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LAST STRETCH
September 1, 2024. The lowest pit in 11 months ?
You try to think about it, visualize. Four young men, one with a torn hand, half an arm, and a young woman, all kidnapped at the Re'im Festival, on October 7, and a woman in her early forties, taken from a kibbutz, Be'eri. And you wonder if their captors wore masks in the final moments. And how it happened.
You wonder where else such horror happened, and the first thing that comes to your mind is Hitler's soldiers, who repeatedly shot down hostages.
September 2, 2024. A general strike in wartime : what for ?
Like a march of mourning, of a whole people. They decided to stop, and step aside.
Careful with words, comparisons. "Hitler's soldiers" ? Soldiers don't shoot down helpless hostages in some deep lost tunnel. Killers do. You think of Manson's sect in California. You think of Groupes Islamiques Armés in Algeria in the nineties, of the death squads in Argentina in the seventies. And German hostage killers in uniform, in the early forties.
Kidnapping, blackmail, execution : the keys of horror.
September 3, 2024. Torn feelings. Eden, Hersh, Carmel...
Disgust, rage. Especially when you see Eden's poor face on that disgraceful video. Eden Yerushalmi.
1998, our Nobel Campaign for Algeria, Saul Bellow (Nobel Literature laureate in 1976), who was among the signatories, called the terror-mongers who were devastating whole villages at night "nasty bastards". Patrick Rambaud, a celebrated writer who has described the political life in France in the form of satires, calls the Charlie Hebdo, Hyper Kosher, BaTaClan killers "crétins sanguinaires" : bloody, bloodthirsty morons.
We're at a loss for words.
Reading Adolfo Perez Esquivel (Peace Nobel laureate in 1980) again. "The executioner, from the nature of his acts, has hurt me but he has equally deeply damaged the human family". (Cultivons la paix ! 2000)
"The executioner, through his criminal acts, has broken human brotherhood".
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, in Buenos Aires, for forty years have been gathering for the sake of their Desaparecidos, disappeared children. How long can we live with the current blackmail about the hundred hostages detained in Gaza ?
Is it shocking to state that the common, non-involved Palestinians in Gaza, most of them displaced, also are hostages of the same totalitarian theocracy ?
In the infinite pain of grieving, please let us not lose hope. Don't let them extinguish the flickering flame of hope.
"If history teaches anything, it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of an almost fanatical resistance.
Evil must be attacked by a counteracting persistence, by the day-to-day assault of the battering rams of justice."
Martin Luther King
"Today more than fifty wars and conflicts are taking place in different places on this little planet of ours...
Lost in power and violence, we are exhausted in a mad race to nowhere.
We must return to the ways of the spirit that lead us to peace."
Adolfo Perez Esquivel The Power of Hope 2021
Looking at these last pictures of Carmel, from Vivian Silver's Be'eri kibbutz, Hersh and Eden, kidnapped at the Re'im festival, on October 7, thinking of their captors and executioners, the words miserable bastards come to mind, with the re-surge of rage, and then the healing wave of redemption for the truthful souls in pain - with these thoughts about how evil opposes such a fanatical resistance, and how lost in power and violence we get.
How thankful we are that, beyond the courage of the combatants and rescuers, we find the power of higher souls, showing the long way to redeeming and restoring justice.
September 4, 2024. "Walk me out..." (a song for grieving souls, wherever)
Walk me out in the morning dew my honey
- I can't walk you out in the morning dew today... (Evanston, Illinois, November 1, 1973)
Time for Trivia, Twaddle : / Divest from Waters
There's an old bloke, in his eighties, former rock star or something, thinks he knows it all, has been all over the places (his name is Waters), while he doesn't even know about the men his age who died a damned death in those darkest dungeons, accursed tunnels in Gaza... Call their names with an aching throat : Chaim Peri, Amiram Cooper, Aryeh Zalmanovich, Yoram Metzger, all from kibbutz Nir Oz - but that poor old bloke named Waters, he's so blind he only sees one side of anything, and there are millions like him... He only went once (or twice) to the burning land, had his photo op in Bethlehem, and he thought he had it all figured out, the Good / the Bad, and he'd be the Good Guy from then on, who would prophesize with his mike...
