Israeli-Arab News Cycle

I found this Haaretz article too complicated too follow. So the Israeli Army has a psy-ops unit that used to be very active but has been less so recently, and is now being revived. This psy-ops unit plants articles in the Arab press about groups like Lebanon's Hizbullah, painting them as vicious terrorists. Then it comes to Israeli newspaper like Haaretz with translations, and urges that the pieces be written up for Israeli and Western audiences. But of course the pieces are reported as originating in the Arab press:

' The unit's activities have been controversial for years. In October 1999, Aluf Benn revealed in Haaretz that members of the unit used the Israeli media to emphasize reports initiated by the unit that it managed to place in the Arab press. He reported that the news reports focused on Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in terror activity. '

So is MEMRI, which translates articles from the Arabic press into English for thousands of US subscribers, in any way involved in all this? Its director formerly served in . . . Israeli military intelligence. How much of what we "know" from "Arab sources" about "Hizbullah terrorism" was simply made up by this fantasy factory in Tel Aviv?

As someone who reads the Arabic press quite a lot, this sort of revelation is extremely disturbing.

I also saw an allegation that British military intelligence had planted stories in the US press about Saddam's Iraq.

You begin to wonder how much of what you think you know is just propaganda manufactured by some bored colonel. No wonder post-Baath Iraq looks nothing like what we were led to to expect by the press, including the Arab press!