Journal de guerre, jour XIX

Pendant ce temps, le gouvernement canadien est un des seuls au monde à n'avoir pas réagi à la tuerie de Cana. Ni dans un sens ni dans l'autre.

Pendant ce temps, la popularité du Hezbollah monte en flèche partout au Proche-Orient.

Pendant ce temps, juifs et arabes du Canada commencent à s'invectiver.

Pendant ce temps, on prépare une guerre de mille ans. 

Pendant ce temps, je commence à être passablement découragé. 

Photo © AP

 

Journal de guerre, jour XIX - Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk: 'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'

The Independent (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1205977.ece) 

Published: 31 July 2006

They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. " Mehdi Hashem, aged seven ­ Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 ­ Qana", "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one ­ Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.

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.

And in Qana, of all places. For only 10 years ago, this was the scene of another Israeli massacre, the slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees by an Israeli artillery battery as they sheltered in a UN base in the town. More than half of those 106 were children. Israel later said it had no live-time pilotless photo-reconnaissance aircraft over the scene of that killing ­ a statement that turned out to be untrue when The Independent discovered videotape showing just such an aircraft over the burning camp. It is as if Qana ­ whose inhabitants claim that this was the village in which Jesus turned water into wine ­ has been damned by the world, doomed forever to receive tragedy.

And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". No doubt the manufacturers can call it "combat-proven" because it destroyed the entire three-storey house in which the Shalhoub and Hashim families lived. They had taken refuge in the basement from an enormous Israeli bombardment, and that is where most of them died.

I found Nejwah Shalhoub lying in the government hospital in Tyre, her jaw and face bandaged like Robespierre's before his execution. She did not weep, nor did she scream, although the pain was written on her face. Her brother Taisir, who was 46, had been killed. So had her sister Najla. So had her little niece Zeinab, who was just six. "We were in the basement hiding when the bomb exploded at one o'clock in the morning,'' she said. "What in the name of God have we done to deserve this? So many of the dead are children, the old, women. Some of the children were still awake and playing. Why does the world do this to us?"

Yesterday's deaths brought to more than 500 the total civilian dead in Lebanon since Israel's air, sea and land bombardment of the country began on 12 July after Hizbollah members crossed the frontier wire, killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others. But yesterday's slaughter ended more than a year of mutual antagonism within the Lebanese government as pro-American and pro-Syrian politicians denounced what they described as " an ugly crime".

Thousands of protesters attacked the largest United Nations building in Beirut, screaming: "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv," and Lebanon's Prime Minister, the normally unflappable Fouad Siniora, called US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ordered her to cancel her imminent peace-making trip to Beirut.

No one in this country can forget how President George Bush, Ms Rice, and Tony Blair have repeatedly refused to call for an immediate ceasefire ­ a truce that would have saved all those lives yesterday. Ms Rice would say only: "We want a ceasefire as soon as possible,'' a remark followed by an Israeli announcement that it intended to maintain its bombardment of Lebanon for at least another two weeks.

Throughout the day, Qana villagers and civil defence workers dug through the ruins of the building with spades and with their hands, tearing at the muck until they found one body after another still dressed in colourful clothes. In one section of the rubble, they found what was left of a single room with 18 bodies inside. Twelve of the dead were women. All across southern Lebanon now, you find scenes like this, not so grotesque in scale, perhaps, but just as terrible, for the people of these villages are terrified to leave and terrified to stay. The Israelis had dropped leaflets over Qana, ordering its people to leave their homes. Yet twice now since Israel's onslaught began, the Israelis have ordered villagers to leave their houses and then attacked them with aircraft as they obeyed the Israeli instructions and fled. There are at least 3,000 Shia Muslims trapped in villages between Qlaya and Aiteroun ­ close to the scene of Israel's last military incursion at Bint Jbeil ­ and yet none of them can leave without fear of dying on the roads.

And Mr Olmert's reaction? After expressing his "great sorrow", he announced that: "We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents [sic] this morning. We will continue the activity, and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation." But how much further can it be broadened? Lebanon's infrastructure is being steadily torn to pieces, its villages razed, its people more and more terrorised ­ and terror is the word they used ­ by Israel's American-made fighter bombers. Hizbollah's missiles are Iranian-made, and it was Hizbollah that started this war with its illegal and provocative raid across the border. But Israel's savagery against the civilian population has deeply shocked not only the Western diplomats who have remained in Beirut, but hundreds of humanitarian workers from the Red Cross and major aid agencies.

