From Me To You

all i can do is sit and pray
all i can do is hope that the messages of peace typed across our laptop screens reaches its destination
all i can do is stay awake fearing to sleep for that time spent could be used sending more messages of peace
all i can do is fry my brain thinking of ideas and ways to try and bring all of this to an end, from the small corner of my room, from the keyboard of my laptop, from the depths of my being
all i can do is weep for the lives lost, for the smiles gone, for the hopes and dreams of a people that just wanted to live and let live
all i can do is count the hours and minutes in frustration wishing that something good will happen, something miraculous, something ...something..ANYTHING TO STOP THIS DESTRUCTION!!
all i can do is look up to the heavens and ask yeh hariri where are you?, we need u..look at what they are doing to us?..and the world looks and moves on without hesitation without a backward glance
all i can do well..i am trying..i am trying to be superhuman, i am trying to be strong, i am trying to stay hopeful
all i can do is wish that my people stick together and not go against each other..
one hand, one voice, one blood.....one nation
all i can do is this...

CARRY EACH OTHER

is it getting better? or do u feel the same? will it make it easier on you now..
you got someone to blame, you say....

one love, one life, when it's one need in the night
one love, we get to share it..it leaves you baby ..if you dont care for it

did i disappoint u? or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
you act like you never had love and you want me to go without
well it's too late tonight..to drag the past out into the light
we're one but we're not the same, we get to carry each other
carry each other

have you come here for forgiveness? have you come to raise the dead?
have you come here to play Jesus..to the lepers in your head?
did i ask too much? more than alot?
you gave me nothing now its all i got, we're one but we're not the same
well we hurt each other....then we do it again

you say...love is a temple, love is a higher law, love is a temple, love is a higher law
you ask me to enter but then you make me crawl..and i cant be holding on
to what you got when all you got is hurt

one love, one blood, one life, you got to do what you should
one life with each other...sisters, brothers,
one life, but we're not the same...we get to carry each other
C-A-R-R-Y- E-A-C-H- O-T-H-E-R

-BY U2 (ONE)

I CARRY YOUR HEART WITH ME

I Carry Your Heart With Me
I Carry It In My Heart
I Am Never Without It
Anywhere I Go You Go, My Dear
And Whatever Is Done By Only Me
Is Your Doing, My Darling

I Fear Not Fate
For You Are My Fate, My Sweet
I Want No World
For Beautiful....You Are My World, My True
And It's You Are Whatever A Moon Has Always Meant
And Whatever A Sun Will Always Sing....Is You

Here Is The Deepest Secret No-One Knows
Here Is The Root Of The Root
The Bud Of The Bud
And the Sky Of The Sky
Of The Tree Called Life
Which Grows Higher Than The Soul Can Hope
Or The Mind Can Hide
And This Is The Wonder
That Is Keeping The Stars Apart

I Carry Your Heart
I Carry It In My Heart

- by E.E.Cummings

HUMANITARIAN RELIEF DONATIONS FOR LEBANON

Lebanon needs your financial support more than ever. You have 3 diiferent possibilities to make your donations: also check www.mirvat.blogspot.com for more information regarding donations!!

visit http://www.lebanonembassyus.org/BankInfo.htm
American Red Cross:online donations
https://american.redcross.org/site/DonationACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=5772

The American Red Cross is working in partnership with the members of the international Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to meet the humanitarian needs of those affected by the conflict. Assistance may include services and aid such as medical assistance, shelter, and psychosocial support. To learn more about how you can help through the American Red Cross

Please Visit this site.
(For By Phone/Mail Donations, Please click here) http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_options
OR Check donations can be made payable to:
“Rescue and Relief- Lebanon”
Bank Name: HSBC Bank USA
Bank Address: 1130 Connecticut AvenueWashington, DC 20036
Account Name: Rescue and Relief-Lebanon
Swift Code: MRMDUS3
Routing Number: 021001088
Account Number: 389049760

OR Donations will be routed to the Banque du Liban's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to help and relief the victims in Lebanon.Please send donations to the Bank of New York noting the following beneficiary, account number, and routing number.

