The world media have grudgingly released the news that UNIFIL actually backs Israel’s versions of the ambush of IDF soldiers by Lebanese snipers. But the narrative is still that it’s a volatile border, and Israel’s extremely hostile act of pruning the vegetation in Israeli territory caused the entire incident. Clearly, it did not. Let’s take the order of events.
Israel contacts UNIFIL to tell them that they will be doing their weekly bush clearing on the border. UNIFIL asked the IDF to delay the pruning for several hours. The IDF complied. At the appointed time, UNIFIL asked for another delay. The IDF complied again. Then the IDF sent down the crane. The soldier began trimming the trees. What happened next is detailed in an email sent to the Elder of Ziyon by an IDF source:
At this point, the Lebanese Armed Forces opened fire with snipers towards Israel. It must be noted, however, that such fire was not aimed at the soldiers located by the fence, but rather directly aimed at IDF officers who were standing in a separate area, on higher ground. These officers were wearing helmets and flack jackets. The officer who was killed by this fire was shot in the head, despite the armour he was wearing. This demonstrates the premeditated, planned and deliberate nature of the Lebanese attack.
The soldier on the crane was not the target, and yet, the Lebanese shouted to the world that he stepped across the border. Then they shot his commanding officer, who was clearly not over the border, in the head, in a deliberate, unprovoked attack. And even the Lebaneseadmit that they shot first. So how does the AP present its analysis of the event?
It took no more than cutting down a tree to shatter four years of calm on the Israel-Lebanon border.
[…] The clash started after an Israeli soldier on a crane dangled over a fence near the border early Tuesday to trim a tree that could provide cover for infiltrators. The Israelis said they clear such underbrush at least once a week and coordinate their actions with UNIFIL, the peacekeeping force that has been in the area for more than 30 years.
This time the tree trimming was followed by gunfire from the Lebanese army, apparently aimed not at the soldier hanging over the fence, but at a base some distance away, where a senior officer was killed by a shot to the head. Another officer was wounded. Israel responded with gunfire and shelling, killing two Lebanese soldiers and a journalist.
The onus in the lead, of course, is on Israel, even though the Lebanese clearly shot first, unprovoked. But you have to dig through half the AP article before finding those facts.
Even so, Lebanon still considers the tree-trimming a provocation, saying its soldiers fired warning shots after the Israelis ignored requests from UNIFIL to stop cutting the tree, and Israel retaliated.
Information Minister Tarek Mitri said Lebanon respects the border but still contests part of it, insisting that the fateful cypress tree, while on the Israeli side of the border, “is Lebanese territory.”
Israel was having none of that, charging that the attack was unprovoked aggression.
That would be because it was. But the early stories that came out heavily supported Lebanon’s claim that Israeli forces were over the border. Oh, the next graf almost always issued the Israeli denial, but that’s how journalism works: When you want someone to think your subject is lying, have the paragraph immediately following rebut your subject’s claim. This is what they call “balance.”
In the meantime, as Snoopy pointed out, Lieutenant-Colonel Dov Harari is dead. And Hezbullah got its propaganda story of the month.
But it wasn’t because of a tree. It was because of a planned, deadly attack by anti-Israel forces in Lebanon.
Actually, at this point, I’m inclined to say it is because of the media’s deadly embrace of the idea that non-Westerners as incapable of moral responsibility. “They can’t help but be violent, the poor dears. The nasty Israelis were cutting down a tree right before their eyes.”