Al Zon Media. Hello and welcome to the podcast. It's a calm introduction today. It's just a chill one. It's me James and I'm joined by Mia.
How you doing, Mia?
Not the best, but you know, we're hanging in there. We're defeating we're defeating the illness and the frailness of the human body.
Overcoming the surly bonds of Earth, the types of face of God or something.
That's what Elon Musk does every day. Of course. Yeah, when we're doing this with the power of cough medicine, it's gonna be great.
Yeah, yeah, not the kind of cough medicine that you can only buy so much of. Okay, So we're here today, how by cough medicine to discuss the United Nations into reinforce in Lebanon. Of course, thing that we haven't talked about before, but the lots of people are talking about on the internet, and I wanted to like just clear up what I think is some misunderstandings or like just a lack of background, sort of explain what they do, Explain who it is composed of, a little bit of
history and sort of its role here. As Israel begins attacking Lebanon as it did Gaza, right, and as it has continued to attack the West Bank as well.
Yeah, and as as we're going to get to the end of this episode, they started making a small push into Syria. So great things happening here. Well we'll get to that the episode.
Yeah.
Yeah, once again employing an entirely proprietary understanding of borders and where they are and how they work.
Maybe they're actually the no borders state, you know, like and listen.
My opposition to the Sykes Pcobe borders is is well known, but not like this.
Not like.
In event diagram the overlap of people who disagree with Sykes pecod. It's mir Wong the Kurdistant Workers Party in Israel, but it's very small and they disagree with it for very different reasons at Isis too.
Yeah that's true. Yeah, yeah, you're really in good company. Yeah.
I remember back and back in like twenty fourteen, So this one's for there's there are a bunch of kids who listen to this show, and by kids, I mean people who weren't like twenty seven, who don't remember the fact that you could just argue with Isis people on Twitter. Oh yeah, twenty fifteen and like they had a really good PR operation. Oh incredible. Yeah, And one of the arguments he would make was like, well, yeah, we're trying to destroy the imperialists.
Like it's like snow boarders. We're like, well, okay.
Well, like you're doing this by establishing ISIS.
It's like really, yeah, that was a wild time when you could argue them, Like you can still argue with like an asadist occasionally on Twitter or like.
Oh sure, but like this wasn't even just like people who support them.
This was like actual isis PR guys.
Yeah, yeah they were. That was the whole job was to argue with you. Yeah, there are some pretty good articles from back in that time period about that if you're too young to remember that. But yeah, So we're talking about UNIFIL today, where the United Nations in termforcing lemanon. Why are we talking about them? Because the IDF has spent the last week or so edging on just openly attacking them, and it has more or less openly attacked them, but it hasn't done so in like a complete way.
I guess we'll talk a little bit now about some of the things which have happened because I think we should probably start there, and then what'll explain who uniform are, what they.
Do, whether they're etcetera. A little bit of history.
So UNIPHIL has called the situation with the idea of extremely serious and a flagrant violation of international law, a phrase which is used every time Israel does anything, because it's true and then nothing happens, and then nothing happens. Yeah, and that's I think where we're going to end up today, is that like it's good that they are there, right,
Like just a big picture. This what Israel has done in Lebanon, in Gaza and in the West Bank is it has attacked anyone who is any form of outside observer, right, it has killed aid workers, It has killed journalists, and it has shot artillery realms at peacekeepers, injured peacekeepers in Lebanon. Right, one who can provide any form of independent oversight, who can provide any form of accountability for what they're doing, is in danger.
And this is more or less.
I mean, Russia does this a little bit too, right, But like among like I don't know what we're supposed to understand. It's relative democracy, but like this war seems to be pretty unpopular even there and then Yahoo really
isn't he's taken a Trump approach to democracy. Let's say, Israel seemingly murdering journalists as part of his policy as a goal of its invasion of Gaza is pretty unique, even by the standards of like other Western militaries who have done some pretty terrible things in the Middle East in the last twenty years. So some of the things they've done in recent days, it's fired smoke grounds about one hundred meters from their compounds, causing UNIFIL peacekeepers to
have to done their gas masks. Fifteen of them were injured. They have like skin irritation for whatever the munition was. I don't quite know what it was. I guess I think expired smokes can do that, and tear gases. Tear gas can do that. You're not supposed to use tear gas. Yeah, that's a war crime. Yeah, that's a war crime. It's a war kind that lots of people do. To be fair, like,
they wouldn't be the first one I'd seen. But then again, right, like these are people, are they signature's to a genity of convention? Actually, I don't know that's a good they are. They don't give a fuck does it really matter that? Yeah, have a look, I'm interested to know.
