Lebanese Father Mourns Loss Of Family MARWAHEEN, Lebanon - Last month, Khamel Ali Abdallah kissed his wife and six children goodbye, then put them on a bus to his native village in south Lebanon for summer vacation. He was supposed to join them a week later, but war between Hezbollah and Israel broke out.
Top Picture: Lebanese Khamel Ali Abdallah, 36, holds his six-year-old daughter Lara in his lap in the village of Marwaheen, southern Lebanon, Friday, 25 August 2006. Lara was one of only four people to survive a July 15 Israeli attack on a convoy of Lebanese who were trying to flee fighting between Hezbollah guerrillas and Israel. Abdallah lost his wife and five of his children, all but Lara, in the attack. (AP/Todd Pitman)
Bottom Picture: Led by unidentified relatives, weeping Lebanese Lara Abdullah, 6, walks during the funeral procession Thursday, 24 August 2006 for the victims, killed July 15 by Israeli forces bombardment on their car convoy as they were trying to flee the southern border village of Marwaheen, Lebanon. Lara was the only survivor in her family, as according to the residents she lost several family members in the attack. (AP/Lefteris Pitarakis) ~ Click here or on image to enlarge
by Todd Pitman
Associated Press
Tuesday, 29 August 2006
He would see only one of them again.
The day after Abdallah's family arrived in Marwaheen, a small hilltop village a stone's throw from the Israeli border, Israel unleashed a barrage of artillery and airstrikes that reached Lebanon's glittering Mediterranean capital of Beirut and beyond.
The assault tore giant craters into roads across the country, making it too dangerous for Abdallah to leave Beirut. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of charred cars still line the roads of war-wrecked towns, more than two weeks after a U.N. cease-fire ended the fighting, provoked by Hezbollah's July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers.
Abdallah, 36, who holds jobs as a security guard and a coffee server at a communications company, called his wife in Marwaheen three times a day for the first three days of the war.
"She kept telling me 'Beirut is dangerous, it's being bombed, be careful,'" Abdallah said. "I told her 'I'll be fine, take care of yourself.'"
On the fourth day of fighting, he called at 7:30 a.m. "She told me 'We are fine,'" Abdallah said, and he felt reassured.
He called back an hour later. This time there was no answer.
Abdallah managed to reach a brother in nearby Sidon on the phone, who told him he'd heard the family had fled Marwaheen after Israeli forces ordered residents via loudspeakers to evacuate within two hours.
The panicked family had rushed to the local U.N. headquarters and begged U.N. peacekeepers to protect them. The peacekeepers turned them away, and the group decided the only way out was to risk Lebanon's deadly roads.
"There was a fire burning inside me. I couldn't think. I could only worry," Abdallah said of the uncertain hours that followed.
Glued to the television in his Beirut apartment, he saw a report about a convoy carrying civilians trying to flee Marwaheen that had been hit by an Israeli airstrike. More than a dozen were said to be dead.
A sick feeling came over him.
Desperate for news, he called his brother in Sidon. His brother told him he had something important to tell him, but he could not do it on the phone.
Abdallah knew what it was and wept.
Twenty-three people in the two-vehicle convoy were killed in the assault, carried out by an Israeli gunboat and an attack helicopter that strafed the survivors.
Only four people survived. One was Abdallah's 6-year-old daughter, Lara, who miraculously crawled out of the burning wreckage without a scratch, but covered in blood and screaming.
Her aunt, Zeinab, said Lara was in her mother's lap when the vehicle was struck and her mother's body had shielded her. Zeinab survived only because she had stepped away from the vehicle, which had overheated or broken down, and was sitting by the road.
His wife and five other children - a 2-year-old daughter and sons aged 8, 12, 13 and 14 - were killed.
"God protected her, this little girl," Abdallah said, cradling her in his lap. "I thank God. She is all I have left."
Across south Lebanon, the yellow flags of Hezbollah fly over the rubble of destroyed houses. Hung across roads in Hezbollah strongholds, yellow banners proclaim "Victory with our Blood" in Arabic, French and English. The Islamic militia says it won an asymmetrical war simply by surviving.
But there are no Hezbollah banners in Marwaheen. Here black flags fly from rooftops.
"Nobody won this war," Abdallah said, wearing black trousers and a black shirt.
