Liban, encore et encore!

Enfin, voilà, allez have a good day et Enjoy :)

Keep walking! Always!

I'm proud; proud of us the Lebanese people; proud of our ability to react, to rebound, proud of our cynicism (and not fatalism!), proud of our sense of humor! Do you remember one of my post "Keep fucking your country!" based on the "Johnny Walker" famous gimmick? Look at the new adds that publicists came up with for "Johnny Walker".

Relevant to our gas crisis because of the air and sea blockade!


Bridge? BOUMMM!!!!

Enfin, voilà, allez have a nice day et Enjoy :)

Engagement Rules:

Ce matin, tout en buvant mon nième café et en tentant péniblement d’émerger de la brume qui semblait remplir tout mon cerveau, j’écoutai la radio. De mon superbe poste datant de l’ère pré-chiraquienne (alors imaginez la vétusté du machin) émanait la voix nasillarde de deux anencéphales amputés de la syntaxe et du verbe qui s’esquintaient à expliquer aux protozoaires parasites qui composent la grande majorité de leurs auditeurs à quel point cette Finul renforcée au sud Liban est « Géniale » et va permettre de « Pacifier la région ». Leurs brillantes explications reposaient sur la définition de nouvelles règles d’engagement qui stipuleraient que la force de l'Onu serait autorisée à ouvrir le feu pour se défendre, protéger des civils ou désarmer des miliciens qui se trouveraient sur leur passage, mais pas à s'interposer en cas de reprise des combats…

Je dois dire que ces formidables règles me laisse un peu dubitatif tout de même. Nos beaux lapins tous bleus vont riposter s’ils sont pris pour cible par le Hezb (le grrrrrrrrrros méchant loup) mais par contre en sera-t-il de même s’ils sont pris pour cible par les gentils soldats de Tsahal ?

Imaginer une seconde les réactions internationales à un tel événement : tout d’un coup on se rendrait compte que la Finul et l’Onu sont un rassemblement d’anti-sémites forcenés ! Ben oui enfin ! Vous imaginez bien qu’il faut être anti-sémite pour prendre à partie l’armée de l’état hébreu.

Non mais plus sérieusement, vous imaginer que ces règles vont s’appliquer à toutes les parties en présence ? Vous croyez sincèrement que la Finul va ouvrir le feu sur Tsahal si elle est prise à partie par celle-ci ? Ne me dites pas que ce que je dis est impensable, rappelez vous les 4 observateurs de l'ONU tués en Juillet 2006 ou encore cet autre "Antécédent fâcheux" lors de l'opération «Raisins de la colère» en 1996, où le poste des Nations unies du village de Qana avait été bombardé, entraînant la mort de plus de cent civils qui y avaient trouvé refuge.

Alors ? Moi je me pose beaucoup de questions :

• Cette force disposera-t-elle de véritables moyens d’actions ? De moyens aussi bien légaux, avec un mandat explicite des Nations Unies, que des moyens matériels ? D’armes lourdes et non uniquement de transport de troupes ? Du support d’une aviation ? D’une artillerie ? Où alors n’est-elle qu’un rassemblement de gentils piou-piou avec leurs fusils à bouchons qui vont jouer tous ensemble à « pan-pan c’est la guerre » et qui, si la situation s’envenime vraiment, iront jouer à qui pisse le plus loin ailleurs ?
• Cette force n’est-elle qu’un anxiolytique hors de prix pour les chancelleries européennes empêtrées dans leur culpabilité post-coloniale ?
• Une force internationale sans les US a-t-elle un poids quelconque ? Je vous rappelle que le départ des US du Liban en 1983 était motivé par deux éléments, l’attentant contre les marines qui avaient fait 241 morts US, mais aussi le début de tensions entre Tsahal et les troupes US présentent due à l’attitude de Tsahal dans son rôle d’occupant. Ces tensions qui auraient pu mener à des affrontements sporadiques, certes, mais qui auraient été très difficiles à justifier pour ces deux alliés….mais je m’égare.
  

Comme vous le voyez, je me pose beaucoup de questions sans entr’apercevoir le début d’une once de réponse…Mais heureusement que les deux déchets radiophoniques sus-cités ont calmés mes appréhensions en disant que cette Finul renforcée était « géniale » !

