Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood drone attack plot foiled

From AP:

Egypt charged two leaders of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, two Sinai Bedouins and a Palestinian with plotting a terrorist attack with Hamas, a security official said Sunday.

Brotherhood leaders Abdel-Hai al-Faramawy, a professor at Cairo's Al-Azhar university, and Mohammed Wahdan were charged with paying the equivalent of US$3,600 (¤2,300) to two Bedouins to buy 30 jerry cans of fuel, spare parts and a remote control for an unmanned aircraft.

Al-Faramawy denied the charges, while Hamas said the reports were completely false.
The security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said Hamas was planning to build the unmanned aircraft but it was not clear how the aircraft was going to be used or who would be targeted. Media reports suggest that everyone from U.S. and Israeli interests to rival Palestinian factions were to be hit.

Hamas does not possess any aircraft, but it has in the past attempted to load remote-controlled airplanes with explosives for attacks on Israeli targets. These attempts have never succeeded.

Previous Hamas attempts to fill remote-controlled planes with explosives are listed here.

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ElBaradei blames Israel and the US for his being a moron

From JPost:

The head of the UN nuclear monitoring agency on Friday criticized the US for not giving his organization intelligence information sooner on what Washington says was a nuclear reactor in Syria being built secretly by North Korea.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei also chastised Israel for bombing the site seven months ago, in a statement whose strong language reflected his anger at being kept out of the picture for so long.

Yes, we all know how effective he would have been in stopping Syrian nukes.

Look how great a job he is doing in Iran!

The U.S. and its allies probably have no more than a year to take action against Iran before that nation acquires nuclear weapons, warns Dennis Ross, an architect of the Mideast peace process.

By 2009, Iran “could be a nuclear power, if not a nuclear weapon state, said Ross, who served as the director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H.W. Bush and special Middle East envoy under President Bill Clinton.

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The UNRWA response that reveals their true colors

I mentioned on Wednesday that the UNRWA in the West Bank went on a planned 3 day strike - stopping food distribution and other services - in response to attacks and threats on UNRWA personnel by Palestinian Arabs.

And these events were not mentioned, as far as I could tell, on the UN or UNRWA websites (although their concurrent suspension activities in Gaza in response to fuel shortages were mentioned.)

Why does the supposedly neutral UNRWA go out of its way to mention anything that can be blamed on Israel and downplay things that Palestinian Arabs do to them?

I emailed the UNRWA three times - first to their public information office, then to their West Bank PR office, and finally to Christopher Gunness, who is also one of the UNRWA's press liaisons:

Dear Mr. Gunness:


I read in Palestine Today Wednesday morning that UNRWA is closing its offices in the West Bank in protest from being forced to close earlier this month by protesters. I could not, however, find any press release from UNRWA concerning this, nor about the protests earlier this month reported in PNN.

Can you please comment on what is happening and any background information you might have? I originally sent the email to the main public information office 24 hours ago, and then to the West Bank PIO last night, but received no response.

Thank you,

Elder of Ziyon

Here is Gunness' response in its entirety:

HI there,

There had been problems but these have now been avoided for the time being.

Chris

That's it. Nothing specific, no confirmation of what I had mentioned, no pointers to any press releases I might have missed - nada.

To the UNRWA, violent attacks by the people they are meant to help are embarrassing events that should never be mentioned to the public because the UNRWA is emotionally invested in making sure that the Palestinian Arabs appear purely as victims and never - never - as being partially responsible for their own problems.

Their website contains megabytes of information about the 1948 "nakba" but to find out the real source of their problems nowadays one must decipher doublespeak that is buried deep within. For example:

With more than 9,000 people crammed into an area 650 meters by 200 meters, Neirab camp near Aleppo has a population density that sadly rivals Gaza. Most of the population lives in small one-room shelters. Depending on the time of day, these tiny rooms may serve as living rooms, salons or bedrooms.

Um Hashem, Neirab resident, outlines in gestures how six people can sleep in twelve square metres: four people lay sideways across the room. Meanwhile, Um Hashem lies lengthways, clutching her two-month-old son.

It has been close quarters in Neirab camp since the first Palestine refugees fled their homeland to Syria in 1948, where they were put up in abandoned WWII barracks. Originally, each barrack in the former British and French military base housed sixteen families. With successive generations the camp population increased, however the size of the camp has stayed the same. To address overcrowding, an infrastructural overhaul has become necessary.

In Phase I of the Neirab Rehabilitation Project, UNRWA built new shelters for Neirab refugees in the nearby camp of Ein el Tal, which does not suffer from the same overcrowding. This phase is drawing to a close with 300 families relocating to new shelters. Their decampment will provide additional space for the refugees still residing in Neirab.

Volker Schimmel, UNRWA Project Officer for the Neirab Rehabilitation Project, insists that although the living conditions of Palestine refugees in Neirab must be improved considerably, the project is not calling into question their right of return. "We want to allow Palestinians to live in dignity," he states. "Choosing not to live in misery does not mean that they will forfeit their right of return."

In English, this last paragraph means that any UNRWA attempts to build better housing for Palestinian Arabs in camps has been roadblocked for 60 years by "Arab leaders" who think that happier Palestinian Arabs may lead some of them to not want to destroy Israel quite as much, which reduces their usefulness considerably. The UNRWA doesn't even try to pressure Arab governments to allow PalArabs to become citizens any more - they abandoned that decades ago, unlike the UNHCR, which is actually dedicated to reducing the number of refugees under its care.

The UNRWA might have its private frustrations with the Palestinian Arab leaders who fight tooth and nail against the welfare of real-life Palestinian Arabs, but it will only publicly blame Israel.

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Where killing Jews is the ultimate goal

There was another terror attack this morning:

Two Israelis were killed Friday morning when Palestinian terrorists opened fire at them in the Nitzane Shalom industrial complex near Tulkarm.

IDF troops and police were at the scene and were searching for the shooters.

According to the preliminary investigation, at least one terrorist arrived at one of the factories in the complex and opened fire at the two.

The gunmen had initially intended to infiltrate Israel but returned to the industrial complex after they were unable to penetrate the security barrier, Army Radio reported.

The Nitzane Shalom complex was built in 1995. It houses nine factories that provide jobs to many Palestinians from the West Bank.

Al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad's military wing and the Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Hamas' military wing, have assumed shared responsibility for the shooting attack near Nitzanei Oz.

The organizations claimed that the attack’s executer is a terrorist wanted by Israel and the Palestinian Authority, who arrived at Qalansuwa village disguised as a woman. Later on, the terrorist changed into worker’s garments and advanced towards the factory, where he executed the attack “dedicated to Gaza’s residents.”

It is again important to understand the mindset that plans and executes such horror. The terrorists planned to enter Israel and kill civilians there and when they couldn't they decided to attack Jews that were a bit easier to reach.

And every terror organization is claiming credit for the attack:

Five Palestinian resistance factions have claimed responsibility for shooting dead two Israeli security guards in the Tulkarem industrial zone on Friday.

The military wing of Islamic Jihad, the Al-Quds brigades and the Al-Qassam Brigades the military wing of Hamas, also claimed responsibility for the operation in Tulkarem.

The Palestinian Arab press will spin this into an attack on "settlers" even though it is clear that their goal is to kill any Jews they can find on either side of the Green Line.

Notice that the Al Aqsa Brigades - our moderate friends whom the PA has claimed no longer exists, and some of whose members just received amnesty from Israel yesterday - is happily taking responsibility.

Most importantly, think about the natural Israeli reaction to an attack like this:

It will mean that Arab women from the territories will be subjected to much more rigorous screening.

It will also result in Arabs losing their jobs as Israeli employers get naturally more jittery about the security of their workers.

In other words, the net effect will be to make the Palestinian Arab lives much more miserable. But since they successfully managed to murder a couple of 50-something Jews, to their sick minds this is a victory.

And you will not find many Palestinian Arabs who disagree.

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Chabad synagogue torched in Miami

Federal, state and local police on Wednesday are investigating a fire that damaged a Miami Beach Jewish community center during Passover. The Chabad Shul, located at 2401 Pinetree Dr., was vandalized early Tuesday and its Torah stolen.

FBI Dir. Robert Mueller said to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a member of the house judiciary committee, in Washington DC., that his agency will investigate the fires that damaged Miami Beach synagogues in the past six months as hate crimes.

The FBI has jurisdiction over hate crimes motivated by intolerance of a person's race, religion, or national origin.

CBS4 Tiffani Helberg was told by congregation members that the Torah, a religious scroll of Jewish laws and customs, a centerpiece of its religion, was taken. Pieces of the Torah were found outside. Its value is more than $40,000.

"We could see all the prayer books there, all burnt up you can find them, but not one inch of the Torah remnants," said Rabbi Zev Katz. "And we found the pole to the Torah outside. Something strange happened; this is definitely criminal activity."

The rabbi said he believed the fire was intentionally set, but Miami Beach fire officials have not confirmed it. The pole that holds the Torah found outside was brought to the attention of investigators as a clue as to what might of happened.

Wasserman Schultz, who is Jewish, said the fact that the fire occurred during Passover and that there have been two synagogue fires in the past six months makes the fire suspicious. Although the Chabad House is outside her congressional district, many of its congregates live within her district.

Two synagogue fires in six months in Miami?

So, which is more prevalent - Islamophobia or anti-semitism?

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How to spot a Persian prostitute

Slate explains how prostitutes can make a living while wearing chadors in the nation claims it is far moral than the West:

Tehran's former police chief Reza Zarei attempted suicide in prison yesterday, a month after being arrested for consorting with six naked women in a brothel. In the aftermath of the scandal, the Times, the Associated Press, and the BBC all reported that prostitutes are becoming more visible on Iranian streets. Given the Islamic dress code, how do Persian prostitutes signal their trade?

Location, location, location. In the 1970s, Bostonians looking for a proverbial good time went to the "Combat Zone" and New Yorkers flocked to 42nd Street; in contemporary Iran, the holy city of Qom is known (unofficially) as a place of "both pilgrimage and pleasure." There, prostitutes wearing veils and even chadors mill about temples or sit together in public courtyards where men can inspect them. Sometimes a male go-between offers "introductions," at which point the prostitutes pull aside their headgear so the potential client can get a glimpse, but the whole process is fairly subtle. For an outsider, it's difficult to pick a street girl out of a crowd.

Qom may have become a prostitution hot spot due to the abundance of shrines. Young female runaways with no shelter come to the city knowing they can take refuge at holy sites by sleeping in rooms intended for pilgrims. They have no way of making a living, so after awhile they get involved with the sex trade. The city's young theological students and transient tourists form the main clientele.

Of course, Qom isn't the only place in Iran where prostitutes walk the streets. Back in 2002, the Iranian newspaper Entekhab estimated that there were nearly 85,000 prostitutes in Tehran alone. In that city, and especially in nearby suburbs, there are neighborhoods where heavily made-up prostitutes in traditional garb stand idly at traffic circles. Prospective customers drive by slowly to check out the human wares, then make a deal. The visual difference between an ordinary citizen wearing makeup who happens to be standing alone and an actual prostitute is, again, quite subtle. Apparently, mistakes are not uncommon.

The penalties for prostitution are severe—ranging from whipping to execution. But there's a loophole in Islamic law called sigheh, or temporary marriage. According to Shiite interpretation, a man and a woman may enter an impermanent partnership with a preset expiration date. There's no legally required minimum duration (a day, a week, anything goes) and no need for official witnesses—unless the woman is a virgin, in which case she needs the consent of her legal guardian. An Iranian who's wary of arrest can simply escort a prostitute to a registry, obtain a temporary contract from a Muslim cleric, and then legally satisfy his sexual needs.

Not that the mullahs don't have their priorities straight:

Iranian police will confront women in private offices, or even socialising in cafes, whose dress is deemed improper, as part of a continued morality crackdown, Tehran's police chief said on Thursday.

Police have been enforcing the crackdown for the past year and its morality patrol officers have handed tens of thousands of warnings to women on Tehran's streets.

