HEZBOLLAH BACKERS ARE REPREHENSIBLE.

Byline: BRIDGET JOHNSON

YOU may have missed the march in downtown L.A. on Aug. 12, but I was there. I expected the Palestinian flags, the jaunty kaffiyehs, the drum- beating and brow-beating. But I nearly dropped my pen in the gutter when I heard cries of ``Long live Hezbollah!'' from the marchers.

It's one thing to protest the Israel-U.S. alliance, to think Israel's a big bully, etc. I don't agree, but a free country is open to varied political discourse. Call everyone with whom you disagree a Nazi if it makes you feel better.

But it's quite another to cheer on a terrorist organization. And if you think it isn't happening in the United States, you may have missed some recent far-left rallies where that anti-Israel stance crossed the line to anti-Semitism, where the traditional anti-Bush chants were supplemented with support for guerrilla militias armed by Iran.

When I saw the signs saying ``Hezbollah forever'' and ``Hezbollah, Hamas -- People's Resistance,'' among others, I knew I wasn't hearing things. And the Anti-Defamation League reports similar occurrences at that day's other rallies, including ``Long live Hezbollah'' cries in San Francisco and San Diego, and a chant of ``Nasrallah, Nasrallah, the martyr is the beloved of Allah, the Zionists are the enemy of Allah'' in Washington, D.C.

Since when did Hassan Nasrallah become a man of the people, a pied piper to lead the oppressed masses? Since when did Americans find his draconian theological warfare to be a symbol of liberation? ``The most honorable death is death by killing,'' Nasrallah told his followers last year.

``Our motto, which we are not afraid to repeat year after year, is `Death to America,''' he also said.

Would people get miffed if marchers were screaming ``Long live al-Qaida!'' through downtown? Or if Osama bin Laden became the sexy new poster boy for anti-war demonstrations? How vile will these protesters become simply to spite the current administration?

Because it wasn't just about bashing Bush and Tony Blair, or demanding redrawn boundaries in the Middle East. It was about supporting terrorists. And that's just reprehensible. On the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, Hezbollah was responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack on Americans before 9-11 when Marine barracks in Beirut were bombed in 1983, killing 241. The ``Party of God'' is believed responsible for nearly 200 terrorist attacks -- including kidnappings and a 1985 TWA hijacking -- resulting in more than 800 deaths.

``Hezbollah is the main weapon outside of Iran for Iran,'' said Christopher Hamilton, a senior fellow in counterterrorism studies at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Iran, our fair protesters may be pleased to remember, is controlled by a nuke-coveting mad regime that denies the Holocaust and wants to annihilate the Jewish state in their hat tip to Adolf Hitler.

How does Hezbollah win its support among the American far left? By focusing its virulent hatred on Israel and the U.S. By accusing the Bush administration of interference in the Middle East. By painting itself in a glorious revolutionary light so attractive to the fans of Che.

Nasrallah once referred to the American people as ``most of whom are distant and ignorant of what is going on in the world.'' I look at the terrorist-supporting protesters with a heavy heart and agree, but the Hezbollah leader surely would call this rabble bloody geniuses.