The View from over there

Way down deep in the comments section here, a debate on the meaning of anti-Semitism has erupted, and has, so far, remained totally civil. (Amazing. I plan to keep it that way.) The only reason I bring it to the fore is because of this column by my friend Danny Schechter the Media Dissector. His stuff always provokes. This time, he contends that the reason Americans are out of step with the rest of the world on the Middle East is because the media misleads them into it.

(S)urveys have shown over the years that ordinary members of the Jewish community are far more politically progressive about the need for peace than those who claim to be their “leaders,” self-righteous elite who sit on top of vast fundraising machines. They have well-paid jobs specializing in spreading fear and alarm about anti-Semitism as a tool for frequent solicitations and psychological conditioning. The memory of the Holocaust is still manipulated for political purposes.

There is a well-financed Israeli lobby that funds politicians and dominates the op-ed pages. What else explains the dramatic difference in public opinion in this country and overseas? Why do polls show Americans and Israelis backing the war while the world calls for a cease fire?

<SNIP>

Somehow many in our media have turned the words Israel and Jews into synonyms, as if all Jews are hard-line Zionists who automatically back the policies and practices of the Israeli government, every Israeli government. Ironically, there is more debate among Jews in Israel on these issues than is reported, or somehow allowed in the United States where Jewish critics of Israel policies are often ignored or labeled “self-hating” Jews.

Many organizations, especially in Democratic Party circles (and even the blogosphere) would prefer to ignore the issue for fear of being divisive or attacked. Notice how many in the Congress rallied to Israel’s side before the facts were even in. Notice how few, even in the anti-war contingent, had the courage to speak out.

<SNIP>

It's not surprising that many Jews are unaware of what’s happening largely because of the information diet they are exposed to, every day and in all media--just like the rest of us. They are expected to recite the “official” mantra—not think for themselves.

I have been reading opinion pieces from both Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post, which is further to the right, almost daily, and I have to say that their tone and content are inconsistent with the media here. For example, there we see calls for the heads of the Olmert government, with frank admissions that Israel botched the war. Here, the MSM tiptoe through the issues (with the exception of the National Post, of course) while the ''ethnic'' press (obviously I can only read the English-language versions) is screechingly partisan.

It's an emotional, existential issue. I know. But we have reached the point in the West where it MUST be discussed, openly and rationally, free of cant, rancour and hatred.

Is that even possible?

UPDATE (AUG. 18/06 @ 17:38): Apparently not. Another thread is biting the dust, the comments closed. If you think this means that I will not be continuing to cover the coverage of the Middle East, think again.

The hardest story to cover

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED:

Via Canadian Journalist:

Dunno how I missed this in yesterday's New York Times (sub. req'd), considering everything that has happened on this blog in recent weeks.

Wars in the modern media age often come complete with their own journalistic difficulties.

Although doctored and stage-managed photographs out of Lebanon garnered their share of headlines last week, they are just a part of a larger, underlying issue: the role of images in fairly portraying the conflict incited nearly five weeks ago by Hezbollah’s raid into Israel and its kidnapping of two soldiers.

Particularly vexing for many American news organizations is the struggle to determine how and in what proportion images of civilian dead and injured should be displayed in their coverage, when one side’s casualties greatly surpass the other.

The journalistic calculus is made tougher by the involvement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a topic that bedevils news editors like no other, and an organization, Hezbollah, that is considered a terrorist group by the United States government.

<SNIP>

Editors and executives at newspapers, newsmagazines and the broadcast and cable networks say they do not impose a formula for fairness on coverage of this conflagration. “This is not a sporting event, where we’re toting up the scores of both sides,” said Jonathan Klein, president of CNN for the United States.

But, they concede, they are very conscious of keeping a rough balance over time, whether that is a 24-hour cable news cycle or a week’s worth of evening broadcasts and newspapers. And they pay special attention to images because of their potency.

“Photos are trickier than words, because their content is in large measure emotional, visceral, and because you can’t edit their content,” said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. “You can’t insert a ‘to be sure’ paragraph in a photo.”

