Past Peak: Blowback

August 12, 2006

Blowback

Each Lebanese civilian death, each child's death especially, fuels a growing rage against the US government. CSM:

With his arm raised and fist clenched, Sheikh Hussein furiously expressed a sentiment rapidly taking hold here.
"We know who our first enemy is: America," he shouted before tearful mourners at a funeral Wednesday for 30 civilians killed by an Israeli airstrike on Monday. The white-turbaned sheikh led the crowd in a militant chant: "Death to America! Death to America!"

Even as Israel continues to pound Beirut's southern suburbs, and agreed Wednesday on plans to expand its four-week-old offensive as far as 18 miles into southern Lebanon, many here increasingly blame the US for its extensive military and political support for the Jewish state.

"Israel wants to stop the war, but America orders them to continue," the sheikh asserted later in an interview. "This is the American freedom?"

Moments before the first child was interred by weeping parents Wednesday, Israeli ordnance hit again at a building nearby; more strikes followed during burials. [...]

And in Beirut's Shiyyah district, where the Israeli strikes Monday night took more than 40 lives — the largest single-event toll of the conflict — it was a day of digging.

Just after first light, Hassan Dirani pulled several stuffed teddy bears and toys from the rubble, shook off the dust, and gently assembled them on a slab of concrete, with a blonde doll on top. They were dolls his own children had given to families displaced by fighting in the south, who had sought refuge in this "safe" Shiite-Christian neighborhood.

For Mr. Dirani, his emotions were first about the children — three of his remained in the rubble. And second, they were about accusing the US of giving Israel a free hand to destroy Lebanon.

"Thank you, George Bush. Thank you for those 'smart' bombs," says Dirani, whose wife and surviving son were injured in the attack. "I want to ask George Bush: 'What did our children do to him?'" [...]

"I beg Americans not to vote for another butcher and criminal like George Bush," says Dirani, who works at the environment ministry. Tearfully, he says his small daughter, now entombed, had been sharing her excitement about her upcoming sixth birthday party next week; she wrote out an invitation list of 20 school friends.

"Why does your system and White House do this to us...give smart bombs to throw on our people?" asks Dirani. "What are you going to tell your kids [to explain it]?"

...On the first day of conflict, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz vowed to "turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years"...

"That's how they create terrorists," says Mohammed, a Lebanese restaurant owner, while watching the digging effort in Shiyyah. "And they ask: 'Why do they hate us?'" [...]

"I don't understand anything! I don't know, I just don't know," wailed Mr. Yatim, his body shaking. "Criminal people and a criminal government does this to us. The kids have nothing to do with missiles and bombs, but they are burning everything. No one in the world deserves such a massacre."

"Americans, Europeans, and the Western people are great people ... they love freedom," says Yatim, as workers sought to find his daughter. "But the governments of Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair are criminal." [...]

"Imagine if Americans were receiving this, and not Lebanese," says Yatim. "If these were Americans dying in this massacre, what would they think?

"We are in the 21st century, and it's unbelievable we still have people who follow such a savage way," he continues. "There are 1,000 ways, democratic ways, that [Americans] can protect the world — not this way." [Emphasis added]

What can one say? If I were to find my own daughters dead in the rubble, I don't know what I would do. I very much doubt I would forgive.

[Thanks, Miles]

Posted by Jonathan at August 12, 2006 06:22 PM

Comments

Speaking of the Middle East, I watched the best DVD I have seen on how the American media masks what's happening. It's very clear. it was made by Bathsheba Ratzkoff and is entitled "Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land
- U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict"
You can easily order it by googling Bathsheba Ratzkoff's name.

This pivotal video exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--working in combination with Israeli public relations strategies--exercise a powerful influence over news reporting about the Middle East conflict. Combining American and British TV news clips with observations of analysts, journalists, and political activists, Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides an historical overview, a striking media comparison, and an examination of factors that have distorted U.S. media coverage and, in turn, American public opinion.

The film, of course, is a heart breaker and scarier than hell. It lays out the foundation for presenting violence and terrorism as some abberation that aren't connected to the conditions that lead up to them. It would be an excellent film to show friends, groups, classes. - Mary

Posted by: Mary at August 13, 2006 03:21 AM