Yeah, they actually have ratified Theydia of Convention, which I guess makes them mildly more big international law bound.
In the US. The ultimate rogue state, Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean it's really it's pretty much a rogue state at this point, right, Like that I think is oh yeah, the sort of the frame of analysisue which they should be understood. A rogue state doing violence set alone, is wherever the fuck it wants with your taxpayer money, because apparently there's nothing it can do which will cause it to have one centimeter of accountability from the US.
Yeah. Other things they've been getting up to.
They've knocked down compound walls of the UNIFIL compounds. Can we explain what uniform is, by the way, Yeah, sure. So the UNIFIL is the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. It's tasked with peacekeeping, monitoring the withdrawal of the IDF. So in theory, the IDEAF as we'll get into, has invaded Lebanon many times in theory since two thousand and six, which was the last time it's sort of invaded Lebanon On.
Like it's invaded Lebanon on a very small scale the hundreds of times, right, like, for instance, stepping across the border, which the border is not entirely agreed upon by its Lebanon, but the United Nations has imposed something called a blue line, which is what it considers to be the border. It's Raeli troops will go across that to trim trees a lot so they can like spy more effectively. Right, they
literally have towers and cameras and stuff. But in two thousand and six, people who are old like myself were members. Last time it did a sort of full scale evasion of Lebanon, and on its withdrawal.
I'll just go through the history of uniform now. We can about the attack later, I guess.
So they're supposed to keep the IDF and Husbulla in theory out of an area between the Latani River and the blue line. The blue line is where the UN through the border in two thousand and The idea is that the border was drawn there by the UN to determine if Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon. That doesn't necessarily mean that all parties accepted it's the border they don't, but it is the blue line for now. The UNIFL
have been in Lebanon since nineteen seventy eight. That was one of the times when israelvated Lebanon.
At that point they were looking for the PO.
Yeah, I think the PLO had crossed over from Lebanon to attack and massacre people in Israel. Right at which point Israel then decided to just go hog and in fully invade Lebanon seventy eight and invaded again in eighty two while UNIFIL we was there, and it sort of bypassed uniform position to that point. And it doesn't mean that people didn't die in these invasions uniform troops of peacekeepers, because they did, right, Like it's a dangerous place to be.
Also, like eighty two is like the saber Chatila massacre, Like yes, like I was just like hideous Israeli massacres of refugee camps, which the kind of thing that like used to cause more anger in the US that it did now Like yeah.
Now it's another day that ends in why right, you know the bomba hospital again. It's a year of bombing hospitals now and it doesn't seem to register anymore, doesn't you know?
Make the headlines.
Yeah, in eighty two Israel bomb compound and it took Israel until the year two thousand to quote unquote withdraw from Lebanon. And at that point that was when the blue line was drawn. Right during that time, before two thousand, it wasn't just the IDF that was operating in the area.
You also had the South Lebanese Army. I don't like the division of groups in this part of the world exclusively along religious lines, because I think that doesn't entirely explain things always and I think it's it's like a very analyst brain way of seeing things, like to be like, oh, these are the sites, and they do this, the sort
of sunnies and they do this. But the SLA is a majority Christian organization and like it began as its own independent thing in the in the Civil War Lebanon, but it became more or lesson it's really proxy, right, it's certainly in this area, and the UN caused them. It's Raeli de facto forces, which is kind of a bold move from the UN. Actually, Like yeah, to just say it. Of course, saying it and doing it is another thing. But like during the time from eighty two
to two thousand. It's revvated multiple times, right, including in nineteen ninety six when just in the year of nineteen ninety six it's rail fired on uniform peacekeepers.
Two hundred and seventy times.
So like, I think that's like every weekday for the entire year. To put things in perspective, you know, like if they took weekends off, they fired on them every weekday,
including shelling a uniform compound. After the withdrawal in two thousand withdrew UNIFILM stasts of peacekeeping monitoring the withdrawal and assisting the Lebanese government in restoring it for authority in the area, and a UN mandate seventeen oh one two thousand and six is relevated again and eventually it's sort of ground to a stand still that time, ground to stand on top of a massive pile of civilian bodies, as it tends to do.
Right.
