Up the River with (Howard) Kurtz

By Ken Silverstein

“Since Israel has inflicted far more damage on Lebanon than it has sustained,” Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote today, “a heavy focus on the more than 300 civilian victims in that war-ravaged country could help tilt public opinion against the Jewish state. But that would overlook two key facts: that Israel retaliated only after Hezbollah crossed a U.N.-sanctioned border to kill and capture several Israeli soldiers, and that Hezbollah fighters hide—and hide their weapons—among civilians to make counterattacks more difficult.”

Both of these “key facts” are pretty ridiculous. Lets look at the first one. It appears that Kurtz is suggesting that because Hezbollah acted “first,” any Israeli reaction is justified. Thus, Hezbollah is made responsible for the Lebanese civilians killed in the conflict.

Beyond that, the Arab–Israeli conflict did not start when Hezbollah (however recklessly and stupidly) captured and killed those Israeli soldiers a few weeks ago, any more than the Cold War started when the Soviets entered Afghanistan. There is no defined beginning or end to the hostilities, and indeed there have been numerous occasions in the past when Israeli military action triggered retaliatory attacks from Hezbollah.

Yet imagine that an Israeli cross-border strike on Hezbollah fighters had brought about a massive attack on Tel Aviv that had killed hundreds and destroyed a good chunk of the city. Would Kurtz have written: “Hezbollah has inflicted far more damage on Israel than it has sustained, but that overlooks the fact that Hezbollah only retaliated after Israel crossed a U.N.-sanctioned border to kill and capture several of its soldiers”? Somehow, I doubt we'd be reading the same justification from Kurtz for such heavy civilian deaths and damage to infrastructure.

As to Kurtz's second “key fact”—that Hezbollah hides among civilians. I've heard this parroted in the media, but no one as far as I know has provided any actual evidence of Hezbollah's use of civilians as human shields. The idea is more likely a rhetorical ploy that Israeli spokesmen are using to justify a policy that was, in a recent interview on this website, summarized in this way by Middle East expert Wayne White:

<blockquote>Israel's civilian and military leadership appears to believe that it can destroy Hezbollah, not only by attacking Hezbollah itself, but also by showing the government and people of Lebanon what the price will be for allowing Hezbollah to operate on Lebanese territory. </blockquote>

The other major problem with Kurtz's second point is that there's no sign that any of the Lebanese civilians killed so far—like the family fleeing Tyre in their car yesterday, as told so well in Kurtz's Washington Post—are dead because they were willing or unwilling human shields. Nor is there evidence, based on the news reports I've seen, that many (if any) of the victims were even in the same immediate vicinity as Hezbollah fighters. Most appear to be “collateral damage” of large-scale bombing by Israel.

It's inexcusable for Hezbollah to lob rockets into Haifa when civilians are likely to be killed. It's inexcusable for Israel to bomb recklessly and level Beirut. And it's also inexcusable for Kurtz to use loaded “key facts” and weak logic to justify the deaths of so many Lebanese civilians.

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