In the summer of 2000, Israeli forces pulled out of South Lebanon, where they had maintained a security buffer between Hezbollah and the Israeli civilians in northern Israel. A few months later, Israel was rewarded for this gesture when Hezbollah ambushed three soldiers on the Israeli side of the border and took them captive.

The Iran-backed terrorists disguised themselves as employees of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and attached UN markings to the trucks used in the attack. The next day, UN workers tried to tow away the trucks but were stopped by Hezbollah operatives. The UN workers turned the vehicles over to Hezbollah.

But there was a twist. The UN had videotaped the scene, which was filled with evidence of the previous day’s kidnapping.

What the UN did with that tape is crucial to understanding the UN’s role in Lebanon and in shaping the conflict up to the present. With that tape, the UN did… nothing.

The news this weekend was saturated with coverage of UNIFIL blaming Israel for putting its cardboard peacekeepers in danger while the IDF responds to Hezbollah’s continued attacks. Israel, in turn, exposed the fact that the UN has allowed Hezbollah to construct tunnels and weapons depots under its nose, protecting the terrorists from IDF counterstrikes.

But all of this begins back in 2000, with that videotape.

Israel’s Labor government pleaded with the UN to turn over the recording, which could help Israel in its search for the captives. Time was, as always, of the essence: Every minute that went by put the kidnapped Israelis’ lives in more danger.

Instead of turning over the tape, the UN lied repeatedly by claiming there was no tape. Eventually, scenes from the tape leaked, revealing what everyone knew the entire time: Of course the tape existed. At that point, the UN publicly admitted they’d had the tape all along.

By then, the soldiers were dead. In 2004, Israel would trade hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails in return for the bodies of the three soldiers.

There was some irony here: The Hezbollah terrorists dressed as UNIFIL and then UNIFIL aided and abetted their getaway and helped ensure the murder of the soldiers. What had started with terrorists impersonating UN members ended with the UN impersonating Hezbollah. The two were on the same team, cooperating in acts of profound evil. It was manifestly unclear where the UN ended and Hezbollah began.

Sound familiar? It should: It’s also the story of UNRWA, the Gaza-based UN agency that has become an adjunct of Hamas. Its members participated in the Oct. 7 attacks last year and even helped hold Israeli hostages. The head of the UNRWA teachers union turned out to be a high-level Hamasnik with ties to Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Oct. 7. We even have video of an UNRWA worker dragging away the body of a murdered Israeli alongside a Hamas terrorist. Where does one end and the other begin?

And by the way, the exact date of that Hezbollah kidnapping 24 years ago after which the UN hid the videotape and obstructed Israel’s attempts to get its soldiers back? Oct. 7, 2000.

This pattern would repeat itself throughout UNIFIL’s tenure in South Lebanon. Israel says the time has come for that tenure to end. Over the weekend, Israeli officials guided journalists along the border so they could see for themselves that Hezbollah is stronger with UNIFIL’s presence than without it.

One of those journalists, the Telegraph’s Jotam Confino, posted pictures and video of a UN compound with a lookout tower 100 yards away from a Hezbollah tunnel entrance. To state the obvious: It’s not a hole in the ground. It’s a tunnel, and constructing such a tunnel requires extremely noisy and conspicuous machinery as well as the regular presence of Hezbollah operatives. These tunnels and weapons caches along the border area were built, and are maintained, with the full knowledge of the United Nations—in fact, in full view of the United Nations.

If you approach a UN compound on South Lebanon you are probably standing above a Hezbollah tunnel or bunker. Where does one end and the other begin?