Giving Hezbollah Time To Regroup

If any Western political party issued a statement which said, "It is an open war until the elimination of all Islamic states and until the death of the last Muslim on earth," do you think the world community would call for that party be censured or to be removed from power? If any Western leader came out and said, "If they all gather in Mecca, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," do you believe that there would be cries of condemnation, and calls for that leader to step down?

In the West, that would be an offense. Many members of Western society would be aghast at the statements, groups representing Islam in the West would be screaming to anyone who would listen, and the Islamic nations around the world would be appealing to the U.N. to do something about this flagrant call for genocide.

Those quotes, however, were not from a Western political party or a Western leader. They are the words of Hezbollah and its ever so intolerant leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. I did take the liberty of changing around the references to Israel and the Jews, but the remainder of the statements stayed intact.

"It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."
Hezbollah statement; source: The New York Sun

"If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."
Statement by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah; source: The Daily Star

Strangely enough, the world community has allowed Hezbollah to remain in power, and there is little to make anyone believe that more will be done to force the organization to disarm and/or disband. While it is true that there is the new cease-fire agreement to the latest Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, it doesn't do much more than help to legitimize Hezbollah by putting the terror group on equal footing with recognized U.N. member states. UNIFIL hasn't been willing to do anything about Hezbollah in the past, so what is to make us believe that they are going to change now?

A prime example of the impotence of the U.N. in Lebanon occurred back in 2000. It took the U.N. 271 days to turn over a videotape showing the vehicles, and the contents thereof, which were believed to have been used in the kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers on 07 October 2000. The last segment of the videotape, filmed one day after the kidnapping, shows armed individuals, believed to be Hezbollah, intercepting the vehicles that the UNIFIL forces were about to tow away. UNIFIL did nothing to stop Hezbollah from grabbing the vehicles, and made no mention of it to the world until Israel began to loudly complain that they believed that the U.N. had a videotape.

And why didn't the U.N. notify Israel of the incident between UNIFIL and Hezbollah on 08 October 2000?

The Under-Secretary-General pointed out that the UN has a duty to protect the confidentiality of its internal documents and to consider the security of its personnel. "At the same time, we understand the plight and anxiety of the families who want to know as much as possible," he said.

The security of its personnel? While I can't say for certain what the USG meant by that, I would be willing to guess that he was indicating that the U.N. was concerned that, if the tape were to be turned over to the Israelis and (most likely) be made public, then the UNIFIL forces could be in danger of retaliation from Hezbollah.

With a backbone like that, I'm sure that Hezbollah will be firing at Israel from behind UNIFIL positions shortly after the international "peace-keeping" forces are in place and the Israeli troops have withdrawn from Lebanon.

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