Bank Name: Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Bank Address: New York, NY Bank
Routing Number: 021084694
Bank Swift (Bic Code): FRNYUS33
Account Name (Beneficiary): Banque du Liban
Account Number: 02 700 362123

WE HAVE A DREAM

THE MILLION MAN MARCH....

NATIONAL EMERGENCY MARCH ON WASHINGTON!!
DEFEND THE PEOPLE OF LEBANON AND PALESTINE!!
STOP THE US-ISRAELI WAR!
MONEY FOR JOBS AND EDUCATION NOT FOR WAR AND OCCUPATION!
NOT IN MY NAME!!

We will stand side by side, brother and sister,
Muslim, Jew and Christian, Americans, Lebanese, Palestinians...in solidarity.
We will join forces to create one voice against the killing of civilians,
against the destruction of a people,
against the US sponsored war with Lebanon..
the people of America say NO!!...NOT IN OUR NAME!!!!!!

When: August 12, 2006
Where: White House, Washington DC

For transportation and volunteering information please contact:
Atl4Aug12@yahoo.com
elahmad74@yahoo.com

Tel: (770) 989 2536

THE PEOPLE UNITED.......CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED!

www.unitedforpeace.org
www.mirvat.blogspot.com
www.saveleb.org
www.relieflebanon.org
www.lebanonheartblogs.blogspot.com
www.angryarab.blogspot.com
www.reflectionsfromfarmland.blogspot.com
www.libanomio.blogspot.com

silent protest, candle vigile New York July 22, 2006

Mourning the loss

This is the Operations' Command Center of the Lebanese Army. I was most impressed with its high-tech look. I mean, did you see how many phones they have? I don't know what all those phones are for. I know that one is for pizza deliveries, another is for shish tawuq delivery, a third is for baklava delivery. And look how modern the table is.


Wow. Now I know what the Minister of Defense (shown above in a shirt) meant when he said that the Lebanese Army will "teach Israel a lesson" when--WHEN--Israel attacks Lebanon.
- comment and picture taken from http://angryarab.blogspot.com/

LEBANON THEY HAVE LEFT U TO DIE, YET AGAIN

Paradise Lost:
Robert Fisk's elegy for BeirutPublished: 19 July 2006

Elegant buildings lie in ruins. The heady scent of gardenias gives way to the acrid stench of bombed-out oil installations. And everywhere terrified people are scrambling to get out of a city that seems tragically doomed to chaos and destruction.As Beirut - 'the Paris of the East' - is defiled yet again, Robert Fisk, a resident for 30 years, asks:

how much more punishment can it take? In the year 551, the magnificent, wealthy city of Berytus - headquarters of the imperial East Mediterranean Roman fleet - was struck by a massive earthquake. In its aftermath, the sea withdrew several miles and the survivors - ancestors of the present-day Lebanese - walked out on the sands to loot the long-sunken merchant ships revealed in front of them. That was when a tidal wall higher than a tsunami returned to swamp the city and kill them all. So savagely was the old Beirut damaged that the Emperor Justinian sent gold from Constantinople as compensation to every family left alive. Some cities seem forever doomed. When the Crusaders arrived at Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered every man, woman and child in the city. In the First World War, Ottoman Beirut suffered a terrible famine; the Turkish army had commandeered all the grain and the Allied powers blockaded the coast. I still have some ancient postcards I bought here 30 years ago of stick-like children standing in an orphanage, naked and abandoned.

