The American Spectator

At Large

One question I have yet to see the Mainstream Media address is why there are still so many civilians in south Lebanon. The BBC says the stragglers are too old, sick and poor to leave. If Lebanese families are abandoning their sick and elderly as they flee the war zone, it speaks poorly of the Muslims, not the Jews.

p>If we go back to 1978, when Israel launched an offensive in southern Lebanon in retaliation for a PLO bus hijacking in Tel Aviv (35 Israelis killed, 100 injured) we find this story -- also from the BBC: br> /p>

Civilians Flee Southern Lebanon

The large town of Nabatiya, only two miles from the Litani river, has been almost totally depopulated of its 30,000 inhabitants who have fled the shelling.

br> What's different this time? Certainly there are no more poor, sick and elderly than in that earlier conflict? Perhaps the difference is that Hizbullah has been schooled in the overarching importance PR, of sacrificing civilians as a means of winning the propaganda war, and the weight of world opinion in wartime.

Listening to the mainstream media one is unlikely to know that Lebanese civilians were warned to leave southern Lebanon before the fighting started. To quote Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir: "The Israeli defense forces dropped leaflets and warned the civilian population to leave the place because the Hizbullah turned it into a war zone." In fact, the Israelis telephoned Lebanese civilians. Such courtesy is unprecedented in the annals of military history.

p>Nor are we likely to have heard the report from the Israeli military that Hizbullah has prevented civilians from leaving villages in southern Lebanon: br> /p>

Roadblocks have been set up outside some of the villages to prevent residents from leaving, while in other villages Hizbullah is preventing UN representatives from entering, who are trying to help residents leave. In two villages, exchanges of fire between residents and Hizbullah have broken out.

br> Hizbullah, of course, knows that without its civilian shields to hide behind, the Israeli forces will wipe them out within days. Likewise, the only way to defeat a superior Israeli force is to turn world opinion against the Jews. And that can only happen if lots of Lebanese women and children are "martyred."

Have you noticed that when there are casualties, the media automatically assumes that all are civilians or noncombatants -- even though Hizbullah fighters don civilian clothes, fire rockets from civilian areas, and scramble into nearby buildings afterwards to hide among civilian populations -- and this before any legitimate investigation takes place?

topics:
Mainstream Media, Television, Military, Iraq, Israel