It sounds like trivia... This Waters bloke... sounded like pure twaddle, rubbish, whatever... Erase his name, Divest from his business...
Far too many people speak and act as instant judges, after just/not even one short trip or two, from the biased papers they read, the media they're chained to (and no others). How can they ? How dare they ? They don't even think they're biased.
Ok... what do you know ? How do you think you know what you know ?
Yesterday night I received my ETA visa to the burning land. How many trips does it take to understand a little bit more ? How many years ? I know I fell in love with the Land during the First Intifada, from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to Beersheba to Gaza to Rafah, and then to Sinai... and back to Eilat, to the Dead Sea...
A religious man once told me "You only see well with your heart".
Seth J. Frantzman, The Jerusalem Post, September 4, 2024
Bringing Hamas to justice: Why US charges are an important step - analysis
September 5, 2024. Walking the countdown line.
The end of August 2024 was the turning-point. The murdering of the six hostages in a Rafah tunnel.
Like May 21, 1996, in Algeria, when the seven monks kidnapped in the night one month before, were assassinated by their captors, the Groupe Islamique Armé.
It does not matter that the monks were French, Catholics, in a country that had turned totally islamic after the exodus of all its non-Muslim inhabitants in 1962. It does not matter that there were doubts about "who did what" exactly. What matters is that the monks were obviously peaceful, devoted, helpless men. Totally innocent, and everybody knew.
Until then, March 1996, a large part of the people had been attracted to the jihadis' discourse and stand (against the army and the powers that be). They provided them support, of one kind or another.
The kidnapping of the monks acted as a revelator. Their murder marked the end of a long period of confusion among the people. Everybody agreed then that the jihadis' methods were wrong, unacceptable.
From then on, the relative legitimacy they had gained since the 1992 cancellation of the 1991 legislative elections started waning, the trust faded, and the people rallied around the army. Until the islamist insurgency was totally defeated. 150,000 to 200,000 people were killed in this civil war - a tiny fraction of them, Christians because they were Christians (all Jews had left in 1962), the quasi totality Muslims killed by other Muslims.
The six hostages executed in Rafah personified innocence - young Hersh, Eden... Carmel...
Keep It Simple.
"Always act so that the principle of your action may be taken as a universal law."
"Always act so as to treat humanity in yourself and in others as an end, and never as a means."
You don't have to be a Kant reader to keep it simple that way.
Stay Human was Vittorio Arrigoni's motto and last will.
Vittorio, an Italian volunteer in Gaza, was kidnapped in April 2011 and executed by his captors who claimed that his death "was the natural outcome of the [Haniyeh] government's policy against the salafis".
The executioners' creed never changes.... It's always the Other, they know neither guilt nor remorse...
Fragment of a message to John in Tennessee : "I see it all as one constant battle between real good guys, benevolent, other-centered types, and mean, self-centered, hard-hearted bastards. Regardless of parties, nations and the such."
Or, in Somebody else's words : "Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
September 6, 2024. "It may not have in its possession..."
"The terror group said it may not be able to release 30 hostages in the first phase because it may not have in its possession women captives, including soldiers, the sick and injured men and the elderly."
The negotiations have been stalling for so long now. One of the main obstacles being that both sides talk about a 30 hostages' swap (out of 103) for 800 Palestinian prisoners (convicted murderers among them).
And now, the other side confesses it may not even "be able to release 30, because it may not have in its possession women captives... the sick and injured and the elderly" (sic)"it may not have in its possession..."
