UNIFIL hides info about Hezbollah war prep from Security Council

from Haaretz: Israel: 'UNIFIL is hiding information about Hezbollah from Security Council'


The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is intentionally concealing information about Hezbollah activities south of the Litani River in Lebanon to avoid conflict with the group, senior sources in Jerusalem have said. In the last six months there have been at least four cases in which UNIFIL soldiers identified armed Hezbollah operatives, but did nothing and did not submit full reports on the incidents to the UN Security Council.

The Israel Defense Forces and the Foreign Ministry are reportedly very angry about UNIFIL's actions in recent months, especially about the fact that its commander, Major General Claudio Graziano, is said to be leniently interpreting his mission, as assigned by Security Council Resolution 1701, passed at the end of the Second Lebanon War.

Senior IDF officials said recently behind closed doors that Graziano is "presenting half-truths so as to avoid embarrassment and conflict with Hezbollah," and that Resolution 1701 has been increasingly eroded in recent months.

A senior government source in Jerusalem said that, "There is an attempt by various factors in the UN to mislead the Security Council and whitewash everything having to do with the strengthening of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon." The source also said, "The policy of cover-ups and whitewashing will not last long and, hopefully, now that the concealing of information has been revealed, things will change."

Israeli anger reached boiling point over a week ago after the release of a new report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with regard to another Lebanon-related Security Council resolution, 1559. The report briefly mentioned an incident at the beginning of March in which UNIFIL soldiers encountered unidentified armed men, and included no additional details. Officials in Israel, familiar with the incident, reportedly were aware that the Security Council had not been apprised of numerous details of the incident.

A day after the release of the report, Haaretz revealed that the incident described in the report had actually been a clash between UNIFIL and armed Hezbollah activists. The latter, driving a truck full of explosives, threatened the Italian UNIFIL battalion with weapons. Instead of using force as required by their mandate, the UN soldiers abandoned the site. A diplomatic source at the UN told Haaretz that senior officials in UNIFIL and in the UN Secretariat brought heavy pressure to bear to have the incident erased from the report or at least to blur it.

When the incident was made public, UNIFIL was forced to admit that it had indeed occurred and to request Lebanon's assistance in investigating it. UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane said that during the incident, which took place near the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, five armed men had threatened UNIFIL troops. Bouziane said the identity of the armed men was uncertain.

A day later, a second report was transmitted to the Security Council on the matter, this time including all the details. However, the report stated that this was the first incident of its kind. According to a security source in Israel, this was a misrepresentation; he said that in fact there had been many similar incidents in the past. A response from UNIFIL with regard to Israel's claims was unobtainable.

Syria Linked to Terror Groups

The Prime Minister of Lebanon and the Secretary General of the U.N are pointing fingers at Syria for supporting Fatah al-Islam and running weapons to Hezbollah. Here's the under-reported story:

By BENNY AVNI

from The New York Sun:

A report by Secretary General Ban links an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Lebanon to Syrian intelligence.

The information, included in a report released today, is based largely on a letter to Mr. Ban written by Prime Minister Siniora of Lebanon. The letter draws upon information gathered during the interrogation of captured leaders of a group known as Fatah al-Islam, and from data found in a Palestinian Arab refugee camp in northern Lebanon, Nahr al Bared, where the group mounted a rebellion against Lebanon's government during the summer.

"Direct contact between some of Fatah al-Islam's leaders and some senior Syrian intelligence officers, which were revealed in the interrogations, are consistent with the suspicion that Syrian intelligence has used Fatah al-Islam to serve its political and security objectives in Lebanon," Mr. Siniora wrote, according to Mr. Ban's report to the Security Council.

To substantiate his allegation Mr. Siniora cited, among other facts, the release from prison in Syria of Fatah al-Islam's leader, Shaker Yousef al-Abssi, shortly before the riots in the Palestinian Arab camp began.

The fighting in Nahr al Bared lasted 105 days and ended September 2, when Lebanon's army declared victory over the group. Some168 Lebanese army soldiers and about 222 militants were killed in the fighting, according to Mr. Ban's report, while thousands of the camp's residents were displaced.

Over 200 members of the terrorist group, which allies Al Qaeda, were arrested, but the report notes that the Lebanese victory may be incomplete, as Mr. al-Abssi was not captured. The report also accuses Syria of continuing illegal weapons deliveries to Hezbollah. Syria denied the allegations in a letter to Mr. Ban.

New definition of chutzpah

Nasrallah blames Israel for killing anti-Syrian pols in Lebanon

from Haaretz

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday accused Israel of killing anti-Syrian figures in Lebanon to cause strife and drag his militant movement into fighting other Lebanese communities.

