What Did You Do in the War,.UNIFIL?
MARCUS, LORI LOWENTHAL
What did you do in the war, UNIFIL? You broadcast Israeli troop movements. BY LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made...
...indeed, that to do so would violate the peacekeeping mandate, which required "full impartiality and objectivity...
...Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops, provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did...
...A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N...
...Stymied in its efforts to recover the men while they were still alive, Israel ultimately agreed to an exchange in January 2004: It released 429 Arab prisoners and detainees, among them convicted terrorists, and the bodies of 60 Lebanese decedents and members of Hezbollah, in exchange for the bodies of the three soldiers...
...obtain such detailed and timely military intelligence in the first place, before broadcasting it for Israel's enemies to see...
...about Israel's enemies...
...In a telling incident just a few years back, UNIFIL vigorously insisted on its "neutrality"—at Israel's expense...
...But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N...
...The U.N...
...Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces...
...stonewalled, insisting first that no such tape existed, then that just one tape existed, and eventually conceding that there were two more tapes...
...obstructed the Israeli investigation...
...New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old...
...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...
...The IDF advanced from that area north toward Bint Jubayl, and south towards Yarun...
...The U.N...
...Why is this permitted...
...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...
...These analysts, including a current high ranking military official, noted that the same intelligence would not have been provided by the U.N...
...officials said the decision had been made by the on-site commanders that it was not their responsibility to provide the material to Israel...
...For that matter, how did the U.N...
...On October 7, 2000, three IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah just yards from a UNIFIL shelter and dragged across the border into Lebanon, where they disappeared...
...Once again, it has acted to shield one side in the conflict and to harm the other...
...source...
...Or with the posting on July 24, in which UNIFIL revealed that the IDF stationed between Marun Al Ras and Bint Jubayl were "significantly reinforced during the night and this morning with a number of tanks and armored personnel carriers...
...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...
...compare the vague "various locations" language with this UNIFIL posting from July 25: 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...
...was thought to have videotaped the incident or its immediate aftermath...
...Blame for the deaths of those three Israelis can be laid, at least in part, at the feet of the U.N., which went to the wall defending its inviolable pledge never to share military intelligence about one party with another...
...report on the incident was adamant that its force had "to ensure that military and other sensitive information remains in their domain and is not passed to parties to a conflict...
...UNIFIL has just done what it then vowed it could never do...
...Sure enough, a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever...
...This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time...
...to turn over any videotape that might shed light on the location and condition of its missing men...
...Explaining their eventual about-face, U.N...
...For months the Israeli government pleaded with the U.N...
...Rather than help Israel rescue its kidnapped soldiers by providing this evidence, however, the U.N...
...And for nine months the U.N...
...Israeli press—always eager to push the envelope—did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics...
...The Lori Lowenthal Marcus is president of the Zionist Organization of America, Greater Philadelphia District...
...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...
...This partiality is inconsistent not only with UNIFIL's mission but also with its own stated policies...
...Inquiries made of various Israeli military and government representatives and analysts yielded near unanimous agreement that at least some of UNIFIL's postings, in the words of one retired senior military analyst, "could have exposed Israeli soldiers to grave danger...
...During those nine months, clips from the videotapes were shown on Syrian and Lebanese television...
Vol. 11 • September 2006 • No. 47
