Israeli Cows Try Lebanese Shepherds' Souls

They have good taste: Israeli cows prefer Lebanese water. (David Silverman/Getty Images)

Myrl Redding must be rolling in his grave.

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.

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.

See Also:

• What Is UNIFIL?
• The 2006 Lebanon War: Israel and Hezbollah Square Off
• Analysis: The Winograd Commission Report on Israel's 2006 War
• Summary Findings of the Winograd Commission
• Israel's 1978 Invasion of Lebanon
• The 1978 PLO Raid on Tel Aviv and Its Consequences