Beware of Disinformation from Lebanon
(Updated August 2006)
CNN’s Nic Robertson
was taken to an area of Beirut and told that
the rubble of buildings is a result of Israeli
air strikes on civilian targets. The reporter
repeated the allegation as fact. He had no
way of knowing what was in the buildings,
whether it was a rocket workshop, a hiding
place for katyushas, the home of a Hizballah leader,
or a command center. In fact, he didn’t
even know if Israel was
responsible for the destruction that he was
shown. Later, he admitted that his report
had been shaped by his Hizballah minder
who only let him go to certain areas and
photograph what the Hizballah “press
officer” would allow.
In waging their propaganda war, Israel’s
enemies count on journalists to report first
and research later, if at all, and CNN and
other media outlets have fallen into their
trap.
Israel’s adversaries learned a long
time ago that they can attract publicity
and sympathy by fabricating statistics and
screaming “massacre.” This was
the case in April 2002 when Palestinians
claimed that 500 people were “massacred” in
Jenin. They could not produce any evidence
to support the scurrilous charge, and their
own review committee reported a death toll
of 56, of whom 34 were combatants. By the
time the truth was reported, the story had
been repeated throughout the world media
and Israel’s image was tarnished.
During the last war
in Lebanon, disinformation
was the norm. Perhaps the most dramatic example
occurred when the Washington
Post published
a photograph (August 2, 1982) of a baby that
appeared to have lost both its arms. The
UPI caption said that the seven-month-old
had been severely burned when an Israeli
jet accidentally hit a Christian residential
area. The photo disgusted President
Reagan and was one reason he subsequently called
for Israel to halt its attacks. The photo
and the caption, however, were inaccurate.
The baby, in fact, did not lose its arms,
and the burns the child suffered were the
result of a PLO attack on East Beirut.
The media also reported that Israel’s
operation to end the PLO threats to northern
Israel resulted in 10,000 deaths and 600,000
homeless in south Lebanon. The 600,000 homeless
figure originated in mid-June 1982 with the
Palestine Red Crescent, headed by Yasser
Arafat’s brother Fathi. Francesco Noseda
of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, who had originally used the bogus
number, later repudiated it. By then, however,
it was too late and the perception had been
created that Israel was responsible for the
mass killing of civilians and the creation
of a humanitarian disaster.
The Lebanese Prime Minister
is trying this tactic again in 2006 by claiming
that Israel has perpetrated massacres and
has made 500,000 people homeless. No effort
is made to confirm these claims, they are
simply repeated by the media, thereby reinforcing
the incentive for Arab propagandists to spread
disinformation. In August, he declared that
Israel had perpetrated a “massacre” and
killed 40 people in the town of Houla. Later,
he was forced to admit that only one person
had died.
In the earlier war in Lebanon, there would
have been zero dead or homeless if the PLO hadn’t used south Lebanon as a base
from which to menace Israel. This same point
can be made today, but is being ignored by
the media in its obsession with casualty
figures and its desire to find evidence of
Israel attacking innocents. Not a single
Lebanese civilian would be in danger, however,
if Hizballah was not controlling southern
Lebanon and attacking Israel. This fact appears
lost on most journalists covering the current
conflict.
The press is also spending a great deal
of time talking to Lebanese civilians and
their relatives in the United States and
highlighting the difficult conditions they
are enduring. This is no doubt the case since
they are living in a war zone; however, the
media has spent almost no time talking to
the Israelis living under the constant threat
of rocket attacks. Few reporters have gone
into the bomb shelters to interview the frightened
Israeli families. No one seems interested
in how the relatives of Israelis in the United
States feel about their loved ones being
under siege.
Similarly, every report
has focused on the Americans living in Lebanon while
no one seems interested in the thousands
of Americans living in Israel. It is terrible
that tourists and students are having to
be evacuated from Lebanon, but what about
those same groups in Israel? What about the
hundreds of students on summer tours and
programs in Israel, many of whom were in
the north when the violence escalated? While
the complications of leaving the country
may not be as severe as in Lebanon,
it is still very difficult to arrange a quick
exit from Israel, and many American parents
are in a state of panic worrying about their
children in Israel.
Wars are never easy to cover,
and each side of a conflict wants to make
its case through the media. A responsible
press, however, does not repeat whatever
it hears, it first makes every effort to
insure the accuracy of its reporting. That
is the standard expected of journalists
covering the war between Israel and Hizballah.
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