Discontent during the Lebanon War, summer 2006

I am just about to remove a blog I started and never kept up. These two posts bear saving. I shall back date them, so they only really feature in the archives.

I was reflecting on some themes during the Lebaon war of 2006, in the first instance sitting in a hotel room in China, then having returned home.

To read on see the extension below.

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I Must Add My Voice    (31st July 2006)

During the past two and half weeks I have been distracted from work that should have held my full attention.  I have been distracted by the pure senselessness of a war that is being waged disproportionately by Israel in Lebanon.  Yesterday's massacre in Qana in southern Lebanon forces me to move beyond distraction to comment.

Qana is the possible location for Jesus turning water into wine. Yet the place where the Prince of Peace may have celebrated life has twice in ten years become a place of senseless and indicriminate death.

Yesterday's attack has too many parallels to the Israeli shelling of a UN post at Qana on 18th April 1996 to be ignored. 102 civilians, many of them chldren, who had been unable to leave the war zone were sheltering there. There was no justification for the act then, and there is none for what happened yesterday.

 

I will do no more than add my voice to the voices of journalists like Robert Fisk in the Independent:  'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'   Fisk was an eyewitness to the 1996 massacre. His original report can be accessed here:  Massacre in Sanctuary; Eyewitness   He is prone to venting, but that surely is something of an entitlement to a person who has reported on 25 years and more of senseless war in the Middle East, who has witnessed too many apparently deliberate massacres, and who has narrowly escaped death too many times. He is as critical of Hizbollah as he is of Israel.

(The most recent Fisk article I can find, reporting a recent near miss close to Qana is this from three days ago: On a Red Cross mission of mercy when Israeli air force came calling )

 

I do not just write here to say the obvious - "its past the time for a ceasefire." I believe it is. But I want to make some connections. Fisk himself has helped me in this.  The day after the 1996 massacre he wrote this: "Nor will the Arab world forget yesterday'a terrible scenes."  He recorded one old Lebanese man as saying: "I would like to be made into a bomb and blow myself up amid the Israelis."  There were similar remarks yesterday. And people paid attention.

 

Soon after September 11 2001, that now infamous day when terror struck the USA and the world in a new way, it was reported that the lead hijacker, an Egyptian named Mohammed Atta, had signed a "living will" in April 1996, stating that he would give his life to destroy the Zionists and their ally the USA. Fisk was the only person (in my understanding) to note the date of Atta's decision: April 26th 1996. A week after the Qana massacre, an event that led to profound anger around the Arab world.   

 

I commented on this before, in October 2001 shortly after Fisk made that connection. Since then the US, with the UK as ally (to my personal shame), have waged two wars in the Muslim world, and now sit by and condone a third. All in the name of a war against terror. Tragically the cycle of vengeance turns again.  What will be the fruit of yesterday's massacre, unless that cycle is broken?  (I will in a day or two when I am home, post my article from October 2001.)   

 

In writing that I do not want to be prophetic. Unlike Robert Fisk, cynical and seemingly with no hope, I believe the cycle of suffering, anger and revenge can be broken. The Prince of Peace made it possible by a sacrifice of amazing love, and he demonstrated to us that forgiveness is possible. He has no favourites

 

Yet we say so little. And, with great respect but profound disagreement, I would add that many of us sit by and countenance, or indeed eagerly encourage, that which we would condemn out of hand elsewhere, because it is Israel whose behaviour we call into question. Surely the apple of His eye can do no wrong? 

 

As if the Prince of Peace suspends judgement for a favourite child. As if Father's character is inconsistent on this matter. Surely not?  He has no favourites. Yes, he has blessed one first, in order that they might bless the nations. Maybe even the State of Israel today is by his design. Yet the ancient calling to Abraham in Genesis 12.2-3, with its promise of blessings, is surely not compromised by a display of nationalistic vengeance. Blessings still means blessing, and by no stretch of anyones imagination were the events of yesterday blessing. To argue such is to cause the world to have sincere questions about His character.

 

I will not go on. This is no rant: I trust you have heard my heart. It is my prayer. Yes, peacemaking is my calling.  But as followers of the Prince of Peace we are all called to work for peace. Can I encourage you to add your prayers, and your voice, to call for our nations (the UK, and US primarily) to have a change of heart.

