Domenica Eddé Letter To Israel

[This is a machine translation, so there are errors]
Article Nouvel observateur
"That you your inflexibility paid? Terror with the doors of your houses, a universe locked up, hostile with any difference: opposite of the universal Jewish thought which as well gave us "
by Domenica Eddé

Your choices, per hour as it is, concern us all. I address myself here to those among you who approve this war. More than 80% of the Israeli people. In the name of your safety, you gave to the your controlling right to put at ground two people and two countries, Palestine and Lebanon. On what is based your confidence renewed in the capacity of the bombs? In what this vision of oneself without the other is a manner of facing reality, to protect your future? So only you knew the amount of violence and of hatred which your tanks and your planes sow, if you knew the long way that such an amount of among us, your neighbors, made to include/understand you, you to know, you to recognize, you would be afraid of your fear, fear of misleading that it inspires to you. You would use of the crushing force which is yours to entrust peace only to the application of the right: with the withdrawal of your troops of all the occupied territories, with the dismantling of all the colonies, the respect of the legitimacy of the Palestinian government. Didn't the recourse to the military absolute power give you the proof in Palestine, like with your American allies in Iraq, of its impotence to put reality at the step of your desires? Your controlling in vain put fire at the landscape which frightens you, plus this landscape burns, more it frightens you. Reality that your tanks and your planes take for target - human lives, houses, roads, cities and villages -, hardly you demolished it that it escapes to you. If tangible, if spectacular it is, the conquest which is with the range of your soldiers is a lure. It is, certainly, a domination of space, but time? How do you hope to reach it? It is however him your enemy, it is him whom you should persuade, to tame. Because this space, no matter what you make, is inhabited by a world which survives its deaths and which is not yours. To more destroy it you, shave it, erase it, more its memory grows and changes of hatred. Of it, of this set ablaze memory, you will be able to never make you obey. So far is yours, nothing any more is used for to deny it and to make him carry the crime which was perpetrated against your people. It is not here, it is in Europe that the Jewish people endured the horror. And it is still over there that a certain number of your allies, with the pretext of defend you, support your wars only for better discharging their culpability. You do not leave berner by the approving silence of the world. Rather rejoin your dissidents who will be one day the honor of your history. Do the islamist movements frighten you? Do Hamas and Hezbollah threaten you? It is necessary for you to finish some, to stripe them chart, to tear off them like trees, until the last of their roots? You cannot, you will not be able to reach that point. Have seen Iraq dismembered, broken up, subjected for three years to the daily rate/rhythm of its several tens of died and casualties. Now see Lebanon, on which your army is baited on all sides. Which trophy awaits you at the horizon of dead and the exodus which you cause? None. Almost the totality of the population Lebanese Shiite - that is to say nearly 40% of the people - supports the Hezbollah, which, remember, was born in 1982 to resist the first invasion of Lebanon by your troops. Since, it is not only any more one armed party, it is an organization social, political, economic, a way of thinking, a force impossible to circumvent. This one, although allied in Iran, is not to in no case a foreign body in Lebanon, it is from now on, that you, whether we like that like that or not, a constituent part, determining. To dream its eradication with blows of bombs, it is to dream to make go a man while cutting the legs to him. It is also to expose Lebanon to the risks of a new civil war. Only time - still him - allowed, would have perhaps allowed, the slow readjustment of balances interlibanais. Your State did not cease testing, during the fifty-eight years of its history, exchanging the application of the right against that of the force. In is it more advanced? At present, let us make the accounts. Let us put temporarily side the suffering endured, one decade after the other, by the Palestinians, forget one moment the right of Lebanon, not to be not only one field of ruins, which you gained, you, Israeli people, to give up nothing? Or then, if, let us be right, you gave up Large Israel, but in exchange of what? Of which parcelled out territory, which intolerable prison for the Palestinians? And to finish, that you your inflexibility paid? What of other that terror with the doors of your houses? What moreover than one universe locked up, hostile with any difference: opposite of the universal Jewish thought which gave us so much? Your enemies of the day before - Arabs - are demolished, completely demolished. This world which one called "the Arab world" and which you do not perceive, by far, like worst threats, it is not any more but the shade of itself. Its little of existence, it does not owe it any more from now on but with its language, which, it should be said in passing, is not without relationship with yours. Its other bonds and springs do not have any more an existence. They politically died. Neither the wars of the Gulf, neither the wars of Lebanon and Algeria, neither those of Palestine and Iraq, nor, today, your réinvasion of this badgered country which is mine, caused the least movement of Arab solidarity. Perhaps some among you see there the sign of a first victory. They would be wrong. Because this overcome world, finished, broken up, gave to Israel, like the great powers, the bad habits to go at the rate/rhythm and rate that those imposed to them. Good liking badly liking, it has, since the end of the Othoman Empire, regulated its watch at the Western hour, adopted a calendar which was not it his. This forced march was not, far from there, the only reason for its shipwrecks but it contributed there. At all events, the monk, returned forces some on the political scene, replaced from now on of the Arabism. And this new déboussolé East is, once again, well too complicated to be let forge like metal by the only will of the couple israélo-American and by the fire of the bombs. The majority of the Arab modes, that no adjective exhausts - repressive, untrue, treacherous and corrupted -, are in a state of artificial survival. It is the Islamism which takes from now on a little everywhere, in various forms, the relay of the Arabism. This fact displeases to you? With good among us also, you appear. When I say "us", I think of all those which, in the Arab countries, fought in favour of a citizenship which transcends the Community memberships. For million men, this tidal wave signs an enormous defeat. It does not prevent: the principle of reality is not an image which one erases while pressing on the trigger. Is balances or imbalances within Islam, with you or is this with the Moslems themselves to decide some? Because the time of islamist, I repeat myself, is not more at the thank you of yours. You in vain will continue their men of city downtown, of country in country, the hours and the years which are theirs do not have any more accounts to return to you. Tighten the ear, and compare the Arab speeches of last century with those of the current religious chiefs. The flow of the first is pressed, boosted, connected on the Occident, second is slow, calm, indifferent to your summations, your ultimata. The islamist ones gave an enormous brake application to the walk of the history. Against this new clock, your bombs cannot anything. Your comprehension, on the other hand, your right appreciation of short and the long term can initiate a movement which protects your rights without destroying ours; better: who makes your country around a pole of which to join, an open democracy and not a closed vase founded on the abusive conscience of an intrinsic superiority. Is the bet risky? Admittedly. It is already too late? Perhaps. But is there another way which is not suicidal? Born in Beirut, Domenica Eddé, who lives today in Paris, published in 1989 "posthumous Letter" at Gallimard, then, in 1992, "Beirut downtown area" (Cypress) and, in 1999, "Why it makes so dark? "(Threshold). Its last novel, "Kite", were published in 2003 in the collection the Land-surveyor at Gallimard. Domenica Eddé

Meeting Aug 9 To Plan Interventions

Action Wednesday is calling for a follow up meeting for the working groups that were formed at our last meeting on Monday, July 24. As with the last meeting, this is a PLANNING MEETING.

While the protest committee and the Ad-hoc coalition has met to plan large public actions, and is continuing to do so (which is wonderful), we would like to focus this meeting on some of the other working groups, with a focus on the BDS campaign. We will make sure that all other groups will have time to work on their actions/plans.
The list of working groups and goals they created from the last meeting follows:

1. Media working group (FAQ and Talking points, articles in the press etc.)
2. Art/culture working group (street/subway theater, concert, video action idea proposed by Emily, Film festival, graffiti, stencils)
3. Congressional working group (communication with unions, religious orgs, community groups and politicians)
4. Boycott/divestment working group (targeting Israeli business, outreach materials for divestment, weekly protests)

Location- ALWAN FOR THE ARTS
(16 Beaver Street) Subway: 4,5 Bowling Green R,W Whitehall
2,3 Wall Street J,M Broad Street 1,9 South Ferry

Time- 7:30pm-9:30 pm

Agenda
1. Progress of each working group in the past two weeks (5 minutes)
2. BDS working group discussion (25 minutes) 3. Working group discussion (45 minutes)
4. Report back from working group- goals and plan (30 minutes)
5. Calendar of events for two weeks (15 minutes)

Is Israel Using Banned Weapons?

From: Hanady

[Via Rasha Salti]

The main points from our reports today are :

1- what Zeinab was able to find out about electromagnetic arms: please check http://uk.oneworld.net/article/view/136518/1/5795

2- the director of Nabatiyeh National Hospital in the south , dr Hassan Wazni , talks about “vacuum bombs, it vacuums the air out of the body and stops the breathing and thus the heart stops operating. He also speaks about one death case , that of Sadek Hamed (12) whose caused is still unknown (medically) .

3- A spokesman for the army , said on record that the Israelis are using “bombs with special fillings” that could include internationally forbidden material.

4- The director of Marjeyoun national hospital (south) dr Mo’ness Kalakesh speaks about abnormal cases they treated : weird burns that make the skin glued and almost impossible to treat. These are people whose either arms or legs were hurt.

5- The doctors in the hospitals in the south all say the same thing : doing test on the remains is a luxury they can not afford at this time. They lack of doctors and equipment and time .. casualties arrive the around the clock and the priority is to try and save the injured and not to test the dead. However, an American University hospital expert , the head of Environment and Public Health and Danger management departement Azmi Imad , told us that not only the remains of the corps should be tested , but also the scene where the bombings happened too. This is of course impossible for more than one reason : all the “scenes” are unreachable due to the bombings ( some of the victims of the rmayleh bridge bombings are still under the remains of their cars) + no one can afford to leave the ER to go test scenes on the ground.

6- Today they had to burn corpses due to lack of space in the morgues , so maybe we’re loosing proves.

7- Several hospitals in the south speak about similar cases : burnt\ not burnt corpses , swallowed, no bleeding , the unbearable semll.

8- None of the doctors would go to the extend of confirming naything : they admit they don’t know. Only one doctor in Tyre , director of Najm hospital , says he saw similar cases in previous Israeli aggressions.

9- This is it . Tomorrow , a WHO representative is supposed to be handed remains of corpses and tests results, but I’m not very optimistic about any of this;on one hand , the local heath authorities seem more concerned about their political agendas and pay offs and are not giving the issue the time and effort it deserves. On the other hand, I have an innate mistrust and skepticism towards anything that involves the UN.

Beirut Siege: Rasha Salti on Day 6

From: Rasha Salti

(Dear All,
The generator shut down before I could end this entry. It's noon the next day now...)