<SNIP>

Jon Banner, executive producer of “World News With Charles Gibson” on ABC, said he could not think of a news event in recent memory more difficult to cover, given the complexity of the issues and powerful nature of the images. Usually ABC has run one segment from Lebanon and one from Israel as a way to tell both sides of the fighting.

That, to some, is a dereliction of journalistic duty. Some critics of Israel argue that because the death tolls and destruction are greater in Lebanon, a proportionality of sorts should inform the resulting reports; anything else betrays a pro-Israeli stance. But supporters of Israel say such an approach bestows a misguided moral equivalence. Israel is a democratic nation exercising its right to self-defense, they argue, while Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that uses the Lebanese people as human shields.

<SNIP>

Executives at news organizations, long steeled to complaints about their Middle East coverage from various sides, said they tried to avoid pandering to critics. “They don’t want you to be balanced in your coverage,” said Mr. Keller of The Times. “They want you to portray the morality of the war as they see it.”

I can agree with that.

UPPITY DATE: Further and further to those allegations of staged Qana photos, here's (YouTube) a very interesting German-language deconstruction of the propaganda that went into the making of some of them. Note the warning of potential inaccuracies.

UPPERDATE (Aug. 16 @ 5:40): Unlike the right-wing pajamahadeen, AP reporter Kathy Gannon worked to track down the infamous "Green Helmet'' that the flogosphere has been using to make themselves feel better about the slaughter of civilians at Qana.

After hours of digging in the blistering heat, Salam Daher emerged from the wreckage with the body of a 9-month-old baby, a blue pacifier still pinned to its nightshirt.

He held the infant up and, click, an Associated Press photographer snapped another picture of Daher, in his trademark green helmet, displaying a civilian victim of Israeli bombs for the world to see.

Daher, a member of the civil defense for 20 years, has been photographed with bodies of the dead in two wars now — first in 1996 and most recently with the baby on July 30 __ both times after Israeli attacks in the village of Qana six miles southeast of the city.

For that reason, some Web sites have labeled him the "Green Helmet," and accused him of being a member of the Hezbollah guerrilla group, and of showing off bodies as propaganda.

"But that isn't true," he told The Associated Press. He is not affiliated with any party, he said. "I am just a civil defense worker. I have done this job all my life."

<SNIP>

After hours of digging, Daher emerged with the youngest victim. In a parched voice, he shouted something in Arabic and held the child up for the photographer.

To many in the West, such photographs are surprising; but they are not unusual in the Middle East, where grief and drama are often intertwined, and that can include displaying of bodies.

Bloggers have accused rescue workers and volunteers of showing off victims for the media. The Lebanese make no apologies for wanting the world to see the civilian suffering in the Israeli onslaught aimed at uprooting Hezbollah.

Needless to say, the chairborne commandariat chose to discredit both Gannon and her dispatch.

Pity the other nation

The Star's Oakland Ross, who has been in the thick of the Middle East conflict, delivered a fine feature today on Israel's attempts to win the propaganda/PR war. He reports on a government guided bus tour for journalists designed to show that Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, are suffering as much as the Lebanese.

Yesterday's eight-hour-long bus tour of the Israeli war zone — sponsored by the country's foreign ministry in conjunction with a Washington-based non-governmental organization called The Israel Project — was aimed, at least in part, at correcting that perceived imbalance, the critical question of just who, in this month-long horror story of rockets, bombs, and blood, is suffering more.

Israelis? Or Lebanese?

The question is much on the minds of Israelis these days, many of whom fear this country may be losing the all-important public-relations war — a battle for international hearts and minds — even as Israel's armed forces make gains in the air and on the battered ground of Lebanon.

This past weekend, an editorial in the Jerusalem Post challenged the government here to put more conviction and resources into presenting the tale of this country's torment, so as to counter the searing images and accounts of Lebanon's pain that some say have won greater international attention and sympathy.

As for The Israel Project, its central purpose is to assist journalists around the world in reporting on Israel, but it also has its own agenda.

"Obviously, we are for Israel," said Jennifer Packer, normally based in Washington, who was one of two of the organization's representatives on yesterday's war-bound bus. "The idea is that Israel does as much as it can for itself and we try to help."

She politely declined to comment when asked the question: who is suffering more — Israelis or Lebanese?

