The Town of Martyrs

Beirut
29 August, 2006

"You're just a kid," scoffed nonogenarian Ahmed Yehya al-Hajj when I told him I was sixty years old. "I have sons older than you and a grandson over fifty."

Ahmed is fortunate to be alive, and not just because of his age. He was visiting one of his many offspring in the village of Houla when the house was struck by an Israeli missile. First reports were that as many as sixty people may have died, but in fact there was only one fatality and several very serious injuries, some permanent. Still bad enough, for those affected.

The survivors showed me the remnants of the missile. They also shared the remnants of their hopes and dreams. Newlyweds had been living in the house, their furniture and wedding gifts now part of the rubble. Were there fighters in the building? No, just civilians, all members of the al-Hajj family.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard the same thing from different families in different places at different times. Is there a vast conspiracy among the million victims to pretend that they are all civilians? I doubt it. The more obvious and likely explanation is that civilian targets were the rule and military ones the exception.

On the ground across the street was one of the many destroyed water tanks that had been atop a house. Denial of access to water was a major strategic goal of the Israeli military. In each of the hundreds of towns and villages in the south, hundreds of these tanks became targets. In Houla, the four main water towers were among the first casualties of the invasion. Pumps, generators and major plumbing arteries had also been targeted.

Of course, water was not the only target. Electricity, roads, bridges, schools and occasionally even hospitals and ambulances had come under attack. Israel's defense is that these facilities get used by Hezbollah. That's true, but if Hezbollah fighters breathe air, does that mean that air should be cut off to all areas in which they operate? This seems to be the logic of Israeli strategy. The result is massive "collateral" death and damage to civilians, since everything that sustains life can potentially be made to sustain fighters. Such logic fosters war crimes.

Houla is in fact known as the "village of martyrs". (The terms is used to mean anyone who dies at the hands of the enemy, whether a combattant or not.) More than 100 were slaughtered by Israelis in 1948. They were placed in a mass grave now covered with trees but no markers. A monument in another section of town serves as a memorial. Another ninety villagers were killed during the Israeli invasion of 1982, during which the death toll rose to 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinians in the space of three months. Nonetheless, there is competion for Houla's title. Qana lost more than one hundred civilians to a single Israeli strike in 1996 and another 54 were reported killed by a guided missile last month. Other villages have similar histories.

The need for sustenance can become a trap in both directions, as well. We were shown a house where twelve Israeli soldiers were killed by four resistance fighters. The soldiers had decided to use a particularly comfortable house three nights in a row to eat, drink and sleep at night. During the soldiers' daytime sorties, fighters got into the basement of the house, waited until most of the soldiers were asleep, and then went upstairs and slaughtered them all. Their bloodstains were still on the mattresses, floor and doors.

In the same village, an Apache helicopter fired a wire-guided missile into another house, killing two young mothers. Volunteers of our civil resistance group interviewed the survivors about their needs, especially baby clothing, diapers, formula and bottled water. We also met the four-year-old son of one of the women. He could not explain why he was unable to cry, but the relatives taking care of him say that he cannot sleep for more than a few hours at a time and generally refuses to talk about his mother's death. Chances are that he feels guilty for being alive and watching his mother die, according to the nurse in our group.

There is much more, of course. A middle-aged man in an undershirt and brown pants told me that he had had nothing else to wear for weeks, having barely escaped with his life when his house was hit. These experiences would have to be multipied many thousands of times, with at least a million directly affected and the entire population of Lebanon indirectly affected.

I have occasionally met with Hezbollah spokespersons, always respectful and grateful for our efforts. However, they never agree to be photographed. On the other hand, I have never encountered victims who did not want to speak on camera or have their photograph taken, which makes it exceedingly unlikely that any of them are Hezbollah, and which corroborates their reports that the damage is civilian.

Leaving Houla, we went to Beirut via the Beqaa valley, a route that took us by the border areas that I had visited as a guest of Mohammed el-Amine less than a week before the fighting started. At one point where the Lebanese and Israeli roads run next to each other with a fence in between, we saw two Israeli workers repairing the fence and a settler in a pickup driving opposite us, in the same direction. The tidy Israeli settlements with their red tile roofs were in stark contrast to the massive destruction on our side of the border.