Dear All,

I am drafting this entry in this unusual diary at 11:30 pm, I have about half an hour before the generator shuts down. Most of Beirut is in the dark. I dare not imagine what the country is like. Today was a relatively calm day, but like most calm days that come immediately after tumultuous days, it was a sinister day of taking stock of damage, pulling bodies from under destroyed buildings, shuttling injured to hospitals that have the capacity to tend to their wounds more adequately.
The relative calm allowed journalists to visit the sites of shelling and violence. The images from Tyre, and villages in the south are shocking. Images from Haret Hreyk (the neighborhood in the southern suburb that received the most "focused" shelling) are also astounding.
The number of deaths is yet uncertain, it increases by the hour as bodies are pulled from the landscape of destruction. In the southern suburbs, some people may be trapped in underground shelters under the vestiges of their homes and apartment buildings. And yes, there is a problem of space in morgues in the south and the Beqaa, because none of the towns and villages are equipped to handle these numbers of deaths.
The IDF has destroyed almost entirely the village of 'Aytaroun. Some of the surviving wounded are Canadian citizens. Like the 8 Canadians who died in the building in Tyre (a building that housed the red cross and civil rescue), the Canadian government has had very little regard for them.

Evacuations, Privilege, Solidarity
Today was a particularly strange day for me because I was granted an opportunity to leave tomorrow morning. I hold a Canadian passport, I was born in Toronto when my parents were students there. I left at age two. I have never gone back, for lack of opportunity and occasion, no other reason. I have the choice to sign up for the evacuation, but the European and North American governments have been so despicable, so racist that I don't want to subject myself to a discrimination of that sort. The Swedes, the Danes and the Germans have evacuated their patriots with blond hair and blue eyes. The immigrants that were given shelter to their countries "out of the kindness" of their governments have been systematically left behind; and the guest workers who stayed to enliven their economies and their babies who adjust the dynamism of their demographies, were left behind to fend for shelter under the shells. But I digress. The point I set out to make is that I refuse to be evacuated as a second tier denizen.
I had the opportunity to leave tomorrow by car to Syria, then to Jordan and from there by plane to wherever I am supposed to be right now. For days I have been itching to leave because I want to pursue my professional commitments, meet deadlines and continue with my life. For days I have been battling ambivalence towards this war, estranged from the passions it has roused around me and from engagement in a cause. And yet when the phone call came informing me that I had to be ready at 7:00 am the next morning, I asked for a pause to think. I was torn. The landscape of the human and physical ravages of Israel's genial strategy at implementing UN Resolution 1559, the depth of destruction, the toll of nearly 250 deaths, more than 800 injured and 400,000 displaced, had bound me to a sense of duty. It was not even patriotism, it was actually the will to defy Israel. They cannot do this and drive me away. They will not drive me away.
This is one of the most recurring mistakes that the IDF makes, this is how we see things: THEY have destroyed this country, THEY are taking an opportunity to turn it to rubble and to usher us into oblivion, if there is ambivalence vis-a-vis the wisdom of Hezbollah's capture of the two soldiers, there is unambiguous, unanimous solidarity to stand in the face of Israel's barbaric arrogance. Some people see more in this war, some people see a moment of where the logic/values of the policies of the Moubaraks, the Abdullahs of the Arab world, i.e. the defeatist, pragmatic corrupt sell-outs will be humiliated as well. And I am sure, other people see other things as well.

The roads to Damascus are not safe. Its many different ways are shelled everyday. Drivers know what "calculated" risks to take, I am assured, but one never knows. Everyday the way out becomes more difficult. I decided to stay, I don't know when I will have another opportunity to leave.
The first contingent of Britons was evacuated early this evening. There are two ships, but the evacuation will take place over 3 days. Same for the French and Americans, their evacuations will last for 2 days. While the evacuations are taking place, there was relative quiet. A welcome lull. There was activity in the street, even on the Corniche along the seaside. Refugees from the south, displaced from their homes and provided shelter in public schools strolled in Hamra, looking for a breath of fresh air. A break from the confinement in schools and other makeshift shelters.
Imagine the horror, the sad, sad horror: we are on borrowed time and the only reason we are not under threat, under any serious threat is because the passport holders of some of the G8 countries are evacuating safely to safer harbors. With this relative calm, the sense of impending doom becomes almost palpable, time, space, light and movement are subsumed in an eerie stillness. It feels vaporous and fills the air. As it wafts from room to room, from apartment to apartment, as it turns a corner and moves to another neighborhood, every gesture, every act is a little delayed, slowed, surreptitiously lethargic, every thought lingers too long in the unfinished or inchoate state. This eerie stillness numbs the passage of time and the cognitive perception of things material. Objects seem both familiar and unfamiliar. They are familiar in that they were there the day before and seem not to have moved from their place. They are unfamiliar because they seem to belong to another time, another life. There was another life, I had another life that seems distant and foreign now. The morning is different, noon is different, sunset is different. Another Beirut has emerged. War time Beirut. War time Lebanon. War time mornings, war time noons. Siege time Beirut, siege time morning, siege time sunsets. Everyone else in the world is going about their day as they had planned it or as it was planned for them. The shakers and movers of this world, the fledgling middle classes of the developping world, the 11 million children workers in India, the good-doers and the evil-doers. We are in a different geography of time, of agency, we are besieged, captive, hostage. No chance of Stockholm syndrome this time. Our every move is monitored: every moving vehicle delivering food, fuel, or medicines is monitored, every phone call is listened on, every email read, every dream snarled at, every desire crushed. Israel has the right to explode it to smithereens.
The shelling has not really let, don't get me wrong. It still goes on but it's more occasional, there are more "blank spaces" in between now.

Hezbollah
These "siege notes" have been receiving a number of reponses from Israelis. I have to say that most are of the annoying sort. First, they always begin by noting that I am intelligent and I get commended for my intelligence like Colin Powell gets commended for his English language speaking skills and you wonder what those making these observations expect from you and the world in the first place. Second, they systematically mistake expression of dissent and critique with Arab regimes and official discourse as some sort of a favorable disposition towards Israel. In other words there is, falsely, a tautology between regarding Israel as an enemy country and endorsing radical ideologies of Islamic fundamentalism or rabid nationalism. As if being a democrat, an egalitarian and a feminist implied that one could not have even more profound grounds for being critical of Israel and regarding that country as an enemy country that has sponsored and produced nothing but war, violence, wretchedness, misery, banditry and usurpation. And so heartened by my ambivalence towards this war they recommend that more conversations should take place between Israelis and I. Off course most propose that I make the effort to seek those Israeli interlocutors out. This extreme form of Habermas-mania, that assumes that deep conflicts can be "talked through" is the sumum of hubris. The experience of the peace process is telling: it is clear that Israelis cannot cannot cannot accept Palestinians as human beings whose humanity is of equal value as their own. This is the bottom line. And until that bottom line is changed, there is nothing that a member of a society that builds walls around itself to shut itself off from the world and shut the world from itself can tell me. Punto final.
One of my impromptu (Israeli) commentators warned of my candor, despaired at my position vis-a-vis Israel, and took generously time and space to explain to me that Hezbollah he/she must be crushed because if they were to win, they would destroy Israel and me, because of my values and lifestyle. This view, along with other views salient in western media (particularly American) of Hezbollah betrays ignorance. It is fatal ignorance.
The most gross miscalculation Israeli strategists are making is based on the assumption that Hezbollah is a) not a legitimate political entity in this country, b) its base is made up of extremists and c) its "elimination" would leave the Lebanese construct unscathed. In point of fact, pushing the Lebanese population to "rise up" against Hezbollah, or the scenario of a Lebanese implosion is the worst case scenario for all regional "parties", because the country would then become the jungle of violence and killing that Iraq is today.
Because I am a staunch secular democrat, I have never endorsed Hezbollah, but I do not question their legitimacy as a political actor on the Lebanese scene, I believe they are just as much a product of Lebanon's contemporary history, its war and postwar as are all other parties. If one were to evaluate the situation in vulgar sectarian terms, when it comes to representing the interests of their constituency they certainly do a better job than all the political representatives presently and in the past.
It would be utter folly (in fact it would be murderous folly) to regard Hezbollah as another radical Islamist terrorist organization, at least in the ideological and idiomatic vein of the American intelligentsia and punditry. (There is something about a stubborness to misunderstand that betrays an intent to see a crisis linger or even escalate in the US. If Americans feel better being misguided idiots, Israelis should know better. If the Israeli intelligentsia wants to play deaf like Americans the only outcome will be an Iraq scenario, although I reiterate that Lebanon is not Iraq and the Lebanese are not and will not be Iraqi and will not be manipulated into the barbaric sectarian horror. We've tried that before and it does not work, and we are tired of fighting each other.)
Hezbollah is a mature political organization (that has matured organically within the evolution of Lebanese politics) with an Islamist ideology, that has learned (very quickly) to co-exist with other political agents in this country, as well as other sects. If Lebanese politics was a representation of short-sighted petty sectarian calculations, the lived social experience of postwar Lebanon was different. Sectarian segregation was extremely difficult to implement in the conduct of everyday social transactions, in the conduct of business, employment and all other avenues of commonplace life. And that is a capital we all carry within ourselves, there are exceptional moments when the country came together willingly and spontaneously (as with the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but there are other smaller, less spectacular moments that punctuate the lived experience of the postwar that every single Lebanese can recall where sectarian prejudice was utterly meaningless, experienced as meaningless.
When former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps, the consensus was overwhelming however that we will not revert to fighting one another, to eliminating one another.
If Israel plans to annihilate Hezbollah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hezbollah and its constituency are not only Lebanese in the perception of all, they are also a key, essential element of contemporary Lebanon. Moreover the specifics of UN Resolution 1559 may have regional implications, but at heart and in essence they can only be resolved within the Lebanese consensus. Israel CANNOT take it upon itself to implement that UN resolution. There is off course sinister folly that Israel should implement any UN resolution considering its stellar record of snarling, snickering and shrugging at every single UN resolution that did not suit its sensibilities.
Hezbollah are not al-Qaeda, Israeli and US propaganda will portray them as much, and that is the downfall of public opinion, that is the tragedy at the root of the consensus that agrees to watching Lebanon burn. In more ways than can be counted they are different political ideologies, groups and movements. First, they are not suicidal. Second, they are not anti-historical. Third, they are a full-fledged political agent at the center of a dynamic polity. Their ideology is not an ideology of doom, they represent as much petty interests of their constituency as they are imbricated in the fabric of regional politics.

