by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he reactions and media coverage coming out of the West regarding this latest war in the Middle East are as bewildering as they are instructive.<\/p>\n Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., for example, recently said, “I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah or for or against\u00a0Israel\u00a0.”<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Western news agency Reuters, responding to scrutiny by bloggers, withdrew wire photos taken by a freelance photographer of a smoky and burning\u00a0Beirut\u00a0. Reuters had failed to catch the freelancer’s doctoring of the photos to emphasize unduly the damage from Israeli bombs.<\/p>\n And the Associated Press notes that initially reported Lebanese claims of 40 “civilians” killed by Israeli air strikes at Houla, Lebanon, in fact, were mistaken \u2014 and that the latest reports have lowered the death toll to one.<\/p>\n In Qana, where the Israeli military had hit an apartment building (and were quickly censured by European statesmen), the number of civilian fatalities reported also kept decreasing as reports were scrutinized. Plus, we have learned that several hours lapsed between the dropping of the bombs and the fatal collapse of the building, raising further questions about the relationship between the bombing and the fatalities that followed. Finally, based on photographs from the scene, the onsite rescue appeared staged for reporters.<\/p>\n These discrepancies suggest we have little idea what actually happened on the ground there \u2014 other than that Qana has been a favored missile-launching site against\u00a0Israel\u00a0, as a recent deadly aerial assault from there on\u00a0Haifa\u00a0attests.<\/p>\n T<\/span>here is a depressing pattern here. The sources for Western erroneous reports and faked pictures always seem to exaggerate the damage to\u00a0Lebanon\u2014 but never to\u00a0Israel\u00a0.<\/p>\n Likewise, Western news agencies rarely list a precise number of Hezbollah losses, instead lumping them in with civilian fatalities. Does that mean that someone who launches a missile in\u00a0Levis\u00a0and sneakers is not a combatant?<\/p>\n In addition, the history and nature of Hezbollah do not matter to many in the West.<\/p>\n Knowingly or not, news outlets continue to spread Hezbollah’s propaganda. One wonders if Westerners remember or know that, until Sept. 11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than had any other terrorist organization.<\/p>\n Most ignore as well that Hezbollah precipitated the present crisis by kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers, and launching missiles against\u00a0Israel\u00a0‘s cities.<\/p>\n In retaliation, the Israeli Defense Forces use precision bombs to target combatants and try to avoid civilian casualties (though the latter is nearly impossible against an enemy who doesn’t wear uniforms and uses non-combatants as “human shields”). In contrast, every random missile launched by Hezbollah is intended to hit a civilian target.<\/p>\n On one side of this conflict is a true democracy that was attacked. On the other are terrorists who hijacked the sovereign government of\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0, instituted theocratic rule over a third of the country \u2014 and started a war.<\/p>\n Hezbollah, of course, has been enabled in large part thanks to Iranian petro-dollars and intimidation. But the nature of Hezbollah’s patrons doesn’t seem to matter to many Westerners, either.<\/p>\n Those now calling for “dialogue” with the “major players” ignore that\u00a0Iranpromises to wipe out\u00a0Israel\u00a0. The French foreign minister was quick to praise the regional role of theocratic\u00a0Iran\u00a0as “stabilizing.”<\/p>\n Then there’s Hezbollah’s other patron, Syria, a country that brutally occupied Lebanon, harbors terrorists and is suspected of being behind the assassination of Lebanese reformist Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.<\/p>\n S<\/span>o, what then does matter to so many Westerners about this war?<\/p>\n Our fear, of course. We want to avoid messy complications like stirring up another 9\/11 or\u00a0Madrid\u00a0bombing, spiking oil prices to over $80 a barrel, or treading on politically incorrect ground by criticizing the “other” of the formerThird World\u00a0.<\/p>\n The Western press \u2014 usually so careful to condemn hate speech \u2014 is utterly silent about Arab racism. But a European paper recently published a cartoon portraying Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a Nazi, secure that no rabbi would issue threats that could cost the editors their heads.<\/p>\n Still, when this is all over, we should not worry about the survival of\u00a0Israel\u00a0. For weeks, pundits have been lecturing how canny and adept Hezbollah has proved \u2014 and how a clumsy\u00a0Israel\u00a0could only respond by destroying\u00a0Lebanon’s infrastructure. Yet, when the dust settles, the world will learn that\u00a0Lebanonoutside Hezbollah’s domain is not destroyed. And, one hopes, those who have suffered in the Hezbollah-controlled south will reexamine their support for a terrorist organization that has brought them \u2014 and itself \u2014 to near ruin.<\/p>\n Instead far more worrisome is the moral crisis in the West itself. If so many of its politicians, intellectuals and media will not or cannot fathom moral differences in this war, they will hardly be able to see them anywhere else.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The reactions and media coverage coming out of the West regarding this latest war in the Middle East are as bewildering as they are instructive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[771],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-119","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3902,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/relearning-lessons-in-the-war-on-terror\/","url_meta":{"origin":3915,"position":0},"title":"Relearning Lessons in the War on Terror","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 28, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services From the recent Israel-Hezbollah war in southern Lebanon to the jihadists in Iraq's Sunni Triangle to the repeated efforts by Islamists across the globe to trump Sept. 11, what old lessons about terrorism are we in the West finding ourselves having to relearn?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2006"","block_context":{"text":"August 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/august-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3041,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/surreal-gaza\/","url_meta":{"origin":3915,"position":1},"title":"Surreal Gaza","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The world reacts I spent today reading accounts of Gaza \u2014NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc. There are no terrorists, just militants. Not much about past rocket attacks on Israel \u2014 most everything on the crowded conditions of Gaza. Iranian aid is rarely elaborated on;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3037,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-lose-lose-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":3915,"position":2},"title":"A Lose-Lose World","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Creepy times There is something especially nauseating about the latest Middle East war \u2014 scenes of worldwide Islamic protests with photos of Jews as apes, protesters (in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida of all places!) screaming about nuking Israel and putting Jews in ovens, parades of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4756,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-should-we-stop-supporting-israel\/","url_meta":{"origin":3915,"position":3},"title":"When Should We Stop Supporting Israel?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans the question\u2014at what point should we reconsider our rather blanket support for the Israelis and show a more even-handed attitude toward the Palestinians? The answer, it seems to me, should be assessed in cultural,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2004"","block_context":{"text":"March 2004","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2004\/march-2004\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6916,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-israel-double-standard\/","url_meta":{"origin":3915,"position":4},"title":"The Israel Double Standard","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The prejudice against Israel in diplomatic matters is as troubling as more cruse bigotry agains Jews. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 An obscure academic organization called the American Studies Association not long ago voted to endorse a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli universities. 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