Slaughter
In Qana
By Robert Fisk
07 August, 2006
The Independent
Sunday, 30 July
Qana
again. AGAIN! I write in my notebook. Ten years ago, I was in the little
hill village in southern Lebanon when the Israeli army fired artillery
shells into the UN compound and killed 106 Lebanese, more than half
of them children. Most died of amputation wounds - the shells exploded
in the air - and now today I am heading south again to look at the latest
Qana massacre.
Fifty-nine dead? Thirty-seven?
Twenty-eight? An air strike this time, and the usual lies follow. Ten
years ago, Hizbollah were "hiding" in the UN compound. Untrue.
Now, we are supposed to believe that the dead of Qana - today's slaughter
- were living in a house which was a storage base for Hizbollah missiles.
Another lie - because the dead were all killed in the basement, where
they would never be if rockets were piled floor-to-ceiling. Even Israel
later abandons this nonsense. I watch Lebanese soldiers stuffing the
children's corpses into plastic bags - then I see them pushing the little
bodies into carpets because the bags have run out.
But the roads, my God, the
roads of southern Lebanon. Windows open, listen for the howl of jets.
I am astonished that only one journalist - a young Lebanese woman -
has died so far. I watch the little silver fish as they filter through
the sky.
On my way back to Beirut,
I find the traffic snarled up by a bomb-smashed bridge, where the Lebanese
army is trying to tow a vegetable-laden truck out of a river. I go down
to them and slosh through the water to tell the army sergeant that he
is out of his mind. He's got almost 50 civilian cars backed up in a
queue, just waiting for another Israeli air attack. Leave the lorry
till later, I tell him.
Other soldiers arrive, and
there is a 10-minute debate about the wisdom of my advice, while I am
watching the skies and pointing out a diving Israeli F-16. Then the
sergeant decides that Fisk is not as stupid as he looks, cuts the tow-rope
and lets the traffic through. I am caked in dust, and Katya Jahjoura,
a Lebanese photographer colleague, catches sight of me and bursts into
uncontrollable laughter. "You look as if you have been living in
rubble!" she cries, and I shoot her a desperate look. Better get
out of this place, in case we get turned into rubble, I reply.
Monday, 31 July
Benjamin Netanyahu tries
another lie, an old one reheated from 1982, when Menachem Begin used
to claim that the civilian casualties of Israel's air raids were no
different from the civilians killed in Denmark in an RAF raid in the
Second World War. Ho hum, nice try, Benjamin, but not good enough.
First, the story. RAF aircraft
staged an air raid on the Nazi Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, but
massacred more than 80 children when their bombs went astray. The Israelis
are slaughtering the innocent of southern Lebanon from high altitude
- high enough to avoid Hizbollah missiles. The reason the RAF killed
83 children, 20 nuns and three firemen on 21 March 1945 was that their
Mosquitoes were flying so low to avoid civilian casualties that one
of the British aircraft clipped its wing on a railroad tower outside
Copenhagen central station, and crashed into the school. The other aircraft
assumed the smoke from its high-octane fuel was the target.
Interesting, though, the
way Israel's leaders are ready to manipulate the history of the Second
World War. No Israeli aircraft has been lost over Lebanon in this war
and the civilians of Lebanon are dying by the score, repeatedly and
bombed from a great height.
Tuesday, 1 August
Electricity off, my fridge
flooded over the floor again, my landlord Mustafa at the front door
with a plastic plate of figs from the tree in his front garden. The
papers are getting thinner. However, Paul's restaurant has reopened
in East Beirut where I lunch with Marwan Iskander, one of murdered ex-prime
minister Rafiq Hariri's senior financial advisers.
Marwan and his wife Mona
are a source of joy, full of jokes and outrageous (and accurate) comments
about the politicians of the Middle East. I pay for the meal, and Marwan
produces - as I knew he would - a huge Cuban cigar for me. I gave up
smoking years ago. But I think the war allows me to smoke again, just
a little.
Wednesday, 2 August
Huge explosions in the southern
suburbs of Beirut shake the walls of my home. A cauldron of fire ascends
into the sky. What is there left to destroy in the slums which scribes
still call a "Hizbollah stronghold"?
The Israelis are now bombing
all roads leading to Syria, especially at the border crossing at Masna
(very clever, as if the Hizbollah is bringing its missiles into Lebanon
in convoys on the international highway). Then the guerrilla army, which
started this whole bloody fiasco, fires off dozens more rockets into
Israel.
I put my nose into the suburbs
and get a call from a colleague in south Lebanon who describes the village
of Srifa as "like Dresden". World War Two again. But the suburbs
do look like a scene from that conflict. My grocer laments that he has
no milk, no yoghurt, which - as a milkoholic myself - I lament.
Thursday, 3 August
More friends wanting to know
if it's safe to return to Lebanon. An old acquaintance tells me that
when she insisted on coming back to Beirut, a relative threw a shoe
and a book at her. What was the book, I asked? A volume of poetry, it
seems.
Electricity back, and I torture
myself by watching CNN, which is reporting this slaughterhouse as if
it is a football match. Score so far: a few dozen Israelis, hundreds
of Lebanese, thousands of missiles, and even more thousands of Israeli
bombs. The missiles come from Iran - as CNN reminds us. The Israeli
bombs come from the United States - as CNN does not remind us.
Friday, 4 August
The day of the bridges. Abed
and I are up the highway north of Beirut with Ed Cody of The Washington
Post (he who reads Verlaine) and we manage to drive on side roads through
the Christian Metn district, which has inexplicably been attacked (since
the Christian Maronites of Lebanon are supposed to be Israel's best
friends here). "You cannot believe how angry we are," a woman
says to me, surveying her smashed car and smashed home and shattered
windows and the rubble all over the road. A viaduct has fallen into
a valley, all 200 metres of it, though another side road is left completely
undamaged, and we cruise along it to the next destroyed bridge. So what
was the point of bombing the bridges?
We drive back to Beirut on
empty roads, windows open and the whisper of jets still in the sky.
I go to the Associated Press office, where my old mate Samir Ghattas
is the bureau chief. "So how were the bridges?" he asks. "I
guess you were driving fast." He can say that again.
I do an interview with CBC
in Toronto and talk openly of Israeli war crimes, and no one in the
Canadian studio feels this is impolitic or frightening or any of the
other usual fears of television producers, who think they will be faced
with the usual slurs about "anti-Semitic" reporters who dare
to criticise Israel.
I turn on the television,
and there is Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's boss, threatening Israel
with deeper missile penetrations if Israel bombs Beirut. I listen to
Israel's Prime Minister, saying much the same thing in reverse.
I call these people the "roarers",
but I leaf through my tatty copy of King Lear to see what they remind
me of. Bingo. "I shall do such things I know not, but they shall
be the terrors of the earth." Shakespeare should be reporting this
war.
Saturday, 5 August
Lots of stories about a massive
Israeli ground offensive, which turn out to be untrue. The UN in southern
Lebanon suspects that Israel is manufacturing non-existent raids to
pacify public opinion as Hizbollah missiles continue to fly across the
frontier. But a friend calls to tell me that Hizbollah might be running
out of rockets. Possibly true, I reflect, and think of all the bridges
which haven't yet been blown to pieces.
More gruesome photographs
of the dead in the Lebanese papers. We in the pure "West"
spare our readers these terrible pictures - we "respect" the
dead too much to print them, though we didn't respect them very much
when they were alive - and we forget the ferocious anger which Arabs
feel when these images are placed in front of them. What are we storing
up for ourselves? I wrote about another 9/11 in the paper this morning.
And I fear I'm right.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited