August 22nd, 2006
by Ramzi Kysia
Last week, I made my first trip to South Lebanon since the war began. Having traveled a fifth of the world, and been present during “wars” in Iraq, Palestine, and New York – I can honestly say that I have never seen such complete devastation in my entire life. The only thing that even comes close are the pictures I’ve seen from World War II. Much of South Lebanon simply lies in ruin.
In the South, Israeli warplanes occasionally break the sound barrier, rattling people as they fly off on God knows what missions. Israeli drones constantly fly overhead. The low, insistent hum of their engines serves as a continual reminder that Lebanon is not yet safe.
Bombed out gas stations and the twisted, blackened remains of what once were cars line the roads. The roads themselves are a wreck, pockmarked with craters and covered by fallen bridges, in places completely impassable. There are miles of roads lined with chalk-colored vegetation, so covered are they from the dust of destroyed buildings that you can see no green whatsoever. Almost every single city and village throughout South Lebanon has significant war damage. Almost every single one. The dead are still being pulled from the rubble.
In Qantara, a village of some three hundred and fifty families, twenty-five homes are destroyed, and another fifty seriously damaged. A man passes out pictures of his fifteen year old son in barely controlled panic. He hasn’t seen the boy for nearly a month.
In Sriefa, three entire blocks of homes are smashed to ground. Other buildings and shops throughout the town are bombed and destroyed. Women walk the streets, sobbing.
In Sultanya, dozens of homes are destroyed. The local hospital lies bombed and gutted by fire. The house I stayed at in the village has three unexploded cluster bombs in its garden.
Bint Jbeil, a city of over eighty thousand people, is completely shattered. Much of the city is simply rubble, but even what’s left standing is damaged. The entire back wall of the three-story primary school is just gone. The city center is barely passable to cars, so cratered are the roads. I literally did not see a single building in all of Bint Jbeil without serious damage. Not one. Not a one.
In Siddiqine, block after block of residential neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. From over three-hundred multi-story homes and buildings, nothing larger than a breadbasket remains. I met a man wandering through the wreckage who gave a short, sardonic laugh when he found out I was an American. “Here is the democracy,” he said, pointing at the ruins, “here is the freedom.” Then his eyes teared up, as he told me that he couldn’t even figure out where his house used to stand.
This wasn’t a war against Hezbollah, with some collateral damage on the side. This was a war against the basic structures necessary to sustain civilians in South Lebanon. This was a war against the basic structures of human life.
But there are Lebanese who will not let that happen.
During the war, a coalition of Lebanese educators, engineers, architects, merchants, health care workers, NGO workers, students, and others, came together under banner of Civil Resistance - the Arabic phrase for non-violent direct action. Our founding statement of purpose began with the words, “We, the people of Lebanon, call upon the local and international community to join a campaign of civil resistance to Israel’s war against our country and our people. We declare Lebanon an open country for civil resistance.”
During the war we organized a fifty-two car convoy to take needed relief supplies from Beirut to the South, disregarding the Israeli ban on traveling in our own country. We were stopped by internal, Lebanese politics – something we are going to make sure does not happen again. Today, Lebanon is united in resistance to war.
Today, we are organizing a nation-wide petition demanding that the Lebanese government expel Jeffery Feldman, the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, as a threat to peace.
Today, we are organizing to provide direct assistance to communities in need throughout South Lebanon.
In just the past, few days we’ve organized solidarity missions to Qantara and Selaa. In Selaa, short hours before the ceasefire took effect, Israel destroyed thirty-five homes, killing at least eight people, and shutting off running water to the entire community.
We organized a mission to Selaa, building connections with civic leaders in the village. With donated funds from across Lebanon, we purchased a suction pump and water storage tanks for the villagers. We distributed food, donated clothes, children’s toys, and sanitary supplies. We located a doctor willing to come to the village to provide free medical exams, and helped fill needed prescriptions. Since the phone lines are down in the village, we contacted the Lebanese Army on their behalf to request assistance in removing unexploded bombs from the area.
As time goes on, we will maintain and deepen our ties to Selaa, Qantara, and other villages we are able to help, shifting from providing direct relief to other work, such as restoring schools and organizing cultural events. We will not give up.
We are not alone. Samidoun, another grassroots Lebanese coalition, is assisting three, other villages in South Lebanon. As we do our work in the South, we hear of other such coalitions, other such campaigns.
Abid Na’im lost his sixty-five year old father in the bombing of Selaa. There was barely enough left of the remains to bury but, despite his grief, Abid summed up the spirit of Lebanon today when he told us, “It’s impossible to beat the people. You can destroy the stones, you can destroy the homes – but you can’t destroy the people.”
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Short Update
Since arriving on the 11th of August in Beirut I have been busy in grassroots efforts to both bring relief to those whose lives have been shattered by this war as well as work with local Lebanese folks interested in civil resistance. International solidarity, especially of Americans, has been key in making the vital links between those of us from the country who funds and build arms and those of us who suffer under their terror. The link created between us is not very unlike the work I do at home with my community and with the educational and social transformation initiatives I have been a part of as a member of Word and World.
Having a presence here in Lebanon has only served to heighten my awareness of the great work of building relationships with one another in which we find creative initiatives and alternatives to the systems that perpetuate poverty and militarism. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to be in a "circle of witness" throughout the last several years that shaped and formed my faithful commitment to justice. With that being said I can only offer my experience here as a lens into which more people may understand this conflict and our place in it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any way and so I hope that what I may offer can be useful. Apologies for my inexperience aside, what I have seen here has shaken me to the very core.
The day that Kathy and I arrived in Beirut the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had dropped leaflets all over central Beirut warning that bombings might occur even in the centre of town where the government buildings and universities (like the well known, American University of Beirut) reside - which are not in any way strongholds of the Hezbollah resistance. For me this was proof that this war was not only about "rooting out terrorism" but perhaps Israel had multiply motivations.
The other point that dropping leaflets in downtown Beirut proved was that Israel believed it could get away with bombing people and places that traditionally would be "off-limits"; in other words international law (which my country has adopted as their law but very seldomly abides by) which was designed to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure does not apply in this war or at least Israel could break this law, commit war crimes and get away with it. We saw other examples of this gross abuse of power in Southern Lebanon when we heard of United Nations convoys attempting to bring aid or to safely transfer refugees from harm in the South were bombed, killing UN aid workers and Lebanese civilians - many "legitimate" news agencies covered such stories if you would like more "proof" this example visit the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera etc.
What the example helps to provide is a lens into which we all might get an idea of the measure of this war upon those that do not have any power: the impoverish, mostly Shiite Arabs of Southern Lebanon. These are the very people who bore the brunt of this war (and several others in the past) and whose lives have been devastated. Last week, Kathy Kelly, Ramzi Kysia, Michael Birmingham and I visited several villages in the South of Lebanon. We were given a list of places where massacres of civilians has taken place. We wanted to visit these places to mourn with the dead, learn what we could about how this war had affected the lives of the survivors and get an idea of what the impact of the war had been upon the people, land and infrastructure of Southern Lebanon. Of all the villages we drove through (not even just the places we stopped in) not one was sparred from bombing.
Not one.
What we did notice in town after town was that the majority of places bombed were homes, schools, petrol stations, and small corner stores or shops. International law, and more specifically the Geneva Conventions, provides the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. The Fourth Convention sets the standards of how a military is to deal with civilian populations in times of war. Israel ratified the four Conventions in 1951, the United States in 1955 - neither of which held any reservations or declarations upon signing the treaty that would absent them from the provisions provided for civilians in a time of war, therefore they have full responsibility not only to uphold the law, but we as citizens of these countries have a responsibility to hold our governments accountable to the laws which they have adopted and swore to protect.
It isn't a new story that these countries have not and will not abide but such laws, but if we refuse to hold them accountable and our governments refuse to adhere to these sorts of laws than the more pertinent question may be why we have such laws at all? And what would become of our world if these laws did not restrict the arms of greed and power?
----
Visiting villages in the South was useful for me to understand better how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon. In my response to my friend Jeremy I tried to help provide a lens into which we may reshape how we view Hezbollah - not to be fair to them, but to help us to understand that not all "terror" groups are the same or operate similarly to those we hear most often in the news about. Today in the New York Times there is an article about how aid is being given out in Lebanon and how many aid organizations are having trouble giving aid that doesn't pass through the hands of Hezbollah. When Michael and I visited Sanayeh Park before the ceasefire we met Hassan Fattah, one of the journalists who wrote this story in the NY Times, and he seemed like a descent enough guy so here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/world/middleeast/23lebanon.html?hp&ex=1156392000&en=b62857e857a7b28a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
When our group of Voices visited Bint Jbail we met an engineering professor, originally from Bint Jbail, but now living and working in Beirut who told us "there is no difference between the people of the South and Hezbollah they are the same."
Although in a technical sense this is not exactly true, the more important understand that his statement provides is the fact that Hezbollah works as a resistance movement, not as a terrorist cell for Shiites in the South. Hezbollah doesn't travel to other countries, training suicide bombers to kill indiscriminately - it believes it works to provide basic needs and defense to all Lebanese people, especially groups in the South. Interestingly enough, Hezbollah has asked for the unity of all groups in Lebanon to "defend our homeland and rebuild" which immediately points to Hezbollah's, at least politically, intolerance of sectarian division. Kathy. Michael and I noticed this one evening walking back to our hostel from long hours of meeting with the group we have joined here. We noticed that Hezbollah seems to be in favor of defending anyone who is Lebanese, from the most conservative, anti-western, southern Shiite to the leftist, secular, bar-hoping yuppie. Reporters staying in our hostel visited the school Hezbollah has taken as an office in Dahiyeh to provide relief to folks whose houses and property has been destroyed, and they told us that anyone who has some sort of proof that their residence was destroyed may visit this school and receive the promised $12,000 in cash Hezbollah is providing for relief. The journalists watched as stacks of hundred dollar bills were handed out to families with the promise that the rebuilding of their houses will also be provided in the weeks ahead. After hearing stories of the difficulty of folks to receive money from the government after Hurricane Katrina, Hezbollah certainly seems to be providing the means to restore broken lives in more effective ways than our own country even if it was a main actor in causing the conflict to begin with.
Tomorrow I hope to visit Eit eh Shab, a town on the border between Lebanon and Israel where our small group of Lebanese young people hope to help villagers set up generators and water pumps. I hope to have some more reports to post soon.
