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Lebanon - Dahr Jamail's Weblog
'Dahr Jamail's Weblog' contains Dahr Jamail's published news reports regarding the Middle East.
April 20, 2007
Ongoing Defiance/Political Gridlock in Lebanon
Last night, 19 April, Jeff and I visited the ongoing opposition sit-in near the Lebanese Parliament. In sum, there are four main political parties which participated in a sprawling protest on December 10, 2006, probably Lebanon's largest ever, immediately followed by the launching of a sit-in against the U.S./France/Saudi Arabia-backed government.
Continue reading "Ongoing Defiance/Political Gridlock in Lebanon"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 10:26 AM
August 10, 2006
Destruction, Death, and Drastic Measures
The Damage in Lebanon -- and Beyond
The idea that you can solve social and political problems militarily from the air is, on the face of it, ludicrous. The historical record is filled with the dead dreams of air power solutions to ground-based problems. But that stops no one.
Just yesterday, for instance, as part of the new American operation to -- somehow -- seize control of the situation in civil-war wracked Baghdad, American forces launched an attack on Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia in the capital's heavily populated Shiite slum, Sadr City. As a Bloomberg News Service piece put headlined its piece: "Iraq, U.S. Forces Raid Sadr City to Calm Baghdad." Aha. "Calm," it seems, was to be imposed not just by ground troops but from the air by helicopter assault (though even the best accounts of the operation offer few details on just what those helicopters did). We do know that this calming raid managed to kill three people, including a woman and a child, wound others, and destroy three homes. It also left the Iraqi Prime Minister a good deal less than calm. Simply firing into urban areas this way should be considered inconceivable rather than, as now, a problem-solving approach to the disaster that is Baghdad.
In Lebanon, here's what "precision" bombing seems to mean. "On Saturday, an Israeli offense consisting of more than 250 air attacks dropped 4,000 bombs within seven hours… The total death toll from the attacks is approaching 1,000. One third of those deaths are from children under 12." I don't know who is counting all this or whether such figures are accurate, but there can be no question that parts of Lebanon are being turned into little more than rubble; that with main highways and bridges destroyed, unmanned aerial drones and F-16s overhead, airports shut down, and the coastline blockaded, supplies are not arriving; that hospitals are at the edge of closing, and that a staggering percentage of the country of only 3.8 million are now refugees -- abroad, in Syria, or simply on the move and homeless in their own country. Christian areas of Lebanon are now being bombed -- for this, see a vivid, and horrifying post by Juan Cole -- and the bombing campaign is widening with, for instance, ever more central areas of Beirut being hit. It seems that even some Israeli pilots are having qualms about the targets being offered. The message is, I suppose, precise enough, even if the bombs and missiles aren't: Nowhere is safe; there will be no refuge. In Baghdad as in Lebanon, this, it seems, is where the Bush "crusade" has indeed left us all. It's a place without pity or, evidently, a shred of mercy. It is no place for diplomacy, nor even for words (so much more precise and yet frustrating than bombs). Hezbollah's "words" are, of course, its rockets which land indiscriminately across northern Israel.
And our President? He's evidently unfazed by the spreading chaos in the Middle East (and perhaps sooner or later in our wider world). Recently, Steve Holland, a Reuters correspondent, took a more than vigorous bike ride with Bush around his Crawford vacation home. ("'Riding helps clear my head, helps me deal with the stresses of the job,' a sweat-soaked Bush said after an hour-and-20-minute ride that shot his heart rate up to 177 beats per minute at the top of one climb.") Holland reports that the occasion for the ride was the President's sense that "a U.N. resolution on southern Lebanon was essentially complete." George Bush, it turns out, does not bike in silence. Here's an example of his bike-riding exclamations. Think of it as well as a presidential Rorschach test: "'Air assault!' he yelled as he started one of two major climbs, up Calichi Hill, which he named for the white limestone rock from which it is formed."
Dahr Jamail, who has in the past covered the American war in Iraq for Tomdispatch, gives us a sense of what the view from Damascus (and Lebanon) looks like at the moment – of what it actually means to shout "Air assault!" in the Middle Eastern equivalent of a crowded room. Tom
Destruction, Death, and Drastic Measures
By Dahr Jamail
Damascus, Syria -- "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist aggression," said a Hezbollah fighter after I'd asked him why he joined the group. I found myself in downtown Beirut sitting in the backseat of his car in the liquid heat of a Lebanese summer. Sweat rolled down my nose and dripped on my notepad as I jotted furiously.
