Ireland Invests in Beirut Airport Next to Private Rooney's Hezbollah Killers

[Updates June 2023]: 

- One Saudi businessman was kidnapped for ransom on Airport Road, but was freed in a Lebanese Army operation.

- A Lebanese court has charged five Hezbollah terrorists in the killing of Private Sean Rooney of the Irish contingent of the UN Peacekeeping Force UNIFIL. One is under arrest, four are hiding under the protection of Hezbollah. 

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Lebanese officials said on Monday, March 20 that Lebanon will soon begin the construction of a new terminal at the country's only airport, which has not undergone an expansion since 1998, and which is right next to a sprawling Hezbollah encampment known as the Southern Suburb. Every traveler in and out of the airport runs the risk of a deliberate accident, a clash with local thugs and hoodlums, and when security is down, a shutdown of access, kidnappings, assassinations, and other such threats. Remember Hezbollah's truck-bombing of the US Marines compound in October 1983? It was right there. This is where the Irish government is investing - under a cloud of illegal backroom deals with corrupt Lebanese officials - in the expansion of the airport.

Lebanon’s only international airport had a major facelift after the country’s 1975-90 civil war. Caretaker Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamiyeh - who represents the terror organization of Hezbollah in the corrupt Miqati government - said Terminal 2 will bring in private sector investments worth $122 million and will handle 3.5 million passengers annually when operations begin in 2027.

There are other airports in the country that could be rehabilitated to serve other regions in the country, but the Muslim-dominated Lebanese governments have constantly rejected these other options for fear of losing the financial benefits and the control they have over who goes in and out of the country. It is a known fact that Iranian planes land routinely at Beirut Airport carrying matériel and weapons to Hezbollah. The airport has often been the scene of massive drug smuggling operations of Captagon which is manufactured by Hezbollah in areas it controls in the Bekaa Valley.  The airport is located in a very dangerous security nexus under the control of the Hezbollah terror organization in what is known as the Southern Suburb. This is the area where all the western hostages of the 1980s were kidnapped by Hezbollah and then killed or traded for concessions from a cowardly US. This is the same area that was bombed to smithereens during the Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006. 

Building a second airport somewhere north of the capital would reduce the chaotic traffic and the risks of criminality and terrorism against foreign and domestic travelers. During times of insecurity, the  airport has been the scene of many hijackings, Israeli attacks, Palestinian guerilla actions, Hezbollah kidnappings of foreigners, etc. Areas north of the capital are much safer than the Hezbollah neighborhood where the current airport is located. Since the country is nearing collapse with mounting tensions between Christians and Muslims, airport road could again become the scene of anti-Christian and anti-Western terrorism. The current government is a caretaker government that has no money and that oversees a country in total economic collapse. The pro-Hezbollah forces in Parliament have obstructed the election of a new Christian president for the past 5 months, giving the Muslims a free hand in running the country ... running it down the mud, that is.

Why is the Irish government backing this deal? Is investing $122 million a priority when the average Lebanese citizen makes $60 a month, much less than a Syrian refugee's $200 a month pay from Western NGOs? One wonders why Ireland’s Minister of State James Browne attended Monday’s ceremony in Beirut to sign a deal with Hezbollah representatives, but without demanding answers and accountability from Hezbollah for the December 2022 assassination of Private Seán Rooney, an Irish soldier in the peacekeeping UNIFIL force? Looks like the Irish have learned perfidy and greed from their English tormentors.

The project comes as Lebanon is in the throes of its worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by the country’s political class, including by the current Sunni Muslim Prime Minister, Najib Miqati, who has monopolized, among many other examples, the postal system after it was privatized to his personal benefit. For decades, Miqati has not paid what his Liban-Poste monopoly owes the government, thus contributing to the bankruptcy of the state coffers. 

Indeed, the Irish-Hezbollah airport deal is so one-sided to the Irish advantage that many here sniff a corruption stench out of it. In fact, the Irish company stands to retrieve its $122 million investment within 3 years of operation, and then it's pure profits (estimated at $800 million) for the next 22 years during which not a dime goes into the depleted Lebanese treasury. Which means that the Hezbollah ministers, Miqati and Hamiyeh, have sold their own country's resources really cheap to the Irish company, which in turn suggests that the Irish company may be "back-paying" these two ministers for their "service" of signing this bad deal for Lebanon. This is the sort of deal that Lebanon's corrupt ruling class has been doing for decades, leading to today's collapse and insolvency of the country. WHY IS IRELAND BACKING A CORRUPT DEAL?

Lebanon’s economic crisis that began in October 2019 has left three quarters of the country’s 6 million people, including 2 million Syrian refugees, in poverty. But the refugees get lots of money, healthcare, schooling, etc. from a hypocritical West, while the Lebanese continue to sink without any aid. And the Western NGOs and some governments (e.g. the fucking British who caused the heartbreak that is Palestine today) have no compunction demanding that the Lebanese accept to settle the Syrian refugees permanently. Would they similarly advise Ireland, for example, to suddenly permanently admit and settle 3 million Ukrainian refugees on top of its 6 million population? Really? With such policies, the West is either working on deliberately eliminating the last free Christian community in the East, or it is pushing for yet another civil war that will push even larger numbers of refugees to seek a life in Europe. How smart is that?