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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Hezbollah is losing friends and influence at home. |
| 2006-08-03 |
| by Lee Smith, The Weekly Standard THE LEBANESE MEDIA are the best in the Arab Middle East, and perhaps the freest, not because of any noble principles but because they are so competitive. Every Lebanese media outlet represents a political interest, sometimes several political interests, and all the major political parties own TV stations. (In this regard, Hezbollah really is just like every other political party, though no one else does "martyr kitsch" like the Party of God.) And the people of Lebanon take their cue from the media. Insofar as rumors are also a medium, they, too, represent political interests. My friend Fawaz called last week from Lebanon with reports of a rumor. "There are lots of stories going around Beirut that Hezbollah M.P. Mohammed Raad is dead," says Fawaz. "And get this--more than 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed and are lying around area hospitals. That's a lot of virgins on call." Whether or not such rumors are true, they indicate something about the state of affairs right now in Lebanon. There are many Lebanese imagining, fantasizing, hoping against hope that Hezbollah will be wiped from the face of the earth. Some are even joking about it. "The new one," Fawaz says, "is that they're going to play the next World Cup in the Daheyh [the Shiite neighborhood]--the whole thing's been leveled nice and flat." This narrative, including the morbid jokes at the expense of the heavily Shiite southern suburbs and the spectacular number of Hezbollah dead, runs against the current Western news narrative. It seems that U.S. and Western press outfits are determined to claim that the Israelis have driven all of Lebanon, Shiite or not, Islamist or not, pro-Hezbollah or not, into the waiting arms of the Islamic resistance. It is not clear why Western journalists believe this is so, though it seems to comport nicely with the idea that the Israelis are killing too many civilians--a cynical storyline, given that the Israelis are fighting against a militia and without the benefit of weapons capable of targeting only the bad guys. . . . Michael Totten, blog-sitting at Instapundit's place this week, has this to add: Lee is right. He and I both lived in Lebanon, and he lived there longer than I did. (He only left a few weeks ago.) Lebanon’s “support” for Hezbollah is nothing more than an attempt at national unity during a fight. It will evaporate the instant Israel leaves. It will remain, though, as long as Israel stays and throughout cease-fire talks. |
| Posted by:Mike |