"This morning the dogs were eating the neighbors"

woiyo
woiyo, if you will bother to read Blatham's original post starting this thread, you would know that he requested information about events in Lebanon be posted, not partisan opinions. I'm complying with his request. Are you?

BBB

Information...good. Lack of information...bad.

And a part of the information we ought to have relates to the carnage presently happening.

Americans Left Stranded in Lebanon
Americans Left Stranded in Lebanon
By LAUREN FRAYER, AP
BEIRUT, Lebanon (July 25)

Hundreds of Americans and Russians were reported stranded in the heart of Lebanon's war zone Tuesday when a ship evacuating foreigners had to pull out of a southern port without them.

The Cypriot ship Princesa Marissa picked up about 300 foreigners stuck in the southern port city of Tyre - a joint effort by the U.S., Switzerland, Norway and others, said Erik Rattat, a German official involved in the evacuation.

Rattat said 300 Americans trapped southeast of Tyre had called the U.S. Embassy for help. He said the embassy called him and asked that the Cypriot ship wait as long as possible for the Americans to get on board. But the boat had a deadline to leave by 5 p.m., he said.

U.S. officials confirmed they had been trying to get Americans onto the ship, but were unsure if any had made it on time. The last scheduled evacuations of Americans from Lebanon were planned for Wednesday, U.S. officials said.

A Canadian ship was due in Tyre on Wednesday to evacuate more people, officials said.

Boatloads of evacuees have been leaving from Beirut for nearly a week, but Israeli airstrikes have damaged roads leading to the capital, and few people in the south have risked the trip.

More than 12,000 Americans have fled Lebanon since hostilities started two weeks ago, and officials said the effort was winding down.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said more than 100 Russians and citizens of other ex-Soviet republics also might be caught in Lebanon's south, the stronghold of the Hezbollah militant group targeted by Israel's offensive. Russia and Israel were negotiating a safe corridor for their passage to the Syrian border, he said.

Nearly 2,000 citizens from Russia and other ex-Soviet republics have been evacuated, and scores more were to be bused from Beirut to Syria this week, Lavrov said.

The Princess Marissa boat arrived at Larnaca, Cyprus, after midnight Tuesday carrying some 230 mostly European nationals. Ambulances stood by for several injured evacuees.

Some 500 Americans left Monday morning on the USS Nashville, a troop transport vessel that last week took multiple loads of more than 1,000 people. It had been scheduled to leave Sunday, but did not fill up, and officials held it in port overnight.

The cruise ship Orient Queen left Beirut on Monday night with several hundred more American evacuees, U.S. officials said.

U.S. Embassy officials said they were meeting Monday night to discuss whether to reduce the fleet of seven naval ships involved in the effort.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.S. military would shift to a humanitarian mission, carrying tons of medical equipment and other supplies from Cyprus to Beirut.

The last large group of Britons requesting evacuation sailed out of Beirut's harbor Sunday. The British have pulled out a total of about 4,500 people.

Canadian officials said about 1,200 of their nationals left on two ships Monday, bringing the total number of Canadians evacuated to nearly 8,000. Officials said they had stopped phoning Canadians to notify them of evacuations and urged them to report to boarding areas without waiting for a call.

Reporters in Lebanon and Israel Describe Work & Dangers
Reporters in Lebanon and Israel Describe Work --- and Dangers
By Joe Strupp, E & P
Published: July 24, 2006 3:55 PM ET

As journalists scramble in and around Beirut and southern Lebanon to cover the escalating violence between Israel and Hezbollah, several veterans of recent Baghdad reporting say the violence in Iraq is, in many ways, more dangerous to reporters than what they are encountering in the newly war-torn Lebanon.

In conversatons with E&P today, they also described day to day working conditions that make their work a little easier than certain aspects in Iraq, with fewer logistical problems or electricity and phone connection interference. Not to mention Hezbollah's willingness to work with reporters, to a degree, in an effort to get their message out.

"Electricity is sporadic in and out, but it is almost uninterrupted," said Hannah Allam, former Baghdad bureau chief for Knight Ridder, now head of McClatchy's Cairo bureau who has been in Beirut in recent days. Saying she had recently traveled south to several Hezbollah areas, she said its leaders have been willing to speak with reporters and allow them to report. "I have not felt censorship from any side," she said.

