He Who Tells the Truth Gets Chased out of Nine Villages, Part III
Recorded August 27, 2006
Introduction: The Matrix films enjoyed tremendous popularity and circulation in the last years of the 20th century. An adventure series, the films are predicated on the cognitive domination of a captive human race, held in thrall by a society of intelligent machines. Unaware that their perceptions are under the total control of a computerized system, humans are a subservient population, subdued by their lack of awareness of the true nature of their surroundings. Because most people are informed by mediated experience, they are dependent for their grasp of reality on the integrity of the media sources upon which they rely for information. When those media—for whatever reason—fail to maintain their functional integrity and present distorted information to the public, those who rely upon them are in a matrix as decisive as that in the popular film series. Coverage of the Israeli/Arab conflict in general, and the recent Lebanon war in particular, has been affected by just such matrix. Driven by the economic power of Middle Eastern petroleum-producing countries, media propaganda about Israel has both drawn upon—and fueled—traditional anti-Semitism, often rationalized as “anti-Zionism.” This program pierces the disinformation of the Middle East Matrix and its manipulation of coverage of the Lebanon War. By repeat showings of the same footage in such a way as to deceive the audience into thinking the scale of destruction is far greater than it actually was, many TV outlets created an utterly false picture of the aerial campaign in Lebanon. Far worse is the networks’ and wire services’ uncritical acceptance of obviously staged and fabricated “atrocities” allegedly committed by the Israeli Defense Forces. One of the major factors determining the skewed coverage of the Lebanese war is the fact that Hezbollah rigorously restricted journalists’ access to the war zone. They saw–and reported—only what Hezbollah wanted them to see and report! TV coverage of the war, as well as the Israeli/Arab conflict generally, has been heavily prejudiced by the marketplace economics affecting the Associated Press’s Television News service. The financial engine that underpins the non-profit Associated Press, the APTN accounts for a large percentage of the television feed that reaches world audiences. The content of that feed, in turn, is profoundly affected by the APTN’s Arab service, created and tailored specifically for the Gulf States. The audience of the Arab and Muslim states of the Gulf devour news of Israel, and favor the prejudiced viewpoint prevalent in the region. The economic clout of the Gulf States and the proximity of the Arab APTN production crew and facilities to BBC staff and production facilities heavily prejudices broadcast coverage of anything to do with Israel.
Program Highlights Include: Discussion of the grotesqueness of comparisons of Israel with Nazi Germany; graphic illustrations of the falsification of photographic evidence of alleged “Israeli atrocities”; falsification and/or exaggeration of coverage of the “Qana non-massacre”; journalistic coverage of the “non-attacks” on Lebanese ambulances by Israeli aircraft; fabrication of an Israeli “non-attack” on a Reuters vehicle; comparison of the skewing of coverage of the Israeli/Arab conflict with the distortion of information in the OJ Simson case; failure of the so-called alternative media to cover the distortion.
1. The issue of media distortion of the events surrounding the war in Lebanon couldn’t be exaggerated. In FTR#564, we touched on some of the falsification of photographic evidence in the Lebanon war, as well as the staging or embellishment of civilian casualties. This information is reviewed at the end of this program description. As noted here, among the factors skewing the media coverage of the war is the fact that Hezbollah very carefully restricted media access to the battlefield. In fairness to the journalists who covered the war, most of them saw only what Hezbollah allowed them to see. Nonetheless, the facile and inappropriate comparisons of Israel to the Nazis are outrageous, as well as preposterous. For example, one brigade of the Leibstandarte Adolph Hitler (a Waffen SS division) burned 200 villages in the Soviet Union with the people locked in the buildings, earning the nickname “the Blowtorch Brigade.” [A brigade usually consists of approximately 3,500 men, although this number can vary greatly from one army to the next.] “Large sections of the international media are not only misreporting the current conflict in Lebanon. They are actively fanning the flames. The BBC world service has a strong claim to be the number-one villain. It has come to sound like a virtual propaganda tool for Hezbollah. As it attempts to prove that Israel is guilty of committing ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity,’ it has introduced a new charge — one which I have heard several times on-air in recent days. The newscaster reads out carefully selected ‘audience comments.’ Among these are invariably contained some version of the claim that ‘Israel’s attack on Lebanon’ will serve as a ‘recruitment’ drive for al-Qaeda. But if anything is going to win new recruits for Osama bin Laden and his like, it will not be Israel’s defensive actions, which are far less damaging than Western TV stations would have us believe, but the inflammatory and one-sided way in which they are being reported by those very same news organizations.”
