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Today's Stories July 24, 2006 Mark Levy Whatever You Did in War Will Always Be With You Robert Fisk Israelis Bomb Fleeing Villagers Maher Osseiran Beirut, 1982 Paul Craig Roberts Israel's Criminal Accomplice Patrick Cockburn More Than 100 Iraqis Being Killed Each Day Website of the Day sirnosir.com July 22-23, 2006 Jonathan Cook Israel's Indiscriminate Onslaughts Paul Craig Roberts The Shame of Being an American Gilad Atzmon Israel's New Math Robert Fisk Elegy for Beirut Ralph Nader Here's How to Halt This Horror Fred Gardner The Double Standard on Depression Christopher Reed The Right's Use of Sexpot Schoolgirls Dr. Susan Block Bush's Fecal World Najla Said Do People Know How Much We Hurt? Uri Avnery "Stop that Shit" July 21, 2006 George Galloway John Cornford and the Fight for the Spanish Republic P. Sainath Indian Prime Minister Faces the Dead Farmer Problem Aseem Shrivastava The Iraq War is a Huge Success Alexander Cockburn Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need to Know Website of the Day FromIsraeltoLebanon July 20, 2006 William S. Lind Why Hezbollah is Winning Robert Jensen Florida Puts History on Probation John Ross AMLO Presidente! Tom Hayden I Was Israel's Dupe Paul Craig Roberts The Unfolding Horror Show July 19, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government Discredited Trish Schuh Israel Targets, Flattens Beirut TV Station HQ Jonathan Cook Is Israel Using Arab Villages As Human Shields? Vicente Navarro The Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On: The Deafening Silence on Franco's Genocide July 17 / 18 2006 Mike Whitney Israel's Shameful Attack on Gaza Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land July 14 / 15, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn How Venice is Dying Tanya Reinhart The IDF is Hungry for War Robert Fisk Beirut Waits: Is Damascus the Key? Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Jazz Winslow Wheeler Pentagon Budget Gimmickry: When a Cut is Actually an Increase Hugh O'Shaughnessy In Amazonia: Slavery and Deforestation M. Shahid Alam Israel, the US and the New Orientalism William S. Lind Two Signposts in Iraq Ramzy Baroud Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault Gilad Atzmon Echoes of the Wehrmacht Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Railroading Your Rights Samar Assad A History of Israeli-Palestinian Prisoner Exchanges Ron Jacobs Japan and Pre-Emptive Strikes: Why Would They Want to Go There? Lee Ballinger A New Kind of Jim Crow? Walter Brasch A World Without Fajitas?: the Rightwing's Language Police Dave Lindorff The Bush Swingers?: They Broke the Law and People Died Clifton Ross Up from Below in Oaxaca Tom Crumpacker Planning for the Re-Colonization of Cuba Ricardo Alarcon The Mad Annexationist William Hughes Rev. Billy Graham: A War-Monger in the Pulpit Susie Day Bugging Hillary Farrah Hassen The Road to Gitmo: Dramatizing the Banality of Evil Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Engel and Davies July 13, 2006 Saul Landau Lies as Patriotism? Youmans / Erakat Divestment, Corporate Engagement and IsraelDave Lindorff Cut and Run: a Winning StrategyRon Jacobs Dogs of War Barking at the MoonCol. Dan Smith Iraq: Fool Me TwiceJune 22, 2006Marjorie Cohn Friendly Fire AmbushWinslow T. Wheeler Lockheed, the Senator and the F-22Tanya Reinhart A Week of Israeli RestraintMike Marqusee The Forest Gate RaidWilliam Blum Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's July 12, 2006 John Ross Mexico Splits in Half: the Election Hits the Streets John Stauber The CIA Propagandist and Former Prankster Stewart Brand: John Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars Robert Boston Top 10 Powerbrokers of the Religious Right Wayne S. Smith Bush's New Cuba Plan: Embargoes, Blacklists and Assassination Plots John Graham Secrecy and the Curtain of Oz Ed Kinane Arrested for Failing to Obey a Lawful Order to Cease Protesting an Unlawful War: My Statement to the US District Court Kevin Prosen Goodbye Mr. Zeidler, You Will Be Missed Jonathan Cook Israel's Latest Bueaucratic Obscenity Website of the Day Addicted to Oil: Starring GW Bush July 11, 2006 Dave Lindorff Does a State of War Give Bush the Right to Commit War Crimes? Dave Zirin Why I Wear My Zidane Jersey Mokhiber / Weissman Boeing's Criminal Agreement: Odd and Unusual Amira Hass A War on Families Clare Hanrahan The Last Free Fourth of July? Brian Cloughey Stop Blaming Pakistan Felice Pace The US Media and the World Cup Raed Jarrar Iraq: Raped Website of the Day Bad Boy of Gitmo July 10, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Courting Doom with North Korea Uri Avnery A One-Sided War Roger Burbach Democracy Betrayed: Electoral Fraud and Rebellion in Mexico Ron Jacobs The New SDS: Toward a Radical Youth Movement Joshua Frank Sectarian Flames in Iraq Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Stunning Admission to Larry King Alexander Cockburn The War in Iraq: a Dreadful Mistake July 8 / 9, 2006 Weekend Edition Stephen Green When War Criminals Retire Paul Craig Roberts Republic or Empire?: Lessons from Stanford Greg Moses Boots Down on the Rio Grande Ralph Nader The Wail of the Oceans Laura Carlsen Mexico's Election Lacks Credibility Conn Hallinan Dumping Musharraf: Is Pakistan Expendable? John Chuckman Afghanistan is No One's War Fred Gardner Big Pharma's Strange Holy Grail: Cannabis Without Euphoria? Dr. Tod Mikuriya Cannabis as a Frontline Treatment for Childhood Mental Disorders Pierre Tristam Missile Envy: Is N. Korea Bush's Most Reliable Ally? Lucinda Marshall Deep Sexing the News: the Rape of Iraq David Swanson Command Rape: the Ordeal of Suzanne Swift Heather Gray The Spiral of Violence: What the Dead Might Tell Us Dave Zirin / John Cox French Soccer and the Future of Europe: Le Pen's Racists vs. Zindane and Henry Mark Engler Mexico's Fear of Democracy: Elites, Fraud and the Status Quo Michael Lettieri Mexico: Don't Discount a Recount Ron Jacobs 2008 Might Be Too Late: the Case for Impeachment Now Jamal Juma' Globalizing the Occupation Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Engel and Kirbach   July 7, 2006 John Ross Anatomy of a Fraud Foretold: Mexico's Surreal Elections July 6, 2006 Nick Dearden Profiting from the Occupation: the Corporate Interests Behind the War on Palestine John Stanton Nationalize the Defense Industry Ralph Nader The Politics of the Minimum Wage Laray Polk Cambodia Then; Gaza Now Saul Landau Who Mourned the Victims of the US Covert War on Chile? Joshua Frank Sweet Angst, Power Chords and Politics: Farewell Sleater-Kinney William S. Lind To Be or Not to Be a State? Hamas and 4th Generation War Adelman / Lindorff Impeachment Comes to Main Street, USA Jonathan Cook An Experiment in Human Despair Website of the Day Adulterers in Chief? July 5, 2006 Mike Whitney Is Cheney Betting on Economic Collapse?: the Veep's Curious Investment Portfolio Saul Landau False Axioms: Star Democrats and Iraq Massacres Ramzy Baroud And Israel Shall Be Safe Again Missy Comley Beattie An Axis of Nuts: Ready, Aim, Fear Arthur Neslen A Way Out of the Gaza Crisis? Vincent Maruffi Party Politics in Connecticut: Lieberman, Lamont and the Greens Paul Cantor Aberrations: Hell, High Water and the Moral High Ground Paul D. Johnson Mystery Meat: Let's Be Honest About Food's Origin David Price Shouting Down Nazis in Olympia July 4, 2006 Col. Dan Smith Iraq and Independence Day: Lessons from the War of 1812 Chris Floyd American Power in Mahmudiyah Marjorie Cohn Israel's Collective Punishment of Gaza James Brooks Israel 9,000 Palestine 1: Destroying the Gaza Strip Medea Benjamin "Dictatress of the World:" Has America Become JQ Adams' Worst Nightmare? Matt Reichel An Independence Day Lesson for the American Left from France Elisa Salasin Why I am Fasting Today Rick Wilhelm Will Lieberman Apologize to Ralph Nader? Paul Craig Roberts Rape, Lies and Murder Website of the Day A Mighty Handsome Family   July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Gaza in the Dark: Poor, Frustrated and Powerless Dr. Bouthaina Shaban "I Hope You're Not Here to Talk About the Palestinians" Julia Olmstead The Biofuel Illusion: Running on Top Soil Dave Lindorff The Real Meaning of the Hamdan Ruling: Bush Adm. Has Committed War Crimes Andres Gomez A Mockery of Justice Alan Singer Another Encounter with Chuck Schumer: Just as Hawkish as Hillary, But Nastier Alexander Cockburn Temple of Mammon, Planet of Doom July 1/2, 2006 Weekend Edition Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Assaults on Freedom: What's to Stop Him? Stephen T. Banko Echoes from Vietnam; Nightmares in Iraq Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Slang: the Bunkum of Bunkum (for Dizzy Gillespie) Fawzia Afzal-Khan The Class Behind the Muslim Jeff Taylor The Sandy Foundation of the White House: a Bible-Believing Christian's View of Bush John Ross Mexico: There's a Riot Going On Greg Moses Psycho-Management Hits Mexico's Maquiladoras Laura Carlsen Mexico's Elections: a Choice for Change Justin E.H. Smith Lethal Injection and Other Fashion Trends Brian Cloughley Different Worlds: When Liberation is Worse Than Oppression Anthony Papa