Middle East post of the night

Comments won't be opened until morning, when I'm sure more stories will appear:

Hezbollah using Christian villages as shields:

A Christian from the village of Ain Ebel, who requested to remain nameless for fear of a reprisal from Hezbollah, reported that he found Hezbollah fighters setting up a launcher on his rooftop. Hezbollah fighters ignored his pleas to stop and fired the missiles. He immediately gathered his family and fled his home, which was bombed 15 minutes later by an Israeli air strike.

Hezbollah has also attempted to stop Christians from fleeing their villages. According to Christian Solidarity International, on July 28, Hezbollah fighters fired upon several Christians fleeing Rmeish with their families, wounding two.

Sami El-Khoury, president of the World Maronite Union, adds that media reports about Christian support for Hezbollah are inaccurate.

"Contrary to Western press reports, indicating high percentages of Christian support for Hezbollah, 90 percent of Christians, 80 percent of Sunni and 40 percent of Shiites in Lebanon oppose Hezbollah," El-Khoury told Christian Solidarity International.

Christian Solidarity International has called for the United Nations to establish a politically independent commission to investigate Hezbollah's contravention of international law. The group has also urged the UN Security Council to deploy immediately an international force in Lebanon to facilitate a ceasefire, to stop the flow of arms from Syria to Hezbollah, and to assist the Lebanese government in fulfilling its obligation to disarm Hezbollah.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem speaks:

After describing what is going on in Gaza and southern Lebanon as “simply inhuman”, Mgr Sabbah criticized the tardiness of the international community which instead “should interfere with greater efficiency in order to put an end” to the violence, a real “vicious cycle of death” that must be broken by the strongest. The patriarch seemingly condemns the violence of the Palestinian and Lebanese militia (and suicide bombers) as well as that perpetrated by the Israeli army: “Experience in this conflict has proved that violence has only generated and even increased violence, did not give the required security and it is useless to found a new order.”

Part of his appeal is addressed more directly to the Israelis: “Military power alone cannot protect. Military reprisals only increase the refusal that encircles Israel in the region. Indeed the result is the deepening of hatred and refusal.”

The patriarch continued: “The only action to use for legitimate defense, that can really protect and will have as result the required security, consists simply in putting an end to the initial injustice which is the heart of this long conflict, that is, the Palestinian question. It consists in putting an end to the Israeli military occupation imposed for years upon the Palestinians, and giving them back their freedom and their independence.”

Mgr Sabbah said: “As long as the oppression lasts, the oppression will give birth to violence.”

An op-ed in the Jerusalem Post looks at the media:

CNN "senior international correspondent" Nic Robertson admitted that his anti-Israel report from Beirut on July 18 about civilian casualties in Lebanon, was stage-managed from start to finish by Hizbullah. He revealed that his story was heavily influenced by Hizbullah's "press officer" and that Hizbullah has "very, very sophisticated and slick media operations."

When pressed a few days later about his reporting on the CNN program "Reliable Sources," Robertson acknowledged that Hizbullah militants had instructed the CNN camera team where and what to film. Hizbullah "had control of the situation," Robertson said. "They designated the places that we went to, and we certainly didn't have time to go into the houses or lift up the rubble to see what was underneath."

Robertson added that Hizbullah has "very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access into those areas. You don't get in there without their permission. We didn't have enough time to see if perhaps there was somebody there who was, you know, a taxi driver by day, and a Hizbullah fighter by night."

Yet "Reliable Sources," presented by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz, is broadcast only on the American version of CNN. So CNN International viewers around the world will not have had the opportunity to learn from CNN's correspondent that the pictures they saw from Beirut were carefully selected for them by Hizbullah.

Another journalist let the cat out of the bag last week. Writing on his blog while reporting from southern Lebanon, Time magazine contributor Christopher Allbritton, casually mentioned in the middle of a posting: "To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hizbullah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one."

snip

But meanwhile anti-Semitic coverage and cartoons are spreading across the globe. Norway's third largest paper, the Oslo daily Dagbladet, ran a cartoon comparing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to the infamous Nazi commander SS Major Amon Goeth who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them from his balcony and was depicted by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg's film Schindler's List. (A month earlier Dagbladet published an article, "The Third Tower," which questioned whether Muslims were really responsible for the September 11 attacks.)

Antonio Neri Licon of Mexico's El Economista drew what appeared to be a Nazi soldier with stars of David on his uniform. The "soldier" was surrounded by eyes that he had apparently gouged out.

A cartoon in the South African Sunday Times depicted Ehud Olmert with a butchers knife covered in blood. In the leading Australian daily The Age, a cartoon showed a wine glass full of blood being drunk in a scene reminiscent of a medieval blood libel. In New Zealand, veteran cartoonist Tom Stott came up with a drawing which equated Israel with al-Qaida.

At least one leading European politician has also vented his prejudice through visual symbolism. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wore an Arab scarf during an event at which he condemned Israel, but not Hizbullah, who he presumably thinks should not be stopped from killing Israelis.

It's entirely predictable that all this violent media distortion should lead to Jews being attacked and even murdered, as happened at a Seattle Jewish center last week.

When live Jews can't be found, dead ones are targeted. In Belgium last week, the urn that contained ashes from Auschwitz was desecrated at the Brussels memorial to the 25,411 Belgian Jews deported to Nazi death camps. It was smashed and excrement smeared over it. The silence from Belgian leaders following this desecration was deafening.