| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Defendario" |
| Date: |
01 Aug 2006 07:42:24 PM |
| Object: |
"My wife and children are injured, and we have nowhere to go." |
Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail
Monday, July 31, 2006
Returning from traveling to Sidon on Saturday, I was emotionally
exhausted, physically sick from what I saw.
The first hospital I visited with two photographer friends was the
largest in the south, Hamoudi Hospital. After asking permission, we were
taken to several rooms of patients there.
In the first room, I met 77 year-old Mousa Sif, an old man who sat on
the end of his bed, his eyes expressing a mixture of shock, fatigue,
grief and sadness. "The second day of the war the Israelis bombed my
home," he told me.
He, his family and several neighbors had gone to the UN building nearby
their home, seeking shelter, but the UN people sent them back to their home.
"We were bombed by the Israelis during our trip to the UN, then on our
way back home, several of the vehicles were hit," he told me wearily,
"Then they bombed our home. There were 15 of my family in our house, and
now many of them are dead."
In the next room I met an ambulance driver with one of his arms blown
off. Khuder Gazali, 36 years old, talked to me, his eyes fixed on mine,
almost never blinking -- from the shock, anger, and disbelief.
"Last Sunday people came to us and asked us to go help some people who'd
lost their legs when their home was bombed by the Israelis," he
explained of the events that took place in a small southern village, "We
found one of them, without legs, laying in a garden, so we tried to take
him to the nearest hospital."
On the way, an Apache helicopter rocketed his ambulance. The rocket took
off his arm before exploding behind him, critically injuring everyone in
back.
"So then another ambulance tried to reach us to rescue us, but it too
was rocketed by an Apache," he told me while gesturing with his one arm
and explaining that everyone in that ambulance was killed, "Then it was
a third ambulance which finally managed to rescue us."
He pointed to his shoulder, then at another patient who had ridden in
his ambulance laying in nearby bed, shrapnel wounds all over his body.
"This is a crime," said Khuder, "I want people in the west to know the
Israelis do not differentiate between innocent people and fighters. They
are committing acts of evil. They are attacking civilians and they are
criminals."
After visiting several more patients with similar stories of atrocities,
we found ourselves sitting out in front of the hospital, numb from the
experience.
"We can go to the other hospital now," our interpreter Ayman informed
us. So we loaded into our mini-bus and drove to the Labib Medical
Center, also in Sidon.
Unlike in so many of the hospitals in Beirut, the staff at Labib was
more than eager to show us their patients. They were desperate to get
the information out to the world. A kind nurse, Gemma Sayer, took us
around to each room.
The first person we met was a 16 year-old boy, Ibrahim Al-Hama. He lives
in a village just north of Tyre, and was swimming with 12 of his friends
in a river when they were hit by an Israeli rocket.
"Two of my friends were killed, along with a woman," the boy told us.
In the room next door, a father talked with us whose wife and two small
children, 5 year-old Hussien Jawad and 8 year-old Zayneb, looked on. One
of Hussein's legs was in a cast, while Zayneb had multiple injuries to
her body and butterfly stitches on the bridge of her nose.
They'd stayed in their village near the border during the first three
days of the bombing-but the bombs were getting so close they fled to
another village for eight days.
"We ran out of food, and the children were so hungry, so they left with
my wife and her sister in a car which followed a Red Crescent ambulance,
while another car took the two other sisters of my wife," he explained
sternly, "They reached Kafra village, and an F-16 bombed the car with my
wives two sisters. They are dead. And now you see my wife and children
are injured, and we have nowhere to go."
I could fill pages with the other cases we saw, but this is already long
enough. I didn't sleep well last night, and still feel sick inside. I
woke up Sunday and turned on Al-Jazeera, to watch bodies being pulled
from the wreckage of a shelter in the southern city of Qana which was
bombed by Israeli warplanes.
At least 21 children and dozens of other civilians are dead. Dozens
remain buried in the rubble. So far only three survivors have been
pulled from the wreckage.
The Israeli army rejected responsibility for the deaths, and said that
Hezbollah bore the blame because it used the village for launching rockets.
The same Qana where on April 11, 1996, the Israelis bombed a shelter in
a UN peacekeeping base, killing 102 and wounding 120.
--
Originally posted on Mother Jones website
<http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2006/07/among_hezbollah.html>
More writing, commentary, photography, pictures and images at http://dahrjamailiraq.com
.
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| User: "DoD" |
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| Title: Re: "My wife and children are injured, and we have nowhere to go." |
01 Aug 2006 08:08:32 PM |
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"Defendario" <Defendario@netscape.com> wrote in message
news:4jaatiF6obcoU1@individual.net...
<snip stupid *****>
"Here is the president of terror," proclaims a Hizballah propaganda film
montage on Al-Manar television, showing the face of President Bush alongside
an American flag. As faces of dead and wounded children appear on the
screen, crude pictures of bombs rain down on the pictures, all of them
labeled "MADE IN AMERICA."
President George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have now gained
"most wanted" criminal status on Hizballah's television station, as the
terrorist organization escalates its anti-American and anti-Semitic
propaganda. While Bush, Olmert, Israel, America, Jews, and most Westerners
have always been frowned on by Hizballah, the messages of hate have deepened
noticeably in the last week as Hizballah has come under greater military
pressure.
Hizballah's main propaganda arm, al-Manar television, has begun featuring
video clips of Olmert saying, "[W]e believe in our struggle because no
struggle is more moral." Out of nowhere, a Nazi swastika armband appears on
Olmert's right arm and, through the miracle of television, Olmert, whose
words are translated from Hebrew into Arabic, suddenly grows a Hitler-like
mustache.
Similarly, a Hizballah commentator, identified as "Professor Ramouda,"
offered this take on Israel: "Israel is not a country, but rather a military
base built on the principle of racism. They are using all the techniques
used by the Nazis."
To those who are familiar with Hizballah's television, radio and Internet
eructations, the charge of being a Nazi is somewhat out of charcter, because
Hizballah daily features its uniformed terrorists marching in Nazi-like
goose-step and using the familiar open-palm "zig-heil" salute. At the same
time, al-Manar screens a relentless barrage of anti-Semitic propaganda.
Two days before the deaths of 27 Lebanese in the collapse of a building-used
as a Hizballah rocket warehouse-al-Manar launched an unusually anti-Semitic
attack on Israel when a featured commentator claimed that Jews were
instructed to kill women and children. "What does their Torah say: it says
kill all men, women and children and even animals," said the Hizballah
commentator, Ghassan Matar, identified as a former member of the Lebanese
parliament. "That is what their Israeli Zionist god, their racist god
'Yahweh' orders them," sneered the gray-haired Matar, gesturing broadly with
his hands. Matar, who was wearing tinted eye glasses and a short-sleeved
yellow jacket, said that Israeli conquest of some villages in southern
Lebanon would not bring it victory.
Al-Manar is also known for broadcasting programs based on the "Protocols of
the Elders of Zion"-an anti-Semitic tract first developed by the Russian
Czars and then distributed by the Soviets.
The growing anti-Jewish and anti-American assaults on al-Manar may be
indicative of tension felt by Hizballah personnel in recent days. This would
explain why the anti-American message has also been escalated as Hizballah
emphasizes the "American role" in regional events, perhaps as an explanation
for why things have not gone as well as Hizballah hoped.
"Land is not the most important factor, but rather the spirit of the
people," declared a strategic commentator identified as Dr. Col. Amin
Akhtai, interviewed on the television station that until now has been
bragging about battlefield successes. Dr. Akhtai said that Hizballah was not
concerned about loss of terrain, because "perhaps the remaining terrain is
better suited for defense." Most telling about his remarks was the fact that
he prefaced them with a lengthy and uncharacteristic eulogy to "those heroes
who have become martyrs in the defense of Lebanon."