An American woman living in Beirut in 1916 described how she "passed women and children lying by the roadside with closed eyes and ghastly, pale faces. It was a common thing to find people searching the garbage heaps for orange peel, old bones or other refuse, and eating them greedily when found. Everywhere women could be seen seeking eatable weeds among the grass along the roads..." How does this happen to Beirut? For 30 years, I've watched this place die and then rise from the grave and then die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace, its people massacring each other. I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis - in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside - tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties - 240 in all of Lebanon by last night - with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same. And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah. I walked through the deserted city centre of Beirut yesterday and it reminded more than ever of a film lot, a place of dreams too beautiful to last, a phoenix from the ashes of civil war whose plumage was so brightly coloured that it blinded its own people.This part of the city - once a Dresden of ruins - was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister who was murdered scarcely a mile away on 14 February last year. The wreckage of that bomb blast, an awful precursor to the present war in which his inheritance is being vandalised by the Israelis, still stands beside the Mediterranean, waiting for the last UN investigator to look for clues to the assassination - an investigator who has long ago abandoned this besieged city for the safety of Cyprus.

At the empty Etoile restaurant - best snails and cappuccino in Beirut, where Hariri once dined Jacques Chirac - I sat on the pavement and watched the parliamentary guard still patrolling the façade of the French-built emporium that houses what is left of Lebanon's democracy. So many of these streets were built by Parisians under the French mandate and they have been exquisitely restored, their mock Arabian doorways bejewelled with marble Roman columns dug from the ancient Via Maxima a few metres away. Hariri loved this place and, taking Chirac for a beer one day, he caught sight of me sitting at a table. "Ah Robert, come over here," he roared and then turned to Chirac like a cat that was about to eat a canary. "I want to introduce you, Jacques, to the reporter who said I couldn't rebuild Beirut!"And now it is being un-built. The Martyr Rafiq Hariri International Airport has been attacked three times by the Israelis, its glistening halls and shopping malls vibrating to the missiles that thunder into the runways and fuel depots. Hariri's wonderful transnational highway viaduct has been broken by Israeli bombers. Most of his motorway bridges have been destroyed. The Roman-style lighthouse has been smashed by a missile from an Apache helicopter. Only this small jewel of a restaurant in the centre of Beirut has been spared. So far. It is the slums of Haret Hreik and Ghobeiri and Shiyah that have been levelled and "rubble-ised" and pounded to dust, sending a quarter of a million Shia Muslims to seek sanctuary in schools and abandoned parks across the city. Here, indeed, was the headquarters of Hizbollah, another of those "centres of world terror" which the West keeps discovering in Muslim lands. Here lived Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Party of God's leader, a ruthless, caustic, calculating man; and Sayad Mohamed Fadlallah, among the wisest and most eloquent of clerics; and many of Hizbollah's top military planners - including, no doubt, the men who planned over many months the capture of the two Israeli soldiers last Wednesday.But did the tens of thousands of poor who live here deserve this act of mass punishment? For a country that boasts of its pin-point accuracy - a doubtful notion in any case, but that's not the issue - what does this act of destruction tell us about Israel? Or about ourselves? In a modern building in an undamaged part of Beirut, I come, quite by chance, across a well known and prominent Hizbollah figure, open-neck white shirt, dark suit, clean shoes. "We will go on if we have to for days or weeks or months or..." And he counts these awful statistics off on the fingers of his left hand. "Believe me, we have bigger surprises still to come for the Israelis - much bigger, you will see. Then we will get our prisoners and it will take just a few small concessions." I walk outside, feeling as if I have been beaten over the head.

Over the wall opposite there is purple bougainvillaea and white jasmine and a swamp of gardenias. The Lebanese love flowers, their colour and scent, and Beirut is draped in trees and bushes that smell like paradise. As for the huddled masses from the powder of the bombed-out southern slums of Haret Hreik, I found hundreds of them yesterday, sitting under trees and lying on the parched grass beside an ancient fountain donated to the city of Beirut by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid. How empires fall. Far away, across the Mediterranean, two American helicopters from the USS Iwo Jima could be seen, heading through the mist and smoke towards the US embassy bunker complex at Awkar to evacuate more citizens of the American Empire. There was not a word from that same empire to help the people lying in the park, to offer them food or medical aid. And across them all has spread a dark grey smoke that works its way through the entire city, the fires of oil terminals and burning buildings turning into a cocktail of sulphurous air that moves below our doors and through our windows. I smell it when I wake in the morning. Half the people of Beirut are coughing in this filth, breathing their own destruction as they contemplate their dead.