A quick (and yet inadequate) Thank You to all of you who provided money and means for my travel here. Visiting villages in the South, and talking with families there has given me the opportunity to provide small amounts of relief to different individuals trying to put their lives, homes and businesses back together - your donations have helped a few families greatly and soon I hope to have a report (with pictures) of individuals your labor has helped.
Love and prayers for peace,
Farah Marie
UNIFIL 5000 bombs a day
153,000 bombs in 43 days
10% are cluster bomb munifitions
15,000 cluster bombs packets - each carries 88
300,000 bombs lying around the south
Having a presence here in Lebanon has only served to heighten my awareness of the great work of building relationships with one another in which we find creative initiatives and alternatives to the systems that perpetuate poverty and militarism. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to be in a "circle of witness" throughout the last several years that shaped and formed my faithful commitment to justice. With that being said I can only offer my experience here as a lens into which more people may understand this conflict and our place in it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any way and so I hope that what I may offer can be useful. Apologies for my inexperience aside, what I have seen here has shaken me to the very core.
The day that Kathy and I arrived in Beirut the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had dropped leaflets all over central Beirut warning that bombings might occur even in the centre of town where the government buildings and universities (like the well known, American University of Beirut) reside - which are not in any way strongholds of the Hezbollah resistance. For me this was proof that this war was not only about "rooting out terrorism" but perhaps Israel had multiply motivations.
The other point that dropping leaflets in downtown Beirut proved was that Israel believed it could get away with bombing people and places that traditionally would be "off-limits"; in other words international law (which my country has adopted as their law but very seldomly abides by) which was designed to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure does not apply in this war or at least Israel could break this law, commit war crimes and get away with it. We saw other examples of this gross abuse of power in Southern Lebanon when we heard of United Nations convoys attempting to bring aid or to safely transfer refugees from harm in the South were bombed, killing UN aid workers and Lebanese civilians - many "legitimate" news agencies covered such stories if you would like more "proof" this example visit the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera etc.
What the example helps to provide is a lens into which we all might get an idea of the measure of this war upon those that do not have any power: the impoverish, mostly Shiite Arabs of Southern Lebanon. These are the very people who bore the brunt of this war (and several others in the past) and whose lives have been devastated. Last week, Kathy Kelly, Ramzi Kysia, Michael Birmingham and I visited several villages in the South of Lebanon. We were given a list of places where massacres of civilians has taken place. We wanted to visit these places to mourn with the dead, learn what we could about how this war had affected the lives of the survivors and get an idea of what the impact of the war had been upon the people, land and infrastructure of Southern Lebanon. Of all the villages we drove through (not even just the places we stopped in) not one was sparred from bombing.
Not one.
What we did notice in town after town was that the majority of places bombed were homes, schools, petrol stations, and small corner stores or shops. International law, and more specifically the Geneva Conventions, provides the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. The Fourth Convention sets the standards of how a military is to deal with civilian populations in times of war. Israel ratified the four Conventions in 1951, the United States in 1955 - neither of which held any reservations or declarations upon signing the treaty that would absent them from the provisions provided for civilians in a time of war, therefore they have full responsibility not only to uphold the law, but we as citizens of these countries have a responsibility to hold our governments accountable to the laws which they have adopted and swore to protect.
It isn't a new story that these countries have not and will not abide but such laws, but if we refuse to hold them accountable and our governments refuse to adhere to these sorts of laws than the more pertinent question may be why we have such laws at all? And what would become of our world if these laws did not restrict the arms of greed and power?
----
Visiting villages in the South was useful for me to understand better how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon. In my response to my friend Jeremy I tried to help provide a lens into which we may reshape how we view Hezbollah - not to be fair to them, but to help us to understand that not all "terror" groups are the same or operate similarly to those we hear most often in the news about. Today in the New York Times there is an article about how aid is being given out in Lebanon and how many aid organizations are having trouble giving aid that doesn't pass through the hands of Hezbollah. When Michael and I visited Sanayeh Park before the ceasefire we met Hassan Fattah, one of the journalists who wrote this story in the NY Times, and he seemed like a descent enough guy so here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/world/middleeast/23lebanon.html?hp&ex=1156392000&en=b62857e857a7b28a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
When our group of Voices visited Bint Jbail we met an engineering professor, originally from Bint Jbail, but now living and working in Beirut who told us "there is no difference between the people of the South and Hezbollah they are the same."
Although in a technical sense this is not exactly true, the more important understand that his statement provides is the fact that Hezbollah works as a resistance movement, not as a terrorist cell for Shiites in the South. Hezbollah doesn't travel to other countries, training suicide bombers to kill indiscriminately - it believes it works to provide basic needs and defense to all Lebanese people, especially groups in the South. Interestingly enough, Hezbollah has asked for the unity of all groups in Lebanon to "defend our homeland and rebuild" which immediately points to Hezbollah's, at least politically, intolerance of sectarian division. Kathy. Michael and I noticed this one evening walking back to our hostel from long hours of meeting with the group we have joined here. We noticed that Hezbollah seems to be in favor of defending anyone who is Lebanese, from the most conservative, anti-western, southern Shiite to the leftist, secular, bar-hoping yuppie. Reporters staying in our hostel visited the school Hezbollah has taken as an office in Dahiyeh to provide relief to folks whose houses and property has been destroyed, and they told us that anyone who has some sort of proof that their residence was destroyed may visit this school and receive the promised $12,000 in cash Hezbollah is providing for relief. The journalists watched as stacks of hundred dollar bills were handed out to families with the promise that the rebuilding of their houses will also be provided in the weeks ahead. After hearing stories of the difficulty of folks to receive money from the government after Hurricane Katrina, Hezbollah certainly seems to be providing the means to restore broken lives in more effective ways than our own country even if it was a main actor in causing the conflict to begin with.
Tomorrow I hope to visit Eit eh Shab, a town on the border between Lebanon and Israel where our small group of Lebanese young people hope to help villagers set up generators and water pumps. I hope to have some more reports to post soon.
A quick (and yet inadequate) Thank You to all of you who provided money and means for my travel here. Visiting villages in the South, and talking with families there has given me the opportunity to provide small amounts of relief to different individuals trying to put their lives, homes and businesses back together - your donations have helped a few families greatly and soon I hope to have a report (with pictures) of individuals your labor has helped.
Love and prayers for peace,
Farah Marie
UNIFIL 5000 bombs a day
153,000 bombs in 43 days
10% are cluster bomb munifitions
15,000 cluster bombs packets - each carries 88
300,000 bombs lying around the south
Short Update
Since arriving on the 11th of August in Beirut I have been busy in grassroots efforts to both bring relief to those whose lives have been shattered by this war as well as work with local Lebanese folks interested in civil resistance. International solidarity, especially of Americans, has been key in making the vital links between those of us from the country who funds and build arms and those of us who suffer under their terror. The link created between us is not very unlike the work I do at home with my community and with the educational and social transformation initiatives I have been a part of as a member of Word and World.
Having a presence here in Lebanon has only served to heighten my awareness of the great work of building relationships with one another in which we find creative initiatives and alternatives to the systems that perpetuate poverty and militarism. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to be in a "circle of witness" throughout the last several years that shaped and formed my faithful commitment to justice. With that being said I can only offer my experience here as a lens into which more people may understand this conflict and our place in it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any way and so I hope that what I may offer can be useful. Apologies for my inexperience aside, what I have seen here has shaken me to the very core.
The day that Kathy and I arrived in Beirut the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had dropped leaflets all over central Beirut warning that bombings might occur even in the centre of town where the government buildings and universities (like the well known, American University of Beirut) reside - which are not in any way strongholds of the Hezbollah resistance. For me this was proof that this war was not only about "rooting out terrorism" but perhaps Israel had multiply motivations.
The other point that dropping leaflets in downtown Beirut proved was that Israel believed it could get away with bombing people and places that traditionally would be "off-limits"; in other words international law (which my country has adopted as their law but very seldomly abides by) which was designed to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure does not apply in this war or at least Israel could break this law, commit war crimes and get away with it. We saw other examples of this gross abuse of power in Southern Lebanon when we heard of United Nations convoys attempting to bring aid or to safely transfer refugees from harm in the South were bombed, killing UN aid workers and Lebanese civilians - many "legitimate" news agencies covered such stories if you would like more "proof" this example visit the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera etc.
What the example helps to provide is a lens into which we all might get an idea of the measure of this war upon those that do not have any power: the impoverish, mostly Shiite Arabs of Southern Lebanon. These are the very people who bore the brunt of this war (and several others in the past) and whose lives have been devastated. Last week, Kathy Kelly, Ramzi Kysia, Michael Birmingham and I visited several villages in the South of Lebanon. We were given a list of places where massacres of civilians has taken place. We wanted to visit these places to mourn with the dead, learn what we could about how this war had affected the lives of the survivors and get an idea of what the impact of the war had been upon the people, land and infrastructure of Southern Lebanon. Of all the villages we drove through (not even just the places we stopped in) not one was sparred from bombing.
Not one.
What we did notice in town after town was that the majority of places bombed were homes, schools, petrol stations, and small corner stores or shops. International law, and more specifically the Geneva Conventions, provides the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. The Fourth Convention sets the standards of how a military is to deal with civilian populations in times of war. Israel ratified the four Conventions in 1951, the United States in 1955 - neither of which held any reservations or declarations upon signing the treaty that would absent them from the provisions provided for civilians in a time of war, therefore they have full responsibility not only to uphold the law, but we as citizens of these countries have a responsibility to hold our governments accountable to the laws which they have adopted and swore to protect.
It isn't a new story that these countries have not and will not abide but such laws, but if we refuse to hold them accountable and our governments refuse to adhere to these sorts of laws than the more pertinent question may be why we have such laws at all? And what would become of our world if these laws did not restrict the arms of greed and power?
----
Visiting villages in the South was useful for me to understand better how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon. In my response to my friend Jeremy I tried to help provide a lens into which we may reshape how we view Hezbollah - not to be fair to them, but to help us to understand that not all "terror" groups are the same or operate similarly to those we hear most often in the news about. Today in the New York Times there is an article about how aid is being given out in Lebanon and how many aid organizations are having trouble giving aid that doesn't pass through the hands of Hezbollah. When Michael and I visited Sanayeh Park before the ceasefire we met Hassan Fattah, one of the journalists who wrote this story in the NY Times, and he seemed like a descent enough guy so here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/world/middleeast/23lebanon.html?hp&ex=1156392000&en=b62857e857a7b28a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
When our group of Voices visited Bint Jbail we met an engineering professor, originally from Bint Jbail, but now living and working in Beirut who told us "there is no difference between the people of the South and Hezbollah they are the same."
