The euro weenies vs. Israel

Melanie Phillips:

The responses in Britain and Europe to the current crisis in the Middle East more than ever confirm my view that much of the west is in the grip of a profound moral breakdown. The outward manifestation of the sickness is a hatred of Israel, an irrationality and a willingness to turn objective truths on their heads to a degree which is simply unprecedented. Indeed, the British pathology now runs so deep that the hostility towards Israel’s activities in Lebanon is currently far more pronounced than in much of the Arab world, which unlike Britain has grasped what is actually going on in Lebanon and what the stakes are — compared to which, hatred of the traditional Israeli foe takes a very firm second place. This is another first for our upside-down times.

A hysteria towards Israel is rising within the media and so-called educated classes of Britain which increasingly mimics and even rivals, in its intensity, irrationality and bigotry, the prejudices and libels coursing through the Arab world which are the recruiting sergeants for global terror. Through the distorting prism of this world view — the dominant view of the media and the intelligentsia — Israel is being presented as the aggressor in this dispute, inflicting upon the hapless Lebanese a wholly disproportionate level of punishment.

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What is essentially a war of defence and of survival, however, is being presented to Britons in their armchairs as a war by Israel of unconscionable aggression, with all the suffering taking place among the Lebanese who are in turn presented as the innocent bystanders caught up in a war in which they have no standing. The fact that Hezbollah was elected to the Lebanese parliament, holds government portfolios and has been allowed to operate with impunity by the Lebanese as a state within a state to carry out its murderous objectives towards Israel is almost totally ignored. Yes, innocent Lebanese are dying and suffering in this war, and that is awful. Innocent civilians, tragically, are always victims in any war. But Lebanon itself is not an innocent bystander at all. It is an accessory to genocidal terror. We heard this from the mouth of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah himself yesterday, when he said:

‘I told them on more than one occasion that we are taking the issue of the prisoners seriously, and that abducting Israeli soldiers is the only way to resolve it. Of course, I said this in a low-key tone. I did not declare in the dialogue: “In July I will abduct Israeli soldiers.” This is impossible.’
Interviewer: ‘Did you inform them that you were about to abduct Israeli
soldiers?’
Hassan Nasrallah: ‘I told them that we must resolve the issue of the
prisoners, and that the only way to resolve it is by abducting Israeli
soldiers.’
Interviewer: ‘Did you say this clearly?’
Hassan Nasrallah: ‘Yes, and nobody said to me: “No, you are not allowed to
abduct Israeli soldiers.” Even if they had told me not to… I’m not
defending myself here. I said that we would abduct Israeli soldiers, in
meetings with some of the main political leaders in the country. I don’t
want to mention names now, but when the time comes to settle accounts, I
will. They asked: “If this happens, will the issue of the prisoners be over
and done with?” I said that it was logical that it would. And I’m telling
you, our estimation was not mistaken.’

The BBC in particular has turned into the Beirut Broadcasting Corporation, reporting the war almost entirely from the perspective of a Lebanon that is entirely innocent and victimised (as opposed to Sky which is far more even-handed). All this with scarcely a nod at the scores of Israeli dead and hundreds of casualties, or the thousands of Israeli refugees being taken in by families in the south of the country. And this despite the fact that those Israeli casualties are being specifically targeted for death, whereas the Lebanese casualties are the inadvertent victims of attacks directed against Hezbollah terrorists and their infrastructure. The Israelis are leafleting Lebanese civilians in advance of their raids to ensure that as many as possible leave the zone of fire. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work, but the intention is patently there to avoid killing civilians because this is a war of self-defence against a terrorist army. The Hezbollah, by contrast, is firing its rockets tipped with ball-bearings — designed to murder and maim as many as possible —in order specifically to kill Israeli civilians.

Yet the British media, led by the BBC, reflects none of this....

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There is much more on the reporting that is prompting the Euro weenie disease.