He leaned down, put his cheek to Lara's and ran his hand through her hair. She hopped down and ran giddily from room to room, too young to understand she'll never see her mother and five brothers again.
On a wind-swept hilltop cemetery overlooking a deep valley, the 23 slain were buried Thursday in coffins under a patch of dark red earth. Simple cinder blocks topped with pictures kept in place by loose stones mark their locations until proper grave stones can be brought in.
"The Lebanese people, the civilians, we are the losers," Abdallah said softly. "We have lost everything."
Dima Hilal - Two Poems ghaflah - the sin of forgetfulness by dima hilal born by the mediterranean Bedouin Eyes by Dima Hilal My hands turn to claws, tear
our mothers bathe us in orange-blossom water
olive trees and cedars
strain to give us shade
we come to america where they call our land
the East meaning different/dark/dirty
we soon forget
our grandmothers combed hair like ours
we wish our hair blonde our eyes and skin light
we know barbie
looks better than scheherezade
we think french makes us sophisticated so
we greet each other bonjour instead of salaam
proud of our colonizer's tongue
we forget the Qur'an sings in arabic
when we arrived
our fingernails pierced the palms of our hands
we stared at pictures of our children
eye sockets carved out by rubber bullets
on the 10 o'clock news
our brothers and sisters spit up blood and teeth
and CBS declared them "terrorists"
now we turn away from bruises and broken bones
body counts and funerals
we know we cannot help anyway
we forget we once stood on the same ground
they die on
we look for the arabia packaged by the west
we escape into clubs to watch
blonde belly dancers named jasmine
sashay almost naked
we eat pasty hummous at eight dollars a plate
and tell each other
how much we miss our home
------------------------------
newspapers declare war
the West erupts against
those backward Arabs
my throat bubbles, chokes with acid hate
rage and salt water form cesspools
in my Bedouin eyes and blind me
my breathing shallow
mind numb and calculated
the gardenia scent of my country
has never seemed farther away
I see your guns aimed
in the name of justice;
tearing flesh, stopping a breath
in mid-exhale, a heart
in the second half of its beat
when you scream terrorists
I hear the prayer of my family
a tight canopy against the falling sky
while you count mortalities, I see faces
that look like mine
now my lips will not form the words of Allah
as I feel our city shudder, then
break and collapse onto itself
my lungs save their wind for curses
as my people, bruised, cannot rise
and I welcome
the nausea which overtakes
weakens
forces my body to sink to the floor
------------------------------
International Equestrian Federation President Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussein
of Jordan smiles as she gives a press conference at the opening ceremony
of the World Equestrian Games in Aachen, Germany, 20 August 2006. (AFP)
dances during a dress rehearsal of Don Quixote at the Royal Opera
House in London, 17 August 2006. (AFP/John D. McHugh)
A model showcases a creation
by Indian fashion designer Priya
Kataria Puri, 17 August 2006,
during a media preview for the
forthcoming India fashion week,
which will start 30 August, in
New Delhi. (Reuters/Adnan Abidi)
They made a desert and called it peace. Srifa - or what was once the village of Srifa - is a place of pancaked homes, blasted walls, rubble, starving cats and trapped corpses. But it is also a place of victory for the Hizbollah, whose fighters walked amid the destruction yesterday with the air of conquering heroes. So who is to blame for this desert? The Shia militia which provoked this war - or the Israeli air force and army which has laid waste to southern Lebanon and killed so many of its people?... ~ Robert Fisk: Desert Of Trapped Corpses Testifies To Israel's Failure
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AFP) Saudi Arabia warned against accusing Muslims of terrorism and fascism, in an apparent reference to US President George W. Bush's claim that the United States is at war with "Islamic fascists". The Saudi government "called on everyone to realize that terrorism has no religion or nationality", said a cabinet statement carried by the official SPA news agency. It "warned against hurling charges of terrorism and fascism at Muslims without regard to the spotless history of Islamic civilization", the statement said. "What Islam is being accused of today, like fascism, is primarily a Western cultural product," it added, calling for close international cooperation to combat terrorism. The Saudi government, a close ally of the US, did not elaborate, but its remarks came four days after Bush said that his country was "at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation". Bush made his comments after Britain announced it had disrupted an alleged terror plot to bomb planes bound for the US.
Monday, 14 August 2006
The real war in Lebanon begins today. The world may believe - and Israel may believe - that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed. But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose...
