Friday 14 July, 3:30 am: Awoke to planes overhead and another explosion to the south. Apparently anti-aircraft also, red lights coming up from ground. My roommate Meredith heard three bombs so far tonight or three planes … Now Meredith thinks she’s heard four bombs and/or sonic booms. The anti-aircraft go up as red lights and then twinkle white in the sky. It’s still burning away in the south. The anti-aircraft were coming up not only from the south but from a more easterly neighborhood too. We can hear muezzin (call to prayer) singing someplace not too incredibly far away. Read more about Four days of counting explosions in Beirut 

If I could stop time I would, stop everything from moving forward, not for long, just for a few moments, just long enough to let out the scream that is growing in my lungs making it difficult to breathe. Here I am in Chicago on the hottest day of the year so far, an overcast day where the air is like a swimming pool, where the humidity is so thick you can smell it, feel it wrap around your skin as soon as you step outside. This morning I walked outside into the humid air and thought, immediately: Beirut. Read more about Hands full of empty words in Chicago 

As I play back what I have seen and heard today in Ramallah, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Lebanon, and as I see the Israelis unaffected and showing no mercy for the immorality of their state’s action, I can’t help think about what all this means.  Is it Lebanon’s fate to be the sacrifical lamb of the Middle East as the rest of the Arab leaders remain traitorous masters of rhetoric?  In all honesty, Syria, Iran, Jordan and Egypt should open their fronts.  But they won’t because they aren’t worth the dignity they claim as Arab.  If anything good comes out of this it is that no one should ever question the Arab identity of Lebanon.  Read more about Palestine to Lebanon: So close, yet so far away 

What a beautiful day it was yesterday. The sky was crystal clear and the sun strong. The beach could have been an option to many of my fellow Lebanese. Moreover, a strange calm overtook the city, as if everyone was resting, like on a typical summer Sunday. I strolled around a downtown that was unusually empty, apart from a couple of people sitting nonchalantly in the shade of restaurants’ parasols. I sat and wondered if we ever had a day such as this since the beginning of the year. By this time, Israeli warplanes had already hit several regions of south Lebanon, the Beirut airport, a couple of bridges, and had imposed a sea and land blockade of the country. Read more about The "Israeli-Lebanese war" is a big day for many 

July 15 morning update: After all the retaliations it was eerily quiet after 1:00 am in Beirut Friday night. Israeli ships could be seen encroaching the perimeter of the northern seaside. The Israeli planes were too busy hitting what they had left in the south and beginning their northern operations to bother with Beirut.  We heard the planes all night but they were in the distant as they passed over and kept on trucking up north. The fires are still burning in Bir Hassan from yesterdays attacks. Smoke billows in formations like cumulonimbus clouds. Read more about Letter from Beirut: Eerily silent in the city 

Saturday July 15 — It is not me they should be worrying about, my friends from countries around the world who have been calling since Wednesday; after all I live in one of the safest areas of this country, next to embassies and prime ministers. I have water and electricity and, above all, the Internet. If they are to worry, they are to think of the tens of people I am calling everyday. People in the south of Lebanon who are under the shelling, and isolated from the rest of the country. If I am to share a diary I will not share mine, but that of my friend Mohammed and his family. Read more about Mohammed and his family in Tyre 

July 14th, Morning update — Was awakened again by the Israeli planes in the sky and missiles form the sea. The Daahiye in Beirut (densely populated Shiite neighborhood) was hit all night long. The first planes came at 3:30am, it has been raining ever since. They hit the power plants in the south on their way up to Beirut along with a bombardment of the Damascus Highway (the freeway linking Beirut to the Bekka and on to Syria). We are cut off, trade and supply wise, from the rest of the world. Read more about Letter from Beirut: Sleeping in the day and awake in the night 

Israeli war planes are bombing Beirut. Over 70 Lebanese civilians have died since the Israeli military launched a major military offensive against Lebanon on Wednesday, July 12th. Bombs targeted civilian infrastructure throughout the country, including the key highways and bridges across southern Lebanon effectively halting all cross-country transportation. Pictured in this photo is a mosque on the edge of Beirut’s southern suburb with smoke in the sky above due to Israeli missile strikes on the Beirut international airport. Read more about Photostory: Damage after Israeli bombing of southern suburbs on Thursday night