UN says Israeli tanks burst through gates of peacekeeper base

[groundloop]

Source: Reuters

The United Nations said on Sunday Israeli tanks had burst through the gates of a base of its peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, the latest accusation of Israeli violations and attacks that have been denounced by Israel's own allies.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the United Nations to evacuate the troops of the UNIFIL peacekeeping force from combat areas in Lebanon. Hours later, the force reported what it described as additional Israeli violations, including two Israeli Merkava tanks destroying the main gate of a base and forcibly entering before dawn that morning.

Soon after the tanks left, shells exploded 100 metres away, releasing smoke which blew across the base and sickened U.N. personnel, causing 15 to require treatment despite wearing gas masks, it said. It did not say who fired the shells or what sort of toxic substance it suspected.

It also accused Israel's IDF military of halting a logistics convoy. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to the statement.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-orders-evacuation-more-southern-lebanese-towns-amid-rising-displacement-2024-10-12/

[AZLD4Candidate]

1. The same organization that reports the Hamas Gaza Government's casulty reports at 100% fact

without a second's thought that Hamas is a lying terrorist organization with genocidal rhetoric.

[Eko]

22. Historically their numbers have proved accurate.

[NickB79]

24. Lol, no they aren't

Look at Figure 1 of this statistical analysis and tell me that doesn't set off your BS detector immediately.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers

[Eko]

25. Not sure Tablet is a good source of information.

Overall, we rate Tablet Magazine as right-center biased based on an editorial bias that moderately favors the pro-Israel nationalist right. We also rate them Mostly Factual in reporting rather than High due to the promotion of conspiracy theories despite a clean third-party fact check record

.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/tablet-magazine/

Tablet Mag is a news media source with an AllSides Media Bias Rating™ of Lean Right.
Sources with an AllSides Media Bias Rating of Lean Right display media bias in ways that moderately align with conservative, traditional, libertarian, or right-wing thought and/or policy agendas. A Lean Right bias is a moderately conservative rating on the political spectrum.

About Tablet Mag

According to its About page, "Tablet is a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture. Launched in June 2009, it’s a project of the not-for-profit Nextbook Inc., which also produces the Jewish Encounters book series, edited by Jonathan Rosen. Our archive holds all the articles and features that originally appeared on the website Nextbook.org."
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/tablet-mag-media-bias

As for their numbers being correct historically.

Historically, the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures have been found largely accurate. News organizations, human rights groups, and international governments and bodies (including the United Nations) cite them in the moment; and human rights groups that have worked to verify the ministry’s data in previous conflicts have found it generally reliable. Vox reports these figures, as it reports the Israeli government’s stated death tolls.

Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring human rights abuses in Gaza for three decades, told the Guardian the group has “generally found the data that comes out of the ministry of health to be reliable.”

Historically — in conflicts in 2008, 2014, and 2021 — the health ministry’s fatality numbers closely matched death tolls resulting from independent research by United Nations humanitarian agencies.

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/23940215/israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-death-toll-war-fatalities-verified-count-conflict

Prof Spagat has also looked back at previous conflicts, and found that health ministry figures in Gaza have held up under past scrutiny.

In an analysis of health ministry death figures from the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014, in which Gaza was bombed, and a separate record of death figures from that same year collated by Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, Prof Spagat found overall consistency in the reported figures.

The ministry of health said 2,310 Gazans had been killed in 2014, while B'Tselem counted 2,185 deaths. The UN said 2,251 Palestinians were killed, including 1,462 civilians and Israel's foreign ministry said the 2014 war killed 2,125 Palestinians.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67347201

You can use statistics to prove or disprove pretty much anything you want. But you can believe a statistics guy who writes for a right leaning Jewish mag who doesn't know anything about how the casualties are reported or the history behind them. Ill go by history.

[Mosby]

31. Vox has a left wing bias

The BBC is so biased against Israel their own investigation revealed over 1500 times they breached their own guidelines.

HRW and B'Tselem have very well documented history of bias towards Israel. See Here, Here and Here.

B'Tselem has gone so far to call for Israel to be eliminated. Does that sound like a reputable non-profit to you?

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. That was not "their own investigation" - your own source is quite clear about that

You feel human rights groups have bias against Israel. OK, what does that say about your, or Israel's, respect for human rights?

Are you really going to complain that it has a "left wing bias" on DU? Wow. Maybe this says something about your relationship with DU and the Democratic Party.

[Mosby]

34. So you admit the BBC is biased?

And HRW?

If Amnesty, HRW and B'TSELEM represent the state of human rights groups we have a problem, because they all seem to have a strange obsession with Israel, to the detriment of other human rights situations around the world. They have even admitted that they focus on Israel more than other countries, partly becuase they think that "western" countries should be held to different standards than Arab and other countries, but also because Israel is "low hanging fruit", these human rights folks spend their days chilling in Tel Aviv, eating Sabich and falafel completely ignoring kidnappings of girls in the Triangle of Death, just miles away, because fuck, who wants to go there? This is why there are more reporters, NGOs in Israel per capita than ANY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH.

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. Your post title doesn't even deserve an answer. (nt)

[Eko]

37. That was not their own investigation, just read and follow the link.

And see post 36.

[Israeli]

39. ROFLMAO

Showing your true colours now Mosby

these human rights folks spend their days chilling in Tel Aviv, eating Sabich and falafel

[Mosby]

42. It's true.

And you know it.

[Israeli]

38. Nail on head

Not the first time he has slandered B’Tselem on these forums or any Israeli Left wing leaning web sites
or news outlets.

BTW NGO Monitor is Right wing , see :

What is NGO Monitor’s connection to the Israeli government?
By Yossi Gurvitz April 29, 2014

Source : https://www.972mag.com/what-is-ngo-monitors-connection-to-the-israeli-government/

Also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGO_Monitor

[Mosby]

41. Do you think your country should exist?

B’Tselem doesn't.

That's their stated truth, not slander.

[Eko]

36. 3 of those were Israeli media sites and the last one,, well,,,

It definitely has a very pro Israel bias.

Over the last two years, numerous political non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in anti-Israel advocacy and their UN allies have issued publications accusing Israel of “apartheid.” This offensive term is used to advance a narrative of unparalleled Israeli immorality, and to promote demonization through BDS and lawfare, including in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Below is background information relating to the campaign and the NGOs involved, as well as articles and reports by NGO Monitor that debunk the apartheid demonization campaign.

https://ngo-monitor.org/apartheid/
That's not to say that they are right or wrong with that but that a unbiased news org would not do that.

We could go back and forth but I want to add one more. I don't know if you will believe this guy but who knows, maybe you will.

The U.S. government has cited the same figures that Hamas-controlled entities have provided to the U.N. During his March 7 State of the Union speech, President Biden said that “more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed — most of whom are not Hamas.” Biden did not provide a source for that number, but the White House later confirmed that it was based on the Gaza Ministry of Health numbers.

The U.S. government again relied on the same tally in early May in a public State Department memo about whether U.S. weapons are being used to violate international laws of war. “The Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health is the primary source for these numbers, which international organizations generally deem credible, but do not differentiate between Hamas fighters and civilians,” read the report.

https://time.com/6979208/israel-gaza-death-toll/

Ya know what, I just want to end this. So I'll add this. In the 2014 Gaza conflict Israel states,

As discussed below, the IDF’s preliminary analysis has determined that 2,125 Palestinians were killed during the 2014 Gaza
Conflict.

Page 3 https://www.gov.il/BlobFolder/generalpage/operation-protective-edge-full-report/en/English_Terrorism_DOCS_PalestinianFatalities.pdf
Taken Straight off the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs from this page
https://www.gov.il/en/pages/operation-protective-edge-full-report
Its the last PDF on the right bottom.
What does the anti-Israel UNRWA say about that?

2,251 Palestinians were killed;

https://www.unrwa.org/2014-gaza-conflict

So we have President Biden, The US Government and even Israel itself saying that the numbers are reliable. Now and historically.

[mountain grammy]

2. I guess Israel has the "right to defend herself" from the United Nations by gassing peacekeepers..

[AZSkiffyGeek]

3. Those peacekeepers are doing a bang up job

Keeping Hezbollah from launching rockets at Israel.

[mountain grammy]

4. Oh ok. Then I guess it's ok to gas them

Right?