They bom Beirut in two thousand and six. I remember that I was I was traveling in the Middle East in two thousand and six. I remember just being like, oh, this is it's I one thing to watch war on TV when you're at home, but when you're that little bit closer, and it's people who are like, my cousin is there, my brother is there. A good school friend of mine was within Beiru.
I remember like.
It was one of my earlier experiences of just being like this is horrific, and there's nothing we can do, Like no one seems to care, no one's going to stop them, and like here we are getting on for two decades later, and.
In fact, no one has stopped them. They're still doing it.
Talking of things that no one can stop. Yah, no one can stop the relentless march of capitalism. And that is where we now have to pivot to advertisements.
We are back.
So in two thousand and six, once again Israel killed UN peacekeepers right. Perhaps the most notable incident is when a precision guided bomb struck a bunker and which four UN peacekeepers were sheltering. They'd been shelled fourteen times that day. They had then gone to their bunker right to be protected from the shelling, at which point they received this precision guided munition which killed four of them. The peacekeepers
were from Austria, Canada, China and Finland. Later the UN sent like a quick reaction for US and a rescue team, which the IDF also shelled.
Jesus chrised, Yeah.
I think this may be the time to point out that I think a lot of people are maybe hope for and maybe it's true that like if Israel crosses a line with attacking like European people, that will matter more to the nation that the states and governments of the world than it has done with killing Palestinian civilians. And to a degree, they might be right, like you might. You've had statements from a dozen or so countries that Israel shouldn't be attacking, but they're still getting this fire hose.
Of money and weapons.
Right, There's still been no actual accountability, and I think there will actually stop them from doing what they're doing. That's not like the fault of the people on the ground in Junifhill for the most part. Yeah, But nonetheless it's the case. It was also in that instant in two thousand and six, and I was talking about UNIFIL called the IDF ten times to ask them to stop shelling.
And this bunker, by the way, I'm not talking about like concealed position, right, Like like I've been in bunkers and I'm away for work that you might not be able to see very easily. This bad boy is painted bright white with the letters you n on it like. It's incredibly well marked. It's impossible to miss, you know. It stands out like a sauthor. That's where they drop their precition guid ammunition. There's also an instant in twenty ten. This might be one people remember, and this is one
of the tree trimming incidents. So the IDEF was trying to trim trees along the blue line and the Lebanese military perceived them to have vented Lebanon. I'm sure the IDEF perceived themselves to be inside Israel. The ideaf's understanding of borders, as I said, is somewhat unique, and so Indonesian UNIFIL troops were there. This is a particularly interesting incident. The Indonesian troops seem to be pretty popular in Lebanon.
From what I can tell, there are forty one nations that take part in UNIFILM right, but there are large contingents of Spanish, French, German, Italian, Irish peacekeepers and Indonesian and Nepally peacekeepers as well. The Indonesians are interesting because the government doesn't recognize Israel and so they have no diplomacy.
I don't quite know how they manage that because, as we'll get into, Unifhili's controlled by this thing called a tripartite mechanism whereby they have to agree on almost everything with the government of Lebanon or the military of Lebanese Army and the IDF, which is it's kind of classic un right. You have these people there who are positioned to do something really important right now, which is to stop the IDF doing in Lebanon what he's done in Gaza.
But they've managed to engineer themselves into a situation where they the IDF also has a veto on pretty much anything they can do, yeah, which I was told. I spoke to someone who was very familiar with the operations of UNIFIL and they were telling to me, for instance, so the IDF had been able to control what munitions they were able to bring into the country Jesus, which matters because, as we'll get into, one of the things that IDF likes to do is like literally knock on
their front door with main battle tanks. Right that they actually knocked down the front gate of the uniform compound with a macaver tank. Certainly like knocking the front Gate down with a mccarverary is one way of going about.
Asking Yeah, which is insane. Yeah, like the people just completely lost their minds.
Yeah, that's the thing, right, Like, I think that's what I want folks to take away from this is that, like it's unlikely that the un is going to go toe to toe with the IDF at this point.
Yeah.
