So if you haven’t taken a look at them yet — sorry, they’re graphic but they show the truth you won’t see on your TV set — do so now.
MONTREAL (AFP) – Ali El-Akhras wanted to introduce his children to his grandparents in Lebanon to show how three generations had thrived in Canada, but the carnage his parents once fled ended the trip and their lives.
An Israeli air strike destroyed the family home in Aitaroun in southern Lebanon this past week, killing the Montreal pharmacist, his wife and children, as well as his mother and an uncle, relatives said.
“We’re all devastated. It’s a shock,” Walid El-Akhras, 21, a relative who works at the family grocery in Montreal told AFP on Monday.
All were Canadians with dual Lebanese citizenship. Three of their Lebanese relatives also died in the blast, he said. Canadian officials have confirmed seven family members died but relatives say eight were killed.
Israeli forces have pounded targets in Lebanon since the middle of last week after the Hezbollah militant group captured two Israeli soldiers and began launching its own barrage of rockets into Israel.
On Monday, customers offered their condolences to the family. One wholesaler dropping off goods said: “It’s senseless.”
Ali El-Akhras had graduated from Montreal University and worked for the popular pharmacy chain Jean Coutu in the city’s Cote-des-Neiges district.
He had scrimped and saved to afford to bring his four children, aged one to eight years old, to Lebanon and introduce them to relatives for the first time, his sister Mayssoun El-Akhras told reporters at a press conference in Montreal.
“He wanted to return because the country was for a while peaceful … but they died as they slept, they burned to death in the same room,” she said, evoking images and sounds of the bombs their parents “had fled 35 years ago which finally caught up to them.”
Bush curses in unscripted Mideast comments
By JULIE MASON
Copyright 2006 Houston ChronicleST. PETERSBURG – President Bush inadvertently dropped the facade of carefully scripted summit diplomacy today when his lunchtime conversation with other world leaders was picked up by Russian television.
“The irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this (expletive) and it’s over,” Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair during lunch today, unaware their microphones were on.
The exchange, broadcast by Russian host television as the Group of Eight world leaders gathered for a closed session on their last day here, revealed a more candid side of the polite, often bland diplomacy officials show publicly.
Before Blair leaned over and snapped off the microphones, he and Bush discussed the Middle East, made small talk about travel plans, Diet Coke, and upcoming remarks the leaders would be making as the session came to a close.
“I’m just going to make it up,” Bush said. “I’m not going to talk too damn long like the rest of them. Some of these guys talk too long.”
The other thing that came out of this is that “Condi” is going “out there.”
Update: This isn’t the best recording, but here’s the BBC’s footage + interview.
President Jacques Chirac of France characterized the statement issued here as a call for a cease-fire — a word the Bush administration has sidestepped at every turn over the last few days. The host of the summit meeting, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, told reporters that “we do get the impression that the aims of Israel go beyond just recovering their kidnapped soldiers.’’
Talking to reporters here on Sunday evening, R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, acknowledged that the statement does not present any specific order for steps to solve the crisis; rather, he said, it presumes that Israel will stand down only after Hezbollah and Hamas stop shelling Israeli towns and release captured soldiers.
That’s right — absolutely nothing.
I edited the English translations of articles today written by a couple of friends in Lebanon — Hassan Dawoud, the writer and editor a major cultural weekly and the journalist and poet Youssef Bazzi — and they will both be shortly online (in Arabic, English and French) at babelmed.net, the Mediterranean culture site. Hassan and Youssef’s articles make me worry about the psychological impact of this war, which seems much greater than the 1996 Israeli operation Grapes of Wrath (then again, so is the damage). Youssef — your classic mad, intense Lebanese poet — has a wonderful turn of phrase to describe Lebanon in his piece: “a P.O. box for violent opportunists.”
We’ve been hearing the theory that the timing of Hezbollah’s Tuesday kidnapping of the two Israeli Defense Force soldiers was planned well in advance and with coordination from Tehran or Damascus. Can you speak to that?
