3-Aug-06: Pre-requisites for Asking Questions About Qana

Now that the Israeli military has delivered the results of its enquiry into what happened at Qana to the IDF Chief of Staff, the rules of discussion need to change.

The inquiry's results, delivered on Wednesday, confirm what the IDF told the press on the day of the tragedy. The IDF said then and now confirms that it deliberately targeted the residential building in an air attack on July 30th just before 1 in the morning. The attack consisted of two missiles. The first exploded; the second did not.

No journalist, no analyst, no cartoonist is now free to rage about the loss of innocent lives, or to claim there has been an act of "Zionist genocide" of the Lebanese without explicitly first dealing with the following short list of issues:

• The residential building was deliberately targeted because it fit the test set out by the Israeli military's guidelines regarding the use of fire against suspicious structures inside villages. The residents had been warned well in advance to evacuate by the mass drop of Arabic-language leaflets; in addition, by various other means, the residents of Qana and the villages surrounding it were warned to leave since they were in a target zone because of Hezbollah's activities. The building in question was immediately adjacent to an area from where missiles had been fired in the previous hours and days at Israel.
• Israeli surveillance of Hezbollah provided explicit confirmation of their exploitation of civilian structures inside villages to store weaponry and hide after launching rockets attacks.
• Intelligence gathered from Qana confirmed that this building was one of those structures.
• From July 12th onwards, more than 150 Hezbollah missiles were launched from Qana at civilian targets in Israel.
• From the official text: "The IDF operated according to information that the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists. Had the information indicated that civilians were present in the building the attack would not have been carried out. Prior to the attack on the aforementioned building, several other buildings which were part of the infrastructure for terror activity in the area were targeted. Our comment: It hurts our enemies to hear this, but Israelis rarely claim to be all-knowing and incapable of making mistakes. Mistakes happen; systems are developed to minimize their frequency and harm. But war is absolutely awful, and the mistakes you make in war are not like mistakes you make in other areas of activity. The consequences are far more serious. This is not what the IDF's report says, but this is exactly what it means.

Lt. General Dan Halutz, the Chief of Staff , expressed one more time his sorrow at the deaths of civilians, among them children, in Qana. In doing this, he expressed the sense of the whole of Israel. But expressing sorrow is quite different from saying "We did this". We did not do this.

Fighting terror is different from fighting a conventional war, as the citizens of Bali, Madrid, New York, Washington, London, Paris, Munich, Mumbai and dozens of other cities already know, and as most of the rest of the world is going to learn in the future.

Terrorists, like Hezbollah and Hamas, use civilians as human shields like armies use armour.

Terrorists, like Hezbollah and Hamas, wear no uniforms and conduct none of their operations, ever, within the rules of war

Terrorists, like Hezbollah and Hamas, intentionally operate from within civilian areas and buildings.

They do these things because traditional military forces hesitate before responding in kind, and in particular will think twice and three times before firing on what may be non-military targets. Not, however, all militaries: the British and the Americans felt themselves sufficiently provoked by Nazi Germany to turn Dresden into ash in 1945, at a time when the tide of war was well and truly running in their direction. It seemed the right thing to do at the time. There is not the remotest comparison to what Israel did this week, hitting a carefully-identified, confirmed military target.

It would be a great mistake to think that Israeli society and its institutions are at peace with what happened in Qana. Halutz instructed that guidelines for opening fire against suspicious targets be re-evaluated and updated immediately. They doubtless will. And Israeli soul searching goes on, affecting all parts of our society. Moral issues get taken quite seriously in this country.

But beyond the military and strategic issues at stake here, there is a long list of additional questions that no objective analyst is free to ignore:

• Israel confirms, and no one denies, that the bombing happened in the small hours of the morning and the building collapsed seven hours later. What happened in between? Officers of the IDF have said publicly (certainly on Israel television, to which we're glued at the moment) that they believe Hezbollah explosives brought the building down. Maybe yes, maybe no. But the fact no mainstream journalist or report has raised this possibility suggests they are just so very happy with their pin-it-on-Israel theory that anything less would be a let-down.
• Refrigerated trucks arrived from Tyre before reporters and photographers. There is prima facie evidence that bodies from Tyre's morgue were added to the Qana body count.
• The Lebanese Red Cross says 28 people were killed in Qana. Why do all the newsagency reports from AP, AFP, Reuters and others say 56, 60 and more?
• Confederate Yankee raises non-trivial questions about the absence of concrete dust on the bodies. No, not the bodies where there plainly is concrete dust, but the many others.

