Thursday, July 27, 2006

When Hezb'allah co-locates with your position, its time to leave

From Little Green Footballs
Retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie was interviewed on CBC radio, and had some very interesting news about the UN observer post hit by Israeli shells; the Canadian peacekeeper killed there had previously emailed Mackenzie telling him that Hizballah was using their post as cover.

The entire interview is a breath of fresh air:

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.


Not only does Hezb'allah hide behind women and children, they hide behind the UN. The UNIFIL troops have sadly become victims of Hezb'allah perfidy.

In addition, just to show how co-located many of these UN positions are with Hezb'allah, here's a picture of one of them:
I don't know if this was the same post that was hit but it is certainly an example of how close Hezb'allah was to these UN positions before this conflict even started. Today I would not be surprised if they are firing from within UN positions.

Why the UN has not loudly complained about, and condemned, Hezb'allah for using their positions and treoops as shields in this conflict is unknown, but the UN's ingrained bias against Israel is undoubtedly the most likely suspect, and secondly that the UNIFIL troops are essentially hostages to Hezballah likely also makes any condemnation of Hezb'allah's actions a risky proposition for the UNIFIL observers on the ground.

It is a sad loss that the 4 UNIFIL observers were killed, but the fault lies with Hezb'allah, not Israel.

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