Hezbollah TV’s Misreporting of Israeli Military Exercise
Posted by editor on 24 June 2008 at 3:26 pm UTC
After reading today’s headliner at Al Manar, Hezbollah’s television-news website, one has to wonder if Hezbollah’s reporters and editors are incompetent, manipulated, or both?
The story, “Israel to Strike Iran before New US President Sworn in,” is a Hezbollah spin-piece that basically reviews an interview with former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton by London’s Daily Telegraph.
The piece, which refers to Bolton as ”an unflinching hawk who proposes military action to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons,” contends that any military operation by the Israelis aimed at taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities would probably take place before the next U.S. president enters the Oval Office.
According to Bolton:
“An Obama victory would rule out military action by the Israelis because they would fear the consequences given the approach Obama has taken to foreign policy. With McCain they might still be looking at a delay.”
Can’t say I disagree with the ambassador.
But where Hezbollah totally botches it is when they report: “Last week, Israeli jets carried out a long-range exercise over the Mediterranean that US intelligence officials concluded was practice for air strikes against Iran.”
The exercise in fact took place on June 2 – more than three weeks ago — and despite the fact that the 100-plane, 900-mile mission over the eastern Mediterranean including parts of Greece, was not reported for more than two weeks (we touched on that here), it has since been widely reported.
But Al Manar still can’t get it right.
That’s not to say that Hezbollah has poor intelligence. On the contrary, the Lebanese-based terrorist army (supported by Iran and Syria) has a far greater intelligence network than many in the West might realize. The shoddy reporting within their media on the other hand only plays to the fact that — unlike legitimate media — Hezbollah’s Al Manar has no institutionalized commitment to accuracy. Their focus is instead on disseminating Hezbollah’s propaganda whatever and whenever that might be.
Al Manar TV — along with its print-news cousin, Al Akhbar — is simply a Hezbollah soapbox made to appear is if it is legitimate media.
Al Manar reporters are kept in the dark about the issues critical to Hezbollah (military capabilities, exercises, numbers and types of weapons, meetings with key leaders, where any of those leaders might be hunkered down at any point in time, and other comings and goings). That’s not surprising considering that only a free press would have access to such, and Al Manar and Al Akhbar are actually media branches of Hezbollah’s broader propaganda wing.
Same with Hezbollah’s members of parliament: They are representatives of Hezbollah to be sure. But does anyone actually believe any of them have any clue where Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah spent last night, or the night before?
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
Fighting Near the Shores of Tripoli: Lebanon’s, Not Libya’s
Posted by editor on 23 June 2008 at 4:15 pm UTC
Over the weekend, we received word that fighting was taking place in-and-around the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, not far from where last year’s fighting took place between the Lebanese Army and the Al-Qaeda affiliate group Fatah Al Islam in the bloody battle of Nahr al-Bared.
The current fighting, which is now being widely reported throughout the Western media, is between pro-democracy Sunnis and pro-Syrian Alawites (allied to Hezbollah).
According to the AP:
“…It was not immediately possible to determine whether the Tripoli violence was an isolated event or residue from last month’s clashes …”
Our sources are telling us, the fighting in Tripoli is most certainly connected to last month’s attacks by Hezbollah, the Doha agreement – which greatly increased the power and influence of Hezbollah (and Iran and Syria) in Lebanon – and the ongoing albeit under-reported attacks launched by Hezbollah and its allies across the country since mid-May.
Readers may also recall from our reporting at World Defense Review (here, here, and here) that resistance groups began forming across the country almost immediately following the Doha talks in Qatar. And as I reported at Human Events:
“On Sunday evening [May 18], sources informed us that members of the pro-democracy movement in Lebanon had, hours earlier, formed a ‘resistance group against terrorism.’ Monday we learned the resistance group — formed in Beirut — was composed of Christians, Druze, and Muslims (both Sunni and Shiia), all ‘committed to resisting Hizballah.’ There also are reports of a like-minded Sunni resistance group forming near Tripoli.”
According to Ya Libnan, Lebanese parliamentarian Mohammed Kabbara, a Sunni, says, “”Hezbollah is seeking to shift its battle — after invading Beirut — to the Bekaa, and now Tripoli’s turn has come.”
Tom Harb, secretary general of the World Council of the Cedars Revolution, tells us, “This is clearly a strategy of Hezbollah and a continuation – by other means and in other regions of the country — of the terrorist attacks launched by Hezbollah against the Lebanese people last month.”
Sources very close to the Lebanese Army also are telling us, the attacks in Tripoli, the Bekaa Valley (last week), and elsewhere, are part of a much broader two-part strategy on the part of the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah axis to both increase the pressure on the Lebanese Army and the Interior Security Forces (national police) — spreading legitimate Lebanese forces thin and keeping them off-balance – and to perhaps create or increase fissures within the Army leadership and the rank-and-file.
Updates will follow.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
The MSM is increasingly falling short RE: military reporting
Posted by editor on 20 June 2008 at 10:53 pm UTC
(AFP)
The MSM is increasingly becoming a joke when it comes to military reporting. That’s not to say there aren’t some good ones — publications and reporters — in the literal trenches, doing great work. There are.
