Covering the war… two different realities

Watching the 24/7 media coverage of the latest war spell in the Middle East, a reasonable person may think that Hezbollah is a country that is invading Israeli and terrorizing its civilians. The war between Israel and Hezbollah cries the CNN and Fox headline banner. “Hezbollah rockets rain on Israeli cities” exploded another headline. The new Garry Cooper of evening primetime  coverage; Mr. Anderson Cooper of CNN with his investigative concerned voice showing assessing the damages in Israeli cites for the world to see. The media coverage is sensational, void of any depth historic perspective and overly simplified for the Americans to consume. The mainstream media coverage heavily leaning toward the Israeli perspective and agenda, a total destruction of a democratic neighboring country is an act of Israeli self-defense, an invasion of a country is opted as incursion. The press covering equate a few thousand militias with WWI Katyusha rockets, randomly lunched mostly landing on the outskirt of Israeli cities, to the organized war machine of Israel, a military industrial complex machine using weapon that are not even at the reach of NATO is disingenuous and calculated distortion of what is going on the ground. Targeting civilians by Hezbollah is horrible and criminal, I hate to compare crimes, but to equate this to the massive assault by the Israeli and the killing of Lebanese civilizes is mined boggling; The Arab media on the other hand has nothing but a propaganda of Israeli atrocities to Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, an over dose of Hezbollah legendary heroic resistance to the Israeli war machine. Both, the Arab world and Israelis are experiencing the war as if it is lunched in a two different realities. For the Bush administration here, which this war was a badly needed diversion form the Iraqi disaster venture, this war is in sync with his war on terrorism mantra. The fallacy of Global war on terrorism as the American and the Israeli generals wanted us to believe, is the fact that each war has its own political dynamic. We installed Iraqis Shiest in Iraq to fight Sunni insurgents, Israelis are fighting Shiest insurgents in Lebanon, we are fighting Sunnis insurgents in Afghanistan with the blessing of the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordan Sunnis; the only constant in all these wars is; people around the world for some strange reason have no affinity to foreigner occupation, and that for another strange reason, for the Israelis and Americans generals is very hard concept to swallow.

Ahmed Tharwat/ Host of the Arab American TV show Belahdan

952-933-6825/ www.belahdan.com