Enfin, voilà, allez have a nice day et Enjoy :)

Why the Middle East Crisis Isn't Really About Terrorism

By insisting it is, President Bush clouds the real issues, which are how much the U.S. should do for Israel and what it should do to Iran

By LISA BEYER for the Time Magazine

A year after 9/11, Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, was asked at a Washington forum whether the Bush Administration had plans, in its war on terrorism, for the Lebanese Islamist group Hizballah, factions of which the U.S. believes were responsible for the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. service members. Armitage, a bear of a man, gave a chest-thumping reply. "Their time will come," he vowed. "There is no question about it. They have a blood debt to us, and we're not going to forget it."
The time appears to be now. By supporting Israel's ferocious offensive against Hizballah in Lebanon, especially by pushing back international efforts to broker a cease-fire in order to give the Israeli military more time to lay waste to the group's fighters and armaments, Washington has taken a forceful swing at the militia, even if it's by proxy. It's not exactly about avenging the Marines, of course. It's about fighting the global war on terrorism.
Or is it? Should it be?
Enunciating a new security doctrine nine days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush declared that the war on terrorism would be fought not just against al-Qaeda but also against "every terrorist group of global reach." Hizballah can certainly be said to fit in that category. However grand it may be to fight all global terrorists, though, the simple fact is that we can't: we don't have the troops, the money or the political will. That means it may make sense to limit our hit list to the groups that actually threaten us. Hizballah does not now do that. Nor does the other group currently in the spotlight, the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas. The U.S. has sound reasons for wanting to constrain these groups, principally that they threaten our ally Israel. But those reasons have largely gone unarticulated as Bush falls back on maxims about the need to confront terrorism, as if Hizballah and Hamas are likely to be behind the next spectacular that will top 9/11. They are not, and pretending that they are costs the U.S. credibility, risks driving terrorist groups that aren't allied into alliance and obscures the real issues at hand in the Middle East: How do you soften up militants who vehemently oppose Israel's existence? What should the U.S. put on the line for Israel? And does it make sense for Washington to engage in boxing by surrogate with Tehran?
THE NATURE OF HIZBALLAH
Formed in 1982 to resist Israel's occupation of Lebanon, Hizballah established its terrorist bona fides in the 1980s by kidnapping some 50 foreigners in Lebanon, including 18 U.S. citizens, and killing two of them, notably CIA station chief William Buckley. The group's global reach was achieved perhaps in 1985 with a suspected connection to the saga of TWA Flight 847, in which hijackers shot dead a U.S. Navy diver and dumped him onto a Beirut tarmac. In 1992 Hizballah bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29, and, in 1994, a Jewish cultural center there, killing 95.
It is a nasty crew. Consider what prompted Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah to arrange for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers on July 12, which is what led to the current crisis. Nasrallah says he wants Israel to release from prison Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese citizen who was part of a Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) cell that in 1979 arrived by boat in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya and invaded the apartment of the Haran family. Smadar Haran hid in the attic with her daughter Yael, 2, and was so intent on stifling the girl's crying that she accidentally suffocated the child. Meanwhile, members of the cell took Danny Haran and daughter Einat, 4, back to the shore where, realizing escape was impossible, Kuntar shot Danny in the back and drowned him, then battered Einat's head on beach rocks and smashed her skull with his rifle butt.
While it can be emotionally satisfying to see Nasrallah and his ilk set back, that doesn't qualify Hizballah as an appropriate target for U.S. efforts against terrorism. Robert Baer, a former CIA covert officer who tracked Hizballah, says that by the late 1990s, the CIA was watching the group to see if it might resume violence against the U.S., but it never did. Eventually, within the agency, he says, "they just weren't important." That U.S. authorities in 2002 convicted a ring in North Carolina for raising money for Hizballah by smuggling cigarettes doesn't mean the group has dispatched sleeper cells to one day attack the U.S. It means Hizballah has fund raisers here.
