THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG - PART TWO

Still the condemnation of Israel for defending its men, women and children against the unprovoked aggression of Hizbullah continues to roll in with certain elements in the media finding Israel at fault for everything while subjecting it to completely different standards of scrutiny to any other nation under attack.

The hypocrisy is stunning.

Israel is vilified in articles, photographs, cartoons and letters to editors while its side of the story often remains untold or misrepresented.

There have long been those journalists - even in the mainstream media - who have had no compunction about selectively providing their own slanted narratives to suit their particular political agendas but which fail to give proper context to Israel's conflict with its neighbours. This might be acceptable when commentators are expressing an opinion but not when they are supposed to be reporting on the news - especially about a conflict where the good and the bad are often blurred.

So we see reporters who are quick to rush to judgement against Israel with bold headlined stories but when it's proven that they were mistaken, the retraction is contained in barely a paragraph, hidden away or not made at all.

And in this conflict things have just gotten worse!

We are now seeing a number of scandals exposed over the internet where reporters, cameramen and others are prepared to fabricate news events or to embellish them in such a way that the Israeli is seen in the worse possible light.

So the consumers of the "news" are not receiving the full picture and the truth is not making it anywhere near to the public arena because so many segments of the news are no longer told truthfully and honestly and in some cases, not at all.

These untold segments of the news are what I call, "the blank pages".

There are many stories of this war that can only be found on the "blank pages". Take the story of the battle for Bint Jbeil.

Bint Jbeil normally houses a population of several thousand and was, until a fortnight ago, an Hizbullah stronghold from which rockets were being fired with regularity at Israeli citizens a few miles across the international border with Lebanon. The IDF could have adopted the Allied tactics used against Dresden and unleashed a firestorm against the Hizbullah fighters and its citizens but instead, it first dropped leaflets warning the residents of the impending battle and then adopted an approach that involved house-to-house fighting at close quarters, a tactic which resulted in a toll of nine Israeli lives. One commentator compared the number of Israeli deaths proportionally to the equivalent of 350 deaths of United States soldiers – all in just one day. Of course, the town is now partially destroyed, the Hizbollah death toll was much greater than that of Israel and intermittent fighting continues to take place but the number of civilian casualties in Bint Jbeil was limited to a handful despite the major battle which took place there.

Stories like Bint Jbeil as told on the blank pages of the world’s newspapers in real life act to distinguish the just from the unjust – the good from the evil. Above all, they are what leads us to be thankful that we weren't made like Hassan Nasrallah, his Hizbullah fighters and their cheerleaders, supporters and sympathisers throughout the world.

Thankful that we weren't made like them.