lebanon – Page 10

Photographer caught doctoring Lebanon pics

The really stupid thing about the freelance photographer for Reuters who doctored his pictures is that his stupidity will discredit the thousands of real pictures out there that show what an ugly war this has been. And while the pro-Israel blogosphere probably rejoices, it doesn’t change that between 600 and 900 Lebanese people, for the most part civilians, have been killed.

And besides I don’t even see what he was trying to do.

I was interviewed by the German newspaper Stuttgart Zeitung (sp?) today about the Flickr pictures. Clearly a lot of people have picked up on the media side of this war and what a powerful (but ultimately still too weak) impact some of the horrible images we’ve seen have had.

How does Hizbullah define victory?

A sobering op-ed by Bernard Heykal:

Judging from Sayyid Nasrallah’s speeches it is clear that Hezbollah is not fighting Israel as much as the generalized Arab and Muslim feeling of defeat, humiliation and genuine incompetence. Pay attention, for example, to the way in which Sayyid Nasrallah has defined victory in his typically low-key style, which contrasts sharply with the old-style and bombastic claims of Arab leaders such as Jamal Abdul-Nasser and Saddam Hussein. Sayyid Nasrallah is very clear and precise that Israel cannot be defeated militarily. Hezbollah, he says, “cannot shoot down Israel’s F-16 fighter jets,” but what it can do is bleed Israel’s military forces, harm its economy and extract political concessions, any of which constitutes a victory. Victory, in other words, is a new psychological state for Arabs and Muslims, as well as for the “defeated” Israelis, and bears no relationship to the actual physical or material costs of war. This victory cannot be quantified or calculated and no amount of destruction and killing in Lebanon, or elsewhere in the Middle East, can outweigh its positive value and outcome. It is this psychological aspect to the present war that has so many Arabs and Muslims rallying to Hezbollah’s side—they finally see Arabs who are putting up a real fight against a formidable adversary who had acquired supernatural power in their collective imagination. But does Hezbollah’s resistance really count as a victory or is it merely illusory especially in the long term? Does it constitute anything more than al-Qaeda’s “victory” on 11 September 2001? How will the political map of the Middle East change if Hezbollah is seen to have won this round with Israel? And finally which forces in the United States are benefiting most from this engagement?

I see it a little differently — the Arab support for Hizbullah is not only about the psychological need for a hero, but also related to anger at the Arab regimes’ impotence or collaboration with US-Israeli policy in the region. But the op-ed raises some important questions and is worth reading.

Jaded journo in Beirut

Andrew Butters, freelance hack in Beirut, writes about the war. The tone will disturb some, but there are some great tidbits there about the Lebanese reaction to the war (well, in his neighborhood anyway), the media self-censorship, and more.

Former Leb PM al-Hoss: Bush is a terrorist

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss in an open letter to George W. Bush in the Daily Star:

You repeatedly claim that Israel is acting in self-defense. How preposterous! Self-defense on other people’s occupied territory is tantamount to one thing: blatant aggression.

You call Hizbullah a terrorist organization. We call it a legitimate resistance movement. There would have been no military wing of Hizbullah if there had been no Lebanese territory under Israeli occupation, if there had been no Lebanese hostages languishing in Israeli jails, and if Lebanon had not been exposed to almost daily Israeli intrusions into its airspace and territorial waters, and to sporadic incursions into Lebanese land and bombardment of civilian targets.

You cannot eliminate a party by demolishing a whole country. This would have been achieved peacefully by Israel withdrawing from the land it occupies, releasing Lebanese prisoners, and desisting from further acts of aggression against Lebanon.

Israel is the most horrendous terrorist power. And you, Mr. President, are unmistakably a direct partner, and hence a straight terrorist.

Pictures of attacks on Lebanon – early August

A new set of pictures has been uploaded to the Flickr account. They were sent by Hanady Salman of as-Safir and show some of the effects of the last few days of bombing in Lebanon.

An Israeli strike on a suburb of Beirut.

Fishing boats covered in ashes and surrounded by an oil slick in a port south of Beirut.

Rescuers inspect a destroyed vehicle on a bombarded road.

Reality hits

Israeli misgivings about Olmert’s and Peretz’s grandstanding:

It is doubtful that Olmert and Peretz, even in their worst nightmares, ever envisioned this spontaneous operation extending and transforming into the longest war to which the Israeli home front has been exposed since the War of Independence (not counting the terror attacks). But the enchanting myth of a “speedy, strong and elegant” IDF that “supplies the goods” within two or three days is blowing up in their faces, just as it blew up in the faces of their predecessors.

