Lebanon needs your prayers

By now, most of you would have heard about the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. Very rarely do we get so many up-close pictures and videos of such an enormous explosion. Although the footage is extraordinary, sadly, many lives were lost and the damage bill will run into the hundreds of millions.

Lebanon has a storied history. After World War 1, the French took control of Lebanon. Before that, it was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century. In 1920, Lebanon was placed under a League of Nations mandate and in 1926, the Lebanese Republic was declared. Although this was the case, Lebanon actually remained under French control until 1943, with French troops leaving the country in 1946. Beirut was a thriving city – a fusion of East and West, known as the “Paris of the Middle East”. Unfortunately, extremist ideologues under the control of Islam began their torturous grip on the nation beginning in the 1950’s, leading to our modern day where Hezbollah (translated: Party of Allah) maintains effective control over Government actions. In fact, Hezbollah has the strength of a medium-sized army and has formidable weaponry, often supplied by Iran.

The official explanation for the blast revolves around incompetence, corruption, fireworks and almost 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate. However, experts are beginning to have doubts. At the time of writing, questions are starting to be asked. By the time this article is published, the information may have changed again. However, this is what we are starting to learn.

David Wurmser, a former US Navy Reserve intelligence officer believes the Lebanese government’s account is incorrect. “What we’re beginning to realise is that there’s no plausible way which that is the true story because the magnitude of the explosion, the nature of what we see and so forth strongly indicate a fundamentally different structure of collapse here,” Wurmser said.

Wurmser argues that 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate would have produced a 1.1 kiloton blast. He cites world-renowned explosives expert Danilo Coppe (dubbed “Mr Dynamite”) who puts the actual blast at 3 kilotons. “Now, it’s pretty clear, [the ammonium nitrate] is not sufficient to have caused that massive blast in the end,” Wurmser said.

Further, Coppe told the Italian publication Corriere the blast revealed the presence of missiles. “You can clearly see a brick orange column tending to be bright red, typical of lithium participation. Which in the form of lithium-metal is the propellant for military missiles. I think there were armaments there,” Coppe told the publication.

Wurmser echoes Coppe’s opinion that missiles were involved in the blast. “I think what we’re talking about here, putting all this evidence together, is a missile shipment potentially with a missile conversion facility next to an ammonium nitrate store that is larger than what the ship story yields, considerably larger. So, whatever happened, the Lebanese government, which is under the control of Hezbollah, is simply not telling the truth. And whatever happened looks to be by the minute more and more nefarious,” he explained.

It is no secret to the Israelis that Hezbollah dabbles in weaponry and ammonium nitrate. In 2018, Benjamin Netanyahu warned the UN that Hezbollah had secret sites for building precision-guided missiles in the city of Beirut. In 2015, London police discovered a Hezbollah cell with 3 tons of the explosive. That same year, authorities in Cyprus arrested another cell with 8 tons. After Israel’s Mossad tipped off Germany to a stash of the ammonium nitrate, the country banned Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

A video circulating online shows Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2016 laughing as he talked about blowing up ammonium supplies to murder Israelis. His description is eerily similar to Beirut.

“The nuclear bomb I’m talking about is when a couple of our missiles falling on ammonium warehouses in Haifa’s port, will lead to the same effect as that of a nuclear bomb. When the missiles fall on the warehouses in an area with a population of 800,000, tens of thousands will die,” he said. Nasrallah would do well to read the account of Haman in the book of Esther to see what happens to those who plot against Israel.

For the innocent people caught up in this catastrophe, we can only hope that the Lebanese people will see that Hezbollah is no good for their country and that it will be a catalyst to loosening the grip of this terrorist group on their country.