Wednesday July 15, 2009, 6:37 pm
Israeli Cows Try Lebanese Shepherds' Souls

A Hezbollah weapons depot exploded in South Lebanon today, 12 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border. The Lebanese president is complaining of Israeli military incursions into Lebanese air space and violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah (Sunday marks the the third anniversary of that war). And a leaked memo reveals that Israel learned nothing from its 1982 fiasco of a war in Lebanon, on its way to the 2006 fiasco.

Lebanese flag
But none of that is the crisis of the day between Lebanon and Israel. This is: Israeli cows are wandering across the border and drinking Lebanese water from a Lebanese lake, in the shadow of Israeli Merkava tanks, getting away with, and making Lebanese shepherds very, very angry.

"There's barely enough water for me and my fellow Lebanese shepherds and each Israeli cow drinks more than 40 of our goats put together. Why doesn't UNIFIL consider this as an violation of the Blue Line?" Ismail Nasser, a shepherd from the Lebanese village of Kfar Shuba, tells Lebanon's Daily Star. (The Blue Line is the Israeli-Lebanese border drawn by the United Nations.)

Shepherds complain that when their dogs run after the cows, Israeli tanks rumble. Yet the shepherds are powerless to stop the cows. They've drafted a letter, through their town council, to the UNIFIL commander, urging him to put an end to the cow incursions--and to plug up two holes in the barbed wire along the border, the cows' crossing point.

The cows have no comment as yet.

Wednesday July 15, 2009, 7:51 pm
mooooove over , they're thirsty... stop pickin' on the cows... Thanks Raffi!

Thursday July 16, 2009, 1:54 pm
The headline is a bit... unserious. (-; But, the story is interesting.

Thursday July 16, 2009, 6:27 pm
Agree with Eric, boring headline, interesting article.

Thursday July 16, 2009, 6:31 pm
the cow's have to drink to .