Antiwar.com Blog

Joshua Frank responds to Ran HaCohen’s thoughts on the Hezbollah capture of two Israeli soldiers:

First I should say thanks to Ran HaCohen and Antiwar.com for posting a response to my piece, “Kidnapped in Israel or Captured in Lebanon,” which attempted to raise the question of whether or not Israel’s story that Hezbollah entered Israel and captured two soldiers was indeed accurate or not.

From my own research on the issue of where the Israeli soldiers were actually captured, I’ve come away with a few things. First, my main point in my original post was to bring this issue to light, not spread a conspiracy theory. Second, I really think that the reports on both sides should raise alarm — for neither proves anything concretely.

I am on the fence myself and not convinced one way or another as to where the soldiers were actually captured by Hezbollah soldiers. One thing is a fact, however: the original story (i.e., the AP) changed everywhere after Israeli military released their statement.

If one reads most every story written about the incident in question, most outlets initially quoted “Lebanon Police,” but failed to use their quotes after Israel released their official statement sometime later. So really, it seems this all boils down to the IDF version vs. Lebanon Police.

Hezbollah’s early communiqués seem to validate the Lebanon Police account, but Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah officials have not officially released a statement as of this writing. From the few contacts I have with people close to Hezbollah and in Lebanon, the organization purportedly refutes the official Israeli version, i.e., the rumor that there was the use of a ladder, etc. But they seem to insist they in fact provoked the attack but captured the soldiers in Lebanon. Who really knows at this point? I’d like to see Hezbollah come forward to tell their side. But I certainly would never say that the Israeli version is in any way trustworthy in the interim. Time, hopefully, will tell all.

Like I noted above, I think we all need to keep in mind that there hasn’t been a war waged in the past 60 years that did not use lies and propaganda to seduce the public. Why would Israel’s latest invasion of Lebanon be any different?

At 7:30 p.m. ET on C-SPAN, Antiwar.com contributor Leon Hadar talks about his book, Sandstorm, at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.  James Pinkerton (Newsday, Fox News) and Geoffrey Kemp (Nixon Center) provide commentary. During the Q&A portion of the event, the panelists talk about the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon.

Satire Alert!

If I ran this as a regular story, I would get in so much trouble.

Andy Borowitz on the latest military scheme for Iraq. One of the best parts is the quote from General Schoomaker, which is partially accurate.

Joshua Frank did an important job in bringing two competing stories about the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hizbollah: the main-stream story which says they were abducted on the Israeli side of the border, and the alternative claim that the soldiers were captured by Hizbollah on Lebanese soil. I am afraid, however, that this is one of these rare cases in which the main-stream (and Israeli) version is the credible one. Note that the Hizbollah itself, so it seems,  never claimed the alternative story was true: it’s not Israel’s words versus Hizbollah’s, but the general media versus unclear sources. Let me try to show why.

(1) As for the main-stream story, Frank writes: “Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory.”

-Not quite. The precise story is: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing three and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory. Following the kidnap, an Israeli tank crossed the border into Lebanon and was destroyed, in which four soldiers were killed, bringing the number of casualties to seven. Some of the confusion seems to have been caused by these two separate events, which are sometimes conflated in the reports.

(2) As for the alternative story, Frank writes: “Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon’s southern territory. It was at this point that an Israeli tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six.”
-However, an Israeli tank of the kind used (Merkava) is normally manned by 4 soldiers, not by six or eight.

Now let’s check the sources for the alternative version, one by one:

(3) The AFP report: “According to the Lebanese police force, the two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory.”

-But the same report contains yet another significant line: “Hezbollah did not specify the place of capture of the two soldiers”. Remember the actual organ in power in south Lebanon is Hizbollah, not the Lebanese police.

(4) The French news site www.VoltaireNet.org: “In a deliberated way, [Israel] sent a commando in the Lebanese back-country to Aitaa al-Chaab. It was attacked by Hezbollah, taking two prisoners.”

-However, this site says that this report is based not on its regular Middle-East reporter, but “grâce aux nombreux contacts dont il dispose sur place” – i.e., anonymous sources.
(5) The Associated Press reported that “The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon”.

-This ambiguous or rather contrdictory  formulation can clearly mean that the soldiers were captured across the border on Israeli soil; “southern Lebanon” may be used as a broad geographic term.