Bush two weeks ago likened Hizballah militants to the terrorists who last summer bombed London subways. That implies that Hizballah has the same mind-set and agenda as the global jihadis of al-Qaeda and its imitator groups, but they are not the same. Hizballah's military mission is principally to defend Lebanon from Israeli intrusion and secondarily to destroy the Jewish state. As an Islamist group under Iran's sway, Hizballah would like to see Islamic rule in Lebanon. The global jihadis think much bigger. They are Salafists, radicals who seek to revive the original and, to their minds, pure practice of Islam and establish a caliphate from Spain to Iraq, in all the lands where Islam has ever ruled. The Salafists are Sunni, and Hizballah is Shi'ite, which means their hatred for each other is apt to rival their hatred for the U.S. Al-Qaeda's late leader in Iraq, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, used to say Shi'ites were worse than Americans and launched a brutal war on them in Iraq.
Of course, Sunnis and Shi'ites do sometimes cooperate. Ali Mohammed, a former Green Beret who pleaded guilty to being an al-Qaeda agent, testified in 2000 that he had provided security for a meeting in Sudan between Hizballah security chief Imad Mughniyah and Osama bin Laden and that Hizballah had provided al-Qaeda with explosives training. If there was cooperation, it seems to have been short-lived; the two groups certainly aren't allies. Lebanese police in April arrested nine men that Hizballah officials claim were al-Qaeda agents plotting to assassinate their leader. In a recently published interview with the Washington Post's Robin Wright, Nasrallah slammed al-Qaeda. "What do the people who worked in those two [World Trade Center] towers ... have to do with war that is taking place in the Middle East?" he asked. Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri last week released a videotape about the fighting in Lebanon, but at least in the excerpts released by al-Jazeera, he conspicuously failed to encourage Hizballah in its fight against Israel or to so much as mention the group. Instead, al-Zawahiri spoke of the jihad--that is, al-Qaeda's jihad--being the one that would liberate Palestine.
THE RISKS FOR THE U.S.
Although Washington includes Hizballah as a war-on-terrorism target, the U.S., of course, isn't actually fighting the group; it is Israel that is paying that price in blood and treasure. Still, by taking the approach it has, the U.S. bears different costs. For one thing, Washington may not ultimately be serving as Israel's best friend. It has become clear that the Israelis didn't expect their offensive to escalate into a war so costly and messy. If Washington were playing its conventional, pre-9/11 role--calling for moderation from all parties--the Israeli officials could use that as a pretext for climbing down from their position that they won't stop fighting until Hizballah is demonstrably trounced.
The U.S.'s connect-the-dots view of terrorism also diminishes its power of persuasion. For Washington to succeed in putting together a multinational force to help the Lebanese government neuter Hizballah, it must win the participation of other states, perhaps France, Egypt and Turkey. But many governments by now are loath to go along with anything that sounds like an extension of the Bush doctrine. "If you compare Hizballah to the forces that flew planes into the World Trade Center on September 11," says a French diplomatic official, "you may lend your arguments more force, but it may also start undermining your support and credibility with people who won't agree with that commingling." Plus, encouraging Israel's continued onslaught puts the U.S. in the position of being blamed for mounting Lebanese civilian deaths.
Beyond that, the Bush Administration's with-us-or-against-us policy has cut off avenues of diplomacy that would be useful to pursue in this crisis. In the last major outbreak of Israel-Hizballah fighting in 1996, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher conducted shuttle diplomacy, traveling to, among other places, Syria, which along with Iran sponsors Hizballah. Having persuaded the Syrians to rein in Hizballah, Christopher achieved a cease-fire. Today the U.S. doesn't conduct high-level talks with Damascus principally because of Syria's ties to various terrorist groups.
Moreover, by casting the battle against Hizballah as part of the war on terrorism, the Administration is obscuring the real questions in this crisis and depriving the American public of a debate over them: How much should we do for Israel, and what should we do to Iran, Hizballah's main source of funding, training and weaponry? The fundamental problem with Hizballah is not that it is a terrorist group, as the President has said repeatedly in recent weeks. The fundamental problem the U.S. should have with Hizballah is that it refuses to stop fighting our principal ally in the region, despite Israel's complete withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. And Hizballah can keep up the fight because it is sponsored by a state that, with its nuclear program, really does present a danger to the U.S. The backers of the Administration argue that the U.S., through Israel, needs to slap back Hizballah in order to smack Iran. But does Israel's whacking Hizballah really deliver a blow to Iran on behalf of the U.S. any more than a medieval duel of seconds settles who is the superior of two knights? It's a discussion worth having, if we can sort out our real interests and purposes in this affair.
HOW HAMAS FIGURES IN