Although in a technical sense this is not exactly true, the more important understand that his statement provides is the fact that Hezbollah works as a resistance movement, not as a terrorist cell for Shiites in the South. Hezbollah doesn't travel to other countries, training suicide bombers to kill indiscriminately - it believes it works to provide basic needs and defense to all Lebanese people, especially groups in the South. Interestingly enough, Hezbollah has asked for the unity of all groups in Lebanon to "defend our homeland and rebuild" which immediately points to Hezbollah's, at least politically, intolerance of sectarian division. Kathy. Michael and I noticed this one evening walking back to our hostel from long hours of meeting with the group we have joined here. We noticed that Hezbollah seems to be in favor of defending anyone who is Lebanese, from the most conservative, anti-western, southern Shiite to the leftist, secular, bar-hoping yuppie. Reporters staying in our hostel visited the school Hezbollah has taken as an office in Dahiyeh to provide relief to folks whose houses and property has been destroyed, and they told us that anyone who has some sort of proof that their residence was destroyed may visit this school and receive the promised $12,000 in cash Hezbollah is providing for relief. The journalists watched as stacks of hundred dollar bills were handed out to families with the promise that the rebuilding of their houses will also be provided in the weeks ahead. After hearing stories of the difficulty of folks to receive money from the government after Hurricane Katrina, Hezbollah certainly seems to be providing the means to restore broken lives in more effective ways than our own country even if it was a main actor in causing the conflict to begin with.
Tomorrow I hope to visit Eit eh Shab, a town on the border between Lebanon and Israel where our small group of Lebanese young people hope to help villagers set up generators and water pumps. I hope to have some more reports to post soon.
A quick (and yet inadequate) Thank You to all of you who provided money and means for my travel here. Visiting villages in the South, and talking with families there has given me the opportunity to provide small amounts of relief to different individuals trying to put their lives, homes and businesses back together - your donations have helped a few families greatly and soon I hope to have a report (with pictures) of individuals your labor has helped.
Love and prayers for peace,
Farah Marie
UNIFIL 5000 bombs a day
153,000 bombs in 43 days
10% are cluster bomb munifitions
15,000 cluster bombs packets - each carries 88
300,000 bombs lying around the south
Having a presence here in Lebanon has only served to heighten my awareness of the great work of building relationships with one another in which we find creative initiatives and alternatives to the systems that perpetuate poverty and militarism. I am grateful to have had an opportunity to be in a "circle of witness" throughout the last several years that shaped and formed my faithful commitment to justice. With that being said I can only offer my experience here as a lens into which more people may understand this conflict and our place in it. I don’t pretend to be an expert in any way and so I hope that what I may offer can be useful. Apologies for my inexperience aside, what I have seen here has shaken me to the very core.
The day that Kathy and I arrived in Beirut the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had dropped leaflets all over central Beirut warning that bombings might occur even in the centre of town where the government buildings and universities (like the well known, American University of Beirut) reside - which are not in any way strongholds of the Hezbollah resistance. For me this was proof that this war was not only about "rooting out terrorism" but perhaps Israel had multiply motivations.
The other point that dropping leaflets in downtown Beirut proved was that Israel believed it could get away with bombing people and places that traditionally would be "off-limits"; in other words international law (which my country has adopted as their law but very seldomly abides by) which was designed to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure does not apply in this war or at least Israel could break this law, commit war crimes and get away with it. We saw other examples of this gross abuse of power in Southern Lebanon when we heard of United Nations convoys attempting to bring aid or to safely transfer refugees from harm in the South were bombed, killing UN aid workers and Lebanese civilians - many "legitimate" news agencies covered such stories if you would like more "proof" this example visit the New York Times, Washington Post, Al Jazeera etc.
What the example helps to provide is a lens into which we all might get an idea of the measure of this war upon those that do not have any power: the impoverish, mostly Shiite Arabs of Southern Lebanon. These are the very people who bore the brunt of this war (and several others in the past) and whose lives have been devastated. Last week, Kathy Kelly, Ramzi Kysia, Michael Birmingham and I visited several villages in the South of Lebanon. We were given a list of places where massacres of civilians has taken place. We wanted to visit these places to mourn with the dead, learn what we could about how this war had affected the lives of the survivors and get an idea of what the impact of the war had been upon the people, land and infrastructure of Southern Lebanon. Of all the villages we drove through (not even just the places we stopped in) not one was sparred from bombing.
Not one.
What we did notice in town after town was that the majority of places bombed were homes, schools, petrol stations, and small corner stores or shops. International law, and more specifically the Geneva Conventions, provides the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. The Fourth Convention sets the standards of how a military is to deal with civilian populations in times of war. Israel ratified the four Conventions in 1951, the United States in 1955 - neither of which held any reservations or declarations upon signing the treaty that would absent them from the provisions provided for civilians in a time of war, therefore they have full responsibility not only to uphold the law, but we as citizens of these countries have a responsibility to hold our governments accountable to the laws which they have adopted and swore to protect.
It isn't a new story that these countries have not and will not abide but such laws, but if we refuse to hold them accountable and our governments refuse to adhere to these sorts of laws than the more pertinent question may be why we have such laws at all? And what would become of our world if these laws did not restrict the arms of greed and power?
----
Visiting villages in the South was useful for me to understand better how Hezbollah operates in Lebanon. In my response to my friend Jeremy I tried to help provide a lens into which we may reshape how we view Hezbollah - not to be fair to them, but to help us to understand that not all "terror" groups are the same or operate similarly to those we hear most often in the news about. Today in the New York Times there is an article about how aid is being given out in Lebanon and how many aid organizations are having trouble giving aid that doesn't pass through the hands of Hezbollah. When Michael and I visited Sanayeh Park before the ceasefire we met Hassan Fattah, one of the journalists who wrote this story in the NY Times, and he seemed like a descent enough guy so here's the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/world/middleeast/23lebanon.html?hp&ex=1156392000&en=b62857e857a7b28a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
When our group of Voices visited Bint Jbail we met an engineering professor, originally from Bint Jbail, but now living and working in Beirut who told us "there is no difference between the people of the South and Hezbollah they are the same."
Although in a technical sense this is not exactly true, the more important understand that his statement provides is the fact that Hezbollah works as a resistance movement, not as a terrorist cell for Shiites in the South. Hezbollah doesn't travel to other countries, training suicide bombers to kill indiscriminately - it believes it works to provide basic needs and defense to all Lebanese people, especially groups in the South. Interestingly enough, Hezbollah has asked for the unity of all groups in Lebanon to "defend our homeland and rebuild" which immediately points to Hezbollah's, at least politically, intolerance of sectarian division. Kathy. Michael and I noticed this one evening walking back to our hostel from long hours of meeting with the group we have joined here. We noticed that Hezbollah seems to be in favor of defending anyone who is Lebanese, from the most conservative, anti-western, southern Shiite to the leftist, secular, bar-hoping yuppie. Reporters staying in our hostel visited the school Hezbollah has taken as an office in Dahiyeh to provide relief to folks whose houses and property has been destroyed, and they told us that anyone who has some sort of proof that their residence was destroyed may visit this school and receive the promised $12,000 in cash Hezbollah is providing for relief. The journalists watched as stacks of hundred dollar bills were handed out to families with the promise that the rebuilding of their houses will also be provided in the weeks ahead. After hearing stories of the difficulty of folks to receive money from the government after Hurricane Katrina, Hezbollah certainly seems to be providing the means to restore broken lives in more effective ways than our own country even if it was a main actor in causing the conflict to begin with.
Tomorrow I hope to visit Eit eh Shab, a town on the border between Lebanon and Israel where our small group of Lebanese young people hope to help villagers set up generators and water pumps. I hope to have some more reports to post soon.
A quick (and yet inadequate) Thank You to all of you who provided money and means for my travel here. Visiting villages in the South, and talking with families there has given me the opportunity to provide small amounts of relief to different individuals trying to put their lives, homes and businesses back together - your donations have helped a few families greatly and soon I hope to have a report (with pictures) of individuals your labor has helped.
Love and prayers for peace,
Farah Marie
UNIFIL 5000 bombs a day
153,000 bombs in 43 days
10% are cluster bomb munifitions
15,000 cluster bombs packets - each carries 88
300,000 bombs lying around the south
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
An open Dialogue Between Friends
Jer and I are friends from way back. Our mutual friend Nancy pointed out to me that we were both in this area of the world doing peace work. I read his blog, he read mine and we spoke the truth we know. Here is our dialogue:
ps. Please go to the www.VCNV.org website to see some of my pics, and click on the title of this post to visit Jer's blog and read about the war from a peace pilgrim in Northern Israel.
JEREMY WROTE
Farah is one of my favorite people in the world. We used to work/live in philidelphia and worked to fix the world together (we still do).We marched together at several peace gatherings. Interestingly, She is in Lebanon helping the folks out there, and I have been in the North of Israel for the last month helping folks here, playing music and delivering food to people in shelters amidst the falling missiles. I've really apreciated her perspective, I hope you can apreciate mine.
---------
Hey Love,
Two quick prefaces;
1) I hate Political squabbling, I'd rather play guitar.
2) I Hate war and my yearning for peace has never been stronger in my life.
But in the name of Truth finding, I'll share my perspective.I was sitting on a porch, playing guitar, and some people started throwing explosive missiles at me.
The people who threw the missiles at me got the missiles and learned how to throw them at me from a place called Iran, who has a very popularly elected by the people for the people president, who openly proclaims;
"Israel must be wiped off the map,"
"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world."
"Holocaust was a myth"
(I was surprised when I looked over your blog to see a speech of his. He doesn't seem like a peace-maker)
So I ask myself, what should Israel have done? Let these people, who dream of our destruction, destroy me and this country? Is that peace? At what point do we start defending ourselves? How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist? In WWII no one stood up for us until 6 million of my ancestors were reduced to human ash.
Conversely, the Israelis aren't trying to kill civilians, that's why they pirated radio stations and dropped tens of thousands of flyers in southern Lebanon warning civilians to leave town. And that's why the Govt sent in ground troops instead of more bigger bombings, to distinguish civilian from war-maker (Guerilla).
No one here dances in the streets and passes out candy when news of Lebanese civilian deaths come through the radio. Hizbolah aims at hospitals. On the Sabbath, they would aim at the old city where the Jews where gathered. I know this for a fact as I was there hiding in a shelter. The people shooting missiles at me were shooting them from civilian houses and even from mosques. That's why they were targeted.
