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How the UN Supports Israel's Enemies in Gaza and Lebanon
(Tablet) Tony Badran - The Israeli Knesset has taken a first step toward banning UNRWA from the country, following a series of revelations over the past year of its intimate, decade-long partnership with Hamas. The agency was shown, among other things, to have paid salaries to leading perpetrators of the Oct. 7 atrocities and allowed the terror organization to locate its combat headquarters and data centers under its schools. The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) plays a similar role by allowing Hizbullah strike force members to use its bases as physical cover for the terrorist organization's tunnel networks and for the underground staging areas from which it intended to launch a bloody invasion of Israel's Galilee. IDF units operating in Lebanon have uncovered the openings of elaborate, large-scale Hizbullah tunnel networks a few yards away from UNIFIL positions. It was clearly impossible for UNIFIL commanders not to have been fully aware of the construction of those positions and their use by large squads of armed Hizbullah militants who moved in and out. This makes a mockery of UNIFIL's supposed role in demilitarizing southern Lebanon. Recently captured Hizbullah fighters have reported that the group had bribed UNIFIL personnel to use their positions. Moreover, Hizbullah took control of UNIFIL cameras near the border to collect intelligence on Israeli troop movements. In 2018, a story in the French press quoted a high-ranking Irish UNIFIL officer who relayed how some contingents regularly pass on intelligence to Hizbullah.