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Merhi Rima: The world has to stop this slaughter if a democratic Lebanon is to have a future
Where are America and Britain now that we need them? Not that they listened to us last July, when I testified to the US Congress on the aspirations of the youth of Lebanon for national reform. I remember the moment when I cried out in sheer frustration: "Hizbollah, Hizbollah, Hizbollah - there is more to Lebanon than Hizbollah!"
Apparently not, at least not for Israel and the United States. "There is a limit to how far the Lebanese are willing to forgo their security and stability for the sake of reform," I told Congress. The tragic massacre at Qana yesterday is a clear demonstration to the US and the world of Israel's "measured response".
In complete disgust, I listened to one speaker yesterday on the BBC make the offensively racist remark that "Israelis are raised in a more human way than Arabs" while urging Lebanese mothers to not allow Hizbollah to use them as human shields. If she was a mother she would know that no mother in the world would risk her own child's life for any purpose in the world. In the name of "reform", "democracy" and "the war against terror", Israel, backed by the US, has led my country into destruction and my people into a humanitarian crisis. We are numb with despair on hearing Israel admit it is nowhere near achieving its military objectives against Hizbollah! Israel's responsibility does not begin and end with the security of its people, so long as it is party to conventions and treaties on international and humanitarian law.
No one will dispute that Israel is no more secure today than it was 19 days ago. Both Israel and Hizbollah have been accused of war crimes and must be tried by the international community at large. The whole world is outraged by Israel's disproportionate response. The attack on UN premises in Beirut yesterday morning is a desperate cry for help in a world where we feel abandoned by the international community at large, including our Arab neighbours.
With the support of my colleagues and professors, I made a speech on Lebanon at Oxford University last week. I was secretly amused to note that some colleagues may have had the illusion that Hizbollah is a terrorist dressed in black carrying a bomb and living every minute of every day with the sole intent of destroying Israel and the US.
I dread to think that many Israelis and Americans, among others, cannot see that the vast majority of Arabs simply call for respect of the Palestinian cause, while sharing the same humanity, dreams, fears and expectations for a lasting peace. I notice that the western media fails to inform the public of the underprivileged Shia living in abysmal conditions in the south of Lebanon, who are loyal to Hizbollah for no more than their bread and butter.
Last year, through democratic elections, the Lebanese government awarded 14 seats to Hizbollah in an attempt to integrate this isolated Shia community into the mainstream and build their allegiance to the Lebanese state. I reminded my colleagues that Hizbollah was established in 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the 18-year occupation of the south of Lebanon that granted Hizbollah the legitimacy to continue their operations against Israel on the Lebanese-Israeli border. When Israel withdrew from the south of Lebanon in 2000, conditions for a sustainable peace were not met. The Lebanese government urged the international community to no avail to empower it to disarm Hizbollah by resolving the dispute over the Sheba farms and the safe return of not two but hundreds of prisoners of war who have been thrown in Israeli prisons for more than 20 years.
More
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1205999.ece
In complete disgust, I listened to one speaker yesterday on the BBC make the offensively racist remark that "Israelis are raised in a more human way than Arabs" while urging Lebanese mothers to not allow Hizbollah to use them as human shields. If she was a mother she would know that no mother in the world would risk her own child's life for any purpose in the world. In the name of "reform", "democracy" and "the war against terror", Israel, backed by the US, has led my country into destruction and my people into a humanitarian crisis. We are numb with despair on hearing Israel admit it is nowhere near achieving its military objectives against Hizbollah! Israel's responsibility does not begin and end with the security of its people, so long as it is party to conventions and treaties on international and humanitarian law.
No one will dispute that Israel is no more secure today than it was 19 days ago. Both Israel and Hizbollah have been accused of war crimes and must be tried by the international community at large. The whole world is outraged by Israel's disproportionate response. The attack on UN premises in Beirut yesterday morning is a desperate cry for help in a world where we feel abandoned by the international community at large, including our Arab neighbours.
With the support of my colleagues and professors, I made a speech on Lebanon at Oxford University last week. I was secretly amused to note that some colleagues may have had the illusion that Hizbollah is a terrorist dressed in black carrying a bomb and living every minute of every day with the sole intent of destroying Israel and the US.
I dread to think that many Israelis and Americans, among others, cannot see that the vast majority of Arabs simply call for respect of the Palestinian cause, while sharing the same humanity, dreams, fears and expectations for a lasting peace. I notice that the western media fails to inform the public of the underprivileged Shia living in abysmal conditions in the south of Lebanon, who are loyal to Hizbollah for no more than their bread and butter.
Last year, through democratic elections, the Lebanese government awarded 14 seats to Hizbollah in an attempt to integrate this isolated Shia community into the mainstream and build their allegiance to the Lebanese state. I reminded my colleagues that Hizbollah was established in 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the 18-year occupation of the south of Lebanon that granted Hizbollah the legitimacy to continue their operations against Israel on the Lebanese-Israeli border. When Israel withdrew from the south of Lebanon in 2000, conditions for a sustainable peace were not met. The Lebanese government urged the international community to no avail to empower it to disarm Hizbollah by resolving the dispute over the Sheba farms and the safe return of not two but hundreds of prisoners of war who have been thrown in Israeli prisons for more than 20 years.
More
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1205999.ece
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Many Lebanese bloggers describe the attacks as Qana II, in reference to the Israeli shelling of the village in 1996 that killed more than 100 people.
Today on 12manypeaches.com, there is a collection of photographs from Qana showing the terrible aftermath of the latest attacks. One of the site's authors, Bob, describes the phone call he had with a friend yesterday when he found out about the attacks:
"They did it again." She told me, they did it again, 54 civilians 26 of them babies, this is so barbaric. It is Qana she said, it is Qana, and in an instant my mind went back 10 years. When a mention of Qana comes up it is always associated with the word massacre in Lebanon, for no one forgot or will ever forget the horrendous massacre the Israelis committed in their so called Operation Grapes of Wrath in 1996 where they shelled a UN base where 106 people were killed, again most of them were children. The gruesome images of the brutality of the Israeli killing machine will be hardly wiped out of any Lebanese brains, and I say only Lebanese because honestly we have lost hope and faith in any other nation. So this time again they hit Qana, the holy place where Jesus turned water to wine, and the people of this village are destined to suffer, just like Jesus did, for the greater good.
Read More
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/07/31/they_did_it_again.html#more
"The arrows are all pointing in the wrong direction," Richard N. Haass, who was President George W. Bush's first-term State Department policy planning director, told The Washington Post on Monday, July31 .
He warned that the "daily drumbeat of suffering" in Lebanon and the heart-breaking images of children killed in the Qana massacre is alienating Arabs.
Experts believe this policy would create a new generation of Arab youth perceiving Americans as enemies, leaving the US more isolated than at any time since the Iraq invasion three years ago.
"The biggest danger in the short run is it just increases frustration and alienation from the United States in the Arab world…this will just drive up anti-Americanism to new heights."
The US is coming under rebuke at the popular and official levels for opposing an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon even after the Qana carnage.
Up to 60 civilians, including 37 children, were killed Sunday, July30 , in a deadly Israeli air strike on the southern Lebanese village.
The deadly attack triggered a storm of worldwide condemnations and demands for an immediate ceasefire, something the UN Security Council failed to call for over American opposition.
More
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2006-07/31/02.shtml