because American thinking tends to conflate the concepts of just cause and just tactics. The default American opinion is that if someone starts a fight, the other party has the right to finish it by any means necessary, which means that to many Americans, the only significant fact is that Hizbullah struck the first blow.
There might be some insight about the American psyche there, but I would say the main reason is years of well-organized pro-Israel PR campaigns carried out by the main pro-Israel think tanks in DC (and the absence of equivalent pro-Arab think tanks) that has shaped much American political and media thinking about the Arab-Israeli conflict. And on top of that you have to add the not insignificant number of well-established, fundamentally pro-Israel publications in the US such as the New Republic, New York Sun, New York Post, Commentary, the Forward, and arguably the New York Times. This media reaction is not just the result of a “just desserts” attitude but the long-standing presence of almost automatically pro-Israel publications in the American media.
I would also add that it makes a big difference to Americans that Israelis often speak English with American or British accents (hell, there’s half a million Israeli-Americans just in NYC), are at ease in American media formats and cultural references and play much better on the nightly news than an Arab leader with a distinctly different accent. So news channels overwhelmingly interview Israeli government and military spokespersons and “experts” as a “view from the ground” rather than interviewing Arabs (who are presumed to be constantly fighting each other anyway). The pro-Israel side is better set up to work with US news routines.
Here’s a survey I bookmarked a few years ago about American attitudes towards Muslims and Jews:
http://people-press.org/reports/print.php3?PageID=728
And this came out today – see questions 71-80 on attitudes to Israel-Lebanon.
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20060726_poll.pdf
it makes a big difference to Americans that Israelis often speak English with American or British accents
Case in point: Mark Regev, the current Israeli equivalent of Comical Ali, was born and raised in Australia. The media training of Israeli government and military spokespeople — training for the US media, primarily — is something to behold.
What’s slightly different here is the cosmopolitan character of Lebanon, meaning that you have as many fluent English and French speakers in Beirut, including many who don’t fit American stereotypes of ‘the Arab’. Strangely enough, few of them are getting much face time. Similarly, you’ll never find a Ha’aretz writer interviewed on American television.
Good point – although I have seen some Lebanese-Americans or Lebanese-Canadians interviewed on TV, this was the BBC. Not sure about US media, from what I’ve seen on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, they don’t talk to Lebanese people.
You know Nick, you’d think all those blondified Eurotrashy Lebanese in their designer sunglasses and fluent English would play well on American TV, not to mention the zillions of dual citizens, but in the news segments I’ve seen, they seem to be grouped in with “evacuees” rather than “Arab voices.” The Lebanese/Arab “establishment” is still represented (on telly) by mustachioed guys in suits speaking through translators.
Hey, if Edward Said, the WASPiest Arab man ever born, could be smeared as a terrorist-sympathizer in the US, what hope do these poor Lebanese have.
MSNBC has been terrible in covering this conflict, much worse than CNN.
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