Soccer Dad

Israel's success and hizbollah's

I've been bothered by the way the media has been trumpeting Hezbollah's success so far. Most of my focus has been on the the Washington Post, but the NY Times, I suspect has been no better. There's a recent story from the Times Arab World Finds Icon in Leader of Hezbollah. It explains how Nasrallah has, by keeping his rhetoric toned down and living up to his word has become a hero in the Arab world.

Gone are the empty threats made by President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s official radio station during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to push the Jews into the sea even as Israel seized Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.

Gone is Saddam Hussein’s idle vow to “burn half of Israel,” only to launch limited volleys of sputtering Scuds. Gone too are the unfulfilled promises of Yasir Arafat to lead the Palestinians back into Jerusalem.

Now there is Sheik Nasrallah, a 46-year-old Lebanese militia chieftain hiding in a bunker, combining the scripted logic of a clergyman with the steely resolve of a general to completely rewrite the rules of the Arab-Israeli land feud.

“There is the most powerful man in the Middle East,” sighed the deputy prime minister of an Arab state, watching one of Sheik Nasrallah’s four televised speeches since the war began, during an off-the-record meeting. “He’s the only Arab leader who actually does what he says he’s going to do.”

Yes. And his last broadcast was from where? An undisclosed location? Does that mean that he's abandoned his fighters to their fate in Lebanon while he's of in Tehran? Or does it mean that he's in Lebanon but dare not give Israel any hints because he fears it will be his undoing?

There's no word in the article about Nasrallah's last speech. That would have conveyed a sense of weakness on his part. And apparently the NY Times can't have that.

Barry Rubin in From Arafat to Nasrallah: How Misperceptions of Israel Shape Arab Strategy, on the other hand, sees little new about Nasrallah. And in fact he even provides quotes to show that Nasrallah, unlike what MacFARQUHAR reported for the Times, indeed, uses the rhetoric of the past

Here is Arafat in 1968: "The Israelis have one great fear, the fear of casualties." This principle guided PLO strategy: Kill enough Israelis by war or terrorism, and the country would collapse or surrender. A PLO official in 1970 said the Jews could not long remain under so much tension and threat; "Zionist efforts to transform them into a homogeneous, cohesive nation have failed," and so they would leave.
And here is Nasrallah on July 29: "When the people of this tyrannical state loses its faith in its mythical army, it is the beginning of the end of this entity." This confident assertion comes after two squads of Israeli soldiers were killed, two tanks destroyed, and one patrol boat seriously damaged. Israel suffered far heavier losses fighting PLO terrorists in the 1960s when the country's population was far smaller without political or social upheaval.

To read MacFarquhar and Rubin together, it's impossible not to believe that the former is writing hopeful propaganda, rather than a carefully considered expose of a terrorist leader.

Similarly compare the Times's A Disciplined Hezbollah Surprises Israel With Its Training, Tactics and Weapons with David Horovitz's Measuring Success and Failure.

The Times story tells us of all the advances made by Hezbollah over 18 years. (It comes accross almost as a recruitment brochure.)

Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state, and its fighters “are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians,” said a soldier who just returned from Lebanon. “They are trained and highly qualified,” he said, equipped with flak jackets, night-vision goggles, good communications and sometimes Israeli uniforms and ammunition. “All of us were kind of surprised.”

Much attention has been focused on Hezbollah’s astonishing stockpile of Syrian- and Iranian-made missiles, some 3,000 of which have already fallen on Israel. More than 48 Israelis have been killed in the attacks — including 12 reservist soldiers killed Sunday, who were gathered at a kibbutz at Kfar Giladi, in northern Israel, when rockets packed with antipersonnel ball bearings exploded among them, and 3 killed Sunday evening in another rocket barrage on Haifa.

But Iran and Syria also used those six years to provide satellite communications and some of the world’s best infantry weapons, including modern, Russian-made antitank weapons and Semtex plastic explosives, as well as the training required to use them effectively against Israeli armor.

It is Hezbollah’s skillful use of those weapons — in particular, wire-guided and laser-guided antitank missiles, with double, phased explosive warheads and a range of about two miles — that has caused most of the casualties to Israeli forces.

And later

Mr. Goksel describes Hezbollah much as the Israelis do: careful, patient, attuned to gathering intelligence, scholars of guerrilla warfare from the American Revolution to Mao and the Vietcong, and respectful of Israeli firepower and mobility.

“Hezbollah has studied asymmetrical warfare, and they have the advantage of fighting in their own landscape, among their people, where they’ve prepared for just what the Israelis are doing — entering behind armor on the ground,” Mr. Goksel said.

“They have staff work and they do long-term planning, something the Palestinians never do,” he said. “They watch for two months to note every detail of their enemy. They review their operations — what they did wrong, how the enemy responded. And they have flexible tactics, without a large hierarchical command structure.”

