The Hezbollah Bombardment
Lebanese soldiers with armored personnel carriers confronting Hezbollah members and allies on the northern edge of Beirut on Tuesday. (Wael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency )
Twice this week, the International Herald Tribune has referred to “the Israeli bombardment” of Lebanon in articles about internal conflict in Lebanon.
On Saturday-Sunday, Hassah Fattah (with Nada Bakri) reported:
Some analysts credit the alliance with helping stabilizing conditions in Lebanon after the Israeli bombardment in the summer as well as with helping change Hezbollah’s focus from regional to local. (“Lebanon split on Christian leader”)
And today, Bakri and Fattah report:
Early Tuesday, groups of protestors set up roadblocks along major thoroughfares leading into Beirut, blocking roads with burning tires and rubble that was said to be from buildings demolished in the Israeli bombardment of the city’s southern suburbs last summer, and setting fire to vehicles. (“Strike led by Hezbollah brings Beirut to a halt”)
This tendentious description obscures the fact that it was Hezbollah which initiated the war, with Hezbollah’s July 12 rocket bombardment of Israeli towns and villages, and the accompanying crossborder raid in which Hezbollah killed and captured Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil. The employment of “Israeli bombardment” exonerates Hezbollah as a party to the war (not to mention initiator). It was Hezbollah, after all, which dragged all of Lebanon into war, a fact for which many Lebanese resent Hezbollah.
As Beirut Journalist Michael Young wrote in July:
Of course the people here are angry and anxious about the possibility of a widening of the Israeli attacks, but their rage, as they see the country being taken apart, is often directed against Hezbollah.
But why should this minor detail about Hezbollah’s summer aggression get in the way of a story about Hezbollah’s winter bullying of the Siniora government?
Versions of these two articles also ran in the New York Times, which twice edited out the misleading term “Israeli bombardment.” (See here and here.)
This would not be the first time that the Times commendably edited tendentious language out of a report that also appeared in the Tribune.
More from SNAPSHOTS
The Palestinian Authority Paid Terrorists $347 Million in 2017
January 9, 2018
A Jerusalem Post graph illustrating how PA payments to terrorists are calculated, with amounts shown in shekels The Palestinian Authority (PA) paid imprisoned terrorists and their families 347 million USD in 2017, Israel’s defense ministry [...]
Foreign Policy Fails To Tell The Truth About UNRWA
January 9, 2018
An image posted on the official Facebook page of an UNRWA school As its headline illustrates, a Jan. 5, 2018 Foreign Policy article, “Nikki Haley’s Diplomacy of Revenge Targets U.N. Relief Agency,” substituted editorializing for [...]
Where’s the Coverage? Palestinian Leaders Spend Christmas Celebrating a Terrorist
January 2, 2018
PA President Mahmoud Abbas meets with Rafat Al-Jawabra on Dec. 25, 2017. Image courtesy of MEMRI Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and head of the Fatah movement, spent Dec. 25, 2017 [...]
Reuters Removes Photograph Implicating Israel in Deaths of Iranian Street Protesters
January 2, 2018
What do Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz have to do with the deaths of 10 Iranian protesters demonstrating against their regime? That's what Twitter users were wondering after Reuters [...]
‘Crux’ of the Conflict, According to The New York Times
December 24, 2017
What is the crux of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? According to a New York Times headline in yesterday's print edition, and online here, it is religious settlers encroaching on Palestinian land ("An Israeli Settler, A Dead [...]
Where’s the Coverage of New Jersey Imam’s Call for Genocide?
December 21, 2017
On December 8, MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, translated a sermon given in a New Jersey mosque. The organization summarized as follows: Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, [...]
DPA Captions Wrongly Blame Israel for Islamic Jihad Deaths
December 13, 2017
Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA) published photo captions yesterday which incorrectly imply that an Israeli strike was responsible for the deaths of two Islamic Jihad members in Gaza. The photos and captions, distributed by major photo [...]
Reuters Rushes to Publicize Claim of “Israeli Attack.” You Won’t Believe What Happened Next
December 12, 2017
There may be times when "local residents" are good sources for a news story. But the death of two members of the Islamic Jihad terror group, killed in an explosion as they raced through Gaza [...]