Today we counted our lost ones from yesterday. We collected photos
of the remains of families, of women and children who were killed.
Yesterday was the worst, 70 civilians were killed - most of them are
still under the ruins of their houses destroyed in the south and the
Beqa'a regions.
On the television and radio people from the south and east Lebanon
who are beseiged in their villages are asking for medicine, food,
water, and are asking for mercy. They say there are still people
buried under their houses that Israel bombed yesterday. They say
there are still fires they cannot put off as Israel is using
phosphorus bombs that burns everything. They say please give us one
hour to allow us to have medicine and food at least for the children
and to bury those who were killed.
They say there is a strong smell of death in their villages because
there are bodies of killed people under the ruins of shelters and
houses.
Reporters say they were able to hear voices screaming for help,
moaning from pain, dying under the ruins, and no one was able to
help because Israel is bombing any vehicle that moves and the people
are not able to move the ruins of the houses to save the people who
are buried underneeth.
Today doctors from the hospitals in the south are screaming saying
many of the dead bodies they received were not even injured and
didn't bleed, but they were burnt while the hair is not burnt and a
strange strong smell comes from the bodies. These are evidence that
Israel is using chemical weapons.
Yesterday the speaker of the human rights committee in United
Nations, said that there is a "strong possibility that Israel is
conducting war crimes". Of course Israel is conducting war crimes.
This is a genocide. Would the UN and the international comunity act
now before it is too late to force Israel to stop?
It is already one week of this and the UN gave Israel one more week
to finish its dirty work in Lebanon. One week of this genocide and
the result is more than half million displaced Lebanese and 325
killed civilians and 1000 injured civilians. Most of them are
children.
The war is generating damages of one and a half billion dollars
every day so far. It would take 15 years to rebuild what Israel
destroyed in 7 days. But those who got killed cannot be brought back
to life.
Yesterday Israel conducted several massacres, one of them in the
village of Sreifah in the south by blowing up 10 houses with the
people inside, killing 27; all were members of 3 families.
Israel orders the people in the south to evacuate their villages:
when the people try to leave their villages Israel targets them with
Apache helicopters and kills them. Israel did it again yesterday
targeting 3 cars full of peole and children who were trying to leave
the village Aitaroun killing 4 and injuring 7.
There will be no schools this 2006/07 schoolyear, as there are tens
of villages and towns that were completely destroyed including
schools, medical centers, shops, factories and houses of its
citizens. Tens of thousands from among the half a million displaced
people would have to stay in the public schools and gardens for 6
more months this is if the war were to stop today. Winter is coming,
I wonder how the displaced Lebanese would survive in the public
schools and gardens?
On Day 1 of the war the Israeli government said they would turn
Lebanon back in time by 20 years. And they did it. But now they are
murdering all of us. Lebanon is completely destroyed, no more
bridges, roads, factories, stations, water, electricity, airports,
seaports, they bombed medical centers and schools and internet
stations, they even bombed the historical ruins of Bealbeck.
Today I had to go like hundreds of people to bring drinkable water
from the fountain which is something my grand grand grandmother used
to do in the 17th century. Then I went to buy milk and cigarettes:
the shelves in the 7 shops I visited were almost empty.
The roads are cut and there is no way to provide goods from one
region to the other. I didn't complain, I thought about the others
who are trapped in their villages under attack with nothing at all
for 8 days now.
I tried to call friends, Wafa and Fadi in Sida, Raed in Beirut,
Sameera in Bealbeck, Sahban in Tyre and others, but while standing
in front of the public phone in the street waiting for my turn,
watching the tens of young women and children waiting to use the
phone, listening to the conversations, the fear, the worries etc, I
felt I couldn't wait, I couldn't make the phone calls, I was so
scared that no one will answer at the other side of the phone, this
other side that is only an hour or an hour and a half away now seems
very distant, as if on another planet.
I went home feeling sad and helpless. Decided to occupy myself with
reorganizing the old newspapers I keep in my room: I carry the first
one and open it to find it is "Al Safeer" newspaper from 1996 and on
the first page pictures of killed infants and children - it was the
Israeli massacre of Qana. This massacre happened when people from
the southern villages took refuge at a UN center in the village of
Qana and were murdered as Israel bombed the UN center. Pain sweeps
me and I crack down with the tears I tried very bravely and hardly
to stop for seven days.
The whole picture is so shockingly clear to me: we will never live
in peace and will never have a future as long as Israel is protected,
tolerated and allowed to kill children and destroy houses and
hospitals in Lebanon and Palestine.
It is a genocide. Nothing less. Nothing else.
Today
on the television they showed Israeli children in north Israel
writing messages on Israeli bomb missiles that will be fired - or
have been already fired - at the Lebanese villages. Those messages
say: "from the children of Israel to the children of Lebanon". Can
any one explaine this... What is this madness? Can someone at least
tell the world and Israel that those messages found their way to the
flesh and blood of the Lebanese children? We got the message.
More survivors and displaced families are coming to the mountains
today and they have even reached the northern mountain. Now people
are hosting those displaced families in their own houses as all the
public schools and universities are full. Cars with megaphones are
driving in the roads asking people to donate matresses as there is a
need for 11,000 matresses, in the mountain alone, and it is an
immediate need.
When I think about the displaced people I imagine that I have to
sleep wearing the same outfit I was wearing for a week, in the same
underwear, I imagine how it would feel to be in a minivan on the
road with tens of other people squeezed running away to what might
be a safer zone, fearing that the Israeli missiles would hunt us at
any second and that we would make the news like the family whose
photos I sent you who were targeted after trying to escape with
their truck on the road. And like many others. I try to imagine if I
can stay with no shower for a week, with no medicine for a week,
with no food, no bathrooms, no water to drink, no contact with other
members of my family.
