Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Sunday night that the IDF carried out a series of raids targeting buildings belonging to the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association after asking residents to stay away. IDF spokesman in Arabic Avichay Adraee issued a series of warnings accompanied by maps of buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the eastern Beqaa, and south Lebanon, warning that these are facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, and calling for people to keep their distance.
The Qard al-Hasan is similar in principle to the Jewish Gmach – offering interest-free loans to people in the community who need them. But according to Israeli sources, the bank was used to pay the salaries of Hezbollah terrorists. It also functions as a conduit for money laundering for Hezbollah’s drug trade.
The bank has been under sanctions imposed in 2007 by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control. In 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department said the bank “illicitly moves funds through shell accounts and facilitators, exposing Lebanese financial institutions to possible sanctions.”
If the money runs as deep as the many terror tunnels the IDF has uncovered, and continues to expose, then Israel’s defense forces have a long road ahead of it in order to rout out this source that enables terrorism.
Source:
IDF Blows Up Hezbollah’s Banks All Over Lebanon, by David Israel/Jewish Press, October 21, 2024