If Hizballah's nature doesn't square with that of the global war on terrorism, then the Palestinian group Hamas is an even worse fit, although Bush routinely lumps it in with the global jihadists. This green-lights whatever response, however harsh, Israel makes to provocations, like the kidnapping by hard-liners within Hamas of an Israeli corporal in June. That may or may not make sense, but the justification cannot be that Hamas is a threat to the world or to the U.S. The group, born in the Gaza Strip in 1987 to resist the Israeli occupation, has no global reach. What's more, it has never targeted Americans.
Hamas is a Sunni organization, but it has no known ties to al-Qaeda. When bin Laden's band tried to instruct Hamas on how to proceed after it won Palestinian elections in January, the group--which takes pride in its homegrown, independent character--told al-Qaeda to buzz off, according to Hamas and Israeli intelligence sources. Hamas accepts limited assistance from Iran, and some of its leaders take sanctuary in Syria, but the group holds both countries at arm's length.
Al-Qaeda essentially wants, through terrorism, to intimidate the U.S. and other Western powers into leaving the Middle East entirely and revoking support for the region's current rulers and Israel. Al-Qaeda's demands are nonstarters, to say the least, and the group's history is about nothing but murder. Hizballah and Hamas are more complex organizations. They want to destroy Israel but have shown some signs of temperance on that point. They seek Islamic states in their spheres of influence, but their political parties have worked with secular parties in government. And those extreme aims are not their only agendas. Both run extensive social-welfare networks. After Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hizballah rolled back its destroy-Israel rhetoric and justified its continued militancy by harping on bogus claims that Israel still occupied a sliver of Lebanese territory. Hizballah's political party today holds 14 seats in the Lebanese Parliament and has two members in the Cabinet.
For its part, Hamas controls the Palestinian government. Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas agreed in June to a unified platform with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, of the secular P.L.O., that would implicitly recognize Israel if it would withdraw to its 1967 borders. That's out of the question for Israel, but Haniya's signature is a sign that Hamas may be able one day to resign itself to Israel's existence, just as the P.L.O.once sworn to Israel's destructiondid. It is also an indication of the deep divisions within Hamas between the hard-liners who kidnapped the Israeli corporal and moderates like Haniya who can be potential diplomatic partners for the U.S. "The strategy should be to identify the fissures in a terrorist group and widen those chasms to cause it to explode, to isolate the hard-liners and strengthen the moderates," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. and the author of the new book Inside Terrorism. "The risk of painting all terrorists with one brush is that you miss those signs, and so you miss those opportunities."
An additional downside to tossing all terrorists under one heading is that if you treat them the same, address them as one, you may encourage them to see themselves that way. "Bush has really been the great unifier of all the previously divided and often mutually hostile groups we're trying to defeat rather than assemble," says François Heisbourg, director of the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research. "Waging war in Iraq to combat terrorism has transformed Iraq into a nexus of terrorism it hadn't been before. Justifying the operation in Lebanon by putting Hizballah on the same terrorism shelf as al-Qaeda is getting radical Sunnis to back radical Shi'ites in a way we'd have never imagined." By failing to make distinctions between groups--differentiations that are clear to people who actually live with these various conflicts--Bush feeds Muslim paranoia that his war on terrorism is just a cover for a war on Islam. Says Brian Jenkins, a Rand Corp. counterterrorism expert: "We created an artificial composite of enemies. The reality is that we can't address each of these terror enterprises with this simplistic approach."
Heisbourg, a special adviser to the French Foreign Ministry, stresses, "I have absolutely no problem with the Bush Administration stepping up and saying, 'Hizballah is a pawn of Syria and Iran. It's a threat to Israel. And, yes, this isn't just about punishing Hizballah but also punishing Iran for the trouble it causes.' That would be the kind of strategically coherent, longer-term vision we've seen in the past. But the Bush Administration isn't saying that. It is calling it all part of the war on global terrorism, which is nonsense. And that, in turn, is throwing into stark relief just how confused and ill-conceived the global war on terrorism has been from the start."
Five years into that war, a lot of Americans are understandably perplexed about just what it is. "Peace will come only by defeating the terrorist ideology of hatred and fear," the President said recently about the Lebanon crisis and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there is no one ideology among terrorists. And terrorism isn't even an ideology. It's a tactic. The President would be better off leveling with the American people. The U.S. has interests in the Middle East, such as protecting Israel. Some of them are subtle and require explaining, like resisting Iran's efforts to expand its influence. And many of them have nothing to do with global terrorism.

