The Detroit Free Press Coverage As mentioned...

The Detroit Free Press Coverage As mentioned, coverage revolved around a number of themes: that the Israelis were attacked first, that the Shi\'i militia Hizbullah was a "state-within-a-state," that Israeli civilians were bravely facing their enemies while the Lebanese remained largely faceless and, contrary to all evidence, that the Israeli response to Hizbullah\'s capture of two Israeli soldiers was not disproportionate and that it was a natural extension of the "right to self-defense." The Detroit Free Press\' Niraj Warikoo-singled out largely in this paper as he was at least partially responsible for most of his newspaper\'s articles on the conflict-wrote in a July 14 article: The second day of fighting between Israel and Hizballah militants quickly escalated into all-out warfare as Israel bombed the Lebanese capital\'s suburbs and crippled the airport, and bombed roads early today leading from Beirut to Damascus, Syria.

Hizballah - the militant group that kidnapped two Israeli soldiers Wednesday, setting off the fierce Israeli response - responded by firing more than 100 missiles into northern Israel.

Warikoo went on to add, "Hizballah\'s audacious raid Tuesday into Israel to capture soldiers - which followed another operation in Gaza by Palestinian militants that accomplished the same goal - set up this round of violence." The problem with the way Warikoo frames the conflict here is that it begins with Hizbullah\'s capture of the two Israeli soldiers. Hizbullah and Israel were sworn enemies since the creation of the Shi\'i militia in the 80s as the Lebanese Civil War raged.

The Shi\'i militia was organized to fight Israel after the state occupied Lebanon. The conflict by no means began with the altercation repeated so often by the American media as the cause for the fighting. Israel itself crosses Palestinian and Lebanese borders with impunity and has captured thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese it deems as being enemies. Not to ignore what Israel\'s enemies have done, but Israel has itself committed numerous atrocities throughout the course of its history.

None of these were mentioned in the above article to give any sense of the longer term struggle taking place between the two forces. At the very beginning, Warikoo\'s articles indicated an attempt to mention both Israeli and opposing positions. He noted that Hizbullah is seen as heroic by many Lebanese for fighting the Israelis.