(“The Media War Against Israel” by Tom Gross; National Post; 8/2/2006.)
2. “While the slanted comments and interviews are bad enough, the degree of pictorial distortion is even worse. From the way many TV stations worldwide are portraying it, you would think Beirut has begun to resemble Dresden and Hamburg in the aftermath of Second World War air raids. International television channels have used the same footage of Beirut over and over, showing the destruction of a few individual buildings in a manner which suggests half the city has been razed. A careful look at aerial satellite photos of the areas targeted by Israel in Beirut shows that certain specific buildings housing Hezbollah command centers in the city’s southern suburbs have been singled out. Most of the rest of Beirut, apart from strategic sites such as airport runways used to ferry Hezbollah weapons in and out of Lebanon, has been left pretty much untouched. From the distorted imagery, selective witness accounts, and almost round-the-clock emphasis on casualties, you would be forgiven for thinking that the level of death and destruction in Lebanon is on par with that in Darfur, where Arab militias are slaughtering hundreds of thousands of non-Arabs, or with the 2004 tsunami that killed half a million in Southeast Asia.” (Idem.)
3. It should be noted that the vast majority of the coverage of the Lebanon war has been presented by journalists whose accounts have, in fact, been carefully regulated by Hezbollah operatives. In all fairness to the journalists, and to the organizations for which they work, the distortion of events in the Lebanon war was largely beyond their control. In the “journalistic marketplace”—to coin a term—it is unacceptable not to cover a huge story, such as the war. Thus, the only account of events is the one Hezbollah wishes to disseminate. “In fact, Israel has taken great care to avoid killing civilians — even though this has proven extremely difficult and often tragically impossible, since members of Hezbollah, the self-styled ‘Party of God,’ have deliberately ensconced themselves in civilian homes. Nevertheless the civilian death toll has been mercifully low compared to other international conflicts in recent years. Last week, a senior journalist let slip how the news media allows its Mideast coverage to be distorted. 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 Hezbollah. In particular, he revealed that his story was heavily influenced by the group’s ‘press officer,’ and that Hezbollah have ‘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 Hezbollah militants had instructed the CNN camera team where and what to film. Hezbollah ‘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.’” (Idem.)
4. “Robertson added that Hezbollah has ‘very, very good control over its areas in the south of Beirut. They deny journalists access to 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 Hezbollah 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 that the pictures they saw from Beirut were carefully selected for them by Hezbollah. 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, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loath 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.’” (Idem.)
