Ezra Levant examines UNIFIL’s 46-year failure in Lebanon, where 300 Irish troops allegedly stayed as Hezbollah’s human shields despite Israel’s warnings. Hezbollah’s 100,000+ rockets and Iran-backed aggression post-October 7th justify Israel’s preemptive strikes, Levant argues, while criticizing UN peacekeepers’ past misconduct. Shifting to Canada, he links the opioid crisis—47,000 deaths—to "safe supply" failures and pharma-funded public health, exposing $398M SDTC scandals like Stephen Guibot’s conflicts of interest. The episode ties these issues to broader warnings about institutional complicity and the need for accountability, freedom, and transparency in governance. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey, did you know that there was a United Nations peacekeeper buffer between Israel and Lebanon, and it's been there for 46 years?
Seriously, in between the Hezbollah terrorists and Israel's army are hundreds and hundreds, I think thousands even, of peacekeepers.
Did you know about that?
Well, you're not going to believe what they're up to now.
That's what I want to show you today.
And I got a video to prove it.
I really want you to see the video.
Can you do me a favor?
And I think it's doing yourself a favor too, but it's certainly doing us a favor.
Go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
That's where you get the video version of this podcast.
And I want you to see the video of this border area.
It's eight bucks a month via Rebel News Plus, but that might not seem like a lot of money to you.
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So please go to RebelNewsPlus.com.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Tonight, can you name me just one thing the United Nations is actually good at doing?
It's October 17th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
shame on you, you censorious bug.
Hezbollah Attacks on UN Troops00:16:01
Is Israel going to get into a shooting war with the United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon?
I guess it's a possibility.
There's something absolutely astounding going on I want to talk to you about.
Some background first.
Do you know how long war has been going on between Israel and its northern neighbor, Lebanon?
Well, decades, of course.
We all know that.
By some ways, you could probably say centuries.
I mean, the modern state of Israel was invaded the day it declared independence back in 1948.
Seven Arab armies, if I'm not counting wrong, seven Arab countries declared war on it, and miraculously, Israel survived.
The same thing has been repeated a half a dozen times since.
And of course, Muslims have attacked Jews for centuries.
It's a central story in the Quran, if you don't know.
Anyways, back in 1978, there was a horrible massacre committed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist group against Jewish civilians in northern Israel.
Muslim terrorists hijacked a bus in Israel and murdered 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.
76 more people were wounded.
Their plan was actually worse.
It was to take over an entire hotel, if you can believe it.
Here's a picture of the burnt-out bus, just shocking, but actually the same as today, isn't it?
So Israel invaded Lebanon, but it wasn't really invading to fight the Lebanese.
It was invading to fight against this Muslim terrorist group, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO, which had occupied southern Lebanon as a base from which to attack Israel.
It would be like the cartels in Mexico.
They're different from the government.
The PLO was also fomenting a brutal civil war within Lebanon, by the way.
They had just been kicked out of Jordan, where they had been fomenting a Civil War II.
I wonder if you can see a pattern here.
Anyway, so Israel invaded Lebanon to shut down the PLO base camps, and the world clucked their disapproval.
And so the United Nations told Israel to leave.
And as a promise of safety, it committed to send peacekeepers as a sort of buffer between the terrorist group and Israel.
But of course, terrorist group is essentially a violent group.
They're not going to negotiate away their nature.
Now, the UN resolution that set this up called for, quote, strict respect for the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries.
The PLO never followed that for one second.
I'll read the rest of the text.
The UN calls upon Israel immediately to cease its military action against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its forces from all Lebanese territory.
Even that wording acknowledges that Israel wasn't shooting at the Lebanese government.
It was shooting at the terrorists.
It would be like America going after the cartels in northern Mexico.
Here's the active part of the resolution.
The UN decides, in the light of the request of the government of Lebanon, to establish immediately, under its authority, a United Nations interim force for southern Lebanon for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and security, and assisting the government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area.
The force to be composed of personnel drawn from member states.
