Mitch Prothero of Salon says Hezbollah gunmen care more about Lebanese civilians and collateral damage than the IDF:
Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths — the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far — on “terrorists” who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.
But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters — as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers — avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators — as so many Palestinian militants have been.
For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they’ll get some fighters, too.
Too bad Prothero didn’t talk to these civilians about their experiences with Hezbollah gunmen.