(6) The Hindustan Times writes: “The Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon .[…] The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they ‘infiltrated’ into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border.”
-This could sound pretty good if the Hindustan Times was responsible for this item. But this is not the case. Hindustan Times has taken the item from the Indo-Asian News Service. The Indo-Asian News Service, in turn, has taken it from DPA, the German news agency. However, the DPA report in German, posted immedialy after the kidnap (even before the tank incident) said the two soldiers had been abducted, according to the Hizbollah announcement, „from the border area“ („aus dem Grenzgebiet“).

(7)  The last source quoted is “a report from The National Council of Arab Americans, based in Lebanon”. However, this “report” is no more than a blog message posted by an anonymous “Zeina”, who was seeking shelter somewhere in Lebanon and was clearly informed second-hand.

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     In short, there seems to be no real evidence for the so-called alternative story, especially not in view of the very extensive account and pictures released in Israel for the original version, i.e. that the two soldiers were abducted across the border just inside Israel.

Ran HaCohen

 

Comparing the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah guerrillas to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Charles Krauthammer weighs in on the Israeli reponse:

“Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right — legal and moral — to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one’s security again. That’s what it took with Japan.”

Let’s apply the principle enunciated here to everyday human relations. Say I “capture” your wallet on a crowded bus, and make for the back in an effort to evade your attention. In pursuit, you push over a few old ladies, floor a woman carrying a baby, and trample several young and rather small children. Not only that, but you start shooting — and hit five or six people without landing a bullet on me.

According to the Krauthammerian moral doctrine, you are perfectly within your rights. After all, I am “hiding among civilians,” just as Krauthammer alleges is Hezbollah’s favorite tactic. Besides which, those “civilians,” who know perfectly well that I’m a pickpocket — this bus line has been plagued with them recently — have done nothing to stop me. They let me pass, and isn’t this a form of collaboration? As the Israeli “Justice” Minister Haim Ramon, in advocating that villages under attack by the IDF should be “flattened,” put it:

“Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there could be considered a Hezbollah supporter. ‘All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,’ Mr Ramon said.”

There aren’t “innocent civilians” in the back of the bus, and anyone who gets in your way is fair game. You finally get to the back row, and find I’ve locked myself in the bathroom. You’re out of ammunition, but luckily you remembered to take your switchblade: this is used to persuade the bus driver to hand over the key. You, of course, have a perfect right to hold all the passengers on that bus hostage: after all, you must “carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one’s security again.”

According to the logic of Krauthammer’s moral creed, you have the right to blow up the bus and everyone in it provided the threat to your security, i.e. the pickpocket, is eliminated, which is precisely what Israel is doing to Lebanon.

Disproportionate?

If individuals engaged in the behavior exhibited by Israel in Lebanon, they would be prosecuted and imprisoned in order to protect the public. No doubt Krauthammer believes Israel’s status as a state grants it transcendence over a legal and moral code meant for mere mortals. But of course a state can be guilty of war crimes, which Israel is surely committing as I write. (Or is Krauthammer now joining the “revisionists” in repudiating the war crimes trials at Nuremberg?)

Tension between the U.S. and Israel, always bubbling just beneath the surface, is popping up all over the place, in spite of George W. Bush’s confusion about which country he’s really chief executive of. Condoleezaa Rice’s trip to Rome, where she argued for a “sustainable cease-fire” rather than an immediate cessation of hostilities, is a case in point. The declaration issued by the conferees reflected this “sustainable” view, and the Israelis immediately cited it as a green light to continue their relentless campaign of bombing civilians in the name of “fighting terrorism.” According to the New York Times, however, the State Department, begs to differ:

“Israeli officials said later that in fact, the declaration gave Israel the world’s permission to continue strikes in Lebanon against Hezbollah targets.

“But today, a State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, said that such an interpretation of the Rome declaration was ‘outrageous,’ and that the United States was working for a durable end to the conflict.”

“Outrageous” pretty much describes Israel’s behavior in all of this, and we can expect more of the same from both the Israelis and the State Department as the crisis continues. Simply put, Israeli interests and American interests are at loggerheads in Lebanon, and the longer this war continues the more we will see and hear rhetorical salvos fired betwee Washington and Tel Aviv.