THE SLOWDOWN in the pace of the impending US war against Iraq has certainly dampened expectations of a third, anti-Hezbollah front in the war on terror. But the effort to attract attention to the potential threat that the group poses to the United States has continued over the past few months.

One such effort came last Tuesday at the Middle East Institute in downtown Washington, DC. A full crowd squeezed into a second-floor room at lunchtime to hear Avi Jorisch, a Soref research fellow at the strongly pro-Israel think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, give a talk about Hezbollah’s media operations.

The group’s TV station, Al Manar ("The Beacon") — beamed locally in Lebanon and throughout most of the world via satellite — was foremost on Jorisch’s agenda. In a tone that was slightly excitable, even giddy, he presented his case for the pernicious power of Al Manar in the Arab world. He noted that Al Manar’s reach — consisting of almost 10 million viewers a day worldwide — is immense. Its viewership is second only to that of Arab all-news station Al-Jazeera in places such as the West Bank and Gaza.

Though Jorisch complimented Al Manar’s professionalism and ambition, he argued that the station’s avowed purpose "is to wage psychological warfare." It spews hate for Israel and the United States, he said, and actively encourages the recruitment of suicide bombers through programming that includes music videos.

It all sounded perfectly awful. Then Jorisch showed one of the videos — a cringe-inducing bit of violently propagandistic gore called "Death to Israel" — that confirmed his view of the station’s disgusting propaganda even as it undercut his claims of Al Manar’s professionalism. The video is essentially a splatter/snuff film of rockets, rock-throwing, and post-bombing carnage synched to a fairly unappealing soundtrack, but Jorisch cited reports that a female suicide bomber in April of this year was inspired by such Al Manar programming. Jorisch even distributed lyrics to the video’s highly offensive ditty: "Strike them with the stone, sling or knife, day and night/Chase them for the will is strong/Like an erupting volcano./Shake the betrayer’s existence/Do not mind that the enemy’s armor is heavy."

Eventually, the Q&A session got around to what should be done about Al Manar. Jorisch noted that the options range from "bombing the station to doing nothing — and lots in between." After NATO’s decision to bomb the downtown headquarters of Radio Television Serbia in the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia, the bombing of a media outlet is clearly not off the table. He also mentioned shutting down the satellite and punishing US corporate sponsors of the station’s programming. "Any station that supports suicide bombing should not have a forum," argued Jorisch.

His talk wasn’t the only drumbeat about Hezbollah last week. On Monday, December 9, a New York Daily News op-ed on anti-Semitism in the Arab media mentioned one of the programs that Jorisch derided. A December 10 USA Today op-ed by Amitai Etzioni presented Hezbollah as a proxy for Iran — and argued that the threat posed by Iran was "being overlooked."

To date, however, the biggest mainstream assessment on Hezbollah has come in a two-part, 18,000-word piece penned for the New Yorker in October by Jeffrey Goldberg. Published shortly after Armitage’s September remarks at USIP — which Goldberg quotes — the piece presents Hezbollah as virulently anti-American and a clear and present threat in the US-led war on terrorism. (Jorisch makes an appearance in the article in a section titled "The Suicide Channel.")

The subtitle of the first part of Goldberg’s article — "Are terrorists in Lebanon preparing for a larger war?" — promises much more than it actually delivers. It emphasizes the grudge, dating back to the Reagan years, held by US officials against Hezbollah, and makes some not-so-subtle links between the group and Al Qaeda ("Magnus Ranstorp, the director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, at the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, says that Al Qaeda learned the value of choreographed violence from Hezbollah"). But Goldberg also lays out nightmare scenarios of a larger war that simply hang in midair, with little more to support them than supposition from unnamed experts. For instance, near the end of part one of his article, Goldberg writes: "Both Israel and the United States believe that, at the outset of an American campaign against Saddam, Iraq will fire missiles at Israel — perhaps with chemical or biological payloads — in order to provoke an Israeli conventional, or even nuclear, response. But Hezbollah, which is better situated than Iraq to do damage to Israel, might do Saddam’s work itself, forcing Israel to retaliate, and crippling the American effort against an Arab state. Hezbollah is not known to possess unconventional payloads for its missiles, though its state sponsors, Iran and Syria, maintain extensive biological- and chemical-weapons programs."