~ Robert Fisk: As The 6am Ceasefire Takes Effect, The Real War Begins
Displaced Lebanese drive through the bombed-out bridge of Damour as A Lebanese girl, who had left for Syria during the Israeli aggression against
they return home, 14 August 2006. (AFP/Patrick Baz)
her country, returns home with her family at the Lebanon-Syria border in
Magdel Anjar, following the ceasefire, 14 August 2006. (Reuters/M. Nikoubazl)
Bush and Blair and their advisers know that the plan is far more important than the rage, the "red" alert levels at airports, or even planes crashing into buildings and plunging out of the sky.
And to protect that plan – to preserve the Middle East as a giant oil pump, cheaply feeding our industries and our privileged lifestyles – those who care about the suffering, the deaths, and the wars must be silenced. Their voices must not be heard, their loyalty must be questioned, their reason must be put in doubt. They must be dismissed as "Islamic fascists"... ~ Jonathan Cook: Suddenly, I'm an 'Islamic Fascist'
Barbaric Terrorism: Zein Al-Abdinne Zein, 12, holds the hand of his mother Zeinab Hawilla, 38, as they lie dead in the rubble of their destroyed house in the southern Lebanese village of Burj El-Shemali, 13 August 2006, following an Israeli air strike overnight. Zein was killed along with his mother, his two brothers and their Sri Lankan maid while they were sleeping in the building. Neighbors tried in vain to dig them out and rescue services had still not arrived at the site two hours later as the nearby port city of Tyre was coming under continued raids. (AFP/Hassan Ammar) Click here to enlarge image
by Peter Beaumont
Sunday, 13 August 2006
Observer
A month of fighting, more than 1,000 dead, upwards of 800,000 Lebanese displaced and $2bn worth of damage - for what? Who wins in this bloody debacle, assuming it is coming to an end? Given the continued fighting, that is still a big assumption. Not Israel, certainly. Even while the authors of this military adventure continue to try to carve out some notion of victory to sell the Israeli public, increasingly fewer people are buying it.
The likes of deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres have tried to promote the notion that Israel has got everything it wants out of the war - and from Friday's disgracefully late UN resolution calling for an immediate cessation of violence (on which Israel is still being permitted by the US to drag its feet) - but the reality is that the prosecutors of this war have lost more than they have won.
Whatever Israel does now, it is seriously diminished. In military terms it has been confronted successfully for a second time by the guerillas of Hizbollah. Again and again, its heavily-armoured Merkava tanks have been rocketed to a standstill. All its technology and its large army have been shown lacking the deftness and determination of a vastly smaller force lacking armoured vehicles, bombers and aircraft. Most seriously, its vulnerability to missile attack has been amply demonstrated to any enemy, despite its possession of US anti-missile batteries. Israel has lost one of its most powerful weapons - the psychological sense of its military invulnerability.
It is something for which Israelis are unlikely to forgive those behind a war which evidence now suggests was being planned long before the kidnap of two Israeli soldiers. Even before the UN resolution was agreed, support for the conflict, though still substantial, was steadily beginning to erode, confronted by a constant stream of casualties from the fighting for little geographical and strategic gain. Indeed, Israel's only major victory thus far was the 'capture' of the largely Christian town of Marjayoun - peopled with its former collaborators with Israel's allies from the South Lebanese Army - a few kilometres across the border.
Instead, in the past two weeks both the Israeli military and its political masters have come under attack for their prosecution of the war. And if one figure now appears most at risk it is Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a cold fish who tried and failed to be tougher than his mentor, Ariel Sharon. For what Israelis have not been slow to notice is that Olmert has signally failed to achieve what he set out to do: destroy Hizbollah. The victory being claimed is diffuse and very partial: in securing a UN resolution sort-of-on-its-terms and by reducing (by who knows what amount) Hizbollah's capability. Beyond that Hizbollah has survived largely intact, but pushed back a little further from Israel's border.
Then there are the imponderables. The nature of the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, with its scorched-earth policy designed to drive out local populations, its mendacious claim that it had allowed humanitarian corridors when it had not, its lack of concern for the killing of civilians (and callous explanation that dead civilians should have fled when threatened) has amplified the increasing sense abroad that this is a country which does not care about international law.