Israel, and Channel 2
I was watching Lise Doucet on the BBC interview one of Olmert's underlings yesterday after the speech. This is the folly of the Israelis, and I believe it will be their downfall, ultimately. He was lamenting that Hezbollah hit the "peaceful" city of Haifa, an Israeli city that he described as exemplar of coexistence between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Haifa! An Israeli city? Haifa? The name is Arabic. The jewel in the crown of Palestinian cities... A peaceful haven of coexistence between Jews, Muslims and Christians? My God! It took DECADES for Christians and Muslims to appear on the roster of "human beings" in the ledgers of the Israeli government. Decades of struggle, riots, pain and suffering. And they are still second class citizen, and they are still unwelcome, pushed out, day after day, crushed by the Israeli machine.
This eloquent underling was making the argument that Hezbollah wanted to destroy the city of "coexistence". Off course, he does not care that the city the IDF has currently under siege, the city they are bombing to rubble, the city where the red cross and civil rescue headquarters were shelled to the ground, Tyre, is itself a gorgeous jewel on the Lebanese coast. That it is a GENUINE city of coexistence amongst Christians, Shi'ites and Sunnis. And the delightful town of Marja'yun is also a city where sects and religions co-exist, and Zahleh... and so on and so forth... But no matter, the Israelis have always done this, and eventually, it catches up with them, and in the end, they realize that their narrative is so far removed from reality they have to back track. The key to understanding Israeli's relationship to our humanity lies in a text by David Grossman, one of Israel's foremost novelists, essayists and writers. He wrote it around the time of the First Intifada. Israel was then beginning to come into reckoning that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was no longer tenable or sound strategy for the well-being of its democracy.

By the second or third of these "siege notes", the emails reached Israel and Israeli blogs. A journalist from Israel's Channel 2 contacted me by email and asked for an interview. I was uncomfortable with the idea at first, for fear that my words be distorted and my genuine, candid sentiments quoted to serve arguments I do not endorse. Exposing oneself with transparency has its charm and price. That journalist seems like a nice person, but I have no reason to trust her and she understands my misgivings. My only defense is transparency. She sent me the set of questions below for me to answer so she can air them on TV or use them for some report. I decided to share them with you all.

1. How your day looks like from the morning. What you did today? did you have coffee? how do you get the news - television? radio? internet?
The routine of our days is totally changed. We now live under a regimen of survival under siege. Those of us still not wounded and not stranded do whatever needs to be done to survive until the next day. Coffee, yes, I have coffee in the morning, and at noon and in the afternoon. Perhaps I have too much coffee. The passage of time is all about monitoring news, checking everyone's OK, and figuring out what has to be done to help those in distress. News are on all the time. All the time, whatever media works.
There is a great need for volunteers to tend to the hundreds of thousands displaced now.

2. Can you describe the neighborhood you live in?
So it will be bombed? No thank you. I live in a very, very privileged neighborhood, far from the southern suburbs. After the evacuation of foreign nationals (and bi-nationals) is complete, everyone is expecting doom and if Israelis decide to give us a dose of tough love as they did in the southern suburbs my life will probably be in serious danger as my family's and everyone who has decided to stay here.

3. Can you say something about yourself - like what you do for living, if you can say.
I organize cultural events and I am a free-lance writer. I used to live in New York city and moved to Beirut Tuesday July 11th. I have no life at the present moment. I try to do a few things over the internet, but that's increasingly difficult.

4. Are you Lebanese or Palestinian?
Both and it gets more complicated I have Syrian blood too. And Turkish and Bosnian. I am the product of the Ottoman empire, and I say it with pride. I know it ires a lot of people. But I am VERY proud to claim my lineage. My father was expelled from Jerusalem in 1948, he and his family lived in a gorgeous home in Talbiyeh. I think it is a day care school now. We own property in old Jerusalem as well and the Atlantic Hotel which was bombed by your "valiant" paramilitary pre-national militias in 1946.

5. In Israel our leaders think that by targeting Hezbollah and other places in Lebanon will make the rest of the local population against them. Is this true?
It is pure folly, but even if it were true it is a terrible strategy, an imploded Lebanon is a nightmare to all, not only the Lebanese but to everyone, does Israel want an Iraq at its doorstep? There seems to be consensus now in Israel over the military campaign. It is because Israelis are not yet pressing their leadership and military the smart questions. Do you actually believe it would be possible to eliminate the Shi'i sect from Lebanon, and that it would go down easy in the region? If the Americans are advising you, duck for cover or move. Need I list their record of wisdom and foresight recently? Vietnam, Central America, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq. If you need to listen to imperialists, find less idiotic ones, at least who have a sense of history. Gold help us all if Rumsfeld is also in charge of your well-being. This war will bring doom to all. Stop, cut everybody's losses. Wars can be stopped before the body count is "intolerable" or an entire country has been reduced to rubble.

6. What is the atmosphere in the streets of Beirut, if you can tell.
Beirut is quiet, dormant, huddled. We are caged, but there is tenacious solidarity. You have to understand that we see ourselves under an unwarranted attack from Israel. The capture of two soldiers DOES NOT justify Israel's response. There has been a status quo for the past 6 years that was well managed. Hezbollah was not in an impasse, the Olmert government was in an impasse. He ran on a campaign to solidify the "new" (illegitimate) borders, finish the wall and finalize the enclave and withdraw into the boundaries of that enclave. The Olmert government did not have the maturity or intelligence to know how to deal with the Hamas government. Your government was guided by arrogance. We, you and us, are here today because your political class is not up to the challenge. I am sorry, but the Hamas government was elected democratically, and there were myriad ways to deal with them. MYRIAD. But this is the stage of your destiny that you have reached, you build walls around yourselves (you to whom the Massada is a foundational trauma/myth!), and you chase barefoot, toohtless, illiterate, hungry people with state of the art military arsenal. And you insist that you are victims, and you insist that you are on the right side of history. All this bulllshit will catch up with you.

7. What is the atmosphere among your friends?
The consensus is solidarity. Our country is under attack. Otherwise, we are an exceedingly plural society every one has a theory and a point of view, and we co-exist. Humoring one another. What do you do when you are under siege? Do you eat one another, cannibalize on one another, or stand in solidarity to weather the storm?

8. Can you go to work, or do you have to stay home? (because some of the workers in the north of Israel did not go to work today)
The largest, largest majority do not go to work. Although it is a form of resilience. If the war goes on for longer, life will have to evolve a different routine. A large part of the work force is impaired from movement. And then there is the random shelling, it's also dangerous to go out. This has gone on from the first day of the siege. The south is now sinking in a humanitarian crisis. Beirut will soon.
(The new regulation by your glorious IDF this morning is to shoot at all moving vehicles larger than SUVs. One was just shelled in Ashrafieh. New danger, new things to look out for.)

9. Whatever crosses your mind.
Let's not go there... It's dark now, and I am too traumatized. I just want this to be over. I am waiting for a ceasefire. Are you? Is that too unmanly for your society? What do you need to see before you cease your fire? You want to hear me expire? You take down Hezbollah, and I am going down with them. Do you know when Hezbollah was born? 1982. Where were you? Was it an exciting summer for you?

10. I, for example, went to my gym class this morning. I am at home now, listening to the radio on one side, writing mails on the other side. Air-condition is on, since it is extremely hot and humid in Tel Aviv. I live in the center of the city. Later I will go to the office. I think life in my city continues but in a lower volume.
Life as it were, or as previously understood, in my city has stopped. No gym classes, and I am accumulating cellulite, hence chances of finding second husband are lessened (can I make the IDF pay for that?). Air-conditioning is dependent on electricity or generator working. Power cuts are the rule now and the generator works only on a schedule. I like it when Israelis report their weather, it ought to have some cathartic virtue, because it's like a reality check one of the few reminders they are in this region and not in Europe. So yes, without air-conditioning and with power cuts, my "semitic" curls produce unruly coiffe and I have to admit, I am enduring siege with bad hair.
I am on email, but that's intermittant between two bouts of "breaking news".

I hope you will wake up to the nightmare you have dragged us into. I hope you will want to have fire ceased as soon as possible. I hope you will deem our humanity as valuable as your own.

Best, Rasha.

Zena el-Khalil: Red Lights Still Working

Via Emily
From Zena in Beirut

Today I drove through downtown on my way to visit my parents. I was driving
alone and was a bit nervous. First time in a car alone since this whole
thing started... But I had to see my parents.

I came across a red light and stopped. The streets were empty, and I caught
myself wondering why I stopped and didn't just go through. Streets were
totally empty; no other cars, no traffic police. Then I remembered my latest
policy that is helping to keep me sane; that even under attack, we should
not lose our manners. That even under attack, there are still some
regulations we should abide by. Somehow, by not crossing the red light, I
was able to maintain some dignity.

Then I looked into my rearview mirror and saw other cars approaching. I
closed my eyes and in a fit of prayer wished that they would stop too. That
somehow, if they didn't cross the light, it would indicate that somehow we
are all thinking the same. I know most of you have heard about Lebanese
drivers.. They never stop at red lights! Ladies and Gentlemen, today, they
stopped.

I opened my eyes and and then burst into tears. All the cars had stopped.
Everyone was behaving. It was a ray of hope today. Haha, the little things
that make you happy. I turned and smiled and nodded my head to the other
drivers. Maybe they thought this bleached blond was flirting with them.

I don't want to write about all the miserable moments I had today. They were
too many. And how can I find the words to really express my despair?

I don't want to write about the tears that fell when I heard about how the
Israeli army bombed food storages today. They bombed wheat silos and
vegetable storages. Now they want to starve us to death? About how they are
now targeting Lebanese army outposts. Lebanese army who are not even
fighting them. About the planes that are flying so low. About how my house
starts to shake every time a bomb drops. About my worries now about food and
water shortages. About the refugees who have lost so much, who are now
living on the streets.

The biggest threat today has been to bomb our main electrical plant. The
very same one they blew up a few years ago. If that one goes, we are without
electricity. I remember that summer... It was long and hot. I don't know
what I would do without internet. Dear friends, if you don't hear from me
after this email it is only because I no longer have access.

I don't want to write about the cramp in my heart every time I hear the
death toll rising. So many children!! I don't want to write about how
everything I have spent my whole life working for has disappeared in a
matter of days. A matter of days..my whole life has changed.

My whole life has changed and I did not ask for it. My whole life has
changed without my consent. My whole life has changed because someone, not
me, decided they were going to change it. Who said they could? Why didn't
they ask me? I was supposed to be camping in the mountains (Chouf) this
week. I was supposed to be working on a proposal to bring a New York artist
out here next summer. It was supposed to be a surprise; I was going to set
the whole thing up, get the funding and surprise him with it. People bought
artwork from me, I am supposed to cash my checks. I am supposed to deliver
art to people.

Two bombs just went off. My windows are shaking. Stupid me, I closed them to
stop the mosquitoes from coming in. thank God they didn't just shatter. My
heart, my heart is another story.

We are doing the best we can to help those in need. We are all playing our
respective roles... Finding roles to play. My sister has been working with
the Zicco House/ Helem rescue point. They have gotten a bank account open to
accept donations so they can buy food, medicine, water, blankets, and
mattresses. The ministries of heath and social affairs have proven to be
ineffective. It is up to the civil society now to help out.

