LighthouseBombing Milk Factories, Grain Silos, Churches, Bridges, s, Power Stations...

When I Last Saw Lebanon

By GEORGE BISHARAT

It had always taken my breath away, cresting the ridge from the Beka'a Valley, and descending toward the sea, when I caught the first glimpse of the city of Beirut, framed like a cluster of lustrous pearls against the stunning blue of the Mediterranean. I had traveled that route many times, while studying at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in the early seventies, before the madness of the Lebanese civil war made travel there imprudent.

Anything seemed possible in the Beirut of the seventies - one could meet people from all over the world, buy books in any language, swim in the sea in the morning, escape to the mountains and ski in the afternoon. Newspapers reflected a dizzyingly wide range of perspectives - freedom of the press was a vigorously practiced reality. University students were immersed in politics, from right-wing Lebanese nationalism to pan-Arab socialism, and everything in between. Men and women dressed in traditional Arab clothing and in the most avant-garde European fashions. Food was delectable, always elegantly and generously presented. I joined a multinational Chicago-style blues band that won a devoted following in and around the AUB.

So my breath caught again, earlier this summer, as I approached Beirut from Damascus with my family, returning to the city where I had spent the most enjoyable year of my life.

Beirut had suffered a long, bleak period, but clearly was bouncing back.

Just weeks ago I saw it pulsing with life, entrepreneurial drive, and, at the time, World Cup soccer mania. Germany has been particularly kind to Lebanese political refugees. The night it defeated Argentina a riotous party erupted in the city. Our blues band held a reunion concert in AUB's lovely old chapel to endow a fund to support music at the university, playing to an enthusiastic audience of mixed nationalities and generations. We quaffed Lebanese wines that rivaled those in my home state, California.

Just days after we flew back, all this vivacity was crushed, as Israel brought its iron fist down on Lebanon. The blow had been planned for at least a year, awaiting only the pretext of Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers. Hizbullah seized them to trade for Lebanese detainees that Israel had previously refused to release. If Hizbullah indeed attacked inside Israel - some reports initially located the skirmish in Lebanon - it violated Israel's sovereignty, took Israeli lives, and committed grave wrongs - but did nothing to justify the destruction of a country.

Israel has bombed convoys of medical supplies along the very highway we traveled and destroyed milk factories, grain silos, power stations, the airport, the lighthouse, mosques, churches, bridges, roads, urban residential neighborhoods, and villages. It has killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians and uprooted 500,000 to 700,000 from their homes. Qana, a Lebanese village where 106 civilians were killed in a 1996 Israeli artillery barrage, has again been targeted. This time, the toll is 56, including 37 children.

Israel has a long history of violence against Arab civilians, displacing or otherwise harming two million over sixty years, according to Israeli journalist-historian Tom Segev. In 1948 Jewish troops terrorized 750,000 Palestinian Christians and Muslim into flight. By their numbers and predominant ownership of land, Palestinians were obstacles to establishing the Jewish state. Six decades later, they are still resisting exile and subjugation.

Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, killing an estimated 18,000 civilians - and ultimately giving birth to Hizbullah. In 2002, Israel pummeled the West Bank, crippling the secular nationalist-led Palestinian Authority - and aiding the rise of Islamist Hamas.

The long-term trend should be obvious: Israel's violence, no matter the justification, fails to provide Israeli citizens with a sense of security.

The Israeli army may beat back Hizbullah temporarily, only to create more numerous and radicalized foes than before. Until recently, Israel faced hostility in Lebanon mainly from Shi'a Muslims, who suffered the most from Israel's lengthy occupation of South Lebanon. Now it is earning the enmity of countless more Lebanese, who, until two weeks ago, were happy to live in peace with their neighbor.

I wish, one day, that Israeli Jews could crest that ridge, and have their breaths taken away as the magic of Beirut unfolds below them. But they will never see the full beauties of the region they inhabit by dominating others militarily, and denying equal rights to Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

Security in the Middle East will only be achieved by respecting rights - to life, dignity, a homeland, and security - for all.

George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, and writes frequently on the Middle East.

etter from Lebanon

Adjusting the Heroic Commando Raid Story

By ROGER ASSAF

Beirut.

Good Morning my dear friends ...

Everyday, I find it more and more difficult to say things like "good morning" or to answer used-to-be simple questions like "how are you?". Last night and this morning, the darling Israeli air force did not take a break, bombing massively: Nabatyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, Baalbeck and outskirts, Ouzai ...

And in the delightful early hours of sunlight (between 7am and 8am approx.), when some people are already on the highways, they presented us with a new and spicy twist, by taking out 4 major bridges on the highway between Beirut and Batroun (North Lebanon): Ghazir bridge in Jounieh, Madfoun bridge in Batroun (Yes, the one that gives us access to our -now oil-slicked- little seashore haven), Casino bridge in Jounieh/Maameltein, and Fedar bridge in Jbeil.

We are way past the argument of whether this or that is an actual Hizbollah target or not. Israel is showing once again that this is a war on a nation and its worthless insect inhabitants. The stench of racism, spite, and outrage has long ago surpassed the infamous oil slick. Practically, the country is now severed into little blocks, south and north as well now, making access between families, friends, supplies, and aid restricted, dangerous and at times impossible. The world allowed it to do so in Palestine, why would it stop it in Lebanon?

All this is planting hate and anger into more and more hearts. Destruction isn't constructive. Violence will not bring peace. There are many examples throughout history. It's very simple.Come on people, you can't be that stupid.

