US Silent at UN on Hezbollah's Massive Arms Build-up in Lebanese Civilian Areas

"Every calendar quarter the United Nations Security Council holds an extensive debate on the Israeli-Palestinian "situation." The Israeli and Palestinian UN representatives make speeches following the Secretary General's report on the current status, which are normally predictable restatements of their respective positions. This time, however, Israel's ambassador Danny Danon, addressing the Security Council at its July 12th meeting, presented new graphic evidence of Hezbollah's alarming arsenal of rockets and missiles located in civilian areas of southern Lebanon...

Not surprisingly, Ambassador Danon's presentation of irrefutable evidence of Hezbollah's clear and present danger to Israeli and Lebanese civilians, and his demand for Security Council action, fell on deaf ears. In her own statement that followed Ambassador Danon's remarks, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said not a word about what was just presented regarding Hezbollah. Instead, she stuck to her canned talking points that continue to draw a moral equivalence between acts of Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense. 'In recent months, there's been a steady stream of violence on both sides of the conflict,' she said. Then Ambassador Power proceeded to criticize the building of Israeli settlements, as if again to draw a moral equivalence between housing construction and terrorism. She assailed what she called Israel's 'systematic process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalizations of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.' All that Ambassador Power said about Lebanon was to decry the political stalemate in electing a new president and to state that 'the United States is helping the Lebanese armed forces build the capabilities necessary to counter violent extremism and protect the Lebanese people.'

If the Obama administration were truly interested in countering 'violent extremism' in Lebanon and protecting the Lebanese people, it would start by doing everything possible to eliminate the violent extremist threat posed by Hezbollah's massive rearmament. That, in turn, would require the Obama administration to reverse its appeasement course towards Iran and tighten, not loosen, the financial screws on the regime..."