Though the world has long demonstrated a habit of forgetting Israel's misdemeanours, this war has dramatised the urgent need for a return to a proper Middle East peace plan, a negotiated process that will be less generous to Israel than its own unilaterally-applied 'convergence' plan. There is a danger too that if America's unconditional support for Israel in this affair damages its wider policy in the Middle East - in Shia-majority Iraq, where there are tens of thousands of US troops, and over Iran - Israel may feel that it squandered a high point in its relationship with Washington for little real advantage.
So who has won? Not Israel. Certainly not Lebanon or its fragile democracy, the development of both of which will have been pushed back half a decade and more. But what about Hizbollah? What can be said is that, on its own terms, it has not lost. Not yet. It has resisted Israel and thus far at least has survived, which was all it had to achieve. If it continues to survive until an international force is deployed - which seems likely - then the issue of its disarmament will have disappeared again into some vague future. In psychological terms, it can claim that its few fighters have inflicted disproportionate damage on the Israelis for a second time, and put the issue of the Shebaa farms on the negotiating table.
But the real test for Hizbollah will be applied not by the international community but by Lebanon itself, which must decide if the price it paid for Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah to claim bragging rights was far, far too high.
Source:
Nobody's victory, but in the end Israel could not defeat Hizbollah by Peter Beaumont
In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. "It's a moment of clarification," President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. "It's now become clear why we don't have peace in the Middle East." He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the "root causes of instability," and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until "the conditions are conducive."
The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground... ~ Seymour Hersh: Watching Lebanon (The New Yorker)
A Haiku on Lebanon (3) In her cloudless eyes Published in the Saudi Gazette , Monday, 14 August 2006
by Saleh Badrah
the radiance of resistance
enduringly glows
copyright © Saleh Badrah (2006)
A raver dances to techno music during the 15th Techno Street Parade in downtown Zurich, 12 August 2006. (AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
A child labourer walks home after a day's work at a construction site on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, 12 August 2006. India, home to the largest number of child labourers in the world, has banned children under the age of 14 from working as domestic servants or at hotels, teashops, restaurants and resorts, the labour ministry said last week. (Reuters/Kamal Kishore)
Put An End To The Aggression Britain and Europe must take a lead in halting Israel's wanton destruction of my country For a month now, as the international community has vacillated, Israel has besieged and ravaged Lebanon, creating a humanitarian and environmental disaster and shattering our infrastructure and economy. In the name of the Lebanese people, I again demand an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops. The international community has an obligation, under the UN charter, to defend Lebanon's sovereignty and protect our people under humanitarian law. Given the historic ties with our region, Lebanese look to Europe and Britain to take a lead through the UN in putting an end to this aggression. · Fouad Siniora is the prime minister of Lebanon
by Fouad Siniora
Saturday, 12 August 2006
Guardian
Israel says this war is against Hizbullah, not Lebanon. But the Israeli terror is inflicted on all Lebanese. The indiscriminate murder of more than 1,100 Lebanese civilians (a third of them children), the massacres and "cleansing" of villages and the wanton destruction of our infrastructure are nothing short of criminal. One quarter of our population has been displaced. On behalf of all Lebanese, I demand an international inquiry into Israel's actions in Lebanon, and insist on reparations.
I have proposed a comprehensive seven-point peace plan, rooted in international law, which takes into account the interests of all parties to this conflict. It was adopted by the Lebanese council of ministers, which of course includes Hizbullah, and is supported by a broad national consensus.
There is, and should be, no military solution. The plan therefore calls for an immediate, unconditional and comprehensive ceasefire and the release of Lebanese and Israeli detainees; the withdrawal of the Israeli army behind the established "blue line" between the two states; a UN commitment to put the Shebaa Farms area and the Kfarshouba Hills under its jurisdiction until Lebanese sovereignty over them is settled; the extension of Lebanese government authority over its territory through its legitimate armed forces; an expansion of the UN international force in south Lebanon, with a wider mandate and scope of operation, to undertake humanitarian work and guarantee security; UN action to enforce the 1949 armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel; and a commitment by the international community to support Lebanon's relief, reconstruction and development needs.
As part of the plan, the Lebanese government has decided to deploy 15,000 Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon as the sole military force in the area, alongside UN forces, the moment Israel pulls back to the international border.
