It is long, but worth reading all the way.<br>
It is a intellectual, precise, humane letter that shows anger, patriotism, despair, disgust, solidarity, outrage, helplessness<br>
all what a single human mind can go through in few minutes!<br>
<br>
<br><br>"Siege notes" by rasha salti<br><br><br> (Dear All,<br>The generator shut down before I could end this entry. It's noon the<br>next day now...)<br><br>Dear All,<br><br>I am drafting this entry in this unusual diary at 11:30 pm, I have
<br>about half an hour before the generator shuts down. Most of Beirut<br>is in the dark. I dare not imagine what the country is like. Today<br>was a relatively calm day, but like most calm days that come<br>immediately after tumultuous days, it was a sinister day of taking
<br>stock of damage, pulling bodies from under destroyed buildings,<br>shuttling injured to hospitals that have the capacity to tend to<br>their wounds more adequately.<br>The relative calm allowed journalists to visit the sites of shelling
<br>and violence. The images from Tyre, and villages in the south are<br>shocking. Images from Haret Hreyk (the neighborhood in the southern<br>suburb that received the most "focused" shelling) are also<br>astounding.
<br>The number of deaths is yet uncertain, it increases by the hour as<br>bodies are pulled from the landscape of destruction. In the<br>southern suburbs, some people may be trapped in underground<br>shelters under the vestiges of their homes and apartment buildings.
<br>And yes, there is a problem of space in morgues in the south and the<br>Beqaa, because none of the towns and villages are equipped to handle<br>these numbers of deaths.<br>The IDF has destroyed almost entirely the village of 'Aytaroun. Some
<br>of the surviving wounded are Canadian citizens. Like the 8 Canadians<br>who died in the building in Tyre (a building that housed the red<br>cross and civil rescue), the Canadian government has had very<br>little regard for them.
<br><br>Evacuations, Privilege, Solidarity<br>Today was a particularly strange day for me because I was granted an<br>opportunity to leave tomorrow morning. I hold a Canadian passport, I<br>was born in Toronto when my parents were students there. I left at
<br>age two. I have never gone back, for lack of opportunity and<br>occasion, no other reason. I have the choice to sign up for the<br>evacuation, but the European and North American governments have<br>been so despicable, so racist that I don't want to subject myself
<br>to a discrimination of that sort. The Swedes, the Danes and the<br>Germans have evacuated their patriots with blond hair and blue<br>eyes. The immigrants that were given shelter to their countries<br>"out of the kindness" of their governments have been systematically
<br>left behind; and the guest workers who stayed to enliven their<br>economies and their babies who adjust the dynamism of their<br>demographies, were left behind to fend for shelter under the<br>shells. But I digress. The point I set out to make is that I refuse
<br>to be evacuated as a second tier denizen.<br>I had the opportunity to leave tomorrow by car to Syria, then to<br>Jordan and from there by plane to wherever I am supposed to be<br>right now. For days I have been itching to leave because I want to
<br>pursue my professional commitments, meet deadlines and continue<br>with my life. For days I have been battling ambivalence towards<br>this war, estranged from the passions it has roused around me and<br>from engagement in a cause. And yet when the phone call came
<br>informing me that I had to be ready at 7:00 am the next morning, I<br>asked for a pause to think. I was torn. The landscape of the human<br>and physical ravages of Israel's genial strategy at implementing UN<br>Resolution 1559, the depth of destruction, the toll of nearly 250
<br>deaths, more than 800 injured and 400,000 displaced, had bound me<br>to a sense of duty. It was not even patriotism, it was actually the<br>will to defy Israel. They cannot do this and drive me away. They<br>will not drive me away.