«La guerre au Liban aboutit à la consécration du Hezbollah»

C'est là!
"- Le bilan de l'offensive israélienne paraît donc maigre…
- Dans les guerres asymétriques, le petit qui survit gagne la partie. Le Hezbollah ne fait pas exception. Auprès de l'opinion arabe, il passe maintenant pour le seul mouvement de lutte contre Israël. Il a l'appui de la population libanaise. Hassan Nasrallah, son chef, est devenu un héros du monde arabo-musulman. En outre, depuis le massacre de Cana, les Etats arabes, qui avaient jusque-là accueilli sans déplaisir l'offensive israélienne contre le parti de Dieu, manifestent une réprobation ouverte. La guerre aboutit à la consécration du Hezbollah, à la grande satisfaction de l'Iran, qui voit son rôle renforcé sur la scène du Moyen-Orient."

OUI!

Le chef du gouvernement libanais a présenté un plan de règlement du conflit en sept points qui a reçu l'aval de l'ensemble de son gouvernement, y compris les deux ministres issus du Hezbollah. Ce plan prévoit un cessez-le-feu, l'échange de prisonniers entre le Hezbollah et Israël, le déploiement de l'armée libanaise dans le Sud jusque-là contrôlé par la branche armée du mouvement chiite, le renforcement de la Force de l'Onu, déjà sur place (la Finul), la mise sous tutelle de l'Onu de la zone des «Fermes de Chebaa», la réactivation de l'accord d'armistice entre Israël et le Liban de 1949 et, enfin, le désarmement du Hezbollah.

MAIS OUI!!!!!

NON!

La résolution ONUSIENNE qui a été tellement ardemment négociée entre la France et les USA est tout bonnement INACCEPTABLE pour le Liban et le peuple Libanais. Je veux, par ce petit mot, juste me ranger derrière mon gouvernement et affirmer qu'aucune résolution ne sera acceptée par le Liban et les Libanais si elle n'impose pas à Israël le retrait IMMEDIAT de ses militaires du Sud Liban. Cette résolution, dont se gargarise notre bon Chichi et son pote au bretzel, ne prévoit NULLEMENT le retrait des soldats israélien du sol Libanais! C'est tout simplement inacceptable de légitimer ainsi une nouvelle occupation Israélienne! Et puis sur quelle planète vivent-ils pour pensez qu'ils pourraient obtenir le désarmement du Hezb à court terme?? Après ce qu'Israël vient de nous faire PERSONNE ne réclamera au Liban le désarmement du Hezb! Pas même-moi, alors que j'étais le premier à hurler à tout va qu'ils devaient être désarmés. Tout ce qu'Israël et les US ont gagnés par cette guerre c'est d'augmenter le ressentiment et la haine des gens du Moyen-Orient envers eux et de LEGITIMER l'existence et l'action du Hezb. Ils ont poussés les modérés dans les bras des extrêmes! Ici même, et sur de nombreux autres blogs, je m'offusquai quand je lisais que le Hezb était qualifié de résistance, mais aujourd'hui ils SONT la résistance. Cette action barbare, meurtrière et inhumaine d'Israël a donné au Hezb et surtout à Nasrallah une aura nouvelle qui ne se limite pas au Liban, qui irradie sur l’ensemble des pays arabes. Croire qu'ils vont pouvoir aujourd'hui imposer le désarmement du Hezb fait de Chirac le roi de Bisounours-Land et ne fait que confirmer que Bush Jr est le benêt du village dans les nuages!

Alors, NON!!!

“Pluie de bombes sur Beyrouth

Le sud du Liban a vécu samedi sa pire journée de bombardement depuis le 12 juillet dernier et le début de l'offensive israélienne. La journée a été marquée par le pilonnage massif de la région par l'aviation israélienne qui a effectué pas moins de 250 raids.

Sur le terrain, les combats ne faiblissent pas, un raid aérien à l’aube a fait de nouvelles victimes civiles dans un village du Sud Liban. Dans la nuit, l'aviation israélienne a bombardé deux routes reliant la plaine de la Bekaa, dans l'est du Liban, à Beyrouth et au Liban nord, et deux ponts situé au nord de la capitale.
La nuit dernière, la ville côtière de TYR a été lourdement frappée. L'armée israélienne visait des rampes de lancement de roquettes du Hezbollah. Lors des combats, l'armée libanaise a réagi, se plaçant ouvertement aux côtés du Hezbollah contre l'armée israélienne. Jusqu’à présent, l'armée libanaise était restée plutôt en retrait.

Rtbf.be 6 aoû 2006 10:05"

Enfin, merde à la fin!!!

An open letter to the American president:

By Salim El Hoss, former prime minister of Lebanon

Dear Mr. Bush,

We heard you express your regrets regarding the casualties of "Israel's" ravaging war against my country, Lebanon. I hope you have been furnished with a true profile of the atrocities being perpetrated in my country. You pose as being at war with terrorism. Let me honestly tell you: Charity starts at home.
"Israel" is wantonly indulging in the most horrendous forms of terrorism in Lebanon: indiscriminately killing innocent civilians at random; not sparing children, elderly or handicapped people; demolishing buildings over their residents' heads; and destroying all infrastructure, roads, bridges, water and power arteries, harbors, air strips and storage
facilities. Nothing moving on the highways is spared, not even ambulances, trucks, trailers, cars or even motorcycles, all in violation of the Geneva Conventions and human rights.

