- As Lebanon bleeds and the humanitarian crisis there deepens
among the craters left by Israeli bombs, those who can have fled - mostly
to Syria.
-
- http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php? set
_albumName=album44&id=P7160012
-
- Not long ago at the northern border of Lebanon, streams
of people, wary with the aimless stare generated by living in terror for
days on end, shuffled across into Syria.
-
- http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php? set_
albumName=album44&id=P7160003
-
- Pushing wheelbarrows full of what belongings they managed
to get out, they had come from all parts of Lebanon; from the northern
coastal city of Tripoli, down the coast a short ways to Batroun and the
once beautiful city of Byblos where I once shared tea with my cousins
in Lebanon-who we have yet to hear a word from since Israel's war of aggression
against the Lebanese began.
-
- http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php? set
_albumName=album44&id=P7160010
-
- Most were, of course, from Beirut. The rest, including
cars with luggage strapped atop them came from the ravaged lands of southern
Lebanon-the cities of Sidon, Tyre, Marjeyun and so many villages closer
to the southern border.
-
- http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php? s
et_albumName=album44&id=P7160011
-
- Over 140,000 refugees from Lebanon have now crossed through
border posts into Syria. As the UN impotently urges a cease fire from
war-mongering Israel, backed by their greatest enabling ally, the veto-wielding
US, two of their personnel in Tyre were killed by an Israeli air strike.
-
- http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php? set_a
lbumName=album44&id=P7160009
-
- "They [Israelis] are taking it out on the people
who are not Hezbollah," an American man told me while fleeing with
his mother. They had been vacationing in Beirut with family members there.
"This is a catastrophe, their bombs are falling everywhere,"
the 25 year-old social studies teacher added while wiping sweat from his
forehead inside the sweltering border crossing, "They are destroying
all of Lebanon!"
-
- With the death toll in Lebanon now well over 350, over
one third of them are children, who would have taken part in creating
the future of Lebanon.
-
- After interviewing several refugees, my interpreter Abu
Talat and I made our way to a taxi to head further north up the coast
of Syria. Our taxi driver, Abdo al-Hamre, a 32 year-old farmer told us
he'd been driving refugees from the border for days.
-
- http://dahrjamailiraq.com/gallery/view_photo.php? set_
albumName=album44&id=P7160005
-
- "I'm crying every day now for the Lebanese,"
he said strongly, "All of them are crying in my car as I drive. This
is really too much to bear."
-
- War stops everything. War kills a country-whether it
be those dropping the bombs, or those being shredded by them. Countries
who wage war, like Israel now in Lebanon, or the US in Iraq and Afghanistan,
make the choice to sell their soulperhaps a payment nearly as great as
those whose lives are extinguished by the aggression waged against them.
-
- War stops everything. School, food deliveries, public
transportation, picnics, dancing, kite flying, laughing with loved ones,
everything is stopped as the struggle to remain alive becomes paramount.
-
- At that point, nothing else matters. Only to remain alive.
Humans are reduced to the level of basic survival, for there is no room
for anything else.
-
- Earlier today we were at the Red Crescent headquarters
in Damascas interviewing refugees. An old man, holding his head in his
hands, had just arrived after fleeing his village in southern Lebanon.
-
- We began to talk and I asked him if the Israeli plan
of bombing the Lebanese in order to force them to pressure Hezbollah out
of the south of their country was working. Was it turning the Lebanese
against Hezbollah?
-
- He promptly stood up, forcing me to step back.
-
- "More Lebanese are now with Hezbollah than ever
before," he yelled while pointing to the sky as his eyes widened
in fury, "God damned the Israelis for destroying Lebanon! They will
never destroy our spirit! The resistance is an idea, and you can never
kill off an idea!"
-
- He was mad with rage. And why shouldn't he have been?
-
- But this man, who should be perhaps tending a field,
playing with his grandchildren, sharing meals with his wife as the sun
set, was raging at a journalist in Damascas because everything he knew
is now smoldering rubble.
-
- War stops life. War stops everything.
-
- (c)2006 Dahr Jamail.
-
- All images, photos, photography and text are protected
by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to
reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright
notice and a prominent link to the http://DahrJamailIraq.com website.
Website by photographer Jeff Pflueger's Photography Media http://jeffpflueger.com
. Any other use of images, photography, photos and text including, but
not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing
requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward
Dahr's dispatches via email.
-
- More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images
at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
|