[Igel]

6. Jury's out as to the origin of the rockets w/ gas.

Maybe somebody thought the IDF was still hanging around or had "collaborators" or "traitors" among the UNIFILians.

Note that UNIFIL said they barged in and insisted that they turn out (off?) the lights. Strikes me as unlikely that this was the first request and no reason was given for the lights-out "request".

[MarineCombatEngineer]

14. You seem to be accusing Israel of the gassing,

so I guess you have evidence of that?
If so, please post it so we can see it.

[Beastly Boy]

9. "It did not say who fired the shells or what sort of toxic substance it suspected."

But why not go ahead with the kneejerk assumption of Israel's guilt by default, as usual?

[moniss]

5. The rules of engagement

for the peacekeepers need to be upgraded. Perhaps the perimeter areas need to be mined etc. But at least it should now be clear that the continuation of Israel as a member nation of the UN needs to be discussed. Of course the US will block any meaningful action but the discussion by the General Assembly would at least put them on the record and put the absurdity of having a member attack the organization itself. No member who militarily attacks the organization repeatedly should remain a member. The IDF does these things because they know there will be no resistance. The escalation of the US sending 100 American troops to be stationed in Israel manning an advanced missile defense system is not a recipe to convince the surrounding countries that we are sincere in wanting deescalation and peace. I would expect that at any time now some of those countries will "reassess" their more recent positions toward the West and we may well find that it will be to our detriment.

The question has been posed before whether the West was actually playing into a "good cop/bad cop" scenario perhaps unknowingly or perhaps not while the "bad cop Netanyahu" escalates and inflicts wildly disproportionate damage while the "good cop" West does it's best impression of Susan Collins and expresses "deep concern" while the conflagration erupts wider and wider and the ones expressing the "deep concern" and claiming to want to prevent a wider conflict keep pouring in weapons at a breakneck pace and seemingly limitless quantity.

[Mosby]

28. Should Lebanon be kicked out of the UN?

They attacked Israel without any cause. Almost 10,000 rockets now.

Isn't the role of UN "peacekeepers" to keep the peace?

[moniss]

29. Hezbollah sent the rockets not

the government of Lebanon or the Lebanese State Military. As far as the role of UNIFIL it is a misconception by many people that they are supposed to shoot people and grab weapons from people and parties violating Resolution 1701. If that were the case there would be dead Israelis, downed drones, downed aircraft as well as dead members of radical groups in Lebanon.

The men and women of UNIFIL were never given the mandate to do those things and by design and agreement of the parties, including Israel, they are a "buffer and observer force" primarily for operations in Southern Lebanon and the Blue Line specifically along with assisting the Lebanese government in attempting to stabilize their military in order to increase the Lebanese ability to provide for increased safety and security in their own country. They also provide the training for personnel for landmine clearing as well as other training assistance for the maritime operations of the Lebanese State Forces regarding vessel inspection etc. UNIFIL also provides assistance for various civilian infrastructure projects. As I have noted elsewhere they investigate and report violations of Resolution 1701 to the respective parties for correction and also issue regular reports to the Secretary General.

It was a demand of all parties when negotiating the agreement that violations of Resolution 1701 be reported to the respective violators themselves for correction. The fact that every report details a multitude of occurrences by the two main parties would indicate that lack of self correction is not a defect of just one party or the other.

[Mosby]

30. Hezbollah is part of the government of Lebanon

They have been for a long time, multiple decades.

Your understanding of 1701 is incorrect, to wit:

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 mandates that UNIFIL's main responsibility is to confirm the disarming of Hezbollah and to prevent further hostilities in southern Lebanon. However, despite this mandate, Hezbollah has significantly expanded its military presence over the years.

Here's some of the relevant text from 1701 and meeting notes.

Section 11 spells out the role of UNIFIL:

Decides, in order to supplement and enhance the force in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operations, to authorize an increase in the force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of 15,000 troops, and that the force shall, in addition to carrying out its mandate under resolutions 425 and 426 (1978):


(a) Monitor the cessation of hostilities;


(b) Accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the South, including along the Blue Line, as Israel withdraws its armed forces from Lebanon as provided in paragraph 2;


(c) Coordinate its activities related to paragraph 11 (b) with the Government of Lebanon and the Government of Israel;


(d) Extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons;


(e) Assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area as referred to in paragraph 8;


(f) Assist the Government of Lebanon, at its request, to implement paragraph 14;

Obviously "accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces" is a lot more than observing, they were there to actively support the Goverment army, which is why the resolution calls for increasing troop size and armament.

