More interesting posts about the Israeli/Hezbollah war
Bookworm on Jul 21 2006 at 2:05 pm | Filed under: Hezbollah, Israel, Media matters
It’s time for another installment in the “things I find interesting” series of posts I’m doing about the Israeli/Hezbollah war. This is not meant to be a compilation of everything regarding the war, just those things that struck me as fresh takes, or unusually clear takes, on current events. As before, I’ll move this to the top when I update, so be sure to scroll down if this is at the top — there might be something new below.
Yesterday, I carried on a bit about the simplistic coverage the media is giving this war. In the MSM world, it’s not about rocket attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas, and Hezbollah’s massing armies on the North. It’s all about kidnapped soldiers. Most people are going to view that as a personal tragedy, not a national threat, and are likely to view the Israeli offensive as disproportionate. I’m not the only one who has noticed this shoddy coverage, but others have taken the idea and run with it. The best example today is Denis Boyle’s scathing denunciation of the wilful naivete evidence in the European papers.
Ben Stein has an interesting historical take on “disproportionate” bombing:
In World War II, the Germans bombed exactly no United States cities or towns. We bombed the hell out of them, day and night, for more than two years, including helping the British with firebombing Dresden, one of the most appalling civilian killings by a free people of all time.
Was it disproportionate? Well, no. The Nazis had bombed our allies, the British, in terror raids for years. They had started a world war. They had created a genocide unspeakable in human history. So, yes, there was horrible killing, but is anyone now saying it was disproportionate? Maybe a few, but not many.
Read the rest of what he wrote on the subject here.
James Lewis, writing at American Thinker, discusses the difficulties Israel is facing in a ground war, given that Hezbollah has had years to dig tunnels and arm itself, and that it is perfectly content to use human shields to protect its soldiers.
Talking to Technorati: Israel, Hezbollah, Hizbollah, Media
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3 Responses to “More interesting posts about the Israeli/Hezbollah war”
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The only way to make sure they stop using human shields, is to act as if there are no shields in existence at all.
If you’re interested in a British wimpy view on things, visit this opinion from the Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1071-2279230,00.html
Ms. Sieghart’s online commenters do disagree. (Well she did pull out some stops. Who will accept this assertion about Israeli citizens: “Most British — and many Israeli — citizens are horrified when they see the devastation wreaked by Israeli bombings.”)
One Israeli sets her straight, exposing England as a hypocrite:
The proportion of killings is irrelevant. God forbid we had the same amount of dead as the other side. A military victory means that you kill more than you lose. You fail to understand that the proportion of dead has nothing to do with who is right and who is wrong; it just indicates who fights better. The reason we are fighting is not only because of our kidnapped soldiers and dead civilians - northern Israel and a third of our population is under that strategic threat of continuous bombings by rockets. A million Israelis are refugees who fled to Tel Aviv and the economy in the North is paralysed. I don’t think that England acted any differently when its cities were attacked by German V2 rockets during WW2. You guys levelled German cities, especially Dresden. And you know what? Thanks God you did it because you won the war and rid the world of the Nazis.
Barak, Tel Aviv, Israel
As we all know, Britain has changed.