5. The BBC is a different kettle of fish, however. For one thing, the BBC—as is the case with most major foreign correspondents for British dailies—is connected in the most profound way with MI6 (the UK’s foreign intelligence service.) At least insofar as Israel and events in the Middle East are concerned, the BBC has metamorphosed into the contemporary equivalent of the Goebbels propaganda ministry. As will be seen below, BBC’s video content is heavily influenced by APTN (Associated Press Television News). “Robertson is not the only foreign journalist to have misled viewers with selected footage from Beirut. NBC’s Richard Engel, CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer, and a host of European and other networks, were also taken around the damaged areas by Hezbollah minders. Palmer commented on her report that ‘Hezbollah is also determined that outsiders will only see what it wants them to see.’ Palmer’s honesty is helpful. But it doesn’t prevent the damage being done by organizations such as the BBC, whose bias is obvious to those who know the facts. First, the BBC gave the impression that Israel had flattened the greater part of Beirut. Then to follow up its lopsided coverage, its Web site helpfully carried full details of the assembly points for an anti-Israel march due to take place in London, but did not give any details about a rally in support of Israel also held in London a short time later. Indeed, the BBC’s coverage of the present war has been so extraordinary that even staunch BBC supporters in London seem rather embarrassed — in conversation, not on the air, unfortunately. If the BBC were just a British problem, that would be one thing, but it is not. Thanks to British taxpayers, it is the world’s biggest and most lavishly funded news organization. No other station broadcasts so extensively in dozens of languages, on TV, radio and online.” (Idem.)
6. “The BBC’s radio service alone attracts over 163 million listeners. It pours forth its world view in almost every language of the Middle East: Pashto, Persian, Arabic and Turkish. (Needless to say, it declines to broadcast in Hebrew, even though it does broadcast in the languages of other small nations: Macedonian and Albanian, Azeri and Uzbek, Kinyarwanda and Kyrgyz, and so on.) It is not just that the supposed crimes of Israel are completely overplayed, but the fact that this is a two-sided war (started, of course, by Hezbollah) is all but obscured. As a result, in spite of hundreds of hours of broadcast by dozens of BBC reporters and studio anchors, you wouldn’t really know that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been living in bomb shelters for weeks now, tired, afraid, but resilient; that a grandmother and her seven-year old grandson were killed by a Katyusha rocket during a Friday night Sabbath dinner; that several other Israeli children have died. You wouldn’t have any real understanding of what it is like to have over 2,000 Iranian and Syrian rockets rain down indiscriminately on towns, villages and farms across one third of your country, aimed at killing civilians.” (Idem.)
7. “You wouldn’t really appreciate that Hezbollah, far from being some ragtag militia, is in effect a division of the Iranian revolutionary guards, with relatively advanced weapons (unmanned aerial vehicles that have flown over northern Israel, extended-range artillery rockets, anti-ship cruise missiles), and that it has a global terror reach, having already killed 114 people in Argentina during the 1990s. The BBC and other media have carried report after report on the damaged Lebanese tourist industry, but none on its damaged Israeli counterpart, even though at least one hotel in Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, was hit by a Hezbollah rocket. There are reports on Lebanese children who don’t know where they will be going to school, but none on Israeli children. Many have grown accustomed to left-wing papers such as Britain’s Guardian allowing their Mideast coverage to spill over into something akin to anti-Semitism. For example, last month a cartoon by the Guardian’s Martin Rowson depicted Stars of David being used as knuckle dusters on a bloody fist.” (Idem.)
8. “Now the Conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph, Britain’s best-selling quality daily, and previously one of the only papers in Europe to give Israel a fair hearing, has got in on the act. The cartoon at the top of the Telegraph comment page last Saturday showed two identical scenes of devastation, exactly the same in every detail. One was labeled: ‘Warsaw 1943’; the other: ‘Tyre, 2006.’ The suggestion, of course, is that modern Israel is no different from Nazi Germany. A politician had already given the cue for this horrendous libel. Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell told the House of Commons that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was ‘colluding’ with U.S. President George W. Bush in giving Israel the okay to wage a war crime ‘gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.’ Of course, there was no ‘Jewish quarter’ of Warsaw. In case anyone needs reminding (Sir Peter obviously does) the ghetto in the Polish capital, established in October 1940, constituted less than three square miles. Over 400,000 Jews were then crammed into it, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. 254,000 were sent to Treblinka where they were exterminated. Most of the rest were murdered in other ways. The ghetto was completely cleared of Jews by the end of May 1943.” (Idem.)
