23-Aug-06: What the BBC never told you about Southern Lebanon

Regular browsers of our blog will have sensed our passionate lack of respect for the professionalism of many of the reporters, editors, photographers and film crews who cross our paths, plying their journalistic trade in this troubled part of the world.

As people who have taken part in more than the average number of media interviews, we are frequently appalled at what we personally encounter. Sometimes it's the pooled ignorance of badly-prepared, ill-informed news people arriving in a war zone with close-to-zero knowledge of the history of the conflict. Sometimes it's their spouting of barely-grasped news analysis that seems to have been picked up over drinks the night before in the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem. (That by the way happens to be where an inordinate number of visiting news-people stay; the lobby and bar with their Palestinian 'fixers' in every corner remind you of war-time Casablanca, the movie.)

And sometimes it's a pseudo-liberal, save-the-oppressed-of-the-earth crusader outlook, the sort that produces the worst kind of agenda-based reporting, that we encounter. In our experience, that's the worst of all outcomes because it's not that they don't know the real facts; just that they choose to ignore them or invent new facts since this is all so much more important than mere reporting.

That's why it's like a breath of cool, fresh air in the hot, dry desert when someone comes along and ignores the line taken by the herd while delivering an intelligent and humanistic view of war. Australia's Sydney Morning Herald has one of those stories in its pages today. Its correspondent Sarah Smiles went to Ain Ibl in southern Lebanon where she spoke with Wissam Andruous. He's a Christian who lives in a Christian village located right next to Bint Jbail. The adulatory crowds of pro-Hizbollah Arabs who feature so prominently in almost every post-ceasefire article this past week leave him completely cold. Here's an extract:

Hezbollah has few fans among bitter ChristiansWISSAM ANDRUOUS'S family home lies in ruins after the war between Israel and Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militia, Hezbollah. Plastic sheeting flaps over a hole where a bomb ripped the side of the house in the Christian village of Ain Ibl in southern Lebanon. Only the mattress springs remain of a charred room where three of his younger brothers used to sleep.

"We are Christians. We did not not belong to any party," said Mr Andruous, 31, a video technician and father of two, whose younger brother, Rany, 21, is studying in Sydney. "What if we rebuild this house and they make war again? How can I live with my children here?" he said.

While Hezbollah has claimed victory - propaganda posters across southern Lebanon declare: "Our Blood Has Won" - it is no triumph for many who have lost their livelihood and property in the violence. Although many Shiite Muslims support Hezbollah, members of other communities caught in the crossfire of this war do not.

"How can it be a victory when most of [southern Lebanon] has been destroyed?" asked Elias Hasrouni, a Maronite Christian, who manages the local electricity company. "There's no work, many people left, many people died, the houses were damaged. Is this a victory?"

Ain Ibl is next to the flattened village of Bint Jbeil, where there was heavy fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.

Imad Khoury, 38, the head of the local council, said the town is surrounded by Hezbollah missile batteries.

[Reminder: When the BBC's Orla Guerin and several other foreign reporters walked through the ruins of one south Lebanese town or another, they implied heavily or stated explicitly that there had been no Hizbollah military presence in the zone. This was agenda-driven nonsense. Knowing that armed-to-the-teeth towns like Bint Jbail were the source of many of the four thousand missiles fired into northern Israel this past month is essential to any understanding of what happened here.]

Hezbollah is dispensing up to $US12,000 ($16,000) to people who have lost property in the war, but Mr Hasrouni says he will not accept it. "We don't want to be indebted to Hezbollah," he said.

Residents who fled the town during the war returned to find bloodstains on their couches, or dirty handtowels where Hezbollah fighters had used their toilets, Mr Hasrouni said, adding that although many locals did not support this war, they could not stop it. Three years ago Hezbollah seized his olive groves for military purposes. He could do nothing.

"I do not like Hezbollah," said Mr Hasrouni, who still is afraid to visit his groves. "I am disappointed with this war because Israel didn't really do the job … And I really don't believe anyone could disarm Hezbollah."

When Israel ended a decades-long occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah assumed control of the rural area. Its intelligence networks prevailed and people grew fearful of speaking out against the Islamic party.

Mr Andruous, who is not interested in politics, wants to leave Lebanon with his young family. "I visited Australia in 2004," he said, standing in the ruins of his living room. "I like the country and I have a little money. And I cannot live here any more."

Truthful reporting from Lebanon would include many more voices like those of Hasrouni and Andruous. The fact that we're barely aware of them points to how spun, unreliable and misleading the coverage can be.