In the coverage of last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, two themes came to dominate the narrative. First, every major news outlet estimated Lebanese casualties at around 1,200, “mostly civilians.” Just search Google News for “Lebanon” and “mostly civilians” and you’ll see the oft repeated numbers–at least 44 current news stories echo the claim, which was a staple of international reporting on the conflict in the months after the war. (As far as Israeli casualties, those numbers are uniformly, and accurately, given as 157 killed, “mostly soldiers,” though not for lack of effort by Hezbollah to kill civilians.) Only that isn’t the case at all. To my mind it is impossible that the Lebanese government and human rights organizations didn’t err in favor of a higher body count, but let’s say that 1,200 is an accurate number. The Lebanese government draws no distinction between dead civilians and Hezbollah fighters, but during the war Hezbollah claimed only 70 of its men had been killed, and later revised that number upward to 250. The AP’s estimate for Hezbollah casualties is, suprise!, 250. That the AP, and every other mainstream media outlet, unquestioningly accepted Hezbollah’s count is laughable. Israeli estimates of dead Hezbollah fighters initially stood at 800. Those numbers were subsequently revised down to 532 confirmed dead, of which the IDF claims it can verify individual names and addresses, and a further 200 which cannot be confirmed. So that means approximately 732 Hezbollah fighters were killed out of 1,200. Even if one assumes the Israelis fudged their numbers, one must certainly assume the same of the Lebanese. By any measure then, Lebanese losses were not comprised of “mostly civilians.” The other dominating theme of press coverage last summer was that the IDF’s bombing campaign risked driving the Lebanese public into the arms of Hezbollah. As John O’Sullivan put it, “Instead of destroying Hezbollah and strengthening Lebanon as a democratic state, it [the bombing campaign] destroyed much of Lebanon physically, weakened its new democratic government, and strengthened Hezbollah.” That even National Review bought into the “Israel lost” narrative is telling. Sure, Israel didn’t win a decisive victory, but as healthy as Hezbollah appeared late last summer, it is now clear that the movement was suffering from the equivalent of severe internal injuries. As the violence in Lebanon spins out of control, Hezbollah looks less and less like the winner of last summer’s war. Blogging from Beirut, Christopher Allbritton, a former reporter for the AP and the New York Daily News, writes that Hezbollah has, in fact, alienated its countrymen.
Whatever the outcome in Lebanon, it is a mistake to believe that Israel’s campaign was entirely ineffective, or that Hezbollah was strengthened by the conflict. Certainly it was a mistake to believe that Lebanon’s minorities were pushed into the waiting arms of Hezbollah. Sunnis are chanting pro-American slogans in the streets of Beirut. Lebanon is probably the only place outside of Iraqi Kurdistan where such a thing would be possible.
