Goldstone's Lament Compels Us to Acknowledge the Causes of the Next War

Shoshana Bryen
Senior Director for Security Policy
JINSA
Report #: 1,078
April 4, 2011

http://www.jinsa.org/node/2263

Richard Goldstone wants us to believe that if only Israel had cooperated with the cabal investigating Operation Cast Lead, the result would have been different. What then has he to say about the new IDF report that Hezbollah has been digging under hundreds of villages in southern Lebanon, hiding weapons and preparing to attack Israel in direct violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which controls the ceasefire that ended the fighting in 2006?

If the problem in Gaza was that Goldstone and company didn't understood the nature of Hamas's one-sided war against Israeli civilians, its burrowing into the civilian infrastructure and its use of human shields - all war crimes in and of themselves - and didn't understand the requirement that the Government of Israel take action to put the rocket launchers (human and inanimate) out of business, no one can say now that they didn't know.

And how much better to know before the war comes. Look.

Participants in JINSA's Flag & General Officers Trip to Israel have, for years, met with the UNIFIL officers who patrol southern Lebanon ostensibly looking for weapons under the terms of UNSCR 1701. They are not permitted to patrol or control the borders with Syria, and their entry into Lebanese villages is announced in advance, accompanied by the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and occasionally stopped by Hezbollah.

The UNIFIL colonel and his UNIFIL civilian partner blandly told the May 2010 group that they weren't finding many weapons any more. "We go along the roads. Sometimes, we find old caches from before 2006, but we aren't finding anything more recent," said the UNIFIL civilian. She was asked whether she could say with confidence then that southern Lebanon had become weapons-free as required by 1701. She declined to say anything.

The IDF representative showed the group UAV camera footage of trucks entering Lebanese villages and men unloading large crates into civilian buildings, saying Hezbollah operatives were putting weapons inside villages around the south. Occasionally, the representative said, buildings into which the crates were unloaded exploded from within.

Asked if he agreed with the assessment that Hezbollah was stashing weapons in villages, the UNIFIL colonel said, "No, not always. And the Israeli UAV flights are a violation of 1701. And the villages have to be able to defend themselves if the IDF attacks; defense is legitimate."

One of the really shocking political developments of the past week has been the Assad-centric American and Israeli responses to the beginning of upheaval in Syria. Secretary of State Clinton, citing her experiences and those of Sen. Kerry and Rep. Pelosi, said there remained a belief in Washington that Bashar Assad was a "reformer" and there was still hope of "wooing" him from Iran. Senior voices in Israel noted that Assad was, in fact, a dictator, but because he kept the Golan border with Israel quiet, he might be better for Israel than whatever follows him.

UNIFIL is hopeless, but the United States and Israel must pay serious attention to Lebanon, the place from which Syria and Iran bait Israel and from which an attack is much more likely than over the Golan Heights. Assad is a partner of Iran by choice. Hezbollah runs the government in Beirut; its private army is equipped and trained by Iran, and the LAF is not its enemy; weapons, money and trainers flow into Lebanon from Syria; UNIFIL is a dupe of the same "international community" that missed Hamas's depredations against Israeli civilians.

If the next war comes, it won't be possible to say, "If I'd known then what I know now." We know now.

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