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The Journal
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Journal
Irish Lebanon commander: 'This has been ten times worse than anything I experienced before'
FOR THE LEADER of Irish troops in Lebanon, Israeli drone strikes and dynamic war fighting made his ninth peacekeeping deployment his most challenging yet. The last time The Journal met Lieutenant Colonel Shane Rockett was in Camp Shamrock in the hills of Lebanon as an Israeli drone buzzed overhead. Before that we met him in the Glen of Imaal as his troops prepared to deploy . Today he returned to Dublin Airport with the last group of his troops from the 125th Infantry Battalion as they completed their peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. They have now been replaced by a new battalion of Irish soldiers. The Tipperary man led the troops on what he said was the most dynamic and active trip of his career since he joined the Irish Defence Forces in 1994. As the soldiers he led embraced loved ones in the arrival hall of Terminal One he spoke about his feelings about being back on Irish soil. He speaks of the 'kinetic' atmosphere on the ground in Lebanon – a slang term soldiers use to describe a situation where they are under fire or there is a largescale bombardment. 'I'm very relieved. My main priority as a commander is to make sure we get everyone back home safe and sound, and we've done that. 'It was probably the most kinetic tour of duty I've been on in my career. And I've had nine tours of duty today. One of those was my first tour back in 1995 and 1996 during Grapes of Wrath, which was another Israeli operation in Lebanon, which was, at the time, a bad situation, but this trip was 10 times worse,' he said. Operation Grapes of Wrath was a 17 day invasion of Lebanon by Israel as they targeted Hezbollah – it was designed to stop missiles being launched into Israel from south Lebanon. Lt Col Shane Rockett at Dublin Airport today. Niall O'Connor / The Journal Niall O'Connor / The Journal / The Journal Just days before Rockett and his team handed over their mission to the 126th Infantry Battalion, Israeli troops fired on a UN post in Sector East and attempted to intimidate an Irish patrol with a targeting or range finder laser from a weapons system . 'This is part of military operations abroad. Laser activity on military operations is not something new to us. 'We've been monitoring it for the time that we've been out there. There was no threat to Irish troops at that time. We report these things as a matter of course – it's occurring daily out there, and it's something that we deal with,' he added. Advertisement Rockett had revealed in an interview during The Journal's visit to south Lebanon in March that troops were dealing with a bad reaction from the local population. It emerged that disinformation from multiple sides, but particularly from Hezbollah and Israeli sources, was causing the issue. 'You have one side, like the Israeli side saying that the UNIFIL troops are hiding or protecting Hezbollah out there, which is not the case at all. 'Then you've Hezbollah saying that we're spying on behalf of Israel. That is also not the case. The UN and UNIFIL are neutral. The Irish Defence Forces are neutral out there and we don't take sides,' he added. Rockett spoke about how his troops operated in Lebanon as they established operations as the ceasefire took hold. 'I think the Irish have a unique way of deploying as peacekeepers overseas. We bring a calmness to a situation, and the locals certainly appreciated that for the six months that we were there. 'We were able to establish our operations and work closely with the Lebanese Armed Forces to make sure that we were able to add to the safe and secure environment in the area of operations,' he added. Rockett said the operations were complicated by the amount of random shelling and bombings by Israel and the activities of Hezbollah. 'It's tense and unpredictable there and every day something is happening. 'The ceasefire is fragile, but we have to have faith in the ceasefire. We have to have faith in what comes after, which is hopefully a peaceful process where the people of Lebanon can get back to doing their normal business,' he added. The Journal / YouTube One of the peacekeepers arriving back through Dublin Airport today was Company Sergeant John Rooney who is the uncle of Private Seán Rooney who was murdered in a Hezbollah controlled area while deployed in Lebanon in December 2022. Today, as he was surrounded by his family, John said: 'I wanted to go over there and make my family proud and I wanted to make him [Seán] proud. 'Seán always looked up to me and I know he is looking down and he is proud of me and I am proud of him.' Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
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First Post
10-05-2025
- Politics
- First Post
Rawalpindi goes Hezbollah: India must push to label Pakistan a terror state
