Witnesses from Lebanon

A friend recently wrote from Lebanon to describe one little slice of what has happened in Lebanon.

i don't know what to say, i m really not fine...all what i can say is they destroyed my home in nabatieh, and some of my neihboors are dead and they destroyed our new souvenirs and gift shop containing for about $50000 of gadgets, so u can imagine my situation.

and where is the nice idea? it is that tomorrow the 23rd of july is my birthday and i hope it to be my death day, i hope so and i want so 2.

and that bad feeling, is that as a lebanese, i feel that all the world sold us, and for whom??? look out , we are alone but be sure that we will pass all that and we will be an honour for all the arab people, and when i say arab people i don't mean the arab
people...

any way

all my regards to all of u.

The guy who wrote this has got to be one of the nicest guys I know. He is always joking, always has a smile of his face. He's exactly what you think of and hope for in a "moderate Arab." Where do you think he stands now?

Ghassan Sharbel again writes poignently in al-Hayat:

"What you see flying through the air are the pieces of the Lebanese body. Because it is our body pieces we raise our voices. This is not a war to kill the resistence (Hizbollah). This is a war to kill Lebanon as punishment for operations of the resistence. It's not a war to put an end to Hizbollah, it is a war to put an end to Lebanon. We are shocked by those who are shocked at the barbarity of the Israeli attack. Whoever is shocked is forgetting the long black list of the Jewish state... (Israel has choosen) to bury the resistence under the rubble of Lebanon, that is, to kill Lebanon first."

Say what you will about self defense and moral equivelancy. If you want to know the impact of Israel's war on Lebanon, ask the Lebanese. If you think it will make Israel or the West safer, then you are deluded.

Hizbollah was wrong to attack those Israeli soldiers in Israel. But Israel was 10,000 times more wrong to mercilessly pummel Lebanon for the acts of an organization the Lebanese government hasn't the strength to control.

Israel could have shown restraint, could have gotten world sympathy and support to furhter isolate Hizbollah. Instead it has whipped the world up against itself and done more to harm its own security than Hizbollah or any other Arab state ever did.