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Yesterday, I visited Houla,
a stone's throw from the Israeli border.
Yesterday, I was discovered
by Zainab Fawqi-Sleem - a young, Lebanese woman who was killed
in Houla, alongside her sister-in-law, Selma, on July 15th. Zainab
is but one of over 1,300 innocents killed in this war, but she
is the one who found me.
On October 31st, 1948, in one
of the few massacres of the Nakba to occur inside Lebanon, proto-Israeli
militas seized the town of Houla, setting off bombs and burning
down several houses. They took eighty-five people captive, and
summarily executed eighty-two of the them. There's a memorial
to the massacre in the center of town, not far from homes smashed
flat by this current war.
According to news reports,
Israel bombed and shelled Houla on at least ten separate occasions
during this last war. Israeli soldiers repeatedly invaded the
town and occupied people's homes. They remain, in one home, in
one corner of the village, to this day. If I had run across those
soldiers, I wonder what I could have said to them? What might
they have said to me?
I was in Houla yesterday with
LebanonSolidarity, a local relief and resistance organization.
I was in Houla to assess how we might be able to help the people
living there. We brought medicines, and arranged for a doctor
to come by and give free medical exams. We took down the names
and ages of the people made homeless by the bombings, so we might
bring them some donated clothes.
Throughout South Lebanon, there
are thousands of destroyed homes and buildings, and tens- of-thousands
of homeless. Some towns, like Bint Jbeil and Khiam, are more
rubble than anything else. Traveling through South Lebanon today,
I am reminded so much of Palestine, of Nablus and Jenin and Gaza.
For Israel's security, Arabs
must not possess functioning towns or secure homes.
More than anything, the people
of Houla need drinking water. The town's main pump was destroyed
during the war, and the $20,000 needed to replace it is beyond
the scope of our group's resources. And, again, I am reminded
of Palestine and the theft of local water sources, taken in the
West Bank to supply Israeli settlements with lush, green, desert
lawns and private swimming pools.
For Israel's security, Arabs
must not possess secure access to potable water.
Short hours before Zainab was
killed in Houla, Israel bombed a powerplant in al-Jieh, just
south of Beirut. Al-Jieh was one of several powerplants across
Lebanon that were destroyed during this war.
For Israel's security, Arabs
must not possess electricity.
As in Gaza, where Israel has
repeatedly shot at and shelled Palestinian beachgoers, the al
-Jieh bombing has stolen Lebanon's oceanfront. The bombing destroyed
the powerplant's oil tanks, and ruptured the berm built to protect
against a spill. Millions of gallons of heavy fuel oil has leaked
into the Mediterranean, ruining Lebanon's once pristine beaches.
For Israel's security, Arabs
must not possess beaches.
The ancient port city of Tyre,
some twenty-five kilometers from Houla, has one of Lebanon's
last, remaining, usable beaches. Some Lebanese still go there,
to swim and visit with family or friends and, for a while, escape
the disaster that is South Lebanon today. Young men with slicked-back
brush cuts pass a beer among themselves, as they watch women
in French bikinis jump in and out of the surf. In the heart of
"Hezbollah" country, at the center of George Bush's
"Islamo-Facist state-within-a-state", you can still
see children building sandcastles here.
But, farther out in the ocean,
the Israeli navy maintains its blockade of Lebanon. Nothing is
allowed in or out. In Washington D.C., Congressman Tom Lantos
has blocked all U.S. humanitarian aid until Lebanon's government
agrees to deploy UN troops along the border with Syria, to stop
and search all cross-border traffic - something that Syria has
already said it will not permit. Farther south, Israel's long-running
blockade of Gaza has caused, in the UN's words, a "humanitarian
catastrophe" as malnutrition rates there skyrocket.
For Israel's security, Arabs
must not possess open borders, or engage in free trade with the
world.
Like so many places in South
Lebanon, the roads in and around Houla are severely damaged from
the war. South Lebanon's streets have suddenly come to resemble
their sister thoroughfares in Palestine. There, Israeli bulldozers
have combined with decades of enforced neglect and the violence
to birth a network of degraded and barely passable roads. Here
in Lebanon, the same thing has been accomplished in a matter
of weeks by dropping over a billion dollars worth of bombs and
shells and tanks and soldiers on the South.
For Israel's security, Arabs
must not possess modern roads.
From the hills of Houla, one
can see Israel/Palestine. Just over the border, and even before
the war, Israel had permanently tethered a videodrone blimp,
visible for all to see. The drone is constantly filming Houla,
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Overhead, the low,
humming sounds of Israel's unmanned reconnaissance planes have
become another permanent part of the landscape.
For Israel's security, Arabs
must not possess privacy.
On July 14th, 2006, Ibrahim
Sleem owned a modest ranch house in Houla. Within the walls of
his home now lay a surreal jumble of charred furniture, clothes
and children's toys, broken glass, scattered fragments of wood,
and chunks of concrete fallen from the walls and ceiling. Sixteen
members of his family, including five children, gathered in this
home on July 15th, for a quiet meal. As they were visiting after
dinner, a bomb or shell exploded among them, killing Ibrahim's
daughter Selma and his daughter-in-law, Zainab. It was an American
ordinance that destroyed this home, and killed Zainab and Selma.
The writing on the bomb's fragments is in English, not Hebrew.
It happened at precisely 8:28pm. The clock that used to hang
on the wall is now forever frozen at that moment.
Outside the home is a small
shed, with tools hanging on its walls. Next to the shed is a
modest flower garden, and a beautiful Eucalyptus tree. More than
all of the destruction I have seen in these past weeks, much
more than simply the damage I saw inside the Sleem family home--
that shed, that garden, and that tree tore a hole inside of me.
Someone lived in this place.
Someone used those tools to maintain their home. Someone planted
that garden, and carefully tended it. Someone sat beneath that
tree in the afternoons and enjoyed a cup of tea. Someone loved
this place.
Zainab Fawqi-Sleem was twenty-two
years old and two months pregant when, for Israel's security,
she was killed. Zainab's nine month old daughter, Nadine, will
never know her mother's love. Zainab's unborn child will never
know life at all.
Living in Lebanon today, I
am left with a single, unanswered question. It's a terribly important
question. It is a vitally important question.
The United States speaks for
Israel's security from all we Islamo-Facist terrorist Arabs living
throughout the Middle East. The United Nations Interim Force
speaks for Israel's security here in Lebanon. During the war,
Hosni Mubarak, the dictator of Egypt, spoke for Israel's security.
During the war, King Abdullah, the dictator of Jordan, spoke
for Israel's security. In Marjayoun, a mostly Christian village
in South Lebanon, the Lebanese Army even offered the Israelis
tea when they invaded.
For the West, and for all its
pet Arab dictators, this is the proper moral response to Israeli
terror. We Arabs must not only accept all of the bombs and the
blockades. We must not only accept the destruction of our homes
and dreams. We must, in fact, rejoice in our own devastation.
This is, after all, the joyous "birth-pangs of a new Middle
East."
My question, our question,
Lebanon's question, is simply this: Who will speak for Zainab
Fawqi-Sleem?
----- Ramzi Kysia is a Lebanese-American
essayist and activist. He is currently working with LebanonSolidarity.org
to resist war and renew shattered communities in South Lebanon.
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