The National Public Radio program “On the Media” had two interesting perspectives on the propaganda war that is a large part of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.
Mark LeVine, a US-based Middle East historian, made some reasonable points, especially about Israel’s strangely primitive propaganda efforts. But his suggestion that Hezbollah emerged from the fighting as a much-enhanced power was challenged by Michael Young, the Beirut-based opinion editor of the Lebanon Daily Star.
The idea that [Hezbollah] has gained popularity is, I’m afraid, one of these propaganda pieces that has come out and seems to have spread, particularly in the Western media… [M]any [Lebanese], when they went on talk shows, when they went onto the news and they spoke about Hezbollah, they tended to adopt Hezbollah’s position out of fear of some kind of retaliation… The fact that the Arabs are praising this [outcome] shows you how miserably the Arabs have performed in past wars in the Middle East…
