NY Times Blames Israel For Lebanon Being A Failed State

Lebanon has been a failed state for years.

It has allowed the Iranian-backed terror group Hezbollah to run a massive distinct army for decades and to sit in its parliament. It’s currency has been in freefall since the COVID pandemic and Hezbollah’s weaponry in the Beirut port exploded in 2020.

It then let Hezbollah launch a war against Israel, together with Hamas on October 7, 2023, further putting strain on its economy, even before Israel retaliated.

Currency exchange of Lebanon lira to US dollar, with spikes in February 2023 and February 2024

Yet The New York Times opted to paint the sorry state of Lebanon as a direct cause of Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah.

On December 30, 2024, the Times ran an article with a headline “Lebanon’s Economy Reels From War: ‘We Are Starting From Zero'” with a sub-title that pinned the matter on “the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.”

NY Times article on December 30, 3024

Israel is surrounded by failed states with Iranian-backed militant jihadi groups waging war on the Jewish State. Even as Israel tries to live in peace and defend itself from genocidal neighbors, the New York Times falsely describes Israel as causing hardship to those around it.

NY Times Lies About Iran Wanting “Less Confrontation”

The New York Times, mouthpiece for progressive dreams rather than facts, once again made up news that the Islamic Republic of Iran is taking a “conciliatory tone” in the Middle East and “that it wants less confrontation,” even after the Islamic Republic’s leaders blast Israel.

Lengthy NY Times articles replete with lies from “anonymous sources” about Iran being more peaceful on November 28, 2024

Throughout the article, the Times claimed that Iran had a “shift in tone” and sought to “defuse tensions” in “recent diplomacy.” It concluded that “Without a doubt, among senior officials and ordinary people, there is a real desire to end the tensions with the West and get along…. Cooperation with the West is not viewed as a defeat.”

These comments stand in sharp contrast to those published by Hezbollah’s Al Manar which led its article with “Resistance Unbreakable: Imam Khamenei Declares Israel’s Doom, Al Aqsa Storm Unstoppable.”

The article quoted from the “Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei” who said that “regional resistance movements cannot be quelled” and that the “Zionist regime is destined for departure.” The article said that “Hezbolah hailed the operation’s [war against Israel] success” as did Hamas.

Al Manar concluded with a quote from the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei who said that “the result of the warmongering and crimes committed by the Zionist regime, fully supported by the United States… is the martyrdom of 60,000 innocent people,” inflaming the jihadi readers to seek retribution against the West.

The editors of the Times do not want the United States or Israel to go to war remove the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, so openly lie to its readership that Iran is a peaceful actor in the region and not the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is publishing boldface and dangerous lies.

It begs the questions of whether The New York Times is a tool of Iran.

Related articles:

Every Picture Tells A Story: There Are No Genocidal Leaders In Iran, Just Fancy Women (November 2024)

US Bans Iranian Media But Israel Shouldn’t In The Middle Of A War? (May 2024)

Genocidal Jihadists Come For ‘Soft Targets’

After Israel’s assassination of much of the political-terrorist group Hezbollah’s leadership, people worry whether the region will be engulfed in a wider war. Hamas has been neutered and Hezbollah is rudderless, making their sponsors in Iran furious. The fear is that the Islamic republic’s ire may get them to aggressively attack Israel and thereby bring the United States into the war.

It is just as likely that the leaderless Hezbollah terrorist group and its anti-Israel supporters around the world will begin to hit ‘soft targets’ globally, much as the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group has done in the past.

