You say enter, I say invade

Commenter Elvid first found this yesterday, and commenter Stephen Downes reminded us of it today. It speaks to the start of this nightmare in Lebanon and should make everybody wonder why the mainstream media are not mentioning it. Again, it's by Jonathan Cook, a Nazareth-based journalist who is winning my growing respect and admiration. (I added the link.)

Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the “World in brief” section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to “detain” two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas.

The significance of the mission was alluded to in a final phrase describing this as “the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago”. More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year.

As the Observer landed on doorsteps around the UK, however, another daring mission was being launched in Gaza that would attract far more attention from the British media – and prompt far more concern.

Shortly before dawn, armed Palestinians slipped past Israeli military defences to launch an attack on an army post close by Gaza called Kerem Shalom. They sneaked through a half-mile underground tunnel dug under an Israeli-built electronic fence that surrounds the Strip and threw grenades at a tank, killing two soldiers inside. Seizing another, wounded soldier the gunmen then disappeared back into Gaza.

Whereas the Israeli “arrest raid” had passed with barely a murmur, the Palestinian attack a day later received very different coverage. The BBC’s correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnstone, started the ball rolling later the same day in broadcasts in which he referred to the Palestinian attack as “a major escalation in cross-border tensions”. (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 25 June 2006)

Johnstone did not explain why the Palestinian attack on an Israeli army post was an escalation, while the Israeli raid into Gaza the previous day was not. Both were similar actions: violations of a neighbour’s territory.

The Palestinians could justify attacking the military post because the Israeli army has been using it and other fortified positions to fire hundreds of shells into Gaza that have contributed to some 30 civilian deaths over the preceding weeks. Israel could justify launching its mission into Gaza because it blames the two men it seized for being behind some of the hundreds of home-made Qassam rockets that have been fired out of Gaza, mostly ineffectually, but occasionally harming Israeli civilians in the border town of Sderot.

So why was the Palestinian attack, and not the earlier Israeli raid, an escalation?

<SNIP>

There was another notable asymmetry in the media’s use of language and their treatment of the weekend of raids by the Palestinians and the Israelis. In the Observer, we learnt that Israel had “detained” the two Palestinians in an “arrest raid”. These were presented as the legitimate actions of a state that is enforcing the law within the sphere of its sovereignty (notably, in stark contrast to the other media assumption that the occupation of Gaza is over).

So how did the media describe the Palestinians’ seizure of the Israeli soldier the next day? According to Donald MacIntyre of the Independent, Corporal Gilad Shalit was “kidnapped” ('Israel set for military raid over kidnapped soldier, Independent,' 27 June 2006). His colleague Eric Silver considered the soldier “abducted” ('Israel hunts for abducted soldier after dawn raid by militants,' 26 June 2006). Conal Urquhart of the Guardian, referred to him as a “hostage” ('Palestinians hunt for Israeli hostage,' Guardian, 26 June 2006). And BBC online believed him “abducted” and “kidnapped” ('Israel warns of "extreme action",' 28 June 2006)

It was a revealing choice of terminology. Soldiers who are seized by an enemy are usually considered to have been captured; along with being killed, it’s an occupational hazard for a soldier. But Britain’s liberal media preferred to use words that misleadingly suggested Cpl Shalit was a victim, an innocent whose status as a soldier was not relevant to his fate. The Palestinians, as kidnappers and hostage-takers, were clearly not behaving in a legitimate manner.

<SNIP>

The causes of this bias can be divided into four pressures on foreign correspondents: identification with, and assimilation into, the stronger side’s culture; over-reliance on the stronger side’s sources of information; peer pressure and competition; and, most importantly, the pressure to satisfy the expectations of editors back home in the media organisation.

The first pressure derives from the fact that British correspondents, as well as the news agencies they frequently rely on, are almost exclusively based in Israeli locations, such as West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where they share the daily rituals of the host population. Correspondents have Israeli neighbours, not Palestinian ones; they drink and eat in Israeli, not Palestinian, bars and restaurants; they watch Israeli, not Palestinian, TV; and they fear Palestinian suicide attacks, not Israeli army “incursions”.