9. “The picture isn’t entirely bleak. Some British and European politicians, on both the left and right, have been supportive of Israel. So have some magazines, such as Britain’s Spectator. So have a number of individual newspaper commentators. 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 — as 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.” (Idem.)
10. “A cartoon in the South African Sunday Times depicted Ehud Olmert with a butcher’s 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-Qaeda. 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 Hezbollah, 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.” (Idem.)
11. In assessing coverage of the Lebanon war and the whole issue of the Israeli/Arab conflict, it is important to understand that the Arabs have oil and the Jews don’t. The economic throw weight of the oil industry and other economic entities involved with the tremendous recycled petroleum wealth that has become a large and growing part of the investment landscape is a major factor in the slanting of journalistic coverage of the Middle East. “Other Jews continue to be killed in Israel itself without it being mentioned in the media abroad. Last Thursday, for example, 60-year-old Dr. Daniel Ya’akovi was murdered by the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist group within Fatah that Yasser Arafat set up five years ago using European Union aid money. But this is far from being an exclusively Jewish issue. Some international journalists seem to find it amusing or exciting to bait the Jews. They don’t understand yet that Hezbollah is part of a worldwide radical Islamist movement that has plans, and not pleasant ones, for all those — Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Jew — who don’t abide by its wishes.” (Idem.)
12. Illustrating the political/economic dynamics underlying the journalistic distortion of the Middle East is the relationship between the non-profit Associated Press and its profit-making television news subsidiary APTN. In turn, the profound influence of the Arab market on the coverage provided by APTN and the influence of APTN on other broadcast outlets is a major cause of the media distortion of events in the Middle East. “The vast majority of the TV news pictures you see are produced by two TV news companies. Presented here is a case for how a large amount of money has been used to inject a clear bias into the heart of the global TV newsgathering system. That this happens is not at question, whether it is by accident or design is harder to tell. You may not realize it, but if you watch any TV news broadcast on any station anywhere in the world, there is a better than even chance you will view pictures from APTN. BBC, Fox, Sky, CNN and every major broadcaster subscribes to and uses APTN pictures. While the method by which they operate is interesting, it is the extra service this US owned and UK based company offers to Arab states that is really interesting.”
(“How Much Does It Cost to Buy Global TV News?”; Little Green Footballs)
13. The program encapsulates the history of the AP and the operations of its APTN subsidiary: “The Associated Press (AP) is a not-for-profit news gathering and dissemination service based in the US. Formed in 1848, the AP grew up from an agreement between the six major New York newspapers of the day. They wanted to defray the large telegraphy costs that they were all independently incurring for sending the same news coast to coast. Despite being highly competitive, they formed the Associated Press as a collection agency and agreed to share the material. Today, that six-newspaper cooperative is an organization serving more than 1,500 newspapers and 5,000 broadcast outlets in the United States. Abroad, AP services are printed and broadcast in 112 countries. Associated Press Television News (APTN) is a wholly owned subsidiary of AP. It was formally set up as a separate entity in 1994. It is run as a commercial entity and aims to make a profit. Any profit it does make is fed back to AP (which is non-profit making: APTN profits reduce the newsgathering costs incurred by the 1500 US newspapers that collectively own the AP). APTN is the largest television news-gathering player (larger than Reuters, its only true competitor in this field). While AP is based in the US, APTN operates out of large premises in Camden, London. They have news teams, offices and broadcast facilities in just about every important place in the world.” (Idem.)