In a televised speech broadcast to his supporters to mark "Al Quds" day, Nasrallah said Israel has a network of agents working in Lebanon who are responsible for the political killings.

Nasrallah, whose group leads the pro-Syrian opposition to Lebanon's U.S.-backed government, also warned the parliamentary majority against picking a president of their own to run the country if talks with the opposition failed, and called for polling the general population on their choice if the lawmakers fail to reach agreement.

The Hezbollah chief said attacks against members of Lebanon's anti-Syrian parliamentary majority in the last two years have automatically drawn condemnation from that coalition against Damascus, Hezbollah's ally, and that was the reaction the killers expected, Nasrallah said.

"The hand that is killing is Israel's," he told thousands of supporters who occasionally interrupted his speech with roars of approval.

By the way, this Haaretz article ends with an inexplicable zen koan: "Nasrallah ended the speech with a quote from the Koran which relates to the Children of Israel." The reader must meditate upon that phrase for many years to discover meaninglessness of whatever Nasrallah said.

Please forward this to Robert Fisk

Earlier, I posted a FRONT PAGE report on Robert Fisk stating as fact that Israel had used depleted uranium (DU) weaponry in Lebanon (read that post here: Robert Fisk's Secrets and Lies). Well, Fisk's claims turned out to be false, but Fisk, not to mention his "source" for this misinformation, Chris Busby, the "technology spokesman" for the UK Green Party, have yet to acknowledge, explain or correct their error. Here's a link to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) evaluation of that claim, which I found via LAKA, a Dutch group that archives scientific data on nuclear-related issues (www.Laka.org | UNEP: No U-weapons in Lebanon).

Quoting from the UNEP report:

No use of weapons containing depleted uranium (DU)

UNEP investigated a number of sites with underground facilities with the highest probability of having been attacked with deep-penetrating ammunition. The typical signs pointing to the use of ‘bunker buster’ munitions include collapsed buildings with minimal lateral damage and, usually, little or no evidence of burning. Smear sampling of undisturbed surfaces is one of the most precise methods for detecting depleted uranium. In UNEP’s experience, this method can detect the impact of as little as two 30 mm DU penetrators of 300 g each and clearly confirm the presence of DU within 300 m from the target. Given the high sensitivity of the method, the impact on a hard surface of a ‘bunker buster’ containing a DU penetrator weighing approximately 200 kg, which would generate 5 - 25 per cent of its mass in DU dust, would be detected at a distance even greater than 300 m with the highest probability.

The analysis results show no evidence of the use of DU-containing penetrators or metal products. In addition, no DU shrapnel or other radioactive residue was found at the sites investigated. The analysis of all smear samples taken did not detect DU, enriched uranium, or higher than natural uranium content. After an extensive investigation, including of sites rumoured to have been hit by DU weapons, it can be stated that the ‘bunker buster’ ammunition used by the IDF in the conflict did not contain DU, natural uranium or any other uranium isotope.

If you know how to contact them, please forward the above information to Robert Fisk and to the UK Green Party. We know how anxious they must be to correct the record.

UPDATE (July 2, 2007 4:30 pm): Turns out the Independent, which publishes Fisk, published the following paragraphs on Nov. 8, 2006 concerning the false claim of Israeli use of DU in a small article concerning UNEP's findings that Israel used white phosphorus -- an article buried somewhere in the inner pages. It said:

"Achim Steiner, under-secretary general and executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said that samples taken by scientists had confirmed the use of white phosphorus in artillery and mortar ammunition.

"Mr Steiner also said that the scientific analysis found no evidence of penetrators or other metallic bomb components made of depleted or enriched uranium, as claimed by two British activists in a report last month.

"The samples taken by the UN for analysis were collected between 30 September and 21 October. Three independent laboratories in Europe undertook the tests on behalf of the UN.

"The findings conflict with a report by Chris Busby, a Green Party activist, and his colleague Dai Williams, an occupational psychologist, who claimed to have found evidence of enriched uranium in a sample collected from a bomb site in southern Lebanon."

However, the Independent didn't mention the fact that they had earlier touted that very claim as accurate.

Here's what it says on the website of the Low Level Radiation Campaign, Busby's organization, concerning UNEP's findings:

LLRC and Green Audit predicted this. The Independent 8th November 2006 reported Chris Busby's statement: We are concerned that UNEP don't know what they are doing. Earlier [in 2001] they were useless at finding depleted Uranium in Kosovo due to wrong choice of instrumentation."

Harvard study finds media treated Israel unfairly

The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict

Evidence that the media co-operated with Hezbollah's disinformation campaign.

"Throughout the conflict, the rarest picture of all was that of a Hezbollah guerrilla. It was as if the war on the Hezbollah side was being fought by ghosts."