Another aspect of this assimilation – this one unmentionable in newsrooms – is the long-standing tendency, though admittedly one now finally waning, by British media organisations to prefer Jewish reporters for the “Jerusalem beat”. The media justify this to themselves on several grounds: often a senior Jewish reporter on the staff wants to be based in Jerusalem, in some cases as a prelude to receiving Israeli citizenship; he or she may already speak some Hebrew; and, as a Jew living in a self-declared Jewish state, he or she is likely to find it easier to gain access to officials.

The obvious danger that Jewish reporters who already feel an affinity with Israel before their posting may quickly start to identify with Israel and its goals is not considered an acceptable line of inquiry. Anyone raising it is certain to be dismissed as an anti-Semite.

The second pressure involves the wide range of sources of information foreign correspondents come to rely on in their daily reporting, from the Israeli media to the Israeli army and government press offices. Most of the big Israeli newspapers now have daily editions in English that arrive at reporters’ doors before breakfast and update all day on the internet. The Palestinians do not have the resources to produce competing information. Israeli officials, again unlike their Palestinian counterparts, are usually fluent in English and ready with a statement on any subject.

This asymmetry between Israeli and Palestinian sources of information is compounded by the fact that foreign correspondents usually consider Israeli spokespeople to be more “useful”. It is, after all, Israeli decision-makers who are shaping and determining the course of events. The army’s spokesperson can speak with authority about the timing of the next Gaza invasion, and the government press office knows by heart the themes of the prime minister’s latest unilateral plans.

Palestinian spokespeople, by contrast, are far less effective: they usually know nothing more about Israeli decisions than what they have read in the Israeli papers; they are rarely at the scene of Israeli military “retaliations”, and are often unreliable in the ensuing confusion; and internal political disputes, and a lack of clear hierarchies, often leave spokespeople unsure of what the official Palestinian line is.

Given these differences, the Israeli “version” is usually the first one to hit the headlines, both in the Israeli media and on the international TV channels.

These snippets don't do Cook's analysis justice. If you read one thing about this impending disaster, this is it.

By the way: Just in case it disappears, here's the entire text original Observer brief, which was placed beneath the story of the death of Patsy Ramsey, mother of JonBenet.

Gaza Strip arrests

Israeli forces have detained two Palestinians, who the army said were Hamas militants, in the Gaza Strip, in what observers said was the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago.

From little incursions, giant invasions grow.

Comments

[Scott Disher aka MoDuv]

BTW, an equally cogent and compellingly persuasive analysis of the cretinously pro-zionist MSM coverage of the war-criminalesque Israeli incursions and destruction wrought across Lebanon and in Gaza these past few weeks can be found in this article in the always invigorating "COunterPunch", which was penned by that mag's co-editor, the distinguished and always provocative Alexander Cockburn:

'A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven whole weeks ago...

'Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know'

www.counterpunch.org/Cockburn07212006.html

"...As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.

The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.

Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.

Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.

Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.

Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.

That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.

Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah.

...Israel regrets… But no! As noted above, it doesn’t regret in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice nor John Bolton who is the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.

None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them.

Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.

You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.

...Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.

In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.

Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.

Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.

With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.

The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 -- of two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of Palestine.

When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.

Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.

The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.

Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at will.

So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.

Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire...."

I guess being deadly accurate about U.S. and Israeli complicity in various Middle East conflagrations is a particularly leftie Brit journalista aptitude--Chris Hitchens being the excpetion that proves the rule.

[Antonia Z.]

Thanks for that great read Scott but, please, next time, a link plus a FEW well-chosen graphs should do.

[Jay Currie]

Antonia, you invade a sovereign nation, you enter a quasi state. The PA is not soverign and will not be until and unless it manages to get past the "drive Israel into the sea" routine and negotiates seriously. Which would mean disarming its terrorists as a start.

