As part of its coverage for the fast-approaching midterms, the liberal, elitist media have gone to bat for candidates -- think Michigan's Abdul el-Sayed -- who can make their dreams a reality, especially if it is to provide them with ammunition to bash Israel. CNN's The Situation Room delivered a perfect example Tuesday with a one-sided report from Lebanon from international correspondent Jeremy Diamond that lacked context, presenting Israel as the bad guy, responsible for ceasefire violations and gratuitous mass destruction.
Co-host Wolf Blitzer was no better as he introduced Diamond: "CNN has gained very rare access inside Israeli-occupied South Lebanon, where homes are reduced to rubble. The Lebanese army is trying to regain control of the region through so-called pilot zones. That's a framework backed by the U.S. meant to transition control of Lebanese territory occupied by Israeli forces."
Blitzer conveniently left out that, according to the U.S. State Department, the pilot zones are areas where "the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of the territory to the exclusion of all non-state actors." That includes the terrorists, Hezbollah, whose deadly attacks are the reason Israel is in Lebanon in the first place.
The agreement reached in June between Israel, Lebanon, and the U.S. further stated: "All countries reaffirmed that the future of the relationship between Israel and Lebanon must be decided by the two sovereign governments. They rejected any attempt, by any state or non-state actor, to hold Lebanon’s future hostage."
That non-state actor would be Hezbollah. But why give the story context? Just blame Israel, as Diamond did:
BLITZER: CNN's Jeremy Diamond exclusively embedded with the Lebanese army on patrol in one of these areas. Jeremy, tell our viewers, what did you witness?
DIAMOND: Yes, that's right, Wolf. The Lebanese army gave us access to their operations in one of these pilot zones. We joined them on patrol there, and we saw the ways in which they are patrolling the town. They have set up checkpoints at the entrances to this village in an effort to keep militants out, including Hezbollah militants. This is all part of an effort to eventually try and push for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Southern Lebanon. A lot of it depends on the success of these pilot zones. So far, there isn't much of an appetite, though, in the current Israeli government for expanding those pilot zones, so we will keep an eye on that.
Of course he will.
Diamond went on, dialing up the gripes:
But what we also saw on the ground, Wolf, were the enormous levels of destruction, not only from Israeli airstrikes, but also from Israeli bulldozing, as the Israeli defense minister has vowed to raze every single village inside the Israeli security zone to the ground, with the rare exception of just a few Christian villages in that area.
Diamond never mentioned why Israel has taken these actions. Israel's military says it's to destroy outposts used by Hezbollah.
But the worst part of Diamond's piece was yet to come:
We also saw the extent to which the cease-fire in Lebanon is very much a cease-fire in name only. As we were interviewing a soldier talking about a previous Israeli strike, here's what we heard and saw.
Diamond then played a clip of said interview, which was interrupted by an unidentified strike. The CNN reporter was pining to pin the circumstances on Israel, asking this of a Lebanese soldier:
When you were first deployed to the south -- and that was some kind of Israeli strike close by. How often are you seeing Israeli military strikes like this?
How did he know it was an Israeli strike? How could he be so sure? Shouldn't he have told his viewers? Instead, we got, "This is what cease-fire looks like?"
The report never mentioned what Hezbollah has done to Israel. On October 8, 2023, a day after October 7, Hezbollah started attacking Israel. Two days after the start of the Iran war, Hezbollah started attacking Israel.
In fact, Israel's fight against Hezbollah's terror has been going on for decades, but you'd never know it from Blitzer and Diamond (even though they both know better). We could chalk it up to this being CNN, but this anti-Israel bias permeates the left-wing media.
