Even the most just wars are a messy business in which the innocent are hurt alongside combatants. This is especially true when the combatants deliberately use civilians as a shield or a political tool.

Back in April, blue-helmeted U.N. troops, attempting to promote the first legitimate election in Congo in four decades, participated in a “massacre” of 30 Ituri men, women, and children, the British journalist Aidan Hartley reported in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times on Friday.

Secretary-General Annan said he was unaware of the allegations of atrocities committed by troops under his command. “I will look into these issues,” he promised reporters on Friday.

Meanwhile, at the Security Council, where Congo is one of 15 members, Mr. Annan yesterday called for an immediate condemnation of Israel’s actions at Kfar Qana in southern Lebanon, again urging an end to all “hostilities” prior to the disarming of Hezbollah.

Israel’s argument — that its army’s moral code, not to mention its political interest in extending its anti-terror military campaign, would preclude deliberate targeting of defenseless civilians — remained unheard. It was forced to declare a temporary suspension of its aerial activities. For the next couple of days, civilians will be allowed to leave southern Lebanon, with no way to verify whether non-uniformed Hezbollah fighters are among them.

Mr. Annan issued his rebuke just before the release of a video depiction of a Hezbollah missile launch from a spot adjacent to the Qana building where dozens of civilians found refuge. An air force briefer, Brigadier General Amir Eshel, later added that the only Israeli missile was shot at the building seven hours prior to the first report from the ground of its collapse, which killed at least 57 civilians.

Aiming to assume the role of white knight, Mr. Annan is weighing a trip to Damascus, Tehran, or both, Turtle Bay sources tell me. Desperate for a final, term-defining diplomatic achievement, they say, he is angling to position himself, or an envoy on his behalf, as a negotiator with the bad guys.

Hezbollah and its supporters, however, are no fans of the United Nations, or of Mr. Annan, who yesterday lauded Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, the main Shiite representative and Hezbollah supporter in Beirut, for his “statesmanlike appeals for calm” during attacks on a U.N. post in Beirut. (Mr. Annan spoke before a Palestinian Arab mob similarly stormed the United Nations’ offices in Gaza.)

No Jerusalem politician was thus congratulated last week by Mr. Annan; instead, he accused Israel of deliberately targeting four unarmed U.N. troops in Khiyam, in the heart of Hezbollah-land.

Mr. Annan was so quick to denounce Israel that yesterday he warned the council of two potential atrocities that have yet to take place. Israel had asked U.N. observers to help evacuate civilians from the Lebanese villages of Ramyah and Ayta ash-Shab, Mr. Annan said. The United Nations will not assume responsibility for those civilians once Israel attacks, he volunteered.

In contrast to his promise to investigate his own troops’ actions in Congo, Mr. Annan repeatedly issues immediate guilty verdicts against Israel’s army and then calls for investigations. This brand of justice helps to inflame passions, which yesterday manifested themselves in the attacks against U.N. offices in Gaza and Beirut.

Last week, Mr. Annan expended so much energy in trying to substantiate his assertion that Israel deliberately attacked the U.N. troops that he had no time to think of how to protect the lives of the badly defended troops under his command. The United Nations’ Lebanon contingent was left inside a dangerous war zone, performing meaningless tasks, which a former U.N. commander in Bosnia, the Canadian General Stephen MacKenzie, described as “counting artillery shells.”

Israel aims to diminish Hezbollah’s military capabilities significantly prior to the deployment of a French-led military force that would, one hopes, prevent its rearming. It needs two more weeks to achieve that goal, Prime Minister Olmert said yesterday. But events like Qana and Khiyam take their toll, accelerating the push for premature cease-fire.

Mr. Annan is not alone. According to British press reports London’s foreign office is in near open rebellion over Prime Minister Blair’s refusal to join the call for an immediate cease-fire.

Israel cannot rely on the kind of patience the Allies in World War II displayed to the razing, in the service of a just cause, of whole cities like Dresden. It also cannot block television cameras as it fights in Lebanon, as Russia does in Chechnya or China in Tibet. Unlike Congo, Israel’s war efforts are extensively documented and their validity constantly second-guessed. On that, regrettably, Mr. Annan is firmly on the bandwagon.