BEIRUT -- A response is in order to the Jeruasalem Post's story today, in which Michael Totten is interviewed and my name comes up in the article.
The Post says, "Chris Allbritton, who sometimes works for Time Magazine, briefly mentioned on his blog during the war that several journalists he knows were threatened by Hizbullah because of what they were writing."
Let's look at what I actually wrote:
To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one.
In a follow-up post, I expanded on this, as this one comment was taken completely the wrong way by many, many right-wing blogs and publications (Such as Totten's and the JPost.)
The beginning of my response was this:
Let's set aside that the Lebanese Internal Security also has photocopies of our passports. The reason for the hassling and the threat was that a reporter had filmed or described either a launching site or Hezbollah positions. (I'm not sure which.) To the best of my knowledge, that's been the extent of the hassling. I'm going to get in trouble for this, but I think it's a reasonable restriction. This is the exact same restrictions placed on journalists by the Israeli army and by the Americans in Iraq. I don't think threatening journalists is cool at all, and it certainly doesn't endear me to them, but that has been the extent of Hezbollah's interference in our coverage.
You can read the rest of it, and I hope you do, here.
Let me see if I’ve got this straight — a Jerusalem newspaper is interviewing a blogger in Portland, Oregon, for the inside scoop on Hezbollah in Lebanon?
Oy vey.