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 03:55 AM
August 05, 2006
Black Beaches in Lebanon
July 29, 2006
Towards the beginning of the war, Israeli air strikes target five of the six oil storage tanks at the electrical plant in El-Jiye city. El-Jiya is a small coastal city roughly 20 miles south of Beirut. The prevailing winds blow towards the north, up the coast, so this translates into most of the coast of Lebanon north of that city now being smeared with 50,000 tons of fuel oil.
Continue reading "Black Beaches in Lebanon"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 09:08 AM
Images from Lebanon
I have taken many photographs of different aspects of the conflict in Lebanon.
To view:
Israeli Air Strikes Targeting Lebanese Red Cross
Click here
To view:
Scenes from Shelter in Qana where on July 30, Israeli air strikes killed over 60 civilians, 37 of whom were children, as they slept in a shelter.
Click here
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Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:27 AM
August 02, 2006
"You reach a place where you look at life like it's nothing."
Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
Walking into the scene of the massacre yesterday in Qana felt like entering a bottomless pit of despair. A black whole of sadness, regardless of the fact that the bodies of the women, 37 young children, the elderly, and what few men were there had been removed.
Continue reading ""You reach a place where you look at life like it's nothing.""
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 07:10 AM
July 31, 2006
"My wife and children are injured, and we have nowhere to go."
Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail
Monday, July 31, 2006
Returning from traveling to Sidon on Saturday, I was emotionally exhausted, physically sick from what I saw.
Continue reading ""My wife and children are injured, and we have nowhere to go.""
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:59 PM
July 29, 2006
Chest-Beating -- While Losing the War
Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail
Friday, July 28, 2006
I'd been wondering why there have been fewer war planes buzzing over Beirut the last several days. Even Dahaya, the utterly devastated southern area of the capital, has been bombed less--while still receiving a good pounding most afternoons, there have clearly been fewer bombs echoing across the capital.
Israel, after claiming to have control of the small southern city of Bint Jbail, merely a few kilometers inside Lebanon, lost at least 13 soldiers there recently. The official count of nine deaths is widely believed here to be false.
The fog of war, of course, is thick.
Continue reading "Chest-Beating -- While Losing the War"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 05:35 PM
July 27, 2006
"War is the total failure of the human spirit."
Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Ah, the joys of reporting on a shoe-string budget! I've been working the last few days with a freelance photographer from Holland, Raoul. It's always helpful to team up—both for the companionship and to split costs. Sometimes it's necessary, working in a war zone in a foreign country where you don't speak the language well enough to get by on your own, to hire a driver, interpreter, and fixer. So costs add up fast, on top of the hotel, feeding, and phones, which are always necessary.
Continue reading ""War is the total failure of the human spirit.""
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:49 PM
"Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them."
Mother Jones Website
News: Daily Dispatches from the War-Torn Lebanese Capital
By Dahr Jamail
July 26, 2006
"I am in Hezbollah because I care," the fighter, who agreed to the interview on condition of anonymity, told me. "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist aggression." I jotted furiously in my note pad while sitting in the back seat of his car. We were parked not far from Dahaya, the district in southern Beirut which is being bombed by Israeli warplanes as we talk.
Continue reading ""Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them.""
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 01:34 PM
July 24, 2006
"Aren't people seeing all of this?"
Hundreds of Lebanese refugees languish in a city park in downtown Beirut. Fleeing southern Lebanon, as well as south Beirut, thousands have already made their way through this camp as they are farmed out to schools, abandoned buildings and anyone willing to take them in.
Continue reading ""Aren't people seeing all of this?""
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 09:16 PM
July 22, 2006
War
War savages everything.
As Lebanon bleeds and the humanitarian crisis there deepens among the craters left by Israeli bombs, those who can have fled-mostly to Syria.
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 08:49 AM
July 20, 2006
Collectively Punishing Lebanon
An acquaintance of mine in Lebanon just sent me this email:
"A friend of mine just called and told me of a massacre: civilian building destroyed in Tyre by Israeli aggression. There, Zouhair Edde's mother has been killed. Rayaan Qudsi has been killed along with her two daughters. This is a conservative number of martyrs thus far. This building is where refugees typically hide."
This is but an infinitesimal example of what is being carried out by the Israeli military apparatus against the civilian population of Lebanon on an hourly basis.
Continue reading "Collectively Punishing Lebanon"
Posted by Dahr_Jamail at 05:51 PM
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