So peacekeepers were sent in, that is, soldiers from around the world.
But what could they do?
Were they going to really hunt down terrorists?
That wasn't really in their mandate there, was it?
So they could be targets, of course, and of course they were regularly attacked by terrorists in serious or more serious ways.
Here's a story from a few years ago of a Hezbollah attack on UN troops in their vehicles.
The UN forced there observed things.
That was one of their official tasks, but they weren't there to fight.
If you read that resolution carefully, they weren't there to fight, even though they had armored vehicles and some light weapons.
There were thousands of these UN peacekeepers, and over the years, probably, I'd say probably 100,000 over the course of time.
In the early days, a lot of them were Canadian, actually.
But they didn't really do things.
They didn't attack the terrorists.
They didn't try to stop the terrorists.
They didn't try to stop Israel from coming in to stop the terrorists either.
They were just there.
The name of this force, which exists to this day, is UNIFIL, which stands for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.
Interim, you know, the word interim means.
It means temporary, like a stopgap until something permanent happens.
Well, it's been 46 years of interim.
Some might say, what exactly have they accomplished?
Except pump billions of tax dollars from other countries into the economy in Lebanon, make money for the third world countries that typically staff UNIFIL.
Did you know that the UN actually pays countries to send peacekeepers in?
It's a good way for poor countries like Sri Lanka to make some cash.
And I'm not sure if you know this, but UN peacekeepers are routinely accused with credibility of raping local children.
I'm sorry to say it so bluntly, but here's just one of a gazillion stories of a major child prostitution ring set up by UN peacekeepers in Haiti.
It's so atrocious.
Anyways, fast forward to 2024, same as always, a terrorist group operating in southern Lebanon, defying the Lebanese government, which is powerless to stop them.
Back in the 70s, it was the PLO.
Now it's a terrorist group called Hezbollah, and Iran's support for Hezbollah.
That Lebanon-based terrorist group attacks Israel, so Israel hits back and UNIFIL just stands there and looks on passively.
They don't try to stop any of them.
They're not a target of Israel and generally not a target of Hezbollah.
They're just there like a barnacle on a ship or something.
I honestly don't know what the point of a UN peacekeeper is.
No disrespect, but they don't make peace.
They're not really allowed to.
And they don't keep peace.
I don't know how they can.
Sometimes they act as social workers or emergency humanitarian workers.
I guess that's a plus.
Sometimes they act as sex predators, as I mentioned in the Haiti case.
I'm not sure what the point of peacekeepers is, especially if there is no peace to keep.
But if they've been in Lebanon for 46 years, somebody must be benefiting from them.
So as you know, Israel was attacked in a shocking terrorist invasion last October 7th from Gaza on the south of the country.
The terrorist group that did that is called Hamas, and it's also backed by Iran.
And then Hezbollah in Lebanon opened up another front against Israel in support of Hamas.
So they just started sending rockets in from the north, and 80,000 Israelis have been evacuated from northern Israel for a full year because of this.
So Israel has finally moved against Hezbollah.
First through their incredible Hollywood-style targeted attack at more than 2,000 senior terrorists by blowing up their pagers.
Just incredible.
Then an attack on the boss of Hezbollah, a terrorist named Hassan Nasrallah, that they got in the bunker.
But not just him, they wiped out the entire leadership, the whole organizational chart of the Hezbollah terrorist group gone.
Hezbollah appointed a successor.
He was eliminated within hours.
And now Israel is going in on the ground to root out the terrorist attack bases and tunnels along the border.
Really, just what they were doing in the 1970s.
It was a preemptive attack as Hezbollah had over 100,000 rockets aimed at Israel and was planning a similar terrorist invasion to the one Hamas had done on October 7th.
Israel just decided to preempt that.
And it was brilliant how they did it, all of which is to say the UN did nothing to stop the terrorist attack from Hezbollah against Israel for a solid year.
They did nothing.
And frankly, it wasn't in their mandate.
