A few questions for Kofi Annan

In Lebanon: Hezbollah is to blame. We’ll also save a little blame for Syria, Iran and the United Nations.

Using the most despicable trick known to man: hiding behind innocent civilians including women and children, the terrorists Hezbollah nation (you heard me right: “nation”) has found a way to antagonise Israel to such a point that the Israeli’s feel compelled to respond. And when they do respond with F-16s armed with precision guided weapons, innocents get killed.

So then Hezbollah drags newsmen and women to the scene and screams, “Look what the bloodthirsty Jews are doing to us!”

And the news people even get a big time ally: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, to agree. Without the benefit of any investigation, the leader of the world’s largest peace-loving international organisation, accused a sovereign member state of murdering peacekeepers intentionally. I find that deplorable.

Hezbollah brilliantly antagonised Israel to such a point that the Israeli’s sent their defence forces into Lebanon in an effort to get the Hezbollah to stop shooting rockets into Israel: rockets that have no guidance systems and kill indiscriminately.

So Israel, using many precision, laser guided bombs, and other high tech equipment supplied by the United States, has gone into Lebanon. And much of the world blames, who else? The United States.

Well, I don’t mind saying I blame the Hezbollah, their backers in Syria and Iran, and the United Nations.

Blaming Hezbollah seems pretty straightforward. Hezbollah’s leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah is on the record:

“This state [Israel] was established on the basis of occupation … I say that this is a state based on occupation, that has usurped the rights of others … I don’t believe in the State of Israel as a legal state because it was founded on occupation.”

We have several complaints about this. First, by denying the legitimacy of a UN recognised state, Hezbollah allows itself to treat the citizens of that state with distain. Hezbollah has been murdering innocent Jews for years. Second, why doesn’t Kofi Annan set the record straight on the legitimacy of Israel, which was created by UN mandate? Kofi?

Why do we blame Syria and Iran? Because they admit guilt. In fact, they are proud of their bloodthirsty ways and want to eliminate the State of Israel, a State they do not recognise as “legitimate”.

"Iran is standing by the Syrian people," Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi proudly told reporters.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Israel was not tough enough to counter Iran and also warned against an attack against Syria.

"Thanks be to God, despite its criminal and savage nature, the Zionist regime and its supporters in the West do not have the power to look in the same way towards Iran," the fiercely anti-Israeli president wailed.

"If Israel commits another act of idiocy and aggresses Syria, this will be the same as an aggression against the entire Islamic world and it will receive a stinging response," Ahmadinejad said in a telephone conversation with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.

Ahmadinejad famously described Israel as a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the face of the earth" also says the holocaust is a “myth”. Ahmadinejad told students in Tehran that a new wave of Palestinian attacks would be enough to finish off Israel. This in October 2005. Did we listen? Kofi?

This is the same Ahmadinejad proudly defying the UN and building a nuclear bomb. You have anything to add on this? Kofi?

And why do we blame the UN? Because the UN has been watching Hezbollah take over southern Lebanon, fortify itself, and attack Israel repeatedly for years. Officially called the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, commonly called Unifil, these “peacekeepers” have been between Lebanon and Israel for 28 years at a cost of about US$100 million a year.

We deeply mourn the loss of UN soldiers in the current fighting. But, we ask, what were they doing there? They are “observers”, “noncombatants”, and “peacekeepers”. Why didn’t Kofi Annan have them removed to safety when the fighting erupted? Kofi?

And what have they been doing for 28 years? Kofi?

The blue-helmeted UN Unifil soldiers include a moderately trained and semi-disciplined Irish brigade. These Irish UN troops were routinely referred to as the "whisky army" by both Islam and Jewish observers who came into contact with them. The Israeli-backed Christian militiamen - known by the Unifil acronym LAUIs (Lebanese Armed and Uniformed by Israel) countered any effort by the Irish troops to stray far from their base at Camp Shamrock.

And I hate to throw red meat to red necks but who is commanding Unifil just now? The French.

Finally, why do we refer to Hezbollah as a “nation”? Because they have all the trappings of a nation.

Hezbollah controls its own media, including a TV station al-Manar (“The Beacon”), runs hotels and restaurants, and operates a thriving economy in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah provides social services that the government of Lebanon cannot afford to supply. It controls about 25 per cent of the Lebanese land mass and almost half a million people. It runs its own schools, elderly centers, clinics, hospitals and libraries.

Hezbollah’s headquarters is called “The Embassy” by locals in the part of Beirut called Dahiya, a crowded Shiite neighborhood where the Hezbollah has its seat of government.

Hezbollah has seats in Lebanon's governing councils too. But more importantly, Hezbollah owns southern Lebanon and is the law in that region near Israel.

But what makes Hezbollah very different, in fact unique in the history of stateless terror groups to date, is its access to very sophisticated missiles and other weapons. When did any group but a nation have Chinese-made C-802 “Silkworm” missiles capable of hitting an Israeli warship before? Kofi?

How else is Hezbollah more like a "state" than a terror group? According to Israel's Dr Boaz Ganor, the deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy and the founder of the Institute for Counter Terrorism in Israel said, "The Hizbullah has succeeded in creating a situation in which it deters Israel more than Israel deters it. It is unprecedented for a terrorist organisation to deter a state and not vice versa."

For the last 50 years deterrence meant nuclear weapons. Is that next for Hezbollah? Kofi?

We do not know, and may never know, if Hezbollah possesses or has access to weapons of mass destruction or really long-range ballistic missiles. But certainly Israeli military planners fear and are at least somewhat deterred by Hezbollah because of what they have done in the past and what they may yet do in the future.