The displaced population has reached more than one fourth of the total population of my country - all suffering the harshest and most miserable of conditions. The victims include thousands of killed and maimed.

If this is not terrorism, what is?

"Israel's" savage assault has been labeled retribution for Hizbullah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers. This smacks of collective punishment, which constitutes a brazen violation of the Geneva Conventions and human rights. Furthermore, the alibi is far from plausible. The two
Israeli soldiers were abducted for the express purpose of reaching a swap of hostages with "Israel". In fact, "Israel" had acceded more than once to such swaps in the past. Why would a swap of prisoners be acceptable at one time and a taboo, rather a casus belli, at another? This created a conviction among the Lebanese that the sweeping assault against them was premeditated, and the abduction was only a tenuous excuse."Israel" is indulging in terrorism at its worst, at its ugliest, using the most lethal and sophisticated weapons you have supplied them.

We the Lebanese are justified in seeing in "Israel" as a most atrocious terrorist power, and seeing in you a direct partner. Mr. President: You are indeed a terrorist practicing the worst variant of terrorism as you condone the annihilation of my country, precluding a cease-fire to be announced, supporting the aggression against my people politically and diplomatically and bolstering "Israel's" destructive arsenal with the most lethal weaponry.

Mr. President: You are not fooling anybody with your alleged war against terrorism. In our perspective, you and "Israel" are the most unscrupulous terrorists on earth. If you want to fight terrorism, we suggest that you start with your administration and your hideous ally, "Israel". You repeatedly claim that "Israel" is acting in self-defense. How preposterous! Self-defense on other people's occupied territory is tantamount to one thing: blatant aggression.

You call Hizbullah a terrorist organization. We call it a legitimate resistance movement. There would have been no military wing of Hizbullah if there had been no Lebanese territory under Israeli occupation, if there had been no Lebanese hostages languishing in Israeli jails, and if Lebanon had not been exposed to almost daily Israeli intrusions into its airspace and territorial waters, and to sporadic incursions into Lebanese land and bombardment of civilian targets.

You cannot eliminate a party by demolishing a whole country. This would have been achieved peacefully by "Israel" withdrawing from the land it occupies, releasing Lebanese prisoners, and desisting from further acts of aggression against Lebanon.

"Israel" is the most horrendous terrorist power. And you, Mr. President, are unmistakably a direct partner, and hence a straight terrorist.

August 1, 2006
Source:Daily Star, 3-8-2006. Date: 03/08/2006 Time 09:51

Etat des lieux:

No comment

Please help Ste Therese Hospital!

L'hopital se situe à 30 seconde de la maison, maison que ma Babouchka refuse de quitter...cliquez là
Enfin, voilà...

Fox News...

Jon Stewart and FOX News explain how the recent crisis in the Middle East will affect the americans.

Enfin, voilà...

Arrêtons le carnage ! par Esther Benbassa

C'est là!

MERCI et trucs en vracs:

Tout d'abord, de la part de Nicolas, merci à toutes et à tous pour votre soutient. Il est rentré Mercredi dernier à la maison. Au passage un grand BRAVO et un énorme MERCI à l'armée française et aux équipes du SAMU 92/38/75 présentes sur place.

Puis, dans la série "il faut bien continuer à vivre", une petite histoire racontée par mon oncle. Il vit à Hadath, sur une colline (mini-colline) qui donne sur l'aéroport et la mer. La vue est belle quand il ne pleut pas des bombes. Ce week-end mon bon tonton décide, on ne sait trop pourquoi, que c'est un bon jour pour laver les rideaux du balcon. La raison invoquée est que les voisins s'étant réfugiés dans les montagnes, ils ne seront pas gênées par les trombes d'eau qu'il avait l'intention de balancer sur ses beaux rideaux. Bon, idée saugrenue certes, mais il la met en oeuvre. En plein lessivage un drone Israélien (avion sans pilote) le survole, je suppose que ce bonhomme s'activant sur ce balcon du 11ème étage leur à sembler suspect...un seau d'eau est si vite confondu avec un bonne roquette Katioucha...donc je disais avant de m'interrompre si grossièrement : un drone israélien le survole une fois, puis une seconde...forcement la question qui s'impose est "et là, tu as fais quoi?", savez vous ce qu'il a fait? Il a servi son plus beau sourire, fais un signe de la main et à continuer son lessivage...comme quoi dans la famille on a tous le cerveau qui fais des bulles!

Enfin, voilà, allez have a nice day et Enjoy :)

Premières bombes sur l'aéroport...il y a déjà 3 semaines...