The lack of "a large hierarchical command structure" is being hailed here as a an advantage. I suspect that it is something of a weakness.

The article gives little indication of Israeli successes so far until the very end

General Kuperwasser, too, respects Hezbollah’s ability “to well prepare the battlefield,” but says, “We’re making progress and killing a lot of them, and more of them are giving up in battle now and becoming prisoners, which is a very important sign.”

Too bad that the Times's correspondents didn't probe Gen. Kupperwasser's remarks a little more. How many killed? How many captured?

David Horovitz on the other hand tells us

Plainly there are Israeli achievements.

Prominent among them is the resilience of the Israeli civilian population - a terrorworn populace demonstrably capable of withstanding 2,500 deadly rockets fired indiscriminately into its midst. In addition to the lengthening roster of the dead, let no one underestimate the impact that the North has had to absorb - the long hours in the shelters, the Katyusha barrages and the constant threat of more; the sense of dicing with death when setting foot outside; the protracted emotional strain that has made nervous wrecks even of many Israelis who live beyond the rockets' reach and do not have children fighting in the IDF.

Yet rather than pleading with its government to find the means, any means, to stop the incoming fire, the populace has encouraged that government to keep on taking the fight to the enemy, acutely conscious of what is at stake. There will be a limit to how much the public is prepared to stoically absorb. But if Iran had armed Hizbullah in part so as to be able to threaten our cities with this kind of missile attack as a deterrent to an Israeli strike on its nuclear program, it will now be working on an amended strategy.

For all the derision over the IDF's slow progress in clearing Hizbullah away from the immediate cross-border area, an enemy that had been given six untroubled years to literally dig in has gradually been pushed out of many of its strongholds. Its fortified outposts at the border, massive explosive devices planted all around them, have been uprooted. Its potential to stage another Goldwasser-Regev-style kidnapping, or attempt a more major crossborder incursion, has been drastically reduced.

The relatively short-range Katyusha launchers are proving so hard to thwart because, Kassam style, they are mobile and easy to fire. A handful of gunmen, trundling a few kilometers from mobile launcher to mobile launcher, can set up, fire, hide the equipment and disappear in a flash, wreaking havoc a few dozen kilometers to the south. And Hizbullah has dozens upon dozens of terror cells to do the job. But the medium and longer-range launchers are an easier target. Many were taken out at the very start of this conflict, on the basis of extraordinary intelligence information allied to technical prowess. In precisely 59 villages, it is said, the IDF knew which home had a Fajr rocket as a guest, and went unerringly to the right address time after time.

It would be one thing if the Times was balancing its accounts of Hezbollah's prowess with accounts of successful Israeli countermeasures, but it isn't. (The degree to which it does, it suggests that Hezbollah wanted Israel deep in Lebanon so it would have longer more vulnerable supply lines. Color me skeptical. Two other interesting omissions from the Times story are its account of the Bam earthquake that asserts that aid came from "everywhere." Well it didn't come from Israel, because Iran refused it. Perhaps, in part, to make it easier to ship armaments back to Syria. The other thing that the Times barely notes though Horovitz mentions is that Israel's weakness towards Hezbollah stems in part from its withdrawal and subsequent absence from Lebanon. Of course that would say that part of the reason for this war is Israel's withdrawal. And the editors of the Times know that more Israeli withdrawals = more peace. Contrary evidence must not be acknowledged.)

Naomi Ragen quoting from one of her son's friends shows that the positive view of Hezbollah doesn't extend to all in the IDF

The village looked empty, and then we heard noises coming from one of the houses, so we opened fire. But when we went inside, we found two women and a child huddled in the corner of the room. We were so relieved we hadn't hurt them. We took up base in one of the empty houses. And then all of a sudden, we came under intense fire. Three rockets were fired at the house we were in. Only one managed to destroy a wall, which fell on one of us, covering him in white dust, but otherwise not hurting him. "I spent the whole time feeding bullets to my friend who was shooting nonstop. We managed to kill 26 terrorists. Not one of us was hurt. Our commanding officer kept walking around, touching everybody on the shoulder, smiling and encouraging us: 'We're are better than they are. Don't worry.' It calmed us all down. And really, we were much better than them. They are a lousy army. They only win when they hide behind baby carriages."

While I'm sure that Hezbollah's made gains in recent years, especially after Israel's retreat in 2000, I don't know that things are going all that swimmingly for them. After all, where's Nasrallah. Unfortunately, the NY Times seemingly views Hezbollah only through rose colored glasses.

UPDATE: Whoops! The same day that the NY Times is advertising Hezbollah's great successes Haaretz reports IDF soldier killed in fierce clashes in south Lebanon; 14 Hezbollah fighters also die in Bint Jbail battles. I guess reporting about the war in general terms is more important than reporting what actually happened.

Technorati tags: Media Bias, New York Times, Hezbollah, Israel.

Posted by SoccerDad at August 7, 2006 6:44 AM | TrackBack