- Today, Sunday, I write this from Beirut, which is being
circled by Israeli unmanned military surveillance drones, the same kind
I saw so often in Fallujah. I suppose they were spying on the raging demonstrators
who clogged the streets in Beirut and assaulted the UN building in a rage
of vengeance after the fresh massacre of civilians by Israeli warplanes
in the small town of Qana in the south.
-
- Hundreds of the protesters ran through the building's
corridors smashing offices, walls and glass while rescue teams extracted
the bodies of at least 34 children and scores of other civilians from the
bowels of the refugee shelter they were hiding in.
-
- "Fuck the UN! Fuck those bastards for not stopping
this Israeli slaughtering of the innocents," screamed a young protestor
waving a Lebanese flag outside the UN building, which by now had smoke
billowing out of portions of it. "What good are they if they cannot
do what they were designed to do - to stop the killing of innocents?"
-
- This man, 22 years old, was but a baby when the first
Israeli military massacre at Qana took place. Yet the parallels of this
sordid history repeating itself were not missed by most in the seething
crowd.
-
- On April 11, 1996, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon
Peres, under pressure to respond to a wave of suicide bombings in Israel,
launched Operation Grapes of Wrath. One week later, on April 18, while
800 civilians sought shelter from the fighting at a UN peacekeeping base
in Qana, the base was shelled heavily - killing 102 and wounding 120.
-
- After the first Qana massacre, the Israeli military
rejected responsibility for the deaths, instead blaming Hezbollah because
they thought fighters had entered the UN base. A similar Israeli justification,
albeit the very definition of collective punishment, was given today -
that they suspected Hezbollah militants had fired rockets from Qana. After
the 1996 massacre, a UN investigation found no evidence to support the
claim made by the Israeli military, and I suspect a similar investigation
will find a similar verdict this time - that the Israeli military had no
reason to bomb innocent civilians.
-
- Astounding as this level of blood thirst is, it really
cannot come as much of a surprise. Why not? Because just last Thursday,
Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon announced on Israeli army radio, "All
those in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."
-
- Using rhetoric that set the stage for justifying
the collective punishment of the Lebanese people in southern Lebanon, Ramon
added, "In order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling
Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by
the Israeli air force before ground troops move in."
-
- He rationalized his statements by saying that Israel
had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to leave the area;
thus, anyone who remained could be considered a supporter of Hezbollah.
-
- So of course by his definition, everyone in southern
Lebanon supports Hezbollah.
-
- I met some of these "supporters of Hezbollah"
yesterday in the hospitals of Sidon.
-
- I met five-year-old Hussein Jawad as his stiff little
body lay prone on a hospital bed, one of his tiny legs in a cast. His eight-year-old
sister Zayneb, also a "supporter of Hezbollah," lay next to him
in the same bed. See, there were so many Hezbollah supporters in the southern
hospitals that the small ones had to share beds.
-
- They, along with their mother Yusah in a nearby bed,
covered in the kind of shrapnel wounds received from cluster bombs, had
stayed in their tiny village near the border during the first three days
of the bombing because they were too scared to leave. The bombing got so
close; they took their chances and managed to move to another village,
where they stayed for another eight days.
-
- They ran out of food, so Yusah and the two little
"supporters of Hezbollah," compelled by fear and hunger, along
with another car containing Yusah's two sisters, followed an ambulance
to Kafra village. When they arrived there, the car carrying the two sisters
was bombed by an American-made F-16.
-
- Then there was Khuder Gazali, an ambulance driver,
whose left arm was blown off by a rocket fired by an American-made Apache
war helicopter while he was rescuing civilians whose home had been bombed.
The ambulance then sent to rescue the rescuer was bombed, everyone in it
killed. Miraculously, the third ambulance was able to retrieve him, only
because the Apache had left.
-
- 16-year-old Ibrahim Al-Hama was surely supporting
Hezbollah as he played in a river with a dozen of his friends before they
were bombed by a warplane. He lay in the hospital bed, his lacerated chest
oozing blood, his left ankle shattered and held together by gauze and medical
tape. Two of his friends are dead, along with a woman who was near the
bomb's impact zone. Perhaps she too was plotting a rocket attack against
Israel?
-
- It's wonderful to see the thoroughness of the Israeli
military, their effectiveness at eradicating "supporters of Hezbollah."
Like 51-year-old Sumi Marden Ruwiri. On July 14th his home in Bint Jbail
was bombed while most of his family members were inside, killing his mother
and sister while they surely were strategizing the next rocket launches
for Hezbollah. When he and several others began to sift through the rubble
for their loved ones, the warplanes returned to bomb the rescuers. He lay
in bed, his back shredded by shrapnel, countless patches of gauze stuck
to his wounds. His sheets were stained red by blood and yellow by pus that
oozed from the wounds.
-
- Alia Abbas, a 52-year-old, fled her village with
five other family members after Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets instructing
them to leave their village. She lay in bed shredded by shrapnel wounds,
one of her eyes missing. 10 days ago when they tried to flee, hanging white
flags out the windows of their car, they were bombed by warplanes. She's
the only survivor. "Why did they bomb as after we did what they told
us to do," she asked me. All I could do was clench my jaw to stave
off the tears.
-
- Apparently Alia didn't know she was a "supporter
of Hezbollah," since her family was wiped out after Haim Ramon's preposterous
remarks about half a million inhabitants of southern Lebanon.
-
- I met dozens of other Hezbollah supporters, most
of them women, children and elderly - the kind most ill-equipped to flee
their homes on a moment's notice. They lay in their beds, many of them
moaning, some crying, and others comatose and kept alive only by machines.
The man comatose in this picture was fleeing his village on a motorcycle
after receiving the leaflets of instruction to do so, according to his
mother - the only one left alive from their family of 10.
-
- Then I met Durish Zhair, a 43-year-old man whose
home near the southern border was bombed by warplanes. Half of his face
was burned his back horribly burned, and the rest of his body pocked by
shrapnel. He sat with a stern look on his face, distraught and confused
by what happened. I asked him where his 11 family members were and he told
me, "They are all wounded, scattered in hospitals in the south, or
in Beirut."
-
- I thanked him for his time, and we walked out of
his room. The nurse who accompanied me softly closed the door. She then
said to me quietly, "All of his family is dead. We cannot tell him
yet because he is so injured. He thinks they are still alive."
-
- Surely, they too, along with his wife and young children
were "supporters of Hezbollah."
-
- My head spun. My head still spins and I feel sick
inside. I wonder how much is enough? How many more will die? Over 600 Lebanese,
mostly civilians, are dead. At least 51 Israelis, the majority civilians,
are dead from this.
-
- If we look back a few years, we find the answer.
Speaking before the Conference on America's Challenges in a Changed World
at the US Institute of Peace (yes, "Institute of Peace") in Washington
DC on September 5, 2002, the Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage
had the following exchange during a Q&A session:
-
- Q: In this war on terrorism, a group that isn't mentioned
very often is one that you're very familiar with, Hezbollah. It has killed
more Americans than any other terrorist group before September 11th. I
just would like to hear whether they are on the agenda sometime in the
future.
-
- Mr. Armitage: Well, let me, for those who don't know
you, Buck, "Buck" Revell, formerly of the FBI, was one of the
leading voices for anti-terrorism activities during the second Reagan administration
and was absolutely key in some of the takedowns we had at the time. And
I appreciate the question.
-
- Hezbollah may be the "A team" of terrorists,
and maybe al Qaeda is actually the "B team." And they're on the
list and their time will come, there is no question about it. They have
a blood debt to us, which you spoke to, and we're not going to forget it.
And it's all in good time. And we're going to go after these problems just
like a high school wrestler goes after a match. We're going to take 'em
down one at a time.
-
- And taking 'em down one at a time, or in the case
of Qana today, scores at a time, is what they are doing in southern Lebanon.
While Israel and their stalwart US backers continue to refuse pleas for
a cease-fire, bombs and rockets rain down on women, children and other
innocents as they huddle in their homes, in refugee shelters, or while
they flee in their cars while holding white surrender flags.
-
- Meanwhile, Israeli defense sources told Israel's
Haaretz newspaper Sunday that the Israeli army's general staff had received
orders to accelerate its offensive on Hezbollah before the declaration
of any cease-fire.
-
- Yet as War Criminal Rice and her cronies back in
DC drag their feet, postponing any real cease-fire, Israel's military needn't
hasten itself too much as they go about their daily slaughtering of the
"supporters of Hezbollah."
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