Hassan Nasrallah poisoned: Haaretz spreading false rumours again

At least that's what Haaretz is claiming today, that Hezbollah's leader was poisoned last week and was in critical condition.

Haaretz's source is an Iraqi website Almalaf. And Almalaf sources are western diplomats in Beirut as well as workers at international Beirut airport who noticed a team of 15 Iranian doctors 3 days ago with heavy equipment coming out from a Russian made plan Antonov 74 that landed at 11 p.m. on sunday.
And then the report goes on to claim that the same diplomatic sources told Almalaf that Nasrallah could have been shuttled to Tehran if Iranian doctors were not going to be able to save his life. The same sources reported also that they suspect that Israel is at the origin of the attempt.

Now I can't go on and translate the amount of non sense contained in Almalaf on the nature of the poison and the way Nasrallah was poisoned...on which Haaretz's report is based with some translation errors as to the time of the arrival of the Iranian doctors at Beirut's airport.

The story has no serious sources. Western diplomatic sources and airport workers reporting on two different aspects of the narrative, Nasrallah's illness and airport activity, something that cannot be cross-checked in any possible way. In addition, who would believe that Nasrallah's health would depend on doctors in Iran, and not right beside him ? And why transport Nasrallah to Tehran if heavy equipment was brought in to save him ? The whole story transpires nonsense and sensationalism.

The only attempt made by Almalaf to check the information was to call Hezbollah's secretary general who denied the story stating that Nasrallh was fine, even though, insists Almalaf, he didn't see him last week ! Almalaf claims that it is hard to verify the information given the lack of transparency in information coming from Hezbollah and that the party would never aknowledge such a thing especially since the assassination of one of his own, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus.

In a nutshell, Almalaf is just throwing a story, reverberated by Haaretz, or is it the other way around ? The story was planted in Haaretz from internal sources and offered under the disguise of western diplomatic sources and airport workers to Almalaf ?

In both ways, the story could have at least two purposes:
1. Provoke a reaction from Hezbollah as to Nasrallah's whereabouts. One may think that the party of God is not naive but it may engage in a press reaction just to dissipate doubts about its leader's health;

However, in my opinion, the most important aspect of the story is this:

2. Distract Shia in Iraq from the fact that Iraqi-born Lebanese Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah who is a top Shia cleric in Lebanon and a respected and esteemed figure among shias in Iraq wrote an edict against the coming US-Iraqi security agreement calling it 'legitimization of the US occupation' while the local top cleric Ali Al-Sistani did not come against it nor expressed himself openly on the subject. The Haaretz article mentions that the Saudi Al Watan has announced that the Iranian speaker of parliament Ali Larijani will meet Hezbollah's leader next week and convey to him Sistani's position on the US-Iraqi security agreement. For that matter read here 'Iraq won't sign US deal'.

And of course, not one single serious news source has published the story, except Haaretz, Almalaf, and exclusively other Israeli news sources like the Jerusalem Post.

Coming from Almalaf, the propaganda is understandable, but why Haaretz is spreading the rumour ? This is not the first time Haaretz engage in spreading propaganda for the state of Israel and its allies, through manipulative and unprofessional journalism.

UPDATE: Well, at last, Haaretz is maybe trying to repare its reputation because when I said not one serious source published the rumour, that was true even days after it was published by Haaretz.

Thanks Annie for this update.