A Massacre or a Few Deaths?   (16 August 2006)

Oh my goodness!!  I wrote the comment above on 31st July with no knowledge of the storm that was already beginning to brew in what some call the blogosphere. Obviously I have to own to inhabiting that world, albeit I hope the outer reaches.

I have now become aware of the extent of the claims and counterclaims that all too easily serve to mask the human suffering that lies behind it all. I make no claim to any extensive survey of the literature. Storms in the blogosphere are not my interest. There is a summary of 2006 Qana airstrike conspiracy theories on Wikipedia.

I was writing from China where I was busy, had a slow internet connection, and also unable to access some of the sites I would otherwise read. (That is another story which I will leave, for now at least.) I read the reports in the British press of what I will for now call the Qana episode of 30th July, but little of the already extensive comment. Knowing Robert Fisk of the Independent had been central to the reporting of the 1996 massacre I looked for his comment. Fisk is outspoken, often cynical, has strong opinions but is I believe reliable. He also writes with incredible feeling -- which is no bad thing in war which can so easily be reduced to figures and the opinions of politicians -- and understanding of the Arab world he clearly loves and has made his home.  I make no apology for referencing him. We have to be willing to hear the stories, and the reality of the pain that war brings. And we need ot hear from both sides of the conflict.

For now I write merely to update the facts in the previous post. That is important. Peacemaking involves seeking the truth, though it also needs to acknowledge that what one side holds to be truth to one side may be propaganda to another. In other words a part of the process is to hear what all parties regard to be "true", and then seek to pursue truth that is verifiable and can be affiremd by all parties. There is a lot more to say there, but for now I will leave it at that.

The facts, as verified by The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Humans Rights Watch seem to be that 28 bodies have been found, and some 13 people are unaccounted for.  (see Israel/Lebanon: Qana Death Toll at 28 . 

A summary of the process that led to that number is decribed in the article on the 2006 Qana airstrike in Wikipedia.  They report:

According to Human Rights Watch on 2 August, the initial estimate of 54 persons killed was based on a register of 63 persons who had sought shelter in the basement, and the rescue teams first having located only nine survivors. However, it was later established that 22 had escaped the basement and that 28 bodies had been recovered, of whom 16 were children. There were still 13 people missing, and locals feared they were buried in the rubble.

Human Rights Watch also added that its own researchers, who visited Qana on July 31, the day after the attack, did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near the house. "Similarly, none of the dozens of international journalists, rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in or around the home. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah fighters from inside or near the building."

One can obviously question the sources here, but who is one ever to believe. Personally I would tend towards believing those who are at the scene, rather than armchair commentators analysing reports, whether photographs and text. (eg  seeking to establish the activity and possible motives of a civil defense worker captured in a lot of photographs from Qana who has been labelled "Mr Green Helmet")  (Please also note:  I often quote from Wikipedia. I have found that its open source / open edit process tends towards a balance and credibility that while not always immediately apparent emerges over time as articles are edited, re-edited and the process is moderated.)

Much more can be said. I intend to comment in the next few days on two main themes:

• Hearing from all sides in a conflict.
• Some initial comments on Peacemaking

My aim here on this blog is not to especially be an authority on this war, but rather to seek to apply some of the lessons I and my friends and colleagues have learned in reconciliation and peacemaking. This is not my region of personal focus, though I know many for whom it is home and who care desperately. This site is not intended to focus on the Middle East, though obviously wars there are not going to go away soon, and thus it will tend to focus a lot of attention there. I was stirred to action by the Qana episode, for reasons I made clear in that post; however I have long been planning to write on this theme.

For now let me pose a question that I raised in the title. I have intentionally here spoken of the Qana episode. Massacre generally means "a general slaughter of human beings or animals" (OED) but often carries with it a sense of being indiscriminate and is usually intentional. eg Wiktionary

The intentional killing of a considerable number of human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty, or contrary to the usages of civilized people  Wiktionary

It is therefore a word that carries a lot of emotional impact. It implies a motive- and that need to be verified. For now then I will not use the word. Its a bit like a word that has become very familiar, and which was used with regularity of Hizbollah - "terrorist". More on that another time.