Israel regards al-Manar television as a potent propaganda force, but the IDF
has so far failed to knock it off the air though it has caused obvious
damage to Hizballah's broadcast product-interruptions and drops in the
quality of broadcasting. But Hizballah's propaganda is still potent, and it
is a complicated mix of psychological warfare, part of which is aimed at the
Lebanese population, part at the broader Arab audience, and partly at
Israelis, trying to demoralize them. There is still a bragging tone to much
of the Hizballah broadcasts-including phony claims of sinking two Israeli
missile boats and shooting down an Israeli fighter jet.
Still, there are many signs of Hizballah stress, including growing calls for
Arab aid, international intervention and ceasefire. Facing growing criticism
at home in Lebanon for the destruction of southern Lebanon, Hizballah is
also draping itself, literally, in Lebanese flags and Lebanese nationalism,
and pretending that it is looking out for Lebanese interests.
These messages of distress are beamed throughout the Arab world by Al-Manar'
s satellite broadcast, and many parallel messages are relayed by Al-Jazeera,
the Gulf-based satellite TV channel, that echoes Al-Manar's pan-Arab and
Pan-Islamic messages.
One suspects that the anti-American and anti-UN riots and demonstrations in
some Arab capitals have to do not so much with Arabs upset at pictures of
dead Lebanese civilians but rather with the increasing militant Arab outrage
as "the Arab street" begins to sense the truth: Hizballah still has some
rockets, but Israel has killed hundreds--over 400 by Israel's count--of
Hizballah's estimated 700 active fighters in southern Lebanon.
The Palestinian media and many Israeli Arabs have echoed Hizballah's
political messages, including the media of the Palestinian Authority (PA),
controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, which receives millions of dollars in American
aid. Nazir al-Ghul, anchorman of Voice of Palestine radio, began morning
broadcasts this week with a condemnation of American transfers of precision
laser-guided bombs to Israel.
The change in the Abbas regime's view of America is not unexpected, because
Abbas and his Fatah movement have-for more than a week, at least-been
supporting the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate
form of "resistance." A cartoon in the Abbas-controlled Fatah newspaper
Al-Hayat al-Jadida this week depicted an Arab holding up a bandaged hand in
a sign of victory in which the fingers were kidnapped Israeli soldiers.
The stridently anti-Israeli and anti-American attitude of the supposedly
moderate Abbas regime has been largely ignored or excused by Israeli policy
makers and Israeli army intelligence analysts (such as former intelligence
chief Aharon Ze'evi-Farkash) since Abbas publicly referred to Israel as "al'
udu al-sihyouni"-the Zionist enemy-during his election campaign a year and a
half ago.
For their part, the Palestinians make no attempt to hide their delight at
the deaths of Israelis in or near Lebanon. Al-Ayyam, a Palestinian paper
controlled by Abbas's Fatah movement, had a cartoon this week that showed an
explosive mine-shaped like Lebanon-waiting to blow up an Israeli naval
vessel. The largest Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds, which is also vetted by
Abbas and the PA, has featured several cartoons this week showing Israelis
burying themselves in a grave marked Lebanon or in quicksand marked Lebanon,
and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert being hung out to dry on a clothesline.
A similar message also appears on Al-Manar. "Notice how scared and confused
they are," noted a Hizballah commentator Friday afternoon to his colleague
as they reviewed films from Israeli television showing bloodied Israelis
against the background of destroyed buildings in Haifa and Nahariya Israel.
Both Palestinian and Hizballah criticism of American diplomatic support for
Israel is clear in cartoons in both the Lebanese and Palestinian press. Some
of these cartoons have a distinct racist or sexist tone, but one of the
tamer cartoons, below, shows Condoleeza Rice seeing the situation-the need
for a ceasefire-backwards through a telescope.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23632
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