Atlanta
Am in Atlanta..so cannot write much, but did see these articles that i thought were worth reading.
Check out this article from my cousin Sanjna in the NYT
Also this article by Robert Fisk in the Independent
07/14/06 "The Independent" -- -- All night I heard the jets, whispering high
above the Mediterranean. It lasted for hours, little fireflies that were
watching Beirut, waiting for dawn perhaps, because it was then that they
descended.
They came first to the little village of Dweir near Nabatiya in southern
Lebanon where an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on to the home of a Shia Muslim
cleric. He was killed. So was his wife. So were eight of his children. One was
decapitated. All they could find of a baby was its head and torso which a
young villager brandished in fury in front of the cameras. Then the planes
visited another home in Dweir and disposed of a family of seven.
It was a brisk start to Day Two of Israel's latest "war on terror", a
conflict that uses some of the same language - and a few of the same lies - as
George Bush's larger "war on terror". For just as we "degraded" Iraq - in 1991
as
well as 2003 - so yesterday it was Lebanon's turn to be "degraded".
That means not only physical death but economic death and it arrived at
Beirut's gleaming new £300m international airport just before 6am as passengers
prepared to board flights to London and Paris.
From my home, I heard the F-16 which suddenly appeared over the newest
runway and fired a spread of rockets into it, ripping up 20 metres of tarmac and
blasting tons of concrete into the air in a massive explosion before a
Hetz-class Israeli gunboat fired on to the other runways.
Two of Middle East Airlines' new Airbuses were left untouched but, within
minutes, the airport was deserted as passengers fled back to their homes and
hotels.
The flight indicators told the whole story: Paris no flight, London, no
flight, Cairo, no flight, Dubai, no flight, Baghdad - from the cauldron into the
fire if anyone had chosen to take it - no flight. Someone was playing "Don't
Cry For Me, Argentina" over the public address system.
Then the Israelis went for the Hizbollah television station, Al-Manar,
clipping off its antenna with a missile but failing to put the station off air.
That might be a more understandable target - "Manar", after all, broadcasts
Hizbollah propaganda. But was it really designed to find or recover the two
Israeli soldiers captured on Wednesday? Or to take revenge for the nine Israelis
killed in the same incident, one of the blackest days in recent Israeli Army
history although not as black as it was for the 36 Lebanese civilians killed
in the previous 24 hours.
An Israeli woman was also killed by a Hizbollah rocket fired into Israel.
So, in the grim exchange rate of these wretched conflicts, one Israeli death
equals just over three Lebanese; it's a fair bet the exchange rate will grow
more murderous.
And by afternoon, the threats had grown worse. Israel would not "sit idly
by". It ordered the entire population of the southern suburbs - home to
Hizbollah's headquarters - to flee their homes by 3pm.
Save for a few hundred families, they stubbornly refused to leave.
Everywhere in Lebanon could now be a target, the Israelis announced. If Israel
bombed
the suburbs, the Hizbollah roared, it would fire its long-range Katyushas at
the Israeli city of Haifa. One of them had apparently already damaged an
Israeli air base at Miron, a fact concealed at the time by Israeli censors.
It certainly frightened Lebanon's Gulf tourists who packed the roads from
Bhamdoun in their 4x4s, fleeing for the safety of Syria and flights home from
Damascus. Another little economic death for Lebanon.
But what did all this mean, this ranting and threatening? I sat at home in
the early afternoon, going through my files of Israeli statements. It turned
out that Israel had threatened not to "sit idly by" (or occasionally "stand
idly by") in Lebanon on at least six occasions in the past 26 years, most
famously when the late Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin promised that he
would not "stand idly by" while Christians were threatened here in 1980 - only
to
withdraw his soldiers and leave the Christians to their bloody fate three
years later.
The Lebanese are always left to their fate. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud
Olmert, says he holds the Lebanese government responsible for the attacks on
the border that breached the international frontier on Wednesday.
But Mr Olmert and everyone knows that the weak and fractious government of
the Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora isn't capable of controlling a
single militiaman, let alone the Hizbollah.
Yet wasn't this the same set of Lebanese political leaders congratulated by
the United States last year for its democratic elections and its freedom from
Syria? Indeed, a man who sees Bush as a friend - perhaps "saw" is a better
word - is Saad Hariri, son of the ex-Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri who
built much of the infrastructure that Israel is now destroying and whose
murder last year - by Syrian agents? - supposedly outraged Mr Bush.
Yesterday morning, Saad Hariri, the son, was flying into Beirut when
America's Israeli allies arrived to bomb the airport. He had to turn round as
his
aircraft skulked off to Cyprus for refuge.
But it was the undercurrent of terror-speak that was particularly
frightening yesterday.
Lebanon was an "axis of terror", Israel was "fighting terror on all fronts".
During the morning, I had to cut across an interview with an Australian
radio station when an Israeli reporter stated - totally untruthfully - that
there
were Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon and that not all Syria's troops
had left.
And so it is terror, terror, terror again and Lebanon is once more to be
depicted as the mythic terror centre of the Middle East along, I suppose with
Gaza. And the West Bank. And Syria. And, of course, Iraq. And Iran. And
Afghanistan. And who knows where next?
