Hollow Men

Why Israel’s enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals


Lee Smith
Tablet Magazine
14 July '10

It’s nothing new for Western intellectuals to lavish attention and admiration on the resistance forces aligned against Israel, whether it’s Hamas or Hezbollah or even organizations like al-Qaida that are less interested in Israel than in killing and maiming Western civilians. Last week, when CNN’s former Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, tweeted that she respected the late militant cleric Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the cards were out on the table for all to see. But usually the pro-resistance vibe is more subtle, as when Nasr’s defenders demanded a more nuanced understanding from knee-jerk Americans who were shocked by Nasr’s support for a suicide-bomb-sanctioning man of faith. After all, Fadlallah was a relatively pro-feminist radical Islamist cleric—and if his talk about Israel was genocidal, well, that’s just part of the package when dealing with a complex place like the Middle East.

Media consumers in the United States are by now well aware that Hezbollah and Hamas provide “social services” for their communities. For the writers and television personalities who push such supposed palliatives on their audiences—“Yes, they do chant ‘kill the Jews!’ and they do act on their rhetoric, but they also educate poor kids in clean, well-lit schools (please ignore the slogans painted on the walls)”—respect for the resistance is a polite way of indicating one’s tolerance for murderous anti-Semitism. The issue is whether this attitude is in danger of seeping into the mainstream of the U.S. public. Poll numbers show that U.S. support for Israel is consistently high—in February Gallup found that a near-record 63 percent of Americans were more sympathetic to the Jewish state than to the Palestinians. But ideas can change, and it’s intellectuals who often lead the way. Remember that Israel was a popular cause among the intellectual classes until the 1967 war. It is true that the American people and the bulk of their intellectual class are far apart on the subject of Israel, but all the massive and popular evil of the last century started among a small ideological elite.

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The Western Press and Hezbollah

Lee Smith
The Weekly Standard
10 July '10

Even after Octavia Nasr apologized for her ill-advised “tweet” over the July 4 holiday expressing her “respect” for the recently deceased Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, CNN fired its senior editor for Middle East affairs. And now bloggers and journalists are up in arms. Some are blaming the job action on “neoconservatives,” which presumably includes THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Daniel Halper who commented on Nasr’s “tweet” here. Israel Lobby author Stephen Walt writes that CNN’s “spineless response” is “one more reason why mainstream journalism is increasingly seen as morally bankrupt.”

Walt and some of the others have half a point--why is Nasr being singled out for openly expressing the U.S. media’s default position on Hezbollah, Fadlallah’s one-time colleagues? For instance, does anyone doubt that the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh “respects” the late cleric’s even more vicious rival, Hezbollah General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah, whom he interviewed in the pages of the New Yorker?

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Why was Octavia Nasr fired?

Soccer Dad
11 July '10

There is currently a rumor going around that CNN reporter, Octavia Nasr was fired for a uncritical eulogy she tweeted for recently departed Sheikh Fadlallah. Don't get me wrong, Nasr clearly showed a bias that is all too prevalent in the MSM. It is mindset that romaticizes terrorists and finds the West (and Israel) a constant source of misery in the world.

In 1972, one of the first major terror attacks on Israel was carried out by Black September, a branch of the PLO, killing 11 Israeli Olympic ahletes at the Olympic games in Munich. Martin Peretz has, on more than one occasion, recalled how Peter Jennings portrayed the attack. Here is one presented at Honest Reporting.

"I first saw Jennings on ABC when, as a young TV journalist, he reported from the Munich Olympics. And I was filled with disgust that his subsequent career has only deepened. At Munich -- I still remember it, 30 years later -- Jennings tried to explain away the abductions and massacre of the young Israeli athletes. His theme: The Palestinians were helpless and desperate. Ipso facto, they were driven to murder. That's life..."

Ten years later Israel was fighting the PLO in Operation Peace for the Galillee and the Washington Post's correspondent, Edward Cody, wrote a front page eulogy for a PLO terrorist (Soldier or Terrorist; July 7, 1982):

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A man of great understanding, not

Soccer Dad
11 July '10

Robert Mackey of the New York Times's The Lede blog weighs in with Online Praise for a Cleric Draws Fire, Again. To Mackey, what's (distressing) news isn't that supposedly objective people (in this case a diplomat) praised a terrorist leader, but that Israel objected to it.