The Henry Jackson Society published a Timeline of Terror in 2012 listing the various attacks committed by Hezbollah. The associate editor at that time was the now famous Douglas Murray. The attacks outside of the region included:

  • 1984 bombing of a restaurant with U.S. servicemen in Spain, killing 18
  • 1984 hijacking of a Kuwait airline, killing 4
  • 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight from Greece, killing 1
  • 1990 killing of Saudi businessman
  • 1992 attack on Israeli embassy in Turkey, killing 1
  • 1992 bombing Israeli embassy in Argentina, killing 29
  • 1993 failed attack on Jewish community in Turkey
  • 1994 bombing of Jewish community center in Argentina, killing 85
  • 1996 bombing US air force residential tower in Saudi Arabia, killing 19
  • 2012 failed bombing of tourist site in Thailand frequented by Israelis
  • 2012 attack on Israeli ambassador in Azerbaijan
  • 2012 attempted killings of Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia
  • 2012 suicide bomb of tourist bus with Israelis in Bulgaria, killing 7
  • 2014 failed attack on Israeli tourists in Thailand
  • 2015 failed attempt to stockpile bombs in the United Kingdom
  • 2015 failed attempt to stockpile weapons in Cyprus
  • 2023 failed attempt to attack the Jewish community in Brazil

At this moment, as the Iranian proxies get decimated, it is just as likely that they and their supporters such as Within Our Lifetime will truly launch the “Global Intifada” in violent attacks against Jews and Israelis around the world.

Within Our Lifetime mourns death of Nasarallah by “zionist entity” in a tweet “The martyrdom of such a figure may generate feelings of despair, but resistance does not rest in one man’s hands — it is in the hearts of millions who refuse to abandon Palestine. Thousands will rise from his place in the earth to challenge this cruel world and carry on our people’s task. The weight of his martyrdom will crash down on the heads of the settler colony.

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The UN Has Joined The Jihadi Fray (February 2024)

The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada (January 2024)

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Politicians In Their Own Words: Why We Don’t Support Defending Jews (January 2022)

Unequal Tallies and Israel’s Soft Force (May 2021)

Every Picture Tells a Story: Israel Is Scared of Female Iranian Shoppers (February 2021)

Murdered Jews as Political Fodder at Election Season in America and Always in Israel (October 2018)

Pick Your Jihad; Choose Your Infidel (September 2014)

NYTimes Says Nasrallah Was Paragon Of Coexistence

Just two months after Israel assassinated one of the leaders of a U.S. foreign terrorist organization in Iran whom The New York Times called a man of peace, the facts repeated.

In July 2023, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, one of the heads of Hamas, an organization sworn towards the destruction of Israel, while he visited Iran. In September, Israel took out Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah in Lebanon, also dedicated to destroying the “Zionist entity.” Just as the Times called Haniyeh the key towards peace in the region, it extolled Nasrallah.

The Times called Nasrallah a “towering figure… across the Middle East.” He “was opposed to Israel… and maintained that there should be one Palestine with equality for Muslims, Jews and Christians.”

I kid you not.

The Times painted a fictitious narrative that Hezbollah “opposes” Israel, maybe like dueling political parties. Perhaps the organization disliked Israeli policies on a couple of issues, or maybe simply wanted a “Free Palestine” with equality for all.

That is a disgraceful whitewashing of the genocidal intent of the jihadist group. Hezbollah wants Israel destroyed and to bring shari’a law throughout the Middle East.

As relayed in a number of articles and speeches, Nasrallah’s Hezbollah sought the destruction of the Jewish State:

  • “our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine.” – February 1985
  • “Our people in Palestine, you have the chance to decide on your own destiny, and you can get your land back. O people of Palestine, your way to Palestine and to liberty is through serious resistance and a real insurrection, not through “The Oslo Accord” or the unfair negotiations held in Stockholm. You should choose insurrection and resistance and never let go of your rights. Do what the Lebanese do: They refuse to keep even a small part of their land occupied.” – May 2000 
  • “[Israel] is an aggressive, illegal and illegitimate entity, which has no future in our land…. It’s destination is manifested in our motto, ‘Death to Israel’.” – 2005
  • “Hezbollah congratulates the resisting Palestinian people and the heroic fighters of the Palestinian factions, especially our dear brothers in the al Qassam Brigades and the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, for the wide-ranging and divinely supported heroic operation, promising complete victory. This triumphant operation is a decisive response to the ongoing crimes of the occupation and continuous violations against sanctities, honors, and dignities. It is a renewed confirmation that the will of the Palestinian people and the rifle of the resistance is the only choice in confronting aggression and occupation. It sends a message to the Arab and Islamic world, and the international community as a whole, especially those seeking normalization with this enemy, that the Palestinian cause is an everlasting one, alive until victory and liberation.” – after October 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas

Nasrallah repeatedly stated that Hezbollah will never negotiate with the “Zionist entity.” That its goal was converting all Christians in the region to Islam and bringing shari’a law as soon as Islam crossed the majority. As it is not currently in the majority, the jihadi group will not force conversion by the sword and asked the Christians in Lebanon to therefore not use violence against them, even as they run a completely distinct army from the government of Lebanon.

Part of Hezbollah’s statement of purpose from 1998

The NY Times description of the removal of leading terrorists who were actively gunning for civilians as an unjust assassination of peace, is designed to mark Israel as blood-thirsty murderers who crave war. Expect the hashtag #HitlerWasRight to accompany reposts to Times’ articles.

The New York Times is deliberately lying to its readership that jihadi terrorist groups which seek the complete destruction of Israel are really seeking coexistence. It is a subtle incitement to antisemitism and hatred of Israel, even in the shadow of the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and in the midst of a multi-front war.

ACTION ITEMS

Write to the New York Times to state clearly that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations that seek the destruction of Israel, and not benign actors looking for religious coexistence.

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Alias Armies Of Jihad

The escalation of the war between Iranian Proxies and Israel continues to lay bare the alias armies of Iran embedded around the region.

The United Nations is demanding diplomatic negotiations commence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority while only narrowly condemning the Hamas (not Palestinian) savage massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023. For the UN, Hamas is at once distinct from Palestine, and simultaneously a legitimate Palestinian political group, as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”

Does the UN think that Hamas is a separate group inside of Gaza or does it acknowledge that Palestine launched a genocidal war against Israel?

In Lebanon, Hezbollah has vast military capabilities, estimated to be around 150,000 missiles. In conjunction with Hamas’s October 7 war, Hezbollah began its attack on Israel. Israel’s response to Hezbollah has been characterized as an attack on Lebanon rather than Hezbollah.

The shifting nouns makes Israel appear to be the aggressor against a neutral party: while Hamas attacks Israel, Israel attacks Gaza; while Hezbollah attacks Israel, Israel attacks Lebanon.

Hamas controls Gaza and has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian parliament. Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon and has 48% of the Lebanese government.

In no other sphere can a country claim that its military is not a functioning arm of the government. Such fictitious divide affords the government a veneer of peaceful intentions while its army wages war.

Simultaneously, both are proxy groups of the Islamic Republic of Iran, colonial outposts on the borders of Israel.

Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel are either 1) a rogue third party terrorist group attack on the Jewish State, 2) a Lebanese attack, or 3) an Iranian attack. If it is a separate entity, than a diplomatic solution must a) have the Lebanese government confiscate all its weapons, b) strip the group of all seats in parliament, and c) expel it from Lebanon. If the attacks on Israel were from Lebanon, than Israel has full right to attack all of Lebanon. If the attacks were spearheaded by Iran, than we have long been in a regional war.

Multiple countries issue a release calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon (people and government), making no mention of Hezbollah or Iran, tacitly accepting that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon and that Lebanon launched an unprovoked attack on Israel.

The same should hold for Hamas and Palestinian territories: Palestinians launched a war against Israel, not Iran or a limited wicked entity.