The anger that any human soul should feel at such suffering and loss was expressed so well by Lebanon's greatest poet, the mystic Khalil Gibran, when he wrote of the half million Lebanese who died in the 1916 famine, most of them residents of Beirut:

My people died of hunger, and he whoDid not perish from starvation wasButchered with the sword;They perished from hungerIn a land rich with milk and honey.They died because the vipers andSons of vipers spat out poison intoThe space where theHoly Cedars andThe roses and the jasmine breatheTheir fragrance.

And the sword continues to cut its way through Beirut. When part of an aircraft - perhaps the wing-tip of an F-16 hit by a missile, although the Israelis deny this - came streaking out of the sky over the eastern suburbs at the weekend, I raced to the scene to find a partly decapitated driver in his car and three Lebanese soldiers from the army's logistics unit. These are the tough, brave non-combat soldiers of Kfar Chim, who have been mending power and water lines these past six days to keep Beirut alive. I knew one of them. "Hello Robert, be quick because I think the Israelis will bomb again but we'll show you everything we can." And they took me through the fires to show me what they could of the wreckage, standing around me to protect me. And a few hours later, the Israelis did come back, as the men of the small logistics unit were going to bed, and they bombed the barracks and killed 10 soldiers, including those three kind men who looked after me amid the fires of Kfar Chim. And why? Be sure - the Israelis know what they are hitting. That's why they killed nine soldiers near Tripoli when they bombed the military radio antennas. But a logistics unit? Men whose sole job was to mend electricity lines?And then it dawns on me.Beirut is to die.It is to be starved of electricity now that the power station in Jiyeh is on fire. No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive. So those poor men had to be liquidated. Beirutis are tough people and are not easily moved. But at the end of last week, many of them were overcome by a photograph in their daily papers of a small girl, discarded like a broken flower in a field near Ter Harfa, her feet curled up, her hand resting on her torn blue pyjamas, her eyes - beneath long, soft hair - closed, turned away from the camera. She had been another "terrorist" target of Israel and several people, myself among them, saw a frightening similarity between this picture and the photograph of a Polish girl lying dead in a field beside her weeping sister in 1939.

I go home and flick through my files, old pictures of the Israeli invasion of 1982. There are more photographs of dead children, of broken bridges. "Israelis Threaten to Storm Beirut", says one headline. "Israelis Retaliate". "Lebanon At War". "Beirut Under Siege". "Massacre at Sabra and Chatila".Yes, how easily we forget these earlier slaughters. Up to 1,700 Palestinians were butchered at Sabra and Chatila by Israel's proxy Christian militia allies in September of 1982 while Israeli troops - as they later testified to Israel's own court of inquiry - watched the killings. I was there. I stopped counting the corpses when I reached 100. Many of the women had been raped before being knifed or shot. Yet when I was fleeing the bombing of Ghobeiri with my driver Abed last week, we swept right past the entrance of the camp, the very spot where I saw the first murdered Palestinians. And we did not think of them. We did not remember them. They were dead in Beirut and we were trying to stay alive in Beirut, as I have been trying to stay alive here for 30 years.

I am back on the sea coast when my mobile phone rings. It is an Israeli woman calling me from the United States, the author of a fine novel about the Palestinians. "Robert, please take care," she says. "I am so, so sorry about what is being done to the Lebanese. It is unforgivable. I pray for the Lebanese people, and the Palestinians, and the Israelis." I thank her for her thoughtfulness and the graceful, generous way she condemned this slaughter.