Here's UN SecGen Kofi Annan:

Now, UNIFIL faces a new task, perhaps even more difficult and dangerous than its previous one. It must be robust and effective, and ensure that no vacuum is left between the Israeli withdrawal and the deployment of Lebanese forces”, he said. Obviously, if it was to carry out its new mandate, it needed to be augmented with the utmost urgency, and provided with sophisticated military capabilities.


“The Council cannot afford to relax for one minute”, he said, urging its members to consult closely, and at once, with both existing and potential troop contributors, with a view to generating the additional forces needed as quickly as possible, “before the situation on the ground once again spins out of control”. He urged the Council to make sure the forces had the equipment they needed. He also appealed to all potential donors to respond swiftly to requests from the Lebanese Government for financial help, as it struggled to reconstruct its devastated country.

Why would Kofi Annan say that UNIFIL needs "sophisticated military capabilities" moniss? You don't need that to "observe".

UNSCR 1701

Eta UNSCR 245 (1978)

Decides, in the light of the request of the Government of Lebanon, to establish immediately under its authority a United Nations interim force for Southern Lebanon for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and security and assisting the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area, the Force to be composed of personnel drawn from Member States;

Pretty sure they weren't expected to "restore international peace and security" with words, lol.

[moniss]

33. Your seeming indication of some "shooting role"

to take away weapons from Hezbollah is nonsense and is contrary to what was negotiated by the parties purposely. Also you only indicate their role about violations relative to Hezbollah when in fact it encompasses all parties. Hezbollah is not the Lebanese government despite them having an influence and members of the parliament who are in line with their thinking. By your reasoning Kach and subsequently Otzma Yehudit as parties in government, although slight, and their reprehensible views (nobody believes Ben-Gvir changed his spots from his days of worshiping Kahane) are the state of Israel. The government of Lebanon has been struggling to strengthen and stand up a judiciary etc. and perhaps rather than point fingers Israel might, but of course won't, think about it's own role in creating the situation in Lebanon.

You selectively pick out parts of things and disregard others. The sophisticated capabilities are not massive weapons systems but rather intelligence and monitoring but it should be noted that despite what was discussed most of it never was approved. The point remains that the parties to 1701 by design and negotiation and the full desire and knowledge of all parties severely restricted what UNIFIL is to do when they become aware of violations. The parties pledged to "self correct" which any reasonably aware observer knew was simply nonsense and that the parties would simply continue to snipe and violate and deny. Which all of the parties have done. As I said the typical periodic reports through the years describe hundreds and hundreds of violations by Israeli personnel, jets and drones. Your advocacy for UNIFIL seems to stop short in wanting aggressive action against those violations. Indeed it is not difficult to find in the reports Israel taking purposeful steps to impede the patrol capabilities of UNIFIL along the Blue Line for example. Perhaps Israel should be asked about it's own years long history of willful violations of 1701.

The fact remains that UNIFIL is not authorized to go in and start shooting up the place. No matter how much you desire it or wish to selectively quote general statements of goals. It should be noted that in the periodic reports from UNIFIL and the Secretary General they do without hesitation list items that they are not able to make headway on or goals frustrated by actions of some and sometimes all parties. I can assure you that I find no such brevity forthcoming from the Israeli government about it's failures to make headway on preventing or addressing their constant violations of 1701 year after year. The encroachment north of the Blue Line with construction activities and refusal to cease the violation and withdraw back to the Israeli side of the Blue Line is but one example. If the Israeli government were truly so concerned about UNIFIL being able to operate then perhaps they shouldn't have purposely taken all of the rubble, boulders etc. and dumped them on the UNIFIL patrol road in the area they illegally encroached which prevented UNIFIL from passage.

[manicdem]

7. Role of Peacekeepers?

They seem really useless. Isn't the main goals of the peacekeepers to disarm Hezbollah, prevent Hezbollah from attacking Israel, and restoring the Lebanon government from Hezbollah? For the past 20 years?

