I'm crying as I write this article. I am so saddened and disgusted and outraged by what is going on that I can barely see my monitor while I type.
I can't believe that the US, formerly a force for peace in the Middle East, would condone ongoing hostilities.
I just cannot believe that my Prime Minister could condone the atrocities that I am reading about today. We all bear responsibility for allowing this to go on.
What set me off today is an article by a
reporter in Beirut. Hanady talks about his daily routine (I'm presuming he's male, I could be wrong), working 14 hrs a day to report what is happening, sheltering relatives who have fled southern Lebanon, comforting his young daughter who doesn't understand what is going on and why relatives have taken refuge in the mountains.
Hanady posts pictures of charred victims of Israeli weapons and asks if we can identify the type of weapons used, because the corpses look "weird."
I look because I can't stop myself from looking. I am looking for my friend, hopefully as a medic, fearfully as a victim but I don't think I would recognise him among the charred, bloated, burned, dismembered or dusty bodies shown in the photos. I don't know what weapons were used but maybe it's white phosphorus, an illegal weapon that produced many charred corpses in Iraq.
Lebanese deaths outnumber Israeli deaths ten to one. Why is that? Why are so many civilians, including many children, dying in Lebanon?
Here's an explanation:
Lebanon posed no threat to Israel's security. The comical Katyusha rockets may have killed a handful of Israelis (which is regrettable) but their military value is nil. Once they are fired, no one knows where they will land. Yesterday an errant Katyusha killed 2 Palestinians in Nazareth. Was that part of Nasrallah's plan?
There's no comparison between Hezbollah's glorified fireworks and the high-tech, laser-guided, state-of-the-art weaponry wielded by the Israeli war machine. Lebanon is a case-study of the lethal efficiency of modern WMD and their astonishing ability to reduce a bustling metropolis into Dresden-like wreckage in a matter of days. It is truly an incalculable disaster.
This article also comments about the scale of destruction in Lebanon wrought by Israeli missiles. Israel says that Hezbollah plants its weapons in residential neighbourhoods, that it is Hezbollah's fault that civilians are being killed. Can Hezbollah really hide weapons at so many civilian sites, and can Israel really be certain of so many Hezbollah targets?
Why would Israel bomb Lebanon's pharmaceutical factories, grain silos and water processing plants?
Why would they attack the mosques, hospitals and a Greek Orthodox Church?
Why would they flatten Lebanon's largest milk factory?
Is Hezbollah in the dairy business?
This article actually goes on to recommend that Lebanon arm itself. "Lebanon needs a credible deterrent to Israeli aggression. It cannot simply reemerge Phoenix-like every decade or so following another rampage by the Mongol hordes from the south."
Bloody hell.
This war will just keep escalating on both sides because the leader with the most influence on Israel, George W. Bush will not say "Stop the hostilities NOW."
To the US and Canada, it doesn't matter that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says that the first step is to call for a ceasefire on both sides and then work at dealing with the issues, like freeing the kidnapped Israeli soldiers.
It doesn't matter to Israel that Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says "that the shelling of cities was an 'unacceptable targeting of civilians,' and stressed that international law demands accountability." Louise Arbour is saying that Israel is committing war crimes.
Don't civilized people care about war crimes any more?
What the hell is going on in the world? What will it take to stop this insanity?
I don't want to debate who started it or who is more in the wrong because it's like peeling an onion, for every event you can peel back a layer and find an antecedent cause.
The right thing to do right now is for everyone to stop fighting and let the best diplomats and negotiators work with everyone involved and find a path towards a lasting peace.
Cross-posted at The Next Agenda. Update [2006-7-23 12:5:55 by Thursday Next]: I just added a link that would explain who my friend is in Lebanon and what he's going through and I realised that I missed a sentence when I transcribed the diary so put it back in.