Lebanese Army attacks on IDF today

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/israeli-officers-ambushed-on-northern-borde...

Great analysis by Richrd Landes.

Fisk in today's Independent is pure poison.

http://www.gloria-center.org/blog/2010/08/todays-media-bias-against-isra...

perhaps the most important comment (by richard landes at http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/israeli-officers-ambushed-on-northern-borde...) …

The presence of a large number of photographers as well as this journalist at the outbreak of the incident suggests that it was prepared in advance ….

an interesting ethical question: should newspapers refuse to publish the photographs of these photographers, on the grounds that the photographers and journalists caused the incidents (and the resulting deaths), in much the same way as photographers and cameramen have been accused of encouraging people, by their presence, to shoot or throw stones at troops in, eg, the west bank or northern ireland?

btw, here's an idf map of the incident …

(© the idf, of course, but presumably they want this to be as widely disseminated as possible )

Jonathan, 5.40 is very early to be checking the JC, why don't you go out and enjoy the morning?

Jonathan Hoffman: Fisk in today's Independent is pure poison.

the worst part of fisk's 5/8/2010 article is his complete denial of the validity of the united nations ruling on the "blue line" …

fisk: The real problem is … The "Blue Line" was inadvisedly drawn on the orders of an ambitious UN civil servant who would one day like to be UN Secretary General. In his haste to draw an "accurate" border, for example, he put the entire area of Shebaa farms – which was Lebanese during the post-First World War French mandate – south and east of the line, effectively putting it under Israeli occupation (which had in military terms been the case since the 1967 Middle East war).
But political errors of this kind led to other mistakes and sapped the belief of Lebanese authorities in the UN's maps.

(the word i've omitted is "twofold" … fisk says the second reason is "… the entire regional hostility – Hamas versus Israel, Israel's threats against Syria and Iran and Syria's and Iran's threats against Israel, not to mention the wreckage of George Bush's adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq …")

fisk completely ignores the strong evidence found by the un in its may 2000 enquiry into the border line …

despite the lebanese-syrian claim that the shab'a farms had been transferred from syria to lebanon in 1951, the un posssessed 10 lebanese maps (and 3 syrian maps) issued after 1966 showing clearly that they were still syrian …

(nb it is essential to use the spelling "shab'a" on a google site-search on www.un.org, since that for some reason is the un spelling )

from security council document S/2000/460 …

17. On 15 May 2000, the United Nations received a map, dated 1966, from the Government of Lebanon which reflected the Government’s position that these farmlands were located in Lebanon. However, the United Nations is in possession of 10 other maps issued after 1966 by various Lebanese government institutions, including the Ministry of Defence and the army, all of which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic. The United Nations has also examined six maps issued by the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, including three maps since 1966, which place the farmlands inside the Syrian Arab Republic. … (A total of 81 maps were available to the United Nations from various sources dating from before and after 1966; 25 of these were issued by the Governments of Lebanon and the Syrian Arab Republic.)

(this was at first accepted by lebanon, then rejected 6 months later, in november 2001, see S/2001/66 …)

5. Last May, when the United Nations identified the Blue Line for the purpose of confirming the Israeli withdrawal, the Shab’a farms area was left outside the Blue Line on grounds that are described in detail in the Secretary-General’s report of 22 May 2000 (S/2000/460, paras. 11-19). Subsequently, the Governments of Israel and Lebanon, notwithstanding certain reservations, confirmed that they would respect the line as identified by the United Nations. In resolution 1310 (2000), the Security Council called on the parties to respect that line. Since last November, the Government of Lebanon has asserted that the Blue Line is not valid in the Shab’a farms area and has claimed the right to use every means, including force, against the Israeli forces occupying it

(one might also ask why lebanon never asked for the farms to be returned immediately after the 1967 war ended, indeed until 2000, since lebanon was not involved in the 1967 war, and the return of land mistakenly occupied by israel would presumably have been a formality! )

fisk states as fact that the "blue line" is wrong, when lebanon's and syrian's own post-1966 maps (not "the UN's maps") confirm it.

(and anyway, lebanon is bound by treaty to obey un security council rulings on the "blue line")

(btw, there's a wikipedia map of the shebaa farms at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shebaa_Farms.jpg, showing how naturally its northen side fits into the border, and how unnaturally its southern side would )

fisk ("the real problem is …") rejects the validity of the whole "blue line" (not just alongside the shebaa farms), thus justifying the many lebanese breaches of unsc resolution 1701 in the shebaa farms, and the present murder of an israeli commander on israeli territory