Two temporary bank accounts are now dedicated for donations:

Credit Libanais S.A.L Beyrouth
Agence Sassine
SWIFT CODE: CLIBLBX
Client Name: Al Azzi Georges
Account number: 043.001.208.0006817.35.6

SGBL Hamra Branch
SWIFT CODE: SGLILBBX
Client Name: CHIT Bassem
Account: 007.004.367.092.875.014


I can not thank you all enough for all your wonderful emails. They are
filling me with life. Please forward the news... I am so tired. But as long
as I have electricity and internet, I will continue to write. Until I lose
my mind... Maybe by then I can get back into my studio again and paint.

To any Israelis who may read this. I have not learned to hate. I still
believe in humanity. Violence begets violence. I know there are some of you
protesting this. Thank you.

With love,
Zena el-Khalil

Beirut Siege: Rasha Salti on Day 5

From Rasha Salti
Day 5 of the Siege part 2.

It's 3:30 am. Perhaps past that time, I don't know. I could not sleep from the shelling. It's not the intense quantity of shells falling, no, it's 10 to 12 shells every hour or hour and the half. They augment the nerve-wrecking aspect: they don't focus shelling one one zone, with one objective. It's wounds inflicted over time and time, the length of a week...
It's been a really, really rough night. Where do I begin with what you will not hear? With what you will not know and what will be hidden from your ears?

The air raids over the Beqaa did not really stop all day today. The raids and shelling over Tyre were also really bad. Saida was shelled and bridges and roads leading to the south. The mountains were shelled as well, specifically bridges.
There seemed to be a lull of sorts in the late afternoon. But as soon as the sun set, the air raids over the southern suburbs returned. By now the IDF knows that there are only civilians, that the Hezbollah leadership is elsewhere in hiding. But they have express missive from the US to kill Hassan Nasrallah (according the largest circulating Israeli daily, Maariv).
At night, the Jamhour area was targetted. It is where the Lebanese Ministry of Defense is located, the Military School, and the power station feeding Beirut and its surrounding mountains. The power station was targetted and hit, but there was a "mistake" and the shells reached the Military School and barracks surrounding it. 100 soldiers are now injured, a dozen are dead. The power station was hit and the larger share of Beirut is under the cover of darkness.

Air raids are also shelling the Beqaa valley. However, the most horrific news is that the inhabitants of 'Ayta el-Shaab (the first village where the IDF tried to make a land incursion but was swiftly defeated by Hezbollah) are being told by loudspeakers and other means that they should evacuate their village by dawn or else they will all be crushed by airplanes, tanks and shelling. It's like 1948 again... They want everyone out. The village has now 3,000 people still left. The elderly and the wounded have been evacuated to another village. It's the "buffer zone" they want to "clear". Most don't have cars to evacuate.

If you want to see a replay of the 1948 expulsion of peasants under fire, tune in to Lebanon. If you don't scream your outrage and make sure some things are NOT acceptable.

Love, Rasha.

Invisible Migrants in Beirut

Excerpt from Invisible Migrants
Naeem Mohaiemen

[This is an excerpt from a longer piece called "Invisible Migrants" written in 2005. This is the portion that concerns Beirut. I wonder if anyone can get news of the status of the Bangladeshi workers in hotels like the Mayflower, where many of us stayed, and also the vast number of migrant laborers in that country.]

I have a ritual when I arrive in the hotel in a new city. After a quick shower, I immediately go looking for a spot to get Internet access. In Beirut to for a festival, I discovered that the best location to receive wireless internet signals was the hallway outside my hotel room. Sitting on the stairs to check email every morning, I soon became a familiar sight to the maids cleaning the hotel. On the third day, an Asian maid finally worked up the courage to ask me in English: “Are you Indian?”

Forsaking my usual sarcastic response, I simply replied, “No, I’m Bangladeshi.” Her face immediately lit up. “I’m from Bangladesh too!” Switching from halting English to rapid-fire Bengali, she started asking me which district I was from, where my home village was, when I had arrived, what I was doing there, and more. Farzana was from Comilla. She was one of two Bangladeshi employees in the hotel. The other was Anis, a downstairs guard I had noticed earlier.

Farzana said something which made me realize why she was so excited: “Allah, you know, I have been in Beirut for seven years, been at this hotel for five years. You are the first Bangladeshi guest I have seen. We see Indians all the time, but Bangladeshis, never!”

During the two weeks that followed, Farzana and I fell into a routine of morning conversations. From these alaaps I learnt that Bangladeshis were relatively new arrivals here, but had already become one of the big groups of migrant workers, after Ethiopians and Filipinos. Sri Lankan maids were of course the Lebanese archetype (their horrific conditions are documented in Carole Mansour’s recent film Maid In Lebanon); but Bangladeshis were starting to replace them in some jobs.

Although the community was recent, almost everyone had been here for at least seven years. Seven years is roughly the amount of time that new visas had been blocked under the previous Syrian regime, so that was the marker for migration. Although the Bangladeshis had established a strong community, they mixed freely with other migrant groups. A day after I visited the Sabra-Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, I learnt from Farzana that it was also the site for the very popular Sunday “Bangla market.” That was when roving Bengali sellers would set up temporary shops next to the camps and sell Bengali food, trinkets, music and films. “Not just Bangladeshi,” she said proudly, “but others also buy our items!”

After the festival ended, Farzana invited me to have lunch at her home. There, I met several other members of her community, mostly working as maids and building guards. The man who interested me most was Hamid, a garrulous nightguard who became my guide through Beirut. To start things off, I asked Hamid why he had two massive posters of assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. This seemed an odd juxtaposition with progressive Lebanese who mourned Hariri’s death but maintained a healthy skepticism about his ties with big business. But Hamid very enthusiastically told me that Hariri was the man who could claim credit for rebuilding war-torn Beirut. “If only Bangladesh could have a Hariri,” he added wistfully. Though some Lebanese artists had warned me that there was a lot of racism in Lebannon, Hamid and his friends seemed to have absolutely no complaints. Rather, he kept insisting that the Lebanese treated them “fairly,” and certainly better than other Arab countries.

The only time Hamid became tentative was when he started talking about his family. Like many other migrants, he had managed to return home only once during his twelve years. During that trip, he married, and brought his wife back to Beirut. Soon afterwards, his wife gave birth to their first son, Rubayat. But the pressures of providing for both wife and son were too much, and he was forced to send them back to Bangladesh. When I asked how he was coping without his new family, Hamid gave a slightly embarrassed smile. Then he stood up straight and said: “This is what’s written in our fate. Allah gives some a lot, so he has to give others little. This is the path written for us, so we just have to manage.”

As if to change the topic, he started showing me pictures of his son. In one photo, Rubayat was standing in front of a silver Porsche. “I asked them to do that on the computer,” he explained, pointing to the car. Looking again at the sports car, I wondered if it was meant to give the family back home an illusion of wealth, or whether it was simply there as a nice backdrop. Hamid started handing the photo over to me, and I protested that I couldn’t take his copy. “No, no, take it, I have many more copies”; then, with a quiet insistence: “Please. I want you to take it.”

[end excerpt]

Beirut Siege: Rasha Salti on Day 5

From: Rasha Salti

Dear All,

A quiet night in Beirut, more or less, compared to what the inhabitants of Tyre and the south and the Beqaa and Tripoli experienced. They were shelled from the air and sea with little respite. Tyre is in tragically dire situation. 30,000 displaced, the mayor was on TV screaming for help, his voice choking with despair. They are out of supplies, they have more wounded than they can handle and the city's reserves in fuel and other basic amenities are pretty much depleted.
(The IDF wants to "clear" three provinces in the South: Tyre, Marja'uyun and Bin Jbeil, in preparation for the "20 km buffer zone")
The port of Tripoli was bombed, the port of Beirut was bombed. The range of targets has expanded to new zones of hurt: civilians, civilians, civilians, and reservoirs of fuel (Jiyyeh, power station feeding the south, and the airport again), storage facilities of vegetables and fruits in Taanayel (Beqaa) and in the south, and Lebanese army barracks. The roster of martyrs of this war now includes poor soldiers, reservists who were stationed in their posts, watching idly the country go up in flames.
The intention? Probably to cripple the population even further, to make survival harder and harder and to corner the Lebanese army.
The promise of "scorched earth" did not really happen yesterday, I mean the inhabitants of the south were served a good dose of Israeli virility, but not to the level of "shock and awe". Maybe it will come in small calculated doses (The IDF are a "calculating" military, not like us, rogues, we don't calculate). Who knows? Who the fuck knows? What makes sense anymore...

Dementia is slowly creeping in... Slowly, surreptitiously. At the rate of news flashes. This is how we live now, from "breaking news" to "breaking news". A sampling: I have been in the cafe for one hour now. (The cafe is an escape from home, but in itself another island of insanity... will get to that later at some point).
OK, I have been in the cafe for one hour now. This is what I have heard so far:
1) A text message traveled to my friend's cell phone: A breaking news item from Israeli military command. If Hezbollah does not stop shelling Galilee and northern towns, Israel will hit the entire electricity network of Lebanon.
2) Hezbollah shells Haifa, Safad, and colonies in south Golan.
3) A text message traveled to my other friend's cell phone, from an expat who left to Damascus and is catching a flight back to London. "All flights out of Damascus are cancelled. Do you know anything?"
4) Israeli shell fell near the house of the bartender, his family is stranded in the middle of rubbble in Hadath. He leaps out of the cafe and frantically calls to secure passage for them to the mountains.
5) Hezbollah down an F-16 Israeli plane into Kfarshima (near Hadath). Slight jubilation in a cafe that thrives on denial.
Does the world make sense to anyone? It's not supposed to, I know, but these "surgical" military tactics are supposed to make sense to at least 15 people. And out of these 15 people, at least 14 disseminate the news, and since the world is about 6 degrees of separation removed, at some point, somebody has to know something...

