of Qasim. If he doesn't het himself fired, too.