Liz Sly of the Chicago Tribune agreed. "They are pretty elusive, but not hostile or aggressive," she said of Hezbollah. "If you organize through their officials, they are not averse to meeting journalists and putting across their point of view."

Both Allam and Sly noted that the first journalist to die, a Lebanese photographer whose taxi was struck by an incoming bomb, was killed Sunday, adding to the obvious safety concerns. They also acknowledged that bridges remain a target, so reporters seek to avoid them or cross quickly. "Several southern suburbs of Beirut have been almost completely wiped out," Allam said, during a phone call from the Beirut hotel where she, Sly, and other western journalists are staying. "A tangle of wires, rubble and uninhabitable buildings."

She also said that the local English-language paper, The Daily Star, had been hit by a newsprint shortage, reducing the number of daily pages, while many of its reporters must work from home.

Lebanon's leader Fouad Siniora angrily described the damage to his country on Monday, including about 380 people killed and some 750,000 displaced, and, according to a statement released by his office, said the Israeli bombing had set Lebanon back "50 years."

Although the continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon, mostly in the southern suburbs, are an obvious threat to life and property -- often coming without warning -- the city remains safer overall and, in many ways, more welcoming to journalists than the atmosphere in Baghdad.

"Baghdad is still a lot more dangerous than Lebanon for foreigners," said Sly, the Tribune reporter who arrived in Beirut 10 days ago after her most recent eight-week stint in Baghdad. "We are still personally targeted [in Baghdad]. They can snatch you. In Baghdad, you have to hide the fact that you are a foreigner. I only go around with my trusted staff there."

Sly, who has reported from Iraq on and off for two years, says the ongoing threat of Israel attacks is a danger. But compared to being in Baghdad, the Beirut city life remains devoid of other dangers, from kidnapping to car bombs, that still pervade Baghdad. "If you are under an Israeli war plane, it is extremely dangerous," she acknowledged. "But they are not randomly bombing the city."

Allam agrees. "In Baghdad, you worry about the car next to you blowing up, here you worry about a bomb hitting you from the sky," Allam said. "Where the danger comes from is different. ... I don't feel any threat from Hezbollah. Nobody is worrying about kidnappings, but we know that can change at any moment."

Thanassis Cambanis, a Boston Globe reporter who covered Iraq for three years before being reassigned last March, also noted the different dangers in Lebanon, where he is reporting from Tyre. But he declined to say which location is more dangerous, noting that, in Baghdad, you can take more precautions to avoid kidnappings and car bombs, compared to Lebanon, where bombs can strike anywhere.

"There is more immediate threat of being blown up here by a bomb," Cambanis said. "In Iraq, there are precautions you can take as far as security or trying to blend in or take different routes. I feel like I have a lot less control [in Lebanon]." Israeli jets have bombed Red Cross ambulances near Tyre in recent days, killing several occupants.

In Israel, meanwhile, Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy's Jerusalem bureau chief for the past year, says reporters are not in as much danger, and have actually been getting as close to the front lines as they want. "We have had better access to the front lines than we expected," he told E&P Monday. "The day of the [Israeli soldier] kidnapping, I was able to drive right up to the border and talk to members of the Israel artillery battery and talk to tank commanders."

Access is one step below that of embedding, Nissenbaum said, adding that although the Israeli Army embedded some Israeli journalists last year during its pullout of Gaza, he did not see it occurring again soon.

Nissenbaum said reporters have even gotten close enough to the front lines to actually catch the Israeli military in a bit of an exaggeration, when they announced they had taken a Lebanese town. "We were standing on a hilltop overlooking the valley and it was clear they hadn't," Nissenbaum said of the city that was eventually captured.

A former embed in Iraq, who also covered Baghdad as a unilateral, Nissenbaum agreed that Iraq was more dangerous than this fighting. But, he stressed, "I am not in Lebanon."

Lebanon's civilian death toll reaches 400 as fighting intens
Posted on Mon, Jul. 24, 2006
Lebanon's civilian death toll reaches 400 as fighting intensifies
By Hannah Allam and Dion Nissenbaum
McClatchy Newspapers

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israeli forces on Monday expanded their efforts to rout Hezbollah militants from southern Lebanon, fighting fierce clashes along the border and continuing airstrikes that have killed more than 400 Lebanese civilians in the past two weeks.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise trip to Beirut to show solidarity with the besieged Lebanese government, which has called for a cease-fire but lacks the power to enforce one. Lebanese officials who met with Rice said she expressed sympathy for the nation's growing humanitarian disaster but offered no indication of a diplomatic breakthrough.