The case of Lebanon is somewhat more complicated as Lebanon is a sovereign state; however its soverignty does not extend in any serious sense to the Hezbollah controlled south. Plus, Israel withdrew from that region pursuant to UN resolutions which, inter alia, required Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah....As if. At the moment the Israeli incursion is directed at Hezbollah which is a non-soverign militia - or mafia if you prefer - which has been waging war against Israel for six years.

In both cases the Israelis are entirely justified in using whatever means necessary to ensure that the rockets and the kidnappings stop. At the moment it looks like those means will include a through clean out of the southern region of Lebanon and, with luck, a push up the Bekaa Valley towards the command and control centers of Hezbollah.

Until the Israelis have succeeded in their objective of wiping out the Hezbollah threat there is not a chance they will agree to a ceasefire and there is no reason at all that they should.

[Bill-Muskoka]

It is so nice that we can all remember the history and such, but here are the hard facts of reality.

1. Israel has ALREADY KILLED AND INJURED HUNDREDS, so all our rhetoric will not bring back one dead innocent, nor restore one bombed and shattered piece of infrastructure.

2. The politicians, while having ample opportunity to diplomatically stop Israel's blatant war of hate using their massive military, sat on their collective hands and did not save anyone from the horror.

3. It is now too late. The damage is done, the lives shattered and lost.

4. What would true justice demand? More killing in retaliation? How about a War Crimes trial? Who should be arrested and tried? Ohlmert, Bush, Hezbollah leaders?

The nails holes will remain because, again, idiots chose force over thought!

End of story for this round!

[Sean Pelette]

The Hamas raid that captured the Israeli soldier was planned for some time. In fact it involved digging a tunnel under the border. That in itself was an incursion and it took place long before the actual raid itself.

[Jiminy C]

Careful Antonia - don't praise Elvid and Jonathan Cook too highly..."a Nazareth-based journalist who is winning my growing respect and admiration".....they might get stuck with the "Zerb Researcher" perjorative by your admirers-NOT!

AND I'm still wobbling in my typing chair this morning having just read Warren Chinchilla's lukewarm praise of you in HIS BLOG.

[Elvid]

Well, I guess 82 years ago this month, "from little incursions, giant invasions grow", we saw a similar process result in the first World War 1.
Change a couple of the names in this letter sent 82 years ago and you would think that it could have been written from Israel to Lebanon.

http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1914/austro-hungarian-ultimatum.html

....Now the history of the past few years, and particularly the painful events of the 28th of June, have proved the existence of a subversive movement in Serbia, whose object it is to separate certain portions of its territory from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This movement, which came into being under the very eyes of the Serbian Government, subsequently found expression outside of the territory of the Kingdom in acts of terrorism, in a number of attempts at assassination, and in murders.

Far from fulfilling the formal obligations contained in its declaration of the 31st of March, 1909, the Royal Serbian Government has done nothing to suppress this movement. It has tolerated the criminal activities of the various unions and associations directed against the Monarchy, the unchecked utterances of the press, the glorification of the authors of assassinations, the participation of officers and officials in subversive intrigues; it has tolerated an unhealthy propaganda in its public instruction; and it has tolerated, finally, every manifestation which could betray the people of Serbia into hatred of the Monarchy and contempt for its institutions.

This toleration of which the Royal Serbian Government was guilty, was still in evidence at that moment when the events of the twenty-eighth of June exhibited to the whole world the dreadful consequences of such tolerance.

It is clear from the statements and confessions of the criminal authors of the assassination of the twenty-eighth of June, that the murder at Sarajevo was conceived at Belgrade, that the murderers received the weapons and the bombs with which they were equipped from Serbian officers and officials who belonged to the Narodna Odbrana, and, finally, that the dispatch of the criminals and of their weapons to Bosnia was arranged and effected under the conduct of Serbian frontier authorities.