Labeling armies with unique names distances the governments and population from the violence they perpetrated. It falsely shields the attacking government and people from fault and casts the defensive response as unwarranted and sinister.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls members of Hezbollah “innocent civilians” and Israel’s attack a violation of “international humanitarian law,” which implies that she believes that the people and government of Lebanon started a war with Israel and Israel is acting in self defense.

The anti-Israel world does not believe that non-Hamas Gazans who are killed by Israel’s defensive war are civilians caught in a war that its government started, but defenseless targets of an Israeli initiated attack. The “Hamas attacks Israel / Israel attacks Gaza” (not Hamas) narrative obfuscates the culpability of the people and government of Gaza.

The antisemitic jihadists in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish State using alias armies, attempting to shield the people and governments as uninvolved bystanders. Much of the world has ingested the red herring and is defaming Israel’s just war in the latest incarnation of a blood libel.

Related articles:

Two Narratives Of Israel-Lebanon War (September 2024)

Palestinians Publicly Go Full Genocidal Jihadi (August 2024)

Israel And Jews Everywhere Must Be Protected As An Ethnic, Religious And Linguistic Minority (September 2022)

Politicians In Their Own Words: Why We Don’t Support Defending Jews (January 2022)

Eyal Gilad Naftali Klinghoffer. The new Blood Libel. (June 2014)

Two Narratives Of Israel-Lebanon War

There are two competing narratives of the war between Lebanon and Israel, one being promoted by the liberal media, the United Nations and Muslim-majority countries (the “Anti-Israel Camp”), and the other by Israel and its supporters. How each side sees the framework of the war will continue to direct the commentary as the war unfolds.

Anti-Israel Narrative

According to one telling of the story, Hezbollah is a “Lebanese militant group” which is “supported by Iran.” The group attacked Israel on October 7, just after the Hamas massacre, “to show support for its Palestinian ally,” and will stop fighting Israel as soon as there is a “ceasefire agreed to by Hamas.”

In this telling of the events, Israel has opened up a new front against Hezbollah for virtually no reason, as the key to stopping the Hezbollah attacks is to end the fighting in Gaza. Israel’s “ferocious assault on Hezbollah” is not only unwarranted but infuriating the United States President Biden who has sought to confine the fighting to Gaza.

NY Times article bemoaning Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, creating a rift between the U.S. and Israel

Hezbollah is portrayed as only a Lebanese ally of the Palestinian group Hamas, whose mission and intentions are unstated. Israel’s mission is seemingly a folly, destined to repeat the “mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

Pro-Israel Narrative

The same events are seen very differently by Israel supporters and those who appreciate a truthful account of current events.

Hamas and Hezbollah are U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations, backed by the leading state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Each is a genocidal jihadi group dedicated to destroying the Jewish State and are acting together to try to achieve that aim.

Hamas has majority support of Palestinians, with 58% of parliament. It’s goal to destroy Israel is to enable 6 million Palestinians to overtake the Jewish State. Hezbollah is slightly less popular than Hamas, with 48% of parliament and seeks to expel the 490,000 Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) who reside in Lebanon to a new state of Palestine.

Israel was attacked by both Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah on October 7, 2023 and is fighting a defensive war it does not want against each. The threat of Hezbollah is much greater than Hamas, which has an estimated 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Over 80,000 Israelis in the north have been internally displaced to the south because of the Hezbollah attacks and ongoing threats.

These narratives are very different. The anti-Israel camp thinks that the United States waged wrongful revenge attacks after 9/11 and Israel is going down the same ill-advised path. But the pro-Israel view is that the American response wasn’t the problem: it waged the war terribly, first by attacking Iraq which was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, and then spending twenty years in Afghanistan fighting a terrorist group that could not pose an existential threat to the US, for the action al Qaeda took on a single day. That dynamic is not remotely similar for Israel fighting two clear and obvious enemies on its borders that are constantly attacking its citizens.

If the reports you consume tell you that Hezbollah is simply helping its beleaguered Gazan allies who are being crushed by the powerful Israeli army against the wishes of the United States, know that you are absorbing a toxic anti-Israel fake account of the just defensive war Israel is waging against genocidal foes next door.