We didn't make it to Beirut. Khalil and Naim, members of the team who offered to take us, prevailed upon us to have dinner at their home in Libbayeh, atop the 1,200-meter peak of a mountain ridge at the edge of the valley. Opposite us to the East towered 2,800-meter Mt. Hermon (Jabal al-Shaikh) and to the West, on the other side of the valley, the Mount Lebanon range. On the way to this isolated community, we stopped at the home of a completely self-sufficient traditional farm housing approximately twenty family members preparing their barley crop. They had sheep, chickens, goats and a cow; all kinds of grains except rice; spring water, fruits, nuts and vegetables. A hunter passed by wearing a jacket of various shotgun shells, including a special one for either bear or Israeli armored vehicles (according to him.

Dinner at Khalil's house was made from the most delicious and freshest ingredients, all grown and raised from the immediate surroundings. Fruit could be picked from the vines and trees in front of our eyes. Khalil's father was the consumate host, allowing me to beat him at backgammon even though he is the village champion - or so he said. We ended up meeting half the town, watching Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's speech on television, and sleeping in the cool air far from Beirut's sweltering heat and humidity.

Not that Libbayeh was untouched by the invasion. An area outside the town had been used as a staging area for commandos striking Baalbek, and some of the roads had been cut. Libbayeh had been hit much more heavily during Israel's last occupation from 1982 to 2000, and much had been damaged and destroyed during that time. The house in which we slept had in 2000 seen a missile that went entirely through it, whisking a gun from the hands of its owner and causing a broken finger as the only injury. Nonetheless, the wounds were still fresh and the townspeople very much on the alert.

We finally made it to Beirut the next day, and in a few hours there will be a meeting to discuss strategies for breaking the Israeli blockade of Lebanon. Currently no one comes or goes without Israeli permission. The plan is to defy Israel and assert Lebanese sovereignty rights by going without permission. The biggest obstacle right now is a boat willing to do it. However, we hope to solve this later today or tomorrow. I hope it happens soon, because I'm due to leave in a few days.

Paul Larudee

Picking Up the Pieces

20 August, 2006

Silaa is a small village in southern Lebanon that, according to the villagers, has thus far been overlooked by all of the aid agencies except our small, inefficient grassroots group of amateurs. Nevertheless the townspeople had managed to get an earth mover and a dump truck, which were clearing the road and pushing the debris into the bomb craters and down the side of the hill.

Abu Yousef, the caretaker of the house where we are staying, across the valley in Deir Kifa, is from Silaa, and introduced us to the worst affected families. Parts of eight bodies had been recovered, a hand here, a head there, a torso with clothes still on it. The hand could be identified by the ring and the torso by the ID in the pocket. Gruesome work, and very hard on both the workers and the loved ones. The youngest was two years old, the oldest seventy. However, there were four bodies that as a practical matter would have to remain beneath the rubble, with no remnant for the funeral.

A survivor explained that two laser-guided missiles had hit his house. The first narrowly missed the main structure and struck the well underneath. The family had barely enough time to escape before the second one hit, collapsing the entire house upon itself.

Mohammed Ayoub, another survivor, was not so lucky. All of the dead were from the extended Ayoub family, and four were his immediate relatives, including his son and his son's wife. A quiet, introspective man, Mohammed had escaped to Beirut early and had returned to find much of the family dead or homeless. His voice broke as he reluctantly described his ordeal in clipped phrases, finding the words painful.

His brother, Hussein, who speaks English allowed me to record him on film:

"Let Bush come here. Let him see. Let him feel, if he has feelings. He has none. If he has feelings, he would never send his smart bombs to kill civilians. From the first moment he could have stopped the war. He could say, 'Stop! It's enough killing. It's enough blood. It's enough crime. In five minutes he can stop everything. I know he has the power of the world, but he's using it wrong.

"The United States is a great country. I love the United States. It's a freedom country. So why did the United States do like this? Why do they protect criminals? If they want to fight Hezbollah, why do they bury civilians alive while they're sleeping in their houses?

"One million refugees ran away. We came back to find our homes. That's my house right there that they're clearing away. I have my brother's son and his wife there, young people. We never found even pieces of their bodies.

"Why? Why? I want to ask the policy of the USA. This is not a new Middle East. It's a new dictatorship. To obey you is not a new Middle East. I love or hate you for what you do. We want peace, but not the way Condoleeza Rice is doing it. They're protecting criminals."

They asked if I wanted to photograph the remains of Mohammed Ayoub's son. Mohammed at first understandably objected, but others thought that the message was important. I agreed to do so. They were pitifully small. They then showed me his picture, a presentable young man in a casual V-neck and crew cut.

We met with the mayor of the town to arrange delivery of the relief supplies the following day and to see what else we might be able to do for the town. We also sent a press release and planned a media event where the survivors of each family would address a town gathering.

