Long, Long Ago, Part I

In a galaxy far, far away … (Oops, wrong anniversary)

Asked by a reporter about “foreigners” in the Palestinian camp where the Lebanese Army has been engaged fighting military forces dug into civilian neighborhoods, an UNRWA representative said “a large group of foreigners had entered the Tripoli camp months earlier armed with mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons but that bureaucratic restraints had prevented the UN from doing anything about it.”

In a galaxy far, far away … (Oops, wrong anniversary)

Asked by a reporter about “foreigners” in the Palestinian camp where the Lebanese Army has been engaged fighting military forces dug into civilian neighborhoods, an UNRWA representative said “a large group of foreigners had entered the Tripoli camp months earlier armed with mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons but that bureaucratic restraints had prevented the UN from doing anything about it.”

Egad! That is an admission UNRWA NEVER made regarding West Bank or Gaza camps from which terrorists went to Israel. But the reporter was so excited about the “foreigners” (nothing new) that she never followed up! And what were those “bureaucratic restraints” that prevented a UN agency – the preponderance of whose funds are U.S. tax dollars – from protesting the establishment of a terrorist army (that’s the only kind with explosive belts) within its purview and amid its civilian charges?

There is a HUGE scandal here involving UNRWA, but clearly the reporter was without historical reference points. As a public service, JINSA will provide them:

A million years ago – no, only 25 years ago in June – Israel invaded Yasser Arafat’s “state within a state” in Lebanon and discovered that Palestinian “refugee camps” were actually training bases for multitudes of “foreign fighters.” There were German Red Army Faction (Baader Meinhof Gang), Italian Brigata Rosa, Japanese Red Army, and Central Americans of all stripes. Guns were mounted on the roofs of houses; armored cars were parked underneath them. Enormous weapons caches were hidden in garages and tunnels under buildings (the Palestinians, not Hezbollah, were the first to bury their arms under the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon.) Anti-aircraft guns were parked next to schools and hospitals. All this within the confines of UNRWA-protected and UNRWA-financed installations; amid civilians they called refugees and we called prisoners.

A half a million years ago – no, only five years ago – Israel invaded Palestinian “refugee camps” in the West Bank and discovered they were actually bomb-making centers and training bases for Palestinian suicide bombers, et al. JINSA wrote at the time:

(Check out) the magnitude of the terrorist infrastructure in Nablus, Ramallah and Jenin. Accounts of relations between Arafat’s people and Hamas and Islamic Jihad; accounts of money – including Saudi money; laboratories for bomb making; suicide bomber belts; material for car bombs; illegal weapons and ammunition; and vile anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda were found in quantities too huge to enumerate here. The physical infrastructure of death and destruction, hidden within the civilian population of these cities, has been largely (though not completely) destroyed. Terrorists, people with blood on their hands and people waiting to get bloody, were captured.

To be continued.