Unifil warns any attack on peacekeepers violates international law after two fall from observation tower under fire
Two UN peacekeepers in Lebanon have been wounded by Israeli fire, the mission said on Thursday, as Israel's military ground operations in the country continued.
In a statement, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said two of its members were wounded after a Merkava tank fired towards an observation tower at Unifil headquarters in Naqoura, "directly hitting it and causing them to fall".
"[Israeli] soldiers also fired on UN position (UNP) 1-31 in Labbouneh, hitting the entrance to the bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, and damaging vehicles and a communications system," said the peacekeeping mission.
"An IDF drone was observed flying inside the UN position up to the bunker entrance."
Israeli attacks in Lebanon over the past month, including a bombing campaign and ground invasion, have killed over 1,200 people and displaced one million.
Maybe they're using the tried-and-tested strategy of targeting UN forces to make them leave. It happened in Rwanda too, they killed those Belgian peacekeepers and then Belgium and France pulled out. Shortly after that, the Rwandan start their genocide. At least the Israelis seem to have just wounded the peacekeepers, unlike the Rwandan, who hacked the Belgian with machetes. Nevertheless, it doesn't look very promising.
They did it during the 6 day war too. Rolled up on some UN peacekeepers trying to leave the sinai and slaughtered them. 15 killed 17 wounded. 14 Indians and 1 Brazilian. TheUN peacekeepers were evacuating at the time and Israel didnt even pretend to not know they were UN. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Emergency_Force
No real repercussions from it.
They also attacked the USS Liberty, and American Navy ship in international waters, killing 34 and wounding 171. Israel pretended not to know it was American, but its not a beleivable denial. As always, there were No real repercussions from it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
Its clearly standard operating procedure to murder some UN peacekeepers. Its not like they are hard to pick out in their bright white painted vehicles and structures, and blue uniforms. Its just plain old murder.
Because as usual religion can be used to argue for as well as against a political question. The only self coherent framework that has as its logical conclusion Israeli policy is nationalism.
Edit: plus, a nationalist explanatory framework is least susceptible to the moral hazard of anti-Semitism. Israeli policy is not exceptional, it's as banal as Serbian or Azerbaijani ethnic nationalism, revanchism, jingoism and bigotry.
Zionism is a Settler Colonialist Project. Israel has never represented all Jewish people and never will, nor are it's actions done to benefit all Jewish people. The conflation is itself antisemitic. Adi Callai, an Israeli, does a great analysis of how Antisemitism has been weaponized (see 29:01) by Zionism during its history.
Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian, discusses it more in his book
Dude, stop. Conflating the two is responsible for genuine Antisemitism. Antisemites love the conflation because they can then attribute all the war crimes and political influence of Israel to all Jewish people, in order to justify their own antisemitic conspiracy theories. It is genuinely responsible for a rise in hate crimes abroad. Zionism is a form of Fascism that weaponizes antisemitism as a shield for it's actions.
But warring factions almost always use the religion of the people as a strong lever and excuse in order to maintain the support of those people for the war effort.
This is no different. There have been strong and influential factions (on both sides of the conflict) who have claimed that the piece of dirt they're fighting over is holy land to both of the religions represented.