http://manalaa.net/node/42852Dear All,
Things seem to heating up. Missiles hit Haifa and the shelling on the south and southern suburbs is unrelenting.
Scorched Earth Policy Ehud Olmert promised scorched earth in South Lebanon after missiles hit Haifa. Warnings have been sent to inhabitants of the south to evacuate their villages, because the Israeli response to Hezbollah will be "scorched Earth". As major roads are destroyed and the south has been remapped into enclaves, it is not clear how these people are supposed to evacuate. And where to. It seems the "sensitivity training" that the IDF went through for evacuating the settlers from Gaza is really paying off, even on the "civilians" because Ehud Olmert offered the hapless inhabitants of the south shelter in Israel. Now that's leadership! Will they be sprayed by DDT as did the jewish populations shuttled from Iraq, Morocco and Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s? Will there be Maabarot (transit camps) ready for them? They want the 20 kilometers buffer zone and they will burn, destroy and maime to get it. Maybe they should build another wall?
Video-ClipAl-Manar TV has a video-clip of possible, potential hits to Haifa. Impressive. A missile is loaded, the camera travels over arial views of occupied Palestine and stops at Haifa. The port. Zoom on the petro-chemical reservoirs. Cut to a hand pressing on a green button. The images are accompanied with text in Arabic and in Hebrew. They are conducting their war in images and video-clips.
Proud to be an Arab
I am still in awe with the response from Arab regimes, how utterly proud I am to be an Arab. From Abou Mazen, to the several moral and physical dwarf kings and queens (the Abdullahs and whatevers) to the un-democratically elected representatives, "chapeau"... I think of all the streets, those who are watching Gaza, Iraq, and now us. Do we not deserve their outrage? Do we not deserve mass mobilizations? Should not Moubarak, and his band of bandits and thieves deserve to be put to shame for their endorsement of the Israeli response. How does it feel, my beloved friends, Arabs and non-Arabs to watch Beirut go up in flames? Meanwhile wall-to-wall coverage is only from al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya and the Lebanese TV stations. The "war" is only a news item on Abou Dhabi, MBC, and the other Arab stations...
The Lebanese predicamentSo Hezbollah dragged us without asking our opinion into this hell. We are in this hell, caught in this cross-fire together. We need to survive and save as many lives as possible. The Israelis are now betting on the implosion of Lebanon. It will not happen. There is UNANIMITY that Israel's response is entirely, entirey, UNJUSTIFIED. We will show the Arab leadership that it is possible to have internal dissent and national unity, pluralism, divergence of opinion and face this new sinister chapter of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Dictatorships produce mute sheep and sheepherders and radical ideologies.
Rasha.
posted by Jesslyn at 7/28/2006 03:53:00 PM 