Including offices and cafes -- which so far have not been targeted -- would mark a major expansion of the drive.

"As part of the campaign to increase security in society, the police in the capital will soon act against bad veiling in private companies, cafes, internet cafes and restaurants," Commander Ahmad Reza Radan said.

He added that police would also be acting against "satan-worshipping" groups but did not give further details.

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Hamas calls on Gazans to storm Rafah border on Friday

Firas Press reports (Arabic):

The Hamas movement today, Wednesday, told audiences to go on next Friday to the Rafah border crossing to break the siege and supply needs from the city of El Arish in Egypt.

I am not sure if they mean this upcoming Friday or the one after that. The last rumors of a planned breach turned out not to be true but that may have been because of the attack at Nahal Oz and Israel's reaction, which would have delayed an action like that.

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Flying pig moment at the UN

AP reports:

The United States, Britain, France and other members walked out of a closed meeting of the U.N. Security Council late Wednesday after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps in World War II, council diplomats said.

The walkout was a rare protest by diplomats on the U.N.'s most powerful body against one of their own members. Libya is the only Arab representative on the council.

According to several diplomats, Libya's deputy U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi ended a long speech about the plight of the Palestinians by comparing the situation in Gaza to the concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews. Some 6 million Jews and between 220,000 and 500,000 Gypsies were killed during the Nazi Holocaust.

Immediately after Dabbashi mentioned the concentration camps, diplomats said, French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff, Britain's deputy ambassador Karen Pierce, Belgian Ambassador Johan Verbeke and Costa Rica's deputy ambassador walked out of the council's consultation room.

South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, the current council president, then ended the meeting.

It is a tiny step, but it shows that Arab hegemony at the UN is not as complete as it has been in the past.

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I always wanted to blog from the beach

And now I have.

Here enjoying a warm spring day at a deserted NJ beach, hanging out with the beautiful and talented Daughter of Ziyon home for Pesach vacation.

Hope you are having as good a day as I am!

UPDATE: Here, for the first time, you can see DoZ. She is playing the popular game Beach Blanket Burqa.

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Three TRILLION dollars!

The latest "statistic" from rabid, anti-Israel nutcases comes courtesy of "Desert Peace" via "MWC News":

America has literally been the lifeline of the zionist paradise for the past 60 years, at the tune of three billion dollars a year (over three TRILLION dollars to date of U.S. taxpayers money).

One can only imagine what mental gymnastics and mathematical games must be played in order for a country that receives $3 billion annually to have gotten $3 TRILLION over the course of sixty years.

Does this person think that US citizens have been bankrolling evil Zionists for a thousand years? Or perhaps the annual amount given to Israel has gone down from, say, $50 billion a few years ago to only $3 billion today?

Actually, the answer is from an absurd study by someone named Thomas Stauffer a few years ago, published by the Arab-funded WRMEA. Stauffer, who was eulogized in 2005 as being a "a good friend of OPEC and an advisor to the oil ministers of several member countries," was an energy economist who pretended to tally up how much Israel has cost the US with some ridiculous assumptions.

For example, he blames Israel for the Arab oil boycott in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War - a war initiated by Arabs, one would recall. The costs of the oil crisis, naturally, must be blamed on Israel, according to "scholars" like Stauffer. Israel gets blamed for higher oil prices. One can only imagine how much of today's price of oil Stauffer would blame on Israel today.

Similarly, any programs that the US has in place in order to gain energy independence is assigned as an expense to benefit Israel. So is the Strategic Oil Reserve, meant to buffet the US from any arbitrary Arab whims. And, of course, the first Gulf War was wholly to help Israel, according to this Harvard lecturer.

Obviously, such pseudo-scholarly garbage gets eaten up by anti-Israel bigots as if they have merit, and it is really a perfect example of how the Saudi-funded WRMEA will latch onto any anti-Israel material no matter how tenuous the scholarship is.

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Palestinian Arabs protest and close UNRWA offices; UNRWA goes on strike

Some more news that got almost no attention:

Earlier this month, the UNRWA announced that they would be reducing some services in the West Bank. As a result, the "Popular Committees" protested by forcibly preventing UNRWA workers from getting to their jobs at a number of camps as well as their headquarters. The committees threatened UN workers and threatened to burn their offices and storehouses of food.

The UNRWA called the Palestinian Arab police to help them re-open their offices, and the Popular Committees responded by saying that they “deplore, denounced and condemn the conduct of those who are of the mindset to call the police to suppress these demonstrations.” The protests meant that food distribution and other services were curtailed.

Today, the UNRWA called a three-day strike in the West Bank to protest the violent conduct of the Committees. This means that for three days, food will not be distributed in the villages, although schools and medical clinics will remain open.

The UNRWA said that while they have no problem with peaceful protests, the physical threats and prevention of workers from doing their jobs is a bit over the line.

I could not find any mention of any of these events at the UNRWA web page (which is chockful of articles detailing Israeli actions) and I have emailed them for any press releases or other information.

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Latest Peaceful PalArab poll - Think Condi knows?

The latest poll of Palestinian Arabs by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (raw results here) shows that a majority of Palestinian Arabs support suicide terror against Israeli civilians:

Q.5 How do you feel about the suicide bombing operations against Israeli civilians? Do you strongly support it, somewhat support it, somewhat oppose it, or strongly oppose it?

	Total	West Bank	Gaza
	N= 1199	n= 760	n= 439
Strongly support	26.1	20.1	36.4
Somewhat support	24.6	22.2	28.7
Somewhat oppose	28.4	31.3	23.2
Strongly oppose	18.1	22.6	10.3
Don’t know \ No answer	2.8	3.8	1.4

That's 50.7% who support suicide bombings against 46.5% opposed.

Can one imagine the world community supporting the establishment of any other state outside of "Palestine" given this knowledge about its citizens consistently supporting terror? Would Tibet or Armenia or Kurdistan get such latitude in their quests for independent states if their citizens held similar positions?

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My Amazon review of "Who Speaks for Islam"

I finally received the book "Who Speaks for Islam," and it is exactly what I was hoping it would not be: an apologetic essay for Muslims that selectively uses numbers to prove a point.

Here is my Amazon review:

I purchased this book well aware of the articles the authors had already written about their findings. The articles would not give details of the poll results, and I had hoped to see the raw data in an appendix of the book. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

This is not a book of scientific fact; it is an opinion piece masquerading as science. When the authors say that only 7% of Muslims worldwide consider the 9/11 attacks "completely" justified they do not say how many consider the attacks "somewhat" or "mostly" justified. Then, the authors go on to label the 93% who may or may not consider the 9/11 attacks somewhat or mostly justified to be "moderates". This is absurd, and it appears that the reason that the authors do not release the raw data is because they realize that the detailed poll findings would not conform to the spin that they decided to clothe their results in.

An apparent example of question bias: the pollsters asked Muslims their opinion of democracy, and found that the "radicals" were more in favor of democracy than the "moderates." However, they do not illuminate these findings by asking questions about Western values like freedom of the press or freedom of religion, things that Westerners would associate with democracy but that Muslims may not. Could it be that the radicals are pro-"democracy" because they want to use democratic methods to establish a sharia state? The authors do not go down that path.

Most polls will show how the questions are phrased, the order of the questions, and the demographic breakdown of the respondents. This book does no such thing. As such, it is worthless propaganda, and raises far more questions than it answers. My opinion of the Gallup organization has gone down considerably to promote such propaganda as if the authors' opinions are proven by a scientific poll.

So far, mine is the only negative review the book has gotten - all the others gave it 4 or 5 stars, showing how shallow people are when a book fulfills their preconceived notions.

I also emailed the Gallup organization asking them to release the raw polling numbers that the book was based on; I received no response.

Polls are tricky enough when the pollsters try to be unbiased; they are downright dangerous when the pollsters withhold their own data in order to make the numbers represent something that they do not.

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Gazans keep shelling Gaza crossings

As sure as night follows day, Gazans will attack the crossings that provide them with food, fuel and medicine.