What are they going to do?
Go and fight the terrorists?
The terrorists would beat them, probably.
Or even if they didn't beat them, they would kill them.
Hezbollah killed hundreds of U.S. Marines and close to 100 French soldiers who stood up to them.
So yeah, the troops from Canada or Ireland were not about to take on Hezbollah.
The UN did nothing to stop the war, either the year of attacks on Israel or, frankly, Israel's recent incursion.
But here's what's weird.
The United Nations often pulls out its peacekeepers when things go sideways.
Sometimes the UN is ordered out of a region by one country or another when war is imminent.
And the peacekeepers always do leave.
Like I said, they're not there to take bullets.
Israel told the Lebanese army to move out of the way before invading.
Not that Lebanon controlled its southern region anyhow.
Israel just said, we're going in now.
Move your guys.
But obviously, Lebanon moved out of the way.
It wasn't in the battle between Israel and Hezbollah.
I'm sure they didn't want Israel crossing over the border, but they also know Hezbollah is a foreign occupying terrorist army, an agent of Iran.
A lot of Lebanese are glad Hezbollah's taken a blow lately.
I don't know if you saw that.
Dancing in the streets in parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran when Hezbollah was knocked down a notch.
This time, UNIFIL has refused to move out of the way as Israel comes into southern Lebanon to root out the Hezbollah terrorists.
It couldn't be clearer.
The UN is deliberately trying to block Israel from defending itself.
And worse, I think in some twisted way, they might actually want Israel to hit a UN peacekeeper just to get bad press for it or to call it a war crime.
It's almost like they're volunteering to be human shields for Hezbollah.
Here's Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The charge that Israel deliberately attacked UNIFIL personnel is completely false.
It's exactly the opposite.
Israel repeatedly asked UNIFIL to get out of harm's way.
It repeatedly asked them to temporarily leave the combat zone, which is right next to Israel's border with Lebanon.
In fact, on the day that Israel began its ground operation next to our border with Lebanon, we asked them specifically, please leave this area so you're not harmed.
Israel is not fighting UNIFIL.
It's not fighting the people of Lebanon.
It is fighting Iran's proxy, Hezbollah, which uses Lebanese territory to attack Israel.
Hezbollah attacked Israel last year without any provocation on October 8th, a day after the Hamas massacre.
And it's continued to attack us ever since by launching over 10,000 rockets and missiles at Israel.
Hezbollah uses UNIFIL facilities and positions as cover while it attacks Israeli cities and communities.
These attacks have claimed the lives of many Israelis, including yesterday.
Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah and will continue to do so.
We regret any harm done to UNIFIL personnel, and the IDF is doing its utmost to prevent such incidents.
But the best way to ensure the safety of UNIFIL personnel is for UNIFIL to heed Israel's requests and to temporarily get out of harm's way.
Get out of the way, he's saying.
Well, no, says the best friends the terrorists have, namely the UN.
Now, as you know, the decision was made that UNIFIL would currently stay in all its position in spite of the calls that were made by the Israeli Defense Forces to vacate the positions that are in the vicinity of the Blue Line.
I want to emphasize that this decision still remains.
It was confirmed this morning by the Secretary General.
We had an executive committee meeting on that specific issue.
And I want also to emphasize that this was a decision that was very carefully considered based on a number of elements and criteria.
Of course, safety and security of the peacekeepers is a paramount priority.
But there are a number of other elements.
And one of them is the responsibility that we have, and UNIFIL has in regard to the mandate that was given to it by the Security Council.
It's a Security Council-mandated operation, and we all feel duty-bound to fulfill to the best of our ability the mandate given by the Security Council.
We are staying.
It's important that there was a decision taken because we are in the south of Lebanon under a Security Council mandate.
So it's important to keep an international presence and to keep the UN flag in the area.
There have been some deliberate attacks against our troops, and peacekeepers were injured.
So this is not only a violation of Resolution 1701, it's also a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
And the parties have the obligation to protect peacekeepers and ensure the safety and security of our troops.
What is needed now is a political and diplomatic solution to this conflict.
It's important for member states, for main stakeholders to step in and find viable solutions to this conflict.
The military solutions that we're seeing right now is not the solution.
The only solution is the political and diplomatic.
More than 350,000 people left the south of Lebanon, but some people cannot leave because they don't have a place to go.
People want to stay in their villages.
And what's relevant right now is to ensure that they are provided with the most basic needs.
The problem right now is that we have been trying to deconflict these activities and provide assistance together, of course, in coordination with UN agencies, Red Cross.
But most of the times, these activities could not take place because of the heavy shelling, but also because we were not getting reassurances from the parties that we could actually move to all these locations.
So very concerning, and it's important for everyone to understand that we need to protect civilians and we need to provide assistance to the people left in South Lebanon.
But like I say, what has the UN done in the past 46 years?
Well, here's a BBC reporter on the ground right now giving his reports.
Take a look at this report.
We are now in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli military is showing to foreign journalists exactly what they found since they invaded a couple of weeks ago.
And it is everything from weapon depots to tunnels, which is what we're seeing right here.
This tunnel was used as an observation post, but there are dozens of these just in this area where the IDF is currently operating.
UN Compound Near Terrorist Tunnels00:03:23
And what they're also telling us is that it is probably 100 meters from the UN compound that you see over here.
According to the Israeli military, they have a hard time believing that they had no idea that Hezbollah was digging 20-meter-deep tunnels just 100 meters from them, something that might have taken years.
And these tunnels are also used to fire anti-tank missiles at villages just across the border.
They hide in these tunnels, use them as infrastructure, and then they attack Israeli sites.
Don't tell me that the UN didn't see every single day Hezbollah terrorists.
That's an observation point.
And the terrorists were just a few hundred feet away.
Here's another video showing the same thing from a different angle.
The Israeli army has discovered countless underground tunnels, ammunition depots, bunkers along the border, really like it was in Gaza.
It was going to be a staging ground for a massive war, a terrorist war, a ground assault.
The only reason it wasn't launched is because Israel moved first in the way I described above.
But it all happened under the nose of the UN.
Of course it did.
But look at what the Irish president, Michael Higgins, said about it.
There's about 300 Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon, and they refuse to move.
And Higgins, he's sort of proud of that.
Here's what he said: It is outrageous that the Israeli defense forces have threatened this peacekeeping force and sought to have them evacuate the villages they are defending.
What?
Hey, hey, hang on.
Hang on a second there.
Did you just say that the peacekeepers are defending the Lebanese?
Are they?
It's not what their mandate said.
I read you the resolution.
Who does Higgins think they're defending the villages from?
From what?
From whom?
Hezbollah has occupied everything.
As you can see, they turned southern Lebanon into a terrorist base.
The UN didn't, hasn't, isn't defending the Lebanese people from any of that.
They didn't defend the Lebanese people from the civil war brought to it by the PLO and then later brought to it by Hezbollah and Iran.
By the way, I read it to you: the UN resolution that created UNIFIL.
It doesn't empower the UN to actually defend anyone or anything.
So I'm not blaming the Irish troops, except maybe in some circumstances they're supposed to defend themselves.
But that's a lie to say those troops were defending anyone.
The United Nations, in case you didn't realize it, is not neutral.
It's not just neutral, it is morally on the side of terrorists.
But more than that, it calmly watched for 46 years as terrorists undermine Lebanon and turned it into a terrorist base.
And now the UN is actively, deliberately getting in the way of Israel, rooting out those same terrorists.
Astonishing.
Stay with us for more.
Government's Role in Health Access00:07:47
Who gets the money?
That's the type of lack of transparency that is absolutely unacceptable in this country.
And, you know, it's interesting.
I always wondered when, you know, before I came here to this place three years ago, you know, people would talk about boards and people getting appointed to boards.
And you think, wow, they don't get paid much.
How do they make money?
