Friday, July 21, 2006

More on Lebanon under Israeli attack


Journalists visit bombed out Harat Hreik, a Shi'ite suburb of Beirut. Chris Allbritton photo

Chris Allbritton has reported from Iraq for three years as a stringer for various U.S. media outlets, most recently TIME. Beirut was where he retreated for R&R -- and when Baghdad became too dangerous last spring, where he waited for a visa to the probable next target of U.S. invasion, Iran. Instead of Chris going to war, war has come to Chris. The guy knows how to look for a story in a war and he knows a little about Lebanon. Check out his vivid reports at the now slightly mislabeled Back to Iraq.
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Martin Accad is the academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon. He was teaching at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, last week and is now unable to return home. Finding the media coverage of what was happening in his country dominated by partisans of Israel, especially fundamentalist Christians, he wrote what follows for Christianity Today.

"Nuclear-armed Iran"? How about the Israeli jet planes that are bombing, as I write, my country and its population, my sisters, my brothers, my fathers and mothers and grandfathers, my children and nieces and nephews? According to the Lebanese health minister, Israel is even using phosphoric bombs, which are forbidden under international conventions! Are my people to consider Iran more dangerous than this? Are we safely in good hands with such actions? Come with me to Beirut and see how inoffensive Israel is....

"Sometimes disproportionate"?! Talk about an understatement to describe a one-week—and still going—machine of annihilation that has destroyed in days what had taken 15 years of reconstruction. Civilians "killed accidentally"?! Explain that to the young mother squatting right now at my parents' home in Lebanon, having just heard her husband was torn into pieces by an Israeli bomb as he was carrying out civil relief in villages of South Lebanon! But of course these civilians were at fault, since they had been warned by Israeli flyers to evacuate their villages the previous night. But to go where? To my father's living room?! They are welcome, but it's getting really full....

I think that some pseudo-biblically motivated Christians with decision power, who believe "that apocalyptic destruction is a precursor to global salvation," are presently working toward provoking a Middle Eastern conflict of regional significance in order finally to settle accounts with Hezbollah- and Hamas-supporting Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine, who have committed the crime, as [an evangelical commentator] put it, of making their hatred for Israel "crystal clear." And how dare they, since the said state has only been acting as an aggressor and racist colonial state with neighbor-exterminating tendencies from the moment of its inception?

The whole article is well worth reading even if your perspective is secular.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

wouldn't it be great if some US citizens. a few citizens. non-arab-americans. the others. were to stage on-going sit-ins at the israeli consulates. or better at the door of their congresmen. with signs saying that the money from their taxes is not to destroy and kill. it would be so appreciated by the lebanese and the palestinians. it might save lives. don't you think so. don't you think that it would also do wonders to the moral fiber of the people of the US. i think that watching tv silently is bad for one's health.
hopeful
in beirut,lebanon

Anonymous said...

What is happening in Lebanon is a great shame on the moral fibre of our times.

Bush and mouse Blair are in too much of a hurry to make fresh enemies. Even moderates feel a rush of blood at the strikes. Israel is overreached its hand too far. With an impotent Un, who is there to force reason and peace?

Anonymous said...

dear anonymous
thank you for your statement about what is going on in lebanon.

you ask the important question: who is there to force reason and peace?
if you are an US citizen, then you should be there doing it. there is no way citizens can run away from the fact that it is their money who is destroying my country.

i am well aware that it is practically impossible to have an impact on Bush. but what about your congressman/woman.

i urge all the readers of this blog to make two daily calls to their representatives in congress and the senate. and two calls to friends urging them to call as well. let it be a chain. 4 calls a day in order to save lives.

let me tell around me that there are americans who are putting pressure on their government.
thank you for your patience
from beirut, lebanon

Anonymous said...

congratualtions on the blog. it is an extremely useful instrument in communicating local news to the outside world.
i would like to invite you to visit a project i prepared along with an italian author about the khiam detention camp. you can visit the project under the galleries section of http://www.mounirzok.com

mounir zok.

fifipoo07 said...

v interesting that such an article was written in a christian publication. over here we i think we have far too much the views of conservative american christians. What is the stance of christianity today? Also i've just on my blog commented on an article written by a christian conservative site, found via google news, trying to destroy the reputation of the bbc's impartiality. I would be interested to know your views on this. Pippa