Following the meeting, we were taken to a home which had been struck by a spent shell. I photographed it and the hole it had made, and I viewed bullets and shells that had been collected by the young men of the town. They said that the bullets had come down like rain and their collection seemed to justify the claim, as did the many more still on the ground in some places. Most of them were high velocity 50-caliber vehicle-mounted shells about five inches long, including the cartridge, and about half were exploding projectiles, some of which had failed to detonate.

I'm finding it hard to wrap the scale of a single month's destruction into my poor brain. It's hard enough to view the damage to one town or one family. I get stuck on the multiplication times the number of places that I have seen - never mind the many more that I have not. And always, always, people are kind and respectful, even when they know that I am American. They even joke about taking some of my blood, and I argue that it's less valuable because I am diabetic. They are still able to enjoy humor amidst the grief. Perhaps it helps to keep busy with the task of putting one's life back together. There is so much to do.

Paul Larudee

The Road to Recovery

Deir Kifa, Lebanon
19 August, 2006

A few days make all the difference. The Lebanese army had laid a temporary bridge across the Litani river, which cut our wait time to less than five minutes. The total time from Beirut to Tyre was under three hours, less than a third what it had been only three days earlier.

My companions were fellow ISM volunteer Alberto Cruz from ISM-Spain and Mohamad Safieddine, a 20-year-old agriculture student at the American University of Beirut, in whose car we were traveling. Mohamad is from the coastal city of al-Naqqoura, just north of the Israeli border, but it was his first time back since the start of the Israeli invasion of his homeland. In something of a role reversal, therefore, Alberto and I became his guides. We took him along the roads we had traveled in previous days, where he saw the devastation that I have described in previous reports.

There were, however, already several differences. First, the Lebanese army had started to deploy in some places, and a few UN troops were also in place. The ones that I asked said they were from Ghana, which means that they were part of the UNIFIL forces who have been here for years, now probably trying to be an advance presence under the new mandate for the French-led forces due to arrive soon as part ot the multinational peacekeepers recently authorized by UN resolution 1701.

The task of cleaning and rebuilding had also clearly begun in earnest. Earthmoving equipment could be seen clearing the roads from crushed buildings mixed with family portraits, stamp collections and high school diplomas, now mere landfill. Repair crews were already restringing cables and laying pipeline and conduits. Hezbollah had also had also put up trademark yellow banners to welcome returnees, journalists and visitors in English, Arabic and French. "Made in USA" captioned the worst areas of destruction, as did "This is your democracy, USA" and "This is the new Middle East". "The Great Lebanon has deseated [sic] the murders[sic]." "Rice, they will not see your new Mideast." In Tyre, mass graves were being dug for the dead and almost every town and village along the way was having funerals.

Our group, a total of about twenty Lebanese and international volunteers, were all making their way to Deir Kifa to do grassroots relief and solidarity work in areas as yet largely unserved by ogther agencies. Our destination was the spacious home of Mohammed Elamine, an old friend of mine from Saudi Arabia whose hospitality I had shared under completely different circumstances only six weeks earlier, mere days before the invasion. He and his wife Lourdes were among the American citizens evacuated near the start of the bombing and shelling, and he was now staying with his youngest son Rami in Baltimore while another son, Bilal, a well-known journalist and co-founder of Left Turn Magazine, opened the house for us.

Mohamad, Alberto and I had left Beirut early in order to go to Maroun al-Ras, on the border with Israel before meeting up with the group at Deir Kifa. Alberto had been refused entry by Israeli soldiers a few days earlier, and the mayor of the town, whom he had interviewed, had expressed grave concern for the welfare of those still inside, mostly old people with whom the Israelis had allowed no communication. We wanted to see what we could do to help, and to report to our group on the current status.

The good news was that the soldiers had left the day before. We spoke to Mustafa Faris, an 80-year-old resident who had survived alone in his house on cracked wheat, onions and well water for 34 days. Had he spoken to the soldiers? Had they supplied the townspeople with food and water, as they had told Alberto a few days ago? He had spoken with them, but they had supplied nothing. I asked in what language they had communicated. In Arabic, he replied. The soldiers were all Arabs, including Druze, bedouins, Algerians, Yemenis and Moroccans. (Some of them may have come from Israel's third-class non-Jewish Palestinian minorities, while others were probably from among the second-class Jews from Arab countries.)