Related articles:

Lebanon-Israel War Narrative (August 2024)

NYTimes Said Israel Killed Man Of Peace In Assassination Of Leader Of Hamas (July 2024)

UN Secretary General Sides With Hezbollah Over Israel (June 2024)

The Gaza Red Herring Covering Iran’s Nuclear Breakout (January 2024)

How Many UNRWA Employees Would Have Been Injured In A Hamas Pager Blast?

Around 2,800 members of the Hezbollah terrorist group were injured in an exploding pager incident on September 17, 2024. The tally was almost exclusively Hezbollah militants, as it would appear that the pagers had been purchased by the group some time prior and distributed to its team as a measure to avoid eavesdropping.

One of the injured included the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani.

Scene from video of Hezbollah terrorist shopping in grocery falling to ground after pager explodes

The world has long known that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the major sponsor of Hezbollah, as well as other jihadi terrorist groups like Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. To see that the involvement of Iran goes beyond sending money and protecting it at the United Nations, but is an integral part of the terrorist militancy is alarming.

But not surprising.

The world saw that many members of the United Nations agency for Palestinian wards, UNRWA, are members of Hamas. It makes one ask how many UNRWA employees would have been injured had similar pagers been distributed by Hamas?

The line between “legitimate” state actors and countries to murderous jihadi groups is blurred. The question is what to do with those “legitimate” agents of death.

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A Milestone For US Recognition Of Foreign Terrorist Groups (September 2024)

NY Times And Amnesty International Cover For Anti-Israel Terrorism In UK (August 2024)

UN Secretary General Sides With Hezbollah Over Israel (June 2024)

Two-Faced UNRWA (May 2024)

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Lebanon-Israel War Narrative

The war between Israel and Iran’s proxies is taking place in the media as much as the battlefield. Just review how Israel and Hezbollah published reports of the battle on August 25, 2024.

Israel claims to have thwarted Hezbollah’s attack with preemptive strikes at missile launching sites in Southern Lebanon.

Jerusalem Post headline on August 25, 2024

The Jerusalem Post called Hezbollah’s attack a “failure” and that Israel foiled the attack.

Readers in Lebanon got a very different message from Al-Manar, the Hezbollah media outlet.

Al-Manar online, August 25, 2024

Hezbollah claimed that it’s “military operation has been completed successfully” and that Israel’s claims about a preemptive attack are false [Hezbollah doesn’t recognize Israel and calls it “Zionist”].

It added that Hezbollah’s “offensive drones… crossed the Lebanese-Palestinian border towards intended targets” was successful. [Note again that Hezbollah considers Israel to be occupied Palestine.]

Al-Manar website

The US-designated terrorist group listed various military targets in Israel, which were the focus of the operation.

Al-Manar website lists solely military targets in Israel, in the hope of minimizing Israeli attacks on civilian locations

People in the radical Islamic and anti-Zionist world were told of Hezbollah striking at the Zionist entity in revenge of the assassination of a jihadi leader, complete with a narrative that dismissed any legitimacy of the Jewish State. Zionists were told of the tremendous intelligence of its military, which foiled a potential deadly attack.

Both Hezbollah and Israel had experienced terrible failures of their defensive forces, and each is now fighting a war of propaganda as much as missiles to reclaim the trust of their respective populaces.

Imagining Israel’s Neighbors For The United States

The United States is blessed in many ways.

One manifestation is that despite the country’s enormous size, it has only two bordering countries. One of them, Canada, is so closely tied to the U.S. in terms of language, culture, trade and military reliance, people often joke that it can be viewed as the 51st state, with 90% of its population living within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

In sharp contrast, small Israel is surrounded by several entities, all of which have gone to war to destroy the country within the last decades. Two of them – Lebanon and Syria – are broken and broke states, with Syria still engaged in its own civil war.

