Dramatic testimony suggests UN peacekeepers bribed by Hezbollah
Captured terrorists confirm they paid UNIFIL to use their outposts against Israel and even using their surveillance cameras. This is in violation of its mandate.
by Lilach Shoval Published on 10-21-2024 08:02
Hezbollah operatives captured during recent Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ground operations in southern Lebanon have disclosed during interrogations that the organization paid off UNIFIL personnel to use their positions in the region, according to security sources who spoke to Israel Hayom.
These sources, privy to the details, revealed that Hezbollah also took control of UNIFIL cameras in compounds near the Israeli border and utilized them for their own purposes. In light of these revelations and UNIFIL's glaring failure to prevent Hezbollah's entrenchment along the border Israel plans to rely primarily on commitments from the Lebanese army in any future arrangement with Lebanon, rather than on UNIFIL, which has proven ineffective over the years and is now accused of frequently collaborating with Hezbollah operatives.
A force mired in failure
UNIFIL, a UN peacekeeping force, was deployed in southern Lebanon under a UN Security Council resolution following Operation Litani in 1978 and has since operated under various mandates. Initially lacking enforcement powers until the Second Lebanon War, its mandate was expanded in 2006 from peacekeeping to limited enforcement authority.
UN Resolution 1701, adopted at the war's conclusion, authorized UNIFIL soldiers to stop Hezbollah operatives from engaging in terrorist activities south of the Litani River. However, the UNIFIL force has failed spectacularly in its mission, with Israel claiming in some instances that it even facilitates Hezbollah's plans under its watch.
Quinn also heads social-conservatives' lobbying group, the Iona Institute, which has distinct organisations based on both sides of the northern Irish border. He has long defended Israel in his columns and appearances in other media.
Here, the sources for the story in Israel HaYom are anonymous and the allegations without yet any further detail that I can find online. Who the prisoners are, where they were captured and what organisation holds them is not revealed either. But most likely this might be the Israel Security Agency, often called the 'Shin Bet', the Israeli equivalent of counter-terrorist activities of MI5 or the FBI, within Israel's borders, the West Bank and Gaza, and often in Lebanon also.
It has long practised physical abuse of prisoners, most notoriously for the 1984 killing of two captured bus hijackers, for which the country's most decorated army officer was then framed.
After that, a practise which ended up being authorised in some forms by legislation and permitted for use in prosecutions, including sleep deprivation, immobilisation by shackling and determined shaking of the prisoners. Allegations of much worse abuse of prisoners during the recent Gaza conflict have led to criticism by Israeli human rights NGOs and even the Shin Bet leadership. A more comprehensive picture is given in the Oscar-nominated documentary by Israeli director Dror Moreh, The Gatekeepers, (2012), based on interviews with all the living previous heads of the Agency; and an accompanying book, The Gatekeepers: Inside Israel's Internal Security Agency (Skyhorse, New York, 2012), by Moreh and with a forward by former Bush, Clinton and Obama administration Middle East negotiator, Dennis Ross. See also Torture, abuse and humiliation: Palestinians on Israeli prison ‘hell’.
Tapes released showing confessions by Hamas prisoners have been published by Israeli authorities also, but treated cautiously by western news organisations because of suspicions of coercion. [6] So far, without even such questionable evidence being presented, Israeli diplomats or the Israel Defence Forces seem not to have stood behind Israel HaYom's allegations either.
The allegations of corruption and complicity in terrorism from Israel YaHam are a gross insult to the Defence Forces who have made so many sacrifices, with 48 dead, more than any of the contributing nations, to the UN peace-keeping mission in Lebanon, with many others bearing injuries or mental suffering after their service. Support for the Defence Forces is close to universal in the Republic, with the organisation typically getting as many applications each year to join as there are serving members.
The allegations of corruption and complicity in terrorism from Israel YaHam are a gross insult to the Defence Forces who have made so many sacrifices, with 48 dead, more than any of the contributing nations, to the UN peace-keeping mission in Lebanon, with many others bearing injuries or mental suffering after their service. Support for the Defence Forces is close to universal in the Republic, with the organisation typically getting as many applications each year to join as there are serving members.
The peace-keeping mission is particularly popular, perhaps, in my opinion, is seen with an excessive idealism which I ascribe to the steadily-increasing and ultimately decisive rejection of the Provisional IRA campaign of violence. Nevertheless, the steady drip of casualties, most recently the killing, allegedly at the hands of Hezbollah-aligned attackers, of Private Seán Rooney in 2022, has not discouraged involvement. The UN missions to restrain both sides by putting peace-keepers at risk to obstruct movement and fire is still effective, with the frustration this causes to the Israeli government apparent in the Israel HaYom article.
While the tweets tell us little about the situation in the Middle East, it provides an important insight into contemporary online right-wing activism. Ignoring the Irish military community and the support they get in the Republic in favour of opinions of a foreign government unpopular both here and there highlights a consistent lack of compassion and connection in Quinn's writing.
While the tweets tell us little about the situation in the Middle East, it provides an important insight into contemporary online right-wing activism. Ignoring the Irish military community and the support they get in the Republic in favour of opinions of a foreign government unpopular both here and there highlights a consistent lack of compassion and connection in Quinn's writing.
Furthermore, I find it hard to understand the unrealism bordering on fantasy of a focusing on Israel, a country which he obviously knows little and which will not, as there is no evidence that he has any relevant Jewish ancestry, ever provide him a home or a safe-haven as it promises for Jews abroad. Beyond that, the casual willingness to attack the Defence Forces, whose role has always been the most important in defending the Free State and then the Republic against enemies at home, in winning the Civil War, then containing the Troubles and other disorders, highlights his abandonment of the support for the State's security forces that has been the solid foundation of Irish political conservatism. Not even the ostentatious piety that working class Dubliners have always mocked as the sign of the 'Holy Joe', visible - the prayer, scripture, catechetics, relics, the Rosary or hymns. Instead, there is only the rampant destructive id of Quinn’s ould lad Maoism.
⏩ Deaglán O'Nualláin is an economist based in Dublin.
Quinn projects his own stuff onto that conflict which many others sadly do.
ReplyDeleteQuinn's right wing Catholicism has never appealed to me.
ReplyDeleteAgain, in endorsing Apartheid Israel, he demonstrates that a Christianity of love is not where he stands. Compare his Christianity to say that of Desmond Tutu or Helder Camara.