You say this was a war over land, but Israel already gave Lebanon the land she wanted? Gaza was given and still missiles fall every day. The main agenda and platform of this current Israeli government was to hand over land... So why would an army attack a nation in the middle of handing over huge tracts of land? Whats the truth?
I personally believe the publicly elected president of Iran (and check signer of the missiles that were thrown at me) who brazenly proclaims he wants the total destruction of Israel.If Israel put down her weapons, she would instantly be destroyed. If Israel's enemies put down their weapons, there would be peace. No invasions, no anihalations.These are the truths I have found. I hope there is something big that I missed, and that there was some other way to stop these people from trying to kill us/me here.I love you and wish both of us peace and clarity and a day where we can sit on the stoop in West Pilladelphia and play some music without a nag in the back of our minds of our fellow humans plight on the other side of the globe, because it won't exist.
Love Jer (Fellow human planet walker)
MY RESPONSE
Hi Jer,
Thanks for your post.
I think our dialogue is helpful to me and to others seeking to know how to interact with and respond to human tragedies like this war. It is even very interesting that the cosmos had us both in this part of the world, yet seemingly miles away from one another.
I will continue this dialogue as I started it in a public way and hope it is useful and not hurtful to stay open and public about it.
On your first two points:
1) I agree, though I don’t really know how to play the guitar
2) Yes, yes yes – me too.
A little context on why I put up the letter by Iran’s President. I believe that the US government, certain members, desire to create "a new middle east" which includes setting up a puppet government in Iran. History teaches us that this has happened in the past, the most blatant case was when Eisenhower organized a coup in 1953 of democratically elected and very popular secular leader Mohammed Mosadeque – the coup’s premise was to stop the spread of communism. When I was doing an 18-day fast last year in front of the UN in Geneva asking for the basic economic human rights of Iraqis I spent an afternoon with Abdul Mosadeque (Mohammed Mosadeque’s grandson).
The result of the coup was US/UK-friendly yet hugely oppressive government of Reza Shah – I believe the Shah's "reign of terror" helped to sow seeds that led to the oppressive theocratic dictatorship of Khomeini in 1979 which ended all relationships between the US and Iran.
The current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was NOT popularly elected because he hates Jews (in all honesty he wasn’t really popularly elected), but because of the growing economic disparities in Iran, the geopolitical and religious results of the Iraq war, and also thanks to the "influence" of certain hard-line militias like the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij. Iran as we all know is not a free society, speaking out against the government will get you put in jail or killed this is a working reality in the lives of Iranians living in Iran.
What is also true is that there are approximately 60,000 Iranian, Jews in Iran – they do suffer discrimination, but they are NOT being taken out into the streets of Tehran and executed. I believe this is an important point because it separates the argument or perhaps clarifies – opposition to the state of Israel does not equal hatred of Jews. Opposition to the ways Israel operates through military and economic intimidation does not equal for me a belief that it should not exist. I believe it has the right to exist and exist peacefully. Likewise I believe Lebanon and Palestine have the right to exist and exist peacefully.
I put the letter from the President of Iran to George Bush up mainly because I believe that many Americans do not have great access to a wide range of views in the media. I put it up to give folks who might read my blog another perspective. I think that if we want to understand an "enemy" than we have to know that enemy - I’d like to believe that people aren’t just naturally inclined to hatred but that they are conditioned in a myopic sense of reality and the result is hatred. I certainly do not agree with Ahmadinejad’s words about "wiping Israel off the map" or that the holocaust was a hoax, but if I had the opportunity to ask him why he thinks these things than I certainly would.
Similarly, I have found it useful to speak to members of Hezbollah about their views, aims and reasons for creating war against Israel. The man explained Hezbollah not as an anti-Jew, anti-Israel organization, but that it was created to defend the rights of Lebanese, particularily Muslims, in the South. Like you, many members of Hezbollah told me that if Israel put down its arms so would Hezbollah and everyone would live in peace. Please God may this be true some day.
-------------------------------------------
"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all." - Tacitus
With that said I want to say these few more things . . . you said,
"So I ask myself, what should Israel have done? Let these people, who dream of our destruction, destroy me and this country? Is that peace? At what point do we start defending ourselves? How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist? In WWII no one stood up for us until 6 million of my ancestors were reduced to human ash.”"
Peace is contructed, not fought for.
In the "Six Day War" in the 1960's (1967?) Israel pretty much anniliated most of the armies of all its neighbors. Israel has enormous military strength backed-up by the US which has the largest military-industrial complex in the world – in fact a huge percentage of the US economy is based on weapons manufactoring and sales – billions of US tax dollars go to Israel’s build up of its military machine. Hezbollah, Syria and Iran in comparison, and just on a sort of rational level, could not destroy Israel militarily even if they wanted to – combined they don’t have half the strength of Israel's military machine.
The war Israel waged in Lebanon, although sold as a war against a terrorist organization called Hezbollah, was in form, a war against civilians, a war against poor Shia Muslims from the South.
I’d call what happened in this war, without reservation, ethnic cleansing.
Hezbollah opperates in Lebanon as more than just a guerilla militia and that militia is only about 500 – 600 fighters large. It also operates as a social welfare organization and political party. I am not saying Hezbollah is good because it reaches out to poor Lebanese folk, but what I am trying to point out is that a war against “Hezbollah” isn’t very cut and dry - its not like fighting an army –- the majority of Hezbollah is not a part of the militia, Hezbollah operates very differently from lets say Al Quaida. We can’t necessarily say all of Hezbollah and its supportors and sympathizers are terrorists or bent on destruction of the Jews – that is over simplified and simply not true.
Hezbollah fighters captured and later killed 2 Israeli soldiers. This was wrong, but this was not a massive war against Israel or the Jews. We all know what transpired as the war escalated – in northern Israel you saw nearly 40 people killed and loads had to in shelters to avoid being killed by thousands of missiles being fired at you by Hezbollah fighters.
Here in Lebanon, the coffee shop where I other Lebanses young folk were meeting in to discuss strategies to resist this war shook when 600-pound bombs were dropped a 15 minute car ride away from us - we conducted our meetings not knowing if we'd be the next victims of an errant or perhaps purposeful "bunker buster", the terror of this time for me was tangible I can not imagine what it must be like for the children.
Members of our group watched as Mothers pulled their children from the rubble of surprise attacks on apartment buildings in Southern Beirut that killed scores of civilians – in one of the Southern suburbs, Shyah, one suprise attack brought down three apartment buildings killing 48 people including many children.
In Soultineyeh the village I was staying in while visiting Southern Lebanon my friend and fellow traveler, Ramzi Kysia, asked for our driver to stop the car as he spotted something suspicious in the road. Five feet in front of us were two cluster bombs sitting in the middle of the road. Had Ramzi perhaps not been in war zones before (he was a part of the Iraq Peace Team with me) or had decided against stopping the car because he couldn’t quite make out the strange objects I may not be writing these words to you now - I believe he saved our lives. Later that evening, when we returned to the house where we were staying we found four more of such "unexploded ordinance" around the garden outside the house – these bombs were rush shipped over to Israel by the US to aid in its offensive. These sorts of weapons kill indiscriminately and 10% are designed to to explode on impact so that they might "serve" as land mines.
Early the next morning we visited Qana, we visited family members of the children that were killed in home hit around the 30th of July. While we were there we could hear the unmaned drone Israeli survalience plane over head constantly taking pictures of what is happening on the ground.
The Mother of one young boy that was killed, six-year-old Zeineb, told Kathy and I that she had seen the Israeli planes many times, and the Israeli planes can see her. The pilots of these planes fly close to the ground, not high up in the sky. Zeineb’s Mother explained that the pilots knew what they were attacking when they hit the Qana bomb shelter causing the internal organs of the small children sleeping inside to explode, killing them. There are many stories like this in villages all across Southern Lebanon. I believe you have heard many stories like this across Israel too. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
"How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist?"
Hezbollah (and lets just say all of Lebanon) is not an existential threat to Israel. Let’s not confuse ourselves and compare the slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust as the same sort of threat or situation as what is happening here or we will loose touch with the reality of THIS situation and with our capacity and imaginative energy to find roads of peace –- poor Shia’s from the south of lebanon can not be punished for war crimes committed against Jews in WWII. Nor should a state created in the aftermath of such a gruesome, unjust, and horrific slaughter use similar means to impose its will. What may be best about understanding our past, by remembering, is that it offers us an unusual opportunity to choose something different - to look into the face of death and choose to put down our weapons and believe in the great redemptive power of our suffering, and not to perpetuate that suffering in anger and sectarian allegiance. Every human being deserves a home and a homeland not because we are Jews, Lebanese, Israelis, Muslims, Iranians, Christian, Zorastrian, Buddist, peace pilgrims or war mongers - if it were all up to me (and lots of living and dead wise folk) I'd give up this notion of who owns what piece of land on this earth "This we know: The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth" (Chief Seattle)
-----------------------------------------------
The remnants of this war’s wreckage, ash and dust, I wear as death’s vestiges, a reminder of what I have seen and heard. I will never forget, and I will never stop working for peace for us all . . .
Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come fromIs called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-AmericanWar had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.
Oh the First World War,
boysIt closed out its fate
The reason for fightingI never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
When the Second World WarCame to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.
I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.
In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.
ps. Please go to the www.VCNV.org website to see some of my pics, and click on the title of this post to visit Jer's blog and read about the war from a peace pilgrim in Northern Israel.
JEREMY WROTE
Farah is one of my favorite people in the world. We used to work/live in philidelphia and worked to fix the world together (we still do).We marched together at several peace gatherings. Interestingly, She is in Lebanon helping the folks out there, and I have been in the North of Israel for the last month helping folks here, playing music and delivering food to people in shelters amidst the falling missiles. I've really apreciated her perspective, I hope you can apreciate mine.
---------
Hey Love,
Two quick prefaces;
1) I hate Political squabbling, I'd rather play guitar.
2) I Hate war and my yearning for peace has never been stronger in my life.
But in the name of Truth finding, I'll share my perspective.I was sitting on a porch, playing guitar, and some people started throwing explosive missiles at me.
The people who threw the missiles at me got the missiles and learned how to throw them at me from a place called Iran, who has a very popularly elected by the people for the people president, who openly proclaims;
"Israel must be wiped off the map,"
"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world."
"Holocaust was a myth"
(I was surprised when I looked over your blog to see a speech of his. He doesn't seem like a peace-maker)
So I ask myself, what should Israel have done? Let these people, who dream of our destruction, destroy me and this country? Is that peace? At what point do we start defending ourselves? How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist? In WWII no one stood up for us until 6 million of my ancestors were reduced to human ash.