I started writing these diary notes to friends outside Lebanon to remain sane and give them my news. I was candid and transparent with all my emotions. The ones I had and the ones I did not have. They were more intended to fight dementia at home, in my home and in my mind, to bridge the isolation in this siege, than to fight the media black-out, racism, prejudice and break the seal of silence. Friends began to circulate them (with my approval). By the third diary note, I was getting replies, applause and rebuke from people I did not know who had read them. It's great to converse with the world at large, but I realize now that candor and transparency come with a price. A price I am more than happy to pay. However, these diary notes are becoming something else, and I realize now that I am no longer writing to the intimate society of people I love and cherish, but to an opaque blogosphere of people who want "alternative" news. I am more than ever conscious of a sense of responsibility in drafting them, they have a public life, an echo that I was not aware of that I experience now as some sort of a burden. I have been tortured about the implications of that public echo. Should I remain candid, critical, spiteful, cowardly, or should I transform into an activist and write in a wholly different idiom? There is off course a happy medium between both positions, but I don't have the mental wherewithalls to find it now. And I don't want to sacrifice candor, transparency and skepticism at the risk of having my notes distorted to serve some ill-intentioned purpose, or in the vocabulary of official rhetoric, "give aid and comfort to the enemy". The enemy does well without the aid of my rantings (they have a nuclear bomb, a hero soccer player form Ghana, the gift of democracy, fantabulous drag queens, and a right wing freak whose first name is BiBi). Notes from a hapless stranded thirty-something caged in Ras Beirut (ie the privileged of the privileged), I believe, will not really make a difference.
I am reminded of the many, many, many e-diaries that Palestinians send when the Israelis want to secure peace and give them a virile dose of justice with sieges, shelling, checkpoints, sniping, maiming, beating, and all that Israel has developped in the vein of practices to strengthen its democracy and territory and off course contribute to the blossoming of the peace process. Well my rantings are far from the emails of my Palestinian brethren. They are charged with ambivalence and anti-heroics. In Palestine things are less complex, less dirty, more starkly contrasted and clear. What Israel is now administering to Lebanon is a small dose of what it delivers to Palestinians. Intense, condensed, but a small dose. However the complications of Lebanon's internal politics and the very, very complicated imbrications of Lebanon with regional politics renders enduring, witnessing, documenting this war more confusing. So bear with me. It's lonely being an anti-hero.
My Palestinian friends are protesting that the Israeli campaign in Gaza has been eclipsed from the world's attention and concern. Beirut is now attracting attention. Don't look away from Gaza. The same canons are firing. The same children are orphaned, the same people are being displaced, shoved outside history and the attributes of humanity, rendered to integers in the logs of NGOs for donations of bags of flour and sugar. The same.

By Day 5 of the Siege, a new routine has set in. "Breaking news" becomes the clock that marks the passage of time. You find yourself engaging in the strangest of activities: you catch a piece of breaking news, you leap to another room to annoounce it to family although they heard it too, and then you txt-message it to others. At some point in the line-up, you become yourself the messenger of "breaking news". Along the way you collect other pieces of "breaking news" which you deliver back. Between two sets of breaking news, you gather up facts and try to add them up to fit a scenario. Then you recall previously mapped scenarios. Then you realize none works. Then you exhale. And zap. Until the next piece of breaking news comes. It just gets uglier. You fear night-time. For some reason, you believe the shelling will get worse at night. When vision is impaired, when darkness envelops everything. But it's not true. Shelling is as intense during the day as it is during the night.

There has been "intense" diplomatic activity between yesterday and today. UN envoys, ambassadors, EU envoys, all kinds of men and women coming and going carrying messages to the Lebanese government from the "international community" and the "Israeli counterpart". Officially they have led to nothing. But we are told, officially on the news, that the "secret" channels have started working, and these are the ones that work. The secret channels were launched when the Lebanese Prime Minister met with the US ambassador and the Lebanese head of parliament in a closed door meeting at the head of parliament's home. There is supposed to be some sort of press conference after that. And Jacques Chirac (Lebanon holds a special place in his heart) is sending handsome Dominique de Villepin to Lebanon this afternoon. He is scheduled to arrive at 5:00 pm. He's the genius who created the CPE, the genius who finally "listened" to the dark-skinned and maladjusted children of France during the last round of riots. I guess we should be glad he's not sending Sarkoczy? Or is the ugly Pole going to Israel? In the final count, we are a "banlieue" of France, the bad boys are at it again, burning cars and breaking the "fragile" status quo in the region. When de Villepin is here, we could have a lull in the shelling. Maybe. Maybe that's when they'll evacuate the "foreign nationals".
The foreign nationals are a new issue now. With so many expats visiting for the summer, and with so many Lebanese holding dual nationality, it's been tough for the G8 to plan their evacuations. Two hundred thousand Canadians (8 of whom perished yesterday in the south)! Fifty thousand Frenchmen... What to do with all these bi-nationals? Create categories. Category A are the real, genuine, white-skinned, tax-paying valuable natives, Category B are the recently integrated, recently assimilated, brown-skinned, tax-paying not so valuable natives.
The best evacuation plan is the American. They are directing their "nationals" to a website (ha! with electricty power cuts it's kinda funny) where they promise an airlift from the airport (although the air strips have been destroyed) to Cyprus. But the seriously unfunny part is that there is an evacuation fee. And for those with no money, the US government generously offers a loan. Isn't that brilliant? Loans and fees are processed in Cyprus.

There are ultra-secret channeling mediated by the Germans too. The Germans negotiated the last round of prisoner exchange between Hezbollah and Israel. "The Germans know their way with Hezbollah" noted a newscaster. Isn't it funny how these conflicts find their interlocutors and negotiators.

I am obsessively thinking about these negotiators and diplomats. How they go through their day. How they initiate conversations, how they end them. Top on my list is Amr Moussa, Egypt's star diplomat and gift to the Arab League. His handling of the Lebanese crisis is stellar, and comes after his handling of the assault on Gaza and perhaps his crowning achievement is his handling of Darfur. How do these people receive dispatches that hundreds of people are dead and decide not to act? I am fascinated by how they structure their consciousness. Not conscience, consciousness. I guess they become numb. I guess they believe that the sweep of history spares them. They probably see the world in a different way, that some people are condemned to be in Gaza or in Tyre and they are supposed to live meaningless lives and die anonymous deaths. They don't. They believe they fashion history writ large. They go through their day, enjoying sleep and meals. Air-conditioned cars, private jets, tailored suits, who's coming to dinner, where to spend summer vacation. They are never to be held accountable for whatever they say or do.
How did Amr Moussa go through the conversation with the Saudi envoy, for example? The tall Saudi minister of foreign affairs was firm, emboldened with an unusual surge of virility, he must have said to him, "Screw the Lebanese, the Hezbollah have to pay. We support the Lebanese government but we should publically condemn Hezbollah and demand a cease-fire. And Amr Moussa said what? "I agree with you." And felt good about agreeing with the Saudis. Did his stomach not writhe with a hint of an ulcer when he hung up? Did he not press on and say, "But the Arab League should take a vanguard role in ending this crisis as soon as possible and impose a cease-fire?" Off course his president, Hosni Moubarak had his own pep talk with the press. And it was inspiring. I think it's easier being Hosni Mobarak because he's senile. Senility is his understanding of freedom. He's a few inches away from absolute freedom. Egypt is waiting with abated breath when he comes out and dsiplays the joys of having absolutely not a single hint of remembrance or cognitive perception of the world around him.
Meanwhile Lebanon was being shelled to rubble. And Amr Moussa must have felt "pressured" to offer something to the "Arab street" (aaah that elusive demon). The foreign ministers agreed in unanimity that the best course of action would be to raise the question at the UN security council meeting in September. To the embarassingly weepy mother of the decapitated child, to the embarassingly nagging child of the charred mother, to the "steadfastly valiant" Palestinians in Gaza and the "hapless" Lebanese in the south, they figured they owed them something, a statement to relieve them from their grief. And the groundbreaking insight said that "the Arab league officially deemed the "peace process to be dead." No one, no one expected such enlightening wisdom from the council of foreign ministers. I am still enraptured in its profundity.

Breaking News: It's not clear Hezbollah downed a plane. The al-Manar TV is now describing it as a "foreign body". Will the Israelis add it to their list of casualties?

Day 5 of the Siege is promising to be more enthralling. More mad ramblings tonight...

Love to all, Rasha.

Lebanon Diary: Zena el-Khalil

Via: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
From: Zena el-Khalil

I have started coughing, but I don't know why. I am not sick. I don't have a
cold. I think it's a reaction I'm having to stress. My body feels weak. My
mouth is always dry, no matter how much water I drink. And I'm afraid to
drink too much water because I don't want it to run out!

Last night was probably the most frightful night I have ever experienced in
my whole entire life. I was so tired and exhausted... have not slept in
days. When there is finally a quiet moment, the tension in my stomach and
heart prevents me from falling asleep.

Last night we counted at least 15 bombs falling into Dahiyeh (Beirut
Suburbs).. and these were just the ones we heard. At some point during the
night, I said to myself that if I didn't at least try to get some sleep that
I was going to go crazy from fatigue; and that that was what was going to
kill me. Haven¹t been able to eat either, so am losing physical strength.
It¹s all psychological at this point. I know I have to be strong, and I will
be, but I can't deny what I¹m going through. And I think it's important that
people hear about the downside as well as the bravery. So many of us are
already working hard to fix things, we are running around Beirut trying to
get food and water and medicine to people, we are doing things online, etc,
but it doesn't mean we are not scared, sick or tired.

So, last night amidst the worst shelling we've had so far, I realized that I
was not afraid of the noise anymore; how quickly you get used to it. I
realized what was hurting the most was the "UNKNOWN". What is going to
happen tomorrow? When will this all end? How are we going to start
re-building again? Are the refugees going to be ok? How are the people in
the south? And why punish a whole country? What is the real plan behind all
of this? How much worse is it going to get?

My husband and I have been housing foreign "refugees" helping them to find
their way out of the country. Two managed to leave this morning, a German
and Swiss. The other two are British and American. The craziest thing is
that out of all people, the American embassy has been the LEAST helpful to
its citizens here. The phone line to the embassy has been practically out of
service. My friend, Amanda, (whom I just met a few days ago, by the way) had
to hire a cab to take her to the embassy (which is a ride out of Beirut) and
all they could tell her was that they didn¹t know what they were going to do
and to keep checking the website. Only thing she has gotten on the website
is that she now knows that there is going to be an evacuation (5 days
later), but when it happens, she is going to have to pay for it! Yes, they
are saying to their citizens that they are going to bill them for their ride
out! Can you believe that?!

Trying to evacuate people has put me under stress. The question is what am I
to do if I had the opportunity to leave? Would I leave? What do I do with my
friends? My family? My art studio? I have a British passport; I could be
evacuated with my husband. But what would happen to my best friend Maya? She
has a very rare and bad case of CANCER! I have been taking care of her since
she was diagnosed a few months ago and I know that my care for her is what
has helped her do so well. Her type of cancer is "untreatable", but
ironically, the day the shelling started, her doctor told us her tumors had
shrunk! Unbelievable- a true miracle. I can't leave Maya!

What about art work in my studio? What about all my brushes and paints and
glitter and books! All my books! Again- the crazy things that cross your
mind.

What about our photo albums? All our family pictures? The memories...