No, that doesn't mean as I've seen people saying that either they're there to spy for the IDF, they're not. The IDEF keeps killing them, Yeah, in quite large numbers, Like I think forty two Irish people have been killed
in the history of uniful deployments. Dozens from other countries too, Right, Nor does this mean there's annet Yaho has called them quote hostages of Husballa, which is kind of a ridiculous claim as many of the things that come out of his mouth are like they're also categorically not that they're hostages of the United Nations. And there's this system that it's backed itself into whereby two Beligeran parties can stop
been doing anything they do. So I'll give you an example about twenty ten K's right, these Indonesian UNIFIL troops are trying to prevent the IDF and the Lebanese Army firing at each other. The IDEF is entering into Lebanon to cut down some trees, and in the perspective of the Lebanese Army, I guess, they started throwing insults on one another, and soon enough they start shooting with each other. So two Indonesian peacekeepers. There was a video of this
that went around for a while. So the Indonesians decide that basically there's nothing we can do they're going to shoot at each other, and that they decide to withdraw, which probably isn't the best like like you know, they're not keeping peace by force, I guess, but they basically decide there's nothing they can do. They decide to pull out local people construct a roadblock to try and make
them stay and prevent the IDEF from entering Lebanon. This happens a lot this, like you'll see this happening, and this happens in various like I'm going to get into some other UN situations where this has happened, right, But
the two peacekeepers get separated from their unit. This is a video that kind of went around at the time, like I'm sure they're genuinely afraid at that point right in the video, they're being helped by local folks and they end up getting in a taxi to like leave and come back to their base, which, like I'm sure they were in a pretty shitty they were having a
bad yeah. Yeah, And to quote Major General Alam Pelagowini, who is a French officer who's UNIFIL commander from two thousand and four to two thousand and seven, quote, the problem is in such cases as this, if you intervene to protect the IDF, for instance, unif will be accused by Husbulla or the people of protecting the Israelis and collaborating with the enemy. The other side, if we do the same with the Lebanese, it's able to accuse the
unifor of collaborating with Husbula. So like, yes, it will in the situation that we're seeing currently, Like I think obviously, like what Israel thinks and says doesn't really have much credibility anymore because they're ruled by this tripartite mechanism.
There's really very little they can do.
Yeah, they can fire people if they fired, but the IDEF isn't like engaging them in small arms combat. Right, They're loving artillery shelves into their compound, they're firing smoke, they're bashing down their walls with Caterpillar armored bulldozers.
The IDF loves and armor bulldozer.
Yeah, because I mean you can probably join the dots on why the IDF loves a armored bulldozer. You know, they're in the business of knocking stuff down, I guess. And yeah, going into urban areas and destroying people's homes. That's I'm sure other folks have armorable those too. Just the IDF is kind of well known for using these things. They shot down an observation tower last week which had two peace keepers in it, and obviously those people were
injured because their tower got shot down. But like they're not fully attacking them enough that those peacekeepers would like defend themselves or their their positions. And I think if people are like hoping that somehow, like an engagement between peacekeepers and the IDF will be what causes accountability, I don't think that's going to happen.
Yeah, And for like for the UN to actually like really seriously intervene in a world like this, it takes one of the UN Security Council members being like, we will send our own troops. That's like how the UN got involved in Korea, right, Yeah, Like the US was like fuck it, we're gonna send an army there, and like Russia is not going to like send an army. They're significantly too busy invading Ukraine and selling natural gas
to Israel to do anything. China is not going to do it because there is real second largest trading partner and they don't give a shit. Like no, no, no, one's actually going to like send troops to like back some kind of like UN mandate to like stop the Israelis from doing this. Like that's just like not even if the Israelis were to just start killing peace keepers, like it's not going to happen. It's never happened any other time the Israelis have killed peacekeepers, Yeah.
Like peacekeepers have in other places for yeah that for instance, Irish peacekeepers in Congo, right or the Canadians and indeed, like the the Uniform have engaged in combat before. But I think the chances of them like stopping the IDF invasion are extremely slim.
Yeah, Like and if you're finding a state that is just directly an American proxy that there's no way. Yeah, it's I don't even think like the seventies nam like not a line movement like dominated UN could have pulled something like that off, and like this UN will not No, like.
The UN re issue strongly worded statements, the UN will say it's deeply concerned. And I imagine that like if you're just like a troop and then you're on your unifil so most of the at least for the Irish, most of people that have volunteered to be there, an Ireland, it's probably among at least among European country is a country that has strongest in its solidarity with Palestine for a long time. I'm sure it fucking sucks. I'm sure
it really blows. Oh yeah, And what the IDEF has done now is advanced past their like forward positions and the positions where people are being injured by shelling at the headquarters positions. So like if you imagine a triangle with the broad base of it at the front, they're shelling and sort of fighting around the headquarters positions. I'm sure if you've been spending that much of your life as a soldier, you know like and you're watching something terrible happen, you'd want to fight that.