Or ... is this unrest, this constant nurturing of hatred and conflict seeds what you really want?

Today I want to share with you a few facts about the heroic Israeli commando operation in Baalbeck from 2 nights ago. I wonder how many people in Israel and the world are exposed to this information.

About the Israeli commando operation on Baalbeck where 5 members of the Hezbollah were captured:

1. The parachutists landed on a hospital: Dar el Hekmat.

2. The glorious battle of the elite soldiers provoked 17 dead among which eight children.

3. The five people who were captured are ordinary civilians living in a house near by. Two of them, a father and his son, are called Nasrallah and have no relation whatsoever with the Hezbollah leader. Nasrallah is a common name not only in Lebanon, but in the Middle East. Such as Youssri Nasrallah, famous Egyptian filmmaker and Christian (please forgive this distinction, Youssri my friend, it's for the good cause) well known in the French film world). It's very possible that they would have been Hezbollah sympathizers, as are more than one million people in Lebanon, but they are not on the staff of Hezbollah.

4. Inside the car that rushed out of the hospital area and that was chased and filmed by the Israelis were a man and his wife, eight-months pregnant. The first rocket hit the back of the car. The two passengers leave the car screaming for help. The helicopter makes a U-turn and shoots again. The man manages to escape, the woman doesn't. A little bit later, the neighbors rush to the car and find her dead, with an exploded belly and the fetus projected outside.

News announcers of TVs, it's with great sorrow that I announce to you the death of Nesrine Salloum, eight months pregnant, a victim of the heroic mission of a worthy Israeli commando on terrorist grounds.

For her, I claim one minute of silence (the least to gain over your lies). Your special corresponents earn in one day half of the monthly salary of a university teacher in Beirut.

Do your job properly, otherwise SHUT UP!

For Israel, innocent civilians are fair game

By Peter Bouckaert

International Herald Tribune

08/03/06 "IHT" -- -- TYRE, Lebanon Mideast -- The voice of Mohammed Shalhoub, 61, a farmer from Qana, still quivers with shock and exhaustion. He was in a basement shelter with more than 60 relatives when two Israeli bombs hit, killing at least 28, including 16 children. As I interview him in hospital, relatives arrive with more news of the victims. A woman starts screaming as she looks at the pictures of the dead and Mohammed's eyes well up with tears.

But his voice turns cold with impotent fury when I ask if there were Hezbollah fighters near the home when the bombs fell. "If the Israelis really saw the rocket launcher, where did it go?" he asks. "We showed Israel our dead; why don't the Israelis show us the rocket launchers?"

The world doesn't seem to put much credence in the testimonies of Lebanese civilians, preferring to buy generic Israeli statements about Hezbollah using civilians as human shields, "precision strikes" at terrorist targets, and a "proportionate" bombing campaign. But after days of contradictory statements about Qana, the Israeli military was reported as saying it had no indication of rocket fire or Hezbollah presence in Qana on the day of the strike, and had bombed the area in retaliation for rockets launched days earlier.

Israel's claims about pin-point strikes and proportionate responses are pure fantasy. As a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I've documented civilian deaths from bombing campaigns in Kosovo and Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. But these usually occur when there is some indication of military targeting: high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's regime present in a house just before it is hit, for example, or an attack against militants that causes the collateral deaths of many civilians.

In Lebanon, it's a different scene. Time after time, Israel has hit civilian homes and cars in the southern border zone, killing dozens of people with no evidence of any military objective.

My notebook overflows with reports of civilian deaths. On July 15, Israeli fire killed 21 people fleeing from Marhawin, including 13 children; no weapons, no Hezbollah nearby. On July 16, an Israeli bomb killed 11 civilians in Aitaroun, including seven members of a Canadian-Lebanese family on vacation; again, no Hezbollah, no weapons. On July 19, at least 26 civilians were killed in Srifa when Israeli bombs flattened an entire neighborhood; no evidence of military targets. On July 23, at least seven civilians were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed dozens of cars trying to flee the south after receiving Israeli instructions to evacuate immediately; no indication of weapons convoys in the vicinity. The list goes on, with about 500 civilians killed so far.

Israel says the fault for the massive civilian death toll lies with Hezbollah, claiming its fighters are hiding weapons inside civilian homes and firing them from civilian areas. But even if the Israeli forces could show evidence of Hezbollah activity in some civilian areas, it could not justify the extensive use of indiscriminate force that has cost so many lives.

Not only has Israel failed to distinguish between military and civilian targets; its own officials suggest that they have decided any civilian still in the south is fair game. Last week, Justice Minister Haim Ramon reportedly said, "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

So if you are too frightened to flee southern Lebanon, or are sick, injured or too poor to pay the more than ,000 it now costs to get out, you are a "terrorist" and eligible for attack. As for those who heeded the Israeli warnings to flee, the roads are littered with bombed civilian cars, many with white flags still attached to their windows. After all, the Israelis tell us, they could have been transporting arms. Israel is prefabricating excuses to justify killing civilians.

Tragedies happen in the fog of war, but Israel's strikes on civilians can't all be excused as accidents or mistakes. The unacceptably high death toll is the natural result of Israel's failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets, and Israel is responsible for the deaths.

Israel must target its fight on Hezbollah, not Lebanese civilians. To do otherwise is not only wrong, but may very well be criminal, and Israel's leaders, and its friends elsewhere in the world, must face up to this harsh reality.

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, is co-author of the report "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," released Thursday.