Day 5

How insulting it is to hear the ‘civilized world’ commenting about this violent attack. From the security council of the UN to the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg, to the Arab summit (this is not the civilized world anymore). To say that Israel is defending itself, to say that it is defending itself against ‘terrorist’ attacks – that is the kidnapping of 2 SOLDIERS. To say that defending itself should not be on such a big scale, a big scale is in this case the complete and systematic destruction of a whole country, its infrastructure, its people, and its resources.

Until this moment 114 Lebanese civilians are dead, most of them in their homes or while following Israeli orders of leaving their homes (they were targeted on the road), 250 are wounded. One looks at the ratio between dead and wounded and clearly sees the violence of the attacks, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. In normal warfare cases the ratio between wounded and dead is around 1 to 5. In this case it is 1 to 2. Today Phosphoric weapons were used on the villages of the south; these weapons are forbidden worldwide however the UN doesn’t even bother to investigate. Their fumes can burn one’s lungs from inside, and from outside it can burn the skin. Water can’t help. This is not terrorism it is self defense, in worse cases it can be called an exaggeration. Only the killing of Israeli soldiers is a terrorist act.

The silence of the world is appalling, the world media even more.

They say the war will not end before the Hezbollah is destroyed. They say it is a terrorist organization, as it targets Israeli soldiers. Israel is not a terrorist state even though it targets Lebanese civilians and infrastructures. Terrorism if it has a definition is the targeting of civilians.

The world is a joke, the UN is a joke.

Today I volunteered in the Lebanese Red Cross; we were distributing what little medicine is available to the refugees who managed to come from the southern suburbs or the few who managed to leave the southern villages before it was besieged. Not one European country has until now declared any resentment to the Israeli attack, or even better exercised any pressure on the poor defenseless Israel. How many times should we get killed until we become humans? Foreign embassies are evacuating their citizens, they should not get killed, human rights are on their side, not ours.

No one is innocent today in Lebanon, no one was ever innocent, even kids, everyone can be killed and later on BBC or on CNN you put a number and label him a terrorist and it is not a crime anymore. No one takes the trouble to ask who this number was, or what this number did.

They compare Hezbollah to Al Quaeida, and Nasrallah the secretary general of the party to Ben Laden – what can one say, how can one explain? Such comparison is so insulting that it bears no comment. How simple is it to compare any enemy to Ben Laden or Hitler and automatically they become evil and can no longer have a cause. How can one fight such moral attacks, such intellectual crimes?

The people of the world are numb. The world itself is a drug.

At this moment exactly I just heard that a whole block building in Tyr, the city that stood against Alexander the Great and did not surrender until it was completely destroyed, has been grounded by Israeli shelling. A 5 storey building filled by its inhabitants maybe more than usual as many of the villagers from the surroundings escaped to the shelter of the city. No numbers yet. They will find an excuse, they always do.

When I saw the footages of the southern suburbs I couldn’t recognize anything. So much destruction, so much fumes. The common joke on the streets of Beirut is that there are no southern suburbs anymore, there is Beirut and then directly there is the south. Lebanese war humor has a taste of its own.