And now you understand how, under this NDP Liberal government, how they've done that.
And what they have done is to pad the pockets of companies that they control.
Recently, our freedom-loving Rebel Live conference went off without a hitch in Calgary.
It was a lot of fun and really refreshing to hear from great speakers as they bounced off ideas and perspectives about how to improve our great nation, including how to fix some of the damage that's been caused to it from radical ideologies and agendas at play.
One of those speakers was medical doctor Stephen Ellis, who previously served our country well with the Canadian Armed Forces and now serves as a Conservative MP who is also Canada's shadow minister of health.
Dr. Ellis gave an important and timely talk about what he calls Canada's safe supply foolishness.
47,000 Canadians have died due to drug overdose.
47,000.
And when you think about all of those souls, you know, one of the things that I often think about is none of those folks were born and as they grew started to say, I wish that I could be a drug addict when I grow up.
None of them ever thought that.
Little Sally or little Johnny always had a dream.
And as Alexandre mentioned, you know, I was a family doctor for a very, very long time and had the opportunity to see children, you know, grow from birth all the way into their adulthood.
And some of them have done very well, some of them not so well.
But I know that none of them ever came into my office and said, I wish I could grow up to be addicted to drugs.
You can catch that in full as well as some of the other discussions while we roll them out and support our journalism by subscribing to our exclusive content at RebelNewsPlus.com.
But for now, I wanted to show you a quick interview I had with Dr. Ellis after his talk about what, if anything, would be different for Canadians under a conservative government when it comes to transparency in public health.
As the people slowly are recovering from years of government overreach fueled by COVID hysteria.
You're getting a lot of momentum in your party.
I guess the first question is, what can Canadians expect under the Conservative government if you are to form government?
What would be the first course of action when it comes to public health?
That's interesting.
I was going to tell you that we're going to axe the tax, build the houses, fix the budget, and stop the crime.
Those are certainly the four things that we're absolutely seized with.
You know, from a healthcare perspective, one of the things that we've come to know very easily is there's six and a half million Canadians who don't have access to primary care.
And when we begin to understand that, the system in Canada is really predicated on the fact that through a family doctor is how you access everything, whether it be lab services, x-ray services, or if you need them, specialist services.
And when Canadians don't have that access, then regardless of what people want to think about a system, if you don't have access to a system, it's an absolutely terrible system.
So we have a program called the Blue Seal Program.
We know that there are probably at least 20,000 internationally trained physicians here in this country who can't practice because of the difficulties accessing through the regulators.
And what we will do, and we've worked very hard on this the last two years, is to allow people to have a practice-ready assessment program so that you're able then to very clearly demonstrate the knowledge and skills that you've gained in your country of origin and then of course be able to work and serve Canadians.
So it's a win on both sides in the sense that not only do does someone get to practice their profession here, but they get to serve Canadians, which is incredibly important.
So you will see that come out as a Blue Seal program in our platform.
Before 2020, it was common for most Canadians to not even know their public health officials' names.
And then we saw those names be household names.
There were orders given that many Canadians believe were coercive in nature and divisive.
So how is your party going to rectify that?
What would they do to rebuild trust in public health?
I think the main things are looking at what Premier Smith said earlier this morning.
That's really inside the purview of what provincial governments will do as a response to public health emergencies.
During COVID, I know that there were a lot of private individuals from private companies who also lost their jobs, but it was government who set the stage.
It was government who was enforcing that.
And so we've then said government's not going to do that in the future.
We're going to respect rights.
Anything that we do has to be done through that lens.
And I hope that will have an impact on how private sector operators enact their policies.
And if it doesn't, if we have to do more, then we can do more.
But I think it's an important first step.
And we'll see.
What we're hoping to do is send a signal to the court that these things matter, that if we end up in a dispute, that they've got to consider whether or not government was reasonable and whether or not government put a lens on it of protecting individual rights.
And we know that part of what we've talked about as Canada's Conservatives is that message of freedom and freedom of choice, and that's incredibly important to us.