Incredibly, Israel yesterday denied safe passage to a UN World Food Programme aid convoy en route to the south, a six-truck mission that should have taken relief supplies to the south-eastern town of Marjayoun. More than three quarters of a million Lebanese have now fled their homes, but there is still no accurate figure for the total number still trapped in the south. Khalil Shalhoub, who survived amid the wreckage in Qana yesterday, said that his family and the Hashims were just too "terrified" to take the road out of the village, which has been attacked by aircraft for more than two weeks. The seven-mile highway between Qana and Tyre is littered with civilian homes in ruins and burnt-out family cars. On Thursday, the Israeli Army's Al-Mashriq radio, which broadcasts into southern Lebanon, told residents that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles were fired from them. But anyone who has watched Israel's bombing these past two weeks knows that, in many cases, the Israelis do not know the location in which the Hizbollah are firing missiles, and ­ when they do ­ they frequently miss their targets. How can a villager prevent the Hizbollah from firing rockets from his street? The Hizbollah do take cover beside civilian houses ­ just as Israeli troops entering Bint Jbeil last week also used civilian homes for cover. But can this be the excuse for slaughter on such a scale?

Mr Siniora addressed foreign diplomats in Beirut yesterday, telling them that the government in Beirut was now only demanding an immediate ceasefire and was not interested any longer in a political package to go with it. Needless to say, Mr Jeffrey Feltman, whose country made the bomb which killed the innocents of Qana yesterday, chose not to attend.

Journal de guerre, jour XVIII

Journal de guerre, jour XVII

Notre cher premier ministre, Stephen Harper, non content de ne pas critiquer Israël, en remet en remettant en question l'action de la FINUL. La subtile et nuancée Lysianne Gagnon dans la grosse Presse d'aujourd'hui en remet elle aussi, et conclut sa fine analyse en écrivant que la bourde de Tsahal sur un poste d'observation des casques bleus n'était sûrement pas le résultat d'un ordre venu "de haut", les Israéliens sachant très bien que cela leur apportrait l'inimité des autres nations. T'es pas sérieuse Lysianne?

Stephen Harper ne devrait pas se promener dans la galerie des portraits du Parlement à Ottawa, celui de Lester B. Pearson risque de lui jeter quelques foudres des yeux. Probablement que M. Harper ne sait pas que Pearson est l'inventeur du concept de "gardiens de la paix" et un des plus influents fondateurs de l'ONU.

Petite lecture du jour pour penser à des choses plus importantes, un papier de Fabrice Balanche, de l'Institut français du Proche-Orient à Beyrouth.

(cliquez pour lire) 

Journal de guerre, jour XVI

Un appel de The Independent qui fait bon contre-poids à la position fallote de Tony Blair, indique de l'histoire de la Grande-Bretagne au Proche-Orient.

 

Journal de guerre, jour XV - LARA!

Si tout se déroule bien, notre Lara sera sur un bateau demain en direction de Chypre. Nous avons tous sauté de joie. En même temps, nous ne pouvons nous empêcher de penser qu'elle laisse derrière toute sa famille, tous ses proches... Elle revient ici seule, pour poursuivre la vie qu'elle a choisie, la belle contribution qu'elle apporte à notre société. J'espère que tous les imbéciles qui ont remis en question l'évacuation des non-citoyens s'en mordreront les doigts jusqu'à la fin de leurs jours.

Lara, j'ai pensé à toi en lisant ce beau poème de Nadia Tuéni, cité par Maruja Torres dans le papier copié dans ma note précédente:

Femmes de mon pays,
une même lumière durcit vos corps,
une même ombre le repose;
doucement élégiaques en vos métamorphoses.
Une même soufrance gerce vos lèvres,
et vos yeux sont sertis par un unique orfèvre.
vous,
qui rassurez la montagne,
qui faites croire à l'homme qu'il est homme,
à la cendre qu'elle est fertile,
au paysage qu'il est immuable.
Femmes de mon pays,
vous, qui dans le chaos retrouvez le durable.

 

Journal de guerre, jour XV

Un papier émouvant de Maruja Torres de El País reproduit dans le Courrier international de la semaine dernière (no. 820, p. 5).

(cliquez pour lire)

Toujours ces femmes fortes, ces enfants perdus, ces hommes qui tournent en rond.

Journal de guerre, jour XIV

Des nouvelles attristantes de notre Lara en toute fin de journée au bureau. Pour la première fois, nous dit-elle, elle a ressenti la peur. Assise tranquillement avec sa mère sur leur terasse en soirée, des avions de chasse israéliens sont passé à faible altitude au-dessus d'eux. La peur l'a tenaillée, constatant concrètement qu'Israël était à si courte distance et le Liban un si petit pays... Lara, nous braillons tous de rage de sentir ta colère.

Journal de guerre, jour XIII

Radio-Canada vient juste d'annoncer qu'un poste d'observateurs de l'ONU affilié à la FINUL a été attaqué et que quatre onusiens sont décédés. Koffi Annan a immédiatement accusé Israël d'une attaque délibérée. Pas fort, fort pour le chef de la diplomatie internationale.

Journal de guerre, jour XII

Des nouvelles de notre Lara ce matin. Toujours coincée à Beyrouth. Toujours aucune idée lorsqu'elle pourra enfin quitter le pays mais elle a eu confirmation qu'elle était sur la liste des évacués. Nous croisons collectivement nos doigts...