Hezbollah officials didn't meet with Rice in person but sent a message through an intermediary, said Hussein Hajj Hassan, a Lebanese legislator who belongs to Hezbollah.

"Our message is only for a cease-fire," Hajj Hassan said. "Not because we are weak or scared, but because we don't want more destruction for us or for the Israelis. We have the complete power to continue this war for a very long time, but we don't want that. We want peace and a cease-fire."

Such a cease-fire, however, hinges on concessions that neither side appears willing to make.

The Lebanese government, which includes Hezbollah Cabinet members and lawmakers, is calling for a package that includes the release of some prisoners in Israeli jails, a map of Israeli land mines in southern Lebanon, the return of land it claims that Israel is still occupying and reparations for the infrastructure demolished by the air raids.

In a stance backed by the United States, Israeli officials so far have rejected calls for a cease-fire, saying the bombardment won't end until Israel is free from the threat of the militants' rocket attacks, which have killed 41 Israelis - 24 soldiers and 17 civilians - since the conflict began.

Hezbollah fired at least 80 rockets into northern Israel on Monday. One person was seriously injured.

Israel also demands the release of two Israeli soldiers whom Hezbollah guerrillas abducted in a brazen cross-border operation that killed eight other Israeli troops and led to the retaliatory aid raids throughout Lebanon.

However, Israeli leaders appear to be scaling back their ambitions and preparing to accept more modest goals to end the conflict.

Israel is still pushing for Lebanon to begin disarming Hezbollah as called for by the United Nations. But Israeli leaders now suggest that they'll be happy if the diplomatic moves lead to the establishment of an international border force that's robust enough to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and reclaiming outposts that it's used to attack Israel.

"The target is not to dismantle totally Hezbollah from missiles capability," said Avi Dichter, Israel's public security minister and a member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Cabinet. "That's not the mission."

An immediate cease-fire that left Hezbollah in control of its southern strongholds could be interpreted as a victory for the militants. Still, international outrage is mounting over civilian casualties and there are signs that the carnage is generating support for Hezbollah even among Lebanese Christians and Sunni Muslims, who are traditional rivals of the Shiite Muslim group.

The two-week death toll passed 400 Monday, and about half of those killed in the Israeli strikes were children, Sami Haddad, Lebanon's economy minister, said in Beirut. The violence has displaced at least 600,000 Lebanese, and the government estimates at least $1 billion in damage to the country's infrastructure.

Humanitarian aid is beginning to trickle in, though most routes south from the capital remained under attack by Israeli airstrikes and it was nearly impossible to distribute supplies to overflowing refugee centers and hospitals under siege, Lebanese officials and aid workers said.

The U.S. military will begin delivering $30 million in assistance to Lebanon on Tuesday, including 100,000 medical kits, 20,000 blankets and 2,000 plastic sheets, said Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, who was traveling with Rice. He said the total international appeal for humanitarian aid would be at least $100 million and could grow to $150 million.

A few American troops will be on hand when supplies land, but the U.S. military isn't likely to be involved in their distribution in Lebanon, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in Washington.

"I'm obviously here because I'm deeply concerned about the Lebanese people and what they are enduring," Rice said before meeting leading Shiite politician Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon's Parliament. "President Bush wanted me to make this the first stop."

After Rice left Beirut en route to meetings with Israeli officials in Jerusalem, her aides disputed reports that her meetings - particularly the one with Berri - were confrontational. But they acknowledged that Rice heard emotional appeals to speed humanitarian aid to the dispossessed and craft an urgent end to the fighting.

"I don't think it was a negative meeting," Welch said.

With diplomacy still in neutral, fighting has escalated in southern Lebanon. After driving Hezbollah from the hilltop village of Maroun al-Ras, dozens of Israeli tanks and hundreds of soldiers moved in on nearby Bint Jbail, about two miles from the Israel-Lebanon border.

One Israeli commander near the border said that more than 3,000 soldiers were operating in southern Lebanon, a dramatic increase from the more limited incursions in the first week of the clash. Officials characterized the operation as a still-limited campaign to dislodge Hezbollah fighters.