<br>This is one of the most recurring mistakes that the IDF makes, this<br>is how we see things: THEY have destroyed this country, THEY are<br>taking an opportunity to turn it to rubble and to usher us into<br>oblivion, if there is ambivalence vis-a-vis the wisdom of
<br>Hezbollah's capture of the two soldiers, there is unambiguous,<br>unanimous solidarity to stand in the face of Israel's barbaric<br>arrogance. Some people see more in this war, some people see a<br>moment of where the logic/values of the policies of the Moubaraks,
<br>the Abdullahs of the Arab world, i.e. the defeatist, pragmatic<br>corrupt sell-outs will be humiliated as well. And I am sure, other<br>people see other things as well.<br><br>The roads to Damascus are not safe. Its many different ways are
<br>shelled everyday. Drivers know what "calculated" risks to take, I<br>am assured, but one never knows. Everyday the way out becomes more<br>difficult. I decided to stay, I don't know when I will have another<br>
opportunity to leave.<br>The first contingent of Britons was evacuated early this evening.<br>There are two ships, but the evacuation will take place over 3<br>days. Same for the French and Americans, their evacuations will
<br>last for 2 days. While the evacuations are taking place, there was<br>relative quiet. A welcome lull. There was activity in the street,<br>even on the Corniche along the seaside. Refugees from the south,<br>displaced from their homes and provided shelter in public schools
<br>strolled in Hamra, looking for a breath of fresh air. A break from<br>the confinement in schools and other makeshift shelters.<br>Imagine the horror, the sad, sad horror: we are on borrowed time and<br>the only reason we are not under threat, under any serious threat is
<br>because the passport holders of some of the G8 countries are<br>evacuating safely to safer harbors. With this relative calm, the<br>sense of impending doom becomes almost palpable, time, space, light<br>and movement are subsumed in an eerie stillness. It feels vaporous
<br>and fills the air. As it wafts from room to room, from apartment to<br>apartment, as it turns a corner and moves to another neighborhood,<br>every gesture, every act is a little delayed, slowed,<br>surreptitiously lethargic, every thought lingers too long in the
<br>unfinished or inchoate state. This eerie stillness numbs the<br>passage of time and the cognitive perception of things material.<br>Objects seem both familiar and unfamiliar. They are familiar in<br>that they were there the day before and seem not to have moved from
<br>their place. They are unfamiliar because they seem to belong to<br>another time, another life. There was another life, I had another<br>life that seems distant and foreign now. The morning is different,<br>noon is different, sunset is different. Another Beirut has emerged.
<br>War time Beirut. War time Lebanon. War time mornings, war time<br>noons. Siege time Beirut, siege time morning, siege time sunsets.<br>Everyone else in the world is going about their day as they had<br>planned it or as it was planned for them. The shakers and movers of
<br>this world, the fledgling middle classes of the developping world,<br>the 11 million children workers in India, the good-doers and the<br>evil-doers. We are in a different geography of time, of agency, we<br>are besieged, captive, hostage. No chance of Stockholm syndrome
<br>this time. Our every move is monitored: every moving vehicle<br>delivering food, fuel, or medicines is monitored, every phone call<br>is listened on, every email read, every dream snarled at, every<br>desire crushed. Israel has the right to explode it to smithereens.
<br>The shelling has not really let, don't get me wrong. It still goes<br>on but it's more occasional, there are more "blank spaces" in<br>between now.<br><br>Hezbollah<br>These "siege notes" have been receiving a number of reponses from
<br>Israelis. I have to say that most are of the annoying sort. First,<br>they always begin by noting that I am intelligent and I get<br>commended for my intelligence like Colin Powell gets commended for<br>his English language speaking skills and you wonder what those
<br>making these observations expect from you and the world in the<br>first place. Second, they systematically mistake _expression of<br>dissent and critique with Arab regimes and official discourse as<br>some sort of a favorable disposition towards Israel. In other words
<br>there is, falsely, a tautology between regarding Israel as an enemy<br>country and endorsing radical ideologies of Islamic fundamentalism<br>or rabid nationalism. As if being a democrat, an egalitarian and a<br>feminist implied that one could not have even more profound grounds
<br>for being critical of Israel and regarding that country as an enemy<br>country that has sponsored and produced nothing but war, violence,<br>wretchedness, misery, banditry and usurpation. And so heartened by<br>my ambivalence towards this war they recommend that more
<br>conversations should take place between Israelis and I. Off course<br>most propose that I make the effort to seek those Israeli<br>interlocutors out. This extreme form of Habermas-mania, that<br>assumes that deep conflicts can be "talked through" is the sumum of
<br>hubris. The experience of the peace process is telling: it is clear<br>that Israelis cannot cannot cannot accept Palestinians as human<br>beings whose humanity is of equal value as their own. This is the<br>bottom line. And until that bottom line is changed, there is
<br>nothing that a member of a society that builds walls around itself<br>to shut itself off from the world and shut the world from itself<br>can tell me. Punto final.<br>One of my impromptu (Israeli) commentators warned of my candor,