Mustafa's nephew, Nimr Faris, invited Alberto and me to come to his house while Mohamad went back to the car to get the few relief supplies that we had brought with us. A few weeks ago, Nimr and thirty other family members, including twenty children, had fled to Sidon after ten terrifying days in the unfinished lower level of their house while bombs and shells rained down and the Israeli occupiers kept them penned in their homes. Only Nimr's elderly father, Diab, the brother of Mustafa, and his mother refused to leave. Tears poured and embraces lingered as the three of them were reunited, removing the anxious doubts for each other's wellbeing. In this family, at least, everyone survived unscathed, a blessing compared the tragedies of some of their neighbors.

The total number of dead in the village was uncertain. Two were being buried that day, and at least three were suspected to be under the rubble of the homes. The smell of death was strongest near the entrance of the village, where the Israelis had bombed the cemetery. How long do corpses continue to reek after they are buried? Or was the smell from the surrounding destruction, offering fresh fodder for maggots and bacteria? As I tucked my nose in my shirt, I wondered how Israeli soldiers could allow themselves to remain among the stench of their handiwork as a reminder of their actions. How does that play on the mind?

As we left Maroun al-Ras, we took a route through many more villages, most of them with large swathes of destruction. The scale stretches the imagination, and especially the short time scale during which the havoc had been wreaked. It is hard to imagine that these were the lovely villages and towns through which I had passed not so long ago.

One of the remarkable things about the resistance in south Lebanon was the degree to which Hezbollah preserved its communication system. Wireless systems would have been intercepted, so it appears to depend upon cables, probably with lots of redundant routes so as to survive ruptures and to cut off tapped connections. Indeed, some of the resdents report seeing such work in years past, suspecting that some of their more influencial neighbors had gotten special privileges. This might explain why Israel attacked the telephone and electrical systems so heavily. Wherever we went, the road was strewn with cables, and the electrical pilons had been toppled. Bomb and artillery craters had ruptured the roads, as well as the conduits beneath and beside them.

All for naught. Hezbollah appeared to have preserved its communication and coordination systems intact regardless of how much the Israelis threw at them. There were stories of entire mountaintops being raised on jacks so as to fire rockets from inside, then reclose before the Israelis hit back. The truth may be more prosaic, but there is no doubt that guerilla tactics included elaborate underground fortifications that permitted them to survive and continue fighting under the most persistent barrages. It brought to mind the massive concrete bunkers that I had seen littering the countryside in Yugoslavia many years ago. Marshall Tito's fortifications were more visible, in order to act as a deterrent for any forces foolish enough to consider invading his country. The Israelis had clearly encountered a situation unlike any they had seen before.

When we finally arrived at Deir Kifa, we found that we were the first to arrive, although we had been on the road more than seven hours. Only the caretaker, Abu Yousef and Bilal Elamine were there, alhough others from Tyre were not long in joining us. We took the opportunity to relax, wash off the dust and smells of the day and refresh ourselves. It wasn't until 9:00 in the evening that three other cars from Beirut arrived. A late evening meeting determined that a team would do more factfinding at some villages while the rest would begin relief at the neighboring village of Silaa in the morning. We went to bed looking forward to working side by side with people rebuilding their communities.

Paul Larudee

The Next Move

Beirut
17 August, 2006

We almost went south again early this morning. At the meeting yesterday, ISM volunteer Alberto Arce reported that on his factfinding tour he had come upon Israeli soldiers preventing entry to the village of Maroun al-Ras, not far from the route that my team took yesterday. The mayor, who lived just outside the village, had told him that he had had no contact with the villagers who had remained in the town, mostly old people, for several weeks, and was very worried for their welfare.

Alberto and a Venezuelan journalist determined to find out for themselves and were turned away. We therefore discussed the feasibility of doing an action to reach these people. Although we had sufficient volunteers, we decided to call it off late last night for several reasons. First, roughly half the volunteers had no training and no experience in such situations. Second, the meeting had already scheduled a training session to take place in Beirut tonight, which would have to be canceled because the trainer (Huwaida) and some of the trainees would be in the south. Finally, one of our number currently in the south reported by phone that she had been successful in reaching Maroun al-Ras with a team from Medecins Sans Frontieres.

We therefore decided that it would be more important to do the training this evening and then consider going tomorrow. We intended to go tomorrow for two days anyway as a large group, to do a retreat and extended strategy session over two days at a large house in the country, so some of us could leave earlier to try to do an action at Maroun al-Ras or another village still occupied by Israeli troups. Huwaida is leaving on Saturday, and although Adam and I can do some training, she is definitely the best in this regard, and can do it bilingually much better than either of us. It is therefore a high priority to use her to best advantage before she leaves.