Conversely, the Israelis aren't trying to kill civilians, that's why they pirated radio stations and dropped tens of thousands of flyers in southern Lebanon warning civilians to leave town. And that's why the Govt sent in ground troops instead of more bigger bombings, to distinguish civilian from war-maker (Guerilla).
No one here dances in the streets and passes out candy when news of Lebanese civilian deaths come through the radio. Hizbolah aims at hospitals. On the Sabbath, they would aim at the old city where the Jews where gathered. I know this for a fact as I was there hiding in a shelter. The people shooting missiles at me were shooting them from civilian houses and even from mosques. That's why they were targeted.
You say this was a war over land, but Israel already gave Lebanon the land she wanted? Gaza was given and still missiles fall every day. The main agenda and platform of this current Israeli government was to hand over land... So why would an army attack a nation in the middle of handing over huge tracts of land? Whats the truth?
I personally believe the publicly elected president of Iran (and check signer of the missiles that were thrown at me) who brazenly proclaims he wants the total destruction of Israel.If Israel put down her weapons, she would instantly be destroyed. If Israel's enemies put down their weapons, there would be peace. No invasions, no anihalations.These are the truths I have found. I hope there is something big that I missed, and that there was some other way to stop these people from trying to kill us/me here.I love you and wish both of us peace and clarity and a day where we can sit on the stoop in West Pilladelphia and play some music without a nag in the back of our minds of our fellow humans plight on the other side of the globe, because it won't exist.
Love Jer (Fellow human planet walker)
MY RESPONSE
Hi Jer,
Thanks for your post.
I think our dialogue is helpful to me and to others seeking to know how to interact with and respond to human tragedies like this war. It is even very interesting that the cosmos had us both in this part of the world, yet seemingly miles away from one another.
I will continue this dialogue as I started it in a public way and hope it is useful and not hurtful to stay open and public about it.
On your first two points:
1) I agree, though I don’t really know how to play the guitar
2) Yes, yes yes – me too.
A little context on why I put up the letter by Iran’s President. I believe that the US government, certain members, desire to create "a new middle east" which includes setting up a puppet government in Iran. History teaches us that this has happened in the past, the most blatant case was when Eisenhower organized a coup in 1953 of democratically elected and very popular secular leader Mohammed Mosadeque – the coup’s premise was to stop the spread of communism. When I was doing an 18-day fast last year in front of the UN in Geneva asking for the basic economic human rights of Iraqis I spent an afternoon with Abdul Mosadeque (Mohammed Mosadeque’s grandson).
The result of the coup was US/UK-friendly yet hugely oppressive government of Reza Shah – I believe the Shah's "reign of terror" helped to sow seeds that led to the oppressive theocratic dictatorship of Khomeini in 1979 which ended all relationships between the US and Iran.
The current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was NOT popularly elected because he hates Jews (in all honesty he wasn’t really popularly elected), but because of the growing economic disparities in Iran, the geopolitical and religious results of the Iraq war, and also thanks to the "influence" of certain hard-line militias like the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij. Iran as we all know is not a free society, speaking out against the government will get you put in jail or killed this is a working reality in the lives of Iranians living in Iran.
What is also true is that there are approximately 60,000 Iranian, Jews in Iran – they do suffer discrimination, but they are NOT being taken out into the streets of Tehran and executed. I believe this is an important point because it separates the argument or perhaps clarifies – opposition to the state of Israel does not equal hatred of Jews. Opposition to the ways Israel operates through military and economic intimidation does not equal for me a belief that it should not exist. I believe it has the right to exist and exist peacefully. Likewise I believe Lebanon and Palestine have the right to exist and exist peacefully.
I put the letter from the President of Iran to George Bush up mainly because I believe that many Americans do not have great access to a wide range of views in the media. I put it up to give folks who might read my blog another perspective. I think that if we want to understand an "enemy" than we have to know that enemy - I’d like to believe that people aren’t just naturally inclined to hatred but that they are conditioned in a myopic sense of reality and the result is hatred. I certainly do not agree with Ahmadinejad’s words about "wiping Israel off the map" or that the holocaust was a hoax, but if I had the opportunity to ask him why he thinks these things than I certainly would.
Similarly, I have found it useful to speak to members of Hezbollah about their views, aims and reasons for creating war against Israel. The man explained Hezbollah not as an anti-Jew, anti-Israel organization, but that it was created to defend the rights of Lebanese, particularily Muslims, in the South. Like you, many members of Hezbollah told me that if Israel put down its arms so would Hezbollah and everyone would live in peace. Please God may this be true some day.
-------------------------------------------
"The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all." - Tacitus
With that said I want to say these few more things . . . you said,
"So I ask myself, what should Israel have done? Let these people, who dream of our destruction, destroy me and this country? Is that peace? At what point do we start defending ourselves? How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist? In WWII no one stood up for us until 6 million of my ancestors were reduced to human ash.”"
Peace is contructed, not fought for.
In the "Six Day War" in the 1960's (1967?) Israel pretty much anniliated most of the armies of all its neighbors. Israel has enormous military strength backed-up by the US which has the largest military-industrial complex in the world – in fact a huge percentage of the US economy is based on weapons manufactoring and sales – billions of US tax dollars go to Israel’s build up of its military machine. Hezbollah, Syria and Iran in comparison, and just on a sort of rational level, could not destroy Israel militarily even if they wanted to – combined they don’t have half the strength of Israel's military machine.
The war Israel waged in Lebanon, although sold as a war against a terrorist organization called Hezbollah, was in form, a war against civilians, a war against poor Shia Muslims from the South.
I’d call what happened in this war, without reservation, ethnic cleansing.
Hezbollah opperates in Lebanon as more than just a guerilla militia and that militia is only about 500 – 600 fighters large. It also operates as a social welfare organization and political party. I am not saying Hezbollah is good because it reaches out to poor Lebanese folk, but what I am trying to point out is that a war against “Hezbollah” isn’t very cut and dry - its not like fighting an army –- the majority of Hezbollah is not a part of the militia, Hezbollah operates very differently from lets say Al Quaida. We can’t necessarily say all of Hezbollah and its supportors and sympathizers are terrorists or bent on destruction of the Jews – that is over simplified and simply not true.
Hezbollah fighters captured and later killed 2 Israeli soldiers. This was wrong, but this was not a massive war against Israel or the Jews. We all know what transpired as the war escalated – in northern Israel you saw nearly 40 people killed and loads had to in shelters to avoid being killed by thousands of missiles being fired at you by Hezbollah fighters.
Here in Lebanon, the coffee shop where I other Lebanses young folk were meeting in to discuss strategies to resist this war shook when 600-pound bombs were dropped a 15 minute car ride away from us - we conducted our meetings not knowing if we'd be the next victims of an errant or perhaps purposeful "bunker buster", the terror of this time for me was tangible I can not imagine what it must be like for the children.
Members of our group watched as Mothers pulled their children from the rubble of surprise attacks on apartment buildings in Southern Beirut that killed scores of civilians – in one of the Southern suburbs, Shyah, one suprise attack brought down three apartment buildings killing 48 people including many children.
In Soultineyeh the village I was staying in while visiting Southern Lebanon my friend and fellow traveler, Ramzi Kysia, asked for our driver to stop the car as he spotted something suspicious in the road. Five feet in front of us were two cluster bombs sitting in the middle of the road. Had Ramzi perhaps not been in war zones before (he was a part of the Iraq Peace Team with me) or had decided against stopping the car because he couldn’t quite make out the strange objects I may not be writing these words to you now - I believe he saved our lives. Later that evening, when we returned to the house where we were staying we found four more of such "unexploded ordinance" around the garden outside the house – these bombs were rush shipped over to Israel by the US to aid in its offensive. These sorts of weapons kill indiscriminately and 10% are designed to to explode on impact so that they might "serve" as land mines.
Early the next morning we visited Qana, we visited family members of the children that were killed in home hit around the 30th of July. While we were there we could hear the unmaned drone Israeli survalience plane over head constantly taking pictures of what is happening on the ground.
The Mother of one young boy that was killed, six-year-old Zeineb, told Kathy and I that she had seen the Israeli planes many times, and the Israeli planes can see her. The pilots of these planes fly close to the ground, not high up in the sky. Zeineb’s Mother explained that the pilots knew what they were attacking when they hit the Qana bomb shelter causing the internal organs of the small children sleeping inside to explode, killing them. There are many stories like this in villages all across Southern Lebanon. I believe you have heard many stories like this across Israel too. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
"How many Jews have to die before we're allowed to defend our right to exist?"
Hezbollah (and lets just say all of Lebanon) is not an existential threat to Israel. Let’s not confuse ourselves and compare the slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust as the same sort of threat or situation as what is happening here or we will loose touch with the reality of THIS situation and with our capacity and imaginative energy to find roads of peace –- poor Shia’s from the south of lebanon can not be punished for war crimes committed against Jews in WWII. Nor should a state created in the aftermath of such a gruesome, unjust, and horrific slaughter use similar means to impose its will. What may be best about understanding our past, by remembering, is that it offers us an unusual opportunity to choose something different - to look into the face of death and choose to put down our weapons and believe in the great redemptive power of our suffering, and not to perpetuate that suffering in anger and sectarian allegiance. Every human being deserves a home and a homeland not because we are Jews, Lebanese, Israelis, Muslims, Iranians, Christian, Zorastrian, Buddist, peace pilgrims or war mongers - if it were all up to me (and lots of living and dead wise folk) I'd give up this notion of who owns what piece of land on this earth "This we know: The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth" (Chief Seattle)
-----------------------------------------------
The remnants of this war’s wreckage, ash and dust, I wear as death’s vestiges, a reminder of what I have seen and heard. I will never forget, and I will never stop working for peace for us all . . .
-----------------------------------------------
Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come fromIs called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-AmericanWar had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.
Oh the First World War,
boysIt closed out its fate
The reason for fightingI never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
When the Second World WarCame to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.
I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.