Yeah, you're just sitting around Like that.
Doesn't mean that it's bad that they're there, No, Yeah, Like any form of accountability will make it more accountable than what happened in Gaza, right, Yeah, or at least it will make whatever happens.
More visible than what happened in Gaza, and.
It probably legitimately has slowed the Israelis down, Like, yeah, this is what would happen if there was nothing there and they could just run rough shod, which is you know, get like what we've seen in Gaza and what we've seen in the West Bank.
Yeah, Like, I mean the strategy in Gaza has been first of all, like militarily inept, right, Like they've lost control of areas in their rear because aside from just killing lots of people and flattening cities, it didn't seem to be really doing much in it, like an actual
sort of targeted manner. And like, yeah, just the present of peacekeepers means that you can't just carpet bomb in advance, you know, fied anything that moves this area between the Latini River and the Blue Line civilians have largely left because there's intense combat going on there, right, there's Bala present there and then obviously the IDEF now present there and they're fighting. So like if people can leave, they've left.
So having not that civilians have really slowly is raised down in Gaza it or been a Cervilian casualties don't seem to be something they care about. But yeah, having these folks there has stopped them just carpet bombing the area, which is a good thing.
Yeah, something that it's not a good thing.
It's our obligation to pivot adverts again, Oh, which we will do.
All right, we're back. Yeah, I guess, like I've seen it from a few people.
I think it's either the people who discovered like international politics a year ago and previously like hadn't really thought about it, or from the kind of nativist right the idea that like they shouldn't be there, Like I've seen it from like some kind of nativist type folks about island, like why are the Irish they're risking their lives for the for the Lebanese?
What the fuck the Lebanese emity for them?
I have such good news for you at about who was training the IRA in the seventies. There are a lot of a lot of guys with Irish accents in the Becka Valley training cancer the seventies, so you know, they really have actually done things for you. It's one of the things people do this with like the US or there's like one of the Israeli lines like ah, what is what of Palestinians ever.
Done for black people?
It's like, well, like one of people who got a lot of trading.
Yellow in the seventies, like Jenny y are for better and for worse because like there's also groups that they trained that like they probably shouldn't have, like without a doubt, a lot of the groups that became the Fighting Vanguard, which was okay, it's I don't want to or they're Fighting Vanguard.
The Fighting Vanguard were like a kind of Biltont wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. And like a bunch of those Fighting Vanguard guys who survived, so they do an uprising and I think it was eighty four, they like all get killed. Those people who survived go on to be some of the founding members of al Qaida. So not always yeah no great, yeah, but you know the record, Like look one out of like twenty of
the people you trained, going Haywires. Not great, but like you know, it's so lied nineteen other ones like it did pretty good.
Yeah, I think abdud Algulam was in the Becka Valley for a while. Yeah, yeah, lots of cadres of the of the PKK.
Yeah, the PKK was there.
Yeah, Yeah, Kurds died actually, Like yeah, that's a good article called the Kurds who Died for Palestine. I was reading recently because often you'll see this like idea that the Kurds are like inherently like Zionists, and I don't think that's true.
No, Like yeah, like they fought awed the elevenies Civil War all the side of.
The PLO Like yeah, yeah, they were in because they were in Beca Valley in the Plos trading caps Like yeah.
They didn't really have much choice to be back. Israel was coming for them.
Yeah, and like like is Israel is one of the coachries that helped kidnap the dou La Jealote Like yeah, that's really not presideds at all.
No, this is one of those things that you'll see found Like I didn't have that bot account. So they're just people with very unoriginal opinions who like they treat kind of Turkish state lines. When Israel build settlements in a West Bank and Guyza, they do it.
With steel that comes from Turkey. Yep.
So yeah, maybe treat those claims with some skepticism. If there's a gray wolf in Bio particularly.
Yeah, there is a broader, more serious point there, which is that like the actual physical resources that the Israelis use to physically build the occupation, right, those all come
from places and it's not all US. And I think people have this image that like, well like and it is true the US, it's an unbelievable amount of money to Israel, But there's a lot of places where the Israelis are getting their ship form, right, Like he's really tech sector in the Israeli tech sector is one of the course these really and it's one of the cores of Israeli occupation is almost entirely fueled by like semiconductors
and stuff that they buy from China. Right, that's where all the physical technical infrastructure of this stuff comes from.
