Jennifer Hanin/ Derailing Peace at Every Turn

(By Jennifer Hanin). Imag­ine if there were evil forces out to frame you no mat­ter what you did or how you did it. Then con­sider Israel. Just two days ago, IDF sol­diers per­formed rou­tine main­te­nance by clear­ing bushes to improve the line of sight along the Israeli – Lebanese bor­der.

Then “suddenly” – a word that par­ents read­ing children’s books are all too famil­iar with when the plot turns to the wicked antag­o­nist – Lebanese sol­diers fired and mur­dered a senior IDF commander. When the story broke, evenhat made the world believe that Israel had delib­er­ately breached the secu­rity fence into Lebane “rep­utable” news orga­ni­za­tions like Reuters and BBC helped demo­nize Israel by pub­lish­ing pho­tos tse ter­ri­tory. In real­ity, the secu­rity fence and the bor­der demar­ca­tion are not the same in all areas. The attack occurred on Israeli ter­ri­tory. In fact, IDF even cleared this rou­tine work in advance with the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) to pre­vent any poten­tial violence. Nev­er­the­less, the vio­lence occurred against Israel and like clock­work, the lynch­ing had begun. The world descended upon Israel and again painted it as the aggres­sor. Even the US gave a response best described as “neu­tral.” But this story, like dozens before it, may as well been con­cocted in La La Land. Crit­ics of Israel are fast to point the fin­ger at the Jew­ish State but are speech­less when try­ing to rat­tle off even one inci­dent where Israel fired first. There sim­ply is none.

Through­out its 62-year his­tory, Israel has retal­i­ated to unpro­voked attacks yet never once insti­gated an attack. The bor­der inci­dent was no dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous inci­dents that endan­gered Israelis. Like the oth­ers, Israel fired back. Hon­est Report­ing did a good job of ques­tion­ing why UN offi­cials and jour­nal­ists were onsite at the time of the ambush. After all, the UN had full knowl­edge that the main­te­nance was occur­ring. It also explains why sev­eral jour­nal­ists linked to media out­lets con­trolled by ter­ror­ist Hezbol­lah were also onsite.

Think about the blood that is now on the hands of those respon­si­ble. UN offi­cials and jour­nal­ists don’t just show up at bor­ders where ten­sion are high unless some­one has asked them to be there. So is it the Lebanese gov­ern­ment or the UN that needs to take full respon­si­bil­ity for the mur­der of the Israeli offi­cer, the jour­nal­ist and three Lebanese soldiers? The UN has now admit­ted that the attack occurred on Israeli soil but it is also couch­ing the Lebanese attack as a “mis­un­der­stand­ing.” Hmm. Does that mean the Lebanese com­man­der that autho­rized the attack was con­fused about where Lebanon’s ter­ri­tory ends and Israel’s ter­ri­tory begins? Hardly. It’s more likely that the Lebanese com­man­der knew exactly what he was doing and vio­lated UN Res­o­lu­tion 1701 by know­ingly com­mit­ting an act of war. Where is the inter­na­tional out­cry? How can the UN boil down a pre­med­i­tated attack to a “mis­un­der­stand­ing?” Like the Gaza flotilla, Israel used nec­es­sary force to defend itself from bru­tal aggres­sors. Unlike the witch-hunt the UN has gen­er­ated into the IDF’s involve­ment with the Gaza flotilla, the fam­i­lies of those slain are likely not gain­ing com­fort know­ing the UN has rub­ber stamped the deaths of their loved ones with a “mis­un­der­stand­ing”.

It’s high time the world inves­ti­gates the UN for the crimes it has com­mit­ted and the spe­cial ses­sions it holds to inves­ti­gate Israel while turn­ing a blind eye to coun­tries that com­mit geno­cide. Talk about a bunch of hyp­ocrites. But that’s another blog post (or series of them) all together. Con­sider recent threats to Israel over the last month or so. I tweeted about the rocket recently fired from Gaza on the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Then there were rock­ets fired from Sinai on the Jor­dan­ian and Israeli cities of Aqaba and Eilat. Next, the Lebanese army opens fire. It’s clear that Hezbol­lah has infil­trated the Lebanese army and we know that Hamas is respon­si­ble for the rock­ets launched from Gaza and the Sinai. But I haven’t seen the inter­na­tional out­cry in the media against these aggres­sors. Israel and the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity should be able to see these vio­lent inci­dents and “ter­ror­ist fac­tions” for what they are: attempts to rip the peace process right out of its seams.

Then there is the never-ending parade of flotil­las to con­sider. What a farce! The Turk­ish flotilla comes no sur­prise as Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan rec­ntly became Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadinejad’s BFF. And where did the fol­low­ing flotil­las come from? Not the Emer­ald City. Oh no, they came from rogue coun­tries that either serve as launch­ing pads for ter­ror­ists like Lebanon or fund world­wide ter­ror­ism like Iran and Libya. These highly pro­pa­gan­dized inci­dents tar­get­ing the only true democ­racy in the Mid­dle East should serve as a reminder that while Israel seeks har­mony with its neigh­bors they are the same lot sac­ri­fic­ing lives and cre­at­ing media mis­di­rec­tion to derail peace.