The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for July 2006

Anderson Cooper on Hezbollah

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Anderson Cooper related his time with Hezbollah.

“We’d come to get a look at the damage and had hoped to talk with a Hezbollah representative. Instead, we found ourselves with other foreign reporters taken on a guided tour by Hezbollah. Young men on motor scooters followed our every movement. They only allowed us to videotape certain streets, certain buildings. Once, when they thought we’d videotaped them, they asked us to erase the tape. These men are called al-Shabab, Hezbollah volunteers who are the organization’s eyes and ears.”

Gesturing to racks of music CDs in a building that had lost at least one of its walls, Cooper remarked, “You see their CDs on the wall still.”

He continued: “Hezbollah representatives are with us now but don’t want to be photographed. They’ll point to something like that and they’ll say, ‘Well, look, this is a store.’ The civilians lived in this building. This is a residential complex.

“And while that may be true, what the Israelis will say is that Hezbollah has their offices, their leadership has offices and bunkers even in residential neighborhoods. And if you’re trying to knock out the Hezbollah leadership with air strikes, it’s very difficult to do that without killing civilians.

“As bad as this damage is, it certainly could have been much worse in terms of civilian casualties. Before they started heavily bombing this area, Israeli warplanes did drop leaflets in this area, telling people to get out. The civilian death toll, though, has angered many Lebanese. Even those who do not support Hezbollah are outraged by the pictures they’ve seen on television of civilian casualties.”As the video showed a group reporters and photographers interviewing a single woman on a blanket, Cooper explained, “Civilian casualties are clearly what Hezbollah wants foreign reporters to focus on. It keeps the attention off them — and questions about why Hezbollah should still be allowed to have weapons when all the other militias in Lebanon have already disarmed.

“After letting us take pictures of a few damaged buildings, they take us to another location, where there are ambulances waiting.

“This is a heavily orchestrated Hezbollah media event. When we got here, all the ambulances were lined up. We were allowed a few minutes to talk to the ambulance drivers. Then one by one, they’ve been told to turn on their sirens and zoom off so that all the photographers here can get shots of ambulances rushing off to treat civilians. That’s the story that Hezbollah wants people to know about.

“These ambulances aren’t responding to any new bombings. The sirens are strictly for effect.”

Cooper concluded: “Hezbollah may not be terribly subtle about spinning a story, but it is telling perhaps that they try. Even after all this bombing, Hezbollah is still organized enough to have a public relations strategy, still in control enough to try and get its message out.”

Emphasis in bold is mine.

Sensory Overload

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It is about a month or so since the real craziness began in Israel. You remember, that was when the terrorists grabbed Gilad Shalit. In the blink of an eye the normal state of affairs was thrown for a loop and then Hizbollah jumped in to the fray.

Out here in the galut we stayed glued to our computers, exchanged emails, got on the telephone and began our own moblization to support our family, friends and companions in Israel. The JBlogosphere began pushing and the community rose to the occasion.

I have no doubt that we have been part of the battle and been working hard to do what little we can to help Israel. It is important, critical and crucial work combating the misinformation and propaganda being promoted and purveyed throughout the world about what is happening.

In the age of the Internet information circles the globe in moments. A katyusha lands in Haifa and from thousands of miles we see it happen in real time. The IDF responds and we see it. During the most intimate moments we are there.

How many pictures have we seen of mothers/fathers wailing over the caskets of their children. There is little to no privacy. Their grief is our grief, their pain is our pain. We share it all. And though it is good that in some small way we are able to be a part of things there is a danger of sensory overload.

The adrenalin rush of fear, excitement, hope and anxiety is not something that you can maintain. There has to be some down time. You have to be able to push it aside and engage in some normal behavior because it is just not healthy to walk around like that.

For those of us who are not in the line of fire it is much easier to say and much easier to do. But the sad reality is that this is not going to end tomorrow and probably not the next day or day afterwards.

The reality is that we are in this for the long haul and if we are going to be there then we have to take care of ourselves so that we can be there to help.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I can say that I am going to mix it up a bit. For my own sanity and sense of well being there is going to be a mix of posts. I’ll still be on top of everything but I need to throw some of the old stuff back in.

Am Yisrael Chai

Worth Repeating

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From an earlier post Mark Steyn on Multiculturalism

“In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of “suttee” – the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural:

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

This makes sense to me. It ties in well with stories about converts who face death sentences, riots based on cartoons or murders of people because of their ethnicity/religion. The time is coming when we are going to have to make a decision whether to push or be pushed.