On the surface, however, many people would likely say there is little comparison between the two sides, except that both are surely suffering.

In Lebanon, at least 689 people have been killed in the conflict so far — including 605 civilians, 29 soldiers and at least 55 Hezbollah guerrillas. Hundreds of thousands have been rendered homeless. Whole neighbourhoods have been crushed by Israeli aerial bombardment. Roads and bridges have been obliterated. Countless people have lost any semblance of their former lives and will probably never recover them again.

A life is a life is a life, it goes without saying, but the losses on the Israeli side have been comparatively modest to date — 101 dead, including 65 soldiers and 36 civilians.

This was on the front page, as it deserved to be.

The Israel Project is, according to its website, "an international non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace. The Israel Project provides journalists, leaders and opinion-makers accurate information about Israel."

Incidentally, this is might relevant reading right now.

More Photo Follies

Now an AP photo from Beirut has come under scrutiny. It depicts a Lebanese woman, on two different days, reacting to the destruction is South Beirut.

The pictures look posed. Or perhaps the woman is a drama queen. Or Hezbollah.

Or maybe there's a simpler explanation: Maybe her house really was demolished by bombs. Maybe she keeps coming back to it. Maybe she has nowhere else to go.

After all, that isn't exactly prime real estate right now in the background.

It's right to question the photo's veracity. Its wrong to assume that, just because two different photographers on two different days shot the same woman, that it is a hoax.

This photo fakery obsession is consuming the angrysphere.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes Gate

Here's today's treeware column on Reutersgate, with some links. It pretty much says everything I wanted to say on the matter, but I have added in some commentary which didn't make it into the paper for lack of space. Note that our Catherine Farley's superb graphic renderings of how the photos were doctored are not online.

Turned out that where there was too much smoke, there was also fire.

For the past four days, ever since the virulently anti-Muslim/Arab website Little Green Footballs nailed the news agency Reuters for its doctored photo of a smouldering Beirut, the right-wing blogosphere has been crowing about how it has once again shot down the mainstream media (MSM).

This time, the direct hit was on Lebanese freelancer Adnan Hajj, who has been shooting for the British agency since 1993.

What the guy did is moronic. Not only did he clumsily manipulate one photo to increase billowing black smoke where there was plenty to begin with (plus he cloned buildings), he did it when there were many scenes of actual - and worse - devastation available.

In doing so, he compromised Reuters - already derided by the right as "al-Reuters" for its reluctance to use the word "terrorist" - and, by extension, all photojournalists risking their lives in war zones. At the same time, he has given more ammunition to the right-wing flogosphere to complain of media bias, and to shift the story away from the carnage in Lebanon to debates over Photoshopped images and staged pictures.

Worse, this all but ensures that any and all images of civilian casualties or the blasting of infrastructure will be called into question - while the actual deaths and destruction won't.

The smoke picture, transmitted Friday and picked up by media around the world (but not the Star), was uncovered Saturday by a tip to Little Green Footballs overlord Charles Johnson, the blogger credited with bringing down CBS' Dan Rather over his 2004 report on U.S. President George W. Bush's service record - or lack of it - during the Vietnam War.

Note that somehow Johnson is now getting all the credit for this, although I don't think he deserves it. This analysis explains why. Anyway ...

From there, it spread through the right-wing blogosphere that animated it, analyzed it, dissected it and tore it apart.

Feeling the heat, Reuters issued a 'Picture Kill' later that day, warning its clients that the photo had been "improperly" edited. Then, on Sunday, Reuters announced it was terminating its relationship with Hajj.

"This represents a serious breach of Reuters' standards," the company said.

Explained spokesperson Moira Whittle: "The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under."

Except that on Monday, blogger Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report turned up a second doctored Hajj photo.

Taken Aug. 2, it shows an Israeli F-16 firing three flares as bombs are dropped on the Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh. Trouble is, the fighter jet actually fired one flare.

On Monday, Hajj was toasted, as were all 920 photos he had shot for Reuters.

(The Star has used four Hajj photos since the war began. The most recent was July 25. None of the photos used by the Star is considered suspicious by Reuters. Our website, www.thestar.com, does not carry Reuters photos.)

