Greetings from the French Hill: Time Out: At Home and on the UN's "Sanity"

Hey all, the husband and I will be travelling today, so we won't be able to do regular updates, but we will get to it later tonight.

In the mean-time, to keep you company, here's some more news about the circumstances surrounding the UN bombing from 2 nights ago (Read this and this from some background on the story). Again, curtesy of LGF and Michelle Malkin.

A match made in hell: The Hezbollah and UN flags flying side by side.

Excerpts from stories being written:

The lynching of Israel continues, this time with United Nations boss Kofi Annan accusing it of the “apparently deliberate targetting” of a UN observation post, killing four observers.

The usual suspects are now running with this line, with The Age front page screaming: “UN told: please explain.’’

The venom against Israel - as splashed about by former Deputy Prime Minsiter Tim Fischer on ABC 774 this morning - is extraordinary. Do these people seriously think Israel aims to kill UN staff, and that this was not simply - as Israel insists - a tragic mistake?

What makes Annan’s allegation so unforgiveable is that his UN Interim Force in Lebanon has been warning for days about what almost certainly caused this tragedy. Hezbollah fighters, who have already been firing behind screens of women and children, have also been shooting from behind and next to the UN positions, presumably hoping Israel will not dare shoot back and risk exactly this kind of propaganda disaster.

Read the UNIFIL press releases for yourself to learn that Hezbollah has not just shot at and seriously wounded UNIFIL observers - without any protest from Kofi Annan or The Age. You’ll also learn that UNIFIL has repeatedly reported Israeli shelling and bombing near UNIFIL outposts because Hezbollah fighters were shooting from right beside them .

Says the UNIFIL press release of 20 July:

Hezbollah firing was also reported from the immediate vicinity of the UN positions in Naquora and Maroun Al Ras areas at the time of the incidents (of Israeli return fire).

Can the jeering critics of Israel stop catcalling for a minute and explain how Israel is to defend itself against an enemy that shoots from among women and children, and from behind UN soldiers? Can they explain why they are such apologists for terrorists? Can Annan explain why he did not call on Hezbollah to stop risking the lives of his staff, or pull them out when they were being used to screen terrorist fighters?
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Read Andrew Bolt's entire Herald Sun Article...

An apparent discrepancy in the portrayal of events surrounding the deaths of four unarmed U.N. observers in Lebanon threatens to unravel Secretary-General Annan's initial accusation that Israel "deliberately" targeted the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.

A Canadian U.N. observer, one of four killed at a UNIFIL position near the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam on Tuesday, sent an e-mail to his former commander, a Canadian retired major-general, Lewis MacKenzie, in which he wrote that Hezbollah fighters were "all over" the U.N. position, Mr. MacKenzie said. Hezbollah troops, not the United Nations, were Israel's target, the deceased observer wrote.

A senior U.N. peacekeeping operation official who briefed the press yesterday, however, said that on the day the deaths occurred, the only "known Hezbollah activity was 5 kilometers away." The official's briefing was conditioned on anonymity, but the undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations, Jane Holl Lute, supplied the Security Council with similar information at an earlier briefing yesterday.
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Read the entire New York Sun article...

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan betrayed his apolitical guise yesterday, as was manifest by his preposterous allegation that an Israeli attack on a U.N. post in southern Lebanon was "apparently deliberate." Mr. Annan knows full well that Israel would never, even if it suited its interests, deliberately attack U.N. personnel or other innocents -- not when the entire world is waiting to unleash its righteous indignation against any perceived "disproportionate" Israeli response to ongoing Hezbollah terror.
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The curious part is that if anyone -- aside from Hezbollah -- should be blamed for the deaths of the four U.N. observers, it's the secretary-general himself. The purpose of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, is primarily to support the Lebanese government's re-establishment of authority in the area. Judging by Hezbollah's re-entrenchment of southern Lebanon over the last few years, UNIFIL seems to have utterly failed in that mission. But since the start of the current hostilities, UNIFIL personnel have been acting as humanitarian agents, mostly shuttling Lebanese out of targeted areas. At times, UNIFIL has even coordinated its evacuation efforts with Israel to ensure that the Israeli military is aware of the location of a U.N. convoy.
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Read the entire Washtington Times Op-Ed....