Report Number Eight from Lebanon: The Divine Victory

Sept. 22, 2006

On the way back from the south of Lebanon on Sept. 21, we watched groups of people walking north to attend the great victory celebration planned for the following day. By noon the next day, large crowds of people were already gathered at the site of the big celebration. By three, it was a sea of yellow flags waved by millions of supporters of Hisbullah. As much as I would have wanted to be there, I decided that it was wiser to go watch it on TV with a friend. As I arrived, the opening reading had just finished. My friend said she cried at the mention of those who died because she remembered how many Arabs had died in recent decades due to Western oppression. As Nasrallah talked, we admired his style and his honesty, and my turn came to feel sad when he talked about Palestine and made his promises to Palestine.

Nasrallah is clearly a nationalist leader completely in touch with and animated by popular support. He talks directly to the people at hand. He does not give them ample time to cheer. They in their millions go to total silence the minute he starts talking again.

I noticed that everyone in Lebanon was talking about the sectarian divisions but Nasrallah reminded them that there were no sectarian divisions but rather political divisions. This was excellent but fell short, of course, of clarifying these political divisions as being divisions along class lines. Another important aspect was his leadership in regard to Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, including them in the general Arab nation and urging unity and liberation, and the cessation of sectarian struggle in Iraq. He made clear his disregard of Arab states and their governmental leadership.

Nasrallah praised the Lebanese military and called them brothers and said that it was the government, the disunited government, which was responsible for turning them into an adding machine of Israeli incursions rather than the heroic men that they were. He added that they must be armed with modern weapons. Nasrallah urged everyone to work for an honest, clean, moral, responsible, united government. He said that personalities are not important but that all should work for such a government of Lebanon that is not Hisbullah.

He also declared that they are stronger now militarily than they were before the war and that they will never use their weapons against a single Lebanese. He said that weapons are not forever and that once there is a safe and defensible Lebanon at a future time, Hisbullah’s weapons would naturally be unnecessary.

Nasrallah also clarified and stressed how this victory was historic and that it was a victory not for Hisbullah but for all Lebanon, for Palestine, and for the entire Arab Nation. Pride and optimism were clearly the message he wanted to communicate

Amazingly, the huge crowd came and went without tragedy or undue difficulties for the city of Beirut. All over the streets, people were happy and banners waved in the air declaring the victory to be a divine victory but also congratulating the people, their dignity, and their will to resist. Beirutis were to their vast majority in support of the victory celebration. But everyone in Lebanon has the quality of making things work regardless of what. Little problems and little knots dissolve in the general willingness to grease the motion of life, to make a bit of livelihood, to respect other, to laugh a little. If the Palestinian trait is stubbornness, then the Lebanese trait is clearing the little problems.

Report Number Nine from Lebanon: A swim at the beach

Sept. 23, 2006

We arrived at the beach, one that is built out of cement balconies of many levels over rock next to the famous Rauche. On the cement slabs were many spots of oil, some large and some small splatters. They colored my feet and took a lot of scrubbing to remove. Yellow awnings were discolored with various tints of tarry oil. The deck chairs in their hundreds had had to be replaced. They were all new. Red floating rectangular volumes of plastic were tinted with oil. The chain of floats marking the safety zone for swimmers were all black. As I had approached the beach from a distance, I had thought them all heads of hair, people swimming far out into the water as normal. But no, no one was in the sea. People swam in the pool filled with cleaned seawater, and they lounged under umbrellas looking over the beautiful ocean. I stayed with my friend to attend the sunset. And it did set slowly, turning redder and reminding me of my childhood days on the beaches of Yafa.

I recognized the location of this beach from my own childhood when I was first there as a refugee from Palestine between 1948 and 1951. At the inlet we used to swim in, a flotilla of oil and garbage held me fascinated in horror. I was told that it is merely a fragment of the many larger flotillas. Plastic bottles of spring water, once clear, now were a thick oily black. The slick of oil and garbage expanded and shrank with the waves. Among the garbage was a yellow container floating upright tinted with various layers of black, refracting the rainbow colors of the sun, a thing of accidental beauty in the environmental disaster.