In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
The Massacre at Qana
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| by Kathy Kelly |
Two days ago, driving toward the village of Qana, we saw men at work, creating neatly aligned rows of rectangular cement structures that would soon be ready for burials. On foot, we entered Qana, thinking we should at least identify the site where a massacre had taken place when, on July 30th, an Israeli bomb hit a building that sheltered children as they slept. It took five hours for ambulances to reach them. Statistics differ, but the most recent Human Rights Watch report estimated that twenty-three were killed. Turning a corner, we saw men arranging white plastic chairs for guests who came to mourn with family members in the funeral tradition. The men sat in front of one home. Women were next door. Farah and I approached four women sitting quietly and tearfully in a small outdoor patio. They invited us to sit with them. For much of the time, we sat silently. Each time a neighboring woman arrived, the women would stand and embrace one another tearfully. They have borne their pain for eighteen days, since 1:00 a.m. on July 30th when the bomb slammed into the building just across the road from where we sat, the building where their children slept. The funeral was delayed until it would be safe to bring families together and to construct the graves. Umm Zayneb, the mother of six year old Zayneb, poured out a torrent of words, telling the details of what had happened to Zayneb and entrusting us with her views which we could only barely understand. Our translators were next door, sitting with the men. We could see that Umm Zayneb had suffered injuries. Under her veil, she wore a medical hood and a thick brace encircled her neck. She stiffly shifted her tall, slender body, unable to point across the street to what was once a building where frightened children had huddled together for shelter during the bombing. Surveillance planes must have known that children were in the building. Many times, in the daytime, Zaynab ran back and forth between the house and the shelter . Umm Zaynab said we must be able to see how close she was to her home. Yes, we could see. We listened to the drone of an unmanned surveillance plane still crisscrossing the skies above. Couldn’t they see? What kind of censorship would obscure this information? “She liked to practice English,” Umm Zaynab told us, her words turning to sobs. “She was happy because she could say English words.” This sentence aroused a new flood of agony. The brace forced her to contain her shudders. She rocked diffidently, overwhelmed with grief. Umm Zaynab asked one of the children to bring a stack of newspapers and magazines. “Here,” she said, carefully sorting through reports on the massacre at Qana. “This is Zaynab.” Photo after photo showed Zaynab held aloft, lifeless, by a strong, helmeted relief worker who shouted his shock and terrible awe. In another, Zainab lies next to Zahara. The force of the explosion seems to have destroyed the internal organs of the little girls, as they slept. Their bodies are not mutilated. Next she placed in our hands a framed picture of Zaynab, a curly headed little girl with huge dark eyes posing seriously for the camera. One can only imagine her smile. “Who are the terrorists?” Umm Zayneb whispered, slowly reaching over to point at Zayneb’s picture. Her eyes held mine as she answered her own question. I heard her say “Bush.” “She is saying that Zayneb and the children aren’t the terrorists,” Farah interjected, understanding more Arabic than me. “She says the real terrorists are the ones who kill children.” Looking at the burnt and blackened hillsides throughout southern Lebanon, you can only imagine the cedar trees that only one month ago made these hills as green as the hills in Israel. Cana. New Testament scriptures say that Jesus spent time here. Nearby is a small cave, reputed to mark the site of a wedding feast Jesus had attended. A story tells of Jesus’ mother, Mary, entreating the beloved son to show concern for newly arrived wedding guests. She identified them as people who weren’t being served. She didn’t want them to be excluded, left out. Who would listen to a widow’s concern? Her son must help. The tradition tells of a miracle, of water turned to wine. Qana. Who will listen to bereaved mothers entreating the heavens for an end to the hellish, fiery explosions that slaughter their children. The facts tell of a massacre, the astonishing technological capacity to identify and then to exclude the children from life itself. A banner hangs in Qana, addressed to Condoleeza Rice. “Rice, they will not see “our new Middle East.” |
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Close to Ceasefire
Here in Beirut, explosions rocked the city during one ten minute stretch in the afternoon and again this evening. Periodic distant thuds assured us that the approach toward a cease fire would be fiery, deadly.
We told our Irish friend, Michael Birmingham, that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should help all of us understand how it's possible that profiteering and murderous forces would consider depopulating an area for mercenary gain. Michael is legend for being our most cynical companion, albeit our saint. "Come on," he said, "don't tell me you're serious."
Dan Berrigan's line came to mind, "Serious, serious says my blood in the falling."
Well. My blood isn't falling. I'm in a safe section of Beirut, reading about the rockets exploding in northern Israel and the audible bombs slamming into neighborhoods just a taxi drive away from where I sit.
Many people have theorized about why this war started and what are the ultimate goals. But there’s no doubt that ethnic cleansing has been enforced in southern Lebanon and in areas of Beirut where the Israeli Defense Forces dropped leaflets threatening people with death and destruction if they didn’t immediately leave their homes.
The most serious question persists: how to turn off this war?
Who wouldn't place intense hope, however naive, in a cease fire holding?
But there's more, much more, that should preoccupy U.S. people. U.S. taxpayers must acknowledge their contribution toward Israel's disproportionate and overwhelming capacity to afflict terror and horror on southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut. When reading the statistics about carnage, contamination, displacement, --the unbearable numbers of wounded, the numbers maimed, the numbers buried, the numbers of orphans and widows and parents holding corpses of their children, -- statistics about Israel’s losses and Lebanon’s losses, --when we read these statistics we must remember that since the Bush administration, the U.S. has spent $9.4 billion helping Israel build its arsenal and military. The U.S. sent 600 pound bunker busters to Israel after the war began--and we're almost certain those bunker busters blasted underground in the Dahiya neighborhood today. The U.S. deliberately stalled prospects for a cease fire.
If equipping an area with weapons, including nuclear weapons, was a reliable way to ensure security, Israel and Palestine would be paradise by now. Has the U.S. policy toward Israel safeguarded homes and towns in northern Israel in this sorry saga of spiraling hatred?
Shouldn’t we all shudder and groan wondering what weapons will be used next as U.S. leaders accommodate themselves to ongoing, hideous warfare?
We watch many Lebanese families, displaced and disoriented, walking streets of downtown Beirut with unimaginable dignity, --the women covered, mothers and children walking hand in hand. As these people, forced to flee the simplicity of village life, walk along streets bursting with the modern fast life, I hope that their steps will slow all of us down. I hope that we can, just for moments, imagine walking hand in hand with them while thinking hard about how to turn off this war. The ancient command, envisioned in the Exodus narrative, "Let my people go," might mark all of our steps. We might displace ourselves from our absurdly “protected” comfort zones. We might long for leaders who will galvanize displaced people to free themselves from the reckless warmongers in our world who sacrifice children and stain our earth with their blood.
How desperately we need trustworthy advocates of unarmed conflict resolution, dare I say nonviolence, who can lead us, the willing and unwilling “displaced,” to a place wherein we reclaim our collective capacity to share resources, live simply, and put an end to war.
We told our Irish friend, Michael Birmingham, that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should help all of us understand how it's possible that profiteering and murderous forces would consider depopulating an area for mercenary gain. Michael is legend for being our most cynical companion, albeit our saint. "Come on," he said, "don't tell me you're serious."
Dan Berrigan's line came to mind, "Serious, serious says my blood in the falling."
Well. My blood isn't falling. I'm in a safe section of Beirut, reading about the rockets exploding in northern Israel and the audible bombs slamming into neighborhoods just a taxi drive away from where I sit.
Many people have theorized about why this war started and what are the ultimate goals. But there’s no doubt that ethnic cleansing has been enforced in southern Lebanon and in areas of Beirut where the Israeli Defense Forces dropped leaflets threatening people with death and destruction if they didn’t immediately leave their homes.
The most serious question persists: how to turn off this war?
Who wouldn't place intense hope, however naive, in a cease fire holding?
But there's more, much more, that should preoccupy U.S. people. U.S. taxpayers must acknowledge their contribution toward Israel's disproportionate and overwhelming capacity to afflict terror and horror on southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut. When reading the statistics about carnage, contamination, displacement, --the unbearable numbers of wounded, the numbers maimed, the numbers buried, the numbers of orphans and widows and parents holding corpses of their children, -- statistics about Israel’s losses and Lebanon’s losses, --when we read these statistics we must remember that since the Bush administration, the U.S. has spent $9.4 billion helping Israel build its arsenal and military. The U.S. sent 600 pound bunker busters to Israel after the war began--and we're almost certain those bunker busters blasted underground in the Dahiya neighborhood today. The U.S. deliberately stalled prospects for a cease fire.
If equipping an area with weapons, including nuclear weapons, was a reliable way to ensure security, Israel and Palestine would be paradise by now. Has the U.S. policy toward Israel safeguarded homes and towns in northern Israel in this sorry saga of spiraling hatred?
Shouldn’t we all shudder and groan wondering what weapons will be used next as U.S. leaders accommodate themselves to ongoing, hideous warfare?
We watch many Lebanese families, displaced and disoriented, walking streets of downtown Beirut with unimaginable dignity, --the women covered, mothers and children walking hand in hand. As these people, forced to flee the simplicity of village life, walk along streets bursting with the modern fast life, I hope that their steps will slow all of us down. I hope that we can, just for moments, imagine walking hand in hand with them while thinking hard about how to turn off this war. The ancient command, envisioned in the Exodus narrative, "Let my people go," might mark all of our steps. We might displace ourselves from our absurdly “protected” comfort zones. We might long for leaders who will galvanize displaced people to free themselves from the reckless warmongers in our world who sacrifice children and stain our earth with their blood.
How desperately we need trustworthy advocates of unarmed conflict resolution, dare I say nonviolence, who can lead us, the willing and unwilling “displaced,” to a place wherein we reclaim our collective capacity to share resources, live simply, and put an end to war.
In Beirut Day Two
Hello.
I apologize for my first post from
Kathy Kelly arrived on Friday evening after a very long journey from
The evening we arrived we were brought up to speed on the situation on the ground in
Yesterday, we joined with many young Lebanese activists (some first time activists) in a civilian convoy headed into
So our group was forced to return to
As far as my work independent of the strategies of the young Lebanese civil resistance group?
Today we met with sisters from the Daughters of Charity at their hospital in
There are many refugees in
Yesterday we had a meeting on a street that follows the coast. A few weeks ago the Israeli's bombed an oil well area flooding the Mediterranean Sea near
Well, that is the report from day two. I hope to have some time to write a proper message to you, but until then I a grateful for your continued prayer.
Peace to you all,
Farah Marie
Saturday, August 12, 2006
In Beirut
Dear Friends:
Hello.
It is so nice to have a moment to write to you. I feel I am reaching out across these many miles into the heart of all of you whose lives are about doing the difficult work of peace in this world. I feel very lucky to have this connection as almost all the power is out in Beirut now. It is well past midnight and today was very full.
