Let's start with the BBC headline. "Hezbollah is unbowed in Baalbek"
Can't you just feel the BBC reporters admiration for Hezbollah.
Definition of "unbowed" - "stood defiantly with unbowed back" not forced to bow down to a conqueror"
"Though Israel says it is temporarily suspending air strikes against Lebanon to investigate the latest Qana tragedy, its drones scarcely stopped buzzing like sinister insects high over Baalbek throughout Monday. "
See? The Israelis are the "sinister" ones. The two sides are at war and using unmanned drones is one way to keep an eye on your enemy.
Pay close attention to this next bit.
Baalbek - home to perhaps the most impressive ancient Roman ruins outside Italy - is now very much Hezbollah country.
Then later on he tells us this:
You also pass a succession of bombed petrol stations and industrial workshops - all buildings with civilian rather than military use, local people say.
Well, if as you say, the place "is now very much Hezbollah country", then the local people would be Hezbollah and they would say that wouldn't they?
Petrol is used as fuel in the trucks Hezbollah uses as rocket launchers and to move their men about. Industrial workshops can be used to assemble the rocket launcers, repair trucks and all manner of military related work.
Even though he notes the following, the BBC reporter is quite happy to take their word for it.
"On the way into Baalbek, you see portraits of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah flanked by his mentors, Ayatollahs Khomenei and Khamenei, supreme leaders of the Iranian revolution."
He goes further to denounce Israel's attack on the area, even though he says it's "very much Hezbollah country" - the Hezbollah that Israel is at war with.
As a result, the area has been heavily bombed by Israel in the last three weeks, though it lies more than 100km (60 miles) from Israel's northern border and poses no threat as a rocket launching area.
That doesn't mean it poses no threat at all. Command and control centers are almost always in rear areas. Attack them and you reduce the thereat to your troops.
Keep his assertion that the area "is now very much Hezbollah country", as you read this from the BBC reporter.
"In all, more than 250 properties are reported to have been hit by Israeli air strikes in the Baalbek area, many of them with no apparent connection with Hezbollah. "
How the BBC reporter knows this, especially in light of his earlier remarks, is a mystery.
And this...
"Most houses were empty, their inhabitants having fled Baalbek for safer villages nearby - but three people died, all civilians."
Again, in light of his earlier remarks, how does he know they were civilians? Unlike Israel, Hezbollah wears no uniform.
He goes on...
"The buildings opposite, said to have been a welfare distribution point and a school, were bombed to rubble a week ago while Mr Taher was standing outside his front door."
Said by whom? One of the locals in the area that "is now very much Hezbollah country"?
He continues to report what he's being told without question.
He hands me the biggest piece of shrapnel I've seen since I got here, about 25cm (10 inches) long and weighing at least 3kg (6lb).
"We found this on my son's bed. Fortunately I sent them to Zahle (a mainly Christian town further down the Baqaa) on the first day of the attacks," he says.
Nice shock value. But is it true? We only have this man from Hezbollah country's word for it. But the BBC is happy with that.
And the BBC want you to know it's not safe here, even for the media.
"It is not safe here. We have to leave, now," said Hikmat Shreif, local correspondent for an international news agency, moments after he had taken us to another bombed area, in a residential district in northern Baalbek. [...] [Hmmm. Since we are in Hezbollah land, I wonder who that could be]
And in the sky overhead, there was the persistent whining of another Israeli drone. When a veteran like Hikmat says it is time to go, you take it very seriously.
Our little media convoy sped back through the narrow streets to the relative safety of the centre of town.
But look what's in the next paragraph.
There, the streets were quiet and almost all of the shops were shut. Ever present though - patrolling the streets in a fleet of old Volvo estate cars - were Hezbollah's local cadres.
Israel is to know who is in which cars is not made clear.
The BBC reporter ends his report letting you know that Hezbollah is winning and Isreal is losing.
They - along with the civilians left in the town - may have taken a pummelling in Baalbek, but they are still very much in charge.
In charge of what?
Remember earlier he said this.
In front of us were two large impact craters that had completely destroyed two buildings where Hezbollah had rented rooms for its activities.
"Activities" is BBC speak for conducting terrorist operations.
UPDATE
Related.
Israel poured up to 10,000 armored troops into south Lebanon Tuesday, and commandos raided a Hezbollah-run hospital and captured guerrillas during pitched battles deep in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a major escalation of the three-week-old war.
In the attack on the ancient city of Baalbek, about 80 miles north of Israel, commandos ferried in by helicopters fought Hezbollah guerrillas inside and around the hospital under cover of heavy airstrikes, witnesses said. At least seven people were killed in the city, they said. Israel said an unspecified number of guerrillas were captured and no soldiers were hurt.
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