The retreat will be a major milestone for ISM-Lebanon. We will discuss the goals, structure and decision-making procedures of the group. It remains to be seen to what extent we will have a role if the Israeli military pulls out completely. I see us as useful in making nonviolent trouble for foreign occupiers and usurpers, especially when they are on the soil of an indigenous population without their consent. I therefore wonder how much we will have to do if Israeli forces do in fact pull out from everywhere except the Shebaa farms. Is that the only place to try to mount resistance? The situation was always different from Palestine in several important respects, and it's now becoming less and less so.

Paul Larudee

The Land is Still There

Beirut
16 August, 2006

By the time we returned to Siddiqine yesterday morning, someone had cleared the dead cows and hopefully adopted the new calf barely standing the night before. Other than that, there is little in the way of good news.

Large areas of Siddiqine, Bint Jbeil and many other villages and towns are completely devastated. We spoke to one driver whose car was piled high with foam mattresses. He said he was from the local village but couldn't figure out where his house had been. I filled my camera with frame after frame of destruction, but soon realized the futility of it all, and limited myself to shots that had a unique and often ironic twist to them, such as the suggestion box framed with destruction in a recently beautiful new school where our team member Maryam had taught. I asked her a few questions while the camera was running, but the references to details of life before the invasion brought tears to her eyes where there had only been surprise. Why hit the schools?

Huge craters cut many of the roads and pulverized some areas of the towns. At least half the houses were uninhabitable, but many did not exist at all. There was talk of a special type of bomb or artillery shell that made a strange crater that was deep but not wide. Were these "bunker busters?" I took some pictures of unexploded ordnance on the ground, including a huge shell with the number 500 on it and some Hebrew writing. I'm hoping Huwaida will be able to translate it. Thankfully, I found no signs of cluster bombs, but brought back some shrapnel that is as heavy as lead but not as soft. Is it depleted uranium? I hope to find out. That is associated with "bunker busters", and it's my understanding that while the shrapnel is not particularly dangerous to handle, it turns to dust and burns when it strikes hardened steel, creating a cancerous long term environmental disaster. I hope my worst fears are unfounded.

In the village of Aita al-Shaab we found a family sifting by hand through the remains of their house. They found what they were looking for: the bodies of the grandparents, several weeks old and not all in one piece. They were no longer human beings, but rather masses of putrid, rotting flesh falling off the bones, leaving an unmistakable stench that was only partially mitigated by some coverings that the family had placed to try to preserve a shred of dignity.

In her grief, the daughter of the elderly couple launched into an indictment of George Bush and the U.S. relationship with Israel, which I was fortunate enough to capture on film:

"Let the people of America see our children. Let all Americans know what Mr. Bush has done to us, that this is his democracy, his "New Middle East". We don't blame Israelis. We have always known what they are. I have a two-year-old baby who can't stop saying, 'They broke my house. I want my house.' Can the American president answer this child? Have the American people no reaction to the gifts of Mr. Bush to the people of Lebanon? He cares more about a dog than for the killing of an entire nation. Does he want to kill the people of the Middle East to create a 'land without people'? We are the Middle East, and without us there is none. Heaven without angels is not heaven. I do not blame the Israelis. I blame Bush, who proclaims democracy and humanity and freedom and dignity, to be imposed upon the entire world with steel and fire, while he professes to believe in God. That's what I want to tell Mr. Bush. I'm looking for my Mom and Dad underneath these ruins. To me they are everything, and even a grain of the soil of this land is more honorable than Mr.Bush. He cannot rule our country even under fire. Even if we are dead, we will be free. His great technology is useless. Is this the way to use technology? Let him learn how to use technology for good. He cannot rule us this way. We are honored to give our blood for our country, even our souls and our houses. We live under the sun of freedom, while he [Bush] has no honor. We've been looking for my parents for 22 days, but of course this is of no interest to Mr. Bush. Let Americans know that the hunger that they suffer is so that Israel can have the weapons to destroy Arab countries. I hope that Americans learn the reality of what is going on. We will stay here. This is our land. We are not afraid of them and their weapons."

As we continued to survey the region, I had expected to see some of the 30,000 Israeli soldiers that were supposedly deployed there. My experience in Palestine made me think that there would be checkpoints and controls everywhere and that I would find myself face to face with Israeli troops throughout the trip. I was therefore surprised to see only three soldiers atop a tank on a hill above the road during the entire day. Even when we drove right next to the border, there was no evidence of troops on either side. This is occupation? What controls are the multinational force going to take over?

Of course there was plenty of evidence that they had been there recently. They had painted graffiti, broken into some of the homes, put their cigarettes out on the furniture, eaten the food, smashed nearly everything that could be smashed and vandalized wedding pictures and pictures of the Virgin Mary. (Just to show you the misconceptions westerners hold about religious attitudes here, the house belonged to a Muslim man who simply liked to venerate this Christian icon of his fellow Lebanese.)