___________________________________________________________
Check out this article from my cousin Sanjna in the NYT
Also this article by Robert Fisk in the Independent
07/14/06 "The Independent" -- -- All night I heard the jets, whispering high
above the Mediterranean. It lasted for hours, little fireflies that were
watching Beirut, waiting for dawn perhaps, because it was then that they
descended.
They came first to the little village of Dweir near Nabatiya in southern
Lebanon where an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on to the home of a Shia Muslim
cleric. He was killed. So was his wife. So were eight of his children. One was
decapitated. All they could find of a baby was its head and torso which a
young villager brandished in fury in front of the cameras. Then the planes
visited another home in Dweir and disposed of a family of seven.
It was a brisk start to Day Two of Israel's latest "war on terror", a
conflict that uses some of the same language - and a few of the same lies - as
George Bush's larger "war on terror". For just as we "degraded" Iraq - in 1991
as
well as 2003 - so yesterday it was Lebanon's turn to be "degraded".
That means not only physical death but economic death and it arrived at
Beirut's gleaming new £300m international airport just before 6am as passengers
prepared to board flights to London and Paris.
From my home, I heard the F-16 which suddenly appeared over the newest
runway and fired a spread of rockets into it, ripping up 20 metres of tarmac and
blasting tons of concrete into the air in a massive explosion before a
Hetz-class Israeli gunboat fired on to the other runways.
Two of Middle East Airlines' new Airbuses were left untouched but, within
minutes, the airport was deserted as passengers fled back to their homes and
hotels.
The flight indicators told the whole story: Paris no flight, London, no
flight, Cairo, no flight, Dubai, no flight, Baghdad - from the cauldron into the
fire if anyone had chosen to take it - no flight. Someone was playing "Don't
Cry For Me, Argentina" over the public address system.
Then the Israelis went for the Hizbollah television station, Al-Manar,
clipping off its antenna with a missile but failing to put the station off air.
That might be a more understandable target - "Manar", after all, broadcasts
Hizbollah propaganda. But was it really designed to find or recover the two
Israeli soldiers captured on Wednesday? Or to take revenge for the nine Israelis
killed in the same incident, one of the blackest days in recent Israeli Army
history although not as black as it was for the 36 Lebanese civilians killed
in the previous 24 hours.
An Israeli woman was also killed by a Hizbollah rocket fired into Israel.
So, in the grim exchange rate of these wretched conflicts, one Israeli death
equals just over three Lebanese; it's a fair bet the exchange rate will grow
more murderous.
And by afternoon, the threats had grown worse. Israel would not "sit idly
by". It ordered the entire population of the southern suburbs - home to
Hizbollah's headquarters - to flee their homes by 3pm.
Save for a few hundred families, they stubbornly refused to leave.
Everywhere in Lebanon could now be a target, the Israelis announced. If Israel
bombed
the suburbs, the Hizbollah roared, it would fire its long-range Katyushas at
the Israeli city of Haifa. One of them had apparently already damaged an
Israeli air base at Miron, a fact concealed at the time by Israeli censors.
It certainly frightened Lebanon's Gulf tourists who packed the roads from
Bhamdoun in their 4x4s, fleeing for the safety of Syria and flights home from
Damascus. Another little economic death for Lebanon.
But what did all this mean, this ranting and threatening? I sat at home in
the early afternoon, going through my files of Israeli statements. It turned
out that Israel had threatened not to "sit idly by" (or occasionally "stand
idly by") in Lebanon on at least six occasions in the past 26 years, most
famously when the late Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin promised that he
would not "stand idly by" while Christians were threatened here in 1980 - only
to
withdraw his soldiers and leave the Christians to their bloody fate three
years later.
The Lebanese are always left to their fate. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud
Olmert, says he holds the Lebanese government responsible for the attacks on
the border that breached the international frontier on Wednesday.
But Mr Olmert and everyone knows that the weak and fractious government of
the Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora isn't capable of controlling a
single militiaman, let alone the Hizbollah.
Yet wasn't this the same set of Lebanese political leaders congratulated by
the United States last year for its democratic elections and its freedom from
Syria? Indeed, a man who sees Bush as a friend - perhaps "saw" is a better
word - is Saad Hariri, son of the ex-Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri who
built much of the infrastructure that Israel is now destroying and whose
murder last year - by Syrian agents? - supposedly outraged Mr Bush.
Yesterday morning, Saad Hariri, the son, was flying into Beirut when
America's Israeli allies arrived to bomb the airport. He had to turn round as
his
aircraft skulked off to Cyprus for refuge.
But it was the undercurrent of terror-speak that was particularly
frightening yesterday.
Lebanon was an "axis of terror", Israel was "fighting terror on all fronts".
During the morning, I had to cut across an interview with an Australian
radio station when an Israeli reporter stated - totally untruthfully - that
there
were Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon and that not all Syria's troops
had left.
And so it is terror, terror, terror again and Lebanon is once more to be
depicted as the mythic terror centre of the Middle East along, I suppose with
Gaza. And the West Bank. And Syria. And, of course, Iraq. And Iran. And
Afghanistan. And who knows where next?
___________________________________________________________
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