Israel Prepares For The War Against Hezbollah

Very interesting bit of pyschological warfate by the Israelis, as they declassified and released IDF maps detailing the location of Hezbollah's bunkers. Via Judith Levy at Ricochet:

If you open the PDF and scroll down to the satellite photo of the village, you will see that weapons caches have been placed beside mosques and hospitals, underneath schools, and in residential areas. El-Khiam -- which was already the site of serious hostilities with the Israelis in 2006 -- has thus been wired as a village-sized suicide bomb. If Hezbollah launches attacks from El-Khiam and the IDF retaliates, civilian casualties are all but guaranteed.

Judith feels the release is a three-pronged offensive: A warning to Hezbollah ("We know where you are..."), and to the Lebanese people (did they know their womenfolk and children were penciled in as human shields?), and to the international community at large, so that the world understands that any civilians killed in an upcoming conflict were placed in harm's way by radical Islamists.

A fascinating play. There will be war in the Middle East sooner rather than later, as various factions try to coalesce a fractured population around them by attacking Israel. And while Hezbollah may or may not start the war (it may be Egypt, Hamas, or Syria, they will undoubtedly go for glory once the shooting starts.

But will this release have any affect on "world opinion" at all?

I'm skeptical. I wrote last week on the upcoming war, and how the media is already ignoring the facts, telling half the story, and otherwise finessing the narrative in order to present the story as it has always been told by the Left: Democratic Israel bad, bloodthirsty Islamist murderers good.

In theory, this should be big news. If it is not treated that way, if it is dismissed or ignored, well...then the ending to the story has already been written, no matter ho hard Israel tries to avoid civilian causalities, and regardless of how many innocents are killed by propaganda-seeking, Jew-hating terrorists...