Punishing Addiction: No Walk in the Park for Dwight Gooden Mike Ferner Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt Jerry Tucker Liberalism's Long Goodbye: McGovern Hoists the White Flag Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Remembering the Marshall Islands Phyllis Pollack Roll Over Beethoven: Chuck Berry is Back in Town Poets' Basement Salasin, Swindell, Ferri-Smith and Engel   June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Supreme Rebuke: Bush Loses Gitmo Case Heather Williams Will Mexicans Ignore What Bolivians Learned? Burbach / Cantor Yellowback Democrats: the Party of Cut-and-Run (from Principle) Nick Dearden Crime in the Valley: Life on the Other Side of Palestine Michael J. Smith Under the Broadcast Flag: Intellectual Property as Intellectual Theft Brian Concannon The Return to Haiti: a Homecoming for Aristide? Virginia Tilley Israel's Appalling Act: Starving in the Dark   June 29, 2006 Bill Quigley Gutting New Orleans Ron Jacobs Killing a Nation to Rescue a Soldier Paul Craig Roberts The High Price of American Gullibility June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Mexican-American Soldiers, Iraq and the Politics of Immigrant Bashing Greg Moses Down in Pinal County: Where the Pun's on Us Mark Weisbrot Mexico: Their Brand is Crisis Ramzy Baroud Re-Interpreting Iraq: the Latest Propaganda Campaign Dave Lindorff Redacting the Constitution: Why Signing Statements Matter William S. Lind Neither Shall the Sword: War in a Fouth Generation World Mike Ferner 50 Years Down the Wrong Direction: Taken for a Ride on the Interstate Highway System Zoltan Grossman Military Resistance: a Brief History   June 27, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Playing Politics with Timetables Benjamin / Jarrar Leading Dems Froth Over Amnesty Plan William Hughes Roadmap to Starvation Doug Giebel Showdown in Montana: Burns vs. Testor Uri Avnery The World Cup and Middle East Peace Alexander Cockburn Hitchens Hails the "Glorious War"   June 26, 2006 Don Santina American Rituals: Massacres, Baseball and Apple Pies Ralph Nader Beyond Binary Politics Dave Lindorff CounterPunch v. CounterPunch: Taking Impeachment on the Road Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz An Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal on Hispanics and Latin America Evelyn Pringle Big Pharma's Big Graveyard: Drug Profits, Fraud and Death Jonathan Cook Israeli "Retaliation" and Double Standards June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Divestment, Corporate Engagement and Israel Dave Lindorff Cut and Run: a Winning Strategy Ron Jacobs Dogs of War Barking at the Moon Col. Dan Smith Iraq: Fool Me Twice June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Friendly Fire Ambush Winslow T. Wheeler Lockheed, the Senator and the F-22 Tanya Reinhart A Week of Israeli Restraint Mike Marqusee The Forest Gate Raid William Blum Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's June 21, 2006Ramzy Baroud Zarqawi's Death: Myth vs. RealityPatrick Cockburn Embassy Work as Death SentenceGary Leupp Making the Case for ImpeachmentGreg Moses Elite Logic at the BorderJune 20, 2006Fred Gardner The Long War on AspirinOmar Waraich Ode to Joy: Watching Blair SinkChristopher Reed Japan Nixes Payments to Its Wartime SlavesCP Newswire Coca Cola Takes a HitJonathan Cook Israel Engineers Another Cover-UpJune 19, 2006Bill Quigley HUD's Bulldozers and the Poor of New OrleansJohn Walsh Tears of a Clown: Al Franken's WarMike Whitney The Zoom Lens War: Bush's Baghdad Photo OpAlexander Cockburn The Left and the BlathersphereJune 16 / 18, 2006 Weekend EditionKathy / Bill Christision The Power of the Israel LobbyJoseph Nevins On the Migrant Trail: No More Walls, No More DeathsFarrah Hassen An Interview with Syria's Ambassador to the US, Dr. Imad MoustaphaGreg Moses The Real Mission of the Uniformed Ghost at the BorderNicole Colson "There's No Hope at Gitmo"John Scagliotti How MoveOn Wastes Its Donors' MoneyMokhiber / Weissmann Corporate DemocratsJune 15, 2006Kathy Kelly Look Them in the Eye: Honest Abe and the Residents of RamadiNorman Solomon Premature Triangulation: Hillary's Big ProblemRon Jacobs Publicity Stunts as Public PolicySam Bahour Cover Up on Gaza BeachRamzy Baroud Palestine on the BrinkCounterPunch Wire Death Squads at Colombia's UniversitiesGabriel Kolko Why a Global Economic Deluge LoomsWebsite of the Day Antje Duvekot: Music You've Been Waiting Years to HearJune 14, 2006Nicole Colson "They Want the Fear Level at a High Pitch": An Interview with Lawyer Lynne StewartJonathan Cook Israeli Law and OrderJoseph Schechla