As Indians gauge diplomacy and the international scramble for a ceasefire, the metric by which they gauge US sincerity should be simple: the designation of Pakistan as a state sponsor of terror read more Pakistan now follows the terrorist playbook crafted by Hamas and Hezbollah across decades: stage an attack, threaten escalation and then seek to sidestep accountability by hiding behind the skirts of diplomats in the name of deconfliction, especially as casualties mount. In April 1996, Hezbollah fired several dozen missiles into Israel, including 30 in a single day. Israel responded with 'Operation Grapes of Wrath', an attempt to degrade Hezbollah and drive it north of the Litani River. For days, Hezbollah suffered repeated defeats, but then, on April 18, 1996, Israeli fire struck a UN compound in Qana, southern Lebanon, around which Hezbollah had set up firing positions. More than 100 Lebanese sheltering in the compound died, sparking outrage that forced Israel to curtail Operation Grapes of Wrath and allow Hezbollah to live another day. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In July 2006, Hezbollah crossed Israel's UN-certified border to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers. Israel responded with another offensive to uproot Hezbollah. Again, Hezbollah shielded itself from accountability for its terrorism by manufacturing sympathy for alleged victims. After an Israeli airstrike killed 28 in a Qana apartment building, Hezbollah activated anti-Israeli partisans in the media and in European capitals to pressure Israel to stop its campaign against Hezbollah short of achieving its goals, selling photographs of alleged children's bodies being excavated from the building only to have video and analysis subsequently emerge showing the corpses get up and walk away or be featured elsewhere. Ultimately, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice succumbed to international criticism and pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to curtail the Israeli efforts. Rice oversaw negotiations to make the UN peacekeeping mission more robust, in theory to prevent Hezbollah's re-armament. In reality, it was a fig leaf to make diplomats feign serious counterterrorism while allowing the United Nations to continue to evade responsibility. Hezbollah not only regrouped and re-armed but also terrorised southern Lebanon for another two decades. Meanwhile, its sponsors in the Islamic Republic of Iran understood that they could, quite literally, get away with murder in their efforts to cripple, if not defeat, Israel by attrition. As international diplomats scramble to win a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in the wake of the attack by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists last month at Pahalgam, New Delhi must ensure it does not repeat the mistakes of Israel. The United Nations Secretary-General and European foreign ministers will gladly take a cucumber, paint it yellow, and sell it as a cucumber. They will dress up any agreement both by praising its protection of civilians and by presenting it as a deal to end terrorism. They will simply seek quiet to last long enough so that they cannot be blamed when the violence inevitably re-erupts. Ideology and not grievance motivates terrorists such as those that Pakistan trains. For all they talk about the occupation of Kashmir, they ignore that by law, Pakistan, and not India, occupies Kashmir. Their problem is the idea that Muslims live under the authority of non-Muslims. Indeed, this was at the heart of Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir's original speech in which he belittled the idea of Hindus and Muslims living together. What Prime Minister Narendra Modi understands but must convey to Washington, New York, London, and Brussels is that any return to the status quo ante will inevitably mean terrorism throughout the entirety of India and not only in Jammu and Kashmir. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD In 2006, Condoleezza Rice and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ignored a simple fact: Hezbollah was a proxy of Iran operating on the orders and authority of Iran. While the United States had already designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism, Rice resisted further sanctions as she and her policy planning staff continued President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's efforts to try to negotiate with Iran and reach out to its supposed reformists. Had Rice, Annan, and others forced Tehran to be accountable for its terrorism, the region might not have descended into further war and terror. Today, many Western diplomats seek a similar deal based on sleight of hand or smoke and mirrors. They want quiet and will treat Islamabad's promises as fact, never mind that Asim Munir is no more sincere about peace than late Al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden. As Indians gauge diplomacy and the international scramble for a ceasefire, the metric by which they gauge US sincerity should be simple: the designation of Pakistan as a state sponsor of terror. Indians should interpret any State Department effort to throw a lifeline to Pakistan as signs of American insincerity and outright disdain for India. Just as it is not possible to protect Israel and allow Hamas and Hezbollah to thrive, it is not possible to take India's complaints about Pakistani terror seriously if Washington refuses to hold Islamabad accountable. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Pakistan will complain about its listing, but the answer to that is not moral equivalency but rather to speak with one voice about the unacceptability of terror. The path to ending a state sponsor designation should not be empty promises but real reform. Indians should demand more. The family of every victim of Pahalgam deserves compensation. That money should come not from Pakistan's treasury but rather from the personal accounts of Munir, be they in Rawalpindi, London, Zurich, or Panama. There could be no other way for Pakistan to show that it has internalised that all terrorism is unacceptable than to make its individual cheerleaders and sponsors pay. Munir, of course, should no longer need such money, as any just agreement would see him spend the rest of his life in prison as an accessory to murder. Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost's views. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
