Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview on Lebanese television last week that he never dreamed taking Israeli soldiers hostage would start a war.

"You ask me, if I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not," said the Hezbollah leader. "We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude."

Nasrallah is attempting a little damage control with the Lebanese people whose country was virtually flattened by the Israeli response to the kidnapping. Nasrallah is evidently trying to make the case that it was Israel that overreacted.

Something along the lines of "Who would have thought it would make them so mad?" – as if infiltrating another country and taking its citizens hostage was the moral equivalent to shoplifting a loaf of bread.

In the same interview, Nasrallah demanded the U.N. intervene to secure the release of one of the Hezbollah terrorists captured by the IDF – during the kidnapping operation!

"It could be that one of the participants in the operation has been taken prisoner. This needs a deep check because those who took part in the operation were youths who fought in front lines for an extended period," he said.

Let's recap the actual history, since the revisionist are already hard at work changing the story. First, according to the U.N., the taking of hostages is a recognized international war crime.

Let me repeat that for emphasis. Taking hostages is an international war crime. The U.N. not only says so, they put it in writing. The "International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages," signed at New York in December 1979, is binding on all U.N. members and observers.

Its relevant passage says clearly, "Any person who seizes or detains and threatens to kill, to injure or to continue to detain another person, in order to compel a third party, namely, a State, to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the hostage commits the offense of taking of hostages (hostage taking) within the meaning of this Convention."

Following up on the Convention, a document issued by the U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights proclaims, "Hostage taking constitutes a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and is also a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions."

Hezbollah is a legally elected part of the Lebanese government. Historical revisionists are arguing both sides, saying first that Hezbollah is a "state within a state" when accusing Israel of bombing the "innocent" Lebanese.

Then, when it comes to the question of disarming Hezbollah, it suddenly reverts back to its status as part of Lebanon's "democratically elected" government. When Hezbollah invades a sovereign state to take Israelis hostage, the U.N. looks the other way. When Israel retaliates, the UN calls it an act of "Israeli aggression."

Nasrallah freely admitted he personally ordered the kidnapping, which also caused the deaths of eight Israeli soldiers. Having openly admitted to violating international conventions and multiple violations of U.N. resolutions, Nasrallah has been hailed from the capitals of Europe to the United Nations General Assembly for his "courageous" display of "penitence."

It is like "normal" has been turned upside down. Nasrallah is a self-proclaimed war criminal. He is both the leader of a state within a state and leader of an official, legally elected part of the Lebanese government.

The U.N. ordered a cease-fire without ordering any final disposition for the Israeli hostages. That, lest we forget, was the war crime that started the war in the first place.

And so far, nobody has even mentioned the thousands upon thousands of rockets fired by Hezbollah into Israeli cities, with the targets of those attacks being Israeli civilians.

The purpose of Annan's Middle East trip is to find ways to blame the victims. The war crime that started the war in the first place not only goes unpunished, but is legitimized by the U.N. through its unwillingness to even discuss it as being relevant.

After all, the victims were only Jews. They should be used to it by now. Or something.

With all of this, the U.N. says to Israel, "Trust me." And they will. And they will live to regret it. Again.

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