The small sliver of a country has 1,068 kilometers of boundaries with adjacent countries and territories. The breakdown is as follows:

regionboundary (km)percentage
Lebanon817.6%
Syria837.8%
Jordan30728.7%
Egypt20819.5%
West Bank33030.9%
Gaza595.5%
Length of Israel’s boundaries

To apply these percentages with the United States’ lower 48 state’s 9,560km land border with Canada and Mexico, would yield the following map:

Lebanon is led by an Iranian-backed terrorist organization, Hezbollah. It has roughly 150,000 missiles and rockets aimed at Israel. It devalued its currency by 90% last month, as its unemployment rate has rapidly increased each year, now reaching about 15%. The country is a shell of its former self.

Imagine such a neighbor for the states of Washington and Idaho!

It doesn’t get better.

Syria has even a longer border with Israel – it would equivalently cover the Montana-Canadian border. Syria’s genocidal leader slaughtered over half a million of his own citizens, in a civil war that has seen millions of people flee the country and millions of others internally displaced. The destructive leader attempted to build a covert nuclear weapons facility with North Korea a few years ago. The country remains in an active state of war with Israel, as it has been since the modern Jewish State came into existence.

At least not that many people in Montana!

Much of the rest of America’s northern border would be with two countries with a cold peace, Jordan and Egypt. While not at war, little economic activity or tourism exists, and the two countries almost always vote against you at the United Nations. A far cry from friendly Canada.

At America’s southern border, there is strain of millions of migrants coming into the country from Central America. They are coming looking for a better life than they had in Mexico, Nicaragua and elsewhere. They are not looking to upend the United States and overthrow it.

Not so with Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza. Hamas is actively looking to destroy its neighbor from its vantage point south of California and half of Arizona. The Palestinian Authority pays its people who kill its neighbor’s citizens and claim the country as its own.

This ugly theoretical snapshot of America’s neighbors were based on keeping America’s huge water boundaries. If one were to use Israel’s actual percentage of coastline, the map would look like this:

Lebanon would cover almost all of America’s northern border. Syria would wrap Maine’s land and water boundaries. Jordan would abut the New England states down to Virginia, while Egypt would extend southward to Georgia. The Palestinian Authority would envelope all of Florida and the Gulf states and the terrorist enclave of Gaza would border much of Texas. The balance would be coastline.

Now further imagine that instead of a large, tall and wide country that is the USA, it was flattened into a pancake with those same neighbors.

If you think Texans like guns now, imagine if they had Hamas digging tunnels under their homes and firing rockets at their schools!

This is Israel’s reality every day. Terrorist-led broken countries and territories surrounding a small sliver of land, attempting to destroy the only Jewish state through a variety of means, including militarily, economically, legally and via public opinion.

Related articles:

Israel: Security in a Small Country

Seeing Security through a Screen

Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave

Islamic Privilege

Wilayat Sinai: The Other Terrorist Group Abutting Israel

UN Secretary General Throws Shade on Israel from Lebanon

The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, visited Lebanon on December 20, 2021 to show support for the country as it continued fail on multiple fronts. Already floundering due to an economic crisis, Lebanon’s falling fortunes are being exacerbated by the pandemic since March 2020, the explosion in the port that damaged much of the capital in August 2020 and infighting between various factions that make up the country’s political landscape and demographic mix.

Guterres spoke to the Lebanese cabinet in a lengthy speech that painted the people of Lebanon as particularly warm and welcoming in the face of adversity. However, various comments made – and parties unmentioned – reveal a dangerous UN bias for the future of the country and region.

Guterres called out Israel both directly and indirectly, and never favorably.

Palestinian refugees. The UNSG recalled Lebanon’s welcome of Syrian refugees and then appended “not to mention the old Palestinian community of a million.” That’s a complete lie. Lebanon welcomed several thousand Palestinian Arabs in 1948-9, and that total grew to 568,000 in 2021, half of Guterres’s figure. Further, Lebanon places severe restrictions on the professions for the stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs), forcing two-thirds of the population into poverty.

