"Recent images from Lebanon are chillingly familiar . . . "

[bigtree]

July 27, 2006

The Tribes of War

By ABBAS EL-ZEIN
Sydney, Australia

MY grandmother was killed in southern Lebanon by an Israeli “precision” air raid as she fled the Israeli Army in March 1978. My uncle searched for her desperately amid the invasion. News kept coming from different quarters, some confirming she had died, others maintaining she was alive in a hospital in Lebanon or Israel.

My uncle finally found her in the village of Abbasiyeh, on the hills overlooking the orchards of the city of Tyre. He recognized her body from the clothes she had been wearing, gathered her remains and buried her . . .

When the civil war in Lebanon ended, in 1990, we took a while to believe it. It could restart at any time, an inner voice told us. A few years later, peace became the norm. Everyone believed in it and belief made it more real. We never suspected that, years later, our original skepticism would be cruelly validated, and the fragility of collective sanity in the Middle East would be exposed once again.

The estimated death toll from the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon was 18,000, about 0.5 percent of the population. Twenty-four years later, I have yet to hear any sign of remorse emanating from Israeli society. Nor were there any reparations for the carnage wrought by the Israeli Army. When the Israeli press, politicians and intellectuals speak with regret about the “Lebanon War,” it is usually to say the cost to Israel was too high or to point out that the invasion failed to achieve its objectives. The Lebanese fatalities are rarely discussed.

Since then, air strikes have grown more precise and the Israeli Air Force appears to have expanded its range: planes now target your neighbor’s house and your own. Recent images from Lebanon are chillingly familiar — fathers watching their children die, mothers expiring in children’s laps. Dozens of stories like my grandmother’s are being re-enacted. Dozens of new graves are being dug.

more: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/opinion/27el-zein.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[AlamoDemoc]

1. NY Times have a way of being romeceful....you wonder if they have at times

....broken their fasting at the sunset.

[bigtree]

2. by running this opinion piece by a Lebanese man?

I think his essay is important enough to be judged on its own

[AlamoDemoc]

3. I am sorry....I lost interest of NY Times all together.

[bigtree]

5. this is silly

"NYT" doesn't write these opinion pieces. These are articles that are usually distributed to other publications. I can understand a boycott of their editorials, and even to shun certain writers, but to dismiss an independent article just because it's in the times is breathtakingly short-sighted.

[AlamoDemoc]

8. Excuse me, but NYT has the privilege and right to edit what they print

....whom and whom they use on their editorial thinking...If New York Times put particular reporter in place for instance, then fine, but I will never view the NYT as paper that covers the Middle East reporting equally.

[bigtree]

9. this article is complete with the most moving first hand account of

history that I have read in the past week.

I'm not measuring this one article against NYT's record. That's another subject. This article should be judged by its content, and perhaps its author. If you have anything substantive about either of those I would consider that relevant to the piece. The rest is the subject for media critics and ombudsmen.

[AlamoDemoc]

12. I am sorry. I do not mean to be difficult of how I feel of NYT....

and am certain the same article is suited and read by many in Washington DC, and I rather not am in the same subscription/reader with them. That is my beef, indeed.

[bigtree]

13. If you wait until tomorrow

put the title of their article (any of their prominent articles) in the Yahoo search box.

Click 'News"

Look to the box on right hand side where 'blogs' are highlighted

If it's noteworthy or popular, you should find the article listed on a blog or web page that will print the article in full

[Malikshah]

6. Romeceful??? Care to define

Not sure I care to know about the breaking fast issue

[Warren DeMontague]

10. Why don't you be more specific as to what it is you actually mean?

C'mon. Spell it out.

[AlamoDemoc]

14. I did...I visited your link...that ought to be enough for you from me?

[Warren DeMontague]

15. Hey, thanks. But I was asking about your post.

I wasn't sure what exactly you meant. Particularly that thing about fasting and sunset.

Me? I think the NY Times clearly has some 'splainin to do about things like the Iraq war, personally.

[AlamoDemoc]

16. I meant to make fun of NYT and their kosher times that make up

that soothe their readers at Washington.

[mom cat]

4. What a powerful piece. So tragic. So unnecessary!

[bigtree]

7. It was incredibly powerful

It gave a sense of continuity to our appeals for a cessation of the assaults. Lessons from that war seem to have been forgotten by so many.

[mom cat]

11. We have to keep protesting this war ... especially with our own Dems.

We have to teach them about compassion for the underdog.