The UN Shield for Terror 

By Joseph Klein
August 11, 2006
FrontPageMagazine.com
Original Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23766

Israel is faced on its northern and southern borders with two Islamic-fascist terrorist organizations determined to wipe it from the face of the earth.  These organizations have operated with impunity as the effective governments in the territories used to launch attacks against Israel while UN observers have stood by and done nothing.  Yet the United Nations literally and figuratively shields the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations while trying to immobilize Israel when Israel finally decides to strike back. 

For example, the UN has facilitated resumption of the financial aid gravy train to Hamas without obtaining a single concession in return.   Asked for an update on the financial situation of the Palestinian Authority, a spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan noted in a press briefing on August 7th that “a funding mechanism is up and running for the funding of the Authority”.  All Kofi Annan ever cared about was to keep the Palestinian government afloat at Western taxpayers’ expense.

The Palestine Authority today is in the grip of the Hamas terrorist organization.  It does not matter to the UN that Hamas still refuses to pursue negotiations with Israel over a secure two-state solution, much less recognize Israel’s right to exist.  It does not matter to the UN that the Palestinian Authority was already sitting on more than a billion dollars of investments recovered from Arafat that it has failed to tap first to help the Palestinian people before asking for hand-outs.  Every dollar that the UN and its cohorts channel to the Palestinian Authority aid program gives Hamas the ability to hoard the money it already has for its war against Israel.  In the UN’s world, terrorists are rewarded with more money.

Beyond financial rewards, the United Nations confers legitimacy upon terrorist organizations by giving them a platform for their “issues” and a shield for their terror operations.  Denying all sense of reality, the United Nations refuses to acknowledge that Hamas or Hezbollah are part of a dangerous global terrorist network whose common denominator is Islamic fascism. 

Here is a revealing exchange with Kofi Annan’s press spokesperson at a daily press briefing back in January 2006 regarding Hamas: 

Question: Does the Secretary-General consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization?
 
Spokesman: The Secretary-General has denounced in clear terms every time any organization has done a terrorist act, including when those acts were claimed by Hamas. 
 
Question: But that doesn’t answer my question.
 
Spokesman: There is no United Nations label that I know of, of a terrorist organization. 

Nothing has changed.   In an interview recently with the Financial Times, UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown declared that “it’s not helpful to couch this war [between Israel and Hezbollah] in the language of international terrorism”.  They deserve a “settlement which addresses the political issues of their cause as well as the military ones.”  He fails to mention that the common cause of all Islamic-fascist terrorists – Hezbollah and Hamas included – is to bring as much of the world as possible under Islamic rule and to destroy Western secular democracies in the process.  Instead, in an effort to make us feel better, Malloch Brown assured us that Hezbollah’s “roots historically are completely separate and different from Al Qaeda.”   That is sort of like saying that imperial Japan and Nazi Germany had such different histories that we should never have lumped them together as part of a global fascist axis during World War II.  

For good measure, Malloch Brown portrayed Hezbollah’s biggest funder and weapons supplier - Iran - as some sort of Rodney Dangerfield character who yearns for nothing more than “respect.”  Malloch Brown opined that Iran’s support of Hezbollah and its nuclear enrichment program were all part of a grand strategy to achieve its most precious wish - “a normalization of its relationships and to be brought back into the international community.”  The fact that Iran’s president has repeatedly called for the annihilation of a UN member state and is building a nuclear arsenal to do just that in defiance of the international community does not seem to enter into the UN Deputy Secretary General’s calculation of what it takes for a UN member state to truly earn respect.
 
Malloch Brown, by the way, was the same individual who publicly lambasted Middle America several weeks ago for being so ignorant about the UN’s valuable role in the world.  Every time Malloch Brown opens his mouth, he demonstrates why so many people in America are right to question the UN’s value and the moral compass of its leaders.  

Indeed, Kofi Annan has the blood of civilians and UN observers on his own hands, because he failed to take action when he had the chance to save lives.  For example, he personally rebuffed an advance warning to the UN from the Israeli Defense Force (“IDF”) that the UN should help remove innocent civilians from certain villages where fighting was expected to ensue.   Here is what this self-righteous ‘humanitarian’ said in response to a question at a press briefing on July 30th: “It's not the time to undertake to evacuate villages. And besides, as I said, such requests would normally come from a government.”

Kofi Annan would rather stand on ceremony and wait for a request to help evacuate civilians come through normal diplomatic channels than act immediately to save lives and avert a humanitarian crisis.   This is reminiscent Annan’s choice to ignore repeated reports coming from UN personnel on the ground near the Lebanese-Israeli border regarding the dangers they were facing as Hezbollah rockets were being fired from the vicinity of their posts and the IDF bombarded suspected Hezbollah positions in response.  Annan refused to remove them from harm’s way until tragedy struck and four UN observers were killed.   He blamed Israel, giving Hezbollah a moral victory of sorts by portraying their enemy as the international pariah while also absolving himself of any personal responsibility for what happened.   

UN leaders have done everything possible to shield Hezbollah by trying to put Israel into a box.   The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, David Shearer, has just called on the IDF to end its attacks on civilian infrastructure and to cease all actions hindering the supply of humanitarian relief supplies to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people across the country.  According to a statement issued by Shearer, bombardments by the IDF have seriously curtailed vital supply routes between the north and south of Lebanon.  Meanwhile Hezbollah’s use of the same infrastructure and the same supply routes to re-arm itself, and to conduct its terrorist rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, is simply ignored.   By this way of thinking, Hezbollah can mix with the civilian population, hiding among them as shields to launch their rockets against Israeli civilians, and then have their buddies at the UN claim a violation of international law when Israel responds and Hezbollah’s shields are inevitably caught in the cross-fire.  
 
Immediate “cessation of hostilities” is the mantra being circulated in the halls of the United Nations as efforts to put together a Security Council resolution acceptable to all sides continue.   The United States and France have proposed a two-step approach, starting with a resolution that would leave Israeli forces in place temporarily but require them to cease any “offensive” operations while Hezbollah also ceases its hostilities.  Given Hezbollah’s track record, cessation of hostilities will mean Israel must stop in its tracks while Hezbollah will use any pause in fighting to re-arm and re-position itself for the next attack.  The same UN peacekeepers, who stood by for six years and did nothing to prevent the current crisis, will be expected to monitor this first phase.  In any case, Lebanon has already rejected the French-American proposal.  Its government mouthed Hezbollah’s unconditional demand for immediate withdrawal of all Israeli troops and offered - six years too late - to send 15,000 of its own troops to southern Lebanon instead.   How anyone could seriously believe that these untrained troops would take any actions against the highly trained and armed Hezbollah is beyond belief. 

If the French-American proposal should somehow move forward and the first resolution is passed, the second step would involve Security Council authorization of the deployment of an international force to southern Lebanon to enforce the terms of an overall settlement of the conflict.  At that time, Israeli troops would leave Lebanon altogether to be replaced by the international force, the Lebanese army would receive training and Hezbollah would be disarmed.   At least, that is the theory.  But it ignores the power brokers who have armed and financed Hezbollah all these years and have no incentive today to change course.   Unless Iran and Syria are themselves brought under the Article VII enforcement provisions of the UN Charter and immediately subject to tough UN sanctions if they continue to support Hezbollah, the second resolution would solve nothing.

Based on the UN’s track record to date as a useful shield for Hezbollah, Hamas and their state sponsors, the terrorists will have little to worry about as long as the United Nations remains involved.