Then, on my balcony - a glance to check the location of the Israeli gunboat far out in the sea-smog - I find older clippings. This is from an English paper in 1840, when Beirut was a great Ottoman city. "Beyrouth" was the dateline. "Anarchy is now the order of the day, our properties and personal safety are endangered, no satisfaction can be obtained, and crimes are committed with impunity. Several Europeans have quitted their houses and suspended their affairs, in order to find protection in more peaceable countries." On my dining-room wall, I remember, there is a hand-painted lithograph of French troops arriving in Beirut in 1842 to protect the Christian Maronites from the Druze. They are camping in the Jardin des Pins, which will later become the site of the French embassy where, only a few hours ago, I saw French men and women registering for their evacuation. And outside the window, I hear again the whisper of Israeli jets, hidden behind the smoke that now drifts 20 miles out to sea.

Fairouz, the most popular of Lebanese singers, was to have performed at this year's Baalbek festival, cancelled now like all Lebanon's festivals of music, dance, theatre and painting. One of her most popular songs is dedicated to her native city:

To Beirut
-peace to Beirut with all my heartAnd kisses
-to the sea and clouds,
To the rock of a city that looks like an old sailor's face
From the soul of her people she makes wine,
From their sweat, she makes bread and jasmine.

I shall always remember u like this for in my eyes, u will always and forever be...BEAUTIFUL!

UNITE FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE. SAVE LEBANON!

Save Lebanon. You can make a difference!
UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
(Please check the united we stand post for information on
how you can help and who you can talk to and read some of
the messages that we are getting in support of the Lebanese
people. Do not give up on us!)

Emergency Action to End the War on Lebanon Deliver a Letter to the
US Mission of the United Nations Join UFPJ and peace and justice activists:
Friday, July 21, 4 -5:30 PM140 East 45th Street
(between Third and Lexington Avenues)

We call for the Bush administration to:
* Support a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate andunconditional
cease-fire
* Urge negotiations now to resolve all disputes including the release ofprisoners on all sides
* Put an end to US blocking of UN action.

We will stage a picket outside the mission and deliver a letter signed by UFPJ andother peace and justice organizations.
(See text of letter below.)

While the world is crying out for global intervention to stop the bloodshed, we have been tremendously disappointed by the response from the Bush administration. And instead of rallying the international community to call for an immediatecease-fire to stop further bloodshed, it has blocked the UN efforts to do just that.We condemn all attacks on civilians, and call for the release of prisoners held onall sides in this conflict, including the Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah.But while Hezbollah violated international law by attacking Israel and then firingmissiles at Israeli cities, Israel's clearly disproportionate response is an act ofcollective punishment against the Lebanese population -- a serious violation ofinternational law.

On Friday, we will go to the US mission to hold our government accountable for theirnegligent response to this conflict. Please join us.

Letter to the Ambassador:
Dear Ambassador Bolton,
On behalf of United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the largest antiwar coalition inthe United States, we want to express our concern over the escalating crisis betweenIsrael and Lebanon and urge you to support a Security Council resolution calling foran immediate and unconditional cease-fire.We are gravely concerned about the loss of lives on both sides. We condemn all attacks on civilians, and call for the release of prisoners held on all sides inthis conflict, including the Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah. But while Hezbollah violated international law by attacking Israel and then firing missiles atIsraeli cities, Israel's clearly disproportionate response is an act of collectivepunishment against the Lebanese population -- a serious violation of internationallaw.While the world is crying out for global intervention to stop the bloodshed, we havebeen tremendously disappointed by the response from the Bush administration. Insteadof using its influence on Israel to stop the devastating attacks on the Lebanese population, it has supported such attacks. And instead of rallying the internationalcommunity to call for an immediate cease-fire to stop further bloodshed, it hasblocked UN efforts to call for an immediate cease-fire.We urgently call on the Bush administration to work with international partners to broker an immediate and unconditional cease-fire and commence negotiations to peacefully resolve the crisis.We look forward to hearing your response.

www.unitedforpeace.org
www.mirvat.blogspot.com
www.angryarab.blogspot.com

Contributions to help the Lebanese victims on this bank account numberSGBL Sin El Fil001-004-361-236446-01-3SWIFT: SGLILBBXPoll:
Register your voice http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/13/mideast/index.html
Expose the ugly truth: send the images and the reality of what is happening on both sides to innocent civilians. How else is the world going to know?
Pray for us.

