From the comments: The Lebanese Daily Star responds

A representative of the Lebanese Daily Star responds to my last post on what I am calling the Poisoned Zionist Balloons:

You are right to point out how absurd it is for Lebanese to get so paranoid about a few balloons drifting over the border. However, you missed the point about why The Daily Star decided to run the story (and please note that we ran it on the inside pages, not on the front page like most of the Arabic press in Lebanon.) The story is newsworthy because the balloons sparked so much panic here in Lebanon. We made a conscious effort to report the story as what it was – unfounded hysteria. The point we were tyring to get across is that there is a deep level of mistrust among Lebanese toward Israelis, a feeling that was amplified in the wake of a deadly war last summer. We have limited space and maneuvering room to make this point with a news story, where our job is simply to report the facts, unlike a commentary or an editorial. Bloggers, on the other hand, have an open and free forum, and could potentially play a greater role in building trust, instead of belitting a terrified population and adding fuel to the fires of animosity.

Kristin Dailey

My response (posted here, not in the comments):

It seems to me that if you were interested in reducing panic you might have led your news article with the fact that the ballons were not toxic in any way. It took you sixteen paragraphs to get to the results of the UN tests, and you put the lack of evidence into scare quotes.

Preliminary tests run by Italian troops in the UNIFIL and by experts in the Lebanese Army tests showed “no evidence” of dangerous substances in the balloons.

The story may have been about the panic in Lebanon—and take no pride in running it on the inside pages, because you eased no paranoid fears by doing so—but that doesn’t excuse the fact that every single person you quoted in the article comes off sounding like a paranoid lunatic.

It isn’t I that needs to work on building up trust between Israelis and Lebanese. Perhaps you may want to look in your own back yard, particularly at the terrorists that run a state-within-a-state in the country.

The fact that the Lebanese were terrified by a few promotional balloons that drifted over the border from Israel speaks more to the paranoia and hatred in Lebanese society than anything.

I tend to mock things that are worthy of mocking. A supposedly civilized nation that accuses Israel of filling balloons with poison gas in an attempt to—what, target innocent civilians?—is definitely worth mocking.

The source said more comprehensive tests on the Israeli balloons will continue for the next two days to check “for chemicals and minerals” that the balloons may be carrying or are made of.

Yes, that’s right. Check the chemical makeup of the balloons, because those evil Zionists can’t be trusted. Why, the next thing you know, they’ll say that Arafat was poisoned by Zionists or something.

Please. The paranoid rants of the Lebanese over a bunch of green balloons is the real humor here, not my post.