As usual...

Liban : réflexions autour d'une paix possible, par Georges Corm

C'est ici!

Enfin, voilà, allez have a nice day et Enjoy :)

Le pays des Cèdres : entre la peste et le choléra!

Par où commencer, ou plutôt par où sortir d’un conflit vers lequel on a été entraîné comme l’agneau pascal que les Israélites immolent chaque année à Pâques. Mais cette fois-ci, ce n’est pas le soi-disant « peuple élu de Dieu » qui se charge de mettre en route la boucherie, mais le fameux « parti de Dieu » qui prend la relève, et offre aux fils de Moïse le pays des Cèdres sur un bûcher, prêt à l’immolation.
Que faire dans cette nation offert en holocauste sur l’autel du Proche-Orient, aux épaules brisées par le lourd fardeau de cette guerre qui l’annihile sans merci et qui lui ferme les yeux, léguant à ses rejetons des problèmes économiques, éthiques, politiques, et sociaux. Comment dépeindre la situation dans laquelle est enseveli mon pays ?
Au temps du roi Salomon, deux femmes de mauvaises vies étaient venues récriminer auprès du roi pour que ce dernier puisse mettre terme à leur problème : elles se querellaient à cause d’un enfant. Chacune attestait être la mère biologique de ce nourrisson. Pour clore l’affaire, le roi proposa de scinder l’enfant en deux avec son épée, afin que chaque mère en prenne une moitié.
Pour moi l’histoire s’arrête à ce point-là, sans avoir de conclusion précise. Ainsi, je pourrai comparer ce texte biblique à l’état de mon pays qui vit une situation analogue à celle que je viens d’énoncer. Mon territoire est cet enfant dont on ignore le sort, et qui est inapte de formuler son avis sur le choix de son trépas ou de sa survie. Les deux femmes de mauvaises vies représentent chaque tribu ou groupe d’individus qui se disputent sans arrêt pour profiter de ses richesses et pour arriver à un but, égoïste, égocentrique, maléfique …
Résultat : le pays agonise, il est au point de rendre l’âme et de livrer son sort à ceux qui vont se déclarer vainqueurs. Et le problème, c’est qu’aucune de ces deux « femmes » n’est la vraie mère du pays.
Les Libanais, sont pris dans un étau : entre la peste et le choléra, entre le marteau et l’enclume, entre le cèdre et l’olivier… ou plus clairement, entre la milice du Hezbollah se devant d’être Libanaise, mais qui a conduit tout le pays à la ruine presque totale – je me demande quel patriotisme ils prônent – et entre une communauté terroriste, traditionnelle, tribale et talmudique, qu’est l’état d’Israël.
Je clos en espérant que la prophétie d’Isaïe se réalisera et très prochainement : « Dans peu de temps, très peu de temps, le Liban se changera en verger, et le verger sera pareil à une grande forêt ». (Isaïe 29, 17) Marie-Josée Rizkallah

Pas mieux...Enfin, voilà, allez have a nice day et Enjoy :)

Ya Israël...

Letter to Israel: You have made a terrible mistake

by Chercheuse d'Or

Bravo ya Israel...

You are destroying Lebanon, and it's the worst move you ever could have made.

Everyone who can is leaving. And they're not just going to sit tight until this ends, packed bags waiting by the door... they're looking for jobs outside Lebanon, resettling.

The Israeli fantasy of the Lebanese rising up against Hezbollah won't happen. Why? Because Hezbollah supporters will soon be the only ones left in the country.

Just a few minutes ago, a dear friend of mine called to say he was evacuating in a few hours for the Gulf. One of the people I thought would never leave. But he has no work here anymore, and he just can't afford to stay. I begged him to promise he'll come back when this is over. The sadness in his voice as he replied cannot be described.

"Carine... come back to what?"

You are driving everyone away. Why do you hit towns like Ehden and Jounieh, why do you hit LBC towers and Lebanese army installations, if you are only after Hezbollah? The supermarkets are stripped bare, the streets are empty. People simply cannot stay.

After you lift your siege, the only people left in Lebanon will be the poor Shia who have lost everything in the war: friends, families, their homes. Even if you succeed in destroying Hezbollah, do you think 100 new Hezbollahs won't spring up from all this misery?

And where will the displaced live, now that their towns and neighborhoods have been decimated? A friend in the Chouf reports that his entire town has been taken over by southern Shia-- and their militiamen, who now roam the streets. So the Druze residents of the village have all left.

In Achrafieh, Lebanese Forces members have started patrolling at night to make sure displaced people don't try to break into buildings or cause trouble in the streets. It reeks of impending sectarian conflict.

