Juan: Your Bias Is Showing
Now, while I take the Israelis at their word on this, I’d be the first to admit that the attack might have been deliberate. I cannot say one way or the other. In fact, the only people who know the truth are the actual IDF personnel who conducted the attack. The Israeli government might not even know. What I can state is that no one sitting in an office in the United States can say with anything approaching certainty that the attack was either accidental or deliberate. Despite that, here’s what the noted and self-proclaimed "public intellectual" Professor Juan Cole has to say about the incident, verbatim.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed shock at the deliberate targetting of the UN peacekeeping base in Khiam, south Lebanon.
' "This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked U.N. post at Khiam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by (Israeli) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions would be spared Israeli fire," '
The Israelis denied that they hit the base deliberately, but Kofi would know. Why do it? When you have in mind war crimes, it is better not to have neutral observers in the region.
Where to start? How about “Kofi would know”? How would he know? He didn’t know any number of things being done by members of his own organization over the past few years. Why should we expect him to know with certainty what the IDF was doing?
How does Cole know that the Israelis are planning to commit “war crimes”? I suspect that he considers anything the Israelis do a “war crime,” which makes things a lot easier. After all, he has termed the Israeli air campaign “Inhuman.”
What about the quote from Annan? Is that actually what he said in his statement? The answer is . . . not exactly. Here’s the entire statement released by the UN.
The following statement by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was issued today [25 July 2006] in Rome:
I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a United Nations observer post in southern Lebanon that has killed two United Nations military observers, with two more feared dead.
This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked United Nations post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud lmert that United Nations positions would be spared Israeli fire.Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the United Nations Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular United Nations position from attack.
I call on the Government of Israel to conduct a full investigation into this very disturbing incident, and demand that any further attack on United Nations positions and personnel must stop.
The names and nationalities of those killed are being withheld pending notification of their families. I extend sincere condolences to the families of our fallen peacekeepers.
Cole uses a truncated non-quote at the start of the section, namely the phrase “deliberate targetting.” Actually, Annan used the phrase “apparently deliberate targeting.” That’s not a minor point for diplo-speak, since Annan’s language left the door open for him to subsequently acknowledge that the attack, despite his sense at the moment, was a mistake. Such an interpretation is supported in a section of the statement dropped by Cole where Annan asked for an “investigation,” which again assumes a degree of uncertainty. Moreover, in Annan’s latest statement about the situation in Lebanon, he does not even mention the attack or the UN deaths. In short, Kofi doesnt know, and while he suspects he isn't certain. It's Juan cole who is certain.
I also found it strange that Professor Cole chose to link as his source (that his hyperlink carried over from his site, not mine) the PRC’s The People’s Daily. Okay, I suspect that Cole considers the The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz unreliable and biased, and perhaps the entire American press pro-Israel. But if you’re looking for a UN statement why not go to . . . let's see . . . the UN’s official website? Let’s just say that the Chinese communist press is not the first place I go for accurate and unbiased information when I want my comments to be “informed.”
Here’s another point to consider: why didn’t the UN pull its personnel out of southern Lebanon? Why not bring them back to the environs of Beirut? They sure as hell weren’t “keeping the peace.” What purpose did they serve, given the obvious risk of mishap in the middle of a war zone? In asking this question I do not mean to imply that I suspect they were helping Hezbollah or doing anything untoward. I’m just wondering why Annan chose not to get them out of harms’ way before the Israelis rolled over the border. Did the world need their presence to know that Lebanon was being bombed, or that Israeli cities were being hit by missiles fired by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon? And, to return to Cole’s commentary, it’s not as if, hunkered down in their post, they were a position to spot any “war crimes” even if they occurred.
