Another Study In Contrasts

First, this:

Tom Ricks, you've covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don't have two standing armies shooting at each other?

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

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KURTZ: Tom Ricks, the New York Times reported the other day, quote, "Israel is now fighting to win the battle of perceptions," which to me says the battle of headlines. And, in fact, an Israeli cabinet minister was quoted, not by name, as saying, "That the narrative at the end, is part of the problem." I'm starting to hear echoes of Iraq.

RICKS: Echoes of Iraq, yes. But also the Israelis are very sophisticated in their handling of the media. They consider it part of the battlefield, officially. The word "narrative" always comes up with conversations with Israeli national security officials. They consider shaping the narrative, the battle for the narrative, to be key as part of any war fighting. So they see the media as part of the battlefield. And, in fact, there's some belief from our reporters that they have occasionally targeted the media.

Is that not one of the most blatant cases of projection you've ever seen? Is it possible to get the facts of the two sides of this conflict more backwards than that? What's next, a WaPo article claiming that the Knesset has enacted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as official state policy?

Here's a taste of the aforementioned facts:

When the Israelis capture Arabs in their wars, the captured Arabs are well fed, well housed, and eventually returned to their homes. When the Arabs (specifically the Syrians) have captured Israelis, they castrate them, cut off their male organs, decapitate the Israelis, and stuff their male organs in their mouths and leave the bodies on the field. Sometimes they also defecate on the bodies.

But that's okay, I guess - what Mr. Ricks would consider the Jews' "just desserts." A fitting end for the "pigs" and "monkeys" that have "usurped Palestine." Something I'm sure we'll see discussed at length in his WaPo "articles" - or should I say "protocols" - to come.