The most ironic part, ya Israel, is that Lebanon is the only country in the region that could've potentially, someday, been a friend. A warm peace rather than a cold one. I always heard, from people who'd travelled to Israel, that the two countries were remarkably similar (aside from the big political issues, of course). They said Tel Aviv was essentially Beirut in Hebrew. And recently, the subject of peace had started to enter polite conversation here.

No one is talking about peace anymore. Aside from the obvious reason-- no one will forget (or forgive) the atrocities committed here for a long, long time-- people also won't bring it up because it's irrelevant. Peace was usually discussed in the context of it being good for tourism and the economy.

What tourism? What economy? Both are dead here.

Shops and businesses are closing every day. Most of my friends have lost their jobs.

Yes, ok: you had to get your soldiers back. Ok, you wanted to get rid of Hezbollah once and for all. But your soldiers are still missing, and you have made your own country far less safe. You may say that Lebanon brought this upon itself, but that is exactly what people will be saying to you, ya Israel, in the future.

You have made the situation much, much worse for yourself. And you have killed something fragile that you ought to have nourished: a liberal Arab neighbor.

I don't want to start considering that Lebanon may be dead forever, that the businesses won't reopen, that life won't flow back into Beirut. Because if that is really true, I'm not sure I will ever be able to be happy again.

I feel like my heart is dead right now, because this country is and always has been my whole heart.

I'm sorry to be so pessimistic, it is not like me at all. But slowly, I've gotten the creeping feeling my persistent optimism may just be denial. Please, if anyone has hope, leave some in the comments...

***
Just as I am about to hit publish, another bomb shakes my home. Please Israel, put down your weapons. If there is still time to save my country, it is a matter of hours or days, not weeks or months.

Enfin!!!

Rapide update: au moment où je vous écris Nicolas se trouve sur le ferry Beyrouth - Larnaca...on y arrive...selon l'ambassade le voyage devrait prendre 35 heures entre le départ de Beyrouth et l'arrivée à Paris. Ce dernier détail a fait dire à maman "il y a vraiment un truc avec les 35 heures en France".

Enfin, voilà, allez have a nice day et Enjoy :)

Update:

Ma tante et ses trois filles (8; 5 et 3 ans) sont arrivées à Chypre avec d'autres citoyens américains. Elle l'a joué au culot, en effet, malgré ses filles, son mari aux US etc etc elles n'étaient pas prioritaires, alors elle a juste débarqué devant l'ambassade et a fait le forcing pour prendre le ferry vers Chypre...ça a marché, et d'une...

Nicolas est toujours au Liban, il est le numéro 1342 ou quelque choses comme ça...pas prêt d'évacuer apparemment malgré que l'ambassade lui avait promis de l'appeler jeudi ou vendredi. Ceci est dû à un certain nombre de passe droit, de gens qui connaissent de gens etc etc...on a aussi décidé de la jouer comme ça, alors deux ou trois coup de fils plus tard sont nom se retrouve parmi le haut de la pile. Le plus drôle c'est que le quai d'Orsay explique à la personne qui appelle pour mettre son nom en prioritaire qu'ils n'ont jamais entendu parler de lui, que Nicolas Y. n'existe pas sur les listings Paris!!!! JE LES AIS APELLES DEUX FOIS, avec force numéros de téléphones, mails et moyens de nous contacter à Paris et de le contacter là bas!!! C'est quoi ces imbéciles, il y a des gens inquiets qui attendent, des deux côtés de la méditerranée! Bon, je me clame un peu....en clair Nicolas va faire comme ma tante demain matin, il va être devant l'ambassade à 7 heures du matin et tenter de la jouer au culot et à la tchatche. La tchatche...ça il sait faire...vendre un télé haute définition à un aveugle? Pas de soucis ;) On est libanais, il faut bien qu'on ai quelque chose d'utile dans notre patrimoine génétique! Courage mon grand, tiens moi au courrant demain...

J'espère à très très vite cette semaine...je t'aime!

Enfin voilà...

...

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - US Ambassador John Bolton said there was no moral equivalence between the civilian casualties from the Israeli raids in Lebanon and those killed in Israel from "malicious terrorist acts".
Asked to comment on the deaths in an Israeli air strike of eight Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon Sunday, he said: "it is a matter of great concern to us ...that these civilian deaths are occurring. It's a tragedy."
"I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he added, while defending as "self-defense" Israel's military action, which has had "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths". "It's simply not the same thing to say that it's the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense," Bolton noted.

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