The blurring of borders occurred on our last stop, as well, in the village of Dhe'ira, on the way to the coast. The people of this village are part of a larger tribe, similar to Bedouin, whose community straddles the border with Israel. More than half live on the Israeli side, with families split down the middle. In many cases, the parents or grandparents live on one side of the border and the children on the other. However, no Lebanese are permitted to go to Israel and no Israeli citizens may come to Lebanon. There, in a bucolic setting of tobacco fields, a taxi driver, Bilal, invited us to his home after showing us some of the damage done by the Israeli invasion in his community. His own home had been untouched, and his hospitality was a welcome respite from the horrors we had witnessed during the day. Even the physical act of washing hands and face from the dust and the smells seemed like an act of purification. We thanked Bilal and made our way back through more destroyed villages to the coast and then north to Tyre.

Although the sun was almost setting in Tyre, Ismail was determined to make it back to Beirut. I was equally determined to send out yesterday's report and download the pictures from my camera. We compromised. We found a Turkish journalist at the Tyre Rest House who helped me download my pictures and then we left. However the traffic jam was so great that the Lebanese soldiers advised us to turn back and try again in a couple of hours. That gave me the chance to send yesterday's report and everyone else a chance to snooze on the beach while I toiled over a hot computer. I was seriously skeptical about reaching Beirut before morning, but Ismail's optimism turned out to be justified. The Lebanese army had worked a few miracles with the road (though not the bridge over the Litani river), and we made it back in three hours.

I have already learned that some of our colleagues who took different routes had more direct and disturbing contacts with Israeli troops. We will meet late this afternoon to make some plans based on our factfinding and decide what actions we want to take. There is plenty of work left to do and we will have to find our role in doing it.

Paul Larudee

On the Road with the Returning Lebanese

On the Road with the Returning Lebanese

Beirut
15 August, 2006
7:00 a.m.

This beautiful, quiet morning in Tyre fails to appropriately mourn the Lebanese lives that have been lost. The residual coolness of the night is too refreshing for the occasion, and the pilotless drones circling overhead sound more like large mosquitoes than spotters for the weapons of the fourth most powerful military force on earth.

The drones had plenty to observe yesterday. If the drive from Beirut is any indication, as many as 100,000 Lebanese may have tried to return to their homes in the south yesterday. It took us nine hours to travel what had been less than an hour away only five weeks earlier. As hawkers sold bottles of cold water to a captive market of passengers trapped in the traffic, residents of the coastal towns taunted us, "You will not return…" We laughed, which made the wait more bearable.

I soon tired of taking pictures of bombed-out bridges, overpasses and pedestrian walkovers. I had enough to show that Israel had been determined to cripple Lebanese life and livelihood.

The worst bottleneck was at the Litani, Lebanon's only major river – three hours of waiting on multiple meandering paths through banana and orange groves converging on a single lane dirt embankment built over culverts barely big enough to allow the river's flow during the dry season. It is the only way to cross without a long detour that itself faces the same problem farther upstream.

I decided not to wait in the car, and instead went down to the river to watch and take pictures. I got as far as a small undestroyed bridge over a tiny tributary of the river, and decided that it was as good a spot as any.

I was not mistaken. Young soldiers unfamiliar with their authority struggled to control frustrated drivers blocking traffic to gain a few precious feet of advantage. At one point an imam in black robes and turban emerged from his Mercedes to try to mediate a dispute, but even his authority made little difference. Most surreal was a young woman in a halter top walking her dog on a leash. Overlooking the chaos was a billboard for the Abou Dib Hotel, with an idyllic scene of resort luxury.

It was dark by the time we arrived in Tyre, where Ismail, a young Lebanese architect who was kind enough to take us in his car, suggested that we drop by the home of S, a dear friend of his. After some warm hospitality and conversation, partly to assess current conditions, we headed out again to the village of Siddiqine, which is the home of Maryam, a third member of our team. We had previously agreed to spend the night at her family home in the village.

The short drive into the low mountains took place in pitch blackness except for the headlights of the cars and the occasional generator-powered home. For all practical purposes, there was no electricity anywhere, which meant that the glow against the sky to the south could only have come from the bright lights of Israel, invisible in normal times.

