21-Aug-06: Standing at the Edge

With the Hezbollah War currently on hold (over would be unduly constructive), we want to share some observations.

Many articles have summarized the events of the past month and prognosticated about next steps. They frequently stake out a position that claims to be binary: either optimistic or pessimistic; and either Israel won or Hizbollah won. We don't understand the need. Things here mostly seem to be in a strikingly unhappy shade of grey.

Optimism is way out of place wherever you stand - and it's clear we stand for Israel. With the Katyushas silent, and Israeli forces either out of action in the field or stood down, far fewer people are dying violent deaths. This, surely, is the furthest extent that optimism can reach at this moment. Is it pessimistic to expect fighting to start again soon? Hizbullah, regaling in what it calls a historic victory, is openly rearming, hardly hiding its plans, preparing for the next round. Parts of Lebanon may be in ruins but Hizbollah's message is triumphal and belligerent in the extreme. Here in Israel, both the political leadership and the military acknowledge that, no matter how well this battle went for Israel (and on that subject there is a very tense but - so far - mostly civil fundamental difference of viewpoints), it's a matter of time, and not much time, before this all erupts again. And no one is saying the next round will be smaller or less destructive.

If the stakes were not so high, it might be possible to sit back bemusedly and ponder some of the vignettes. But they're deeply worrying and they're more than mere vignettes. Here are 5 of them.

The ceasefire and the UN peace-keeping force: a classic case of bait-and-switch. Four players were involved. Israel said it would discontinue its military activity. Hezbollah would agree to be disarmed. Member countries of the UN led by France and equipped with "Chapter 7" powers would place forces in the region to disarm Hizbollah. And Lebanon after six years of failing to exercise its inherent sovereignty over half its territory would move its army south and neutralize Hezbollah. Well, one out of four ain't bad. Israel has removed most of its soldiers already and stood down the rest even though the UN farce, sorry - force, has yet to form itself. And Hizbollah is busy, in broad daylight, re-equipping for more of the same or worse.

Placing matters in their context: It's been a month in which Israel's skies witnessed more than 4,000 missiles fired in the name of radical Islam. Yet from one end of the British working media to the other, reporters, editors and (especially) photographers have worked overtime to present Israel as an insatiable aggressor lusting for dead children. Nothing captures the mood better than Orla Guerin of the BBC. Walking through the south Lebanese village of Bint Jbail, she says: "The international community may well ask how Israel can explain all this in the name of fighting Hezbollah." To which we can only agree. If you feed the public a diet of graphically-rich Lebanese victimhood devoid of the requisite context, as Orla's employer continues to do daily, while pretending that Bint Jbail and the dozens of places like it are less than viper's nests of deeply-entrenched, incredibly over-armed Hizbollah fanatics, your audience will be left with that question on its mind. British security in the same month uncovered a vast conspiracy involving explosives being carried onto aircraft, and evidently headed it off, at least for now. The question that's on our mind: is it beyond the British media to notice the connection between Shi'ite Hizbollah, Shi'ite Iran and Shi'ite terrorists of Pakistani extraction? Or are they noticing it and purposely keeping silent? There are lessons here, staring people in the face.

The underlying cause: It's clear now, for those previously in doubt, that this is not about occupation or land. This might sound like good news. It's not. Despite the violent and angry demonstrations of support for Nasrullah and his Hizbollah in every American, Asian, European and African city with a sizable Arab presence, the fighting this month was not about bringing the Palestinian Arabs closer to what they claim to want: a homeland. It was about more basic matters with wider implications for everyone, which would be clearer to people if only they would listen to the voices booming out of the Islamic world. It was about a Jewish state being wiped off the face of the earth, according to the Iranian government without whom Nasrullah would be no more than a corner preacher. It needs to be clearer now than before: the conflict that gave rise to this war and the multiple wars before it (in truth, all part of one ongoing war) were never about the fact that the Palestinian Arabs don't have a homeland but about about the fact that the Jews do.

The central role of hatred and racism: The Arab media have been host this month to prominent and widely seen caricatures of America's foreign minister as a primate; to an elaborate museum display of Holocaust-denial images in Teheran; and to a flood of Jew-hatred in written form, in imagery and in graffiti daubed onto the outside of synagogues and Jewish property. Even more disturbing, explicit anti-Jew sentiment is losing of its pungency as we look on. It's more than just symbolic when one of the icons of American popular culture, Mike Wallace of the venerable "Sixty Minutes" program, interviews the man who is arguably the most virulent anti-semite in the world, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and comes away using these expressions: an "impressive fellow," "attractive," "smart as hell," "savvy" and "rational." We're as open-minded as a rational person needs to be about figures of speech but applying kid-gloves to the man who is developing a nuclear arsenal to "wipe Israel off the map" is insanity.

Imagery and its manipulation: More than we realize, what we believe and think we know about events far from home is the product of words and pictures delivered by trusted intermediaries. Radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the web are central and indispensable to the forming of views for almost every last one of us. The coining of a new word - fauxtography - signals the permanent end of that trusted relationship. Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC will all stand tall, hands on heart, and say that despite the onslaught of partisan critics (Israel's friends), they passed the test, they delivered objective journalism, they remain the honest brokers of conflicting reports that they always were, and the indications to the contrary are small bumps, minor exceptions to be ignored. This, in the case of the conflict between Israel and its neighbours, is self-serving rubbish. The well-documented and calculated posing of dead children for emotional effect; the inflation of casualty numbers on the Arab side by Arabs; the wilful erasing of the graphic and photographic evidence of the clear, present, immediate and concrete existential threat facing half the Israeli population - all of these make the media and its prime movers complicit in a process threatening to the world in a way that is unprecedented.

There's more. But right now we just need to stop and breathe a while while we look over the edge.