Friday, August 04, 2006

A great text written by Philippe Ducros on the 13th day of the Israel incursion on Lebanon, forwarded to me by a great Friend.

When cluster bombs tell the truth
I want to join my voice to thousands of people around the world.
The people who are outraged and infuriated as much by the aggressions of Israel in Lebanon and Palestine as by the hideous support of the leaders of the Western and the Arab Worlds in accordance with these crimes.
Israel has the right to defend itself. So be it.
But when a whole population is massacred, when a whole country is destroyed:
we cannot call it self-defense anymore.
After 13 days of systematic aggressions:
more than 400 lebanese are killed,
more than 1000 wounded,
more than 500 000 displaced.
How can we talk about self-defense?
One third of the 400 victims are children, only 11 of them are Hizbollah militants.
On day 16 of the aggressions we are talking about one million displaced people (practically one third of the Lebanese population!).
Some of Hizbollah's actions are criminal.
The missiles on Haifa are condemnable.
The death of civilians is deplorable.
But when all of the Lebanon is aggressed and massacred, the influence of the so-called radicals cannot but grow. Hatred and humiliation cannot but be structured.
All this, the world knows it.
Israel has the most sophisticated army of the region; its weapons are very precise.
They do not seem to be targeting the Hizbollah.
Israel pretends to be defending itself, but it is only creating more enemies.
It is creating new generations of people who are condemned to righteously hate Israel. Generations who would never want to acknowledge the mere existence of the state of Israel.
The wounded, the humiliated will obviously become militants;
and they would want to reestablish history with their weapons... with their blood...
This also, the world knows it.
Can peace be made of terror?
Can peace be built on pain and suffering?
The radicals are practical, pragmatic; they allow your own radicalism.
Injustice is unbearable, intolerable. But in the name of interests, alliances, agendas; nobody moves, nobody reacts.
The destruction of the Lebanon, the massacre of its population is throwing it back into feudalism, back into the spheres of the princes of war.
The bombing is delimitating new borders, new frontiers, new demarcation lines.
The seeds of the next civil war are being planted.
The country is isolated, ideas are spinning.
The dynamo of hatred and violence is at its best.
The scales of fear are shaped.
And the world knows where this would lead.
The world knows that the Israeli army bombed
all the ports and the airports of the Lebanon,
all the infrastructure of the country,
all the roads leading to Syria,
the radars,
part of the telecommunications,
television and radio stations,
residential areas,
farms,
churches,
mosques,
factories,
warehouses,
schools,
orphanages,
hospitals,
red cross ambulances,
fuel, water and food reserves,
buses carrying refugees,
trucks carrying humanitarian help.
In 16 days of aggressions, 7000 Israeli missiles fell on Lebanon.
There are strong evidence that the Israeli army might be using phosphoric bombs, cluster bombs, chemicals and other illegal weapons forbidden by international conventions, and nobody is reacting!
Now that the foreigners have been evacuated, will the horror trespass more limits?
As long as Israel occupies Palestinian territories it will feel threatened.
The heart of the problem is there.
For one Israeli soldier, one prisoner of war, over 60 members of the Palestinian parliament were kidnapped, 20 of which are deputies and 8 are members of the cabinet.
We talk about the artisan missiles of Hamas, but we forget to mention that between the end of February and the 15th of April, within 6 weeks 5000 Israeli missiles fell on Gaza.
No water, no electricity anymore.
They also bombed the university, the ministry of interior and once again all the infrastructure that could have given a minimum of autonomy to the country...
And this without mentioning the other impacts of the occupation:
four generations of people living in camps, living in ghettos,
hundreds of houses destroyed in a process of collective punishment,
each mountain invaded by a settlement,
and the wall encircling some cities like Qalquiliya.
Nobody talks about all this anymore.
We talk about the supposed Israeli withdrawal proposed by the Kadima Party,
but we forget to mention that only 70 000 settlers of the 250 000 are to withdraw.
We forget to mention that the 8 000 settlers of Gaza represent 1% of the population there, and that they own 20% of the land. Gaza has the highest population density of the world: 104 000 people living on 1.4 squared meter in Jabalya's camp. We forget to mention that only 22% of the territory is left to the Palestinians.
All this in the name of the war on terrorism.
But terror is also when every night the Israeli army invades the camps, destroys the houses, aligns the families in the streets for hours...
Women cry, children pee in their pajamas...
Soldiers shout, they demolish the parents in front of the eyes of their children...
and this, every night... every single night.
We forget to mention that since the Hamas was elected, Israel took hold of the taxes and customs of the Palestinians: 50 to 60 million US dollars per month! We forget that it is precisely when the Palestinians were about to agree on the so-called prisoners plan which implicitly recognizes the state of Israel that the Israeli army came to destroy everything.
The world seems to forget too many things.
We forget too many things.
But there, they do not forget.
They remember everything.
World War III? World War IV? Did it start already?
Is this generalized state of Hell planned?
Spreading it to the entire Middle East is putting the world in big black whole.
Syria is being accused, already. They point their fingers in the direction of Iran, already.
Irak is a Ground Zero on the scale of the whole country.
Let us all be ready, tomorrow is a day of war... a global war... an international war...
And in our days, wars are also being exported by planes.
Philippe DUCROS
is a playwright, director & actor.
He visited the Middle East many times during the previous 2 years.

posted by Sound Diaspora at 12:21 AM

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