[Volokh] David Bernstein: More Media news from the Israel-Party of God War:

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Posted by David Bernstein:
More Media news from the Israel-Party of God War:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_08_06-2006_08_12.shtml#1154895848


   By popular demand (lots of emails): Reuters has pulled a photo of
   Beirut doctored by one of its "photojournalists" to make damage from
   Israeli air strikes look worse than it was. This photographer was one
   of the photographers who took somne of the most dramatic of what
   appear to be staged photos in Qana.

   Meanwhile, according to the IDF, it has destroyed missile launchers
   that launched the missile that collapsed a building today in Haifa.
   The launchers were based, according to the IDF, in Qana. One of the
   sillier, and oddly popular (even [1]among those you would expect to
   know better), attacks on the IDF I've seen regarding Qana, is that the
   IDF acknowledged that no missiles were launched from Qana on the day
   that the IDF bombed what it believed to be Party of God positions
   there. As if there is some rule of war that if your enemy fires from a
   position on Saturnday, you are only allowed to strike back on
   Saturday.

   Finally, I've been checking Informed Comment here and there, and
   while, as long time readers know, I've never been a Juan Cole fan, he
   seems to have really lost it lately. I find myself just unable to
   follow the logic of what he writes. Just for example:

     Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Saturday rejected European
     criticism of Israel's massive bombing of Lebanon and its killing of
     hundreds of innocent civilians. He pointed to Kosovo as precedent
     for what he was doing.

     Olmert also said he thought he might just murder Hasan Nasrallah.

     Uh, Ehud, you're supposed to be playing NATO in this interview,
     remember? Not Milosevic. You're getting your precedents for murder,
     mass or otherwise, mixed up.

     Besides, the whole analogy is wrong. Milosevic's forces were
     ethnically cleansing the Kosovars. NATO was protecting the latter
     (and the Israeli government of the time supported this effort,
     given its alliance with Turkey). Who was Hizbullah ethnically
     cleansing in early July? In fact, it is the Israelis who have
     behaved in the past two weeks like Milosevic's Serbian troops, who
     systematically attempted to displace the Kosovars during the war.
     And then the NATO estimate is that their campaign killed 5000
     Serbian military personnel and at most 1500 civilians. Israel's war
     has killed nearly 700 (maybe 900) civilians and many fewer
     Hizbullah fighters. So, the argument fails on all counts.

   First off, "murder" is Cole's word, not Olmert's, who apparently said
   that Israeli forces might assassinate Nasrallah. Does Cole really
   think that targeted the head of a terrorist organiztion that has
   killed many of one's countries civilians would be "murder?" Bizarre.
   Let's assume that Cole's casualty counts are correct (he's still
   exaggerating the death toll from Qana on his site--claiming without a
   stitch of evidence that 13 "missing" in Qana, are "almost certainly
   dead", even though local officials say the opposite--o I don't see any
   reason to trust him on the other figures.) NATO killed up to 1,500
   civilians, and over 6,000 Serbs total. And that was because Serbia was
   threatening to wipe NATO off the face of the earth. No wait, that was
   Nasrallah making such threats against Israel, who is allied with Iran,
   which very much promises to do this to Israel. And as I recall,
   tens(hundreds?) of thousands of Serbs ultimately had to permanently
   flee from areas held by the Bosnians, despite NATO "protection," so
   it's not like NATO didn't exact a far worse price than Israel among
   "innocent" civilians. Apparently, Israel's big crime in Cole's mind
   was not to wait until Iran and the Party of God actually began to make
   significantly more progress on their threat to commit genocide.

References

   1. http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2006/08/what_really_hap.html