"Please understand the nature of my job here is to be impartial .... As an unarmed military observer, this is my raison d'etre."
Yet he understood why his position was taking fire.
"This has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity," he wrote.
Retired Major Gen. Lewis MacKenzie took that to mean Hezbollah were entrenched "all around them."
"They come around your position and use you as a shield," MacKenzie told the Sun yesterday.
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The UN post, he wrote in the e-mail, afforded a view of the "Hezbollah static positions in and around our patrol Base."
"It appears that the lion's share of fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah has taken place in our area," he wrote, noting later it was too dangerous to venture out on patrols.
The e-mail appears to contradict the UN's claim there had been no Hezbollah activity in the vicinity of the strike.
