IF YOU HAVE been following the news under the influence of mild sunstroke, you might be forgiven for thinking that Israel and Hezbollah had declared war on Britain, so overwhelming has been the coverage of British citizens caught in Lebanon. Those experiencing severe symptoms might even imagine that it is the Luftwaffe strafing Brits, after Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister, compared the Lebanese evacuation to Dunkirk.

There are 10,000 Britons and 12,000 people with dual British and Lebanese citizenship among a population of more than three million. Most of them live in Lebanon and do not want to leave. They are not protagonists in the conflict and, to date, none has been reported as a casualty. Around 4,000 have apparently asked for government help to get out, and British warships have begun taking them to Cyprus without hindrance.

This is hardly Dunkirk. But then, Dunkirk wasn’t really the Dunkirk of historical myth either. That 1940 evacuation to Britain of nearly 340,000 retreating troops was a humiliating defeat yet was spun into a story of heroic resistance. The difference today is that, where the rewriting of Dunkirk created British heroes, the lopsided coverage of Lebanon recasts the British as the victims.

Some appear to have given up trying to analyse or explain the complexities of the Middle East, and settled instead for making an emotional connection with an audience. So what they assume we need is victim stories. Better still, British victim stories. And best of all perhaps, stories of bewildered children being given a cup of tea by the Royal Navy. How any of this is supposed to help to make sense of events bewilders me. It has reached the point where both the BBC and ITV have staged feelgood family reunions by satellite during news bulletins, reminiscent of those toe-curling old Surprise, Surprise! shows. Crisis in the Middle East? Send in Cilla Black!

Inevitably, the plight of Brits caught up in Lebanon has been exploited as yet another stick with which to beat the Government. That the British State proves creaky in a crisis should surely shock nobody today. But it is pretty ironic to see Tony Blair criticised for not sending warships to the Middle East fast enough — often by the same people who protest loudest at his hasty support for the Iraq invasion.

Meanwhile, more than 300 Lebanese and 30-plus Israelis have been killed, and the UN estimates that half a million people have been displaced. A report published this week on responses to the Asian Tsunami of Boxing Day 2004 attacks the self-serving “arrogance” of Western agencies, and asks: “Whose emergency was it?” Let’s not wait 18 months for somebody to pose that question about Lebanon. Or are we so vain, we think somebody else’s war is about us?

• THE OTHER big news of course is that it has been a bit hot — what we might call a sun-burns-man story. If you were not already feeling irritable enough, the overcooked official health warnings could make the blood boil.

  Yes, we know the heat is a problem for the elderly and unwell, like my mother sweltering in hospital this week. But the Department of Health’s “heatwave” guidelines include millions in at-risk groups (from “people who use alcohol” to “people who are physically active”), and give advice ranging from the patronising (“drink regularly”) to the paranoid (“Stay inside . . . Close the curtains”).

  Dawn Primarolo, a Treasury minister, even told us to cover children from head to toe in VAT-free clothing. We await the appearance of the Gordon Brown babies in tax-efficient burkas.

  The authorities now issue different levels of heatwave warnings as they do terror alerts, and have called on Local Resilience Forums to incorporate precautions for hot spells into “overall emergency planning”, alongside those for a possible bird flu pandemic. These are symptoms of a climate in which the permanently red-faced authorities have to turn everything into a national emergency, including a summer that some of us have long looked forward to.

  So, as they declare war on the sun, the advice is to stay indoors, and wait for the official all-clear. Perhaps next time we should demand that the Government evacuates us from sweltering London to somewhere safer — like, say, Cyprus.

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