***Update: UN Security Council statement***

So, UN chief Kofi Annan is accusing Israel of deliberately targeting the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) observer post. The NY Post editorial page rightly excoriates Annan. You’ll hear Annan’s hysterical charges embraced and echoed in the MSM throughout the day.

Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club has the must-read post of the day, with analysis you won’t find from the pro-Hezbollah press. Fernandez examines the press releases of the last several days issued by UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon. His conclusion:

[T]he UNIFIL is running a kind of ambulance service on the Lebanese side of the border. That is not its official mission; it has failed in its official mission but its men are obviously performing with considerable perseverance and bravery. UNIFIL are able to run convoys in an area where the Hezbollah are shifting squads around while the IDF doing its best to kill the Hezbollah. Yet until July 26 the UNIFIL had not suffered any fatalities from IDF fire. Their sole serious injury to that date had actually been caused by the Hezbollah, and the injured UN trooper was evacuated by the IDF to an Israeli hospital.

The IDF has for its part avoided hitting UNIFIL or their civilian convoys despite its widely publicized use of artillery and air. Far from being random, the IDF is apparently able to create safe corridors in active battle zones through which UNIFIL can pass until the recent incident in Kiyam. There are probably very few military organizations in the world which can accomplish this. Nevertheless, the danger of friendly fire naturally remains.The two IDF personnel probably killed and five wounded from friendly fire is proof of that…

…No one — yet — has accused Israel of deliberately firing upon itself. Considering the fact that UNIFIL peacekeeping mission was a dead-letter it should naturally be asked why Kofi Annan, as their ultimate commander has seen fit to keep them in a position of danger where their only chance of safety actually depends on accurate targeting by the IDF. Their positions are manifestly so close to the Hezbollah; their convoys so at risk at being confused with mobile Hezbollah forces that only by the grace of God and the accuracy of the IDF have fatalities been avoided until now. They were willing to take the risk. Annan was willing to make the hay. You be the judge of Kofi Annan’s competence both in the care of his men and with respect to the accusation he has made against the IDF.

Bryan Preston:

Annan is playing a moral equivalence game that’s all too typical of the transnational progressive set these days. In this line of thinking, national defense is suspect even when it’s mounted against non-state actors like Hezbollah, a terrorist group that is attempting to seize control of Lebanon even as it mounts what can best be described as a war of extermination against Israel, a sovereign nation recognized by the UN. The UN was founded to keep peace and promote democracy, but by elevating the Hezbollahs of the world onto the same moral plane as its own member states, the UN ends up fostering conflict and war. Under Annan’s corrupt and incompetent watch, the UN has become even more a part of the world’s problems than it already was.

Ed Lasky:

Annan seems more exercised by this accident than the truly deliberate kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers and the indiscriminate mass rocket attacks Israel is being forced to endure because the UN was pusillanimous in refusing to enforce its resolutions regarding terror forces in Southern Lebanon.

Annan, as the world’s chief diplomat, is charged with the responsibility of good judgment and temperate, well-considered remarks. He seems to have a penchant for violating this obligation when it comes to issues involving Israel. He also was quick to claim a few weeks ago that Israeli shelling caused the deaths of Palestinians on a Gaza beach.

He made that claim immediately after the event. Subsequent events, of course, proved him wrong. Annan does not seem capable of learning from his own mistakes. After all, his own failures led to the Rwandan genocide but that did not motivate him to act to stop the later genocide in Yugoslavia or the current one in Sudan or the anticipated one in the state of Israel.

Pajamas Media’s news and blog round-up is here.

Best quip on misplaced media priorities in the Middle East comes from FNC boss Roger Ailes, speaking to a confab of hostile media critics, via Glenn Garvin at The Miami Herald:

Other cable news networks seem less interested in reporting the complicated politics of the crisis in Lebanon than in trying to embarrass the U.S. government, Ailes said. ”One of my competitors spent three days on Cyprus trying to find somebody who didn’t like the government because the plane was four hours late and they didn’t get a candy bar in line,” he said, jabbing at a lengthy report by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Beirut. “I thought that was not where the story was.”

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