spooble, any shells going the other way PRIOR to the current hostilities?

Just who enjoys the aegis of the UN? Not the 800,000 rotting corpses in Rwanda. The UN is little more than a traveling cocktail party and at its head is a whited sepulcher who is a third rate African bureauocrat. Under his stewardship the various UN bodies set up to investigate human rights abuses are now headed up by countries where human rights abuses are entwined with cultural practices.

Dateline: Lebanon, 1947. The United Nations votes to accept a partition plan which would create a Jewish state and a Palestinian state side by side. The Government of Lebanon rejects this plan, as do the nations of the Arab League.

Dateline: Lebanon, 1948: The Government of Lebanon declares war on the new State of Israel, as do all the countries of the Arab League.

Dateline: Lebanon, 1948: The Lebanese Government signs a cease-fire agreement with Israel after the Lebanese army attacks Israel unsuccessfully, as do all the Arab states which attacked Israel. Lebanon continues to reject the right of Israel to exist.

Dateline: Lebanon, 1970s: The Lebanese Government allows the PLO - just thrown out of Jordan at gunpoint by the Jordanian Govenment - to settle in southern Lebanon. The PLO creates a mini-state in southern Lebanon and mounts numerous rocket and other terror attacks against the farms of northern Israel. UN 'peacekeepers' in Lebanon fail to stop these terror attacks and keep the peace. The Lebanese Government condones them by active support at times and silence at other times. The Lebanese Government continues to reject the right of Israel to exist.

Dateline: Lebanon, 1980s: Fought out of Lebanon by Israel, the PLO leaves for North Africa. Things improve slightly on the Israel - Lebanon border. The Lebanese Government continues to reject the right of Israel to exist.

Dateline: Lebanon, 1990s: Hezballah, formed with the stated agenda of destroying the State of Israel, sets up in southern Lebanon and begins a steady stream of terrorist actions against Israel.
UN 'peacekeepers' fail to stop these terrorist actions or keep the peace. The Lebanese Government condones the Hezballah actions by support or silence. The Lebanese Government continues to reject the right of Israel to exist.

Dateline: Lebanon, 2006: Faced with a complete inability or lack of will by the Lebanese Government and the UN to stop the Hezbollah attacks into northern Israel, Israel acts.

The UN complains. The Lebanese Government (still at war with Israel) complains.

Would it be too much to suggest it's time the Lebanese Government changed its mind

Dear Narcissist,

I presume that in your eyes, I am both naive and a self-hating Jew. I have heard this before.

I want to pose my naivete against your wisdom -- a wisdom which has led to hundreds of violent deaths of Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese, the destruction of a country's infrastructure, the deepening of hatred of Israel in the Arab and Moslem world, a quantum leap in the attractiveness of antisemitic ideas to those so inclined, and first and foremost, an almost certain increase in the membership of such organizations as Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaida.

Some wisdom!

The UN has become a soft target for the powerful nations of the world, they are the easy scapegoat for what are more much more complex problems.

I would have thought the Israelis could sympathise with this.

It is well to remember that the UN though originally backed by the US, has been virtually replaced by an America since the end of the Cold War which now regards itself as unipolar king-pin ruler of this world, so very much evidenced by its right, as it says, to build up its military capacity, including nuclear to maintain this mastery.

In a sense the US and the Soviets did share a kind of global mastery, with having access to the ridiculous veto which rendered the UN pretty well only a tool to be used by America and Soviet Russia when it suited either one.

Hence the blocking by US representative Bolton earlier not to allow a UN vote even to protest against the Israeli attack on Lebanon.

The point is, why are we all so gutless as regards this recalcitrant America, which has only made the Muslim world despise us even more?

Admittedly we do need America, but only the kind of America we had with the generosity of the Marshall Plan - but not the type of America which illegally moved into Iraq with the resultant unoly mess, and now once again rendering the UN impotent with its supplying of more ammunition to carry on blasting the Lebanese.

Probably the most sensible thing we can do with the UN, is to arrange a vote to remove America's right to the veto.

Could be having a pipe dream, however, to think of such things, with so many dumbed down people in the Western world, especially in John Howard's Australia.

During this time the United Nations has given Israel open authority to bombard a country with indiscriminate aggression towards Lebanese civilians.”

Rather fanciful to think that the inept and ‘always-late’ UN has “given Israel” any authority or permission to do anything. Israel is currently defending itself from Hezbollah terrorists, and would not be looking for any say so from the UN to do that.

Their “aggression”, if that is what the author chooses to call Israel defending itself, is directed against attacking terrorists. Only the author would “assume” that they are Hezbollah terrorists – she gives them the more respectable name ‘militia’.

If those terrorists had not ensconced themselves with the civilian population, the civilian toll would not be as high as it is.

The author has written a lot of words just to tell us something most of us already know – that the United Nations is, and always has been, a dud