Compare and contrast

By Noah Pollak
Yesterday I “noted”:http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTQzNzc0NDQwMDE4YWM5ODllNTJjM2JjOWQ5MDgzNDc= in the Corner a story written by Nicholas Blanford, a Christian Science Monitor reporter, that recounts his misadventure trying to report on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Blanford, not to put too fine a point on it, is more or less a Hezbollah apologist, and has been for a long time. And an ugly one at that: In his piece he blames Hezbollah’s police-state treatment of journalists on, of course, Israel — or more precisely, on the fact that Israel is probably trying to spy on Hezbollah, and Hezbollah fears Israel might use journalists to do so.
Contrast Blanford with another journalist, Charles Levinson, who is also an experienced Middle East reporter. Levinson has a must-read “account”:http://conflictblotter.com/2007/08/06/difficult-dealings-with-hezbollah/ of his recent attempts to report from Lebanon, and instead of writing a piece of conciliatory garbage, he calls Hezbollah’s behavior what it is: fascistic thuggery. Kudos to Levinson. His post took guts to write. And his blog, “Conflict Blotter,”:http://conflictblotter.com/ is excellent.