I talked about it before about like Russian natural gas.
Right, all of these countries who will you know, talk all of this shit like and the un about Israel, like people's geopolitical stances and what they're willing to send me to you really to the Israelis are not the same thing at all. And if you want to actually gauge how the occupation functions, it's because a lot of countries that nominally will be like, oh we oppose is really occupation? Well, didn't just send them all the fucking resources that they need to do the occupation.
Yeah, and they don't get any heat unless it's like literal bombs bullets, right, yeah, and even and even then, like lots of people like yeah, there's plenty of non us. I mean, the utata's a lot of this too, right.
Yeah.
One of the things that IDF likes to do they haven't mentioned yet is mock air assaults of uniform positions.
Jesus Christ.
Well, they'll fly in like a bombing formation just basically, I guess hayes them. I can't really think of.
A way to describe it, right, They terror like it's a terror campaign.
Yes, it's a very clear indication that like any day, we could wipe you off the map, right, And some of the uniform assets seem to have anti aircraft missiles. Some of them don't, but even still like they you know, a determined attack by the idea of they'd be in big trouble. Of course, So right now, I guess the situation we're in, and according to the person who spoke to is that these positions is Israel as advanced passed.
Like the peacekeepers there are still in their positions right they have using their own funds, which I presume means like funds from the states of which they are part, fortified their positions and improve their positions.
With their own Jesus Christ.
Yes, well, the UN is supposed to provide positions for them. It's supposed to provide their rations, and it's supposed to provide weapons and vehicles for some of the states that like kind of aren't up to I guess a modern standard.
That's incidentally why you don't see it so much here, But in other parts of the world you often see troops on peacekeeping missions who like perhaps you haven't heard about country's military before, right, Like, it's very common for like, Also, I think it is better that there are African peacekeepers in Africa than like white European peace like I think for historical and very obvious reasons, I will mention one of the places that sends a lot of pecs to
places in Nepal, and the police peacekeepers that are good are being set by booist governments are.
Good, not great. Yeah, you can google that.
We've talked about this in Brazil at length, a like sorry, Brazilian nepolice cooperation in Haiti's shit show.
Yeah, no, it has not been good for the Haitian people.
I will say, like one of the things that happens a lot is the UN pays them a certain rate for peacekeeping I guess or UN conversate certain right, which is often a lot more more than those militaries pay their soldiers. So it's like a source of income for their military view, see what I mean. They can like skim off the percentage. But these guys have at their own expense, fortify their positions, at their own expense, supplied themselves with rations so that they've they've bought a ton
of food and water. It's what that means in like non nerdy terms. So they're pretty well stocked up, right, They're like they're bunked up.
Yeah, but it's Also it's also like this US operation is being equipped in the same way that like American school teachers make sure their classrooms have pencils.
That's a perfection. What the fuck is going on here? Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Maybe maybe the state not the best way of organizing human society is what people are saying.
Well, we need to fuse the two and finally bring about my lifelong dream of armed teachers union pickets.
Yeah, bring it back to like Blair Mountain, but for teachers. Yeah, don't armed teachers armed teachers unions. Yeah, we can finally get bipartisan agreement on Yeah, they're pretty well hold up, like American preppers dream of themselves being right surrounded by ammunition and MRIs. But at some point they're going to run out of food and water, and at some point
that means that they're going to have to resupply. Right now on I'm just going to check the date very quickly, and UNIFIL is on Twitter by the way, if you want to, you want to follow them there. They kind of give a daily update on what's going on. On the thirteenth of October, UNIFIL said that the IDF sold just stopped a critical uniform logistical movement, which could well be like an attempt at resupply of one of these places. Right, at some point they're going to have to resupply them,
either by air or by land. And I think that is when we will most likely see like exactly how hard the IDF wants to go against like in this case trucks full of MRIs right, Like, yeah, and previously they've got in standoffs like a few years ago the French. The French have done some interesting stuff the UNIFILM mission, Like in twenty ten they kind of went on a unilateral operation without approval to look for her body. Yeah, not a great move. Yeah, it's wild.
French forces level on is such an interesting thing because it's like you have inside of the French soul is warring at all times two forces.
It is it is reis anti Symath.
It's like they because they hate Buzzlims so much, but they are also so antisemtic.
This is an all times warring b French.
The nature of the French soul, the two wolves that live inside the French person. Yeah, well in twenty ten they were their Islamophobia was winning that they u specifically they used sniffer dogs in people's homes, which Jesus is very disrespectful in culture in that part of the world.
I mean also here, I would be really pissed off if fucking a bomb squad like getting started running sniffer dogs around my apartment.
For sure, get out going through private property, you know, doing things that they were. They're supposed to operate with the Lebanese Armed Forces, right, so they patrol alongside them. But in this case, the French decided they were just going to send it solo and obviously pissed a lot of people off. And like, it's really interesting to see
people address their concerns. But what's not interesting, I guess, but people address their concerns specifically with the French element of uniform rather than other elements of uniform, like for instance, Indonesia and seem to be pretty popular. The Indian element of unifil teaches weekly yoga classes, which are apparently becoming more and more popular.
I've seen a bunch of videos.
There's like tiktoks of Liberty's people in that area who speak English, and they all speak English with a Mariage accent.
Oh yeah, there for so long, it's great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, well the Irish have been there since seventies, right, Like, I know of people who have two generations of their family who.
Have been peacekeepers there. Yeah, I think.
For those people like it probably like over time being down, I'm sure they do develop a personal connection to the people who you know that they're around and the people whose communities they are protecting, And like, I genuinely feel like it's probably really a shitty situation to be in.
Yeah, being sort of logged in your base.
That doesn't mean they should leave, right, I just want to end with like, and I know we want to talk about the Gourden Heights to twenty thirteen.
Actually Austria pulled out.
Of the Gourden Heights and Ireland had to deploy a bunch of people really quickly to kind of cover that area. But if we look at like streperlinka right where the
UN could have prevented a genocide did not. Yeah, the UN forces there withdrew, they surrendered and places were captured by the Serbs and then used as collateral to stop the UN doing anymore to prevent what and like some of the most horrific acts in human history happened it's Robnica, right, just just disgusting, terrible stuff, and like hopefully the UN has learned from that, hopefully like individual nations, I think like in that case, it wasn't so much the UN
as a whole as like the specific chain of command of those peacekeepers.
I think they were Dutch.
Well, and it's worth noting in that point too, Like part of what's going on there is that like a lot of the European countries until well into the genocide, we're basically pro served because they saw the Serbs something
that could like just cleanse the Muslims from Europe. Is like this is the explicit language that they're using, right, yeah, And this is this has always been a problem with with UN missions, is like, well, half the time we try to stop a genocide, there's like some faction of the UN that's like, no, this one fucking rips and.
Yeah, yeah right, this is yeah. But they are the bad guys though, aren't they. I think it's good that they have like Muslim countries within their yeah, their group, And like I think it's probably good that the Irish of their in large numbers because as a country they have been better on Palestine than almost anyone else in Europe.
Yeah, it turns out being a colony.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, like yeah, that's on that's on us as the British. But it's better that they're there, I guess. Yeah. And like no one talked about them for the past ten fucking years, but like the most important time for them to be there is right now. Yeah, and like even if they're not fighting, I think they serve a useful role in like it's the only accountability mechan Yeah that Israel can't just destroy There are definitely people who are alive right now who
would not be if the Irish were not there. Yeah, and like I know we have these number of virus distions. Like I know, it sucks it's your family member who's stuck there, like and like it feels like they're not able to do anything and they're just stuck there as like collateral as a bargaining chap.
I don't know, but like, yeah.
I think overseas military deployments, but European countries go, it's one of the more defensible ones. You know, it's one of the ones that has stopped civilian lives being harmed.
Yeh.
And yeah, I think like the idea that they should leave, which I've seen people trotting out like that. No, they shouldn't like when they leave. It's just like Gaza all over again. It's just Israel carpet boling civilians and talking of copy boying cvilians. I guess you want to talk about, like Israel has decided to invade another country.
So okay.
So one of the things that's happened, and this has gotten almost no attention, I think because because the Syrian government does not want to admit that this is happening, and they're not doing anything about it because they don't give a shit.
Yeah.
So Israel has been occupying the Syrian goal On Heights.
Since nineteen sixty seven.
Yeah, they've militarized it, they've just been holding the territory for I shouldn't have tried to do math in a.
Fly like half a century sixty is. Yeah.
