I just saw the "60 Minutes" piece on the Israeli Air Force and I'm stunned. The piece had the feel of pure propaganda. It was all about the mighty air force, with acrobatics, macho pilots, cool missiles and cockpit footage of the bombing of the Osirak reactor back in '81. Bob Simon, the correspondent, and his interviewees, repeated standard Israeli self-justification: Israel is a tiny country in a tough neighborhood, Israel's first losing war will be its last war (wrong; Lebanon '06), the fight against Iran is also the world's fight.
Particularly galling: Simon reported on the "targeted assassination" program in the Occupied Territories without interviewing any Palestinians. Merely gave lip service to the fact that these strikes kill huge numbers of innocents. Simon briefly suggested that Israel was fostering a cycle of violence, but allowed an Israeli officer to answer the charges. No Arabs need apply to be American media sources. And if you are going to give so much airtime to ideological statements about Iran's aims, why no reference to Israel's nuclear program, let alone to American realists who say that Iran wants to arm itself as a deterrent against hostile rivals in a tough neighborhood?
But Simon, who I believe is Jewish, saved his most outrageous stunt for the finale: airing an officer's photograph of Auschwitz, and allowing the officer to go on about how the world ignored Hitler too. This is irresponsible journalism. The Hitler analogy was used again and again with Saddam, and what did that gain us?
P.S. Jack Ross states that Israel lost wars in '56, '73, and '82 before '06. I dunno. It's arguable.
