During the recent month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.As an example of UNIFIL's helping hand, on July 25th there was the following included as part of its report:
UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.
Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.
Yesterday and during last night, the IDF moved significant reinforcements, including a number of tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and infantry, to the area of Marun Al Ras inside Lebanese territory. The IDF advanced from that area north toward Bint Jubayl, and south towards Yarun.This may be the mildest form of UNIFIL overt aid to the terrorist group Hezbollah. There are other, more overt, kinds of aid that UNIFIL has been happy to provide Hezbollah, such as when UNIFIL abetted the Hezbollah kidnapping of Israeli soldiers on October 7, 2000:
An Indian soldier who served in the UNIFIL brigade on the Israel-Lebanese border reportedly told interviewers in Israel that the soldiers in his brigade "could have prevented the kidnapping" of three Israeli soldiers last October, Eitan Rabin of Maariv reported in an exclusive report Friday.UNIFIL, under Frence leadership, refused at the time to provide Israel with uncensured tape of what happened following the kidnapping when Hezbollah removed evidence. UNIFIL claimed to be doing this in the name of neutrality.
Dozens in the UNIFIL brigade reportedly watched the kidnapping but did nothing. Moreover, at least four Indian soldiers reportedly had been bribed [reportedly hundereds of thousands of dollars] by the Hizbullah to offer active assistance in carrying out the abduction.
...The Indian soldier said that at least four UN soldiers collaborated with the Hizbullah to help them reach the ambush location, and to assist them in locating the IDF soldiers.
UNIFIL is not neutral, it is neutered, and has no business being anywhere in the vicinity where peace and people's lives are at stake.
But then again, neither does the UN.
Technorati Tag: Israel and Hezbollah and Hizbollah and Lebanon and UN and UNIFIL.
3 comments:
Wow! you lie in one post, get corrected and the lie again in another post. That takes a fine brand of bull-headed ignorance.
Apparently you and I have something in common.
Neither of us has the faintest idea what you are talking about.
I checked a previous post to see if I could find what CP was referring to.
He is referring to the mention that Indian members of UNIFIL accepted bribes from Hezbollah and were at the scene of the original abduction in October 2000 and did nothing to stop it and may have been able to prevent it. See Will the UN Protect Hizbollah Kidnappers--Again?
In a comment to that post, CP gave a link to refute that claim. He did not quote from the article. Here is a part of it from The Hindu, an Indian newspaper:
A Maariv reporter has claimed that he spoke to an Indian jawan serving with the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) and that the jawan told him that he and his colleagues had observed the abduction of three Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon last October. If Maariv did have such a conversation, a report should have appeared soon after the incident and it would certainly have generated a greater controversy. There is little to show that this conversation took place in October last year. Had it not taken place then, the reporter would have gone to India to record the conversation. Because 2 Madras, the battalion serving with the UNIFIL then, was rotated back to India by December 2000. It would have made no sense for Maariv to interview a soldier of 5/9 Gorkha, which replaced 2 Madras, to find out what the men of the other battalion had observed a year ago (even assuming that the reporter had the guts to cross the international border into Hizbollah-controlled territory). The Maariv report does not say that its journalist travelled to whichever part of India 2 Madras is posted in now.
According to the excerpts of the Maariv report made available, the Indian jawan told the paper that he and his colleagues had observed the abduction, asked the Hizbollah not to go through with it and felt sad that they were not able to prevent it. (How an Israeli reporter for a Hebrew paper managed such a long conversation with an Indian soldier is another matter.) If this conversation did take place then there is nothing exceptional in it since the jawan's remarks merely bring out the invidious position the UNIFIL finds itself in. Its contingents can do nothing to prevent any sort of attacks from either direction.
The peculiarity of the UNIFIL's mandate precludes the necessity for the Hizbollah to bribe anyone. Why would they waste the ``thousands of dollars'' they are believed to have given to the UNIFIL men when the latter could have done nothing to stop them. Here Maariv very cleverly cites some unidentified ``security- diplomatic source'' as the authenticator of its story. Tied up with its earlier claim about a conversation with an Indian jawan this gives the impression that the soldier told the reporter that his colleagues had taken money, women and alcohol from the Hizbollah.
The paper concludes:
Meanwhile, the U.N. has expanded the inquiry into the videotape affair to include an investigation of the bribery charges. Israeli soldiers and civilians were kidnapped throughout the two decades and more than that their army was in occupation of south Lebanon. It does not appear that the U.N. thought it fit to look into the performance of the UNIFIL units responsible in these areas.
Considering the abuses and scandals haunting the UN, aside from its anti-Israel bias, the paper does not exactly end its argument on a strong note.
Still, their argument should be noted.
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