WILFUL OMISSIONS?

Hizbullah's head honcho in hiding Hassan Nasrallah has confessed that he wouldn't have ordered the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers that sparked the recent war had he known that Israel would react with such fury.

The confession made in a television interview has been publicized around the world in most major newspapers and media outlets. In today's Australian newspaper, reporter Martin Chulov NASRALLAH REGRET AT SEIZING TROOPS states that the interview is "widely seen as a bid to placate Lebanese who were hostile to the war and its consequences". He adds that "Nasrallah adopted an almost apologetic tone and pledged a long-term commitment to the ceasefire."

A big story but not enough for the "fair and balanced" Melbourne Age which appears to have ignored it altogether.

And here's another one from the weekend that the Age seems to have missed or considered not important enough to interest its readership:

IN SOUTH LEBANON VILLAGE, SUNNIS EXPRESS DISDAIN FOR HEZBOLLAH

The Associated Press article from a Sunni Muslim village in Southern Lebanon tells why Nasrallah is not the pin up boy in that particular neck of the woods.

" 'Why do you want to put up an image of someone who is killing us?' one man screamed as a mob of dozens waved their fists and thrust open palms toward Nasrallah supporters clutching posters of the bearded and bespectacled Hezbollah chief."

There are similar stories told in Christian and Druze villages around Southern Lebanon where Nasrallah and Hizbullah are despised for provoking the Israel reaction to their aggression and for the thuggish way in which they are holding their country to ransom.

But it's not news for the Melbourne Age whose Middle East chief Ed O'Loughlin seems to have slipped off the radar in the past week or so.

Then again, is it in the interests of an reporter who wants to continue producing "stories" from Southern Lebanon to denigrate the great heroic war hero of the Shia minority in Lebanon?