WHY MUST WE CHOOSE

why do we have to choose whos children are to be spared? it should be both our children both our countries..not in our name should these attacks take place..that is how we can achieve a cease-fire..as a lebanese i am telling u in all honesty i am not with hizbollah for they are fighting in my name and on my land for a cause only they support! take this somewhere else..propagating their agenda in the name of my God..my God does not declare war on children and on innocent lives..does your God do that? is that what has become of humanity..please dont tell me this is our last resort. What Hizbollah did was wrong but it does not justify the IDF going in and retaliating the way they did..there are other means and other methods..i accept that the Lebanese government failed to act years ago against Hizbollah's methods..reason is beyond me..but as a Lebanese citizen i am telling you that i do not accept what both sides are doing..the Lebanese people do not want this nor have they asked for anyone to speak on their behalf if any Lebanese do accept Hizbollahs misson..then they are not true Lebanese..we have had enough of death and destruction..how many times must we rebuild our country.

I repeat that under no circumstance will i choose my children over yours.

PEACFUL DEMONSTRATION-NYC-TUESDAY JULY 18TH

A CALL TO ACTION

DEMONSTRATION AT ISRAELI MISSION TO THE UN ON TUESDAY JULY 18, 2006

PROTEST ISRAELI ATTACKS ON LEBANON AND PALESTINE
DEMAND FREEDOM FOR LEBANESE AND PALESTINIAN POLITICAL PRISONERS!

When Tuesday July 18, 4:30 p.m.
Where Israeli Mission to the UN, at 2nd Ave. between E 42nd and 43rd Sts., NY
Why: The Israeli military is expanding its operations from Palestine to Lebanon. It has killed scores of Lebanese civilians and bombed essential civilian infrastructure, such as the Beirut airport. Simultaneously, the Israeli military continues its deadly attacks on Gaza and its stifling economic blockade . True to form, Israel continues its aggressive expansionism in efforts to suppress all resistance to its oppressive, illegal policies toward the people of the region.

Come to a protest and demonstration to demand action now to stop the killing of Lebanese and Palestinians, hold Israel accountable for its crimes, and free all Lebanese and Palestinian political prisoners.

Bring signs, candles, and slogans. We have a common struggle and history is on our side. Come out and show your solidarity.

For more information, contact Riham Barghouti at rihambarghouti@yahoo.com ; or Issa Mikel at 917-446-8032 or issamikel@gmail.com : or halla el-ahmad at halla.elahmed@gmail.com

Endorsed by: The New York Chapter of the National Council of Arab-Americans, the International Solidarity Movement - NYC, the New York Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, the International Socialist Organization, ANSWER Coalition, ADC New York Chapter, United for Peace and Justice – NYC, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Campus Anti War Network, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, International Action Center.

correspondence from friends on both sides of the conflict!

Dear all,

i am a lebanese muslim living in new york..i studied in canada and befriended an Israeli jewish student..to be honest we were both intimidated by the other becaus of the history of hate in the middle east but once we got to know each other and dissolved the misunderstanding..we created a friendship. She sent me this email she posted on a university server in toronto, the same university we studied in..the degree of hatred among students as a result of the current crisis in the middle east is heart breaking...and i inturn told her of the degree of hatred being created on craigslist (politics section) ..HENCE OUR DECISION TO POST IT ALSO ON CRAIGSLIST

...hatred is not a means to an end..only by accepting mistakes done on either side can an understanding be reached and pride be raised down. read below and please spread it with understanding...this is coming from both sides of the border (from an Israeli and a lebanese...a jew and a muslim..it can happen but only through understanding and acceptance).

