Nicholas Blanford is a Lebanon-based Christian Science Monitor reporter whose work over the years is distinguished by the care that he takes in rarely allowing a bad word to let slip about Hezbollah. He was one of many journalists taken in by the Qana bombing during last summer’s war, reporting at the time — in a preposterously melodramatic, overwrought piece — that “at least 60 victims” were killed as part of Israel’s “onslaught against Lebanon.” (28 were in fact killed).
His latest is an account of being arrested and detained for a night in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah. And what he has to say about Hezbollah’s police-state tactics and intimidation of journalists is first of all that hanging out with Hezbollah is good times:
“It all began two weeks earlier when Ali [Blanford’s fixer] and I, along with another colleague, dined with some members of Lebanon’s militant Shiite Hizbullah in the Bekaa Valley. The grilled lamb and chicken and salads were delicious, conversations with the Hizbullah men relaxed and friendly.”
And second, that Hezbollah’s practice of intimidating and even arresting journalists is — you guessed it — Israel’s fault:
“Hizbullah has grown more wary of foreign journalists since the recent revelation that two Israeli correspondents had entered Lebanon on foreign passports and reported from the party’s strongholds in Beirut and the south, an act that has made life more difficult and potentially dangerous for Western journalists operating here.”
An altogether disgusting and obsequious presentation. And a false one, at that, as Hezbollah has a long history of this kind of behavior. Among others, my good friend Michael Totten was the recipient of Hezbollah’s threats in 2005, long before the recent visit to Lebanon of two journalists with dual Israeli citizenship. It appears that at least in Blanford’s case, Hezbollah’s intimidation has had the desired effect.