Bulldozing Palestine: an Open Letter to Caterpillar, Inc.Michael Carmichael Bolton at Oxford: Jeered and TauntedEvelyn Pringle Karl and George, the Teflon PartnershipWard Churchill My Trial By Media: Turning Quibbles Over Footnotes into FeloniesRev. William E. Alberts Decoding the Coders of Christ: Jesus the Political Insurgent?Website of the Day Marines Iraq Snuff FilmJune 13, 2006Medea Benjamin Take Back America Suppresses Anti-War Dissenters at HRC SpeechAnthony Alessandrini The Evil of Banality: the General, the New York Times and the Gitmo SuicidesPaul D'Amato The Meaning of HadithaDave Lindorff The Strange Death of Zarqawi: Was He Killed So He Wouldn't Talk?John Ross Elections and the World Cup: If Team Mexico Advances, Will Anyone Show Up to Vote for Lopez Obrador?Gabriel Garcia Venezuela and Drug Trafficking: Bush Bashes Chavez Despite Positive ResultsHilton Obenzinger DIvestment is a Stand for Equality in IsraelYitzhak Laor The Secret of AuthorityJuan Antonio Ocasio Rivera Puerto Rico at the UNJennifer Van Bergen The Story Behind Zarqawi's Death: What's the Legality of the Assassination?Website of the Day Paul Wright: a Real American Freedom FighterJune 12, 2006Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Armageddon Wish: a Final End to History?Patrick Cockburn The US Already Misses ZarqawiMike Marqusee Rebranding a Team: English Nationalism and the World CupLee Sustar "I Never Had the American Dream:" Left with No Future by GM and DelphiRobert Fisk Has Racism Invaded Canada?Michael J. Smith Enter Sandman; Exit KoslandFelice Pace NPR's Warped Covereage of the MIddle EastJennifer Loewenstein Setting the Record Straight on HamasWebsite of the Day Our Way HomeJune 10 / 11, 2006 Weekend EditionRobert Fisk Zarqawi's End is not a Famous VictoryDiane Christian Zarqawi's FaceJoe Allen The American Way of Atrocities: Marine Corps' Killer VirtuesRalph Nader Let Us All Praise the Dixie ChicksFred Gardner Tylenol Toxicity TerrorDave Lindorff Nothing New About HadithaDave Zirin / John Cox Will Racism Spoil the World Cup?Dennis Perrin Death is Patriotic: Necro-Porn, Live on CNNGreg Moses Militarizing the Border: Why Operation Jump Start Worries MeJohn Chuckman Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot?Michael J. Smith Babes in Kosland: Dem Blogfest, Day TwoRoger Burbach Bachelet in DC: Chilean President Refuses to Back Down to BushIra Moskowitz Israeli Court Finds Mad-Dog US Prof Libeled CounterPuncher Neve GordonSam Bahour The Gaza Air Strikes: Begging for a ResponseSeth Sandronsky Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society: Profits Fall, Stores CloseMichael Berg A Father's Day Message: Both Parties Have Betrayed AmericaKirsten Roberts Desmond Dekker and the Music of the ShantytownsRon Jacobs Who's Fooling Who?Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This WeekPoets' Basement Jones, Davies, Engel and Louise Website of the Weekend Miles and Trane, So What?

July 24, 2006 Beirut, 1982 Sabra and Shatila and the Brave Woman Who Awoke the Press  to the Massacres By MAHER OSSEIRAN It was December 1982, and I had decided to go back to Beirut after the withdrawal of the Israeli troops to check on my parents. I traveled alone, leaving from JFK the day after Christmas on a British Airways flight to London with a Middle East Airlines connection to Beirut. The first leg was the most fun flight I have ever been on; the whole airplane was like a huge party, Christmas revisited, and no one ever stayed in their seat more than 10 minutes. We were all smoking, drinking, and chatting in groups of five or more in the isles and only sat down when it was time to land. Suspended in mid air traveling across the Atlantic, that flight was the release I needed after months of agony following the news in Lebanon. It was the relief valve I did not expect, but I took full advantage of before facing the gloom left behind by the Israeli invasion. In contrast, the flight from London to Beirut was a somber reminder of what lay ahead. I was surrounded by other Lebanese, who were taking advantage of the Christmas and New Year’s break to go home for similar reasons. Very few words were spoken as each person was burdened with his or her own thoughts, and possibly grief.  I was one of the fortunate; my parents were okay and so was my extended family. Within minutes of getting home and greeting my parents, I went to pay my condolences to our neighbors, who had lost their eldest son and breadwinner. He had been shot by an Israeli sniper while crossing the street.  