Oy vey. There are a lot of people in Washington trying to walk that story back right now, because it’s not true.
Hezbollah and Israel stand along this border every day observing each other through binoculars and waiting for an opportunity to kill each other. They are at war. They have been for 25 years, no one ever declared a cease-fire between them. … They stand on the border every day and just wait for an opportunity. And on Tuesday morning there were two Humvees full of Israeli soldiers, not under observation from the Israeli side, not under covering fire, sitting out there all alone. The Hezbollah militia commander just couldn’t believe it — so he went and got them.
The Israeli captain in charge of that unit knew he had really screwed up, so he sent an armored personnel carrier to go get them in hot pursuit, and Hezbollah led them right through a minefield.
Now if you’re sitting in Tehran or Damascus or Beirut, and you are part of the terrorist Politburo so to speak, you have a choice. With your head sunk in your hands, thinking “Oh my God,” you can either give [the kidnapped soldiers] back and say “Oops, sorry, wrong time” or you can say, “Hey, this is war.”
It is absolutely ridiculous to believe that the Hezbollah commander on the ground said Tuesday morning, “Go get two Israeli soldiers, would you please?”
And my other favorite passage:
Some are proposing that the Lebanese government send its army into southern Lebanon. What do you think of that idea?
It’s a really great idea. The Lebanese army can’t collect the garbage in Beirut. Neither can the Syrian army. Southern Lebanon is Hezbollah land. … Hezbollah is the second or third most competent military force in the region, after Israel and Iran. It could probably defeat a good sized Egyptian battalion.
Ah, poor Egyptians.
Art. 48. Basic rule
In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.
Art. 52. General Protection of civilian objects
1. Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals. Civilian objects are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 2.
2. Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.
3. In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.
Art. 54. Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
Art. 59. Non-defended localities
1. It is prohibited for the Parties to the conflict to attack, by any means whatsoever, non-defended localities. 2. The appropriate authorities of a Party to the conflict may declare as a non-defended locality any inhabited place near or in a zone where armed forces are in contact which is open for occupation by an adverse Party. Such a locality shall fulfil the following conditions: (a) all combatants, as well as mobile weapons and mobile military equipment must have been evacuated; (b) no hostile use shall be made of fixed military installations or establishments; (c) no acts of hostility shall be committed by the authorities or by the population; and (d) no activities in support of military operations shall be undertaken.
Israel ratified in 1951. Helena Cobban has made some good arguments on the need for a single set of standards, under international law, to resolve the conflict. I should stress again that, no matter whether you are “pro-Arab” or “pro-Israeli” the underlying issue here is that Israel is using collective punishment and targeting civilians who have nothing to do with Hizbullah. This humanitarian issue needs to trump all other considerations.
Lebanese TV is reporting that an Israeli plane was shot down, showing footage of debris falling from the sky. Israel is denying it. Along with the strike on the Israeli ship — the most modern frigate they have, and they only have three of them — such a strike would add to the apparently growing feeling in Israel that the army underestimated Hizbullah’s abilities.
Israel has carried out a “limited” crossing into South Lebanon to go after the positions from which Hizbullah is firing rockets on Haifa, but then returned to Israel. More rockets were fired on Haifa this morning, but claimed no victims.
A lot of pundits are expecting a land invasion within a few days, but Israeli officials have said they are reluctant because the border area has been heavily mined by Hizbullah. Some expect an Israeli widening of the war to include Syria. Other Israeli experts or security sources say the whole thing will be over in a few days. Clearly things are in a state of flux as to where this conflict is going, which means that there is still hope for a stand-down.
An Israeli newspaper said that 25% of Hizbullah’s fighting capacity has been destroyed. How do they know that?
I’m not sure how Israel will be able to completely destroy Hizbullah, as it has said it would do, without re-occupying Lebanon. Nor do I see how Hizbullah would accept a peace deal involving its own disarmament, as is being talked about in Western capitals. A ceasefire looks like the best you can hope for.
Sorry for the brevity and lack of links, I will try to put something more cogent together later…