I stay at my room looking at each corner and think about those who
lost their houses, their belongings, those who lost everything.
What does Israel want? - a land with no people in Palestine and
Lebanon? What does USA want? A Middle East empty but for oil? Are
they just displaying their weapons for buying and selling in the
market, is it an exhibition of madness? Condy says "we won't ask
Israel to stop firing because stopping it won't solve the problem".
Yes Condy, it won't solve the problem. Dead Lebanese and dead
Palestinians would solve the problem, no? A genocide. And Blair also
share this position with Condy. Don't they know that ending the
occupation is what would solve the problem?
What future are Israel, USA, UK and Iran planning for the region?
More wars more killing more violence and hate. In this, superpowers
fight over domination; we the ordinary people are the ones stuck in
the middle, we are ones being used in their wars and conflicts, we
are the ones who pay the price. In Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, we
deserve to live in peace.
All the violence is caused by the occupation.
Yesterday Israel bombed Borj El Brajneh district in the southern
suburbs of Beirut with more than 23 tons of bombs!!! yes, 23 tons of
bombs, even the global media confirmed it. The target was a mosque.
They bombed it with the pretext that there are tunnels under this
mosque and Nasrallah is hiding there!!!.
Till now 3 churches and 5 mosques were destroyed. I was thinking
about Wafa'a and her husband Ali, both Palestinian refugees living
in Borj El Brajneh camp. I just went to their wedding party one week
before this war started, visited them at their new appartment in the
refugee camp three days before this war started. I am dead worried
about them. After Israel bombed the mobile/cellphone station it is
almost impossible to make a phone call.
Dear friends, Lebanon that some of you you have visited once does
not exist any more. Tell the world, keep carrying out what you do,
all you can do, make this genocide stop, there is nothing left for
Israel to destroy unless they want to kill us in our homes, house
after house, family after family ... just like what is happening in
Gaza, just like what happened in Sabra & Shatila massacre in 1982.
Yesterday the 19th July, we were no longer able to recognize day
from night; our days are just like our nights all full of bombing,
black smoke of fires (because Israel is bombing gas stations and gas
tanks). There's destruction of milk and cheese factories, burning
tissue, wood, and carton factories, destruction of health care
centers, destruction of schools and shops, photos of burnt children,
news about families being targeted and killed in their shelters and
relief centers...
I fear this might lead to a bigger war or conflict. I feel like
every one lost their minds, even those who do know and do understand.
I have friends in all parts of Lebanon and I am dead worried about
them.
I am worried about my friends in north Israel, too, in Haifa,
Nazareth and Safad.
I write to Salman and his wife Nada, they live in Karmel mountain
above Haifa, they tell me they are fine, yet their daughter left to
Italy to stay with her brother. They ask me to be fine and not to
crack down. Salman, who toured Italy last year talking about the
verbal history of the Palestinians that he has collected for over 30
years, tells me that a storm is in his heart and mind.
Aida, my friend in Haifa, a brave activist and a mother of 2
children whom I met in Cyprus at a conference and became best
friends since then writes to me saying she wishes to sacrifice
herself for me and all the Lebanese. She told me that when people
call her to see if she and her daughters are fine after the
Hezbollah Catyoshia rockets hit Haifa, her daughters answer saying
we are fine but what about the children of Lebanon?
What an ironic world.
What good would come from Hezbollah bombing Haifa, Acker, and Safad
in north Israel? And what good would come from the Israeli
systematic destruction of Lebanon and Gaza and West Bank and killing
of civilians in Lebanon and in Gaza?
Nothing but more violence and madness.
Every day more civilians are being killed, more massacres. Every day
more children within few seconds are turned from beautiful and
innocent creatures full of life and laughter into pieces of burnt
flesh and meat.
We see their images on our televisions and newspapers, and I wonder
what future the surviving children can have with such memories, why
should children in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq have to endure such
brutality.
Make Israel pay for the crimes it is conducting.
Make it stop its crimes, or else Israel will continue this. I read
today that the Zionist
religious
men in Israel said it is allowed for Israel to kill inoccent women
and children who are not Jewish - what difference is there between
this and what Bin Laden and Zarqawi and all those criminals are
saying and doing in Iraq. killing innocent Shi'ites and Christians,
Iraqis and foreigners?
The photos here are of two massacres Israel conducted yeterday and
the day before. One in Nabishiet village near Bealbeck city in east
Lebanon killing 7 members from one family (4 of them are children)
by bombing their four-floor house and injuring 3. The other one
occured in the south when Israel again targeted a car that was
trying to escape to a safer place killing the family that was in it.
Also, there is a photo of the US embassador in Beirut turning his
back to the photos of destruction and the murders which were
displayed at a Government conference room where they invited
ambassadors to ask them to pressure Israel to stop this war.
Thank you again for caring while the world is turning its back and
closing its eyes.
Yours Raida
___________
* Raida Hatoum was a founding member of the
Lebanon
IndyMedia organization in Beirut; is a volunteer active with
the Palestinian Solidarity networks working at the Shatila
refugee camp and with the Najdeh Association; member of the
group which published the Lebanese paper Al-Yasari (the
Leftist); and a committed Socialist.
Cyprus IndyMedia editorial collective
________
I
can hear the bombs as I write this: today, the 20th of July, is Day
8 of the Israeli war on Lebanon.