The drive took us through Qana, site of the 1996 Israeli massacre of more than 100 civilians who had taken refuge in the UN compound, as well as the one less than two weeks ago that reportedly killed another 54. Soon we began to see destruction all around us within the short range of our headlights, and then the unmistakable stench of death permeated the air. At least two dead cows lay on the road, a small dehydrating calf next to one of them – a heartbreaking scene about which we could do nothing.

Unfortunately, Maryam's house was only 200 meters away, down a road made impassable with rubble. If we decided to stay, we would have to walk it with a single flashlight (mine) among us. Maryam's brother had negotiated the passage earlier in the day and determined that the house was relatively untouched. However, doing it at night was another matter, especially with the stench of the cows in our nostrils and earlier warnings of cluster bombs. We headed back to the house of S in Tyre, and accepted her hospitality for the night.

This morning we will head out to Siddiqine and some other villages to do a bit of factfinding so that we can report back to our group in Beirut what sort of civil resistance/solidarity project might be feasible to undertake. Who knows? Perhaps this will be the first day since my arrival without a single meeting to attend.

Paul Larudee

Meeting the Need/Needing the Meeting

Beirut
13 August, 2006

As a solidarity volunteer, I expect to share the suffering of the Lebanese, but seven hours of meetings in one day seems a bit much. I deferred on the committee meeting and will return soon for another at 10:00 p.m. I am awed by the stamina of the Lebanese people.

Our neighbors to the south provided a brief interlude during the second afternoon meeting with an unusually intense bombardment of the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, shown live on the projection television screen at Thé Marbuta, an as-yet-unopened café in the Pavillon Hotel building now serving as the center of Samidoun, a coalition of Lebanese civilian volunteer organizations formed to deal with a fraction of the million refugees of the Lebanese nakba (catastrophe). We speculate that Israel was using the new gifts from its American uncle, bunker busters that shook the ground even several kilometers away. A good Geiger counter to measure inhaleable uranium dust should be able to determine whether we are right.

If so, it probably marks a desperate effort to assassinate Hassan Nasrullah, the Hezbollah leader, before the ceasefire supposedly goes into effect at seven o'clock tomorrow morning local time. If they succeed, there will obviously be no ceasefire, which is probably what they have in mind. If not, they will have to find another way to sabotage it, but probably not before it already begins. They are very resourceful.

One of the jobs of the committee that is meeting as I write this is to explore the possibility of going south after the ceasefire takes effect but before the international forces arrive. I think it's an ideal time to confront the Israeli military directly with a civilian action aimed at being in the way, returning Lebanese civilians to the south, and bringing relief supplies to the population that never left. During that time, Israel will have committed itself to refrain from military action, so it becomes possible to become a nonviolent pain in the butt, something in which the ISM specializes. We would have to be sure that we're not in the way of armed resistance forces, because that would be dangerous, and we never place ourselves directly between parties engaged in combat. The decision rests with our Lebanese colleagues, but I'm crossing my fingers.

I can't say that I'm optimistic about having a quiet night. I'm sure Israel will try to get in its last licks before the ceasefire is due to start. Still, it will be easier for me than for those who are more directly exposed.

Have to head back for the meeting. I try to sleep in between, but sometimes it's easier to succumb during.

Paul

The Mobilization of Civil Resistance in Lebanon

Beirut
August 12, 2006

At 8:00 this morning in Beirut's Martyr's Square, commemorating the deaths of 33 Lebanese patriots in 1916, the doubts about a Lebanese civil resistance movement against Israel's invasion of the south were swept away. Only twenty-four hours earlier, the organizers could assure only six cars, no gasoline and an uncertain number of volunteers. Should we cancel? Change the objective? Postpone? After yet another difficult meeting we decided to plunge ahead, with several contingency plans.

This morning, however, we found ourselves with 52 vehicles, two to four volunteers per vehicle and a press corps swarming all around us. Each car sported a large Lebanese flag on its roof and was loaded with relief supplies for residents still in the town of Nabatiyya in south Lebanon after a million of their citizens had been put to flight by Israel's policy of depopulating the region. After interviews and car assignments, the convoy headed through the pride of Beirut's historic downtown business district - the section destroyed in Lebanon's civil war but recently restored with care to its former glory.

The line of vehicles made its way deliberately through the city, pausing occasionally to let stragglers catch up. "What is this?" asked bystanders. "Where are you going?"

"To Nabatiyya." replied the volunteers with pride. "We are a civil resistance campaign asserting our right to be in our lands."

The faces of the onlookers beamed in return as they shouted "God speed," touched their hands to their heads, lips or hearts and passed their blessings our way with a gesture.

South we went, first on the superhighway and then on the older coastal road where we encountered the first of many bridges blasted with impunity by Israeli military might during the last month.