And one of the things that's been happening recently is there had been there had been like say to describe as like a Russian monitoring force sort of on on the border of the s about Goal on Heights and the sort of like southern provinces of Assyria. Yeah, and the Israelis seem to have just apparently they've done they've done this before where they'll just like go in and buldoze a bunch of farmland.
Yeah. I think this is on the video species of d mining, right, yeah, sort of.
Yeah, I mean it's it's always been. It's always been pretty clearly like a land grab kind of thing.
Yeah. But normally what happens is they go in, they buildoze a bunch of places, and they pull out. Yeah.
So somehow they have surpassed Turkey as the number one bulldozer of olive fields, which is sort of staggering, like they love that shit. Yeah, but this time they've set
up it seems like a road project. Although given everything that we've been seeing about the sort of like rise of the concept of greater Israel where they just start invading everyone and radially outwards from Israel, extremely a loving they've they've built those these places, but now and they're but they've set it up like barred wire like around the new territory, which seems like they're just actually a
time we can do annexation. Yeah, and that's really alarming because I mean, like the Syrian government isn't gonna do shit about this, right, Like, you know, Israel has bombed Syria a few times already.
Oh yeah, they pumped Syria last time. I was saying, the Syrian gummer doesn't give a shit, right, They're they're too busy.
Like like they have courage to kill, Like they don't have time to be dealing with fucking Israel here.
Yeah. Yeah, but there's been an explicit.
Israeli pushed like even further out from the goal on Heights, and I think we're just going to see this intensify as as the most sort of like drained settler factions in Israeli politics gained more and more power, and the sort of like frankly like very American, we must push our borders, we must like push into new frontiers and sees more land like cycle sort of perpetuates itself.
Yeah, and a lot of the people doing the settling have literally come from America to do the settling. Yeah, pushing out in the Goland Heights. It's bad, Like yeah, I know It'srael claims it was attacked by Katiba's Bulah in the Goland Heights like last week, and Katibez Bulla has denied that they claimed it's reel fabricated it nise are those people that people I particularly trust.
Yeah, well, and this is also one of these funny ones where it's like the Israelis are denying that they've done this, I think, and the Syrian government is also denying that they've done this, but like everyone who's there is like, well.
Obviously they did this, Like yeah, and like I.
Don't know why it's real keeps for wanting to open up new fronts. I mean they did. Yeah, like you said, it's set like colonial list logic. I guess I do think that like the continuation of this like full scale war generates consent for the government as it exists in the moment that it stops, and that the government's legiancy will collapse there.
Yeah, but yeah.
Pushing into Syria opens up a whole other world of shit.
Shit, Yeah, the worst stuff.
Yeah, there's there's a nation on earth who really doesn't need anyone else trying to fucking And it's not that Israel has not been killing Syrians for a long time as well, has been lobbing munitions into Syria for a long time, and it's increased in the last year. Yeah, like yeah, you know, I was in Syria on October seventh last year, and pretty much sooner as It's began responding to that attack, it began responding in Syria as well, but a ground operation is a whole different thing.
There ain't no UN peacekeepers in Syria, and yeah, that could be very bad.
So yeah, so we'll keep you updated on that story as it presumably continues to get worse, because yeah, everything seems to end like I mean, I will say, Okay, so today Biden made a thing that said, if Israel hasn't resolved the humanitarian situation in thirty days, he's getting cut off aid. But like that's not going to happen, Like it's simply not like everyone says that all the time.
I mean, how many lines have they stepped over?
Right?
Like how many?
An American red line is a line that when you step over and nothing happens. Yeah, that's that's that's just that's just how it works.
Right, like it was in Syria. It has been multiple times.
Yeah, I mean there's there's there's this old Russian joke about China's Final Warning where because like throughout the entire seventies when like there's all this borders be's going on and even like the sixties and like something in the fifties sixties, like Chinese officials feel like this is China's final warning. Russia must stop and nothing would happen like this. This is where we're at with like the Democrats and being like, ah, Israel must stop doing whatever the fuck's No.
They're not going to do anything, like they don't give a ship. Yeah, no, We've cried both so many time.
It's clearly not an issue that Harris feels like it's going to lose her the election. Yeah, and then whoever wins, we got four more years of turning a fire hose of money and weapons on children in Palestine and apparently Serier in Lebanon as well. So yeah, it's great, It's all great. I'm afraid. Yeah, this has not been a good news episode. I hope people who have family have friends who are in Lebanon, Like, I hope people who have family there were doing Okay, I know it sucks, it could happen.
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