The results brought out by the inquiry no longer permit the Imperial and Royal Government to maintain the attitude of patient tolerance which it has observed for years toward those agitations which center at Belgrade and are spread thence into the territories of the Monarchy. Instead, these results impose upon the Imperial and Royal Government the obligation to put an end to those intrigues, which constitute a standing menace to the peace of the Monarchy.....

[Elvid]

Well, Jimmy, I have already been beaten Warren the K to the punch with a condemnation of my obvious shortcomings.

...The Toronto Star's media columnist, whatsername, has referred to Rhino Party revivalist and internet blowhard "Elvid" as one of her "researchers." He is regularly quoted on the Star's media blog. He has written that he does not like " extra-spicy Mexican food", and defended the use of the "Nitwits" to describe my old school punk band, the "Hot Nasties".
He also, in just the past few days, referred to S..t from Hell as "musical terrorists," "murderers of music" and "practitioners of tone-deafness . He is scum, but he isn't actually the issue. The real issue is this: why doesn't the Rhino Party dissociate itself from him, and denounce him? Why does the Star's official media blog rely upon him as a "researcher?" Why? You got me, babe...

[Arik]

Sean Pelette and Jay Currie together concisely rebut the Ob-zerb-er misreading of events. One can only note how quiet things are in the West Bank, the place where Israel has not yet pointlessly withdrawn. Just coincidence?

As noted by one of Mark Steyn's correspondents this week, the Arabs don't want Israel; they simply don't want the Jews to have Israel. If you can't grasp that essential fact, you simply don't understand the Arabs' motivations.

[sooey]

this post entry strikes me as anti-semantic, ms zerb.

[Scott Disher aka MoDuv]

Although I posted above the Cockburn piece from CounterPunch, I might add that based on my own experience, I regard Hezbollah as very talented and disciplined criminals and islamo-fascist Iranian-rooted militia.

Those with memories may recall that the whole oily Ollie North managed missiles to Iran "Iran Contra" affair and its secret contra-funding side deal came about as a result of Hezbollah having kidnapped the CIA station chief in Beirut, Mr. Buckley, who was then tortured and his extensive confessions taped--the tapes becoming a key leveraged barter item for Iran trading with the Americans.

The irony for Lebanon vis a vis the international pressure and domestic protests which resulted in the withdrawal of Syrian forces last year is that had the Syrians stayed, there would have been no Israeli bombardment or invasion.

The current Israeli destruction of a country that had just been entirely rebuilt following the lengthy civil war and prior Israeli invasion (led by Sharon) will greatly undermine Israel's ability to draw an histrionic line in the sand over rocket attacks on its own cities.

The balance of world opinion has now shifted to the point that attacks on Tel Aviv or Jerusalem will be regarded by many hundreds of millions of educated non-arabic non-muslim observers as just desserts.

...the problem being that should residential areas in Israeli cities be bombed by Iranian or Syrian planes, Israel would likely resort to unleashing its nuclear arsenal.

Finally, in terms of the immoral obscenity of the Bush neo-con war mongerers, I should refer you all to this front-page report from Saturday's NYT:

"U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/world/middleeast/22military.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Claire Brown]

I'm a producer at INN World Report, an independent TV news show that broadcasts across the U.S.

We had on Jonathan Cook talking about how Israel invaded Gaza before the capture of Gilad Shalit last Friday (July 14)

You can stream the show off the internet at:

www.innworldreport.net

July 12 and 13 we had on Professor John Mearsheimer,co-author of the controversial study " The Israel Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy" in a very rare interview discussing the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as well as his paper, which created shockwaves worldwide.

Those interviews can also be streamed at:

www.innworldreport.net

Just click on the respective days on the icons on the left hand side of the site.

We cover Israel, Palestine and Lebanon daily and much more fairly than any other U.S. media -- we give a voice to the voiceless Palestinians and Lebanese. Check us out.