Passing through the coastal villages, we had not gotten far before we came upon a Lebanese military checkpoint. They stopped us and refused to let us pass, saying that it was not safe. We disputed their assessment, pointing out that we were the only vehicles being stopped and that there was plenty of traffic in both directions. With some difficulty, we located a higher official of the Ministry of Interior in order to appeal the order, but he refused to change it. We considered several other alternatives, including removing the markings on the cars, getting past the checkpoint and reforming, or doing a sitdown strike in the road. However, our goal was not confrontation with the Lebanese authorities and Lebanese unity was one of the important principles of our action.

In the end, therefore, we gathered at the Ramlet al-Baida ("White Sands") beach and decided to try to make another opportunity for ourselves as soon as possible on a different day. We then moved the meeting to our staging center for a self-evaluation session. At that meeting we agreed that although it was a big disappointment not to achieve our intended objective, our success in proving the interest and viability of a Lebanese civil resistance movement should not be lost because of external circumstances that no one had foreseen. The group will therefore be holding strategy sessions in the coming days to plan the next move.

Don't count on this group to disappear. Lebanese civil resistance took an important step today.

Paul Larudee
ISM volunteer in Lebanon

The Land of Milk

The Land of Milk

The name Lebanon literally means “the land of milk”. It is one of the names given to a mythical earthly paradise in ancient times, usually located in one's neighbor's land, which typically (along with the assumption that your neighbors are barbarians and therefore a lower life form) justified the conquest of said neighbor.

Of course, such justification is no longer permitted today under the Geneva conventions. Merely coveting one’s neighbor’s land is not enough, even if your neighbors are barbarians unworthy of life itself. Today we use word “terrorist” instead of barbarian, but even terrorists have rights, at least until John Woo, Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales get their way with international law. A “terrorist threat” is therefore required as a security pretext for Israel to take land that it and its founders have coveted since at least 1918-19, when Cahim Weizman and David Ben Gurion first described Lebanon’s Litani river as Israel’s future “natural” border to the north.

Yesterday the original meaning of Lebanon’s name came to mind as I sat on the transmission housing of a shared taxi for five hours on the way to Beirut from Damascus airport, watching the relatively barren Syrian countryside, which contrasts with Lebanon’s mountainous beauty and verdant hillsides. The tour was necessitated because the only remaining route into Lebanon was the longest possible one; all the rest had been closed by Israel’s bombing of the bridges. This one had no major bridges, so even if it is bombed, a rough detour is probably still possible.

I didn’t have to wait long to see Israel’s handiwork. At Qaa, within a few kilometers of the border crossing, was a destroyed vegetable distribution center that Israel had attacked the same morning, claiming that it was a munitions depot. At least twenty people died to prove them wrong. It was Israel’s farthest strike north; any farther is geographically almost impossible.

Israel’s statement that no place is safe found further evidence on the main highway south, where four bombed-out bridges required us to divert to the older coastal highway. It’s a scenic route, but what could be the purpose of destroying the infrastructure in the largely Christian areas, where Israel was the silent partner of some of the parties in the Lebanese civil war? Perhaps it is Israel’s way of punishing them for showing solidarity this time with those resisting Israel’s invasion of the south, or perhaps it is just standard operating procedure to distribute as much misery as possible as widely as possible. It certainly would be consistent with Israeli actions in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip, and in Palestinian communities inside Jerusalem and Israel, although its creation of nearly a million Lebanese refugees seems more like the ethnic cleansing actions employed in 1948 to clear Palestinians from areas that became the Jewish state.

Today I will join a team of international volunteers recruited by Adam Shapiro, one of the co-founders of the International Solidarity Movement, and including his Palestinian wife Huwaida Arraf, Kathy Kelly (founder of Voices in the Wilderness) and other experienced nonviolent activists, who are in the midst of discussions with the local Lebanese committee of counterpart activists on nonviolent strategies that we will employ in the coming weeks and months to confront Israel’s occupation and to express the solidarity of many Americans and other peoples with the Lebanese and their rights, and to show that some of us oppose Israel’s actions enough to come here and do what we can to stop them.

Whether we use the ancient term “barbarism” or its modern equivalent "terrorism" we recognize that it is just the latest form of racism to justify taking the "land of milk" from its people, who are portrayed as savages for defending their land and way of life. We hope that we may be able to change perceptions and demonstrate in person that our fate is bound directly to that of the citizens of Lebanon, and that our best protection is the protection of the rights of everyone.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Paul Larudee
From Beirut, Lebanon
August 5, 2006