Heavy combat along the border Monday led to casualties for both sides. The Israeli military said two soldiers were killed and 14 were wounded.

In addition, two Israeli soldiers were killed when an Apache attack helicopter crashed near the border. Hezbollah claimed it brought down the aircraft, but Israeli officials said the crash might have been caused by pilot error and a mechanical problem. The incident was under investigation.

Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Naboulsi said 10 fighters had been killed in the past two weeks, though that figure is thought to be low. Naboulsi declined to offer details on when or where the militants were killed.
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McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Warren P. Strobel, traveling with Rice, contributed to this report from Beirut.

Blogging from Beirut: The Search for 'Humanity'
Blogging from Beirut: The Search for 'Humanity'
By Greg Mitchell
E & P
August 09, 2006

Returning to the saga of Spencer Witte, son of a good friend, who has been blogging from Beirut for FoxNews.com for three weeks now. His latest dispatches reveal deteriorating conditions: "Even if a ceasefire were to come tomorrow, there is a fast approaching humanitarian disaster in Lebanon."

In the nearly three weeks since I last wrote about the son of a good friend who has been blogging from Beirut for Foxnews.com, sadly little has changed.

Hezbollah is still firing rockets into Israeli villages and hillsides, and Israel is still pounding Lebanon, punishing all of the citizens and severely damaging the civilian infrastructure as a humanitarian crisis builds. Brave reporters in the region are sending back honest and first-rate journalism, while editorial pages and pundits, with rare exceptions, raise few objections to the scale of the Israeli attacks. But at least columnist Tom Friedman, after saying not a word against the air strikes for weeks, is now suggesting that Israel ought to consider a ceasefire, for its own good.


In that previous column, I described how the son of my friends Mike and Sally Witte ended up in Beirut, with his girlfriend, at the very start of the bombardment last month. The Wittes happen to know the editor of the Fox News site, and lo and behold, 24-year-old Spencer Witte (another son, Griff Witte, reports for The Washington Post) was asked to blog almost daily as "An American in Beirut."

I've met Spencer a couple of times -- and all of the Wittes appear in my baseball memoir, "Joy in Mudville" -- so I closed that earlier column with a plea that he keep his "head down" (as we used to say in the local Little League). Catching up with his dozen blog entries since then, I can see that he has been doing just that?-he's not in the prime attack zone of South Beirut?-while venturing out often and observing the impact of the bombing on everyone.

Here are a few entries from some of the Spencer Witte blog postings:

*
July 25

I stand out a bit here. Most locals assume I don't speak much Arabic and, even if I did, don't know the area well enough to direct anyone. But each of the last three days, a sedan packed with people, kids sitting on the laps of mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, has pulled alongside me in hopes I would point them in the right direction.
I have had brief conversations with about 25 of the more than 800,000 people currently displaced in Lebanon. To put that second number in perspective, Lebanon is home to fewer than 4 million people. In just a little over two weeks of fighting, a fifth of the country has picked up, left their homes and escaped uncertainty only to face more of it.

July 26

At this point, I can't honestly say I'm stuck in Beirut. It's more accurate to say I'm trying to stick it out. I chose to be in Beirut, and, at least for now, I'm choosing to stay…..

July 27

Before the war started, Lebanon was regaining its reputation as a safe and worthwhile place to visit, and now that confidence has been dashed. Businesses both small and large are taking huge losses. Vital infrastructure has been destroyed. It will take 10, maybe 15 years to get these things back. An entire country, an entire people's clock has been dialed backwards.

Even given such a depressing reality, there's an attitude here in Beirut that I think many Americans would admire and relate to. It's a resilience ?- a bounce-back, make-it-bigger-and-better-than-before, show-must-go-on resilience that the people of Beirut absolutely share with the American people.

July 28

The sound of approaching planes bring thoughts of approaching death. I look up at the ceiling and wait for it to collapse. I wait for our windows to blow out. In my better moments, I know otherwise, as the chances of this happening are remote. At least for tonight, death is moving elsewhere, to places like Dahiyeh, Beirut's besieged southern suburb….

While I still felt welcome here as an individual American, the American position on this issue confuses a lot of people I've spoken to. I've heard this dozens of times over the last week. People wonder how America can grant Israel more time and speed them additional weapons while simultaneously offering Lebanon $30 million in aid. One Lebanese man I spoke with yesterday compared it to a schoolyard rumble. America, he said, is on the sidelines yelling, "Fight! Fight! Fight!" but then wants to pat the loser on the back and buy him a lemonade later that evening.

July 31

In talking to people here, it seems to circle back to a sense that the international community has been uncaring and extremely slow to push hard for a ceasefire. We're now coming up on 20 days of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Each new sunrise carries the news of mounting deaths of civilians, the loss of their homes, the creation of more displaced people and the deepening of challenges that Lebanon will face after the smoke clears. Each day there are more people caught in the middle whose feelings will harden and whose willingness to forgive will become less likely.

August 1

Over the last several days I've received several hundred e-mails from people who are reading this blog. It certainly hasn't all been fan mail. Words like "human shields," "kidnapped soldiers," "innocent civilians," "katyusha rockets," "U.N. 1559" make appearances and become part of justifications for one action or another. These points can be debated. Heck, they should be debated. They need to be debated. It's healthy.

What should not be questioned, however, is the humanity of the people involved in this conflict. I've received a tiny and troubling minority of e-mails that refer to Hezbollah members, Muslims, Arabs, Israelis and Jews as "rats," "ants," and even "orcs," the monstrous foot soldiers from "The Lord of the Rings." Pushing real people to the level of lowly animals and monsters contributes nothing to understanding the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It does nothing to mask the reality that, whatever our political beliefs, humans make up both sides of this conflict and are being motivated to act on the basis of real circumstances and real ideas.

August 2

Two young Lebanese were passing us in a sedan on our right, windows down and music blaring. I recognized the song right away. It was one of Hezbollah's many martial-themed propaganda tunes that play on both their radio and TV station. Bassel glanced over, again flicking his tongue, and turned up the volume of his radio news broadcast. Lebanon's diversity had again shown itself, this time in a fleeting wordless exchange.

August 3

We're now entering our 23rd day of war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and I'm beginning my 22nd day in Beirut. It's amazing how quickly human beings seem to adjust to their surroundings. Routines get established around changing realities. I woke up late this morning. The fan was still going, pushing humid, Mediterranean air around a sun-soaked room. The first thing that came to mind was that we still had electricity ?- a welcomed sign since Wednesday had been bad and we were without it for about 18 of 24 hours.

In the last three weeks, I've found that normal moments are possible in wartime. But normalcy is not. Last night, I was readying for bed at 2 a.m. when the bombing resumed in Beirut. The sound is unmistakable, and the heart always skips a beat. The windows shake, as does the hanging lamp, as does the floor. But short of ducking under a table, there's also an awareness that you're essentially helpless to the situation. And so you try to remember your routine; close your eyes, get some sleep and hope the fan is pushing humid Mediterranean air around the room when you wake up in the morning.

August 6

Even if a ceasefire were to come tomorrow, there is a fast approaching humanitarian disaster in Lebanon. The 25 day-old air and sea blockade has been effective and regardless of politics, the fact remains, the entire country is squeezed. The last overland routes to Syria were hit by repeated air raids on Thursday night. Roads that connect the south and north to Beirut have been cut off. Many of the electrical and water lines that run underneath the roads have been destroyed. Food is short. At the current pace, even Lebanon's hospitals will have to close in a week to 10 days for lack of fuel. The situation is urgent.

August 8

Stickers have started popping up all around town. They seem to have a simple message but then again, maybe not. "NO WAR" they read, in bold red print on a pure black background. This sentiment has strong support here in Beirut. It's a call for a cease-fire, a halt to the bloodshed, but not a pointing of fingers. Instead, there have been frequent appeals for unity and remembrance of an all-too-recent civil war that dragged on for 15 years and left more than 100,000 dead across Lebanon. An end to hostilities is something most people here can agree on. How to end hostilities is another issue….

Shortly after, two loud explosions pierced the air. They were separated by about 10 seconds and shook the storefront windows advertising for ever-deeper sales. A new area of Beirut called Shiyyah had been hit and at least 10 more people were dying beneath new rubble. As I continued my walk down Hamra Street yesterday evening, it was yet another sign of the times.
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Greg Mitchell ([email protected]) is editor of E&P and first met Spencer Witte when he was about 15.