From Ma'an Arabic:

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility of the bombing of the Karam Abu Salem crossing with three missiles of "maximum type 2"on Tuesday evening.

The battalions released a statement saying that the shelling comes in response to a series of Israeli massacres and an affirmation of the resistance option.

They are too lazy to even come up with any specific reason for the attacks nowadays.

But still the MSM cannot find any irony that Palestinian Arabs continuously attack their own lifelines. And the Israeli government cannot manage to emphasize this to the world.

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UNIFIL buries report of Hezbollah arms smuggling

UNIFIL knows quite well that Hezbollah is smuggling arms from Syria - in direct violation of UN Resolution 1701 that ended the Second Lebanon War -but since it never had any direct evidence it always downplayed that fact.

So, for example, in the February report from the Secretary General on the implementation of 1701, we will see a paragraph that is skeptical about Israeli claims that Hizbollah is re-arming, like this one:

26. Israel maintains that Hizbullah is significantly rebuilding its military presence and capacity, inside the UNIFIL area of operations. At times, the Israel Defense Forces has provided UNIFIL with information about locations in the UNIFIL area of operations, in which it claims that these activities are taking place. UNIFIL, in collaboration with the Lebanese Armed Forces, immediately investigates all such claims if sufficiently specific information is received. To date, it has found no evidence of new military infrastructure in the area of operations. Israel also claims that Hizbullah has adapted its modus operandi in order to conceal its activities from UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces, and has relocated its operations mainly to urban areas. UNIFIL has observed that its operational activities are on occasion being closely monitored by unarmed civilians. However, UNIFIL constantly changes its patrolling patterns to maintain the highest level of effectiveness.

And then, much later in the report, the UN will grudgingly admit:

39. In my last report to the Council on the implementation of resolution 1701 (2006), I drew attention to alleged breaches of the arms embargo across the border between Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic and the claimed transfer of sophisticated weaponry from the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Syrian Arab Republic across this border. In its letter dated 10 December 2007 (S/2007/724), the Syrian Arab Republic countered those claims and maintained that allegations of weapons smuggling across the Syrian-Lebanese border were motivated by political rather than security considerations. However, Hizbullah, by admission of its leaders on several occasions, has replenished its military capacity since the 2006 war with Israel. I therefore remain concerned that this border remains vulnerable to such breaches, which would represent serious violations of the resolution and constitute a significant threat to the stability and security of Lebanon.

And at the very end...

71. I remain concerned about ongoing reports and Hizbullah public statements that point to breaches of the arms embargo, in serious violation of resolution 1701 (2006).

So as of February, the UN knew that both Israel and Hezbollah claimed that Hezbollah was smuggling arms into Lebanon but it wasn't quite willing to admit that it was being hoodwinked by Hezbollah.

This seems to have changed in late March.

Armed Hizbullah militants warded off members of UNIFIL last month when the peacekeepers discovered a truck carrying weapons and ammunition.

On March 30, UNIFIL troops on patrol discovered the truck, chased it down and pulled it over. When the troops approached the vehicle, armed Hizbullah men exited the truck and threatened the troops at gunpoint. The UNIFIL patrol then went back into their cars, according to the source, and returned to their base.

The report submitted to the Security Council said the incident occurred on the night between the 30 and 31 of March. "This serious violation of the UN resolution raises concerns," the report said.

Israeli security officials believe that Hezbollah forces are usually found in areas where the organization enjoys centralized civilian support. There are many areas that answer to that description in south Lebanon because most of the residents in the south of the country are Shiite Muslims, who support Hezbollah.

The incident, referred to in a semi-yearly report submitted to the UN Security Council by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, was not reported in the media at the time.

I could not find this report on the UN website. If anyone else can, I would appreciate it.

Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace get prominently reported by UNIFIL, publicly, but Hezbollah violations that are much more severe are downplayed, minimized and essentially ignored. Not only that, but the obvious evidence that Hezbollah knows how to smuggle weapons under the UNIFIL radar, perhaps even in collusion with some UNIFIL troops, is ignored as well.

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