But perhaps first a recap:
Well, I left early from Camden Wednesday morning having had to leave two days sooner than planned in order to travel with Kathy into Beirut for today's demonstration. It was also the only way to go to Beirut with others. I had to drive to Washington to pick up my Visa from the Syrian embassy as a mix up had me praying to get a Visa at all. The last time I had traveled to the embassy I was told I would receive a 72 hour transit Visa - not the most hopeful of news as you can imagine the difficultly of getting into Lebanon these days. Well, the embassy on the second try was quite kind to me and offered me the standard 3 month, double entry Visa calming my nerves quite a bit. That day I met Fr. Jack O'Hara a very old and dear family friend for lunch at a lovely Irish Pub in Arlington before meeting another friend, Kurt who at the very last minute agreed to take my car for the three weeks I'd be gone (thanks Kurt!)
I had a flight at 10 that evening from Dulles Airport to Paris where I met up with Kathy and we boarded another flight to Amman, Jordan. Jordan doesn't have the splendor of other places I have visited in the Middle East, but there is a very dear little hotel, the Al Monzer, across from the Abduli Bus station in the centre of Amman where almost all delegations of Voices have stayed on their way into Iraq. The best way I can describe it is a little like a Muslim run (catholic) worker house - where all kinds of folks find rest and hospitality. We stayed one night with our friend Cathy Breen from Maryhouse in NYC who has been working on behalf of Iraqi refugees in Amman for the past six or seven months - without a whole lot of result. We were also able to see old friends from the Iraq Peace Team, Anna Bachman and Nathan Musselman and here some of the work they have been courageously striving to do in and around Jordan and Iraq.
The very next morning Kathy and I left for Beirut via Damascus and up into the North of Syria then down to Tartus and through Tripoli finally landing in Beirut around 8 p.m. - just in time to dodge the curfew implemented by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) across all of Lebanon. The journey from Amman to Beirut should normally take maybe 4 or 5 hours, but it took us about 12. Going through the North of Syria and down the coast is the safest and now ONLY route into Lebanon. When we arrived we met with a large group of Lebanese young people and a few internationals about the following day's action. Beirut, in a way, reminds me of Geneva with a Middle Eastern, not-as-sterile twist. Both Kathy and I were amazed at the beauty of the drive into Beirut following the Medditeranean Coast.
After the meeting we met with the nice young couple we were staying with and then headed out to have dinner with our friend Michael from Ireland who spent two years in Iraq before, during and after the war. It was lovely to be all together again despite the grave circumstances.
This morning was the first action we came to be a part of here in Lebanon - a campaign of nonviolent civil resistance in the form of a convoy of 52 cars going South in order to deliver much needed aide to our brothers and sisters who are bearing the brunt of this awful war. Our convoy first had a press conference in Martyr's Square before leaving the city for the South. Unfortunately we were only 20 or 30 minutes outside the city when our convoy was stopped by the Lebanese Police and ordered back to Beirut. It is still unclear why this took places and I probably should hold thoughts on that for another time, but we tried for a long time to get through to no avail.
We returned to Beirut only to hear that the cities we planned to visit in the South were heavily bombarded today by the IDF, a risk we knew we were taking traveling in the convoy.
We arrived back in Beirut late in afternoon and had more meetings on what our next steps could be. Just one hour later, lights flickered and then the sounds of bombs began to pierce our conversation. I stood perfectly still trying to hear from which direction the bombs were coming and how far off they were from us. Fortunately we are staying a district that will probably not see any of the dailey bombardments many folks are experiencing in this country.
The last thing I will say is that the UN resolution isn't making a whole hec of a lot of difference in the cease-fire - in fact it has no teeth whatsoever and I believe we will continue to see the IDF pound Lebanon unless the Israeli parliment declares a ceasefire on Monday morning. Until then the IDF will try to do as much damage as possible to villages in the South of Lebanon.
I have been awake now for almost 24 hours and must get to bed for another long day tomorrow. I hope to write again soon.
Pray for peace!
Farah Marie
Hello.
It is so nice to have a moment to write to you. I feel I am reaching out across these many miles into the heart of all of you whose lives are about doing the difficult work of peace in this world. I feel very lucky to have this connection as almost all the power is out in Beirut now. It is well past midnight and today was very full.
But perhaps first a recap:
Well, I left early from Camden Wednesday morning having had to leave two days sooner than planned in order to travel with Kathy into Beirut for today's demonstration. It was also the only way to go to Beirut with others. I had to drive to Washington to pick up my Visa from the Syrian embassy as a mix up had me praying to get a Visa at all. The last time I had traveled to the embassy I was told I would receive a 72 hour transit Visa - not the most hopeful of news as you can imagine the difficultly of getting into Lebanon these days. Well, the embassy on the second try was quite kind to me and offered me the standard 3 month, double entry Visa calming my nerves quite a bit. That day I met Fr. Jack O'Hara a very old and dear family friend for lunch at a lovely Irish Pub in Arlington before meeting another friend, Kurt who at the very last minute agreed to take my car for the three weeks I'd be gone (thanks Kurt!)
I had a flight at 10 that evening from Dulles Airport to Paris where I met up with Kathy and we boarded another flight to Amman, Jordan. Jordan doesn't have the splendor of other places I have visited in the Middle East, but there is a very dear little hotel, the Al Monzer, across from the Abduli Bus station in the centre of Amman where almost all delegations of Voices have stayed on their way into Iraq. The best way I can describe it is a little like a Muslim run (catholic) worker house - where all kinds of folks find rest and hospitality. We stayed one night with our friend Cathy Breen from Maryhouse in NYC who has been working on behalf of Iraqi refugees in Amman for the past six or seven months - without a whole lot of result. We were also able to see old friends from the Iraq Peace Team, Anna Bachman and Nathan Musselman and here some of the work they have been courageously striving to do in and around Jordan and Iraq.
The very next morning Kathy and I left for Beirut via Damascus and up into the North of Syria then down to Tartus and through Tripoli finally landing in Beirut around 8 p.m. - just in time to dodge the curfew implemented by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) across all of Lebanon. The journey from Amman to Beirut should normally take maybe 4 or 5 hours, but it took us about 12. Going through the North of Syria and down the coast is the safest and now ONLY route into Lebanon. When we arrived we met with a large group of Lebanese young people and a few internationals about the following day's action. Beirut, in a way, reminds me of Geneva with a Middle Eastern, not-as-sterile twist. Both Kathy and I were amazed at the beauty of the drive into Beirut following the Medditeranean Coast.
After the meeting we met with the nice young couple we were staying with and then headed out to have dinner with our friend Michael from Ireland who spent two years in Iraq before, during and after the war. It was lovely to be all together again despite the grave circumstances.
This morning was the first action we came to be a part of here in Lebanon - a campaign of nonviolent civil resistance in the form of a convoy of 52 cars going South in order to deliver much needed aide to our brothers and sisters who are bearing the brunt of this awful war. Our convoy first had a press conference in Martyr's Square before leaving the city for the South. Unfortunately we were only 20 or 30 minutes outside the city when our convoy was stopped by the Lebanese Police and ordered back to Beirut. It is still unclear why this took places and I probably should hold thoughts on that for another time, but we tried for a long time to get through to no avail.
We returned to Beirut only to hear that the cities we planned to visit in the South were heavily bombarded today by the IDF, a risk we knew we were taking traveling in the convoy.
We arrived back in Beirut late in afternoon and had more meetings on what our next steps could be. Just one hour later, lights flickered and then the sounds of bombs began to pierce our conversation. I stood perfectly still trying to hear from which direction the bombs were coming and how far off they were from us. Fortunately we are staying a district that will probably not see any of the dailey bombardments many folks are experiencing in this country.
The last thing I will say is that the UN resolution isn't making a whole hec of a lot of difference in the cease-fire - in fact it has no teeth whatsoever and I believe we will continue to see the IDF pound Lebanon unless the Israeli parliment declares a ceasefire on Monday morning. Until then the IDF will try to do as much damage as possible to villages in the South of Lebanon.
I have been awake now for almost 24 hours and must get to bed for another long day tomorrow. I hope to write again soon.
Pray for peace!
Farah Marie
Friday, August 11, 2006
Amman, Jordan
Dear Friends:
I just have a few short minutes before Kathy and I have to hop into a taxi for Damascus. We arrived in Jordan safely, thankfully we left before all the fuss in London - we traveled here via Paris.
Today we go to Lebanon via Damascus. We will have to go North up through Syria and then across the border and down the coast to Beirut, hopefully making it into the city by nightfall. There we will meet with our team and then tomorrow morning we will have a press conference in Martyr's Square before heading south.
Our safety is very much dependent on the media. (and of course we have God's protection).
I hope to write more once I reach Beirut.
Love,
Farah Marie
I just have a few short minutes before Kathy and I have to hop into a taxi for Damascus. We arrived in Jordan safely, thankfully we left before all the fuss in London - we traveled here via Paris.
Today we go to Lebanon via Damascus. We will have to go North up through Syria and then across the border and down the coast to Beirut, hopefully making it into the city by nightfall. There we will meet with our team and then tomorrow morning we will have a press conference in Martyr's Square before heading south.
Our safety is very much dependent on the media. (and of course we have God's protection).
I hope to write more once I reach Beirut.
Love,
Farah Marie
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Jesus goes to Lebanon
Dear Friends,
The gospel reading from today. May God be with us all:
Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.
The gospel reading from today. May God be with us all:
Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon.
22And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
23But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
24But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
25Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
26But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.
27And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.
28Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
29And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down there.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Other Lands Have Dreams
It should not be a surprise that nature is a force of healing and hope in our world, yet I find that I am so often astonished by its beauty and how that deeply nurtures my soul. Last weekend I had the opportunity, thanks to some new yet dear friends, to visit a little community in rural Connecticut. I was in East Lyme picking up a video camera for my trip and found that I was not so far away from the community of a friend I had made at this year’s Word and World School. Well, the evening before I was planning to come I called him up and asked if I could make a short visit (which became a longer visit) to his community as I had heard much of its healing, transformative power. I found exactly that in the trees, bees, people and pond of little Voluntown. After getting to know the neighborhood rather well I finally rode up the driveway of an old, gray farmhouse with huge windows set on 57 acres of gorgeous natural beauty. There I met two friends Danny and Harold who offered me the fruits of their labor in the fields – fresh and delicious veggies from their garden built into the foundation of an old barn. The rest of the day was a dream.
