The utter inability to tell the truth

I've been looking at the Lebanese coverage of yesterday's events. Even though the facts are plain and obvious, the Lebanese media - across the board - is standing by the absurd story that Israel went into Lebanese territory and the LAF was defending their country.

The anti-Hezbollah March 14th coalition declared that this proves that the LAF can defend their country, and (by implication) it doesn't need Hezbollah.

The Lebanese Army warned Israel that they will do it again in the face of any Israeli "aggression."

Pan-Arab daily Dar al-Hayat said that it is likely that Israel wanted to test Lebanese reaction (by deciding to cut down trees on the Israeli side and giving them two weeks' notice, I suppose.)

No one is mentioning that, you know, Lebanon shot first at Israelis over the border who were doing nothing remotely wrong.

The lies do not end at this incident, of course. Ya Libnan starts off a "news" story this way:

Israel which received over $1.6 Trillion from the US since 1973 is now blaming U.S., France for arming Lebanon.

Say what? $1.6 trillion? That means that every Israeli household has received a million dollars from the US!

Well, it seems that Ya Libnan published an article about this claim just last week, from some blog by someone purported to be a CIA operations officer.

Although he doesn't cite the source, the figure comes from an absurd Christian Science Monitor article from 2002, where Israel is blamed by an analyst and "friend of OPEC" for the cost to the US economy of the Arab oil boycott, among other things.

Yes, the Arabs attacked Israel and initiated an oil boycott against the US, and Israel is blamed for their actions.

Although that author died in 2005, others have used his ridiculous methods to inflate Israel's supposed cost to the US to as much as $3 trillion, by considering the entire cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as being aid to Israel as well.

Ya Libnan, with its journalistic skill, takes a ridiculous blog post, publishes it as fact, and then a week later extends it to translate "cost to US" to "aid to Israel."

Which just goes to show that no lie is too big to be published by the Arab media when it comes to Israel.

UPDATE: Since I queued up this post this morning, Lebanon's Naharnet has reported that UNIFIL declared the tree was on the Israeli side.

But now Lebanon is backpedaling, saying that while they admit it was on the Israeli side of the Blue Line, that is still Lebanese territory:

Lebanese Information Minister Tareq Mitri insisted the trees were in Lebanese territory.

"Lebanon has always expressed its respect for the Blue Line but always affirmed that the Blue Line is not the international border and there are areas south of the Blue Line that are Lebanese territory," Mitri told journalists in Beirut.

"The trees ... were south of the Blue Line but in Lebanese territory," he added.

Which means that if we are to believe him, the supposed Lebanese "respect" for the Blue Line is nonexistent if they are willing to shoot people on the other side.