Editors' Note: Yet another regular City Belt feature makes it debut today -- Media Massage will be the spot for insightful media criticism and reporting on the New Jersey press.
In Sunday's Star-Ledger, the lead editorial, "Containing the Fire in the Middle East" took a strange tack -- it argued that the reasoning behind Israel's attack on Lebanon is false -- ie, waging war to make (or keep) peace does not work.
The pattern is clear, and Israel should know it by now -- they attack and occupy (be it Palestine or Lebanon), citizens are the worse for it, innocents die, and part of the population becomes radicalized. Hence Hamas or Hezbollah, the so-called "terrorists" that Israel hopes to "reign in," swells in ranks and becomes more legitimate.
Whatever your opinion about that, it's odd then for the Star-Ledger to claim that "Israel's response...is justified," and to say that the UN's declaration that Israel's response was "disproportionate" is "maybe...right."
Again, whatever your opinion about the first point (some people may think it's justified to shoot a kid in the face who calls you fat, or whatever), the second point is undisputable. Why is it only "maybe" right?
As the L.A. Times reported today: "Casualties again edged upward, with the death toll exceeding 180 on the Lebanese side, nearly all of them civilians. Twenty-four Israelis have been killed since the region's worst fighting in two decades erupted last week, half of them civilians and half troops."
I guess at the Star-Ledger, all the calculators are broken.
The Israeli response to Hizbullah's actions has been astoundingly virulent, claiming not only hundreds of civilian lives (and who knows how many more before this firestorm dies down), but millions, maybe billions, of dollars worth of damage to infrastructure, not to mention lost tourism dollars. And this right on the heels of Time Out and craigslist recently debuting Beirut editions, and a half-dozen or so recent profiles on Beirut/Lebanon in prominent travel publications - even improbably including Out Traveler magazine. On my own trip there this past May I encountered many tourists from all parts of the globe.
Yet somehow the majority of the american media has managed to paint this lopsided battle as Israel exercising its perfectly legitimate right to defend itself. Of course it doesn't help that the G8, despite Putin's apparent best efforts, agree with them.
Posted by: Shane Smith | 07/17/2006 at 03:22 PM