Thoughts on the UN Incident
We may never know with certainty whether the Israeli attacks against the UN post was accidental or deliberate. After all, people still debate whether the 1999 American bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was deliberate or accidental.
But you can glean some insights into what was going on in south Lebanon by perusing the UNIFIL reports, which you can read for yourself on the UNIFIL website: http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/. Currently, the reports for July 17 through 26 are available.
On 17 July, a UNIFIL task force conducting a humanitarian missions to help Lebanese civilians came under fire when the village they were in was struck twice by the Israelis, who were replying to “Hizbullah fired rockets from the vicinity of the village. “
On July 24 one of the UN observers was wounded by small arms fire that “originated from the Hezbollah side” during a firefight with the IDF. The report also states that a UNIFIL engineering team repaired a road that had been destroyed by IDF strikes. While the UN team’s intent was to reopen the road for refugees, the reopened road would also allow the passage of Hezbollah traffic, which was why the IDF had struck the road in the first place.
On 25 July four Ghanaian solders were wounded by Israeli tank fire. Later that same day Hezbollah fired upon a UNIFIL convoy, but there were no casualties. An engineering detachment once again repaired roads damaged by Israeli fire.
For another interesting “tid bit” visit Charles Johnson’s “Little Green Footballs” site, where you’ll find a link to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio interview with Retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, who once served in south Lebanon. Mackenzie makes two points of interest. First, Hezbollah routinely clung closely to UNIFIL positions. Second, Mackenzie states he received e-mails from the Canadian soldier who was subsequently killed in the Israeli attack.
We received emails from him a few days ago, and he was describing the fact that he was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position for tactical necessity, not being targeted. Now that’s veiled speech in the military. What he was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that’s a favorite trick by people who don’t have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can’t be punished for it.
And if you check out a back issue of Canadian-Jewish News from 2002, you’ll find this picture, which shows the UN and Hezbollah flags actually flying side-by-side at one of the UNIFIL observation posts in south Lebanon.