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. From Oct 8th to late September, Israel killed about 10 times as many in Lebanon as Hezbollah killed in Israel

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=19501764

After that, Israel has killed about 100 times as many (another 17 in Israel, about 1700 more in Lebanon)

The purpose is also to stop Israelis killed Lebanese. You might say that hasn't worked that well, but the Israelis smashing the UN base is hardly improving things, is it?

[Beastly Boy]

10. Not for the lack of trying on Hezbollah's part...

Are you suggesting it is Israel's fault that Hezbollah doesn't give a shit about Lebanese lives and Israel makes it a top priority to save Israeli lives?

What an outrage!

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. I'm stating that Israel kills a fuck-ton of Lebanese

and I'm suggesting that having an idea that the UN is there solely to protect Israelis is woefully uninformed.

[Beastly Boy]

13. The UN did jack shit to protect the Lebanese, if you haven't noticed.

And that's a problem for the UN, isn't it? They were supposed to make sure Hezbollah remains demilitarized and out of South Lebanon. They were supposed to facilitate the functioning of the Lebanese government free of Hezbollah interference.

How many fuckloads of Lebanese were killed on their watch between 1978 and a month ago? And then, suddenly, Lebanese lives became important. WTF changed? Don't tell me: genocide, right? Zionist colonialism, right? This is so transparent, it's not even funny.

They protected no one, and now they demand protection instead.

They are as useful as an umbrella to a diver, and not only are they useless, they refuse to move out of the way for those who come to do their job for them.

[manicdem]

19. Yea, I mean what does the UN actually do there?

Like in the past year, how many rockets did they destroy or arrests made on Hezbollah? Do they do raids on Hezbollah?

I get the feeling the UN just stands there and eats up a billion dollars a year.

[manicdem]

17. How many were Hezbollah or militants?

Sounds like a successful mission with those numbers. I'm guessing theres civilians included in those numbers but civilian deaths are the fault of Hezbollah by continued aggression and having their military posts next to civilians.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

18. Or even under civilian buildings, like HAMAs did.

Hizbollah doesn't give a shit about civilian deaths, they've learned from HAMAs that the more civilian casualties, the better to turn world opinion against Israel.

[onandup]

12. How about restoring the Israeli government from Likud?

And prevent Israel from attacking Lebanon, Gaza, Iran...

Anyway, the actual mission is "confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restore peace and security in the border region and assist the Lebanese government in reestablishing control in the southern part of the country."

[MarineCombatEngineer]

15. The only ones who can remove the Likud from the Govt. are the Israeli voters,

I sure hope you're not suggesting something else.
Are you?

[onandup]

20. It's been suggested Hezbollah be removed by force

How is that any different than suggesting the Likud party be removed by force? Israel has no moral high ground and right now is the most dangerous country in the world.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

21. LOL.

Israel has no moral high ground and right now is the most dangerous country in the world.

You just can't help yourself can you.
Israel is not the most dangerous country in the world, Russia is, but you knew that.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

16. ....

And prevent Israel from attacking Lebanon, Gaza, Iran.

Oh really?
Who attacked who first?
Transparency is great, thank you.

[NickB79]

23. Literally no Israeli government would ignore 8000+ rocket attacks in a year

Any replacement for the current government you could find would be mounting a ground invasion at this point, after so many attacks.

And "reestablishing control"? Control from whom, exactly, if Israel withdrew? Who could possibly be fighting with the Lebanese army for military control over southern Lebanon? Come on, I know you can get this one.

[brush]

26. The out-of-control bully/warmonger continues his rampage.

[sinkingfeeling]

27. Time to shut down all military aid to Israel.

[C0RI0LANUS]

40. Official UNIFIL Statement on Merkava Tank Incident

https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/10/1155661

Per the UN, 50 nations contribute Soldiers to UNIFIL, including Ireland, France, Turkiye, China, Italy, Armenia, and Finland.


Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon (Undated photo: UN). When an Irish UNIFIL soldier was KIA by a mob in 2023 after his vehicle was separated from its convoy, Lebanese Hezbollah found the alleged shooter and turned him over to the Lebanese military for tribunal.

Source:

https://www.arabnews.com/node/2409471/middle-east