Overview:
Hanin Ghaddar is a US-Lebanese citizen fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), where she focuses on developments of the Levant. Ghaddar also works on the Arab Politics program at WINEP. WINEP has historically operated as the Middle East think tank for AIPAC.
Israeli Influence Agent in Lebanon
Ghaddar openly supports the normalization of Arab-Israeli relations and has had numerous meetings with the leaders of the Zionist regime. Being of Lebanese background herself, Ghaddar specifically lobbies for Beirut’s recognition of the Zionist occupation of Palestine.
In one notable instance in 2014, she had a joint meeting with the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, where she criticized the Lebanese military’s actions against the Zionist regime. In 2018, the military court of Lebanon sentenced her in absentia to 6 months in prison and found Ghaddar guilty on charges of “defamation against the Lebanese Army”.1
Ghaddar has sought any argument possible to sway Lebanese public opinion away from supporting fellow Arab Palestinians. For example, Ghaddar once claimed that the Lebanese are “%14 Jewish” and – given that she claims DNA analysis disproves notions of pure “Arab” ethnicity – the Lebanese should consider themselves closer to Israel than to their Arab brethren.
Forever pushing for Arab recognition of Israel, Ghaddar has recently collaborated much with the WINEP-sponsored Center for Peace Communications CPC. The CPC is a leading US-based initiative pushing for the “outside-in approach” to countering Palestine. The “outside-in approach” claims that Palestinians will capitulate to Israel’s ambitions only when other Arab nations normalize relations with Tel Aviv and abandon the Palestinian cause.2
In August, 2021, in support of the Center for Peace Communications positions about anti-normalization laws, she tweeted: ” As opposition against #Hezbollah in #Lebanon mounts, anti-normalization laws become a dangerous tool of repression-in addition to hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in the UAE having to deal with Israelis on a daily basis-maybe it’s time to revisit these laws and their purpose.
On June 22nd, 2021, The Washington Institute held a virtual policy forum with Majd Harb, Nadim Koteich, and Hanin Ghaddar, moderated by Joseph Braude, about Anti-Normalization Laws. At that meeting, she considered anti-normalization laws a form of abuse of Lebanese citizens and considered the cancellation of this law necessary to ensure Lebanon’s security.
Many among the Lebanese regard her as a “Mossad operative” – not at all an independent journalist and researcher – tasked with pushing for Lebanon-Israel relations detrimental to the country’s national security.
- https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/about/press-room/press-release/ghaddar-sentenced-prison-lebanese-court-receives-outpouring-support
- https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/burgeoning-arab-israeli-normalization-not-quite-what-you-think/
- https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/hezbollahs-corona-quagmire-opportunity-empower-laf