But far too many of the world’s largest English-language publications have reporters in the field who completely screw the stories up (because they have no historical frame of reference, no grasp of military science or combat operations … thus no way to effectively put the latter into context). They report around the edges of the story, perhaps hype them (I know of some examples), distort them, or — at the other extreme — under-report them. Unfortunately, as has been determined by not too few counterterrorism experts, some of those reporters are bought and paid for by either the enemy or those with a political agenda. Many times, the reporters miss the story altogether when there was — or is — no reason for it to be missed.
Case in point, the reporting just today of a more-than-sizeable Israeli air-combat exercise that took place < ahem > nearly three weeks ago.
The fact that it it took the top English-language media this long to discover and report this is — as one of my colleagues told me today — “truly pathetic.”
And quite frankly, I see this all too often with the reporting coming out of Lebanon (where much of my focus is), even Iraq and Afghanistan where we have troops on the ground.
I remember last year when the “Anbar Awakening” in Iraq’s previously bloody Anbar Province was first being reported; and the success in Anbar was wrongly being attributed to “the Surge.” It’s still wrongly being attributed to the Surge, though the Surge certainly contributed in a huge way to the success of the “Awakening.”
Fact is, the “Anbar Awakening” began in 2005 following Operation Steel Curtain. But because the MSM either didn’t understand the dynamics of Iraq (or they were trying to keep the lid on the counterinsurgency successes in Anbar), the Awakening was reported to have begun in 2007.
And for anyone who might have picked up the paper this morning — or logged on to their favorite news site this afternoon — a cursory read might have led them to believe a hundred or so IAF fighters were roaring out over the Med last night.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
Posted by editor on 20 June 2008 at 2:30 pm UTC
NowLebanon is reporting that U.S. and Canadian intelligence agencies, which have previously warned of “the possibility of attacks carried out by Hezbollah against ‘Jewish targets’ outside the Middle East” have reactivated dormant cells in Canada.
We know from open sources that Canadian-based Hezbollah-sympathizers have routinely – often anonymously — defended the Lebanon-based terror group on various websites and listserves (and such sympathizers have viciously condemned outspoken critics of Hezbollah). And though few Americans are aware of it, there are growing pockets of Hezbollah support within some of the Shiia communities here in the United States.
Problem is, far too many in the media tend to whitewash Hezbollah as nothing more than “an armed group and a political party in Lebanon.”
Those in the media whitewashing Hezbollah are perhaps attempting to soften the threat for undeclared (but nevertheless real) political reasons, and they are getting away with it despite that fact that national security and counterterrorism experts are increasingly saying Hezbollah is a dangerously expanding terrorist group that “makes Al Qaeda look like a minor league team,” as Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff recently said.
Today, according to NowLebanon: “Some of the party’s chief activists have moved from Lebanon to Canada, Europe and Africa.”
We also know they are in South America (see yesterday’s and last week’s entries on Hezbollah in Venezuela).
In other news: Sources are telling us that Assaad Hardan – who is on the U.S. Treasury Department’s designated list of pro-Syrian, terrorist-supporting bad guys who are undermining the push toward Lebanon’s democracy – will become the next president of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) in Lebanon.
Hardan is a very bad guy, and the SSNP – whose heavily armed and black-masked operatives were photographed rifling through Future News’s offices during Hezbollah’s attacks against the country last month — is a very dangerous group allied to Hezbollah.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
U.S Treasury Department Targets Hezbollah Supporters in Venezuela
Posted by editor on 19 June 2008 at 9:51 pm UTC
Exactly one week after we reported that young Venezuelan Arabs were being signed up for “summer camp” Hezbollah-style in south Lebanon (and Venezuelan Vice Minister of the Interior Tarek el-Aissami having been pegged as one of the top Venezuelan officials recruiting the Hezbollah hopefuls), the U.S. Treasury Department has designated Venezuelans Ghazi Nasr al Din and Fawzi Kan’an — as well as two travel agencies owned by Kan’an – “supporters of Hezbollah.”
According to a statement issued yesterday by Treasury:
“… ‘It is extremely troubling to see the Government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor to Hizballah facilitators and fundraisers. We will continue to expose the global nature of Hizballah’s terrorist support network, and we call on responsible governments worldwide to disrupt and dismantle this activity,’ said Adam J. Szubin, Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
“Today’s action was taken pursuant to Executive Order 13224, which targets terrorists, those owned or controlled by or acting for or on behalf of terrorists, and those providing financial, technological, or material support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. Assets the designees hold under U.S. jurisdiction are frozen and U.S. persons are prohibited from engaging in transactions in property or interests in property blocked under the order. …”
Excellent: We need to keep the pressure on these terrorists, and any individual, company, organization, or state which supports terrorists.
Details follow at Treasury, the Cedars Revolution website, and Fausta’s Blog.
UPDATE: Treasury has today “designated” the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation for having provided financial and material support to Al Qaeda, “as well as a wide range of designated terrorists and terrorist organizations.”
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in these articles are solely those of the author, and do not represent the opinions of World Defense Review and its affiliates. WDR accepts no responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy or inaccuracy of the content of this or any other story published on this website. Copyright and all rights for this story (and all other stories by the author) are held by the author.
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