Nabih Berri is Lebanon’s speaker of parliament. His political party, Amal, is a secular Shia movement and a corrupt political machine with a small and not terribly fearsome militia. It is aligned with Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad’s Baath Party regime in Syria. Berri dispatched men to fight alongside Hezbollah during its invasion of Beirut in May 2008. He is as staunch an ally of Hezbollah as the Party of God could ever dream of acquiring from a secular Lebanese party even if he and its secretary general Hassan Nasrallah are both at least nominal Shias.
Yet Berri wished to see Hezbollah destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces in 2006.
WikiLeaks recently published a diplomatic cable from Lebanon describing Berri’s “pleasure” and “laughter” as Israeli military hardware pummeled his supposed ally from the skies.
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