But today the beach waned in comparison to the many taxi drivers with whom I went going here and there to my many appointments. The taxi drivers of Beirut on this day, Sept. 23, the day after the victory celebration and the first day of Ramadan, were all lit-up with hope and joy… their voice is Nasrallah and he had just spoken their thoughts to the world and they adored him.

One talked all the way in defense of Nasrallah, arguing against all the accusations and in the end apologized for talking so much. I told him he spoke the truth and he beamed beautifully. Another listened to a radio covering the celebration event of the day before. He listened intently all along the way even while his rickety car and radio made all manner of audible and palpable intrusions. He listened with hope and joy unlike.

Nasrallah animated these men unlike anything else. His goodwill extended to his clients and to the world around him, to those who drove badly and to those who parked askew in the narrow street. It was as though a new light was shining after years of imprisonment. There are those that, of course, are sitting back and watching and complaining about the complexity of the political situation in the land of Lebanon. Some claiming how in the good old days there were only three parties but that now there are 140 parties.

Report Number Five from Lebanon

September 22, 2006
Samia A. Halaby

Today we decided to use the public taxi called service to get to the southern village in the surrounds of Nabatiyye where we were schuled to meet with the Nuclear Physicist, Dr. Muhamman Ali Qubeisi who claims that he found high radiation in some of the pits created by Israeli bombing in the south of Lebanon during the July 2006 attack.

Dr. Qubeisi was interested in telling us his history and his work record all of which were both impressive and interesting. He spoke English flawlessly as he told us all this including the fact that he was also a US citizen.

He began by giving us a background on the history of Israeli attack on the southern area of Lebanon. We knew from other interviews that in 1948, the Israelis had grabbed a large chunk of southern Lebanon which included approximately six villages. We knew that this fact was not well known because the villagers, in order to receive UNRWA help, said that they were Palestinian. Dr. Qubeisi then added to our knowledge that when the Israelis occupied the south of Lebanon in 1982, they began to build settlements near the Christian area and near the sea. Thus, when the people of the south became familiar with the continued Israeli attack on their lands, they thought of the Palestinians. They realized the importance of résistance and supported Hisbullah who supports the cause of the Palestinians. The people of the south know that the difficulties of Palestinian refugee life arise from the prohibitions of the Lebanese government. Dr. Qubeisi continued, that yes, the Palestinians should return to their homes as they want to, but treating them like animals is not right and does not send them home faster.

Qubeisi continued saying that when he saw Dahye (southern neighborhood of Beirut) after the war for the first time he immediately went to the Lebanese Council on Scientific Research, a council of which he is a member and which is part of the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission. He asked that they meet to make a plan to test for chemical weapons and radiation. But as they did not reply, he published some of his finding on his own. This brought a huge negative and angry response from the members of the Council and the Commission. He feels that he must continue to do the research, get foreign interest, and publish findings and do so quickly for the safety of the residents.

Dr. Qubeisi said that he tested some deep pits made by Israeli weapons and that his results indicated that there is uranium in the soil. He measured 50 nsV in the outside rim of the pits and 300 nsV in the heart of most pits with the exception of one which measured 800 nsV. It was conjectured by Henk Van der Keur, a member of our delegation and staff member of the Laka Foundation (Documentation and Research Center on Nuclear Energy) in the Netherland, that if these measurements were taken from the first moment and included the ash that the higher measures could be due to the concentration of uranium in the ash – a natural process which does not indicated the presence of nuclear weapons on the use of Depleted Uranium. Van der Keur’s conjecture was based on measurements they took of Dr. Qubeissi’s many samples stored just outside of his house in the back yard.