What about the doodles I drew on my balcony a few summers ago when I was
suffering from a bad break up?

What about all the love letters I have saved? Letters that document my youth
that I wanted to some day give to my daughter.

What about my other best friend? My dog, Tampopo? My beautiful Jack Russel
Terrier who has never let me down. Who has always been a source of purity
and compassion... Who has eyes of an angle... Dogs are not allowed to
evacuate. My American friend Christine is going to have to leave her dog
with me; a black pug named Baousi (means Kiss in Arabic). She is
heartbroken! She almost didn't want to evacuate. She went to so many
embassies to try and register with them and see if they would take her dog.
Don't worry Christine, I will take great care of Baousi.

My sister has been volunteering to help the refugees who are being sheltered
in public schools. Right now they are calling on Lebanese citizens to help
out with money, medicine, food, water, blankets and mattresses. She has been
going to people and asking for money and then going out to buy medicines for
refugees- her own initiative! My mom has joined in too. a friend has put
together a website for accepting donations:

http://atrissi.com/helplebanon/

Biggest cynical statement of the day:
Israel has told people to evacuate from the south because they are going to
annihilate the south of Lebanon. However, the people can not leave because
all the roads have been destroyed/blocked. And yesterday when people did try
and leave, the Israelis opened fire on them! A massacre is happening!

Update on the attacks, as of yesterday:
- Israelis have been bombing the south of Lebanon with phosphorus and other
chemical bombs.
- Israelis have bombed all ports along the coastline of Lebanon.
- Israelis have bombed all our local army radars and some outposts
- Israelis have bombed/attacked the fire fighting brigade and the Search and
Rescue Brigade in the South. Innocent civilian lives were lost. It was a
massacre- the buildings were also housing refugees.
- Israelis have continued to bomb the suburb of Beirut, Dahiyeh & Haret
Hreik
- Israelis have now killed over 100 civilians and there are several hundreds
wounded
- Š and they continue to bomb the south
- Israelis have started hitting roads that lead to the mountains. They hit a
main one leading to the Shouf.
-Israelis have hit a gas plant in the mountains

... I can't keep up with what they have hit.

*** Israel has begun to target Lebanese army outposts. They have killed
Lebanese soldiers. They are no longer just targeting Hizuballah. They mean
to kill all of Lebanon.


The reality:

Israel is trying to bring Lebanon to its knees. Israel is trying to destroy
Lebanon and the Lebanese spirit. Israel is trying to turn Lebanese against
each other. Israel is trying to turn us into animals scrounging for food,
water and shelter. Israel and the United States of America are trying to
drag Syria and Iran into this too. They are using Lebanon as bait. Lebanon
is stuck in the middle. The Americans and Israelis are trying to launch a
regional war!!

Please help in any way you can. Please pass on the message, this email-
reprint if you wish. Please tell people what is going on. Please put
pressure on your respective governments to step in and do something.

Lebanon is a peaceful country. We are the only country in the region in
which people of all religions co-exist peacefully.

It is unbelievable how biased the news is. They are not reporting the real
damage being caused. They don¹t report that the Israelis are killing
innocent civilians. It seems from this end that all they are focusing on is
G8!

Are the Israeli & US government really just trying to wipe us all out??
Well, you can tell them that I¹m not leaving. And there are many of us who
are not leaving. We love Lebanon. We love what we have spent our lives
building.

Tell them about people like me.. who build culture and tolerance. Who work
for peace and understanding. Who work to educate. Who work to promote love
and compassion. There are thousands like me here. What about us?

Tell them about people like me, that despite all of this, I have still not
learnt to hate. They can take everything from me, but not my dignity. Not my
morals and beliefs. They will never never break my spirit.

Tell the Israeli citizens what their government is doing to us. Tell them
that violence begets violence. Remind them that Lebanon is their neighbor
and that co-existence is possible. How are we going to ever reach an
understanding through violence? We were so close... We were so close...

Please stop this brutality!

Still with love,
Zena el-Khalil

By the way, did I mention Maya's tumors are getting smaller?
Did I mention there was a wedding across the street yesterday?

Lebanon Diary: Jumana Mattar

Via Kaelen
From Joumana Mattar

just sending out thoughts to prevent myself from losing sight of my
humanity.. jou

i remember when i was younger, i was always being spirited away to
africa to avoid the war in lebanon. back then i believed it was an
adventure.

i had not lived through a war. i had no way of knowing how it changes people.

now i am here, in my country, that i have grown to call my home.

i am scared. i am scared of what this war is doing to people. we are
losing our humanity.

cues in supermarkets are long, people fighting over a kilo of lemon
which has tripled in price.
the highways are alternatively jammed with cars fleeing to the border
or silent and empty as the threat of fuel shortage looms overhead.

and through it all, we are glued to television sets and radios praying
we won;t be hit next.
it just puts everything into perspective: what;s a new job, or a new
house compared with the destruction and gradual meltdown of our
country, where we planned to live out our dreams?

the most dangerous thing to me, is not the destruction of our bridges
but the abolition of our hope... our hope...

without this butterfly of hope, that can fly through the barriers of
oppression we would indeed lose our humanity. we would be reduced to
selfish animals grabbing on to anything we can get our hands on and
not letting go, simply because we're not sure when we;ll next be able
to acquire it again.

i think im writing this to all of you for all of us; let's be here for
one another. let's remind ourselves of what;s important, of this bond
of friendship that can help us be brave and endure.

i dont know how long we;ll have electricity and phone lines, i dont
know how long this situation will last, i just know that if i feel
there is someone out there who's thinking of me; if there;s someone
who needs me to send a thought their way; things will be alright.

take care, hope to see you soon, safe and sound.

Lebanon: Ibrahim Saidi on Banking Sector

Via: Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
From: Ibrahim Saidi in Beirut

Does Lebanon hold a future for me? it seems not at this stage. THe
israeli and hezbollah wildcards do not àllow for any long term
planning. Working in the banking sector in Lebabnon, one of the
handful of sectors that is contributing the economic revival of
Lebanon, i can see the reversal of all of Lebanon's efforts to develop
and rise again on a minute by minute basis, as clients request the
switch of their lebanese pounds deposits to US dollars, a process that
places immense pressure on the central bank and banking sector as
Lebanon's currency defending the exchange rate that is pegged to the
US dollar. A second and worse consequence of the "war" is the imminent
requests to transfer funds out of Lebanon. This would send deeper
shockwaves throught the financial sector as loss of confidence in
Lebanon would eventually stunt the abilities of the government and the
banks to do business, potentially leading to a meltdown of the
financial economic situation (even if hostilities stopped now), where
wage are not paid to public secctor employees or private sector
employees for that matter. Israel's threat to send lebanon back by
twenty years will only take a few more days of this.
Infrastructure losses and losses from suspension of business is well
over a billion dollars and counting.

90 civilians dead and 300 injured is surely beyond an eye for an eye
retribution, something the Israeli's are so infused in as a state of
mind. Surely Israel's shameful unilateral withdrawal in Aprill 2000
from Lebanon has sat heavily on the minds and hearts of the Israeli
"defense" force, is taking its place as an egotistical driver of
Israel's over- reaction.

What seems to us here, so helplessly obvious, is that there is
something much larger than 2 soldieres being kidnapped by Hezbollah
and Israel reacting to that specifically. One cannot but link this
whole thing to Syria, Iran and indirectly to the US administration's
blue print for the middle east. A p[lan to have a group of castrated
US policy friendly nations (which includes an acceptance of a Israeli
state above international law) .

More ideas later ...

Don't worry. ... We are OK. THings are still very managable. We have
the option to leave beirut to the mountains. We are waiting a little
to see whether it is worth it.

Stay strong. ...

Lebanon Diary: Hiba

Via: Emily
From: Hiba in Beirut

Dear all,

Many thanks to all of you who asked about me and showed their support. I really appreciate it and need it to cope with all the destruction and death surrounding me. I need your support to stop the mass massacre that my people are facing as a result of the Israeli attacks on my country that have been non-stop for 4 days.

My country is under attack with a level of aggression that I have not seen in my entire life. Barbaric acts against civilians, with no attention paid to the difference between children, women, elderly, and the handicapped on one hand, and fighters on the other. Everybody is a target for the bombs that are falling on us like black rain, like fire balls, from military planes that have not left our air since Wednesday July 12th, 2006. Their horrific noises have deafened our ears. Children's cries of horror are tearing our hearts. We asked for the international community's help to broker a cease fire. They did not care. All they care about are their regional interests. Israelis did not stop the bombs! Did not stop deaths! Continued their mass destruction! We are under attack without hope for an end.

The aggression is not only against people, but against infrastructure. All the bridges, tunnels, roads, electricity plants, fuel tanks, IT networks, water dams, and every other aspect of infrastructure has been or is being destroyed. Thousands of people have been displaced. We are currently helping people to settle in schools and other public facilities, and trying to supply them with minimum survival amenities. The entire relief effort is through personal initiatives since there is not yet an aid organization helping with the crisis.

It all started 4 days ago, when Hezbollah took two Israeli soldiers as hostages. We as Lebanese citizens condemned this act. We were surprised by this military operation. We did not want war, but they did not ask us. We Lebanese people are tired of war, we want peace. Too many loved ones have died over 20 years of wars. I was born in war, grew up in war, lived through wars, through Israeli occupation, through assassinations, through horror, through displacements, and I had enough, we had enough, Lebanese people had enough, Lebanon had enough! Enough Destruction..enough!

Unfortunately, two Israeli hostages were taken and three were killed, an operation which I am deeply sorry that we could not stop. But does this justify a barbaric attack that has up until now killed at least 160 people, injured hundreds, displaced thousands, and ruined an entire country? Israel bombed today a bus with 21 women and children fleeing from their village. Innocent people, running for their lives, not terrorists, not military people but women and children were burnt. Today Israel bombed three such buses! The international community remains silent.

This summer was our summer. We were happy to show our beautiful small country to the entire world after we have been rebuilding it for 15 years. We invited friends, family, business people and promised them a lovely time. We were so proud of what we accomplished. In four days Israel shattered our dreams in an unbalanced, crazy, sad, barbaric act of aggression; high-tech military planes high in the air bombing unarmed and defenseless people on the ground. In 4 days, Israel destroyed our country, killed our people. Blind Unjustified Aggression!

We are under siege! We are under attack from the air, from the water, and from land. We are cut off from the entire world, without any form of aid or support. Medical and food supplies are limited. Hunger is already creeping into those villages that have been isolated from the rest of the country. Injured people are stuck under ruins. Lebanon is officially facing a humanitarian crisis. Please help us in spreading the word. I and all Lebanese people need your support.

Thank you very much for your help!

