“If we’ve been able to eliminate a certain number of them, I think it’s a very good thing. It’s an extremely intelligent method,” said Georges-Louis Bouchez, chairman of the French-speaking Liberal party.

 

The chairman of the Belgian French-speaking Liberal party MR, Georges-Louis Bouchez, has called last week’s operation targeting thousands of Hezbollah members in Lebanon via their pagers and talkie-walkies a “stroke of genius”.

“There’s no compassion to havce for terrorists,” he declared in an interview with Radio Judaica in Brussels.

“If we’ve been able to eliminate a certain number of them, I think it’s a very good thing. It’s an extremely intelligent method. From the moment they had those beepers, it’s clear that they’re part of the organization. What’s more, this attack has another virtue. It completely revealed Hezbollah’s organization chart,’’ he told the Jewish radio.

‘’As long as we can’t identify or arrest them,” he continued, ”at some point putting them out of action doesn’t shock me. It’s as if we’d been able to accuse the United States, for example, by saying that it’s scandalous to have gone looking for Bin Laden”, he also said.

For Georges-Louis Bouchez, ”it was also important for the Israeli services to be able to restore their image after the obvious shortcomings in relation to October 7.’’

‘’To say that this is a terrorist attack… Who are we talking about? At some point, people have the right to defend themselves against terrorists,’’ he added in a reference to Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter, a member of the Flemish Green party,who last week  “strongly’’ condemned what she called ‘’ the massive terror attack in Lebanon and Syria, which injured thousands of people.”

The pager operation was attributed to Israel.

Bouchez’s comments were sharply criticized by the left-wing political parties.

“Killing civilians, including children, terrorizing a population that has already suffered, we call that genius at the MR. But what horror. What a disgrace,’’ said federal MP Rajae Maouane, also a candidate from the Greens. .

Another Socialist MP Jamal Ikazban accused the MR president of “apologizing for war crimes”.

On Monday, the ground-floor facade of the MR headquarters in Brussels was covered in blood-red by pro-Palestinian activists. Their aim was to denounce what they saw as the French-speaking Liberals’ support for Israel.

‘’To vote for the MR is to vote for the colonization of Palestine by Israel and for the massacre in Gaza”, said a press release issued by the activists.