Now, this has become "Reutersgate." Or, as Michelle Malkin, a frequent Fox News commentator put it, "Picture Kill is a watershed moment and we won't let the MSM forget it."

Believe it.

Since Hajj's work was discredited, the right-wing blogosphere has shifted into high gear, seeking out other potential instances of photo manipulation. Many are examining images from Qana, the site of an Israeli bombing last week where at least 28 civilians were killed. Others are digging into events in Gaza, claiming images from that Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been staged or edited for the cameras. Right-wing bloggers have dubbed that "Pallywood."

Meanwhile, with very few exceptions, the left/liberal blogosphere remains silent. Not just about "Reutersgate," but also about the Israel-Lebanon conflict.

A couple of progressive writers who have addressed the photo issue have pointed out that the "angrysphere" is quick to condemn the errors of the MSM but loathe to own up to when it fakes the photos or quotes.

For the best take on that, check out Glenn Grunwald Greenwald on Salon here. He talks about, to name one example, the manipulation of an old photo of former Democratic presidential contender John Kerry which made it seem he shared a stage with Jane Fonda during anti-war rally in the Vietnam era.

But that's no defence for the Reuters screw-up, for which there is no excuse.

Any good photo editor should have spotted that fakery.

Once again, this demonstrates the increasing influence of the blogosphere whose members, in the pre-Internet days, would have had to settle for yelling at their TVs or writing letters to editors. Now they have the tools to instantly push back and make the media pay attention.

If only they showed as much compassion for the civilians who may have suffered when that bomb dropped on Beirut as they did passion when Reuters dropped its bomb on the wires.

Well, I got a lot of angry email for that kicker, much of it saying the exact same thing. I'm not objective, the Lebanese casualties are irrelevant and, best of all, where do I get the idea that Little Green Footballs is racist?

Hunh.

If you want to read a lot of the Keyboard Kommandos takes on it, commenter ''Arik,'' an LGF devotee, was obsessed with this story over the weekend and posted a whole bunch of links on this thread here. Scroll down and click away. Read how all these bloggers spend so much time proving a little smoke was added to a photo and then go nuts trying to extend it to all the media coverage coming from north of the Israel-Lebanon border.

(That said, news photos should never ever be manipulated.)

Indeed, if you want to know how I truly feel about what LFWwatch has dubbed "slightlymoresmokegate,'' read this comment on Sadly No!

They added more smoke. Simple fact. Therefore by logical extrapolation Qana was staged. Hezbollah killed those children with rat poison, then beat their small corpses into bloody messes. By further extrapolation the pics of the girls writing on the artilery shells are clearly fake as well. Photos of an ambulance with a hole blow in the dead center of the cross? Also faked, or staged.
The enemies of a peaceful Israel will stoop to any low in order to make Israel look bad. The media is slanted against Isreal, plain and simple. The photographer that modified that pic proves it. He is a Hezbollah sympathizer, and he was formally trained by the PR wing of that organization. The same PR organization that clearly has launched such a successful and powerful campaign on the internet to hijack the comments of any blogs that bring up the issue.

This one photo proves it all. Enough said.

Not quite: The rightwing flogopshere's contention that the MSM haven't reported this is CRAP. It's just that we don't sit in our basements all day and night obsessing. The blogosphere pointed this out. It got fixed. We reported on it. The end.

As if.

UPPITY DATE: Well, at least he has his own blog instead of just kommandeering my comments, unlike some people.

Dem bones rise again

So remember last week when the Winnipeg Free Press (sub. req'd.) mistakenly had Lloyd Axworthy, former Liberal foreign affairs minister and current president of the University of Winnipeg, blaming the Asper family, which controls the CanWest Global media empire, for shaping Canada's policy towards Israel?

No? Then read about it here and here.

And here's the best part of the WFP's apology and correction:

Where we quoted Axworthy as saying "the Aspers," he in fact had said "diasporas." We sincerely apologize to both Axworthy and the Asper family.

So anyway, yesterday, the contrite WFP gave Axworthy acres of newsprint to say his piece, unfiltered in a lengthy op-ed. Here's the relevant bit:

Today 'Diaspora' has a broad definition, referring to any group or groups of people that maintain an ongoing interest and sense of belonging to other regions or states as well as to Canada. We have learned to consider these other views and interests when crafting national and international policies.

