It seems that The New Yorker and McClatchy have fallen for an information operation that has the aim to denigrate Hizbullah and to make the case that a fall of the Syrian government would induce the fall of Hizbullah.
The New Yorker piece by Dexter Filkins is headlined:
After Syria – If the Assad regime falls, can Hezbollah survive?
The McClatchy piece by David Enders:
Pro-Assad militia now key to Syrian government’s war strategy
Both pieces rely in their claims on a person with pseudonym Dani or Dany which is supposed to be a "Hizbullah fighter" or "Hizbullah commander" who claims to have fought in Syria. Both pieces appeared only a day apart. Both make the same claim, based on Dani/Dany, about Hizbullah fighting in Syria and its alleged dependency on Assad's survival.
The Angry Arab has been mocking that source:
Ha ha. Meet "Dani", the Hizbullah fighter
Let me tell you this. Any man in Hizbullah who uses the pseudonym "dani" is certainly not in Hizbullah.
Nick Noe
deconstructs the pieces:
I mean come on, NO ONE in Hizbullah, both reporters say, will talk to them, and they BOTH find a miracle dany (a christian cover name in any case mind you!) and BELIEVE HIM, DONT EVEN RAISE THE difficulty of verifying his identity with readers…. And then this Dany, FOR BOTH, says “the truth” to these American reporters…and it is slightly rich in “admissions” of guilt and snippets of off-putting extremity which make dany’s party look BAD.
…
MOST EMBARRASSING is for the New Yorker – how in the world do they allow a piece where the ENTIRE narrative of hizbullah from hizbullah is carried by a fake name dany, who claims a series of obvious errors (see below), and provides several anchors for his identity that are frankly laughable (theme park access, a dude in the south with a hizbullah flag in his drawer, living near the Hizbullah “area” where a lot of anti hizbullah people also live and have easy access and having a village on the border with Israel where many christian and sunnis also live and some of which – including shiite families – collaborated during the 22 years of Israeli occupation of the area)?
It is simply not believable that any Hizbullah fighter would run around and talk openly to various U.S. reporters about Hizbullah's actions and aims. The organization, secretive for very sensible reasons, simply does not allow such to happen.
It is sad that McClatchy's Enders, who is usually one of the better Middle East reporters, would fall for this dude. Why the New Yorker ever hired Dexter Filkins (and seemingly fired its fact-checkers) is something I never understood. The obvious question now is who send Dani/Dany to those gullible reporters. The fascist Lebanese Force? The Israelis? The CIA?