Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah meets with top Hamas official Khalil Al-Hayya in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on July 5, 2024, Lebanon. Photo: Hezbollah Media Office/Handout via REUTERS
Approximately 80,000 residents in northern Israel have been displaced from their homes for the past 11 months, due to rocket fire by Hezbollah.
In an August 25 attack, Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones in a single day. And on July 27, an Iranian-made rocket launched by Hezbollah — an internationally-designated terrorist organization — killed 12 Israeli Druze teenagers.
But somehow none of these details made it into NPR’s September 17 article about the attack on Hezbollah last week, during which members of the group found their pagers and other devices exploding. (“Hezbollah accuses Israel as thousands hurt in unusual pager blasts.”)
Instead, NPR reporters Jane Arraf and Vincent Ni told readers that Israel’s “attack raises fears of an escalation,” and that, “Hezbollah militants have been engaged in 11 months of cross-border fighting with Israel,” whitewashing Hezbollah’s aggression.
The reporters also described Hezbollah as a “Lebanese armed group,” without noting that it is designated as a terrorist organization by the US government, and many other countries.
The article says, “the attack … comes following warnings from Israeli officials of possible military action against the Lebanese group.” But NPR’s readers are given no clue why Israel might issue such warnings.
A follow-up article on September 18 also failed to mention the 12 Druze children slain, or to relay that the US has designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, though it did accurately portray Hezbollah, and not Israel, as the aggressor in this conflict. (“Israel rigged pagers and radios to explode across Lebanon.”) It accompanied an audio piece that began with a sympathetic portrayal of the funeral of “a dozen people” that had been killed in the pager attack — without specifying if those “people” were Hezbollah members.
As the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah escalates, it’s important that tax-payer funded NPR be clear in every report not only about who the aggressor is, but also who exactly Hezbollah is.