Mapping Beirut's 'Devastation'

I'm all for pulverizing Hizbollah, as well as sick of the anti-Israel bias in "neutral" media, but I don't think this is a fair depiction.

For example, no one (sane) would deny that 9-11's impact on New York City was many times worse than this, but its geographic footprint was even smaller.

Do you think that the media was wrong to emphasize the destruction of the World Trade Center over the 99.9% of New York City that wasn't destroyed?

Imagine the outrage if someone showed a satellite map with a little grey speck down at the bottom of Manhattan and said "Look: New York is basically unscathed!" There would be outrage.

Similarly, the fact that Israel has been selective in its bombing doesn't mean that the effect on Beirut has been trivial.

Posted by: Joe Grossberg at Jul 31, 2006 3:11:58 PM

Joe,

You would be right, if the media hadn't been presenting the Israeli attacks as the devastation of Beirut. Beirut hasn't come close to being destroyed and that's the point of this map.

This is just like what the BBC presented as the destruction of Beirut airport. In fact the IAF was very careful to just punch a few holes in the runways. Together with the threat that they might do it again, this was enough to shut the airport down, but when Israel consented to mercy flights the airport was up and running again in a few days.

The media have very delicate sensibilities about the meaning of the word "terrorism". Odd that they should be so much more relaxed about the pairing of words like "Israel" & "destruction".

Posted by: Paul M at Jul 31, 2006 10:43:33 PM