The BBC, for once, has an article that doesn't blame Israel for something happening in its neighbourhood. It seems that the UN's bloke responsible for Lebanon and Syria blames the latter for the fact that militias in the former seem to be awash with weapons.
[Semi-aside: Actually to be perfectly honest the BBC has two such because its article about the "not a civil war" going on in Gaza also barely mentions our evil Zionist overlords except in the last section:
Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza Strip in 2005, says it will not intervene in the fighting. [...]
The election triggered a Palestinian political and economic crisis, with international donors boycotting the government because Hamas - which they consider a terrorist group - refuses to recognise Israel and renounce violence.
Israel has refused to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in tax, which it collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
Admittedly Melanie Phillips will no doubt complain that the last sentence is gratuitous and have some right on her side but it is the last sentence and most of the rest of the piece is talking about how Fatah's leaders have decided to do a Brave Sir Robin and lead their troops from Egypt. The article also mentions how much Hamas welcomes democracy and freedom of expression:
Several hundred civilian protesters briefly turned out to call for a ceasefire, but they scattered when confronted by masked Hamas gunmen firing into the air.
Is the BBC possibly chaning its mind after seeing that all its grovelling has failed to lead to the release of their palestinian propagandist journalist?]
Back to Lebanon. It seems that the UN is a tad peeved with a country called Syria and also with another one called Iran as even the UN's representative Terje Roed-Larsen can see that it is these two countries that are facilitating the arming of Lebanon. Of course the UN doesn't suggest that its troops in Lebanon redeploy from position protection Lebanon from Israel to protect it against some other threat, but perhaps it will. It occurs to me that this could be a chance for President Sloshkozy to (re)gain lots of international credibility...
Thanks to the Grauniad, however, the machinations of our evil Zionist overlords, are exposed in a leaked report from some other UN bloke. It is interesting to compare this with the BBC article about Gaza. According to the article the UN writer, one de Soto (related to the excellent economist?), complains that the Israelis have directly contributed to the fact that there is no peace in Palestine:
The 53-page "End of Mission Report" by Alvaro de Soto, the UN's Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down.
The revelations from inside the UN come after another day of escalating violence in Gaza, when at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Hamas fighters launched a major assault. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah group, warned he was facing an attempted coup.
Mr de Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence. Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant, he says.
Mr de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who worked for the UN for 25 years in El Salvador, Cyprus and Western Sahara. He says:
The international boycott of the Palestinians, introduced after Hamas won elections last year, was "at best extremely short-sighted" and had "devastating consequences" for the Palestinian people
Israel has adopted an "essentially rejectionist" stance towards the Palestinians
fortunately for my blood pressure he does then continue
The Palestinian record of stopping violence against Israel is "patchy at best, reprehensible at worst"
But apparently he fails to draw what seem to me to be the logical conclusions, namely that Isreal has become "essentially rejectionist" because the Palestinians have rejected every move Israel has made.
Mind you it is entirely possible that the Grauniad is cherry pickign from the 52 page report (quite where the Grauniad gets the 53rd page is a mystery, the PDF from its own website has 52 pages but I guess this is just another case where the layers of fact checkers have swung into action) as just reading the first half dozen pages reveals plenty of other juicy gripes. Fortunately though the Grauniad knows that the most important thing is the blame Israel so it fails to mention the dysfunctionality of the UN that the report describes and so on.
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