MORE ON ZOGBY'S HEZBOLLAH/RAPE VICTIM ANALOGY

Skirt Chasing (WSJ-BOTW)
The disgusting analogy of Hezbollah to a rape victim seems to be a standard talking point for Jim Zobgy of the Arab American Institute. The night before the example we noted yesterday, Zogby employed it in a debate with Alan Dershowitz on CNN's " Larry King Live":

Zogby: For Alan to make the case that this is what Hezbollah wants, that they win a victory when these children die, is gross.

Dersowitz: Absolutely.

Zogby: It is a way of absolving--

Dershowitz: It's true. It's gross and it's true.

Zogby: --a guilty client. It's something he's done time and time again. But the fact is, is that saying "I didn't mean to rape her but she had a short skirt on" doesn't cut it. You at some point have to say "stop the madness."

Some readers thought we misconstrued Zogby's analogy--that he was likening the civilians to rape victims, and Hezbollah to the "skirt." But for this analogy to make sense, one would have to imagine a sentient skirt attacking a man and the man inadvertently raping a woman in the course of trying to kill the skirt.

Reader Andrew Miller offers a more sophisticated interpretation:

It seems clear to me he's comparing the civilian victims to rape victims. And his elision there is very telling. [Mortimer] Zuckerman is asking him if he blames Hezbollah, and he's saying that's like blaming the civilians. Which means he's equating the civilians to Hezbollah. Unfortunately, that speaks to the very heart of why this whole mess is so intractable.

Hezbollah is willing to sacrifice civilians by hiding weapons among them, killing Arab Israelis, etc.--yet these same civilians seem to support them in surprisingly large numbers.

Of course, this is the very point Zogby tries to deny in the "Larry King" interview. But Walter Reich in the New York Sun quotes an Arab making the same point:

On the day an Israeli airstrike inadvertently killed some 28 civilians in the Lebanese town of Qana, a Berlin daily, Der Tagesspiegel, published an amazing letter that summarized the Hezbollah strategy that resulted in those deaths.

The letter-writer, who identified himself as Dr. Mounir Herzallah, said he was a Shiite from southern Lebanon who had lived there until 2002. After the Israelis withdrew from the area in 2000, he recalled, Hezbollah moved into his town, dug rocket depots in bunkers, and then built a school and a residence over those bunkers.

The letter went on: "Laughing, a local sheikh explained to me that the Jews would lose in any event because the rockets would either be fired at them or, if they attacked the rocket depots, they would be condemned by world opinion on account of the dead civilians. These people do not care about the Lebanese population; they use them as shields and, once dead, as propaganda."

This is what Zogby is defending.