Pink Eyed Jim’s Blog

The more I read it, the more I’m coming to love The Jawa Report. These guys tend to draw more of a conservative audience, but that’s just fine. Rusty Shackleford, Vinnie, and all the other people that contribute do an awesome job of finding and archiving news stories that trouble them or irresponsible journalism.

Needless to say, I love it.

Their current pet project is “Reutergate” which has come to be quite a telling expose of how Reuters photographers (two or three in particular, it seems) have been doctoring their photos and slanting the Israel/Hezbollah conflict largely against Israel.

Now it would make sense to me that any rational person should be able to see that there are clearly three sides in this conflict, which makes it all the more complicated, sensitive, and dire.

1. Israel - Hezbollah are firing about 200 missiles a day into northern Israel, killing and trapping her citizens. Two of her soldiers were ambushed (inside Israeli borders) and kidnapped by Hezbollah, one by Hamas.
2. Hezbollah - the eradication of all non-Muslim (Shia particularly) governments in the Middle East, including those of Lebanon, and Egypt as well. The rally of all the area’s Muslims behind this jihadist group as their sole holy protectorate against Jewish and Western invaders.
3. Lebanon - the almost non-sectarian government is trapped in the middle, not strong enough to eradicate Hezbollah, strangely defiant of Israel, worried about her innocent civilians being killed, worried that international releif is not able to get through Israeli warfare-torn areas, the destruction of her Capital, her bridges, the isolation of and danger towards her Christian, Muslim, and all other citizens alike.

So what we have here is a rich conflict. Hezbollah may be batshit insane, but their beleifs are strong and they’re obviously willing to fight for them, and they are winning hearts and minds in the Arab world, due largely in part to knee-jerk reactionism against Israeli bombing. Israel’s response may or may not be extremely disproportionate (I think it stands at something like a 1:8 ratio now between Israeli and Lebanese casualties), but it doesn’t seem to be affecting Hezbollah much yet (they’re able to fire 200 rockets a day in a very well coordinated manner), and it’s definitely not winning them many hearts or minds in the Arab world (which they happen to be stuck right in the fucking middle of). And finally the Lebanese government: it was supposed to be their responsibility to handle Hezbollah in the southern area of their country and they haven’t lived up to it, they’re obviously incapable of it right now, but for some reason it was only two days ago (twenty-something days into this conflict) that the Lebanese PM promised to commit 15,000 troops to the area once Israeli troops leave Lebanon and the bombing of Lebanon stops.

The bottom line is that there is wrong being done on all sides here and Israeli and Lebanese civilians are dying every day because of it. Lebanon needs to commit the troops to the area, supplemented with international forces as needed and control Hezbollah. Israel needs to stop the bombing, pull out her troops, and commit to help rebuiliding civilian infrastructure in Lebanon . As little time as humanly possible needs to pass between these two events. And finally, Hezbollah need to be completely demilitarized, and if that’s not possible, needs to be eradicated both physically and socially. The aid that Hezbollah provides to southern Lebanese muslims (and yes they do provide charitable aid, it’s how they’re winning hearts and minds) needs to be provided by either Lebanon or the international community.

Why can’t we get this done? Why is it that we need to spin the news either way? People are dying on both sides. And we drag our feet.