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Islands in Arabia

Patrick McGreevy Beirut 29 July 2006


Sitting on my balcony staring down at the Sea Gate of the American University of Beirut, and to the Mediterranean beyond, I am in no danger. The bombs are in the distance. The fighting is in the south. In Tel Aviv, Israeli citizens are staring at the same sea, in perfect safety. The missiles are landing in Haifa and farther north. And those following this war from living rooms around the world are in utter cocoons of safety. Most of us are separated from the violence that under girds our world and its order. But are we safe from fear? And does our fear make us wish for an order more and more strongly under girded? 

Down the Memory Hole

29 July 2006


In the wake of the most serious outbreak of Israeli/Arab violence in years, three leading U.S. papers—the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times—have each strongly editorialized that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence, and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. These editorials ignored recent events that indicate a much more complicated situation. As we recently noted, the portrayal of Israel as the innocent victim in the Gaza conflict is hard to square with the death toll in the months leading up to the current crisis. 

Letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on the Crisis in Lebanon

22 July 2006


The close and extensive military relationship between the United States and Israel gives the United States a special responsibility to raise civilian protection issues with Israeli leaders with regard to the Israeli military campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, and to ensure that U.S.-supplied weapons are not used in attacks that violate international humanitarian law. The United States’ commitment to fighting terrorism in the region also strongly argues for raising these concerns with Israel, since that fight is undermined if a close U.S. ally launches attacks that fail to distinguish between combatants and civilians. 

While I was building dreams, they were preparing my destruction

Zena El-Khalil Beirut 29 July 2006


So, they’ve been planning these attacks all along. Why wasn’t I informed? For the last six years, I have been making plans. I have been building dreams. I got married. I bought a home. I painted. I exhibited. I made plans with people … for them to come here. I invested time, emotions, money, ideas, love … into Lebanon. For the last six years, I have been building bridges. From Beirut to New York. From Beirut to everywhere. For the last six years, I have made new friends. I have met with people. I have made contacts. I have made committments. For the last six years, I promised people things. At work, at home, with friends … 

Despite direct hits, TV stations play vital role in relief efforts

28 July 2006


For the past two weeks, Lebanese TV stations have been working flat out to provide their viewers with reports of the Israeli offensive in the country. Exhausted anchors have given the crisis 24-hour rolling coverage and correspondents have taken great risks to cover the heavy fighting. In addition to covering the news however, Lebanon’s many TV channels are also playing a role in the massive relief effort for the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have been displaced. Phone numbers for volunteers and donations are continually flashed up on screens and information from people in the areas that have seen the heaviest fighting has been included in the news. 

Fleeing Lebanese seek shelter with Palestinian refugees

28 July 2006


Some 925 Lebanese families have sought refuge in the impoverished al-Bas Palestinian camp in central Tyre since Israel’s air attacks against Lebanon began on 12 July, according to Ali Naji, head of the Committee for the Aid of Refugees (CAR). Naji said the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) was collecting the camp’s rubbish, assisted by teams organised by members of the Palestine’s Fatah party - the resistance movement founded by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. “Our town was destroyed,” said Waziriya Abboud, one of the displaced Lebanese at the camp, standing outside a classroom in al-Bas. 

Cameraman seriously injured in targeted attack by Israeli army on journalists in Gaza

26 July 2006


Condemning the Israeli army’s latest targeted attack on journalists in the Gaza Strip, in which Ibrahim Atla, a cameraman with the Palestinian public TV broadcaster, was seriously injured this morning by shots fired by a tank in eastern Gaza, Reporters Without Borders today urged the Israeli authorities to calm their troops down. “We appeal to the Israeli authorities to put an end to targeted attacks on civilians and we call for immediate measures to ensure the safety of journalists covering the fighting,” the organisation said. “Journalists and other media workers have repeatedly been the victims of deliberate violence by the Israeli forces, especially in recent weeks.” 

Reporters Without Borders in Beirut to express solidarity with Lebanese media

27 July 2006


Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Menard has gone to Beirut, where he has met with executives and editors of news media that have been the victim of Israeli air strikes including the LBC, New TV and Al Manar television stations. He also met with representatives of the National Council of media. Since the start of the fighting, the Israeli military has destroyed the transmitters of several TV stations, killing an LBC technician, reduced the premises of Al Manar, the Hezbollah TV station, to ruins, inflicted injuries on a three-member New TV crew and killed a young woman photographer, Layal Nagib, near Tyre. 

Lebanese journalist killed, TV transmitters hit

24 July 2006


The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the killing of a freelance photographer and a media technician during separate Israeli missile attacks in Lebanon. Layal Najib, 23, a freelance photographer for the Lebanese magazine Al-Jaras and Agence France-Presse, became the first journalist to be killed since Israel began attacks on Lebanon in response to a cross-border raid by the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Najib was in a taxi yesterday trying to meet up with a convoy of villagers fleeing the Israeli bombardment of south Lebanon when she was hit by shrapnel from a missile on the road between the villages of Sadiqeen and Qana, local media reported. 

TV crews targeted by Israeli warplanes in the south

27 July 2006


The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern today over allegations by several television crews that Israeli warplanes had attacked them, effectively shutting down live television coverage from southeast Lebanon. Crews from four Arab television stations told CPJ that Israeli aircraft fired missiles within 80 yards (75 meters) of them on July 22 to prevent them from covering the effects of Israel’s bombardment of the area around the town of Khiam, in the eastern sector of the Israel-Lebanon border “Israeli aircraft targeted in an air raid TV crews, especially Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and Al-Manar,”said Ghassan Benjeddou, Al-Jazeera’s Lebanon bureau chief.