Israel Matzav

Mainstream media coverup on LAF-IDF skirmish

Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.

Richard Landes reports that the mainstream media overseas has been ignoring some of the findings regarding Tuesday's incident on our border with Lebanon, despite the fact that they have been reported widely in the blogosphere and confirmed by UNIFIL and the two countries' respective militaries.

From here on out, however, the story gets fuzzy. While some newspapers acknowledged UNIFIL’s confirmation of the Israeli “narrative,” few bothered to draw out the implications, and some, like France2, continued to insist the tree was on the Lebanese side. The New York Times, for example, in a remarkably uninformed article, acknowledged the correction, but ended up repeating the “he said … she said” dance by quoting Lebanese officials rather than questioning them about the problems. The Wall Street Journal emphasized the efforts of UNIFIL to prevent an incident, without even addressing the disturbing evidence that they collaborated in the ambush, and then took a day to state what they knew from the beginning — that Israel was on its own turf.

On the contrary, everyone, including the Israelis, is backing off drawing the disturbing conclusions. The intelligence officer who briefed reporters off-record refused to draw even the most elemental conclusions from the incident, even negating claims by major Israeli public figures that the incident was an ambush. He admitted that the Lebanese army had an increasing number of Shiites rising up to the rank of officer, and that even if they were not Hezbollah, many of them had family in Hezbollah. Israel so wants this arrangement with UNIFIL and the LAF to work that they play down their own case.

The intelligence officer even tried to suggest, without dotting the i’s, that this was a rogue incident. He characterized it as an escalation of the “spirit of the commander,” a belligerence that has grown in the past weeks, especially since a Shiite commander took over the brigade that patrols this section of the south. He alluded to a “Levantine attitude” (by which I assume he meant macho behavior), leading Lebanese soldiers to make often imaginative hand gestures at the Israelis (“do you bite your thumb at me sir?”).

Of course sniper fire aimed at a commanding officer in the background (first shot) and RPGs (after a lull) hardly seems constant with escalating the kind of chest-thumping described by the Israeli officer. And the most recent remarks from the Lebanese officer present at last night’s parlay with UNIFIL and an Israeli general make it clear that this came from the top. But theories on just what set of interests set in motion the aggression remain speculative.

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:46 PM