<br>despaired at my position vis-a-vis Israel, and took generously time<br>and space to explain to me that Hezbollah he/she must be crushed<br>because if they were to win, they would destroy Israel and me,<br>because of my values and lifestyle. This view, along with other
<br>views salient in western media (particularly American) of Hezbollah<br>betrays ignorance. It is fatal ignorance.<br>The most gross miscalculation Israeli strategists are making is<br>based on the assumption that Hezbollah is a) not a legitimate
<br>political entity in this country, b) its base is made up of<br>extremists and c) its "elimination" would leave the Lebanese<br>construct unscathed. In point of fact, pushing the Lebanese<br>population to "rise up" against Hezbollah, or the scenario of a
<br>Lebanese implosion is the worst case scenario for all regional<br>"parties", because the country would then become the jungle of<br>violence and killing that Iraq is today.<br>Because I am a staunch secular democrat, I have never endorsed
<br>Hezbollah, but I do not question their legitimacy as a political<br>actor on the Lebanese scene, I believe they are just as much a<br>product of Lebanon's contemporary history, its war and postwar as<br>are all other parties. If one were to evaluate the situation in
<br>vulgar sectarian terms, when it comes to representing the interests<br>of their constituency they certainly do a better job than all the<br>political representatives presently and in the past.<br>It would be utter folly (in fact it would be murderous folly) to
<br>regard Hezbollah as another radical Islamist terrorist<br>organization, at least in the ideological and idiomatic vein of the<br>American intelligentsia and punditry. (There is something about a<br>stubborness to misunderstand that betrays an intent to see a crisis
<br>linger or even escalate in the US. If Americans feel better being<br>misguided idiots, Israelis should know better. If the Israeli<br>intelligentsia wants to play deaf like Americans the only outcome<br>will be an Iraq scenario, although I reiterate that Lebanon is not
<br>Iraq and the Lebanese are not and will not be Iraqi and will not be<br>manipulated into the barbaric sectarian horror. We've tried that<br>before and it does not work, and we are tired of fighting each<br>other.)<br>Hezbollah is a mature political organization (that has matured
<br>organically within the evolution of Lebanese politics) with an<br>Islamist ideology, that has learned (very quickly) to co-exist with<br>other political agents in this country, as well as other sects. If<br>Lebanese politics was a representation of short-sighted petty
<br>sectarian calculations, the lived social experience of postwar<br>Lebanon was different. Sectarian segregation was extremely<br>difficult to implement in the conduct of everyday social<br>transactions, in the conduct of business, employment and all other
<br>avenues of commonplace life. And that is a capital we all carry<br>within ourselves, there are exceptional moments when the country<br>came together willingly and spontaneously (as with the Israeli<br>attacks in 1993 and 1996), but there are other smaller, less
<br>spectacular moments that punctuate the lived experience of the<br>postwar that every single Lebanese can recall where sectarian<br>prejudice was utterly meaningless, experienced as meaningless.<br>When former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, the
<br>country seemed divided into two camps, the consensus was<br>overwhelming however that we will not revert to fighting one<br>another, to eliminating one another.<br>If Israel plans to annihilate Hezbollah, it will annihilate Lebanon.
<br>Hezbollah and its constituency are not only Lebanese in the<br>perception of all, they are also a key, essential element of<br>contemporary Lebanon. Moreover the specifics of UN Resolution 1559<br>may have regional implications, but at heart and in essence they
<br>can only be resolved within the Lebanese consensus. Israel CANNOT<br>take it upon itself to implement that UN resolution. There is off<br>course sinister folly that Israel should implement any UN<br>resolution considering its stellar record of snarling, snickering
<br>and shrugging at every single UN resolution that did not suit its<br>sensibilities.<br>Hezbollah are not al-Qaeda, Israeli and US propaganda will portray<br>them as much, and that is the downfall of public opinion, that is
<br>the tragedy at the root of the consensus that agrees to watching<br>Lebanon burn. In more ways than can be counted they are different<br>political ideologies, groups and movements. First, they are not<br>suicidal. Second, they are not anti-historical. Third, they are a
<br>full-fledged political agent at the center of a dynamic polity.<br>Their ideology is not an ideology of doom, they represent as much<br>petty interests of their constituency as they are imbricated in the<br>fabric of regional politics.
<br><br>Israel, and Channel 2<br>I was watching Lise Doucet on the BBC interview one of Olmert's<br>underlings yesterday after the speech. This is the folly of the<br>Israelis, and I believe it will be their downfall, ultimately. He
<br>was lamenting that Hezbollah hit the "peaceful" city of Haifa, an<br>Israeli city that he described as exemplar of coexistence between<br>Jews, Christians and Muslims. Haifa! An Israeli city? Haifa? The<br>name is Arabic. The jewel in the crown of Palestinian cities... A
<br>peaceful haven of coexistence between Jews, Muslims and Christians?<br>My God! It took DECADES for Christians and Muslims to appear on the<br>roster of "human beings" in the ledgers of the Israeli government.