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Well, we did see changes made in the name of health federally, for example, with not being able to fly, mobility rights and things like that.
So is there anything that you want to comment about in that area?
You know, I think when we begin to reflect on those things, you'll see those come out more fully in the platform in a more general sense of what we believe to be in line with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada.
And, you know, as I said originally, the things that I've been tasked with personally is to look very clearly at the healthcare system and say, how do we affect change there?
I think the questions you're asking, at least from my perspective, are more existential in nature to say, how would a Pierre Polyev government approach this thing?
And, you know, I would say those questions are more better directed at Pierre Polyev than they are at someone who's the conservative health critic.
Okay.
There's other questions that our viewers would probably want to hear.
Focus On Rehabilitation00:04:11
And one is transparency when it comes to the public health agency of Canada.
For example, 85%, roughly around that number, of the funding comes from big pharma.
And when it comes to the studies that they're putting out for the public, those studies are taken by trust from big pharma instead of being done independently.
Is there something the federal government will be doing to help there, maybe using more tax-funded funds to make that agency more independent?
I think when you begin to look at the terrible state of affairs that exists now, so I was able to give a speech on the SDTC scandal that's in front of Parliament right now in understanding that what has happened in the last nine years is that the Trudeau Liberals, in concert with the NDP, have appointed their friends to give out vast amounts of money in this country.
So in this particular scandal, we've now found out that almost $400 million has actually been given to friends and companies that are run by people who make the decision of who gets the money.
That's the type of lack of transparency that is absolutely unacceptable in this country.
And, you know, it's interesting.
I always wondered when, you know, before I came here to this place three years ago, you know, people would talk about boards and people getting appointed to boards.
And you think, well, they don't get paid much.
How do they make money?
And now you understand how, under this NDP Liberal government, how they've done that.
And what they have done is to pad the pockets of companies that they control, thereby increasing their wealth.
For instance, you know, Stephen Guibot was a lobbyist before he came to his current position as the Minister of Environment, and he lobbied the federal government 25 times in the year before he was elected for a company called Cycle Capital.
Cycle Capital, in which he still owns shares, received funding from SDTC.
And he refuses to tell how much his shares are worth and how many shares he owns.
So when you begin to look at the scandals and the lack of transparency that exists at the current time, that is something that obviously Canadians don't want.
It's an intolerable position and something that Canada's Conservatives will not tolerate.
Today you gave a talk about a very important crisis across Canada, especially from where I report in in British Columbia, which is our opioid crisis.
And the leader, Pierre Polyev, has called things like safe inject in sites drug dens.
He's gotten a lot of support for that type of language and a lot of pushback.
What will be the answer to going a different approach from the federal government in that area?
Well, what we know is that so-called safe supply is not safe.
We know that it's a palliative care approach to the treatment of addictions in the sense that when all we do is give people the drugs that they are seeking out, their cases become worse and worse and worse.
They're not being offered any treatment.
And, you know, sadly, I spoke to many people here today, in particular, one gentleman whose daughter is suffering with an addiction to meth.
And when you understand the plight of those parents to say, oh, here's my daughter.
And what resonated with this gentleman was the fact that not any Canadian was born or anybody was born to say, I would like to grow up to be a drug addict.
His daughter was a straight A student, and now here she is living on the streets here in Calgary, calling her dad innumerable times that he comes from Edmonton to meet her.
And the next thing we know from his own words that she's not answering his calls.
It's a terrible affliction.
And clearly, we know that we need to focus on prevention.
We need to focus on disruption in terms of working with law enforcement, making sure that they have the right tools to do their job.
And we also need to focus on rehabilitation.
And rehabilitation is a very complicated topic in the sense that folks have been separated from their jobs and from their families, from other loved ones.
Needs to Focus00:00:25
And to aid them in that recovering of the life and the hope and the aspirations that they had that I spoke about originally, that needs to be the focus of what we're doing here in Canada.
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