The "Diasporas role in the creation of foreign policy goals" is still not fully understood, although it is the subject of a major research project participated in by many Canadian scholars and non-governmental organizations. It has also been the subject of inquiry by government agencies who want to better track the changing landscape of Canadian society and what it means for the priorities we should set internationally.

Some readers of this newspaper regrettably have taken objection to the use of this term attributing value judgments to what is simply the description of a reality. It shows how in times of war the potential of misunderstanding increases manifold.

Well then, that clears the air, I bet.

Uh-oh

As I watch CNN present a live speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrullah, I am reading this New York Times op-ed from last week (available here for free). It's by Bernard Haykel, an associate professor of Islamic Studies at New York University. He discusses the philosophical/political/theological differences between Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, and their long-standing enmity. Seems they both can't be tarred by the exact same ''Islamo-fascist terrorist'' brush.

Haykel warns that Al Qaeda is bristling at how Hezbollah has stolen the world's attention, and is winning the media war in the Arabic-speaking world for dealing with the "Zionist enemy'' and, well, you know how it goes.

That might sound like good news. But it is more likely an ominous sign.

Al Qaeda's Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics, and it profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah. It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given Sunni extremists in Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy sites. A Qaeda recruiter I met in Yemen described the Shiites as "dogs and a thorn in the throat of Islam from the beginning of time."

But now Hezbollah has taken the lead on the most incendiary issue for jihadis of all stripes: the fight against Israel.

Many Sunnis are therefore rallying to Hezbollah's side, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan. The Saudi cleric Salman al-Awda has defied his government's anti-Hezbollah position, writing on his Web site that "this is not the time to express our differences with the Shiites because we are all confronted by our greater enemy, the criminal Jews and Zionists."

For Al Qaeda, it is a time of panic. The group's Web sites are abuzz with messages and questions about how to respond to Hezbollah's success. One sympathizer asks whether, even knowing that the Shiites are traitors and the accomplices of the infidel Americans in Iraq, it is permissible to say a prayer for Hezbollah. He is told to curse Hezbollah along with Islam's other enemies.

Several of Al Qaeda's ideologues have issued official statements explaining Hezbollah's actions and telling followers how to respond to them. The gist of their argument is that the Shiites are conspiring to destroy Islam and to resuscitate Persian imperial rule over the Middle East and ultimately the world.

<SNIP>

Al Qaeda, after all, is unlikely to take a loss of status lying down. Indeed, the rise of Hezbollah makes it all the more likely that Al Qaeda will soon seek to reassert itself through increased attacks on Shiites in Iraq and on Westerners all over the world - whatever it needs to do in order to regain the title of true defender of Islam.

The world series of terrorism. Good thing I have plenty of tinned tuna.

Spiegel catalogue of media manipulation

With respect to Israeli censorship, check out these stories from Germany's Spiegel.

First we have News on a Platter, which deals with how "professionally" Israel wrangles the media.

Not all the information circulated in such a controlled atmosphere, of course, is to be believed. But it's hard to criticize Israel for wanting to see victims of Hezbollah rockets - 17 killed since the beginning of the war against the militant group - in the media. Indeed it is precisely these victims that fuel the Israeli operations currently raging in southern Lebanon.

PR warriors take to the mountains

Still, Israel's support and supervision of foreign journalists seems downright excessive. As soon as you've received your press credentials from the GPO, you're bombarded with e-mails and phone calls. When covering other crisis regions, German reporters often have to make an effort to be extra nice and polite and have to search out interviewees and contacts themselves. Not here. In Israel, reporters are on an all-inclusive package trip - and are well looked after.

Well-thought-out story ideas including transportation, lunch and selected military experts - all these things are offered without ever having to be asked for. Many journalists happily accept the offer. For days, images of Israeli artillery units flickered on TV screens the world over - one reason of course being that the PR warriors always took the camera teams to the frontlines around sunset. The soft, warm twilight is favored by camera men and photographers.

That's contrasted with Hezbollah's tactic, which is Letting the Images Speak for Themselves.

