SUNDAY, JULY 30, 2006
Yes, pictures and media reporting can be very powerful. And it can be very revealing, even when the reporters themselves are not aware of what they are revealing.
When I opened the TV today and heard about the Qana tragedy, I felt horror stricken. It sounded like there was a deliberate direct hit on a building that housed those refugees. Then I started to dig for details. I found out that it is not THAT building that got hit but another one next to it, which "happened" to be used by Hezbollah rocket launchers. The deaths are the result of the concrete roof of the shelter collapsing. Hmmm... Do you think, maybe, just maybe, those Hezbollah fighters were not aware that there were people in the shelter next door...? I heard that Israel is going to release the video showing exactly how it happened, where the Hezbollah rockets were launched from. Until then here is an older video, taken on July 26, showing a similar situation. There the next door building luckily stayed intact.
Now the world is outraged at Israel for commiting such a heinous crime. Can we realistically expect from Israel to have known that there were civilians in the basement next door? Or that this next door building would not withstand the blast? Supposing they knew it, could you realistically expect Israel not to target that rocket launcher BECAUSE its proximity to those civilians? They did so in the past, and the Hezbollah operators obviously counted on it. For them either way is good:
a) if Israel does not shoot, they saved themselves.
b) if Israel does shoot, they die a martyr's death and the civilian casualties will work in Hezbollah's favour in the international arena.
This takes me to my main point. I just saw the "reaction" of a mob of 5000 in Beirut attacking the UN headquarters, "in protest" to what happened. Of course it was really impressively violent, very subconsciously scary for the average viewer. One could not stop wondering: if this kind of violence could potentially get unleashed in London, Paris, New York, in our backyards, maybe we SHOULD stop the Israelis before Arab emotions really get out of hand. Well, my reaction was slightly different, a reaction that may have been somewhat similar to some of the UN personel inside that building: "Oh, God! Couldn't we just carpet bomb this crowd...?"
And here I am, struggling with these emotions. Because at the same time I am aware of the fact that these Southern Muslim Lebanese are actually hostages. Hezbollah may have been a grassroot force, truly Lebanese, at birth. Although I do question even that because of their famous attack on the American peacekeepers in 1982. But Hezbollah definitely lost all its raison d'etre after Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. That is why I questioned in an earlier post that how come there was a lack of similar military reaction to the Syrian presence, even though they stayed way longer in Lebanon, interfering left, right and centre.
By now it should be clearly visible to all that the whole of Southern Lebanon are used as miserable puppets by some other forces who want to use them as the actual front in the fight against Israel. If they were purely of Lebanese interest, what do they have against Israel right now? The Shebaa Farms? I mean, come on...!!! Does that (Syrian!) little piece of land warrant all the military build-up, with 10 000 rockets pointing at Israel and thousands off well trained and armed troops ready for ground combat? Or would "brotherly feelings" towards the Palestinians, against whom they actually faught in the past, warrant for jeopardising their own lives and the lives of their families by fighting for and instead of them? I am sure this propaganda slogan makes the Palestinians feel all warm and fuzzy inside, except that it is not exactly true. I found a very good analysis here yesterday that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if all of it is true. It does make a lot of the puzzle pieces fall into place, but I will have to look into all the details to make up my mind. Because if it is true, it is very, VERY SCARY!!!
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I just watched our beloved CBC showing the anti-Israel demonstration in Montreal. All those empassioned cries for the "innocent lives lost". Yes, true! But how come everybody so quickly forgot the images of the leaflets the Israelis have distributed all over the would-be front line, warning all the civilians to leave? The images of men and women spitefully tearing them up for the benefit of the cameras? And did these Canadian viewers now react in a knee-jerk way to the interviewed villagers saying to the journalists that "those people were too poor to afford the fees they needed to flee", taking it at face value? I would not be surprised to find that some of those interviewees were the very same people who gave rich(er) villagers a ride - "for an appropriate fee", of course. My God, 60 or so people...! Looking down in the military videos on those trucks that carried the rocketlaunchers, I realised that just two of those would have been sufficient to cart everybody away to safety, and still have time to return for the good fight they were wishing for. If Hezbollah was such a socially generous and responsible entity over the decades, how come they couldn't provide this service for the safety of the villagers - FOR FREE? And if any of those grieved villagers interviewed on CNN were actual Hezbollah fighters, would you have been able to tell...?
But Hezbollah thought it was better for those people to stay. Hezbollah thought it was all right to launch rockets right next door from them. Yet so many people all over the world don't seem to think about these things. Where is the anger against Hezbollah? Or Syria and Iran, who are behind Hezbollah? Why only against Israel or the United Nations? How is it that I see all this and so many people don't? When, tell me when, at what point in history, will people realize the extant at which those poor South Lebanese were intellectually hijacked and used?
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