Sez Who?

Hezbollah held a press conference and, according to one account, announced that it “has maintained an arsenal near the Israeli border… but (a spokesman) said the weapons remain hidden from Israel and the United Nations peacekeeping force. ‘They are still present in the south and along the border, but are simply out of sight. Nothing changed after July 12. Hezbollah still has weapons in the southern villages and along the border, but they are hidden.’ (The UN is not) entitled to disarm Hezbollah or to spy on the party.

Hezbollah held a press conference and, according to one account, announced that it “has maintained an arsenal near the Israeli border… but (a spokesman) said the weapons remain hidden from Israel and the United Nations peacekeeping force. ‘They are still present in the south and along the border, but are simply out of sight. Nothing changed after July 12. Hezbollah still has weapons in the southern villages and along the border, but they are hidden.’ (The UN is not) entitled to disarm Hezbollah or to spy on the party. Hezbollah clings to all the elements of power necessary to defy the Israeli enemy. The resistance’s arms are on top of those elements.”

Sez who? For people who get paid to ask questions, and who were burned to a crisp by their sources in August, the media reports Hezbollah’s claim of 20,000 missiles with an extraordinary lack of skepticism.

The media was taken for a ride during the summer, reporting phony Hezbollah-supplied stories without question. The number of terrorist casualties was hugely underreported. More than 500 Hezbollah fighters are confirmed dead and as many as 200 more may be, a large percentage of an “army” that numbered only in the low thousands. Civilian casualties were hugely over reported, as was bomb damage. (William M. Arkin in The Washington Post wrote after the war, “Israeli bombers did not fly over Beirut and unleash loads of bombs. Each individual building was the quarry; the intent was there, and the technology existed, to spare the rest.”) The deaths at Qana were entirely mis-reported and the death toll from a raid on Houla was reported as 40 Lebanese civilians rather than the single one who was killed. Reuters and AP were (willing?) victims of doctored photographs and set-up photo shoots, and none of the Main Stream Media that we can find showed the film of Hezbollah firing from the middle of civilian neighborhoods or the excellent bit in which UN ambulances carried armed men to and from battle sites – all of which were easily accessible online.

“Nothing changed after July 12” is an observable lie. Hezbollah’s adventure cost billions of dollars in Iranian-supplied arms and destroyed the economy of the south – much to the irritation of the locals. A new poll in Le Figaro poll cites 47 percent of Lebanese saying Hezbollah did not win the war, and L’Orient le Jour found 51 percent of Lebanese want Hezbollah disarmed. Walid Jumblatt’s political star is rising again. The Lebanese government has been shamed into moving south, and thousands of foreign troops (coordinated with the IDF) are now in space previously occupied only by terrorists and a few thoroughly cowed UNIFIL “observers.” Hezbollah’s old freedom of action is severely constrained. This week, the Lebanese Army prevented Hezbollah from organizing a stone-throwing protest along the Israeli border, something that was routine in the old days.

The media, having been clearly duped in Lebanon as they were in Jenin, should approach Hezbollah’s pronouncements with extreme caution, and the sharp-eyed among them might notice that Nasrallah’s last “rally” in Beirut (NOT in the south) was filled with African and Iranian “rent-a-protesters” according to some who were actually there. But we suspect that would be too much work for them, and expect the continued parroting of the Hezbollah line.