Best Regards,
Hiba

Lebanon Diary: Zeina

Via: Emily
From: Zeina in Beirut

Hello everyone -

I just want to begin by saying that (obviously) I am ok - for now... thank you to all of you who sent messages and emails of concern and support, and who called my family in the US to make sure I am safe. I am SO SO touched. What can I say - I am living a nightmare. Just last week, Lebanon was expecting 1.6 million tourists, a record number since before the civil war. We were expecting $4.4 BILLION to be injected into our economy. Now it's in shambles. Imagine a militia in the US that acts on its own and kidnaps two Candian soldiers, imagine Canada in response bombing our ports, roads, bridges, residences, neighborhoods - killing US citizens, destroying lives, creating refugees... stopping LIFE. Lebanese did not want this war..... we are fed up, we have no voice.

I finally got to the internet after days of being locked up inside... ohh - bombs just went off again, funny - no one seems to react anymore, not even me. I've grown used to it. My friend is in the US Military and he told my brother that Israel will begin to bomb all of Beirut very soon. Madness... no words to express the feeling of my destroyed heart. He is here looking for me, trying to reach me, trying to protect me...trying to get me out of here, but I don't want to leave. As a Lebanese, yes, I am an extreme patriot willing to stay here and fight it out with my people. As an American, I am ASHAMED AND DISGUSTED at my president's cowardly acts. We are stuck in the middle, between two forces, both vowing to persist in their futile cause - both sources of hate, violence, extremism, and fanaticism. Both feed on the fears of their people, brainwashing them. We are drowning, no one cares to save us...

Life has crumbled in my beloved country
As she becomes hostage to an unwanted war.
The bombs are falling mercilessly
Yet no signs of relent seem to be in store.

I taste the bloodshed, I see the destruction
I feel the anguish, I can smell the ashes.
I hear the screams and the aggression
For how much longer until this passes?

The weight of war and the pain of injustice
Must they befall her one more time?
Must she endure the dirt of politics
And be forced to face these heinous crimes?

WE ARE CALLING FOR HELP! CAN YOU NOT HEAR?
OR IS THE SOUND OF THE WAR PLANES DROWNING OUR
CRIES?
CHILDREN ARE DYING! IS IT NOT CLEAR?
OR ARE YOUR OWN SELFISH INTERESTS BLINDING YOUR
SIGHT?

Oh, where is the courage and dignity of man?
Is Lebanese life so worthless?
Who will rise up and take a stand,
To protect humanity and fight injustice?

My country is being ripped to shreds
Raped and robbed of her rights.
How many more must be dead
Before you listen to our plight?

May this reality not persist much longer
May Lebanon rise once again
May we emerge victorious and stronger
More unified and stable than we've ever been.

With bridges, roads, and ports rebuilt
We will begin anew...
Let the world live with the burden of guilt
While we raise our heads high, with resilience so
true.

Lebanon, my faith in you is ever so deep.
From you, I cannot bear to part.
You stand for resistance and dignity...
Forever, the jewel of my life and the pride of my
heart.

Zeina

Beirut Siege: Rasha Salti on Day 4

Day 4 of the Siege

Things seem to heating up. Missiles hit Haifa and the shelling on the south and southern suburbs is unrelenting.

Scorched Earth Policy
Ehud Olmert promised scorched earth in South Lebanon after missiles hit Haifa. Warnings have been sent to inhabitants of the south to evacuate their villages, because the Israeli response to Hezbollah will be "scorched Earth". As major roads are destroyed and the south has been remapped into enclaves, it is not clear how these people are supposed to evacuate. And where to. It seems the "sensitivity training" that the IDF went through for evacuating the settlers from Gaza is really paying off, even on the "civilians" because Ehud Olmert offered the hapless inhabitants of the south shelter in Israel. Now that's leadership! Will they be sprayed by DDT as did the jewish populations shuttled from Iraq, Morocco and Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s? Will there be Maabarot (transit camps) ready for them?
They want the 20 kilometers buffer zone and they will burn, destroy and maime to get it. Maybe they should build another wall?

Video-Clip
Al-Manar TV has a video-clip of possible, potential hits to Haifa. Impressive. A missile is loaded, the camera travels over arial views of occupied Palestine and stops at Haifa. The port. Zoom on the petro-chemical reservoirs. Cut to a hand pressing on a green button. The images are accompanied with text in Arabic and in Hebrew. They are conducting their war in images and video-clips.

Proud to be an Arab
I am still in awe with the response from Arab regimes, how utterly proud I am to be an Arab. From Abou Mazen, to the several moral and physical dwarf kings and queens (the Abdullahs and whatevers) to the un-democratically elected representatives, "chapeau"...
I think of all the streets, those who are watching Gaza, Iraq, and now us. Do we not deserve their outrage? Do we not deserve mass mobilizations? Should not Moubarak, and his band of bandits and thieves deserve to be put to shame for their endorsement of the Israeli response.
How does it feel, my beloved friends, Arabs and non-Arabs to watch Beirut go up in flames?
Meanwhile wall-to-wall coverage is only from al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya and the Lebanese TV stations. The "war" is only a news item on Abou Dhabi, MBC, and the other Arab stations...

The Lebanese predicament
So Hezbollah dragged us without asking our opinion into this hell. We are in this hell, caught in this cross-fire together. We need to survive and save as many lives as possible. The Israelis are now betting on the implosion of Lebanon. It will not happen. There is UNANIMITY that Israel's response is entirely, entirey, UNJUSTIFIED. We will show the Arab leadership that it is possible to have internal dissent and national unity, pluralism, divergence of opinion and face this new sinister chapter of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Dictatorships produce mute sheep and sheepherders and radical ideologies.

Beirut Siege: Rasha Salti on Day 3

From Rasha Salti in Beirut

Today was a bad day. The shelling started from the morning countrywide and has not let until now. It was particularly brutal in the south. Marwaheen, a village in the south that had been under siege was showered with leafets from airplanes urging its inhabitants to flee because it would be bombed to the ground two hours later. As people gathered up stuff and began to flee, a few were not spared from the shelling, 12 children perished, burned alive on the road walking out of the village. A group amongst the fleeing villagers panicked and saught refuge at a UNIFIL (UN peacekeeping force) base on their road out of the village run by French army volunteers, but they were refused shelter and turned back. I don't know how unprecedented this is but it is certainly shocking.
Nearly all Lebanese ports were shelled today, Beirut, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, Amshit and Jounieh. Christian areas are not being spared. The alternative road to Syria (via Tripoli and Homs) was shelled. Bridges in the north of the country and the south of the country were shelled and rendered unusable.

Tonight the shelling is again focused on the southern suburbs, Haret Hreyk and Bir el-Abed. The first neighborhood is where the headquarters of Hezbollah are located. They have been targetted several times and there is extensive damage. The leadership has not been harmed. A great number of the inhabitants have been evacuated, but the afternoon shelling targetted residential areas. I am up, anxious, writing. As if it served a purpose of sorts.

Foreign diplomatic missions are making plans to evacuate their nationals. They had planned to evacuate people by sea, but after today's shelling of the ports, they may have to rethink their strategy. Should I evacuate? Does one turn their back on a "historic" station in the Arab-Israeli conflict? If there is no cause that animates me, how do I endure this? (I could not give two rats' ass about the Iranian nuclear bomb or Hezbollah's negotiating power). I was shamed this morning for having these thoughts... And now, at 1:30 am, as the Israeli airplanes fill up my sky, I am writing them again.

There was much diplomatic activity today, almost all of it secured moral high ground for Israel to proceed with "scorched earth" policy, re-occupy the south to secure its own borders, and disarm Hezbollah after a fatal blow. The meeting at the UN security council yesterday provided Israel with a green light to pretty much do whatever it wished in this country. (My favorite was Bolton, who was focused on the necessity to "take down" Khaled Masha'al -Hamas representative- in Damascus.)
Then there was an emergency Arab League meeting that pretty much determined that the peace plan of the Quartet was defunct and the region was at the brink of an explosion and that they will call for a UN security council meeting at once. If international law was not respected, then the Arab League would resort to other means (and "arms" was not eliminated as an option). Did the Arabs declare war? We don't know, did they intimate war? It would be the most prudish, skiddish, repressed intimation ever in the history of wars.

For now it seems that the battle will take about two to three weeks to wane. There are stated aims and they are within the paradigm of 1559, namely that Hezbollah should give up its arms, and the southern Lebanese border with Israel be secured by the Lebanese army. Hezbollah are not suicidal, unlike the Bin Ladens of the world and other radicals, they want to negotiate a bigger share of the pie in Lebanon. They are aware that in the final count, they will have to give up something, so until a cease-fire seems like an amenable solution to them, they need to register as many victories as possible. The rockets that can reach Haifa is one such victory, because Haifa is an important petro-chemical base in Israel. The Israeli Patriot missiles planted on Haifa that seem not to work are also another small victory for Hezbollah. The drowned warship is another victory.

Israel's strategy is not only to dismember this country and cripple communication, but also to challenge internal support for Hezbollah. People like me for example, complaining about how my life is a small hell and I can't take it anymore, yesterday and maybe a little bit today, well I was an agent of Israel. I was executing the Israeli strategy to break the spirit of the valiant Arabs. In fact the Israeli ambassador to the UN quoted two Lebanese MPs citing how little support for Hezbollah there is in Lebanon. This is the rhetoric. But in point of fact it is true, that Israel has not spared an area at this stage, whether Hezbollah stronghold or not and they want to make us pay for housing Hezbollah in our parliament. Maybe they prefer an Iraqi scenario?

Forgive me if I am losing my mind. I need to end this long diary entry. I would like to end it by congratulating the president of Iran, to whom a nuclear bomb (like the president of Pakistan) is by far more important than his people walking barefoot, illiterate and hungry. But the kind and generous president of Iran "assured" the world that if Israel hit Syria, Iran would show them hell. Never mind Lebanon burning!

Until Day 4 of the Siege.

Beirut Siege: Rasha Salti on Day 2

From Rasha Salti

It is now night time in Beirut. The day was heavy, busy with shelling from the air and sea, but so far the night has been quiet in Beirut. We are advised to be bracing ourselves for a bad night, although most analysis is more reading tea leaves at this stage.
I received a wide array of comments regarding my email yesterday. The comments stayed with me all day. I visited friends this morning at their house, people now gather in homes, most cafes In "West Beirut" are closed, streets are quiet. In times like these, the city huddles on its neighborhoods, main thoroughfares are avoided, side roads and back streets are trekked. Gatherings shift to the house of the member of the group whose neighborhood has electricity, whose elevator works, and who has elusive enough familial obligations to house an antsy crowd eager for social exchange.
Amongst that group, I was the only one who seemed to have experienced the weariness, to be genuinely frustrated with having to face another round of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Everyone seemd resigned to endure this dark and sinister moment. Everyone was busying themselves with analysis, speculation. Mind games, fictions, chimeras. I regretted expressing my weariness with the fight, with having to summon the energy to face Israel and defy the destruction of Lebanon. I felt I betrayed a principle, a value, disrespected people's pain and suffering. I know a great great number of people in Lebanon share my sentiments, and the political debates on TV seem to return to the question tirelessly. But still, I felt "smaller" than the historical moment demanded.
I wanted to write this, I needed to come clean to you all. I need to let you know that if you were intrigued/discomforted by the pettiness of my spirit. The cause of this is partly my refusal to acknowledge the gravity of the moment. I don't feel I am strong or courageous enough to face it, to take it all in.

