Imagine you lived here
Israel continues its savage assault on the civilians of Lebanon, bombing apartment buildings, ambulances, construction vehicles, a milk production factory, a factory that produces cardboard boxes, roads, bridges, gas stations, power stations, grain silos, and oil depots.
Imagine you lived in this apartment building, or next to it, when Israel bombed it.
This is just one image in a series of photos. Be warned, some photos are quite graphic. Others are unbearably tragic.
Do these people look like terrorists to you?
This is not about “excessive force” or a “disproportionate response” by Israel. This is about the systematic destruction of an entire country. As Robert Fisk, who lives in Beirut, wrote on July 19:
They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis – in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside – tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties – 240 in all of Lebanon by last night – with Israel’s 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.
And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.
There is no equivalence between the actions of Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah operates entirely out of the control of the weak and powerless Lebanese government. Many Lebanese do not support Hezbollah, but there is nothing they can do about them.
Israel, on the other hand, is a nuclear superpower with a mighty army that knows fully the devastation it is wreaking on an innocent people. There are no words that properly describe these actions: war crimes, murder, unfettered aggression.
As innocents die in the explosions of American-manufactured missiles and bombs, Prime Minister Harper does nothing but voice support for Israel and arrange photo-ops. I am ashamed to be a Canadian today.
The Terrorists: Children and Old Women
A Lebanese boy in hospital.
With nowhere else to go, this woman has to sleep in a park.
[tags]Israel, Lebanon, war crimes[/tags]
July 21st, 2006 at 1:31 pm
The pictures are horrible. We all must work harder to get people together. I have a funny feeling that like in Darfour for many years people who knew about the missle build up in the South of Lebanon shruck their shoulders and hoped for the best.
Israel on the other hand had its first serious attacks since 1973. On a scale less, but very serious symbolically nevertheless in the light of similarly powerful allies the Hizbollah keeps.
The victims are civilians.
July 21st, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Yesterday I read an editorial in the post by Terrence Corcoran that suggested Lebanese-Canadians weren’t really Canadian – just Canadian by convenience. Clearly they only have citizenship so that when a foreign power invades, they have somewhere to seek refuge. Whatever happened to the Lebanese being friends? Disliking Syria, I can understand. Railing against Iran, sure. But Lebanon is hardly Axis of Evil material.
Nowadays it’s seems like if you’re against Israel, you’re for Hezbollah. What about being for Lebanon? I wouldn’t recommend them all for sainthood but a lot of them are doing their best to pull the country up by the bootstraps and this is not going to help in the slightest.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:57 am
According to the New York Times, the US is speeding up a delivery of bombs to Israel so it can keep bombing Lebanon: