Well, Isn't Timing Everything

As the issue on the Sunday shows is the tragic loss of life in an Israeli strike on a building with many civilians packed in the basement, (via Instapundit) an Australian paper publishes a series of pictures proving that Hezbollah is not just operating amongst civilians, but (to my eye) basically drawing Israeli fire to civilian areas. They ain't winnin' that propaganda war by accident, team: it's easy when you don't care about the lives of civilians on either side.

And notice that the paper is clear that these images had to be smuggled out of Lebanon. This isn't a view of their war plan they want the world to see.

Now: will we see these images on American television? I've been listening all morning, and I haven't heard or seen a peep yet. Seems as if (given that this has been the very heart of the discussion) it might have come up once or twice.

Comments

[John]

Reading the parsing and dancing around on a pin head going on on this site is bizarre. Most of the world knows who is responsible for the death of those 48 women and children and all the squealing on this site is not going to change a thing. This was not only morally wrong it was stupid. The only result has been to rouse the world against Israel and us, while making Nasrallah and Hezbollah the heroes of the muslim world. As Tallyrand remarked after Napoleon had kidnapped and murdered the Duc D'Enghien "It is more than a crime, it is a stupidity." But then he was French so I suppose that disqualifies him.

[Ron Hardin]

The media will tell the story that brings soap opera eyeballs to the newscast, regardless.

They are not attracting military strategists, but soap opera people.

There's no secret that has to be hidden here.

[BB-Idaho]

John there uses comparative history. From what I've seen, we no longer base policy on the past mistakes or historical precedent. Consider, for example the long and bloody tales of the Crusades. The most successful was that of the excommunicated Frederick II. Rather than
bash Moslem heads, the young king (who spoke seven languages and whose
"atheistic" court was filled with Jews & Moslems)went to the Holy Land
and sat down with the Saracan leaders. He discussed their religion and their philosophies with them in their own language. They GAVE him Jerusalem. Christians pelted him with filth and the Pope repealed the
treaty: Jerusalem quickly reverted to Moslem control. Our foreign policy experts talk of terrorist "root causes" in terms of eradication by air strikes "then maybe we can have a cease-fire", meanwhile creating a large pool of angry willing people who had previously been
eking out a living. When I think of the over-ballyhooed term Root Cause, I think what is it that creates a terrorist and why can't that
be addressed? I'm sure Prof. Dauber covers this far better in her class on terrorism, but beating up kid in the playground seldom makes
him your friend.

[MaxedOutMama]

Prof, as your commenters demonstrate, we just can't have those nasty, dissonant facts messing up the flow of our politically correct argument.

The root cause of the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers was the desire to free Samir Al-Qintar. Samir Al-Qintar went on a raid into Israeli territory when he was sixteen. He shot a guy and bashed a four year-old's head in against a rock. For that he's in an Israeli prison.

And oh, yeah, Abbas explained the next day that the purpose of that raid was to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

But facts like those - uncomfortable facts like those - are never going to be discussed on American television.

[Dan Kuehl]

The reaction to the tragedy at Qana has been entirely predictable, and is an indication why Hezbollah is winning the information war. For more than a decade we have seen those on the ground attempt to defend themselves against air attack by surrounding themselves with civilians, and Hezbollah has carried this tactic to new levels. Their most effective tactic in this campaign is to cause civilian casualties--their own/Lebanese, not Israeli, knowing that the emotive or "cognetic" effcts (kudos to AF Major Bruce Johnson for this term) are far more likely to constrain the Israeli AF than anything they could do militarily. The most frustrating aspect of watching yesterday's news coverage was not the grilling of Israeli representatives but the LACK of grilling of Hezbollah or Lebanese speakers. By not calling them to account for their complicity in this tragedy, the mainstream media has failed to raise a crucial point with their readers/viewers, and thus has allowed itself to be used by Hezbollah. There are plenty of experts out there who the media could call on to bring some light to this issue, but that takes research, which they are evidently not willing to do.

[Commodore Sloat]

Uhh, this article is a little weird. The author does not explain why his friend had to "smuggle" these three photos out of Lebanon. There is no indication he ran into any trouble getting them out of there; and, looking at the photos, they do not at all "prove" that Hezbollah is trying to hide among civilians; they just show that there may have been one small group of armed militants near what looks like a single civilian building -- no indication of how heavily populated this area is and certainly no indication of whether this is standard practice of Hezbollah terrorists. And, in fact, Mitch Prothero points out that Hezbollah doesn't trust civilians and generally stays away from them. So I'm not sure why Cori thinks these three photos from an Australian tabloid should be on CNN, but I'm not too surprised they're not.

[hhhhh]

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