http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Middle_East/2000-02/fisk140200.shtml
How America swallows the Israelis' lies
By Robert Fisk, The Independent, 14 February 2000
Israel is losing its military struggle against Hizbollah
guerrillas in southern Lebanon - but winning its propaganda war
on the conflict in the outside world.
Although its aircraft bombed three Lebanese power stations last
week after guerrillas killed six occupation soldiers, Western
press and television reports almost unanimously portrayed the
latest violence in Lebanon as a war by Israel in defence of its
civilians on the other side of the frontier. In fact, no Israeli
civilians were attacked, let alone hurt, and all the Israeli
soldiers who died were inside their occupation zone in Lebanon.
Journalists based in the Middle East say Israeli diplomats have
mounted a letter-writing campaign to their editors - especially
in the United States - in an attempt to explain away the latest
war as a response to "terrorism" while failing to mention that
the Israeli casualties occurred in Lebanon, not in Israel. On
the BBC, Moshe Fogel, Israel's official spokesman, tried to
justify the Israeli raids on Lebanon's power stations - a clear
breach of the April 1996 ceasefire agreement - on the basis that
"Hizbollah terrorists are attacking our soldiers and civilians".
But no Israeli civilians had been attacked in the violence
leading to the air raids and Mr Fogel failed to mention that the
soldiers to whom he referred had been killed in their military
positions inside southern Lebanon. The only civilians to be
wounded were Lebanese, 17 of whom were hurt in the Israeli
bombings. But subsequent BBC World Service news reports
frequently referred to "the killing of six Israeli soldiers"
without mentioning they had died in Lebanon.
Typical of the coverage was a report in The Washington Post
whose Jerusalem correspondent referred in an article to what he
called "Israel's two-decade old intervention in Lebanon". Far
from being an "intervention" - ironically, this was the very
word the Soviet Union used when it invaded Afghanistan in 1980 -
Israel has twice invaded Lebanon and has occupied part of it in
violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 425 for
23 years. In The Independent's "Right of Reply" column last
Friday, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Dror Zeigerman, also
attempted to justify the Israeli raids on the basis of
"terrorist activities against Israel across the border" and
failed to mention that the six Israeli soldiers were killed in
Lebanon. He said that the Hizbollah attacks were launched from
"civilian villages" and were "a flagrant violation of previous
understandings".
In reality, several of the Israeli dead were killed by roadside
bombs primed and exploded inside Israel's own occupation zone.
And on Friday, Timur Goksel, the special adviser to the United
Nations force commander in southern Lebanon, stated publicly
that the Hizbollah "has not really violated the April [1996]
accords".
According to the UN, the Hizbollah has carried out 300 attacks
on Israeli occupation troops in December, 250 in January and at
least 60 so far this month. Since 1996, the Hizbollah has fired
Katyusha rockets across the Lebanese-Israeli border - but almost
always in retaliation for the Israeli wounding of Lebanese
civilians. The 1996 ceasefire accord states that the guerrillas
and Israeli troops may assault each other's forces inside
Lebanon but must not attack civilian targets or use civilians as
cover.
In all the reporting of last week's violence in southern
Lebanon, no mention was made of the 1,000-strong force Israel
keeps in the occupied zone or of the notorious Khiam jail there
in which - as Amnesty International and other human-rights
groups have protested - men and women prisoners are routinely
tortured with electricity. When the United States Secretary of
State, Madeleine Albright, was asked to comment on the war, she
contented herself with a reference to the Hizbollah as "enemies
of peace".
Only in Israel, it seems, are there journalists brave enough to
tell the truth about southern Lebanon. Among the most eloquent
is the novelist David Grossman who wrote in Yedioth Aharonoth
newspaper that Israel should "evacuate the outposts, bring the
soldiers home" and redeploy across the border. "Go. Learn to
live with the insult, swallow the empty pride, stop feeding the
fire of our lingering, pitiful arrogance with more and more of
our young soldiers. We have lost. It's OK to say it aloud, no
one dies from saying it... "
You would not have found an American reporter daring to say that
last week.