Of course, we know very well that the media and politicians can and will expound on how tragic the Qana events are, and how criminal or immoral or unacceptable the actions of the Israelis. But if those statements are made without reference to the issues above, then - even when they're expressed in the well-rounded vowels of the BBC or The Indepedent - you know you are in the presence of bombastic, self-important hypocrites.

1-Aug-06: Using Dead Lebanese Children for Ammunition

Those of us living in Israel or concerned for Israel's welfare have a pretty good idea what's happening in Haifa, Nahariya, Safed, Afula. This is in large measure because of the real-time, mainly-unfiltered reportage and live television coverage from there and from every other part of this robustly democratic and open country.

But do you know what really happened in Qana? In Tyre? In Beirut? No, neither do I. What we think we know is what the news media – papers, TV, blogs, radio – feed us, generally after the fact, sometimes days afterwards. How safe is a diet like that? Well, as with most diets it's a matter of how carefully you want to check. Here's a look at who's doing the feeding and at the additives, preservatives and other foreign materials that are mixed into what reaches us.

Qana question

As painful as what happened in Qana is to most of us, there are some very disturbing aspects about the tragedy which go to the root of what happened. Some of them:

• Did Hezbullah stage-manage the Qana incident? A Lebanese source (translated from French to English here) says yes. It suggests disabled children were brought to a building which served as a base for a Katyusha battery because the inevitable destruction of such a building by the IDF and the deaths of children would have such a powerful effect on world opinion.
• As revolting as this sounds, the cynical parading of dead children's bodies tells you we're dealing with people whose culture and humanity are unrecognizable to most of us.
• We're also dealing with newsagencies (Reuters, AFP, Associated Press) whose photographers are active collaborators in this disgraceful pornography. The evidence is in the bullet below.
• A small handful of Hezbollah low-lifes appear in one staged photo after another, posing with a dead child's body, hamming up a range of facial responses. If you can stomach it, see The Parade of Dead Children - Euphoric Reality; What Really Happened in Qana? - Wizbang; Qana: The photographic evidence (Update: Bodies from Tyre?) from Hot Air; and especially EU Referendum.
• It may be that the dead bodies from fighting some days earlier in Tyre were trucked in to Qana. Ridiculous? Maybe. But you may want to read this before dismissing the idea entirely.
• In its briefing for journalists at the end of the long day on which the Qana incident happened, the IDF raised several more serious questions. Customarily careful to avoid saying what might not be fully confirmed, the spokespeople presented whatever they were confident to show. This included video footage of missiles being fired from immediately next to the destroyed house several hours before the IDF attacked Qana. CNN's Brent Sadler has just been on our screens this afternoon (Tuesday), reporting live from Qana, pooh-poohing Israeli claims that the town was a launching pad for Hezbollah war ("Nope, no Hezbollah people here"), and asserting that Israel has failed to bring any evidence to the contrary. If you have Sadler's email address, we'd be glad to know he gets this link to the film footage.
• Sadler or his CNN producers might also be interested to hear - since they evidently have no clue - that Qana was the source for no fewer than 150 rockets fired into Israeli civilian settlements in the past three weeks, as documented here. Hezbollah salvos from Qana have crashed (among others) into Haifa, Nahariya, Ma'alot and Kiryat Shmona. They caused the documented, proven and undisputed deaths of 18 Israeli civilians and hundreds more wounded. Brent, our email address is on this page for when you get a free moment to send the people of Israel your apology.
• Reuven Koret over at Israel Insider has some additional, cogent and bothersome questions. Please visit his excellent site to read them.
• We know how hard it can be for some people to accept that Hezbullah would ever treat their Lebanese brethren poorly. But there is some evidence that this is not entirely beyond them. Try looking here and here and here.
• As for the general credibility of Hezbullah, its record as one of the bloodiest of the bloodthirsty speaks for itself... though evidently not loudly enough.

But the western media would surely blow the whistle on stage-managed news fakery, right?

Reporting from southern Lebanon (and quoted in the Columbia Journalism Review), freelance journalist and Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton drops this little gem:

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one.

To be clear, he doesn't say that Hezbollah fakes the news events. Or that they manipulate the journalists. But he doesn't need to. And we're left wondering: on what other aspects of this complex story are he and his colleagues loathe to report? And what have they reported as fact that perhaps ought not to have been reported as fact? Fair questions, no?

CNN's Nic Robertson can supply a helpful answer to that. Last week, Howard Kurtz – on his Reliable Sources show on CNN - interviewed Robertson about reporting from Lebanon. Here's Columbia Journalism Review's analysis of their exchange:

Just a few days before, Hezbollah minders had taken Robertson on a tour of a neighborhood in southern Beirut that had been hit by Israeli missiles. Robertson told Kurtz, "Hezbollah has a very, very sophisticated and slick media operation," and in southern Beirut, "they deny journalists access into those areas. They can turn on and off access to hospitals in those areas." He also said that Hezbollah "designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath ... Hezbollah is now running a number of [press tours] every day, taking journalists into this area. They realize that this is a good way for them to get their message out, taking journalists on a regular basis. Robertson [said]: "We went in to those southern suburbs of Beirut with that media representative from Hezbollah. They haven't let western reporters into some parts of that very, very, very carefully controlled southern suburbs ... they took us in because they wanted to show us what was being damaged." He then ended by again reminding viewers that it was a "very, very brief and swift tour escorted by Hezbollah." The disclosure that Hezbollah acted as tour guide does put the report into perspective, but still, Robertson could have dwelled a bit more on the calculated photo op CNN's cameras were provided by an obviously interested party.

(Source: Paul McLeary, Lifting the Cover of the Hezbollah PR Effort). McLeary also quotes CNN's Anderson Cooper from a week ago (transcript here):

We found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah ... They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings... This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they've been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians ... These ambulances aren't responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.

So whom can you believe?

In our opinion, no one deserves our uncritical support. Questions need to be asked, and no one is beyond criticism. Politicians will do what politicians always do, and terrorists will do whatever they can get away with. Our question is why are so few journalists doing what journalists do -- dig, question, investigate. Thus, the one action point we would urge on everyone visiting this blog is: never assume that reporters, editors, photographers are more credible or more objective than anyone else. It's perfectly plain that they're not and never have been. More than this, they are as capable of being jackasses and dupes as anyone else.

And working for a brand-name media channel is no defence.

25-Jul-06: An open letter to Lebanon's friends

There are thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of innocent Lebanese victims of the latest phase of this ongoing war. The Arafat War (variously called, misleadingly, the Second Intifada and the Palestinian Uprising) which began in September 2000 is only the latest chapter in a continuing century-long war of terror directed at the Jewish national revival in what is now called Israel. We call our blog "This Ongoing War" in recognition of that depressing truth.

Allow us please to state the main part of that para one more time. We don't want the message to be lost.

There are thousands of innocent Lebanese victims. Many deaths, many maimings and permanent injuries. The destruction of quiet, civilized lives and life. This is a truth which media talking-heads, analysts, editors, cartoonists, journalists, politicians, humanitarian activists, photographers, racist rabble-rousers, Islamic men of religion and others want the world to understand.

On behalf of the world, I'm hereby saying it: we understand, we get it, we know. Now, let's try to make sense of what it means so that we can all move ahead by asking this question:

Does it mean that Lebanon is therefore right? Does it mean that Israel, undoubtedly the party doing the shooting at Lebanon, is wrong?

Yes, if you believe right-vs-wrong is a function of who's suffering more. If this is how you feel, you're in safe company. There is a very, very large number of opinion-formers who think and speak this way.

But if the numbers (ten to one, as we write, meaning some 390 Lebanese are reported to be dead, versus 37 Israelis so far) are going to be your moral guide, allow us to draw your attention to some overlooked or little-appreciated aspects of that viewpoint:

• Hezbullah is thoroughly integrated inside Lebanese society. Their missiles are fired from within Lebanese villages. This has been the case for six years at least.
• Until May 2000, Israel and friendly Lebanese forces controlled the far-south of Lebanon. This ended with a unilateral Israeli decision to take a chance for peace. Our prime minister at the time was Ehud Barak. On 24th May 2000, he said: "From now on, the government of Lebanon is accountable for what takes place within its territory, and the Lebanese and Syrian governments are responsible for preventing acts of terror or aggression against Israel, which is from today deployed within its borders."
• The Israeli leader's words were ignored. What happened in that region from that day onwards was decided by Lebanon and its leadership. They decided to do nothing when Hezbullah began a six-year uninterrupted process of filling every basement and crevice with deadly weaponry, all of it pointed at Israeli towns, cities and homes. Lebanon's government with its police and army and moral righteousness could have stopped Hezbullah. Instead they invited it into the Lebanese government where it now sits. You can say Lebanon is weak, impotent, out-numbered. But you can't ignore the Lebanese leadership's culpability in what followed.
• Newspaper articles like "On the Frontline, Historic Tyre is Paying the Price of Conflict", distributed in the past two days by the Agence France Press newsagency, are typical of the shallowness and history-ignorant thinking that proliferate this week. Tyre's suffering is real, but where is it mentioned - other than in the Israeli media - that Tyre has served for the past six years, up to and including today, as Hezbullah's massive arsenal of civilian-targetting missiles and other weapons of terror? This cannot be an irrelevant aspect of such an important story. So why is it so consistently ignored?
• We can't vouch for its accuracy but there is a report, familiar-sounding in this part of the world, of how Hezbullah treats its Lebanese brothers and sisters. "I can confirm this report also. A Lebanese friend has told me that family members are trapped in a village close to the border and are being prevented from leaving by Hizbollah fighters who are setting up rocket positions around the village. Her uncles' words were 'we are waiting for death'. They are terrified of retaliatory Israeli strikes, but can do nothing when threatened by armed guerillas." Source: Live from an Israeli Bunker
• Israel's pre-eminent and widely quoted military journalist, Zeev Schiff, writes: "In one known case, a bomb struck a basement and killed those inside. Later, it turned out that of the 32 casualties, mostly dead, 11 were armed Hezbollah militants. The basement served Hezbollah and civilians that sought cover. In the current fighting there is no alternative but to convince the citizens of the city to leave, and make it easy to do so. But it is unclear whether Hezbollah will allow the evacuation of civilians from Tyre."
• Yes, we know you might view this as misleading Israeli propaganda. But if there's going to be uncritical reporting of horror stories from unconfirmed (and largely unconfirmable) Lebanese sources, please acknowledge that there are reports from usually respected Israeli sources that throw light on an entirely different way of viewing things. Or else admit that you're not going to do this, and tell us why.
• For what it's worth, those words of Zeev Schiff's above were published 36 hours ago, and are directly quoted in not a single news source (according to Google News) other than Haaretz. Given that Schiff has been routinely quoted very widely over decades in many of the world's leading papers, this is extraordinary.
• At a slightly more abstract, philosophical level, there's a wonderful essay in yesterday's New York Times. It's entitled "He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn't" and takes an analytical look at your viewpoint, i.e. that when someone attacks you, it's alright to hit back, just not too hard. If you read nothing else today, read Daniel Gilbert's essay and don't be put off by his being a professor of psychology at Harvard.
• There are plenty of Lebanese who are appalled at what Lebanese tolerance for the Hezbullah insanity has done to their country. This for instance from a Lebanese blogger: "Curse you Hezbollah to hell and back! For all this destruction, for all this death! No it is not Israel fault! It is your own! Curse you!"
• We are parents of a child who was murdered in cold-blood by Hamas terrorists. Our daughter was not caught in any cross-fire; she was not collateral damage. She and the others murdered that day five years ago were the target. So we know the central truth that most Israelis have learned. The terrorist enemy is hard to identify. If only they wore badges identifying themselves as practitioners of barbarism. But they don't. This means that when you fight them, as you absolutely must, you run risks of harming the innocent. There is no other way. You must try to be moral and selective - as we believe Israel does - but you must never lose sight of this reality: if you do not stop them, their incomprehensible determination to destroy will bring unbearable pain and suffering on their targets.

Even if all of this fails to move you, we want you to know our conclusion. If our side needs to be bleeding at least as much as the people on the other side before we win your support and understanding, then we will forego that privilege. And we express our utter contempt for your relativistic, statistics-driven morality.

Through no desire to be at war, and for no strategic reason that anyone can identify, Israel is suffering greatly. (16 missiles have struck Haifa this morning already.) The source of that suffering is Hezbollah. The suffering will continue until Hezbollah is physically unable to go on. No one, other than the victims of Hezbollah, can or will stop them.

The Lebanese people and their leadership are either part of the problem or part of the solution. There is no other way.