The article raises the big question: would Ariel Sharon have done this?

Beirut theater welcomes refugees

Because sometimes you need feel-good stories:

BEIRUT, Lebanon – Al-Madinah Theater was supposed to show art films this summer. Instead it has become a home to scores of refugees, and a cultural oasis where their children can act, draw and watch movies.

So far, 85 people have taken shelter from Israeli attacks, laying mattresses in the dressing rooms and wide corridors of two underground floors. In an office building above the theater, 125 others have taken refuge.

Volunteers show up daily at the theater on Hamra Street — several miles from Israel’s relentless bombardment of southern Beirut — to give art and drama workshops to help the displaced youth channel pent-up fears and anger into creative expression.

On the main stage, children scamper around their drama teacher, their giggles echoing through the cavernous theater. On a lower floor, youths bend over sheets of paper, drawing trees, butterflies and, in some cases, scenes from the hostilities that have forced them out of their homes in Beirut’s suburbs and southern Lebanon, where Israel is focusing its strikes on Hezbollah militants.

Word of the workshops has reached other refugee centers, and the number of children attending has swelled from about 30 to more than 100 on some days.

Read the rest.

Pentagon to train Lebanese army?

The interesting thing about this AP story about US military training for the Lebanese army, written by hardcore pro-Israel hack Barry Schweid, is that it makes absolutely no mention of the Lebanese reaction to the proposal — whether in the Lebanese government or Lebanese army. It’s clear what the idea is, though:

The administration is striving for a resolution that would end the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, now in its fourth week, and also establish conditions for a lasting cease-fire. Many other countries favor an immediate cease-fire.

I put this paragraph in just to show Barry Schweid’s work: no question of the administration’s definition of a “lasting ceasefire,” and a throwaway about what other countries want — the implication being they want an immediate, but not a lasting, ceasefire.

But I digress. It continues:

The military training would be designed to help the Lebanese armed forces “exercise control and sovereignty over all of Lebanese territory once we have an end to the fighting in such a way that is durable,” McCormack said.

So how are we to know that the White House or Pentagon has even discussed this with the Lebanese armed forces? And who exactly is going to disarm Hizbullah? A US-trained Lebanese army? Will they train them like they did many armies and security services across the region — SAVAK in Iran during the 1960s and 1970s for instance? Or just supply them with tools like tear gas (riot-control police in Egypt) and legcuffs or electric batons (Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, used for torture? Is US policy really encouraging the Lebanese army to take on Hizbullah — i.e. start another civil war? I’m not surprised we don’t see a Lebanese general confirming this.

Canada’s pro-Israel stance backfires on Harper

Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is paying the price for his support of Israel in the current war. The 250,000-strong -Lebanese-Canadian community is furious with his description of Israel’s strikes as a “moderate response” to Hizbullah’s activities. Polls now indicate that 77% of Canadians want to remain neutral on this war while 61% of people in Quebec, where Harper’s conservatives were hoping for a breakthrough, are resolutely against supporting Israel. A coalition of 60 NGOs will be protesting on Sunday against the government’s position. As many as 50,000 Lebanese-Canadian were believed to be in Lebanon when the war started, and several have already been killed by Israel strikes.

Also see this Le Monde article [$].

Nasrallah calls for avoiding civilian targets

Hassan Nasrallah has called for avoiding civilian targets on both sides:

BEIRUT: Hizbullah’s leader offered Thursday to stop pounding Israel’s “northern settlements” if the Jewish state refrained from bombarding Lebanon’s “cities and civilians.” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also issued a warning, however, in a televised speech: “Let my words be clear, any attack on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, will result in Hizbullah bombarding the Zionist entity’s capital, Tel Aviv.”

In an almost immediate response aired on Israeli public television, a senior military official said Israel would destroy all of Lebanon’s infrastructure if Tel Aviv were hit.

“We are ready to keep the whole thing restricted to a military fight with the Israeli Army,” Nasrallah said, “on the ground, fighters to fighters.”

I’m not sure how to interpret this except as an attempt to make Israel look bad and reinforce its image of an army that targets civilians, since Hizbullah would be in fact probably unwilling to fight a direct “battlefield” war rather than a guerrilla one, which it has proved relatively effective at doing. Anyway, the rest of the article is interesting — and I’m surprised to see the Daily Star describe Hizbullah as “the resistance.”