To Lebanon from Quebec with Love !

Tomorrow I will be getting fresh news from my aunt who lives in the Kesrouane mountain. I knew that my cousin, my aunt's only son, nearly escaped death the day Israelis bombed three bridges in Lebanon between Beyrouth and the North, one of them near Jounieh.

A Joke in Lebanon, pointing to the obsessive fixation of Israelis on bridges, goes like that:

Israel kidnapped Fayrouz because they wanted her to reveal the location of the Laouzié bridge !

Fayrouz is a National Treasure and a singer who was going to Open the Baalbeck musical festival this summer on July 13th, after an absence of nearly twenty five years due to the civil war and interrupted only by a concert in 1998 at the end of the civil war ! Fayrouz celebrates in her songs Lebanon, his small villages and his scenery. In one of her songs she mentions Jisr el Laouziyé (The Laouziyé bridge).

I listened to an interview given to journalists by Israel's ambassador to the US and by Newt Gingrich, the link is on Angry Arab website. These two persons were lying during the whole interview. Also it seems to me more and more that the war in Lebanon is turning to a war against Iran by proxy because the US cannot afford a war with Iran right now, neither in the international opinion eye nor in the domestic public eye ! Bush has then asked his ally, Israel, to weaken Iran by reigning in Hezbollah. However Iran was made strong by the same Bush who helped Iranians get rid of their next door long time enemy Saddam and replace him by Iranian educated shiites !

Quebec have been, among western nations (Oh yes Quebec is the only Canadian province to call itself a nation !), the most empathetic to Lebanese suffering, even if Montreal's mayor marched on July 26th, a day before the Qana massacre, with B'nai Brith to support Israel's right to defend itself and did not march in solidarity with Lebanon, he is completely divorced from most of the population ! There is daily action going on and when I get out from the house walking in my neighbourhood, people will come to me to chat, understand and ask how they can help !

Thank you Quebec and Quebecers !

I also have uncles, aunts and cousins in the North and will try to contact them in the coming days. Up to now I was taking their news indirectly from my brother but as the situation is becoming more grim, the hope pinned on an end to the conflict is fading with the mounting difficulties the UN is having to formulate a just resolution, Lebanese seem to have started their descent into helplesness and despair ! I wanted to hear their voices and to let them hear mine and know that we are thinking of them every minute !

More news from Lebanon tomorrow !

UPDATE: Two calls this morning, one to my aunt in the kesrouane mountain. Thay are O.K. She told me that her son, who is self-employed, was going to work the day Israel bombed a bridge near the Casino and he was normally going to take this bridge at the hour of the bombing. My aunt, who is seventy, asked him to come for a coffee and he did. The bombing happened while he was visiting his mom. They are hearing the bombings all the time. She told me that everything is becoming so expansive and they are becoming a little bit desperate ! Schools are full of refugees. My aunt told me also that Israel is targeting shiites everywhere. The shiite community is so strisken and is the first to pay a heavy price in this war. This is a punitive campaign to punish shiites for being...shiites ! Israelis excel at inflicting collective punishment !
My other call was to the north. They are O.K. More optimistic because they are not hearing the bombings from there. They confirmed that there was a fire in an olive orchard in the north, in Koura, and could not say if it was a bomb. There are suspicions that the village near the orchard, populated by Moutawélés, a shiite sect and a very small minority in Lebanon, may have been the target but the suspicion rests on the fact that Israel is targeting the shiite population and everything related to shia in a very obsessive, criminal and paranoid way !
My relatives are O.K. However communications are difficult because major roads and bridges have been destroyed. people are using secondary roads which means difficult roads.

I was relieved to hear their voices !