[Jiminy C]

Wear your badge with pride Elvid!

former sockpuppet Warren the K

[stephen.reeves]

We will have either a Jewish secular state as we have now, democratic with Arab representation,free speech,a constitution that works, or we have an Islamic State, with no freedoms, the Jews treated like 10th class citizens, other religions outlawed, and things now taken for granted being banned.
Of course what will happen if Israel goes, is the Arabs will start fighting themselves or will start fighting the Iranians.Do you think the neighbouring states will allow a triumphant Hizbollah, not even Syria.The Bin Ladenists will still be bombing the West.
So there will be no peace in the Middle East whatever happens,the left will support the nasty Islamic Authoritarians as usual, the Right the secular Authoritarians, and the rest of us,(and we are shrinking) will be stuck in the middle.
As for the oil, we may as well get used to riding on bikes like those in the Annex.

[Arik]

An example of Claire Brown's "fair" coverage can be seen here, 5th post from the top: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=1536

"Yesterday and the day before we had on Professor John Mearsheimer, co-author of "The Israel Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy" in a very rare interview. Professor Mearsheimer discussed "The Israel Lobby" paper as well as what is happening now in the Middle East. If anyone is interested go to our website."

Mearsheimer is a curious choice for a network devoted to "fair" coverage of Israel, as dissected by Max Boot in the LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot29mar29,0,7274839.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

'For a more recent instance of the paranoid style, a modern-day Hofstadter could consult "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," a "working paper" by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. With 83 pages of text and 211 footnotes, the Mearsheimer-Walt essay (part of which appeared in the London Review of Books) is as scholarly as those of Welch and McCarthy — and just as nutty....The whole paper is full of such faulty reasoning — not to mention inaccurate "facts" and numerous quotations taken out of context. (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has posted a long list of mistakes at its website camera.org.)'

One can't help wondering how abusive and conspiratorial contributors make it through moderation. They inevitably reflect poorly on the blog overall.

[Jean Crustacean]

Scott Disher deposes thusly:

"The irony for Lebanon vis a vis the international pressure and domestic protests which resulted in the withdrawal of Syrian forces last year is that had the Syrians stayed, there would have been no Israeli bombardment or invasion.

The current Israeli destruction of a country that had just been entirely rebuilt following the lengthy civil war and prior Israeli invasion (led by Sharon) will greatly undermine Israel's ability to draw an histrionic line in the sand over rocket attacks on its own cities.

The balance of world opinion has now shifted to the point that attacks on Tel Aviv or Jerusalem will be regarded by many hundreds of millions of educated non-arabic non-muslim observers as just desserts".

A few observations:

a) I trust, therefore, that Mr. Disher prefers the Syrian boot on the Lebanese neck, never mind that the vast majority of Lebanese desperately wanted the Syrians OUT:

b) I also trust that Mr. Disher has not seen pictures of Beirut taken since the invasion began. The "country" has not been destroyed; designated targets have been hit.

c) I also trust that if Mr. Disher (who purports to speak for the Lebanese) reads the very NYT to which he links, he also noted the following bit of reportage yesterday:

"In the small Christian town of Fatqa just north of Beirut, where the LBC tower lay in a crumpled heap of metal at the top of a large hill, four burning tires blocked the road near the tower and angry Christian residents stopped a car whose occupants were suspected of having ties with Hezbollah, banging it with their fists and shouting at the driver.

The residents, the vast majority of whom are Christian, expressed anger at Hezbollah’s Shiite supporters, saying they had brought the destructive force of Israeli planes on their village. “The guys are so angry,” said Julie Lteif, who was cradling her 2-year-old daughter. “They blame the government and Hezbollah for this. The war is not against us.

The residents said a group of men had gone to an undamaged Hezbollah antenna in the afternoon to try to deactivate it or damage it. “Hezbollah supporters are not among us,” Ms. Lteif said. “Why do they have their tower here?”

