"Elegy for Beirut" by Robert Fisk

[tonka023]

http://www.counterpunch.com/Fisk07222006.html

>>>>snip<<<<<
How does this happen to Beirut? For 30 years, I've watched this place die and then rise from the grave and then die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace, its people massacring each other.

I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.

They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis - in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside - tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties - 240 in all of Lebanon by last night - with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.
>>>>>snip<<<<

[Catch22Dem]

1. I think it is all very, very sad.

The citizens of Beirut are not to blame for the crimes of Hezbollah just as the people of Isreal are not to blame for the crimes of the government, just as you and I are not to blame for the crimes of the Bush administration. I find it so sad that regular citizens are dying because their leaders (elected and otherwise) kill for greed.

[bloom]

2. Interesting with the History lessons.

Robert Fisk - having lived there the past 30 years writes a compelling assessment.

[otohara]

3. Thanks for Posting

:cry: