While the Australian Prime Minister John Howard supports Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Lebanon and Gaza (though, accurately, calls Ariel Sharon a “great sort of right-wing warlord”), and the US Zionist lobby advocates further violence in the region, American news programs are displaying an unsurprising lack of knowledge about Lebanon:
Take Monday’s coverage of the conflict on NBC’s popular Today Show with anchorwoman Nathalie Morales, who in introducing a report on Hezbollah, rhetorically asks: “So just who is Israel at war with in this latest chapter of an ancient conflict?”
Not only does the reporter assume that Israel’s war targets only Hezbollah (and not the Lebanese civilians, government, private businesses and the military, which have all been attacked) but even contradicts earlier reports on her own network indicating Hezbollah’s founding to be in the early 1980s; hardly considered “ancient” times.
A clear aim of Israel’s aggression is its war against the Lebanese Shi’a population, possibly accelerating the collapse of the state itself.