14. Note the role in generating APTN’s coverage of local sources—in many cases ‘stringers’ in Arab countries who are subject to the political and ethnic prejudices that obtain in that part of the world. “APTN uses news crews and broadcast facilities all over the world to record video of newsworthy events (in News, Sport and Entertainment). These pictures are either sent unedited or very partially edited back to London. Most news is fed back within hours but they also cover and feed certain events live (news conferences in Iraq, press conferences after a sporting event etc.). Most of these stories are sent in with ‘natural sound’: there is no journalist providing a voice over, but the choice of what to shoot is in the hands of the local producer and camera crew. Local crews are sometimes employed directly by APTN, or more often ‘stringers’ are hired for a particular event or paid for the footage they have already captured. Once the stories have been fed back to the UK they are edited. This is a round the clock operation. The goal is to produce a 30 minute news bulletin comprising 6 or 7 stories every few hours. These stories are made by editing down the raw ‘rushes’ that come in from all over the world. This is done by a team of producers who work for the news editor. They don’t supply a voice over but they do edit, discard and sequence pictures dictating the emphasis and direction of the story. They will accompany each story with a written description of each shot and the general reason this was a story. This is repeated for News, Sport & Entertainment with a geographical emphasis that shifts around the world as different markets wake and sleep. The output of this is called the ‘Global News Wire’ (GNW).” (Idem.)
15. The program details how APTN makes its money: “This is how APTN makes its money: news organizations (mostly TV but not all) subscribe to APTN and pay an annual amount to both watch and then re-use the stories that are fed over the GNW. The stories are supplied with sound, but no journalist to do a voice over. Most commercial news stations (like the BBC, SKY, Fox or CNN) would take this feed, decide which pictures to use then re-edit it and supply an appropriate voice over for the story. The video comes with a written description of the shots and the events that occur in them. The fee for this feed depends on the size of the receiving organization, their audience size and a negotiation with APTN’s sales force. It is pretty much impossible, however, to operate a TV news organization without taking feeds from either APTN or Reuters or usually both. The agreement with APTN usually allows the receiving news channel unlimited use of the video for two weeks. If they want to re-show those pictures after that they have to separately license the pictures (which can cost anything from $100 to $10,000 per 30 seconds depending on the content).” (Idem.)
16. Of paramount importance in understanding television coverage of news in the Middle East is the decisive influence of the Arab states’ APTN subscription service. This service—specifically tailored for the virulently anti-Israeli Arab market—is profoundly influential on APTN content as a whole. And with the great influence of APTN coverage on TV coverage as a whole, this badly skews the objectivity of the coverage of the Israel and the Lebanon war. “However, there is another significant part of their business model that affects the rest of the business. While most of the world takes news pictures with minimal interpretation beyond editing, the Arab Gulf States have asked for and receive a different and far more expensive service. These states pay for a complete news report service including full editing and voice-overs from known journalists. The news organizations in the Arab countries don’t do anything (beyond verify that they are appropriate for local tastes) before broadcast. What this means is that while there are around 50 people producing news pictures for the whole world working in Camden at any time, there are a further 50 Arabic speaking staff producing finished stories exclusively for the Arab states of the gulf. This has a tremendous effect on the whole feel of the building as these two teams feed pictures and people back and forth and sit in adjacent work areas. The slant of the stories required by the Gulf States has a definite effect on which footage is used and discarded. This affects both the Gulf newsroom and the main global newsroom. This full service feed is much more expensive for the customers than the usual service, but it is also much higher margin for APTN. This is partly because there is great commonality in what they can send to most of the Gulf States taking this service: stories are made once and used in a number of countries.” (Idem.)
17. “Anything involving Israel is a favorite with Gulf Arab states for showing to their viewers. Could this be the reason why Israel receives such a disproportionate amount of particularly negative coverage especially and increasingly ever since the early 1970’s? HonestReporting is usually unable to decide which is most biased: AP or BBC. As the BBC is often using APTN footage, the difference is minor. A significant twist to what is seen, concerns what is not seen. Footage such as the Palestinian mob joyfully lynching two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000 is held by APTN’s library: any attempt to license this film for reshow is carefully vetted. Requests for the use of ‘sensitive clips’ are referred directly to the Library director. This is not the case with clips that paint Israel in a bad light. Likewise, the re-showing of Palestinian celebrations on 9/11 is considered ‘sensitive’. The way in which raw footage such as APTN’s is compiled into a news report and sent round the world has also been analyzed. The Second Draft gives a comprehensive view of how editing can make all the difference. APTN is the gatekeeper that sits between you and the actual event. You will never see what the editors at APTN see before they compile your evening news. What do you think is cut out?” (Idem.)
