Tensions along the Syria-Lebanon border are rising yet again this weekend after a round of fighting along the border region between Syrian rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah faction left 15 fighters dead, including three Hezbollah members, and 44 others wounded.
The fighting is said to have taken place on both sides of the border, and centered on Shi’ite villages on the Syrian side, which have significant populations of Lebanese Shi’ites. The Syrian rebels are overwhelmingly Sunni, and have targeted Shi’ites in the past, accusing them of disloyalty.
Though details are sketchy, the Syrian rebels have accused Hezbollah, a Shi’ite militia whose political wing is part of the Lebanese government, of attacking Sunni villages, apparently in retaliation for moves against the Shi’ite villages.
They also accused Hezbollah of launching a “coordinated ground invasion” of Syria, with Free Syrian Army (FSA) spokesmen claiming 1,000 troops from the Hezbollah factions have marched into Syria over the weekend. The FSA has ordered civilians to leave the area.
The allegation of an “invasion” is just the latest in a series of dubious Syrian rebel claims aimed at convincing the international community to take the Syrian civil war regional.
Well.., these "rebels" fighting on behalf of Saudis, UAE and the Neo Fascism in Europe and get paid for their destruction of Syria.., when they attempt to bring their fight into Lebanon someone is going to stop them.., as the Lebanese defenders stopped the Israeli regime and their invasion of Lebanon in 2006.., so get use to it you "rebel" good for nothing but terrorizing Syrian people.
(…) "accusing them of disloyalty" – disloyalty to whom exactly? Implicit in this report is that Syrian Shi-ites are somehow ungrateful to the FSA who are defending Syrian soil from Hezbollah. Ditz's ambiguity consists in his then saying the FSA's claim regarding a Hezbollah incursion is "dubious". Such ambiguous reporting is at best poor quality, and in any case highly irresponsible. It leads to further bloodshed.
?? "Such ambiguous reporting is at best poor quality, and in any case highly irresponsible. It leads to further bloodshed"??
asynge, can you please explain WHY Ditz's ambiguity is "dubious". My view is that there is no hard evidence either of such an incursion, or YOU should have cited it… and AW.com has NO staff on the ground there, so Ditz seems to me doing what he should with the information he (we) currently have at THIS time. Can YOU cite some information to instruct us here otherwise?
I see Amin Gemayel has acused Hezbollah of meddling in other states (read Syria) and thereby harming Lebanon…. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2013/Fe…
However one of the comments after the article gives voice to the "dubious nature" of the Gemayel complaint.. where Adonis writes:
"so what.
there are lebanese there over the border and it's the duty of lebanese inside lebanon to take care of them
it's quite normal practice in the world. no state want to see it's ethnic minority in other state to be persecuted."
So we here in America could think of it in terns of Mexico… If some foreign state had fighters in Mexico killing the Mexican relatives of Mexicans here, there ould be some resistance from the Mexicans here…
Therefor I believe Ditz's dubiousness only reflects the dubiousness of the current knowledge and the actual goings on in these border towns…
Irresponsible? NO…… At worst, poorly informed…. Send money to improve AW.Coms coverage…
?? "Such ambiguous reporting is at best poor quality, and in any case highly irresponsible. It leads to further bloodshed"??
asynge, can you please explain WHY Ditz's ambiguity is "dubious". My view is that there is no hard evidence either of such an incursion, or YOU should have cited it… and AW.com has NO staff on the ground there, so Ditz seems to me doing what he should with the information he (we) currently have at THIS time. Can YOU cite some information to instruct us here otherwise?
I see Amin Gemayel has acused Hezbollah of meddling in other states (read Syria) and thereby harming Lebanon…. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2013/Fe…
However one of the comments after the article gives voice to the "dubious nature" of the Gemayel complaint.. where Adonis writes:
"so what.
there are lebanese there over the border and it's the duty of lebanese inside lebanon to take care of them
it's quite normal practice in the world. no state want to see it's ethnic minority in other state to be persecuted."
So we here in America could think of it in terns of Mexico… If some foreign state had fighters in Mexico killing the Mexican relatives of Mexicans here, there ould be some resistance from the Mexicans here…
Therefor I believe Ditz's dubiousness only reflects the dubiousness of the current knowledge and the actual goings on in these border towns…
Irresponsible? NO…… At worst, poorly informed…. Send money to improve AW.Coms coverage…
I have remarked on Ditz’s reporting on other occasions and have found that he often manages to slip in some of the most absurd claims of certain Mideastern players as somehow worthy of our attention and as perhaps even credible. I note that one of the links Ditz refers us to here is fairly balanced in its reporting style (dailystar) and that the other two are decidedly pro-FSA. Unsurprisingly (to me!), one of these is ynet. So let me, as requested by you, ‘cite’. Five minutes into the web and I come up with a pro-Hezbollah site ( http://www.islamicinvitationturkey.com/2013/02/18… ) which, while referring to fighting, also points out the Syrian govt. claims that Hezbollah are not active in the area at all. I’m not saying the Syrian govt. is right. But when Ditz ‘digs’, he generally comes up with some absurd Israeli-Western spin and then sugars the pill with something PC – i.e. he ‘digs’ for what he wants to find and then stops.
Ditz suggests – embarrassingly – that the FSA may have some moral claim over local Shi-ites, hence his reference to the FSA’s “disloyalty” complaint. He then backtracks, referring to “dubious Syrian rebel claims”. This is all very sleight-of-hand and “ambiguous” – i.e. sugaring the pill.
By the way, I did not call Ditz’s reporting “dubious”; I said “ambiguous”.
Frankly I find your post a bit hard to understand. In my post I asked: “(…) "accusing them of disloyalty" – disloyalty to whom exactly?” Perhaps it would be easier to undertand where YOU’re coming from if you could provide an answer to THAT question – i.e. disloyalty to WHOM? All best.
Good lord almighty! Does a man have to cite, bookmark and footnote every damn thing from here back into the stone ages to satisfy you? Then we wouldn't have a small story here but a multi-page tome worthy of Tolstoy! Damn it all to hell.
Point taken, up to a point. There is such a thing as good reporting. Often, the devil is in the detail. Propaganda often works by insinuation and sleight of hand. And these I see in many places, including Ditz's work. That's all.