A new delegation came and we went outside with Dr Qubeisi to meet them thinking of the importance of an expanded meeting. It turns out to be a press delegation from Austria. While we were meeting them, Dr. Qubeisi locked his house and apologized to us. We begged him to open it again for us to get our things. The other delegation and Dr. Qubeisi made their excuses and we were thus ejected. Being out in the country with no taxi information, we begged for a ride to the nearby town where we could find a taxi.

It was then merely 11:00 am and we were in the south without a car, but at least on the edge of a town that did have lots of transportation services. We decided to go to Bint Jbeil for a second time and do a more thorough investigation and spend time walking around the most damaged downtown area. We took a service who asked us about a permit and we did show him ours. At the checkpoint, our permit turned out to be a three day permit instead of a 40 day permit as we had been promised by the police. The bureaucrat did not want to keep calling about us and our driver was impatient, so we were ejected, forced to pay our full taxi fare and stood in the sun while soldiers shunted us from spot to spot out of their way. Lost and a bit shocked we tried to flag various vehicles. Ten minutes after the departure of our taxi the bureaucrat waved to us that we could pass. So we sought another taxi going in our original direction all to no avail. Of course it all seems bleak as we stand there in total rejection between no no and then yes and maybe another no. One of the soldiers offered to flag us a cab and told us to wait in the shade of a road sign. The sun is hot beyond belief. The soldier succeeded where we had failed.

We were fortunate in the driver we got even though four of us sat in the back like sardines. He took us to his home in Hula and we talked with his mother and father in law and with his wife, all of whom had stayed in the area during the war. His mother in-law was easily the individual who controlled the conversation supported by the son-in-law to tell what she experienced. While we were there, the children came in ranging in age from the oldest approximately 12 to the youngest, approximately 2 years of age. The mother-in-law and the wife together told us the story of what happened to them.

At first, they were coaxed into going to a center for a few days where they would be cared for by the Red Cross. But there was nothing there but a bit of water to drink and no food and no facilities to bathe. They had been rushed out and had no extra clothes with them. After three days they braved the bombing and went home walking where they fixed breakfast, bathed, changed clothes, and cooked lunch. After lunch they decided to walk uphill from their house in the country surrounded by orchards and cultivated fields, and go stay with their in-laws up the hill in a house in town that they though was more able to withstand the bombing. On the way up the hill, they were pursued by missiles from the air and each time just escaped by mere yards. Approximately 4 to five missiles were aimed at them. One was so close that after raising her head from the spot she had hidden herself in, a spot to which she had run to thinking to throw her face onto the ground so that if the missile fire would reach her it would burn her back not her face, she could not see her husband as the air was thick with smoke and dust. She felt that she was blind. When she did find her husband, he had shrapnel injuries. They did reach their destination feeling great fright.

One night as they were in the basement of the house where they sheltered with their in-laws, a missile hit the house and damaged it. It had struck only meters away from the area they were sheltered in.

The mother told us bout the children, how they all suffered from diarrhea and vomiting and fever. The adults also suffered from it but not to the extent of the children. Once one recovered another would get ill again.

The driver talked about the Palestinian fighters in the 70 and about told us that he worked for Hizbullah in his youth but that now he had to leave it all because he needed to work and support his children. He said that they have to seed themselves and that they must have many children against the danger that the Israelis might kill a few. He asked us to consider, was it not better to sacrifice a few of the children now so that all may live in dignity and good health. He said that they considered how the Palestinians lived in their refugee camps, and that that miserable life was not a life fit for humans, and that it was better to sacrifice in order that the whole community might survive against the Zionist enemy.

About the Palestinian fighters of the seventies, our driver said that they were good and honest and brave but that by 1978-79 they began to be silly and exploit privilege, and that intelligence services had completely penetrated them and there was a successful divide and rule principle used against them. He was persuaded that most Arab government and much of the Arab population are more concerned with their own private pleasure and comfort than they were interested in honesty and integrity.

More details coming soon.