What did you do in the war, UNIFIL? (You broadcast Israeli troop movements)

DURING THE RECENT month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel, U.N. "peacekeeping" forces made a startling contribution: They openly published daily real-time intelligence, of obvious usefulness to Hezbollah, on the location, equipment, and force structure of Israeli troops in Lebanon.

UNIFIL--the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, a nearly 2,000-man blue-helmet contingent that has been present on the Lebanon-Israel border since 1978--is officially neutral. Yet, throughout the recent war, it posted on its website for all to see precise information about the movements of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers and the nature of their weaponry and materiel, even specifying the placement of IDF safety structures within hours of their construction. New information was sometimes only 30 minutes old when it was posted, and never more than 24 hours old.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL posted not a single item of specific intelligence regarding Hezbollah forces. Statements on the order of Hezbollah "fired rockets in large numbers from various locations" and Hezbollah's rockets "were fired in significantly larger numbers from various locations" are as precise as its coverage of the other side ever got.

This war was fought on cable television and the Internet, and a lot of official information was available in real time. But the specific military intelligence UNIFIL posted could not be had from any non-U.N. source. The Israeli press--always eager to push the envelope--did not publish the details of troop movements and logistics. Neither the European press nor the rest of the world media, though hardly bastions of concern for the safety of Israeli troops, provided the IDF intelligence details that UNIFIL did. A search of Israeli government websites failed to turn up the details published to the world each day by the U.N.

Inquiries made of various Israeli military and government representatives and analysts yielded near unanimous agreement that at least some of UNIFIL's postings, in the words of one retired senior military analyst, "could have exposed Israeli soldiers to grave danger." These analysts, including a current high ranking military official, noted that the same intelligence would not have been provided by the U.N. about Israel's enemies.

Sure enough, a review of every single UNIFIL web posting during the war shows that, while UNIFIL was daily revealing the towns where Israeli soldiers were located, the positions from which they were firing, and when and how they had entered Lebanese territory, it never described Hezbollah movements or locations with any specificity whatsoever.

Compare the vague "various locations" language with this UNIFIL posting from July 25:

Or with the posting on July 24, in which UNIFIL revealed that the IDF stationed between Marun Al Ras and Bint Jubayl were "significantly reinforced during the night and this morning with a number of tanks and armored personnel carriers."

This partiality is inconsistent not only with UNIFIL's mission but also with its own stated policies. In a telling incident just a few years back, UNIFIL vigorously insisted on its "neutral ity"--at Israel's expense.

On October 7, 2000, three IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah just yards from a UNIFIL shelter and dragged across the border into Lebanon, where they disappeared. The U.N. was thought to have videotaped the incident or its immediate aftermath. Rather than help Israel rescue its kidnapped soldiers by providing this evidence, however, the U.N. obstructed the Israeli investigation.

For months the Israeli government pleaded with the U.N. to turn over any videotape that might shed light on the location and condition of its missing men. And for nine months the U.N. stonewalled, insisting first that no such tape existed, then that just one tape existed, and eventually conceding that there were two more tapes. During those nine months, clips from the videotapes were shown on Syrian and Lebanese television.

Explaining their eventual about-face, U.N. officials said the decision had been made by the on-site commanders that it was not their responsibility to provide the material to Israel; indeed, that to do so would violate the peacekeeping mandate, which required "full impartiality and objectivity." The U.N. report on the incident was adamant that its force had "to ensure that military and other sensitive information remains in their domain and is not passed to parties to a conflict."

Stymied in its efforts to recover the men while they were still alive, Israel ultimately agreed to an exchange in January 2004: It released 429 Arab prisoners and detainees, among them convicted terrorists, and the bodies of 60 Lebanese decedents and members of Hezbollah, in exchange for the bodies of the three soldiers. Blame for the deaths of those three Israelis can be laid, at least in part, at the feet of the U.N., which went to the wall defending its inviolable pledge never to share military intelligence about one party with another.

UNIFIL has just done what it then vowed it could never do. Once again, it has acted to shield one side in the conflict and to harm the other. Why is this permitted? For that matter, how did the U.N. obtain such detailed and timely military intelligence in the first place, before broadcasting it for Israel's enemies to see?

Lori Lowenthal Marcus is president of the Zionist Organization of America, Greater Philadelphia District.

Before y'all get your panties in too much of a wad, you might remember a little bit of history.

When Rommel was cutting through the British in North Africa like a hot knife through butter, Roosevelt sent one of his best Generals to be his "eyes and ears" at North Africa Command Headquarters. No matter how many times the top British General was replaced, Rommel kept cutting up the British forces, pushing them closer and closer to Egypt.

Churchill was so exasperated that he sent a commando team to kill Rommel at his desert HQ. The night they picked for the raid ... Rommel was not there. The commandos, frustrated, collected up all the papers in his office and returned to their lines, turning their booty over to Intelligence.

To their horror, the Intelligence officers found two things:
1) the precise location of every British tank and HQ -- obtained by the German triangulation of all of the radio chatter by the British troops; and
2) a detailed assessment of British plans, ammunition reserves and their locations, deployment of forces, casualties and replacement plans, all contained in a detailed report written by the American General after attending the weekly Force Assessment by the British Commander. The report had been encoded and sent to Roosevelt, but the Germans had cracked the American Diplomatic Code, decoded it, and sent it to Rommel. So it turned out that Rommel was a military genius in part because he had both detailed macro and micro intelligence about the British forces.

General Montgomery arrived to take over the British Forces from General Wavel shortly after the raid. When he took command, he issued three orders:
1) The American General was sent home (without telling him that the Germans had broken the American code)
2) he threatened to personally shoot the next soldier who uttered an unessential word over the radio; and
3) he deployed his forces so that Rommel would have to attack without knowing exactly where they were deployed, and threatened to personally shoot any tank commander who broke formation without his person authorization.

The German forces, suddenly without either high or low level intelligence, broke on the British line, and started their long retreat towards Tunesia.

Moral of the Story: In retrospect, the American General reliance on the diplomatic code to encode critical wartime intelligence was STUPID, but not malicious; but just as deadly to the troops.

UNIFIL was probably told to act as a objective observer and to publish troop dispositions on both sides of the line before the war started. They could see the Israeli dispositions, but could NOT see any Hezbullah dispositions. When the war started, they did not recieve any orders to leave, so they stayed in place, and continued to post this information in the clear -- subjected to the least amount of analysis, anyone would conclude that this was STUPID, but probably not malicious, but just as deadly to the troops.

On the other hand, we all know that ... you can't fix STUPID.

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