Old Hickory's Weblog

Whenever I try to follow a "fast-breaking" story like the Israel-Lebanon War has been since July 12, I acquire new respect for real journalists, as much as I complain about the many shortcomings of the mainstream media.  Running down facts and sifting verifiable information from speculation, propaganda and disinformation is tough in these situations.  And some journalists are coming through on that.

Josh Marshall links to this story, which suggests that Hizbullah may have been attempting to provoke Israel into firing at the UN observation point that was struck this week, killing four UN personnel: Hezbollah was using UN post as 'shield': Canadian wrote of militia's presence, 'necessity' of bombing by Joel Kom, CanWest News Service/Ottawa Citizen 07/27/06.

Just last week, Maj. Hess-von Kruedener wrote an e-mail about his experiences after nine months in the area, words Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie said are an obvious allusion to Hezbollah tactics.

"What I can tell you is this," he wrote in an e-mail to CTV dated July 18. "We have on a daily basis had numerous occasions where our position has come under direct or indirect fire from both (Israeli) artillery and aerial bombing.

"The closest artillery has landed within 2 meters (sic) of our position and the closest 1000 lb aerial bomb has landed 100 meters (sic) from our patrol base. This has not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity."

Those words, particularly the last sentence, are not-so-veiled language indicating Israeli strikes were aimed at Hezbollah targets near the post, said Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie.

"What that means is, in plain English, 'We've got Hezbollah fighters running around in our positions, taking our positions here and then using us for shields and then engaging the (Israeli Defence Forces)," he said.

That would mean Hezbollah was purposely setting up near the UN post, he added. It's a tactic Maj.-Gen. MacKenzie, who was the first UN commander in Sarajevo during the Bosnia civil war, said he's seen in past international missions: Aside from UN posts, fighters would set up near hospitals, mosques and orphanages.

This does not mean there is no reason to question or criticize the Israeli strike on the UN post.  But it does suggest that it may have been done in pursuit of legitimate tactical military objectives.  As the article explains, however, the fact that Hizbullah had been operating around the post in previous days does not necessarily contradict UN claims that no such operations were in progress at the time the post was hit by Israeli planes.  It also mentions in the concluding paragraph that Israel up to that point had not used Hizbullah operations in the area as an "excuse" for the attack.

This article in today's Salon is an important one:  The "hiding among civilians" myth by Mitch Prothero Salon 07/28/06.  It addresses the question that I haven't seen addressed yet in any other media outlet:  is there any independent evidence for the Israeli claim that Lebanese Hizbullah is positioning its fighters, missiles and rocket launchers in civilian dwellings and civilian areas, and are therefore leaving Israel no choice but to strike those civilian areas?

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths - the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far - on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. ...

Although Israel targets apartments and offices because they are considered "Hezbollah" installations, the group has a clear policy of keeping its fighters away from civilians as much as possible. This is not for humanitarian reasons - they did, after all, take over an apartment building against the protests of the landlord, knowing full well it would be bombed - but for military ones.

"You can be a member of Hezbollah your entire life and never see a military wing fighter with a weapon," a Lebanese military intelligence official, now retired, once told me. "They do not come out with their masks off and never operate around people if they can avoid it. They're completely afraid of collaborators. They know this is what breaks the Palestinians - no discipline and too much showing off."

Perhaps once a year, Hezbollah will hold a militaryparade in the south, in which its weapons and fighters appear. Media access to these parades is tightly limited and controlled. Unlike the fighters in the half dozen other countries where I have covered insurgencies, Hezbollah fighters do not like to show off for the cameras. In Iraq, with some risk taking, you can meet with and even watch the resistance guys in action. (At least you could during my last time there.) In Afghanistan, you can lunch with Taliban fighters if you're willing to walk a day or so in the mountains. In Gaza and the West Bank, the Fatah or Hamas fighter is almost ubiquitous with his mask, gun and sloganeering to convince the Western journalist of the justice of his cause.

The Hezbollah guys, on the other hand, know that letting their fighters near outsiders of any kind - journalists or Lebanese, even Hezbollah supporters - is stupid. In three trips over the last week to the south, where I came near enough to the fighting to hear Israeli artillery, and not just airstrikes, I saw exactly no fighters. Guys with radios with the look of Hezbollah always found me. But no fighters on corners, no invitations to watch them shoot rockets at the Zionist enemy, nothing that can be used to track them.

Prothero has found in his reporting that Hizbullah is careful to maintain a distance, physical and organizationally, it seems, between the combatants (guerrilla fighters) and the civilian elements of the group - party members, social service operators, etc.:

Hezbollah's political members say they have little or no access to the workings of the fighters. This seems to be largely true: While they obviously hear and know more than the outside world, the firewall is strong.

Israel, however, has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians. ...

So the analysts talking on cable news about Hezbollah "hiding within the civilian population" clearly have spent little time if any in the south Lebanon war zone and don't know what they're talking about. Hezbollah doesn't trust the civilian population and has worked very hard to evacuate as much of it as possible from the battlefield. And this is why they fight so well - with no one to spy on them, they have lots of chances to takethe Israel Defense Forces by surprise, as they have by continuing to fire rockets and punish every Israeli ground incursion.

The following paper focuses specifically on the similar though separate non-binding resolution on the Israel-Lebanon War that the two houses of Congress passed:  Congress and the Israeli Attack on Lebanon: A Critical Reading by Stephen Zunes (Foreign Policy in Focus paper) 07/22/06.

 It specifically looks at the House version and provides a lot of information in the process of commenting on and critiquing the resolution.

He catches a factual error in the House resolution, which says, "Whereas despite the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, the Government of Lebanon has failed to *disband* and disarm Hezbollah ... "  (my emphasis).  As Zunes explains, "UN Security Council resolution 1559 does not call for Hezbollah or any other Lebanese political party to be disbanded, only for their armed militias to be disbanded."

The actual text of Resolution 1559 is available online under UN Security Council Resolutions 2004; here is the direct link to the text of 1559, though I had some trouble with the direct link.