The conclusion of a NY Times article on Lebanon reads like an old Yiddish joke:

“The challenge of creating a viable international force to secure Israel’s border with Lebanon was captured by Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot. The European foreign ministers were enthusiastic, he said.

“They only had one small condition for the force to be made up of soldiers from another country,� Mr. Barnea wrote. “The Germans recommended France; the French recommended Egypt, and so on. It is doubtful whether there is a single country in the West currently volunteering to lay down its soldiers on Hezbollah’s fence.�

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/world/middleeast/25force.html?ei=5094&en=64d85c75fabdbc38&hp=&ex=1153886400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

On Hezbollah and what it is fighting for!

I call this partisan:

“The landscape of the human and physical ravages of Israel’s genial strategy at implementing UN Resolution 1559, the depth of destruction, the toll of nearly 250 deaths, more than 800 injured and 400,000 displaced, had bound me to a sense of duty. It was not even patriotism, it was actually the will to defy Israel. They cannot do this and drive me away. They will not drive me away.”

As if anyone was trying to “drive her away.”

re: “To the contrary, the United Nations has a well-established record of collaboration with Hezbollah in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.” Interesting story, a must-read, but the very next post on Wolokh qualifies this by explaining that the worst that anyone can accuse the U.N. of doing is collaborating in the cover-up (and only individual corrupt peacekeepers in the kidnapping). And the first comment to that post laments, “Lately, however, this blog seems to have degenerated into a series of rants, partisan snarkery, and overblown rhetoric. Prof. Kopel’s post, about Prof. Kerr writes, is just one example. It seems that a number of posters lately are only interested in advancing a particular agenda, and posting anything vaguely related to it in support.”

There is another poster from Lebanon by the name of “Faysal” who tends to be a little less so, though he obviously is on the side of his countrymen. He posts on the TNR website and once in a while here.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153291961922&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

“Many of the veteran foreign correspondents have a soft spot for Lebanon. Most cut their teeth in Beirut covering the civil war in the 1970s and the Israeli invasion in the 1980s, and they actually had a good time, made many friends and enjoyed returning in recent years to produce nostalgic stories on the revival of the “Paris on the Levant.”

Thus there should have been no surprises that they were blaming Israel for pushing the clocks back, especially as Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz actually said as much. However, after the first few days, it seemed that the British reporters were becoming increasingly inclined towards adopting a more even-handed view. There were no conversions to Zionism here, but a dawning realization that there wasn’t much evidence for the Lebanese government’s hysterical reports of indiscriminate killing of civilians. Even among the thousands of fleeing refugees, there was probably more criticism of Hizbullah than of Israel. The shift in emphasis had more to do with what was happening in Lebanon than the fact that Israeli cities were also coming under fire, though one of the results of the Katyusha volleys was increased reporting from Haifa and Nahariya.

ASIDE FROM the reality on the ground, there are a number of other factors contributing to the emerging more even-handed coverage. The first is a grim sense of proportion deriving from Americans’ and Britons’ daily exposure to the carnage in Iraq. Even the highest estimates of Lebanese casualties don’t come close to the daily body count in Baghdad.

Another recent development is the deepening involvement of British forces fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. It was breathtaking to hear Israeli and British commanders appearing on seemingly unconnected news items, using exactly the same terms to describe the difficulty of fighting an enemy that uses civilians as shields….”

“