In addition to his parents, he left behind a young wife and three kids, a nine-year-old girl being the eldest. This was the first heart wrenching experience within 15 minutes of my arrival. Our neighbor’s grief was so deep, there was nothing I could have said or done that would have consoled her. I just sat there and listened while every bit of me was tearing apart. A day later, I went to visit an old friend in Shayyah, a district south of Beirut sandwiched between Sabra, Shatila, the airport, and to the east, across from what many know as the Green Line lays the Phalangist section of Shayyah. There was a lot of catching up to do. I had not seen her in almost two years and so much had happened since. As always, I admired her for being the fighter, the eternal optimist, the rock, and the one who always finds a way, regardless of what is going on around her, to stay focused while she juggled her teaching job, her social work at the refugee camps, her studies for a graduate degree, and cared for her ailing mother. (She is a friend I have not seen, called, or written to since. Some might wonder what kind of friendship it is. It is the friendship that transcends time and space and I know well that when we meet again it will feel like our last meeting was only yesterday.) We sat on the small balcony overlooking her narrow street that parallels the Beirut-Damascus main road. We had never sat there before because it used to be reserved for the mop, the broom, the cleaning bucket, and the onions and garlic that hung from the wall. We usually sat on the larger balcony at the other side of the apartment, facing south, but that had fallen out of favor since the invasion, because it was unsafe. I did not have much to tell her.  She understood well the state of mind of people like me – people who watched what was going on in Lebanon from the safe distance of Europe, America, or Africa, feeling guilty for not being with their loved ones, constantly worrying, seeking and clinging to any bit of news, working, going to school, and faking normalcy while dealing with their colleagues at work and school mates. The news was all from her side.  I knew that her social work had exposed her to a lot, but I was not prepared to hear what she had to tell me. The story she told me was her personal experience, and as such, I left it to her alone to share with others. Since the time I heard her story, I had hoped to read it in a magazine or a newspaper.  Perhaps people in Europe got to read it; but I certainly did not read it here in the States. I have always felt that the story, as a first hand account of what happened around Sabra and Shatila while the refugees were being slaughtered, should be widely shared. Today, I feel that the passage of time insulates my friend and gives me the freedom to share it with you. Soon after we sat down on the balcony, I asked about what happened in the camps. My friend’s eyes drifted away. She looked down her narrow street, and did not answer. Her silence was way out of character, and when it drew long, I craned my neck over the little coffee table between us and saw a face almost composed and tears barely kept at bay. I sat back in my chair, braced myself, and solemnly waited. She never looked at me. She kept looking down her street and began to talk.   “I was sitting right here that night. It was mid evening. I was tired, but could not sleep. I could sense something was terribly wrong. I just did not know what it was or how bad it was. You just felt it in your stomach, your chest, the air felt different,” my friend said. She was on her second little pot of coffee, smoking her Rothmans, and waiting for something, but not knowing what it was. About ten in the evening, she saw an elderly woman turning onto her street, dazed, weeping, screaming, and beating her chest hysterically. At first glance, my friend   thought it was her mother, but she knew her mother was already in bed. She could not make out what the woman was saying so she rushed out and caught up with her half way down the street. My friend tried to hold the elderly woman by the shoulders and have the woman acknowledge her presence; but the woman kept on walking. My friend caught up with her and faced her again, now trying to endear herself to the woman by calling her hajjeh. “Hajjeh, what is it, what happened?” my friend said. She might have even addressed        the woman as mother until finally the woman started repeating, ”They are killing us! They are slaughtering us!”  She could not say anything else. That was her answer to any question she was asked. From her accent and the embroidered dress, the pride of every Palestinian woman, my friend suspected she was a camp resident and insisted on knowing where the woman lived. Upon hearing Shatila she had no other choice but go there. With the other neighbors now surrounding the woman trying to calm her down and doing their best to help her, my friend got in her car and drove in the direction of the camps. She knew her way around very well down to the little alleys of the camps, and once she arrived, she planned to connect with the other social workers that lived in the camps to try to get to the bottom of the woman’s story. Her first approach to Shatila was blocked by Israeli tanks – a common occurrence so she did not think much of it.  She tried to convince the Israeli soldiers to let her through, but they turned her back. She was not discouraged; she knew other ways into the camp. Next she attempted to enter the camp from the east, on a small dirt road next to what used to be stables for Arabian race horses. Israeli soldiers were blocking that road too. It was then that she became very alarmed. Hardly anyone knew there was a road there; to most people and even some locals, it was just a driveway leading to a house. Her last option was the entrance by the new cemetery, but that was a main road and she knew that it would be blocked too. Still, she tried to get through with the same result – Israeli soldiers blocked her way. By now she was convinced that something ominous was taking place in the camps and what the woman was describing was just a sliver of what was happening.  My friend’s attempts to talk her way through the last roadblock were feeble at best. While she was talking to the Israeli soldiers, she was simply buying time, weighing her options, and deciding on her next move. She had come to the conclusion that she could not enter the camps on her own and her best option would be to reach the European journalists her sister had introduced her to. She had to get to the Commodore Hotel in west Beirut where almost all European journalists stayed, and sound the alarm. She made a u-turn and turned left on the main thoroughfare heading for west Beirut; again, another Israeli roadblock and she was turned back. Now the sky was falling and she had no options left. Southern Beirut was completely isolated from the rest of the city by Israeli troops. As determined as she was to get to west Beirut, my friend found herself driving home with a million thoughts in her head, and the one that kept hammering at her was, get to west Beirut. The only option left was to cross the green line, the dividing line between the two hostile sections of east and west Beirut, a line known to be infested with snipers and booby traps.   But the biggest unknown was the eastern side, the side she would use to get to the Museum crossing. She had no idea what the Phalangist militia, known for revenge killing and whose leader and Lebanese president Bashir Gemayel had been assassinated a few days earlier, would do to her. Alarmed, I interrupted her story at that point..  “You did not cross!?” I said, half question, half assertion. As if in a trance, she totally ignored me, and continued describing the street she used to get to the green line. She told me exactly where she turned her headlights off. It was pitch black, and she could hardly see ten feet ahead of her, but she did not want to be discovered. She got to the line without incident. The line on her side was deserted as she had expected.  The Israelis had driven the militias underground, but she did not know what was on the other side. She stood there at the green line, the engine of her little French car idling in a whisper. Dark buildings surrounded her, and cinder blocks from the blown out buildings seemed to protrude from the pavement highlighted by whatever light there was. She could not risk dashing across the line in the dark to be greeted by a hail of machine gun fire on the other side. She was also concerned about crossing too slowly and being hit by a sniper. Taking the darkness into account and the Martian landscape that could easily blow out a tire, she decided to brave the sniper and cross slowly, concocting the story  she would tell anyone on the other side who confronted her. Call it luck, fate, or whatever it is, the other side was just as deserted, just as dark, with almost the identical cinder blocks that she had to maneuver around. About four blocks into the eastern section, she saw a light in the street to her left and decided to head that way.  That was north, the direction she wanted to go.  