Last night something quite fantastical happened. By this morning, the mood in the country and city was palpably changed. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that the leadership of Hezbollah are not acquainted with "The Society of the Spectacle".
Last night was a turning point in the confrontation between Hezbollah and the Israeli army. I ought to have drafted a note right after that moment, but I could not find the mental energy to do it. I was so scared and anxious that I became sucked into the pull of minute by minute news reporting and finally succumbed to exhaustion.
You probably all heard about the Israeli warship that was drowned. I am convinced that all of you not privvy to Arab media missed the spectacular staging of the drowning of that warship.
The "showcase" began with Israeli shells targetting Hassan Nasrallah's home in the southern suburbs. As soon as the shells exploded, the media reported them and waited to confirm that he and his family had survived. About half an hour later, the newscaster announced that Hassan Nasrallah planned to adress the nation and the Arab world by phone.
I never thought he was charismatic. A huge majority of people do. He's very young to hold the position of leadership that he does. He's a straight talker, not particularly eloquent, but speaks in an idiom that appeals to his immediate constituency in Lebanon but is also compelling to a constituency in the Arab world that harbors disillusionment, despondency and powerlessness with the failed promises of Arab nationalism to defeat Israel and restore dignity. He is not corrupt, he lives simply, and displays a bent on spartan ascetism. Although he's neither charismatic nor captivating, he has cultivated an aura of sorts, particularly since his son was martyred at age 18 in a commando operation in south Lebanon when it was occupied by the Israeli military. He survived the Israeli attempt on his life last night, and addressed the nation by phone, thirty minutes later. His speech was pragmatic, again spoken in his habitual simple (almost simplistic) idiom from within the Hezbollah rhetoric, obviously. The speech was intended to deliver a number of specific messages, answer back to pronouncements by regional leaders and clarify Hezbollah's strategy in the face of the unexpectedly barbaric Israeli attack.

He began by declaring an open war to Israel's assault. He summoned the Lebanese people to unite in this moment of confrontation, transcend petty divisions and rise to the occasion. He promised to deliver victory, based on the long record of victories by Hezbollah. Most powerful and compelling was his response to the Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian statements issued earlier that day, blaming Hezbollah for bringing the tragedy on Lebanon. The Saudi statement had referred to Hezbollah's actions as "adventurous", the Jordanian as "irresponsible" and the Egyptian as something in both these veins. All three had invoked the pressing need to act reasonably. Nasrallah's response basically said that he is the leader of the only Arab and Muslim political movement to have defeated Israel militarily and forced it to withdraw, the only Arab leader to have been able to shell Israel and pose a serious military threat from without its borders. If his actions were "adventurous" he argued, they were certainly reasonable, but they did not comply to the reason that guides Arab leaders and Arab regimes, rather the reason that animates the common folk on the streets, the reason that defies defeat, the reason that brings victories, saves dignity and does not fear the enemy no matter how powerful his arsenal and allies. He called onto the Arab and Muslim world to stand in solidarity with the Lebanese as they faced, once more, the savagery of the Zionist machine.

His third message was to the "Zionist enemy". He reiterated that Hezbollah did not fear an open war. That they have long been prepared for this confrontation. Interestingly, he claimed that they possessed missiles that could reach Haifa, and "far beyond Haifa, beyond, beyond Haifa", thereby admitting that it was Hezbollah that fired the missile fired to Haifa (until then they denied having fired them). It is not clear what he meant by "far beyond Haifa". Did he mean Tel Aviv? It is not THAT far from Haifa. Did he mean Israeli interests and missions abroad? It was not clear. More terrains for speculators.

His conclusion was all about the showcase... In his message to the Zionist entity, he reminded his audience that he had promised to deliver many "suprises". And now the time has come for the first of the many surprises they have in store for the Zionist enemy, namely the warship that had bombed the southern suburb the night before and was casually sailing in the bay of Beirut was now in flames and its personel was drowning. "Look at it!", he said, this is one of the many surprises we have saved for the Zionist army... And he fell silent.

There is no film footage of the warship being hit because all the cameras had their lenses directed inland, focused on scouting for shells, destruction, victims and tragedy writ large. By the time he had spoken his words, it was too late to catch sight of the warship being hit, all that cameras captured was a huge ball of fire in the open sea, but not much else was clear. Rescue flares flew into the sky from around the ship. Ultimately, it would turn out that all except for 4 from the crew would be rescued/recovered.
The Israeli media began by denying the report, then confirming the warship had been hit, then claiming there were no losses, then admitting four sailors were missing, then claiming the ship was towed to the Haifa port, then admitting it had sunk in the sea where it was hit. This morning one of the three bodies was uncovered by Hezbollah.

The news of the downed warship spread fear in our hearts. We were sure the retaliation would be numbing in violence. Then Hezbollah fired rockets on some settlements in the Galilee and we were all bracing ourselves for a night of hell. Nothing happened in Beirut. The south was shelled, the north was shelled the Beqaa was shelled. Surgical assaults on roads, bridges and the communication network. Slowly but surely, in cold blood the country was being dismembered, ligament after ligament, inland, on the coast, and in the mountains.

In Beirut, the night was quiet. I could not understand how one downed Israeli warship could throw disarray into a military as powerful as the Israeli military.

Nasrallah's calls for solidarity resonnated loudly the next day. Immediately after the spectacular showcase, Hezbollah television was showered with phone calls from Saudi Arabia expressing their support. There were protests supporting him and his mission in almost every Arab city. They contrasted sharply with the reactions from Arab officialdom. He had won his first round against Israel and against the slothful, debilitated and stunted Arab leaderships.

Beirut Siege: Stephen Sheehi from American University

Beirut: Stephen Sheehi from American University

Via: Julia Meltzer
From: Stephen Sheehi

Julia,
THANKS For thinking of us. IN THE MEANTIME, GET EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO WRITE YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE TO PUSH FOR A CESSATION OF ISRAELI AGGRESSION (or in their language "cease fire").
********
SUN JULY 16, 10:30 AM BEIRUT

The coalition leftists Lebanese and Palestinian groups have now been transformed into a relief service with several non-political social groups and NGOs joining.

The Lebanese government has done nothing and only yesterday sent out petit-functionaires to ask what is needed. It is also clear that half the government is in fact tacitly supporting the seige in hopes of breaking their most formidible opponent Hizbullah.

Beirut and all of Lebanon is under a complete state of seige and the Southern Suburbs, which is baring the brunt of the attack at least in Beirut, is deserted. Unfortunately, many of those inhabitants, the poorest in Lebanon, have no place safe to go as most of them are from the South which is both unaccessible and equally dangerous. As we have seen in Marwaheen yesterday where 15 innocent men, women and children were massacred in their cars, refugees fleeing from town to town let alone to or from Beirut is as dangerous as staying put.

Furthermore, even if movement was not dangerous (which is clearly is!), it is extremely difficult. Cities in the South such as Sidon and Tyre are completely isolated and cut off. Travel between villages, these cities, and Beirut is virtually impossible as Israel has destroyed all the bridges, major and minor. Refugees who chose to take their chances have to travel on dirt or small Back roads in hope that they and their children are not "confused" for combatants. moreover, most are afraid to travel anywhere near what bridges and tunnels are still in tact. In fact, the Lebanese Army shut down on Sat (yesterday) the "Open Sit-In" (camp out) in Martyr's Square that the coalition of leftists groups launched on Weds in solidarity with the Palestinians under seige in Gaza. Ironically, the Israelis chose to make us brothers and sisters in resisting another gratuitous and brutal siege. They shut us down b/c we (between 30-100 people at any given time) were camped near the main artery and bridge between East and West Beirut. Related, pounding of the Southern Suburbs is clearly audible throughout the city along with an almost constant drone of warplanes over head, dropping flyers whose adolescent, silly, and juvenile quality ALMOST makes one wish for bombs! While before yesterday, most of us not living in the South or the Southern Suburbs were tense but felt that most Lebanese NOT in those areas were generally safe. However, yesterday's immense attack proved us wrong. The invasion was expanded to hit every part of the country, including blowing up the civilian lighthouse on the Corniche (only about 200 meters from the American University where I am fortunate to live and hence able to write you while most have little electricity let alone access to Internet).

Previously, two or three land routes could be taken to Syria. Now only ONE remains through the northern Lebanese-Syrian border (probably b/c there aren't too many bridges on the way!) and Israel came dangerously close to provoking Syria in bombing another Lebanese border crossing. It is said that the attack, however, was 20-30 meters inside Lebanese territory and the Syrian government was more than happy to oblige Israeli propoganda and stress that ITS territory was not hit. In the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s the Syrians did little to defend or fend of Israeli aggression when they were occupying Lebanon under the pretext of "protecting" it. We used to say "Asad Asad fi Lubnan, Arnab arbab fi Golan! (Asad is a lion in Lebanon and a rabbit in Golan". Indeed, no one wants an expansion of this war but Israel are doing its best to encourage it, clearly using violence ONCE AGAIN to achieve political means.

Currently, the relief movement is based out of Sanaya Garden in R'as Beirut. While we have a hundred volunteers already, this is still not enough as apparently refugees, who are reduced to sleeping in the street, are mounting. There is a food shortage among them and donations internally are being requested. However, the Lebanese population at large is under a complete blockade by the Israelis (one actively enforced as we see in the bombing of three ports yesterday: Beirut, predominantly Christian Jounieh, and Tripoli. Therefore, the Lebanese are hardly in a position to be generous in donating food.

There is also a cal for medical personnel to attend to the refugees. The US, UK, France, Italy, and others are planning evacuations if they have not already evacuated. The UN has known for at least two days that they will be evacuated as well. I should go now as I am packing up my house and office. Please forgive the length of this message. You may send it out if you wish. PLEASE advise me if you want updates? I am currently working with the media coordinator of our coalition to keep a stream of information going out of Lebanon as well as in. I look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your help.

Ma atyab salamati
Istifan
Stephen Sheehi
Assistant Professor
Civilization Sequence Program
American University of Beirut