18. There are indications that the Arabic APTN service may have been set up with this bias in mind. “Was this organization set up with this in-built bias on purpose? Is there some way that the expensive payments made by Gulf state governments form part of a deliberate attempt to skew the media? In Islam and Dhimmitude (2002) by Bat Ye’or on pp294-296 she recounts how decisions were taken in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 to try to put across an anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist message. Successive conferences resolved to contribute vast sums ‘to universities, centers for Islamic studies, international communications agencies, and private and governmental organizations in order to win over world opinion.’ (p296). The messages from these conferences stressed an addition to the more familiar violent jihad: they also emphasized the importance of jihad by the written and spoken word—what we would recognize as classic propaganda. Without question APTN’s interesting business model represents a concrete example of an ongoing financial ‘contribution’ to an important communication agency promoting a pro-Arab bias.” (Idem.)
19. Next, the discussion turns to the falsification and exaggeration of civilian casualties in the Lebanon war. Among the incidents outlined are the alleged Israeli attacks on ambulances, a readily verifiable fabrication. The ambulances that were supposedly attacked by the Israelis clearly were NOT struck by airborne munitions, neither missiles nor cannon fire. This should have been evident to even the most casual and unsophisticated observer. A conservative website presented a detailed, thoughtful analysis of the ambulance fraud: http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/. Note in particular the ambulance that supposedly was hit by a missile in the roof. First, no aerial missile could have entered at this angle. Beyond that, a round big enough to have caused such a hole would have disintegrated the ambulance and left a significant crater in the ground. There would not have been anything left of anybody inside, including the liars who claim to have been injured by a “huge explosion.” This isn’t just disinformation, it isn’t even very well done. Take a careful look at the ambulances in this footage. http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=6377. Once again, they clearly have not been struck by missiles or cannon fire. It is worth noting that the Australian Foreign Minister has echoed the fraud charges concerning the ambulances. Visit this website: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20291873–601,00.html.
20. What John Loftus (in FTR#564) referred to as the “Non-massacre at Qana” also was greatly exaggerated, perhaps even fabricated. There was a period of several hours between the time Israeli munitions struck a building in that city and the time it collapsed. The corpses of children allegedly killed in that building exhibited advanced rigor mortis and were remarkably free of the blood, feces and urine that might be expected on the corpses of children who had been killed in an air raid. The children’s eyes are closed, and there is no bloating. (Bear in mind that these children were supposedly crushed/blasted or suffocated to death and then lay beneath rubble in the Middle Eastern summer sun.) Check out this website and the analysis on it: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/qana-directors-cut.html. Again, it should be noted that virtually all of the coverage of this important phenomenon comes from the conservative sector. The so-called alternative media haven’t touched the issue of the fraudulent “atrocities.”
21. It is worth noting that these obvious frauds had an enormous effect on world opinion. Indeed, the Qana non-massacre appears to have been a major factor in blunting the Bush administration’s support for Israel’s military efforts. Mr. Emory considers Hezbollah’s manipulation of events to be one of the most skilled and decisive uses of psychological warfare and propaganda in the history of warfare. Another bogus incident surfaced, the supposed Israeli attack on a Reuters vehicle. View this website: http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015118.php. Once again, this is NOT a vehicle that has been hit by an aerial missile. Once again, this isn’t even a good fake. In FTR#564, John Loftus alluded to a Reuters photographer who deliberately faked photographs of Israeli air raid damage to Beirut: http://www.zombietime.com/reuters_photo_fraud/.
22. The media as a whole, have not disseminated pictures of Hezbollah, whose rallies routinely feature the Nazi salute.
Discussion
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