RubinReports: How Reuters Rewrites an Israeli Intelligence Analysis to Ignore its Conclusions and Use it Against Israel

How Reuters Rewrites an Israeli Intelligence Analysis to Ignore its Conclusions and Use it Against Israel

By Barry Rubin

The pervasive media slant on Middle East issues is so obvious that it’s funny, and also transgresses the proper rules of journalism.

Here’s a headline on a Reuters dispatch today:

“Israeli official doubts Syria's clout on Hezbollah.”

So, you’d think, Syria isn’t that responsible for what the Lebanese Islamist organization does. In fact, the purpose is shown in the lead:

“Syria may not be able to curb Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday, casting doubt on the feasibility of a long-standing Israeli condition for a peace deal with Damascus.”

Get it? So Israel cannot ask Syria to stop providing Hezbollah (I prefer Hizballah but I’ll stick with Reuters transliteration here) with advanced arms or not urge it periodically to attack Israel. The poor Syrians are just innocent little lambs.

But what was Amos Gilad, former military intelligence chief and today an advisor to Israel’s defense minister actually saying?

He was saying first that Syria has less influence because Iran is the main sponsor of Hezbollah; second that Hezbollah practically controls Lebanon; and third that Hezbollah can start a war when it chooses and drag in Lebanon, as happened in 2006.

So the headline and lead might have been:

Israeli official says Hezbollah is an arm of Iran.

Or

Israeli official says Hezbollah now dominates Lebanon.

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RubinReports: How Reuters Rewrites an Israeli Intelligence Analysis to Ignore its Conclusions and Use it Against Israel