A cameraman for LBC, Emil Jabrail, who was standing near the area where the LBC tower was hit, said that no one from Al Manar had been seen in the area, and that if any were to come, “They’d be dead.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/23/world/middleeast/23mideast.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=80bd209ef6f86447&hp&ex=1153627200&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

d) I also note that Mr. Disher manages to skate over the question of just why Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982. Perhaps he thinks they did so just for the hell of it, and not because Arafat and his PLO had turned Lebanon into a war zone after Hussein chucked them out of Jordan in 1970.

e) as for these here "histrionic line(s)", I would like to know what they are. Are they to be snorted, perhaps? How can a geographic *line* be "histrionic", in any event?

As for these alleged eleventy hundred trillion bazillion people who Now Suddenly Hate Israel, I am more inclined to think of that group as the usual assortment of leftie Yank/Israel haters, appeasers, anti-Semites and isolationists bleating their usual subliterate silliness. I am much more inclined to trust the observations of (South Lebanon-born Shi'a Muslim) Fouad Ajami:

"...In his cocoon, Nasrallah did not accurately judge the temper of his own country to begin with. No less a figure than the hereditary leader of the Druze community, Walid Jumblatt, was quick to break with Hezbollah, and to read this crisis as it really is. "We had been trying for months," he said, "to spring our country out of the Syrian-Iranian trap, and here we are forcibly pushed into that trap again." In this two-front war--Hamas's in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah's in Lebanon--Mr. Jumblatt saw the fine hand of the Syrian regime attempting to retrieve its dominion in Lebanon, and to forestall the international investigations of its reign of terror in that country.

In the same vein, a broad coalition of anti-Syrian Lebanese political parties and associations that had come together in the aftermath of the assassination last year of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, called into question the very rationale of this operation, and its timing: "Is it Lebanon's fate to endure the killing of its citizens and the destruction of its economy and its tourist season in order to serve the interests of empty nationalist slogans?"

In retrospect, Ehud Barak's withdrawal from Israel's "security zone" in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2000 had robbed Hezbollah of its raison d'être. It was said that the "resistance movement" would need a "soft landing" and a transition to a normal political world. But the imperative of disarming Hezbollah and pulling it back from the international border with Israel was never put into effect. Hezbollah found its way into Parliament, was given two cabinet posts in the most recent government, and branched out into real estate ventures; but the heavy military infrastructure survived and, indeed, was to be augmented in the years that followed Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon..."

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008681

Personal notes:

To Bill-Muskoka: Exclamation points make your argument all the more cogent!!!

To Jiminy: Congrats on move (northward?)

To Elvid: Two words: ROTARY CLUB

[Jiminy C]

Hey Crusty one - how doth thou knowest?
Thy trusty Email address hath died - please reincarnate!

[stephen.reeves]

"One can't help wondering how abusive and conspiratorial contributors make it through moderation. They inevitably reflect poorly on the blog overall."
Ank,
This blog is about bias in the media and how it is too pro-American and pro-Israel, The U.S is the evil empire, everone else are peaceloving peoples, the more outrageous the conspiracy theory the better.It is even better now that Harper is setting the Neo Con agenda for the new Canadian Empire.

[Antonia Z.]

I am not a censor.

I allow as much through as I can, subject to hate speech and libel laws. I have deleted a few comments when they have veered into frothing flame wars, and I have edited a few for reasons of taste.

Otherwise, it's a free-for-all although, truth be told, I wish people would stick to the topic and avoid the insults.

[Arik]

The point isn't censorship, the point is whether you (and your employer--who hosts this site) want your blog to be taken seriously. Judging by the distinct lack of TrackBacks for your posts (I count only one among all the topics appearing upfront on today's blog--one of those CBC ones), it would appear that the more "inane" among your contributors (as noted by other observers) have made their mark all too deeply. You might therefore consider declining to clutter up your comments sections with their inanities.

Similarly, if someone posts in a professional media capacity with the intent of generating traffic for her site, it would be prudent due diligence for the moderation process to consider whether it's the sort of source one would implicitly endorse with what amounts to a free ad.