The second part of Goldberg’s article promises to track Hezbollah through "South America and the United States," yet only 10 paragraphs of the 7000-word article — tacked on at the end — deal directly with Hezbollah in the US. Those paragraphs deal with a cigarette-smuggling ring in North Carolina that was identified as a Hezbollah cell. Of the 10 men arrested, eight pled guilty to racketeering charges. One man was found guilty of aiding a terrorist organization.

MOST MAINSTREAM media outlets have been in less of a hurry to advocate opening a front on Hezbollah. Thus, the picture of the group in the American press has been a murky one. Many news organizations have quoted Senator Graham, who has kept up a steady drumbeat about the threat posed by Hezbollah. But such stories tend to be short ones — mainly wire-service copy — and not the in-depth treatment given by the New Yorker.

For instance, the Washington Post has examined the Hezbollah question from a number of angles in its news pages. On June 30, in the paper’s most comprehensive article to date, the Post’s Dana Priest and Douglas Farah took the same line as the one later taken in the New Yorker. Yet the Post’s article, titled terror alliance has u.s. worried; hezbollah, al qaeda seen joining forces, took a more balanced view — noting not only that "the new co-operation is ad hoc and tactical and involves mid- and low-level operatives" and that "unlike Al Qaeda, Hezbollah has never targeted Americans on U.S. soil," but also quoting experts who pooh-pooh a connection between the groups.

A foreshadowing of what may await Hezbollah, however, has recently swept through Canada’s media as a result of that nation’s controversial stand against placing the group’s charitable-fundraising arm on a national terrorist watch list. Earlier this year, the ruling Liberal government, headed by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, made the decision, arguing — as do other countries — that the charitable wing of Hezbollah should not be punished for the group’s dark deeds. (It’s a view not shared by the United States, which places all of Hezbollah under a ban, arguing that such charitable wings are "fronts" to funnel money to support terrorism.)

Canada’s decision caused an outcry not only among pro-Israel groups (the Canadian branch of B’nai Brith filed suit to compel the government to put Hezbollah on the list), but also in the Canadian media. The National Post argued that the Liberal government had "endangered the security of the entire continent — and disgraced the good name of the people of Canada." Victoria Times Colonist writer Robert McConnell thundered, "Until Hezbollah is shut down in this country, every Canadian taxpayer is subsidizing the donations that go from this country to support the scent of scattered blood and body parts."

On December 10, the Liberal government reversed tack and placed the group’s charitable wing on its watch list, partly as a result of the unrelenting media assault on its Hezbollah stance. Oddly enough, a story published on December 4 by the Washington Times, with the headline hezbollah calls for global attacks, added more fuel — and purported new evidence — to that fire.

The Times reported that Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has called for the "export" of suicide bombings worldwide in not one, but two speeches in late November. According to the Times, one of Nasrallah’s "calls" was part of a warning to Israel about the controversial Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The other "call" was alleged to have been made at an unspecified rally.

No major US paper picked up the Washington Times story, in part because it was so vaguely sourced. But accounts of the Canadian government’s reversal contained numerous references to the Times’ allegations of Nasrallah’s recent call for an "export" of suicide bombings.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to defend Hezbollah. Much of what critics say about the group is true. It clearly remains a dangerous entity with a long reach. It poses a threat to a key US ally in the region — Israel — and to the ultimate success of the Mideast peace process. Yet Hezbollah’s potential threat to the United States — a threat which has remained dormant for well over a decade — has yet to be established in any substantial way.

In fact, a report written for the US Strategic Studies Institute in August of this year — titled "Hizballah: Terrorism, National Liberation, or Menace?" — states the case against making Hezbollah the target of "phase three" of a US-led war on terror.

The report’s author, Sami G. Hajjar, a former US Foreign Service officer and professor at the US Army War College, argues that "[w]hile there is in the open literature clear evidence linking Hizballah to acts of terrorism in the past ... no credible and convincing evidence has been published connecting it to contemporary acts of international terrorism."

In his policy recommendations, Hajjar is even blunter about the efficacy of military action against Hezbollah: "The United States should not engage Hizballah militarily. The option of either sending the Marines or Special Forces to tackle Hizballah is unrealistic. Its end result will not amount to more than a ‘feel-good’ mission."

Hajjar concludes: "I see no military solution to the menace of Hizballah."

If the drumbeat for moving against Hezbollah as the third phase of the war on terror does indeed get louder, it will be interesting to see how much play viewpoints such as Hajjar’s get in the debate in the US media.