HERE ARE HER WORDS SENT TO THE UNIVERSITY SERVER:


Hi Everyone, I think it's the first time I am writing on this listserve this year. I was an intern with CISEPO in Israel last year (just thought to introduce myself first). I read your comments about the Middle East and I really hope everyone’s families are ok and safe, as well as the interns. I know that in Israel many people had to evacuate their house and move to the south, otherwise their houses might be bombed by the Hezbollah (many houses and people were killed and injured already). I also heard and read about the families in Lebanon who are trapped with not a lot of water, electricity and food, and their movement is restricted. Neither one of these sides deserves to be in that situation. No parent should worry about the health of her children and we all have the right to live in peace. After having the internship in Israel last year and meeting with a wide variety of people from different religions, cultures and backgrounds I think that the categories of “terrorism” and “defense” are in sufficient to explain the situation in the middle east, and that the situation is more complicated than can be described the word “hatred”. For many years Jews, Muslims and Christians worked, did business, studies, shared their food, danced, and socialized together. I believe most of the Muslims and Israelis want peace, and want to return to the days they could do all those things together. I believe it is possible. I think that we need to take a step back from the conflict and look beyond hatred, anger and fear. The Middle East, like many other areas in the world is subjected to manipulations of the military industrial complex (i.e companies who sell weapons), that earns its living from selling weapons to unstable areas. The region is also subjected to the interests of other political interests that are not talked about is the media, rather in the backrooms. At the moment there are a few weapon companies that are probably very happy their weapons are being used, as they increase their profits. Israelis’, Palestinians’, Jordanians’, Egyptians’, Lebanese’s (and the rest of the countries in the region) lives are affected by those economic forces. If we surrender to violence, we fell into the mouse trap and we serve those company’s interests. In the face of the events in the past few weeks, we are falling. But we can stop it, if we want to. On the surface and in the media the Middle East crisis happens because of hatred. But if you actually go to the region and speak with people, most of them want peace. Most of them do not want to be involved in this conflict that ruins everyone’s lives. An attempt to blame either side is the wrong way to go. Instead we need to cooperate. Cooperation is harder than finding whose fault it is (especially if you look at history the region was colonized, a fact that is one of the major causes to the current conflict); to cooperate is also harder than to turn to violence, but it is possible! I saw that cooperation is possible during my internship in Israel last year with CISEPO. CISEPO succeeds to bring health professionals, academics together to create networks of knowledge and expertise in the region. And it works! I wonder what are this year interns’ thoughts about it… and what your experiences are. We all have to step back and see how this thing can be solved. This crisis, can not be solved by more violence, more hatread and fear from the Other (from any side).

I hope everyone is safe and enjoy their internships

calling all peace loving NEW YORKERS!

if u believe in human rights and you do not accept the killing of civillians in the name of war..please come and join your fellow humanitarians to protest against the crisis in Lebanon!! To make the Bush administration halt Israel targeting innocent Lebanese civillians! we need to create an international outcry at this inhumane treatment and lack of leadership by the Bush administration.

NOTE: THIS IS A PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATION, NON VIOLENT..WE ARE TRYING TO PROMOTE NON-VIOLENCE AND DIPLOMACY NOT ANIMAL WARFARE!

When: Tuesday July 18th, 2006
Where: Outside the UN building, manhattan new york!
Time: 5pm

WE MUST NOT CLOSE OUR EYES..WE MUST MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD..please if you believe in human rights join your fellow human rights activists in support of peace..not war. Israel must stop their bombardment against Lebanon and its people. THIS WILL NOT BE ANOTHER IRAQ!!