<br>Decades of struggle, riots, pain and suffering. And they are still<br>second class citizen, and they are still unwelcome, pushed out, day<br>after day, crushed by the Israeli machine.<br>This eloquent underling was making the argument that Hezbollah
<br>wanted to destroy the city of "coexistence". Off course, he does<br>not care that the city the IDF has currently under siege, the city<br>they are bombing to rubble, the city where the red cross and civil<br>
rescue headquarters were shelled to the ground, Tyre, is itself a<br>gorgeous jewel on the Lebanese coast. That it is a GENUINE city of<br>coexistence amongst Christians, Shi'ites and Sunnis. And the<br>delightful town of Marja'yun is also a city where sects and
<br>religions co-exist, and Zahleh... and so on and so forth... But no<br>matter, the Israelis have always done this, and eventually, it<br>catches up with them, and in the end, they realize that their<br>narrative is so far removed from reality they have to back track.
<br>The key to understanding Israeli's relationship to our humanity<br>lies in a text by David Grossman, one of Israel's foremost<br>novelists, essayists and writers. He wrote it around the time of<br>the First Intifada. Israel was then beginning to come into
<br>reckoning that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was no<br>longer tenable or sound strategy for the well-being of its<br>democracy.<br><br>By the second or third of these "siege notes", the emails reached
<br>Israel and Israeli blogs. A journalist from Israel's Channel 2<br>contacted me by email and asked for an interview. I was<br>uncomfortable with the idea at first, for fear that my words be<br>distorted and my genuine, candid sentiments quoted to serve
<br>arguments I do not endorse. Exposing oneself with transparency has<br>its charm and price. That journalist seems like a nice person, but<br>I have no reason to trust her and she understands my misgivings. My<br>only defense is transparency. She sent me the set of questions below
<br>for me to answer so she can air them on TV or use them for some<br>report. I decided to share them with you all.<br><br>1. How your day looks like from the morning. What you did today?<br>did you have coffee? how do you get the news - television? radio?
<br>internet?<br>The routine of our days is totally changed. We now live under a<br>regimen of survival under siege. Those of us still not wounded and<br>not stranded do whatever needs to be done to survive until the next
<br>day. Coffee, yes, I have coffee in the morning, and at noon and in<br>the afternoon. Perhaps I have too much coffee. The passage of time<br>is all about monitoring news, checking everyone's OK, and figuring<br>out what has to be done to help those in distress. News are on all
<br>the time. All the time, whatever media works.<br>There is a great need for volunteers to tend to the hundreds of<br>thousands displaced now.<br><br>2. Can you describe the neighborhood you live in?<br>So it will be bombed? No thank you. I live in a very, very
<br>privileged neighborhood, far from the southern suburbs. After the<br>evacuation of foreign nationals (and bi-nationals) is complete,<br>everyone is expecting doom and if Israelis decide to give us a dose<br>of tough love as they did in the southern suburbs my life will
<br>probably be in serious danger as my family's and everyone who has<br>decided to stay here.<br><br>3. Can you say something about yourself - like what you do for<br>living, if you can say.<br>I organize cultural events and I am a free-lance writer. I used to
<br>live in New York city and moved to Beirut Tuesday July 11th. I have<br>no life at the present moment. I try to do a few things over the<br>internet, but that's increasingly difficult.<br><br>4. Are you Lebanese or Palestinian?
<br>Both and it gets more complicated I have Syrian blood too. And<br>Turkish and Bosnian. I am the product of the Ottoman empire, and I<br>say it with pride. I know it ires a lot of people. But I am VERY<br>proud to claim my lineage. My father was expelled from Jerusalem in
<br>1948, he and his family lived in a gorgeous home in Talbiyeh. I<br>think it is a day care school now. We own property in old Jerusalem<br>as well and the Atlantic Hotel which was bombed by your "valiant"<br>
paramilitary pre-national militias in 1946.<br><br>5. In Israel our leaders think that by targeting Hezbollah and other<br>places in Lebanon will make the rest of the local population against<br>them. Is this true?<br>It is pure folly, but even if it were true it is a terrible
<br>strategy, an imploded Lebanon is a nightmare to all, not only the<br>Lebanese but to everyone, does Israel want an Iraq at its doorstep?<br>There seems to be consensus now in Israel over the military<br>campaign. It is because Israelis are not yet pressing their
<br>leadership and military the smart questions. Do you actually<br>believe it would be possible to eliminate the Shi'i sect from<br>Lebanon, and that it would go down easy in the region? If the<br>Americans are advising you, duck for cover or move. Need I list
<br>their record of wisdom and foresight recently? Vietnam, Central<br>America, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq. If you need to listen to<br>imperialists, find less idiotic ones, at least who have a sense of<br>history. Gold help us all if Rumsfeld is also in charge of your
<br>well-being. This war will bring doom to all. Stop, cut everybody's<br>losses. Wars can be stopped before the body count is "intolerable"<br>or an entire country has been reduced to rubble.<br><br>6. What is the atmosphere in the streets of Beirut, if you can tell.
