Letters from Lebanon: The proximity of death

Death is close here. And some of us are not as close to death as others. The south of Lebanon is cut off from humanitarian aid. Here on the north side of the Litani River, the people in the south, taking the worst of the missiles and mortars of the Israeli aggression, are always on our minds. There are whispers in the back of our thoughts: "How long do they have? How can we possibly get to them?" The roads and the bridges are bombed, cut and scarred. Israel has banned movement in the south–any car that's on the road is threatened to be hit. UN convoys, ambulances and those with Israeli clearances have been hit. Now hunger hits bellies in the south. Their thirst must fit the water–there is no more. No medication for chronic illness, or for sicknesses caused by drinking polluted tap water in desperation; sicknesses that twist your intestines and swiftly take the lives of children. There are massacres everywhere. How many deaths at once account for a massacre? Genocide? On Aug. 7, an air strike in Beirut in the Chiya neighborhood, a place no one expected to be hit, killed 41 people. But a civil worker sorting through the rubble at the site of another strike on Aug. 10 held in his hand a list with 3 columns: names of the people dead, the people injured and the people missing. There are 45 people missing, mute under the rubble. All over Lebanon there are the lips, the caresses, the words, the fingers and the histories, buried beneath concrete and metal. The missing have still not been added to the death count, which is at 1056 and rising. They are strong, the bombs. The windows tremble. You awake running. You sleep again with ghosts stalking your dreams, the children pulled from underneath cement, wire, dust. The city shakes. The politicians talk, they still talk, and people in their houses are silenced forever when metal meets flesh. Electricity comes and goes in Beirut. We sit in darkness, amidst cigarette smoke, listening to explosions, feeling the dead gather in the air. More Israeli flyers drift down from the sky. More air strikes. If you hear the noise, you know that one was not meant for you. But the impact reaches your belly, ties you up in knots. The gas is running out. At night people steal it from the gas stations. Even if humanitarian aid workers were risking the roads, they would not have enough gas to reach much of the south. And the hospitals–how many days before the gas runs out? Israel blocked two gas tankers docked off of Cypress from arriving, and also a boat with aid. If air strikes don't kill enough civilians, the Israelis seem to be finding other things that will. Here in Beirut, it's hard to tell the old ruins from the new ones. Here there is a collective memory of Israeli terror. This refugee here, asking for bread, eyes haunted by bombs–how many times in his life has he left his village and his house. How many times has he left his family who could not make the journey to reach the teeming refugee camps? What fear does he know? Another explosion. Leaflets dropped from Israeli warplanes onto the Chiya neighborhood, and in parts of West Beirut. Tonight there will be more bombing. The Israelis are stealing the stars from our nighttime gazes. The planes light the sky seconds before they strike, the birds chirp in response, a moment later life is over. The US will soon pass a deal to sell M26 rockets with cluster ammunitions to Israel. Inside these rockets are hundreds of small bomblets which scatter over vast areas and explode. Israel wants to aim them at Hezbollah rocket launching points. These weapons are responsible for the deaths of countless civilians. What will people in the United States do about this? March in circles around federal buildings? The Zionists argue that Israel is defending its right to exist. Even one of the international ceasefire conditions states that Israel has the right to "defensive" strikes. The same condition is not given to the Lebanese resistance. Israel's right to exist, defend itself. 1056 Lebanese civilians dead. Civilians dead, in defense of Israel. Lebanese civilians must cease to exist, their bodies reduced to shreds, weightless ashes or a collective scene of decomposition–so that Israel can exist. Not only men, women, children, babies, grandparents–but gas, food, water, roads, communities, children's toys in their bedrooms, books, photographs, hope, electricity, art, memories, schools, playgrounds, villages, cherry trees... all in defense of Israel. Hezbollah missiles have killed half as many Israeli civilians as soldiers, and the total number of the two is barely over a hundred. Israel has killed over a 1,000 civilians, and barely 60 Hezbollah fighters. With such sophisticated equipment, this is deliberate killing. Because–who is Hezbollah exactly? Who are their fighters? Why do we never see the fighters on the news? And who lives in a "Hezbollah stronghold?" Are there parks in Hezbollah "strongholds?" Schools? Homes? People? Or just vast areas in which to harbor arms to hurt Israelis? Are the southern neighborhoods of Beirut, hit nightly with air strikes and now crumbled rubble where homes once stood, "Hezbollah strongholds." Who once lived there? Who died there? Whose homes are flattened there, who now sleep in abandoned buildings around Beirut? Hezbollah fighters who launch rockets into Israel? The same Hezbollah fighters who captured the two Israeli soldiers? Killing and displacing civilians, taking out their infrastructure, terrorizing their communities, is a great military strategy if you are fighting a group as grassroots as Hezbollah, when you don't know exactly who Hezbollah is. Maybe everyone inside Lebanon is Hezbollah. An old man, a refugee sleeping in Beirut parks, said Hezbollah is his heart. But he is not a fighter. While Hezbollah is the only one resisting Israel, they will remain in the hearts of those who have survived the air strikes. And with every Israeli air strike, support for Hezbollah grows. In struggle we have learned that in only one moment everything can change, one moment can make the world a little better. And it only takes one moment for a bomb to fall, and in one moment life is lost. This is life here–the paradox of moments. Life is all we have. On Aug. 12, a caravan (www.lebanonsolidarity.org) made up of the civil society, Lebanese and international, will head south on the scarred, severed and threatened roads to bring aid to the isolated and cut out southern region. They are going without permission from the Israelis (Red Cross requests to not be bombed on their missions), and without the backing of political parties. (Note: The caravan mentioned above was stopped by Lebanese police and was unable to make it to its destination.) Spontaneous mutual aid is everywhere in Lebanon, some walk for hours with 80 pounds of supplies on their backs, under Israeli helicopter fire, to keep each other alive. What will people in the US do? Will they watch TV, learn about Lebanese people as Dan Rather stumbles over the pronunciation of "Shia?" Will they listen to speeches at protests downtown, go home and smile at their children, grateful they are not the unfortunate Lebanese? Will they allow the Israeli ambassador to eat a quiet lunch in the shade outside a swank cafe in DC? Or will they begin to participate in mass, targeted, direct action? Will they blockade ports, roads, highways? Will they shut down universities and companies invested in Israel? Will they hold CNN accountable for its incorrect, biased journalism? Will they allow thousands to remain here so close to death? Barucha Peller submitted this commentary to the Asheville Global Report directly from Beirut, Lebanon.