MDEIREJ, Lebanon, 16 July 2006 — The beautiful viaduct that soars over the mountainside here has become a “terrorist” target.
The Israelis attacked the international highway from Beirut to Damascus just after dawn Thursday and dropped a bomb clean through the central span of the Italian-built bridge — a symbol of Lebanon’s cooperation with the European Union — sending concrete crashing hundreds of feet down into the valley beneath.
It was the pride of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the face of a new, emergent Lebanon. And now it is a “terrorist” target.
So I drove gingerly along the old mountain road toward the Bekaa — the Israeli jets were hissing through the sky above me — turned the corner once I regained the highway, and found a 50-foot crater with an old woman climbing wearily down the side on her hands and knees, trying to reach her home in the valley that glimmered to the east. This too had become a “terrorist” target. It is now the same all over Lebanon.
In the southern suburbs — where the Hezbollah, captors of the two missing Israeli soldiers, have their headquarters — a massive bomb had blasted off the sides of apartment blocks next to a church, splintering windows and crashing balconies down onto parked cars. This too had become a “terrorist” target.
One man was brought out shrieking with pain, covered in blood. Another “terrorist” target.
All the way to the airport were broken bridges, holed roads. All these were “terrorist” targets.
At the airport, tongues of fire blossomed into the sky from aircraft fuel storage tanks, darkening west Beirut. These too were now “terrorist” targets.
At Jiyeh, the Israelis attacked the power station. This too was a “terrorist” target.
Yet when I drove to the actual headquarters of the Hezbollah, a tall building in Haret Hreik, it was — wait for it — totally undamaged.
So can the Lebanese be forgiven — can anyone here be forgiven — for believing that the Israelis have a greater interest in destroying Lebanon than they do in their two soldiers?
No wonder Middle East Airlines, the national Lebanese airline, put crews into its four stranded Airbus airliners at Beirut airport early Thursday and sneaked them out of the country for Amman before the Israelis realized that they were under power and leaving.
European politicians have talked about Israel’s “disproportionate” response to Wednesday’s capture of its soldiers. They are wrong. What I am now watching in Lebanon each day is an outrage.
How can there be any excuse — any — for the 73 dead Lebanese civilians blown apart these past three days? The same applies, of course, to the two Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah rockets.
But — please note — the exchange rate of Israeli civilian lives to Lebanese civilian lives now stands at 1 to more than 30.
This does not include the two children who were atomized in their home in Dweir on Thursday and whose bodies cannot be found. Their six brothers and sisters were buried Friday, along with their mother and father. Another “terrorist” target.
So was a neighboring family with five children who were also buried Friday. Another “terrorist” target. Terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.
There is something perverse about all this, the slaughter and the massive destruction and the self-righteous, constant, cancerous use of the word “terrorist.”
No, let us not forget that the Hezbollah broke international law, crossed the Israeli border, killed three Israeli soldiers, captured two others and dragged them back through the border fence.
It was an act of calculated ruthlessness that should never allow Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to grin so broadly at his press conference. It has brought unparalleled tragedy to countless innocents in Lebanon.
And of course, it has led Hezbollah to fire at least 170 Katyushas into Israel.
But what would happen if the powerless Lebanese government had actually unleashed air attacks across Israel the last time Israel’s troops crossed into Lebanon.
What if the Lebanese Air Force then killed 73 Israeli civilians in bombing raids in Ashkelon, Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem? What if a Lebanese fighter aircraft bombed Ben Gurion Airport at Lod? What if a Lebanese plane destroyed 26 road bridges across Israel? Would it not be called “terrorism”? I rather think it would.
But if Israel was the victim, it would probably also be World War III.
Of course, Lebanon cannot attack Tel Aviv. Its air force comprises three ancient Hawker Hunters and an ancient fleet of Vietnam-era Huey helicopters.
Syria, however, has missiles that can reach Tel Aviv. So Syria — which Israel rightly believes to be behind Wednesday’s Hezbollah attack — is not going to be bombed.
It is Lebanon which must be punished. And still we call the damage being done to Lebanon “disproportionate” and ask for restraint.
Thursday, it emerged that the Israeli leadership intends to “break” the Hezbollah — this is the odd phrase of one of its senior military officers — and destroy its “terrorist cancer.”
Really? Do the Israelis really believe they can “break” one of the toughest guerrilla armies in the world? And how? There are real issues here.
Under UN Security Council Resolution 1559 — the same resolution that got the Syrian Army out of Lebanon — the Hezbollah should have been disarmed. They were not because, if Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had tried to do so, the Lebanese Army would have had to fight them and the army would almost certainly have broken apart because most Lebanese soldiers are Shiite Muslims.
We could see the restarting of the civil war in Lebanon — a fact which Nasrallah is cynically aware of — but attempts by Siniora and his Cabinet colleagues to find a new role for Hezbollah, which has a minister in the government (he is minister of labor) foundered. And the greatest danger now is that the Lebanese government will collapse and be replaced by a pro-Syrian government that could reinvite the Syrians back into the country.
So there’s a real conundrum to be solved. But it’s not going to succeed with the mass bombing of the country by Israel. Nor the obsession with terrorists, terrorist, terrorists.
Thursday night, Beirut thundered again to the vibration of exploding bombs after Prime Minister Siniora appealed to President Bush to end the violence.
Bush said he would ask the Israelis to cause less damage. But this is the same Bush who ordered the Israelis to leave the Palestinian city of Jenin in 2002 — “they gotta get out,” he said — and then did nothing when the Israelis ignored him.
And as Nicholas Burns, a senior State Department official, told journalists off the record in Paris this week, “at the UN we will veto any criticism of Israel.” And meanwhile the lies continue. The Israelis say the Lebanese government is responsible for Wednesday’s attack when they know that it is not.
The Hezbollah threatens to rocket Haifa and then after the rockets explode in Haifa, it claims it didn’t fire them. And then there are all those totally civilian, innocent “terrorist” targets.
Whenever Israel assaults Lebanon, it regularly makes up operational names for its military use and false ones for the international media.
In 1982, it told the press its Lebanese invasion was called “Operation Peace for Galilee.” Its real Israeli military name, however, was “Operation Snowball.”
And snowballs — unlike peace — get larger as they go downhill.
Thursday, journalists were given the fake name for this latest bombardment: “Operation Just Reward.”
When we know what it’s real name is, maybe we’ll find out what lies behind this latest bloodbath — apart, that is, from terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.