The draft UN security council resolution proposed by the US and France failed to address the key points of our plan, and was rejected by all Lebanese. The idea of an international force being sent to Lebanon directly challenges our sovereignty, and we can never accept that. If the UN resolution is to have any chance of succeeding, it must not only take into account the wishes of the Lebanese people, but must address the root causes of this war: Israel's occupation of Lebanese territories and its perennial threat to Lebanon's security.
If Israel would realise that the peoples of the Middle East cannot be cowed into submission, that their will to resist grows ever stronger with each village destroyed and each massacre committed, it could also be a stepping stone to a final solution of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict. A political solution cannot, however, be implemented as long as Israel continues to occupy Arab land in Lebanon, Gaza, the West Bank and in the Syrian Golan Heights, and wages war on innocent people in Lebanon and Palestine.
A Lebanese girl sits inside a bus as she flees, along with her family,
the southern suburbs of Beirut, 10 August 2006, after Israel warned
people still living in south Beirut to flee the heavily bombarded area
immediately. (AFP/Patrick Baz)
Dubai-based Al-Arabiya correspondent Rima Maktabi delivers a live
stand-up by the sea in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre,
09 August 2006. (AFP/Hassan Ammar)
An actress from the Meimen Qiqong and Culture Center performs The Legend Of The White Snake during a rehearsal, 05 August 2006, in Taipei, Taiwan. The play makes innovative use of traditional elements such as music, dance, singing and martial arts in the usually conservative world of Chinese theater. (AP/Chiang Ying)
Saudi Women Journalists Battle To Overcome Hurdles RIYADH (Reuters) - They are few in number but determined to make their mark -- women journalists in Saudi Arabia have fought hard to get where they are and say they have more than proved themselves the equal of men.
by Andrew Hammond
Tuesday, 08 August 2006
Despite limitations on women in the workplace, many who have ventured into the media industry as Saudi Arabia opens up under King Abdullah have attracted attention for their tenacity and professionalism.
A young print journalist in the capital Riyadh, who declined to be named, said female journalists had a lot of strengths people might not appreciate.
"I want to speak out," she said.
The journalist, who hails from the less restrictive Eastern Province on the Gulf coast, said her family supported her ambitions but Saudi society made it difficult to do her work.
"The problem is we don't have media departments at university for women. But you need to know how to write, and I don't have the tools," she said in an interview.
"Media means working evenings. You can't do interviews except in your office, and if you go to a hotel lobby, it's a crime," she said, recounting how a colleague was hauled off by the Saudi morality police for interviewing an unrelated man.
"You have to find safe ways. I have to be really careful. In Saudi Arabia, every one is watching you," she said.
Adlah, a photographer and journalist in Riyadh, said she usually gets a positive response from Saudis she interviews while walking around malls, although suspicion surrounds these places since they are seen as fertile flirting grounds.
Sitting down to interview men is a problem.
"Cafes? Oh no! Cafes are closed spaces. It is against the culture and my family would be very upset. People think coffee shops are for families and relaxation," Adlah said.
A sit-down interview in the relative privacy of a mall is no better: "Never! (People) think, 'What's he going to buy you?"'
She said women journalists tend to work harder than men.
"The men are careless, they don't want to work at anything at all. They are very lazy. They come to work at 10 and go home at 2, while the women will start at 8 and leave at 5," she said.
In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia's more liberal second city of 2.5 million people, women have made a name for themselves on English-language papers as well as some Arabic dailies that are based in this ancient city on the Red Sea.
"The girls don't have any fears. They were told the first day that it's not an easy job," says Sabria Jawhar, Jeddah bureau chief of the Saudi Gazette. "It's a matter of will-power -- they will find a way if they really want to."
Jawhar's team of young female reporters has gained access to stories men would be afraid to touch. They have covered issues like prostitution among foreign workers in a country where such activities can result in public flogging.
"It was something new, and then we found that what we write is actually read. You feel proud of yourself when you tackle an issue people were afraid to talk about," said Shroog Radain, one of Jawhar's staff of women reporters.
"But we are a tabloid, it's easy for us to write here at the Saudi Gazette. It's harder in the Arabic press," she said.
TV PRESENTERS
Now Saudi television is trying to present a modernizing face, employing women as newscasters and as hosts of day-time chat shows -- something unheard-of just a few years ago.
"Ten years ago when I started people used to be surprised if a woman journalist turned up to report anywhere," said Rima al-Shamikh, a news anchor with al-Ikhbariya who reported from the field during the violent campaign launched by al Qaeda sympathizers in 2003.