If nothing else, these considerations might provide some cover, however flimsy, against the suspicion that any Jew-hating crackpot is welcome to congregate here, albeit in splendid (and richly deserved) isolation from the rest of the blogosphere.

[Antonia Z.]

Thanks Arik. I do appreciate the advice. Really. I do. And maybe, one day I will lose my patience with some of the regulars (and they know who they are) and just start deleting them.

But I think that, whenever the topic is Israel or anything related to Israel, or the Middle East, or Islam for that matter, especially in this post 9/11 world, the temperature rises and the extremes -- on both sides -- come out.

Let me tell you a story.

A friend of mine used to host CBC Radio's Cross Country Check-up. This was many many years ago. He told me that the subject he hated the most was the Middle East because it always brought out the worst in people and the worst people.

T'was ever thus.

As for the trackbacks, I doubt they are an indication of anything. I am not a purely political blog and am not in some mutual admiration society such as the Blgging Tories. I know how many hits I get and I have to say I am satisfied with them. Sure I'd like more. Who wouldn't? But they're respectable -- and growing.

[Antonia Z.]

As it turns out, I am doing okay. More than okay!

Completely by coincidence, Meaghan Walker-Williams just happened to do this today.

http://somenamedia.blogspot.com/2006/07/alexa-ratings-would-tend-to-show-tlb.html

[sooey]

you're doing okay, ms zerb - but the middle east is doing GREAT! apparently, those aren't death throes we're witnessing - they're birth pangs! we're saved!:

Earlier, Rice told a news conference in Washington, "What we're seeing here ... are the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one."

[Bill-Muskoka]

Scott,

Thanks for reminding all of us of Ollie (I lied to Congress and am damn proud of it) North, the biggest traitor to the Constitution in Marine Corps history.

You are right on spot as well regarding, yet another, hypocrisy of our God fearing, flag waving, Super Patriotic southern neighbor!

[Hockey Fan]

The first question MSM ask themselves when covering events such as the recent Mid East crisis is "How can we make Bush look bad?". Just think of the MSM as reporting the news from the viewpoint of the Democratic Party.

But, so far,surprisingly, no "anti-Bush" angle has been agreed upon. The facts surrounding this crisis, are pretty stark and speak for themsleves -- Hezbollah goes too far and Israel is forced to respond. Pretty straight forward. And the MSM coverage has largely stayed focussed. And as long as the MSM stays focussed and doesn't veer off into invented scandals, supporters of Israel won't have much to complain about in terms of media coverage. All angles are upon for examination, of course, but as long as facts are presented as facts most of us will be reasonably happy.

Naturally, the Bush-hating lunatic fringe is not happy with the coverage. But what else is new? To the BDSers, unless the MSM is actively working against Bush, then they must be in collusion with him. It's been a rough stretch for BDSers. And they won't be happy until their next deranged conspiracy theory crosses over into the MSM. CNN, gave it a valiant effort when, one of their reporters embedded himself with Hezbollah and provided dramatic footage of destroyed buildings. "Lebanon is rubble!" cried the credulous. "Disproportionate!" cried the Hezbollah supporters. "Israel targetting civilians!" cried the simple-minded. But the "Lebanon is destroyed" meme did not really gain much traction (mostly due to the fact that Lebanon has not been destroyed).

But this will all be over very soon. Maybe even before the MSM catches their breath and starts talking about genocide and atrocities. It appears that Hezbollah has used up almost all of their rockets and Iran will have trouble sending them more without anyone noticing. So,hopefully, Israel can eradicate Hezbollah (terrorist organization, remember) and the Israel/Lebanon border will become more secure. We all want the free and democratic country to defeat the terrorist entity, don't we?

One last thing. The Democrats are well on their way to losing the Jewish vote. Don't forget, Jews vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. If this block moves over to the Republicans, which is looking more and more likely, the Democratic Party will accelerate their slide toward irrelevance