I was reminded of how delicate the circle of life is and how precious. How we cannot be “one issue” people, we are so very connected to each other and to the earth. I felt imbued by the beauty of the earth, the warmth of the lake, the smell of the forest, the piercing heat of the sun, the clouds of gray and purple, red and gold – how they filled the sky at dusk. Another friend, Paddy, just returned from several months doing the work of peace in Europe. Her heart was so full of stories, concerns, humorous jests, important critiques and interesting ideas . . . I felt humbled and grateful to meet all these friends of this little farm community. For one heading off to a place of deep impoverishment, oppression, war and injustice the reminder that the world can be a different place was a gift. The reminder was, as Tom Fox (presente) said beautifully, we might use of lives to evoke that of God in all we meet, these “sparks of the divine", may grow to great fires together.
Tonight at our little church we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the coming of Mother Theresa (presente) to Sacred Heart. We remembered her and that of what she taught the world through her life – that God would be found in the love of neighbor, and “if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
I am daily reminded of the magnitude of love, but the intensity of love cannot be measured as Momma T says, “it only gives”.
Indeed.
I have been profoundly moved by the generosity of spirit I have received in the last few days, and I know that my work is now to be a steward of that love and healing in our world. That when I touch the sick or dying, that it will not only be my own hands but all the hands of all the people who have touched my life with their love and generosity. I hope that the people of Lebanon will feel that love; that it may act as a force of healing and hope.
Many would peg me as an idealist. I am not ashamed of this. I have seen the ravages of war, I have experienced the great despairs of life and yet I hold onto the faith of my brothers and sisters who heard the calling in the Wilderness. In that calling they were beckoned to do the work of the Beloved Community – that dreadful love that Dorothy speaks of has transformed the world and given us hope. I go to Lebanon not just because I believe I can do some good there, but I want to do it for all of us. That we may continue to be vigilant in our love for the world and for our neighbor. So that we may be authors of a different story, not one of unending war and poverty and hunger and despair. We will have to be smart, strategic, creative – we will have to look for new voices, we will have to relinquish old paradigms, we will have to build new movements and we will have to look again at old traditions.
But somewhere in that work, in the grind and the gratitude, we will find sustenance and faith. I believe that.
This past Sunday was that terribly beautiful convergence of the 61st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, as well as the liturgical day for the remembrance of the transfiguration of Jesus. At Brandywine’s annual vigil near the river we heard the sound of the bomb and listened to stories of loss and survival. We held candles and remembered the dead.
I thought of that challenge, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”
So tonight I hold up that little light to the immense darkness, knowing that as I prepare for my journey I go with all of you – may our prayer for peace reign through our small efforts of love.
With deepest appreciation,
Farah Marie
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean, And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. But other lands have sunlight too and clover, And skies are everywhere as blue as mine. Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations, A song of peace for their land and for mine.
When nations rage, and fears erupt coercive, The drumbeats sound, invoking pious cause. My neighbors rise, their stalwart hearts they offer, The gavels drop, suspending rights and laws. While others wield their swords with blind devotion; For peace I'll stand, my true and steadfast cause.
May truth and freedom come to every nation; May peace abound where strife has raged so long; That each may seek to love and build together, A world united, righting every wrong; A world united in its love for freedom, Proclaiming peace together in one song.
I was reminded of how delicate the circle of life is and how precious. How we cannot be “one issue” people, we are so very connected to each other and to the earth. I felt imbued by the beauty of the earth, the warmth of the lake, the smell of the forest, the piercing heat of the sun, the clouds of gray and purple, red and gold – how they filled the sky at dusk. Another friend, Paddy, just returned from several months doing the work of peace in Europe. Her heart was so full of stories, concerns, humorous jests, important critiques and interesting ideas . . . I felt humbled and grateful to meet all these friends of this little farm community. For one heading off to a place of deep impoverishment, oppression, war and injustice the reminder that the world can be a different place was a gift. The reminder was, as Tom Fox (presente) said beautifully, we might use of lives to evoke that of God in all we meet, these “sparks of the divine", may grow to great fires together.
Tonight at our little church we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the coming of Mother Theresa (presente) to Sacred Heart. We remembered her and that of what she taught the world through her life – that God would be found in the love of neighbor, and “if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
I am daily reminded of the magnitude of love, but the intensity of love cannot be measured as Momma T says, “it only gives”.
Indeed.
I have been profoundly moved by the generosity of spirit I have received in the last few days, and I know that my work is now to be a steward of that love and healing in our world. That when I touch the sick or dying, that it will not only be my own hands but all the hands of all the people who have touched my life with their love and generosity. I hope that the people of Lebanon will feel that love; that it may act as a force of healing and hope.
Many would peg me as an idealist. I am not ashamed of this. I have seen the ravages of war, I have experienced the great despairs of life and yet I hold onto the faith of my brothers and sisters who heard the calling in the Wilderness. In that calling they were beckoned to do the work of the Beloved Community – that dreadful love that Dorothy speaks of has transformed the world and given us hope. I go to Lebanon not just because I believe I can do some good there, but I want to do it for all of us. That we may continue to be vigilant in our love for the world and for our neighbor. So that we may be authors of a different story, not one of unending war and poverty and hunger and despair. We will have to be smart, strategic, creative – we will have to look for new voices, we will have to relinquish old paradigms, we will have to build new movements and we will have to look again at old traditions.
But somewhere in that work, in the grind and the gratitude, we will find sustenance and faith. I believe that.
This past Sunday was that terribly beautiful convergence of the 61st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, as well as the liturgical day for the remembrance of the transfiguration of Jesus. At Brandywine’s annual vigil near the river we heard the sound of the bomb and listened to stories of loss and survival. We held candles and remembered the dead.
I thought of that challenge, “It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”
So tonight I hold up that little light to the immense darkness, knowing that as I prepare for my journey I go with all of you – may our prayer for peace reign through our small efforts of love.
With deepest appreciation,
Farah Marie
- This is my song, Oh God of all the nations,
- A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
- This is my home, the country where my heart is;
- Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.
- But other hearts in other lands are beating,
- With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Journey Through Syria
Leave the matters written of in the first eleven chapters of the Old Testament out, and no recorded event has occurred in the world but Damascus was in existence to receive the news of it. Go back as far as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the writings of every century for more than four thousand years, its name has been mentioned and its praises sung. To Damascus, years are only moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time.
"Be patterns, be examples in every country, place, or nation that you visit. . .so that your bearing and life might communicate with all people. Then you‚ shall happily walk across the earth to evoke that of God in everybody. So that you will be seen as a blessing in their eyes and you will receive a blessing from that of God within them."
From Mark Twain's "The Innocents Abroad"There is an honoured old tradition that the immense gardens in which Damascus stand was the Garden of Eden...
. . .Damascus measures time not by daysand months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise and prosper. . .
and crumble to ruin.
She is a type of immortality.
She saw the foundation of Baalbeck, and Thebes and Ephesus laid
she saw these villages
grow into mighty cities,
and amaze the world with their grandeur -
She saw Greece rise,and flourish two thousand years, Friday, August 04, 2006
Colonialism and Neocolonialism
"Tree of Life"
Lattakia, Syria
I am sitting here with three books I have been lugging with me ever since I entertained the idea of traveling to Lebanon. They are: “Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, The Badshah Khan: A Man to Match His Mountains” by Eknathn Easwaran; “Colonialism and Neocolonialism” a compilation of the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Early on in my intellectual education I took a semester study course on colonialism in the Middle East as part of a freshman honors program at the Community College of Philadelphia (for those who may be confused I now attend the University of Pennsylvania). The course was designed to help us learn HOW to read, meaning not literally, but how to identify what an author is doing, how to understand an authors context and scholarship etc. Although the reading selection was interesting, the authors were not exactly who I would identify with in terms of their analysis of the Middle East save a few – one being Jean-Paul Sartre and the other Camus (we read one book by a female Arab author all the rest were men and predominately while, Westerns).
Anyhow, I am very grateful for the course and for the introduction I received to some of Sartre’s writing about being human, and what racism and colonialism do to us both as oppressors and oppressed. Of course Sartre was no an island to himself and his works were influenced by or influenced other thinkers like Albert Memmi, Francois Lyotard and Frantz Fanon. The compilation “Colonialism and Neocolonialism” is a critique of French policies in Algeria from the 50’s and 60’s, and helps to shape an idea of how a humanist, a person of conscious (not necessarily synonymous) might begin to think through their own role as an oppressor or as oppressed and sometimes how folks who experience oppression may practice that on others weaker than themselves.
I believe the work that Sartre does is interesting, and though I don’t necessarily come to the same conclusions (for example I am committed to nonviolence because of my particular faith in and understanding of God and the example of God’s justice we find in the story of Jesus) however, I thought I’d put up some interesting passages:
from COLONIALISM IS A SYSTEM
“But above all let us not bring politics into this. Politics is abstract: what is the use of voting if you are dying of hunger?”
“Nothing demonstrates better the increasing rigour of the colonial system: you begin by occupying the country, then you takes the land and exploit the former owners at starvation rates. Then with mechanization, this cheap labour is still too expensive; you finish up taking from the natives their right to work. All that is left for the Algerians to do, in their own land, at a time of great prosperity, is to die of starvation.”
“We, the people of mainland France, have only one lesson to draw from these facts: colonialism is in the process of destroying itself. But it still fouls the atmosphere. It is our shame; it mocks our laws or caricatures them. In infects us with its racism; as the Montpellier episode proved the other days, it obliges our young men to fight despite themselves and die for the Nazi principles that we fought against ten years ago; it attempts to defend itself by arousing fascism even here in France. Our role is to help it die. . . The reforms will come in their own good time: the Algerian people will make them. The only thing that we can and ought to attempt – but it is the essential thing today – is to fight alongside them to deliver both the Algerians and the French from colonial tyranny.”
by Sartre for Memmi’s: THE COLONIZER AND THE COLONIZED
“Colonialism denies human rights to people it has subjugated by violence, and whom it keeps in poverty and ignorance by force, therefore, as Marx would say, in a state of ‘subhumanity’. Racism is inscribed in the events themselves, in the institutions, in the nature of the exchanges and the production. The political and social status reinforce one another: since the natives are subhuman, the Declaration of Human Right does not apply to them; conversely, since they have no right, they are abandoned without protection to the inhuman forces of nature, to the ‘iron laws’ of economics. Racism is already there, carried by the praxis of colonialism, engendered at every instant by the colonial apparatus, sustained by those relationships of production which define two sorts of individuals: for some privilege and humanity are one and the same thing; they assert their humanity through the free exercise of their rights; for the others, the absence of right sanctions their poverty, their chronic hunger their ignorance, in short their subhumanity.”
from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Now Therefore, The General Assembly proclaims This Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article One
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article Two
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declarations without distinction of any kind such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
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