Mere Rhetoric: Katyushas Hit Israel Two Days After UNIFIL Commander Promises Peace

First this morning's news. which sounds a lot more dramatic than it actually is:

Four Katyusha rockets struck the town of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel Sunday afternoon, causing damage but no injuries. Two or three rockets landed in Kiryat Shmona while one hit Lebanese territory. The identity of the attackers has not been confirmed, and the IDF was looking into whether the rockets were fired by Hizbullah or another group, possibly Palestinian, operating from Lebanon. Hizbullah has no connection at all to the Katyusha attack, the guerilla organization announced Sunday evening.

Hezbollah isn't usually in the practice of falsely denying attacks. Their strategy is usually to bluster and re-raise even when they don't want things to escalate - part of the discussion last summer was whether the kidnapping had been done by lower level field commanders who then forced Hezbollah to take responsibility for their actions. So if Hezbollah says they didn't do it, they probably didn't do it.

That said, here's the UNIFIL field commander talking about how well UNIFIL is doing its job:

Dismissing claims that Hizbullah has returned to its former strength in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL commander Maj.-Gen. Claudio Graziano told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview on Thursday that the guerrilla group was practically non-existent south of the Litani River and that if the peacekeeping mission continued, the threat of war would be completely removed within three years... "In my area of operations there is no open hostile activity and we also do not see a rearmament happening," he said. "We are physically patrolling every corner of southern Lebanon and if there was a bunker [system] we would have found it."

Yeah, apparently they missed the corner where the Katyushas are being fired from. Small oversight. But hey - at least he wasn't arrogant and condescending about Israel's security concerns. Because that would have made him look particularly stupid.

References:
* Up to 4 Katyusha rockets fired at northern Israel; none hurt [JPost]
* 'Hizbullah not rearming in S. Lebanon' [JPost]

Previously:
* UNIFIL Pretends Not To Know How Those Big Bombs Got To The Border
* UNIFIL Given Authorization To Keep Sucking
* UNIFIL Involvement in 2000 Kidnapping Not News. Involvement of UNIFIL Soldier Who Thought of Lebanon as "Second Homeland", However, Is.

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

About

Omri Ceren is a PhD student studying Rhetoric at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. He lives in downtown Los Angeles.
Email: omri@mererhetoric.com
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