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Originally Posted by JayMcGee
... were Hezbolah active before the creation of the Israeli state in 1948?
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That fact is a Red Herring, meaning it is not relevant and is a distraction.
The following information is quoted under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from Wikipedia, the free onliine encyclopedia.
The phrase red herring has a number of metaphorical senses that share the general sense of something being a diversion or distraction from the original objective:
* a type of logical fallacy in which one purports to prove one's point by means of irrelevant arguments. See Ignoratio elenchi.
* in politics, a minor or even phony issue trumped up as being of great importance, in order to influence voters to vote for one party or candidate and against the other, or distract from more important issues that might help the opposing party.
* in literature, a plot device intended to distract the reader from a more important event in the plot, usually a twist ending. See also MacGuffin.
* in detective work, mystery fiction, and puzzle-solving, a false clue which leads investigators, readers, or solvers towards an incorrect solution.
* in adventure games, an item or object of no practical use; its purpose may be to frustrate the gamer who tries to find the intended use for it.
The phrase may have originated from the practice of saving a hunted fox by dragging a red herring across its trail to cause the pursuing hounds to lose the true scent and follow the false trail of herring odour instead. In this context the Oxford English Dictionary records its first written use occurring in 1686 "To draw a red herring across the track".
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring