Last Friday, CNN's The Situation Room ran a one sided blatantly anti-Israel report filed by international correspondent Jeremy Diamond from Lebanon, which lacked context, presenting Israel as the bad guy, responsible for gratuitous mass destruction. Saturday on CNN's Newsroom, Diamond was back at it, this time with a much longer report from Lebanon, and even though he mentioned Hezbollah, it was Israel that took center stage.
The prerecorded report repeated many of the claims made in Diamond's Friday piece, and left out some of the same vital contextual information, as did Bianna Golodryga's introduction:
A cease fire with an Iranian proxy, Hezbollah, is technically in effect in Lebanon. The U.S. Brokered agreement between Israel and Lebanon was signed in June. It says Israel is supposed to hand over small pockets of occupied territory to the Lebanese army. But Israeli forces have reduced Muslim towns to rubble, while a few Christian villages have been spared but cut off from the rest of the country.
First, Golodryga didn't recognize Hezbollah as a terrorist group, which has been U.S. policy since 1997. She also left out that, according to the U.S. State Department, the pilot zones, established under that June agreement, were 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.
Diamond's report began with video of Israeli flags planted along the roadside and paid little mind to why they were there:
From this coastal road to the rubble strewn countryside, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is Israeli territory, but it's not. This is a rare firsthand look at occupied Lebanon. (...) Israel invaded this area nearly six months ago after Hezbollah, the Iranian backed militant group that is based here, fired rockets at Israel for the first time since 2024, retaliating for Israeli air strikes on Iran.
No mention from Diamond on the damage done in 2024, or that on October 8, 2023, a day after October 7, Hezbollah started attacking Israel, as they did just two days after the start of the Iran war in March, or that this war has been going on for decades, all from inside Lebanon.
Diamond continued:
We're really close to the Israeli border now, and this is all we're seeing, piles of rubble, one home after the other completely destroyed. A cease fire is technically in effect here, yet Israel carries out near daily strikes. Most of this rubble was caused by bulldozers and controlled demolitions. Part of Israel's plan to raze every town and village in this area, with only a few exceptions.
Diamond never mentioned why Israel has taken these actions. Israel's military says it's to destroy outposts used by Hezbollah.
Diamond did speak to a Lebanese Christian who placed blame where it belongs, on Hezbollah, for the current state of affairs. "Like many in this Christian village, Yorgos blames Hezbollah, which is embedded in the surrounding Shia villages, for bringing war to his doorstep," Diamond said.
Diamond then included part of his Friday report, where, while speaking with a Lebanese soldier, an alleged Israeli strike was heard nearby:
DIAMOND (voice over): That danger comes into focus as soon as this soldier begins telling the story of the Israeli strike that killed his comrade
DIAMOND (speaking to soldier): When you were first deployed to the south--
[Explosion in the distance]
And that was some kind of Israeli strike close by.
This is at least the fourth Israeli artillery strike that we have heard in this area since we've been here, and we've only been here for about 20 minutes.
Questions. How can Diamond be sure that these are Israeli strikes? Why would he stay in an area where four strikes had occurred in 20 minutes? Why was he not wearing a helmet at the time, especially given his next statement: "The Lebanese Army says 34 of its soldiers have been killed so far this year. Some died in Israeli strikes. Others were killed by unexploded ordnance."
And then a most revealing statement from the soldier: "We are finding munitions deployed by the Israeli enemy forces, and we are finding munitions dropped by armed groups from Lebanon."
The report continued and you can see it in the video below.
Diamond's report was just a longer version of the blame Israel piece presented on Friday, and you can count on there being many more on CNN and elsewhere.