We've reached the end of a tour, organized by Hezbollah, through the almost entirely devastated neighborhood of Haret Hreik in southern Beirut. We're back by the collapsed highway bridge that cuts the neighborhood into two halves. Hussein Nabulsi, one of Hezbollah's press spokesmen, announces that we will meet here again tomorrow at the same time.

"I would kindly ask the CNN team to be on time tomorrow," he says. "You've been late the last three times already."

Even if a certain sense of routine has developed after two weeks of de facto war - Hezbollah is hardly pro-active in its relations with the foreign press, represented in Beirut by dozens of foreign reporters. There's no real method to be discerned behind the militia's public relations work. While some camera teams that tried to film in Dahieyeh on their own were immediately pressured to leave the neighborhood - a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut - and escorted north by men on motor scooters, other journalists were able to move as freely as they like. The journalist's ID issued by the Lebanese Interior Ministry is scrupulously checked at some street crossings - at others, however, reporters are waved through before documents can even be produced.

For all the Right Wing Flogosphere's yellling about Hezbollah photo-ops at Qana, where two families decimated by Israeli bombs, and how CNN's Nic Robertson neglected to mention he was on a Hezbollah-guided tour of the rubble in Beirut, there's little said about Israeli media manipulation by anybody.

If only all media organizations did what Spiegel does. Just scroll down to the bottom of this story about a badly injured young Israeli soldier raring to get back into action.

Note: The Israeli soldier Wizer was selected as an interview partner by the Israeli army following a request by SPIEGEL ONLINE. Two press speakers of the Israeli army were present during the interview. The press speakers briefed the soldier for 10 minutes prior to the interview.

There should be transparency on both sides.

H/t to Carlos and David C.

Backfire

Are journalists now considered fair game by warring states and/or terrorists? It would appear so, at least according to this report by former CBS Middle Eastern correspondent Lawrence Pintak on CJR Daily. He argues that journalists are in the gun sights of any nation or entity that wants to manipulate the media.

The Israeli destruction of TV transmission towers in Lebanon and an attack on a media convoy in south Lebanon are emblematic of a grim fact: the media have become targets - and weapons - of war.

The pen may be "mightier than the sword," but in recent years, the sword has left a trail of spilled ink - and blood. It is time for an international law banning targeted attacks on the media.

In the Middle East, the conscious targeting of journalists appears to have become an accepted part of war. The Israeli destruction of the transmission towers of several Lebanese channels, including that of Hezbollah's al-Manar TV, and the convoy attack carry the markings of an ongoing campaign against news organizations by virtually all of the protagonists of the region's many conflicts. Its precedent was the 1999 NATO/U.S. attack on Radio Television Serbia, which killed 19 staffers.

The targeting of "enemy" broadcasts is nothing new. It dates back at least to World War II. Nor are reporters around the world strangers to retribution. The history of journalism in Lebanon itself is littered with the bodies of reporters who angered the powers-that-be. Even foreign reporters sometimes fall victim.

As a Beirut-based correspondent in the 1980s, I had to leave the country for a year after death threats from a pro-Syrian militia; one of my cameramen was literally blown in half, the sound technician killed and the driver crippled by an Israeli tank shell fired directly at them; and several of my friends ended up hostages of Hezbollah or its allies.

What has changed in recent years is the degree to which the media as a whole has specifically and systemically become a "legitimate" target of war. In Beirut in the 1980s, we were kidnap targets because we were the last Americans in town. Now, reporters are targeted because they are reporters.

Well, not exactly. As Pintak notes, reporters are targeted because they report the awful truth, as Al Jazeera journalists found out in Afghanistan and Iraq. Recalls Pintak:

That attitude was summed up by the top U.S. military spokesman on Iraq, Maj. Gen. Mark Kimmett, who told reporters during the invasion, "The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources."

No wonder that Israel fired away at Lebanese and Hezbollah news personnel.

The Israeli government said it bombed three sets of telecommunications towers deep in the Christian heartland to cripple Hezbollah cell phone communications. But the attacks, which killed one technician and injured another, came just days after Israeli helicopters rocketed the Beirut headquarters of al-Manar, the controversial Hezbollah television station, wounding seven people. At about the same time, a convoy of reporters from several Arab satellite channels was attacked by Israeli jets. "Their cars were clearly marked 'Press' and 'TV,'" Nabil Khatib, executive editor of Dubai-based pan-Arab channel al-Arabiya, told the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel says it was "targeting the roads because Hezbollah uses those roads."

