There’s renewed tension on the Israel-Lebanon border. Yesterday the Times reported on recent rocket attacks by Hezbollah on northern Israel and stated the following (emphasis mine):
“That [2006] war was precipitated by a cross-border raid by the Hezbollah militia. The militants ambushed an Israeli Army patrol, killing eight soldiers and taking two captured soldiers into Lebanon. More than 1,000 Lebanese and more than 160 Israelis died in the war. The bodies of the two captured soldiers were returned in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah in July 2008.”
Odd. Back in 2006 the New York Times also stated that a Hezbollah raid across the Lebanon-Israel border that killed eight soldiers set off the Lebanon war of that year. But the Times misstated the number of Israeli soldiers killed, and corrected its report a day later. It said, "It was three, not eight."
Today it repeats the original mistake. Again, three soldiers, not eight, were killed in the ambush. Probably more important are the casualty figures in the story, which fail to note most Lebanese killed were civilians and most Israelis killed were soldiers.