A British diplomat's words of praise for a Lebanese cleric who inspired the founders of Hezbollah disappeared from her blog on Thursday after Israel's foreign ministry expressed outrage.

In a blog post headlined, "The Passing of a Decent Man," Britain's ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, mourned the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the country's leading Shiite cleric.

Mackey uses the occasion to reprint Ambassador Guy's eulogy in its entirety. He offers no rebuttal to the eulogy. One may assume that Mackey agrees with Guy's assessment.

Further he uses the opportunity to castigate Guy's and Ocatvia Nasr's critics.

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BBC downplays Hezbollah's history of violence

Just Journalism
10 July '10

This week saw the occurrence of two separate controversies in relation to the death of leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah. The Lebanese figure, closely associated with Hezbollah, was eulogised online by both the CNN Middle East editor, Octavia Nasr, and the UK’s envoy to Lebanon, Frances Guy.

While neither praised Fadlallah in an official capacity - Nasr made the comment on her Twitter account, while Guy wrote about her personal encounters with him on her blog - both soon came under heavy criticism for their statements. In the case of Nasr, CNN announced that she would no longer be working for the company, and that her tweet ‘did not meet CNN's editorial standards.’

Both of these stories received coverage in the UK media, with all the outlets explaining that Fadlallah was seen as a controversial figure because of his ties to Hezbollah. However, there were noticeable differences in the way that publications presented the militant group.

The Daily Telegraph was the most critical, with its article providing a substantive background on Hezbollah’s history of violence. In ‘Britain's Lebanese ambassador praises Hizbollah founder’, Damien McElroy and Adrian Blomfield noted how the group ‘has been proscribed by the UK as a terrorist organisation since 2008’, and that, after being formed, it had taken ‘dozens of foreigners as hostages, including Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan’. The journalists also cited the outrage of ‘Israeli relatives of those who died during Hizbollah rocket strikes’ and mentioned that Fadlallah had issued fatwas (religious edicts) which ‘authorised suicide bombers who attacked American troops or Israel.’ Hezbollah gained notoriety in 1983 for a suicide attack on a US military base in Lebanon that killed over 300 marines.

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How Dare You Fire the Hezbollah Cheerleader!

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
08 July '10
Posted before Shabbat

As one might imagine, the pro-terrorist lobby (wait — you’ll see it’s appropriate in this context) is raising a fuss over CNN’s decision to can an editor for praising a Hezbollah leader. This is particularly revealing:

“This is unbelievable what is happening in the United States of America,” said Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Arab American News. “You can say anything you want – except when it comes to Israel.”

He accused CNN of a double standard, citing what he said was CNN host Wolf Blitzer’s history of working for the Jerusalem Post and for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). “But for Octavia Nasr to make a statement that’s in agreement with millions of people around the world, has become a firing offense at CNN. It’s incredible the level we have sunk to.”

You know, he says “double standard” like it’s a bad thing.

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CNN fires Mideast editor who praised Hizballah cleric

Credibility compromised?

You're kidding?

Posted by Marisol
Jihad Watch
07 July '10

They said her credibility was "compromised." That's one way of putting it. An update on this story. "CNN fires Octavia Nasr for Twitter post praising Hezbollah terrorist, says credibility 'compromised'," by Richard Huff for the New York Daily News, July 7 (thanks to Ron):

Less than 140 characters cost CNN's Octavia Nasr her job after she tweeted her "respect" for a terror-loving Hezbollah sheikh who died over the weekend.

Nasr, CNN's Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs, ran into hot water after she posted on Twitter that she was "sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah... One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot."

Facing an immediate and harsh backlash, she backpedaled Tuesday in a blog post, saying she didn't endorse the life work of Fadlallah - who was labeled a terrorist by US officials.

"Not the kind of life to be commenting about in a brief tweet. It's something I deeply regret," she wrote. Still, she praised Fadlallah for being a pioneer on "woman's rights," and warning Muslim men against abusing their wives.

But where was the threshhold of "abuse" for Fadlallah?

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