This (scroll down), by the way, is how Ha'aretz, the more progressive Israel paper, views the attack on al-Manar.

"Al-Manar has had an enormous impact on all the Arab press, and in effect on the Hebrew press as well," said Amir Levy from Satlink Communications, which monitors Arab-language media.

Although there were a few slight technical glitches in Al-Manar's broadcasting after its south Beirut offices were destroyed, overall it continued broadcasting normally and showcasing its high technical standards. "It is very high-quality work," said Levy.

"They always broadcast new clips, update the subtitles in real time, broadcast from the field via satellites. It's a very impressive broadcasting quality."

In attempting to take out Al-Manar, Israel also hit other news organizations that may have helped its cause. Says Pintak:

It's true that Al-Manar is a mouthpiece for Hezbollah, but it's also true that several of the other Lebanese and pan-Arab channels affected in these incidents have taken strongly anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah positions over the past year. Their initial coverage of the crisis condemned Hezbollah's actions, but as the Israeli response intensified, their reporting, complete with graphic images of the carnage, has become strongly critical of the Jewish state and what is widely seen as America's cynical support for the Israeli assault.

There is no doubt that south Lebanon's roads have become highways of death, and that cell phones and their signals have become a strategic tool. But it's also true that the recent incidents must be seen in the context of what the International Federation of Journalists has called a "pattern of targeting" of journalists in recent weeks. The dirty little secret of this conflict, which the U.S. media rarely talks about, is that all reporters in Israel are subject to strict military censorship. Al-Jazeera has long operated with relative freedom in Israel, but since the conflict began, its correspondent has twice been detained by the Israeli military and one of its camera crews was fired on.

This is one reason why I get so furious with the pajamahadeen who sit at their keyboards using Google as their weapon of mass deception. You know what boys (and girls)? You want war? Then go join an army. Any army. One that fires real bullets.

Or get a camera and do what guys like Kevin Sites do.

Get blood on your hands instead of just on your minds.

H/t to Deborah Campbell.

Hezbollah for Dummies

Everything you ever wanted to know about Hezbollah but were afraid to ask can be found in The New Yorker. This 2002 two-part piece, by Jeffrey Goldberg, has been re-posted in a prominent position on the magazine's website. Here's a snippet.

Fatah, which is part of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had been firing Katyusha rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon, where it had its main base, and Prime Minister Menachem Begin, on the advice of his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, ordered Israeli forces into Lebanon. The stated purpose was to conquer what had come to be known as Fatahland, the strip of South Lebanon under Yasir Arafat's control, and to evict the P.L.O.'s forces. Sharon, though, had grander designs: to secure a friendly Christian government in Beirut and to destroy the P.L.O. It was not so much the invasion that inspired the Shiites, who were happy to see the South free of Arafat and Fatah. The Shiites took up arms when they realized that Sharon, like Arafat, had no intention of leaving Lebanon.

Hezbollah, with bases in the Bekaa and in Beirut's southern suburbs, quickly became the most successful terrorist organization in modern history. It has served as a role model for terror groups around the world; Magnus Ranstorp, the director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, says that Al Qaeda learned the value of choreographed violence from Hezbollah. The organization virtually invented the multipronged terror attack when, early on the morning of October 23, 1983, it synchronized the suicide bombings, in Beirut, of the United States Marine barracks and an apartment building housing a contingent of French peacekeepers. Those attacks occurred just twenty seconds apart; a third part of the plan, to destroy the compound of the Italian peacekeeping contingent, is said to have been jettisoned when the planners learned that the Italians were sleeping in tents, not in a high-rise building.

Until September 11th of last year, Hezbollah had murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group—two hundred and forty-one in the Marine-barracks attack alone.

It's worth printing out.

Oh, and here's another good New Yorker read, Jon Lee Anderson's analysis of whether Israel's invasion of Lebanon has styrengthened or weakened Hezbollah. The conclusion is grim.