<br>Beirut is quiet, dormant, huddled. We are caged, but there is<br>tenacious solidarity. You have to understand that we see ourselves<br>under an unwarranted attack from Israel. The capture of two<br>soldiers DOES NOT justify Israel's response. There has been a
<br>status quo for the past 6 years that was well managed. Hezbollah<br>was not in an impasse, the Olmert government was in an impasse. He<br>ran on a campaign to solidify the "new" (illegitimate) borders,<br>finish the wall and finalize the enclave and withdraw into the
<br>boundaries of that enclave. The Olmert government did not have the<br>maturity or intelligence to know how to deal with the Hamas<br>government. Your government was guided by arrogance. We, you and<br>us, are here today because your political class is not up to the
<br>challenge. I am sorry, but the Hamas government was elected<br>democratically, and there were myriad ways to deal with them.<br>MYRIAD. But this is the stage of your destiny that you have<br>reached, you build walls around yourselves (you to whom the Massada
<br>is a foundational trauma/myth!), and you chase barefoot, toohtless,<br>illiterate, hungry people with state of the art military arsenal.<br>And you insist that you are victims, and you insist that you are on<br>the right side of history. All this bulllshit will catch up with
<br>you.<br><br>7. What is the atmosphere among your friends?<br>The consensus is solidarity. Our country is under attack. Otherwise,<br>we are an exceedingly plural society every one has a theory and a<br>point of view, and we co-exist. Humoring one another. What do you
<br>do when you are under siege? Do you eat one another, cannibalize on<br>one another, or stand in solidarity to weather the storm?<br><br>8. Can you go to work, or do you have to stay home? (because some of<br>the workers in the north of Israel did not go to work today)
<br>The largest, largest majority do not go to work. Although it is a<br>form of resilience. If the war goes on for longer, life will have<br>to evolve a different routine. A large part of the work force is<br>impaired from movement. And then there is the random shelling, it's
<br>also dangerous to go out. This has gone on from the first day of the<br>siege. The south is now sinking in a humanitarian crisis. Beirut<br>will soon.<br>(The new regulation by your glorious IDF this morning is to shoot at
<br>all moving vehicles larger than SUVs. One was just shelled in<br>Ashrafieh. New danger, new things to look out for.)<br><br>9. Whatever crosses your mind.<br>Let's not go there... It's dark now, and I am too traumatized. I
<br>just want this to be over. I am waiting for a ceasefire. Are you?<br>Is that too unmanly for your society? What do you need to see<br>before you cease your fire? You want to hear me expire? You take<br>down Hezbollah, and I am going down with them. Do you know when
<br>Hezbollah was born? 1982. Where were you? Was it an exciting summer<br>for you?<br><br>10. I, for example, went to my gym class this morning. I am at home<br>now, listening to the radio on one side, writing mails on the other
<br>side. Air-condition is on, since it is extremely hot and humid in<br>Tel Aviv. I live in the center of the city. Later I will go to the<br>office. I think life in my city continues but in a lower volume.<br>Life as it were, or as previously understood, in my city has
<br>stopped. No gym classes, and I am accumulating cellulite, hence<br>chances of finding second husband are lessened (can I make the IDF<br>pay for that?). Air-conditioning is dependent on electricity or<br>generator working. Power cuts are the rule now and the generator
<br>works only on a schedule. I like it when Israelis report their<br>weather, it ought to have some cathartic virtue, because it's like<br>a reality check one of the few reminders they are in this region<br>and not in Europe. So yes, without air-conditioning and with power
<br>cuts, my "semitic" curls produce unruly coiffe and I have to admit,<br>I am enduring siege with bad hair.<br>I am on email, but that's intermittant between two bouts of<br>"breaking news".<br><br>I hope you will wake up to the nightmare you have dragged us into. I
<br>hope you will want to have fire ceased as soon as possible. I hope<br>you will deem our humanity as valuable as your own.<br><br>Best, Rasha.<br><br><br>