Coexistence. Guterres continued that Lebanon was an “extraordinary example of religious tolerance of the capacity to create a diverse society that was harmonious, that was prosperous and that was, I would say, the centre of the region.” Lebanon was engaged in a religious civil war from 1976 to 1990, a point completely omitted and whitewashed in the speech. It has been nearly fifty years since the country had a semblance of religious tolerance. Such tolerance at the “centre of the region” is found in Israel today, not Lebanon.

But Guterres wanted to castigate Israel in his remarks, not elevate it as an example of coexistence.

Israel’s belligerence. While noting for a just a second that Lebanon bore some responsibility for its current state of affairs, Guterres called out outside actors that hurt Lebanon, in particular “the Israeli invasion several years ago.” That invasion in 1982 was in the midst of Lebanon’s Civil War in which the country acted as a terrorist save haven for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) that repeatedly attacked Israel, forcing a response from Israel.

The unmentioned evil actors. Not only did the PLO go unmentioned in the speech, so did Hezbollah, the terrorist group that controls southern Lebanon, as well as Iran, which backs that terrorist group.

Hezbollah was directly responsible for the Beirut port blast which exacerbated the current situation. It has threatened judges investigating the case, lest the terrorist group be cast in a negative light before elections scheduled for March 2022.

Hezbollah is estimated to have well over 120,000 missiles with a range that covers all of northern Israel. The missile launch sites are nestled among 230 Shiite villages in southern Lebanon. Those rockets were purchased with funds from Iran, including the $400 million in cash sent by President Obama to seal the Iranian nuclear deal. This terrorist army was armed and missiles deployed right under the nose of the United Nations, where UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) is charged with maintaining the peace with Israel and keeping Hezbollah from rearming as part of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006).

Hezbollah is likely to become fully active over the next several months as the Lebanese economy collapses, elections happen or are canceled, and the terrorist group’s sponsors in Iran are forced to either accept de-nuclearlization or full economic sanctions. Hezbollah has already begun to test the situation, firing 19 missiles into the Jewish State in August 2021. The UN did nothing, other than voting to continue to fund UNIFIL while it berated Israel and refused to mention Hezbollah.

Which begs the question of what was being accomplished with the head of the United Nations visiting Lebanon at this time. Was it seeking an economic package from world governments? That was mentioned (as was promoting the involvement of women in government), but so was this troubling statement:

I want to say that our mission is essentially a mission of solidarity.  You can be sure that Lebanon is today in the centre of all our strategies and efforts, both at the level of the Secretariat and at the level of the different agencies that are cooperating with the Lebanese authorities, not to mention our two missions, and in particular now, UNIFIL that we want to be more and more actively cooperating with the Lebanese army as a fundamental factor of stability and security in the southern part of Lebanon.

UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have no sway in southern Lebanon. Guterres’s refusal to call out the main troubling actor in the region that has been firing missiles at its neighbor to the south is outrageous, dangerous and ominous.

Israeli forces fire artillery from their position on the border with Lebanon after a barrage of rockets were fired from Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 6, 2021. The militant Hezbollah group said it fired rockets near Israeli positions close to the Lebanese border, calling it retaliation for Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon a day earlier. (Ayal Margolin/JINIPIX via AP)

The UN Secretary General came to stand in solidarity with Lebanon and ignored the dangerous and dominant role that the terrorist group Hezbollah has in the failing state. In the likely upcoming war with the Israel, it appears that Guterres just placed his chips with the puppet state controlled by Iran.

Related articles:

The Scary Growth of Terrorist Propaganda

UN Secretary General Guterres is Losing the Confidence of Decent People

The UN Does Not Want Palestinian Terrorists to be Held Accountable