Hezbollah is lashing out against President Obama after the president told a crowd of Israeli students last week that the European Union should blacklist the Iran-backed group. Hezbollah conducts critical fundraising and logistical work inside the E.U., and even the group’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, has said that an E.U. designation “would dry up the sources of finance… [and] end moral, political and material support.”

Obama insisted that “every country that values justice” should “call Hezbollah what it truly is – a terrorist organization.” The New York Times described the speech as “enthusiastically welcomed” by the Israeli students. Hezbollah officials reacted with somewhat less warmth:

Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group is condemning President Barack Obama, saying the statements he made during his recent visit to Israel made him appear like “an employee of the Zionist entity.” Hezbollah’s statement on Friday came a day after Obama said in a speech in Jerusalem that every country that “values justice should call Hezbollah what it truly is — a terrorist organization.”… It says such statements make Washington “a full partner with the enemy (Israel) in all its crimes.”

The Europeans have been reluctant to blacklist Hezbollah partly due to French and German fears that their interests will be targeted if they heed U.S. calls and acknowledge the group as a terrorist entity. Formal findings by Bulgarian officials and a Cypriot court that Hezbollah members were involved in terror plots on E.U. soil in Bulgaria and Cyprus have been insufficient to overcome Paris and Berlin’s fears.

France and Germany have justified their reluctance by insisting that blacklisting Hezbollah would undermine political stability in Lebanon, where Hezbollah militarily controls the country’s south and politically dominates the government. Analysts have pushed back by emphasizing that Hezbollah is a net destabilizing force inside the country, and that efforts to bolster the government and restore security require that the group be sidelined rather than engaged.

Blowback generated by Hezbollah’s participation in the Syrian conflict — which has made Lebanon into a jihadist battleground after Hezbollah targeted Syrian opposition forces and those opposition forces responded — seems to bear out that analysis. Violence linked to the Syrian conflict left at least six people dead and dozens injured in Lebanon last week.

[Photo: TheNewYorkTimes / YouTube]