The Red Cross is saying it’s taking seriously newly leaked U.S. diplomatic memos that say Iranian Red Crescent ambulances were used to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah militants during the terrorist group’s 2006 war with Israel.
Too bad Red Cross officials didn’t take it seriously when the Israelis reported the same behavior as it was happening. Unfortunately, those reports were dismissed out of hand and the behavior allowed to continue unchecked, handing the Islamo–ascists a propaganda coups whenever the Israelis had to fire on one of the wolves in ambulance clothing.
These memos may be among the very few dumped by the questionably ethical “online whistleblower” WikiLeaks, that may do some good.
Associated Pres reports that Iran, whose ties to Hezbollah date back nearly 30 years, allegedly funds the militant group, sending millions of dollars annually, and is suspected of supplying much of its arsenal.
Paul Conneally, a spokesman for the Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said the body took the allegations against one of its members very seriously, according to an Associated Press report.
“We will of course discuss it with the Iranian Red Crescent, but for now they remain allegations which are unsubstantiated to the best of our knowledge, and based on a source who is not named,” Conneally told the A P.
I wonder if anyone even bothered to check into it when the Israelis reported this exact abuse of the internationally recognized respect for medical equipment and personnel in war zones.
Conneally said the Iranian Red Crescent, naturally, “denied those allegations vociferously.”
“We have very strict rules and regulations on the use of our emblem,” said Conneally. “It is the integrity of the use of the emblem which we depend on for access to humanitarian situations around the world.”
It should be remembered that the International Red Cross, while accepting the Arab world’s Red Crescent into the organizational fold, has never admitted the Israeli equivalent, the Magen David Adom.
You can tell a lot about someone by who their friends are, and this, as we can see here, goes for organizations and countries, too.
Conneally said the allegations of misusing ambulances “was most definitely news to us,” which is interesting, since I knew about it and I’m not a highly placed Red Cross official.
AP noted in the story that during the monthlong conflict in Lebanon, Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, including several medium-range missiles that hit Haifa. This required a weapons system more sophisticated than the terrorists had before, meaning they got it from somewhere after their main suppliers promised to stop supplying them. Again, Israel has complained of this all along and again been dismissed.
But, the New York Times reported that the dumped documents describe the United States’ failure to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah.
It said a week after Syrian President Bashar Assad assured the U.S. that he would not send new arms to Hezbollah, we got information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.
This is another of the few bits of dumped information that might be useful, because it vindicates Israel which has been made to look like a whiney child by an international press with a pro-Palestinian agenda whenever they complain about the treachery and lies.
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