She had never been in that area of Beirut, but she knew where north was. The civil war that divided Beirut along that line and created those two alien sections of east and west had started seven years earlier. At the time, she was too young to drive and her school was in the other direction. Eventually, heading north, she reached the main road in Fern Al-Shebbak where the old tramway tracks used to run; a familiar road and the other Beirut-Damascus connection. The road was relatively well lit, and to her left she could see a building with a Phalangist flag hanging from a balcony and  jeeps parked in front.  She soon realized it was their district headquarters and she had to pass by it to get to the Museum; that she did. After all, who would hurt the prettiest girl to ever drive a little French car? At the Museum crossing, she told the militia men at the roadblock that she was a refugee in east Beirut for the past week and was called to the American University hospital to be by her ailing mother. It was the perfect line that gave her cover and explained her agitated state. She crossed without incident and used a variation of that line a few more times on her way to the Commodore Hotel. At the hotel, now on a short fuse, she raised hell at the front desk and made the desk clerks wake up the television crew. Half awake, they met with her and listened to her story. She told me that she was talking so fast that they had to stop her often and make her repeat things till it all sunk in. That is how the foreign press in Beirut learned about what was going on in the camps. I cannot recall how the crew managed to get into the camps. I do recall being told that they got in after all their videotapes were confiscated. But they managed to keep their equipment, and the cameraman still had a tape hidden; he loaded his camera and carried it upside down by the handle with the trigger pulled. He walked the alleys of Sabra and Shatila, and brought back the first images from the camps, upside down images of the mutilated bodies of women, children, and the elderly. To this day, I don’t know the true impact of what my friend did; it was certainly selfless and heroic. Other than telling it like it is, she did not elaborate much that evening and I never asked her any questions. The whole experience of telling seemed too traumatic to her and I did not want to prolong it. From what I read later, it seems to me that what she did, in the least, undermined the attempts by the Israelis to clean up the crime scene, which they had started to do as the story broke out, and she helped to expose the massacre for what it is. Those first inverted images from the camps seemed to be taken from the proper perspective for our lopsided world.  Despite the recommendation by the Israeli Kahane commission that Sharon not be allowed to hold public office again, he managed to jumpstart the second Intifada, secure the Israeli premiership, give the West Bank its own Sabra and Shatila by the name of Jenin, build a wall taller and longer than the Berlin wall, and effectively created ghettos in the West Bank that rival those of Poland. Also, despite the UN’s characterization of the massacre in Sabra and Shatila as a war crime, we know that Sharon, even a healthy Sharon, would not have been prosecuted for that crime. Sharon later managed to team up with the American neo-cons and pass on his Middle East vision. The neo-cons in turn brought us Iraq and gave the Iraqis their own Sabra and Shatila experience; there, it is called Fallujah. (More recently, their callousness and continued inaction hit the home front just as hard as Katrina, augmenting the losses in property and human life.) Martin Luther King said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Dr. King was talking to all of us, and we need to act on his message. Injustices that go unchecked and their perpetrators who go unpunished can only lead to more injustice. Almost 25 years ago, a young Lebanese woman heeded King’s universal message.  Against all the odds and the attempts to conceal a crime, she made the conscientious choice of risking her own life in order to save others’, and to serve justice. Not all of us have the opportunity or desire to put our lives on the line the way my friend did, but we need to go far enough to make sure the horrors of Sabra and Shatila never happen again. After all, Dr. King’s “everywhere” will eventually include us too. copyright 2006 Maher Osseiran Maher Osseiran is an Arab-American, peace activist, and a member of Al-Awda, an organization advocating the right of return of the Palestinians to their ancestral land. He can be reached at maher@mydemocracy.net

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