Evelyn Gordon: UNIFIL Deters EU from Banning Hezbollah
To be fair, expecting UNIFIL to stop Hezbollah was never realistic. As a senior Israeli official acknowledged this week, few countries would be willing to contribute troops to a mission that actually involved fighting Hezbollah.
What’s inexcusable, however, is that UNIFIL has never even reported any of Hezbollah’s activities to mobilize international action against the organization. On the contrary, whenever Israel complains, UNIFIL insists it has seen no sign of hostile activity.
This might even be true because UNIFIL has learned not to look anywhere Hezbollah doesn’t want it to look. Back in 2010, after a French unit made the mistake of actually trying to do its job by conducting searches and using sniffer dogs, Lebanese “civilians” clashed with UNIFIL troops, seized their weapons and threw stones at them until UNIFIL’s commander forbade such searches. Today, the UN confines itself to meaningless statements about how “allegations of illegal arms transfers … warrant serious concern” and would violate Resolution 1701, but they are “not in a position to substantiate them independently.”
And even when turning a blind eye becomes impossible—like when Israel took UNIFIL officers on a guided tour of the cross-border tunnels—the organization is careful never to blame Hezbollah. As the blogger Elder of Ziyon reported last week, UNIFIL’s press statement about the tunnels didn’t accuse anyone of responsibility; it never mentioned Hezbollah at all. In fact, the post continued, “the UNIFIL website has not mentioned the word ‘Hezbollah’ or ‘Hizbollah’ since the 2006 war!
In contrast, UNIFIL has no problem making accusations against Israel. The same November report that couldn’t “substantiate” Hezbollah’s arms transfers declared that UNIFIL had recorded 550 Israeli violations of Lebanon’s airspace and demanded their “immediate cessation.
Caroline Glick: Corbyn to use his power to harm Israel - be ready
For instance, immediately after the September 11 attacks, then-British prime minister Tony Blair flew to Washington. He was the first foreign leader to meet with then-president George W. Bush. Blair’s visit had a singular impact on US policy toward Israel at the dawn of the US war against Islamic terrorism. Thanks almost entirely to Blair’s lobbying, Bush agreed to exempt Palestinian terrorism against Israel from his general rebuke. Blair convinced Bush that Palestinian jihadists who waged a terrorist war against Israel were not as objectionable as al-Qaeda jihadists were. The consequences of Blair’s efforts are still being felt – as the victims of this week’s Palestinian terrorist attacks make clear.New York Times photographer posted support for terrorism on Instagram
A prime minister, Corbyn will have a profound impact on the balance of forces in today’s Democratic Party. There can be little doubt that his rise will empower radical, extreme Israel haters in the party at the expense of more moderate forces. If a prime minister Corbyn is met in Washington by a Democratic president, his influence on US-Israel ties will be profoundly damaging.
Liberal American philosopher Michael Waltzer has argued that leftist foreign policy in the US stems more from attitudes and prejudices than from a significant, rational view of the world. There are two main twitches that underpin the foreign policy of the American Left: anti-Americanism and support for empowering international institutions at America’s expense.
Given Corbyn’s oft-stated intention to unleash the UN against Israel, Israel can expect for the UN to become even more peripatetic and hostile in its anti-Israel operations in the era of a Corbyn government. Britain, a permanent, veto-wielding member of the Security Council is liable to submit draft resolutions condemning Israel on a regular basis. Other UN institutions from UNESCO to UNICEF to the World Court can be expected to intensify their operations against Israel on multiple fronts. And if a Democratic president serves parallel to Corbyn, the implications for Israel are liable to be disastrous.
On Wednesday, May responded to Corbyn’s attacks against her for her handling of Brexit by saying, “The biggest threat to the UK is not Brexit, it is a Corbyn government.”
It’s possible that enough British voters agree with her to ensure that the Conservatives will win the next elections. But it is possible that they won’t.
Israel cannot wait to find out. Israel needs to act now to prepare itself for the day after a Corbyn government is formed. Because without a doubt, Corbyn intends to use his power to harm Israel. And as the prime minister of Britain, he will have significant means to achieve his goal.
A Pulitzer-nominated New York Times photographer posted support for terrorism on his social media, i24NEWS has discovered.
Wissam Nassar posted pictures of the suspected terrorists behind the Barkan Industrial Estate and Ofra shooting attacks on Instagram, adding the text: “A sad morning that carries with it pride with the martyrs, and honor in resistance. ‘If you lost the way, follow the martyrs’.”
The Palestinian Gaza-based photographer uploaded it as a “story”, meaning it was deleted after 24 hours.
Palestinians Salih Omar Barghouti and Ashraf Walid Suleiman Na’alwa were killed in IDF manhunts on the night of 12 December. Barghouti was suspected of being part of a terror cell that committed the drive-by shooting outside the West Bank settlement of Ofra on the night of 9 December. The cell injured seven people, shooting a seven-months pregnant woman in the stomach—and forcing doctors to prematurely deliver the baby, who died three days later.
Na’alwa had been on the run for two months since the 7 October Barkan Industrial Estate attack, in which he shot dead two Israeli coworkers: 29-year-old Kim Levengrond-Yehezkel, whom he handcuffed before killing, and 35-year-old Ziv Hajbi.
Islamist terror group Hamas took responsibility for both attacks. Its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said: “From the heroic Barkan operation to the Ofra operation, the Qassam Brigades are undertaking a new battle.”
Wissam Nassar’s work has been featured in Time Magazine and The New York Times, which used his photographs inside Gaza in articles on the “Great March of Return” protests and riots.