{"id":2896,"date":"2006-07-30T13:31:47","date_gmt":"2006-07-30T20:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/30\/response-to-hacohen\/"},"modified":"2006-07-30T13:32:22","modified_gmt":"2006-07-30T20:32:22","slug":"response-to-hacohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/30\/response-to-hacohen\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Responds to HaCohen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Joshua Frank responds to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/29\/kidnapped-in-lebanon-i-think-not\/\">Ran HaCohen&#8217;s thoughts on the Hezbollah capture of two Israeli soldiers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>First I should say thanks to Ran HaCohen and Antiwar.com for posting a response to my piece, &#8220;Kidnapped in Israel or Captured in Lebanon,&#8221; which attempted to raise the question of whether or not Israel&#8217;s story that Hezbollah entered Israel and captured two soldiers was indeed accurate or not.<\/p>\n<p>From my own research on the issue of where the Israeli soldiers were actually captured, I&#8217;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 &#8212; for neither proves anything concretely.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>If one reads most every story written about the incident in question, most outlets initially quoted &#8220;Lebanon Police,&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>Hezbollah&#8217;s early communiqu\u00c3\u00a9s 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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Like I noted above, I think we all need to keep in mind that there hasn&#8217;t been a war waged in the past 60 years that did not use lies and propaganda to seduce the public. Why would Israel&#8217;s latest invasion of Lebanon be any different?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joshua Frank responds to Ran HaCohen&#8217;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, &#8220;Kidnapped in Israel or Captured in Lebanon,&#8221; which attempted to raise the question of whether or not Israel&#8217;s story that Hezbollah entered Israel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2896"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}