NPR’s recent report on Israel and UNIFIL was like a stale pretzel: twisted, brittle, hollow, and a little salty.
In NPR’s recent report (Oct. 27), “U.N. peacekeepers leaving Lebanon after pressure from U.S. and Israel,” Jane Arraf ignored two-thirds of the UNIFIL (U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon) mandate, made Israel out to be the bad actor between it and Hezbollah and ignored the uselessness of UNIFIL over nearly a half-century. The result was a report which left uneducated listeners with wrong ideas, including the claim that UNIFIL’s primary purpose was to monitor Israel and, alarmingly, failing to explain that Hezbollah amassed tens of thousands of weapons and dug tunnels and training centers under the nose of the “international peacekeepers.”
NPR’s broadcast began by stating the U.S. and Israel pressured the U.N. to shut down the interim peacekeeping force, but there was no discussion explaining why the two countries wanted UNIFIL’s mandate to end. Presumably, had there been one, NPR would have had to acknowledge all components of UNIFIL’s original and updated mandate(s), instead of only the one-third that Arraf mentioned, stating: “UNIFIL was created to monitor Israel’s withdrawal from South Lebanon in 1978.”
Security Council Resolution 425 also mandated UNIFIL to “restor[e] international peace and security and [assist] the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area . . .” The component NPR shared is the only one of the three that has been irrelevant for a long time, as Israel largely completed it in 1978. Meanwhile, the other two unmentioned mandates from 1978 have yet to be fulfilled.
In addition to those omissions, the broadcast gave no context as to why Israel was in South Lebanon in 1978. On Mar. 11, 1978, Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorists, operating out of South Lebanon blew up two buses in Israel, murdering approximately three dozen Israelis, including children, and wounding more than 70. The Israel Defense forces (IDF) responded by entering southern Lebanon. It commenced Operation Litani to clear out the areas the PLO used as terrorist bases south of the Litani River. Because UNIFIL did not fulfill its mandate to restore peace in the south of Lebanon and assist the Lebanese government in retaking control, terrorist groups remained.
Israel has long argued that because UNIFIL is only a monitoring force, it cannot disarm Hezbollah and solely reports and patrols. However, UNIFIL forces have also been killed and wounded by Hezbollah and harassed or injured by Lebanese Hezbollah sympathizers. In addition, UNIFIL forces have constrained Israeli military operations, which benefits Hezbollah.
NPR failed its audience again when it did not explain that UNIFIL’s mandate expanded under the 2006 U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. Among other things, the Resolution called for immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks on Israel and called for the Lebanese government to secure its borders with UNIFIL’s assistance. It was not only intended to conclude hostilities, but it required Hezbollah to disarm. Yet, in the last twenty years, under UNIFIL’s nose, Hezbollah rebuilt tunnels, rockets, and military positions south of the Litani River (from where the designated terrorist organization was supposed to leave pursuant to UN Resolution 1701).
You might be asking yourself the same question we are: How come Hezbollah is able to embed their weapons just a few meters away from a UNIFIL post? https://t.co/ZlcmW9P3sD
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 14, 2024
Allowing the international narco-terrorist organization to stockpile more weapons than most European armies is antithetical to both restoring peace and security and facilitating governmental control of southern Lebanon. Weapons have been found in roughly a third of the homes in southern Lebanon.
While this went unacknowledged by UNIFIL and NPR, the broadcast quoted both a peacekeeper and UNIFIL’s deputy head, Hervé Lecoq for the proposition that without UNIFIL, “no one will be there to witness the destruction in South Lebanon.” Apparently, UNIFIL has eyes for some things.
In more audio of Lecoq, he lamented both that the U.S. pushed France out of “its prominent role in Lebanon in terms of contributing to security and . . . stability in the south” (ironic, given France’s ongoing difficulties with domestic security and stability) but also said fire has been “one-sided” from Israel since the U.S. brokered ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. NPR added, by mimicking UNIFIL’s biases, that Hezbollah has largely abided by the ceasefire while Israel has consistently broken it.
CAMERA has written about NPR’s narrative shaping vis-à-vis the ceasefire in Lebanon. In addition to NPR not reporting Hezbollah violations, the ceasefire explicitly permitted Israel to operate in self-defense during the ceasefire, which it interpreted as dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure. Further, in a March 2026 U.N. Security Council report, in addition to the 1,900 ceasefire violations the U.N. acknowledged the Israeli military reported of Hezbollah, UNIFIL acknowledged that 90% of the 3,091 “violations of Lebanese airspace” it attributed to Israel were drones (and notably, UNIFIL observed only 11 air strikes in the approximately 4,682 overflight hours it observed).
The U.N. Security Council report also acknowledged Israel’s concern that Hezbollah was rearming faster than it was being disarmed by the Lebanese Armed Forces. Meanwhile, the U.N. said it is not in a position to substantiate allegations of arms transfers. Therefore, Hezbollah’s rearming is not logged. If Israel acts in response to Hezbollah’s rearming which goes unlogged, we can understand the origin of UNIFIL’s misleading statement, repeated by NPR, that fire is “one-sided.”
Arraf stated the Israeli position: that UNIFIL was never able to reign in Hezbollah. She immediately countered, wrongly, “but that was never their mandate, which focuses on monitoring the ceasefire and helping strengthen the Lebanese army.”
Without monitors, NPR reports Lecoq as saying, no one will be able to “verify Hezbollah threats from the south of Lebanon against Israel, the reason Israel has given for leveling large stretches of Lebanese border villages.” But UNIFIL hasn’t verified threats there anyway, and Hezbollah’s mere presence there violates ceasefire conditions. The IDF has been relegated to releasing photographic and video proof of the non-logged violations like Hezbollah tunnels, weapon stores, and their embedding in civilian infrastructure. In late 2025, CAMERA issued a press advisory on this issue.
Finally, Arraf remarked that without UNIFIL, “journalists will likely not be able to bear witness” in southern Lebanon, because UNIFIL has previously been able to take NPR “to report on the devastation.” Of course, NPR previously reported from Lebanese villages while being escorted by professional Hezbollah propagandists. UNIFIL is thus useless even to NPR.