Hezbollah foreign relations fashion of bin Laden, we do not endorse them. And many of the operations that they have carried out, we condemned them very clearly." Michel Samaha, Lebanon's former minister of information, has said that Hezbollah has been an important ally of the government in the war against terrorist groups, and described the "American attempt to link Hezbollah to al-Qaeda" to be "astonishing". As part of a surge of intersectarian support for Hezbollah during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's deputy leader, called for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Zionists and join the fighting in Lebanon.
Hezbollah of Hezbollah: "Apart from their well-known terrorist activities, they also have political standing and are socially engaged." Germany does not maintain its own list of terrorist organizations, having chosen to adopt the common EU list. However, German officials have indicated they would likely support designating Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The Netherlands regards Hezbollah as terrorist discussing it as such in official reports of their general intelligence and security service and in official answers by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. On 22 July 2013, the European Union declared the military wings of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization; effectively blacklisting the entity.