Shamikh's job is all the more sensitive because she hails from one of Saudi Arabia's most prestigious clans.
"It was difficult to be a journalist or appear on television because I am from the Enaza tribe. They tried to say I was Palestinian or Lebanese, to deny that I was Saudi," she said.
"The atmosphere is ready now, but women should only get into this profession if they love it. It's not a profession that brings a lot of money. I have no social life and hardly see my children, but I love the profession."
Shamikh said Saudi society was coming to accept that women often made better reporters than men.
"There is an important point with women of being insistent and professional," she said. "Sometimes I am very aggressive and even hostile as a reporter. Society accepts that."
Picture taken inside a damaged bedroom 08 August 2006 shows the site of buildings destroyed the previous day by Israeli bombardment in Shiah, a suburb of southern Beirut. Rescue workers were still searching today for 26 people missing after Israeli air strikes hit residential buildings in Shiah, the civil defence service said. (AFP/Patrick Baz)
A visitor stands in front of the painting 'Self Portrait with Velvet A visitor stands in front of the painting 'Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels at
Beret' from 1634 at the exhibition 'Rembrandt - Genius on the
Lookout' at the Gemaeldegalerie in Berlin, 03 August 2006. The
exhibition, with more than 70 paintings and drawings by Rembrandt,
is being held to mark the occasion of the 400th birthday of the
Dutch painter. (Reuters)
an Open Door' from 1656/57 at the exhibition 'Rembrandt - Genius on the
Lookout' at the Gemaeldegalerie in Berlin, 03 August 2006. The exhibition,
with more than 70 paintings and drawings by Rembrandt, is being held to
mark the occasion of the 400th birthday of the Dutch painter. (Reuters)
Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussein of Jordan, goodwill ambassador of the World Princess Haya Bint Al-Hussein of Jordan, goodwill ambassador for
Food Program, listens to a Lebanese woman during a visit to a refugee camp
for Lebanese fleeing the Israeli offensive against their country in Zabadani,
40 kms west of Damascus, 04 August 2006. (AFP/Louai Beshara)
the UN World Food Programme, poses for a photo after a news
conference, during a tour of a Lebanese refugee camp in Zabadani,
near Damascus, 04 August 2006. (Reuters/Khaled Al-Hariri)
You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity - yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the "pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana - as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening "western civilisation" - as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people. ~ Robert Fisk: How Can We Stand By And Allow This To Go On?
Australian artist Nike Savvas is pictured with her art piece consisting of
over 50,000 polystyrene balls at the New South Wales Art Gallery in Sydney,
03 August 2006. The sculpture, titled Atomix - Full of Love, Full of Wonder,
vibrates with wind from 10 fans and represents the different 'shimmering'
colours in a hot, outback landscape. (Reuters/David Gray)
Ballerina Svetlana Lunkina dances in the dress rehearsal of Swan Lake at
the Royal Opera House in London, 03 August 2006. (Reuters/Stephen Hird)
An Iranian woman dressed as a suicide bomber with a headbanner reading
'There is no God except Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah'
attends an anti-Israeli demonstration in Tehran, Iran, 31 July 2006.
(AP/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
A Haiku on Lebanon (2) Beneath the rubble Published in the Saudi Gazette , Wednesday, 02 August 2006
by Saleh Badrah
they witnessed the true meaning
of terror and slept
copyright © Saleh Badrah (2006)
A Lebanese girl living in a camp for evacuees looks on at a school in the
city of Zahle, about 55 km (34 miles) north of Beirut, 31 July 2006.
(Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl)
Smoke fills the air following Israeli air strikes on the
Lebanese village of Aita Al-Shaab, 01 August 2006.
(AFP/Denis Sinyakov)
A Lebanese family makes its way through the rubble, 01 August 2006, at
the Masnaa border crossing with Syria, after it was closed to cars following
Israeli air strikes over the weekend. (AFP/Joseph Barrak)
Dancers from the English National Ballet perform Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake
during a rehearsal in Taipei, Taiwan, 01 August 2006. (Reuters/R. Chung)
Egyptian comedian Adel
Imam holds a candle
after the end of his play
Bodyguard at Al-Zaeem
theater in Giza early
01 August 2006 in honor
of the victims of Israeli
air strikes on the
southern Lebanese town
of Qana two days ago.
(AFP/Khaled Desouki)
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