A lobbying firm with a history of supporting Israeli groups and causes has picked up an unlikely client - a Lebanese political party.
The New York-based Friedlander Group, headed by Ezra Friedlander, filed lobbying disclosures recently which show the Lebanese Option Party as a new client. The LOP is a relatively new political party in the country, having been formed from a Shia movement in 2007. It positions itself as an opposition party to Hezbollah, the militant Islamist political party designated a terrorist organization by both the United States and Israel. In 2013, a LOP member was shot and killed during a protest against Hezbollah.
The LOP is headed by Ahmad El Assaad, who has also founded an organization called Saving the Next Generation which aims to combat the waves of extremism that have followed the Arab Spring. The party does not hold any seats in Lebanon's unicameral parliament, but does unofficially align itself with the March 14 Alliance, an opposition party which controls slightly less than half of the seats in parliament.
According to the filing, the Friedlander Group is lobbying the U.S. Agency for International Development on behalf of the LOP. While the firm has close ties to Israel and Israeli clients, they also have represented a diverse slate of clients, including the government of Japan and the Qatari businessman Hassan Ali Bin Ali.
On its website, the LOP is critical of what it perceives as the "Jewish Lobby" in the United States and its role in fostering an environment for "Islamized" movements abroad. The LOP further laments that an "Arab Lobby" did not exist before Sept. 11, 2001 and partly blames divisions in the Arab world for that inaction.
Israel and Lebanon are officially still in a state of war and view each other as enemies.
