Morbid Circularity

"Famously, when the Israeli ambassador came to ask for the suppression of the UN's report on the incident because it would "open deep wounds in Israel" Boutros Ghali retorted that they could not match the wounds inflicted on the Lebanese who were shelled. Ironically, Kofi Annan, who was accused of trying to soften the report in Israel's favour and did much to bring the Jewish state into the UN mainstream, left office in 2006 with a similar problem: the day-long shelling of the UN compound at Khiam and killing of four UN peacekeepers, despite long hours of messages from local UNIFIL commanders, and even high-level messages from the UN HQ directly to Israel. There is a pattern here. Firstly, the regular gruesome pre-election blood sacrifice to prove that Israeli politicians like Ehud Barak are hairy-chested and macho enough to be elected. The IDF personnel involved are either criminally culpable or incompetent, but can be confident that they will escape with impunity – an impunity that increases with each shooting incident in the territories. IDF spokespeople will refer to alleged "terrorist" activity near the sites as they did here and tut tut about how the nasty Arab terrorists use human shields."