Another sad, distressing day. Yesterday, we heard that Zakaria Zubeidi's son, Muhammad Zakaria Zubeidi, in his early twenties, from Jenin, had been shot down by troops, after engaging in armed struggle with others, in the region of Tubas, North of Nablus. His father, Zakaria, has been kept in various jails, in Ramallah, and now in Israel, called "an arch-terrorist" by some seasoned journalists (Y. Bob to name but one), selling the audience an easy stereotype, "like father like son". This is a serious omission about Zakaria Zubeidi's other life : born in 1976, after being the Jenin chief of the Fatah Brigades, and a "symbol of the intifada", he renounced the armed struggle, declared the intifada a real failure, and created Jenin's Freedom Theater with Juliano Mer-Khamis, born in 1958, from a Jewish mother and a Palestinian father.Juliano used to say "I am 100% Jewish, and 100% Palestinian". I met both men in Jenin, at different times. Juliano was assassinated in Jenin in April 2011, while Zakaria was in a Palestinian jail. Posters had been installed all over Jenin, denouncing the liberal trends of the Freedom Theater, with death threats. The murderers were never arrested. You should see Juliano's film. Arna's children
Today, we hear that an American-Turkish humanitarian activist, Aysenur Eygi, 26, was shot to death South of Nablus, while she was protesting, non-violently, unarmed, with others, to protect Palestinian farmers from settlers' violence. Speaking of a non-binary, non-exclusive struggle for human rights and decency. 
Among its most committed trailblazers, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, long-time director of Rabbis for Human Rights, with his Torah Tzedek friends (Torah of Justice).Aysenur's group, Arik's friends, they're all devoted to justice, and the protection of simple farmers, who see their olive-trees burnt and uprooted, their flocks scared and scattered, their sheep stolen, their lands little by little dispossessed.
The level of radical settlers' violence in the West Bank has seen such a rise since October 2023 that security services have warned the State authorities about it.
Shin Bet chief warns Netanyahu, ministers that Jewish terror endangering Israel
This is in The Times of Israel, August 22, 2024. Haaretz, Aug. 29. This is now.
Israeli Army Joins Shin Bet Warning Over Jewish Terrorism in West Bank
September 7, 2024. 111 words for humanity and common sense, maintained.
For the sake of humankind
Are we not the same blood groups ?
We’re all together, one way or another.
Stop the fighting now
Let them all go home,
All the forsaken survivors,
The hostages, the displaced,
Let the fighters lay down their arms,
let them all recover from the din of war.
The only final victory is to break the endless cycle of retaliations,
To stop the traffic of weapons,
as the Irish and the Basque did, after trying terror.
For a true cessation of hostilities, we call for a permanent end to all attack tunnels
and the lasting reconstruction of Gaza within a peaceful, demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.
**************************************************************************************************************
Understanding the logics of eradicating the terrorists - as was the military motto during the Algerian civil war - may be seen as contradictory to this Call. Remembering that the Algerian army and authorities chose not to negotiate with the armed Islamists. But then, until they kidnapped the monks, the Algerian terrorists were not holding hostages. Their terror and blackmail spread over the whole people of Algeria, at all times. Until they were totally defeated and crushed.
When we plead to stop the fighting now, let the hostages, and the displaced, go home, we have no illusion that "peace is not an absence of war". What we demand, "a permanent end to all attack tunnels", will not be obtained with smiles and prayers only. The conflict is a long process, as the conflict between the French and the Germans was, or between the Irish and the British.
Not until the side of "resistance" renounces armed violence and the arms race is there a possibility for dialogue and coexistence.
When Zakaria Zubeidi co-directed the Jenin Freedom Theater with Juliano Mer-Khamis, from 2008 till 2011 the year Juliano was assassinated and his amnesty was cancelled for reasons unclear (in the summer of 2007 Zakaria Zubeidi was among 200 militants who turned in their weapons to Palestinian authorities), he made clear statements that he had chosen art over war.
A Palestinian Intifada Icon Chooses Art over War National Public Radio, Ferb 22, 2008
Murky waters under the bridges since 2008 - still, what unfathomable wastes of opportunities and lives... For lack of resolve and a strategy to viable coexistence.
CIA, MI6 chiefs urge truce-hostage deal; Burns calls for ‘hard political compromises’
Not exactly dreamers or utopians either :
Bill Burns & Richard Moore, The Financial Times, September 7, 2024
September 8, 2024. "The suffering is unimaginable" / a different view of winning
"People are suffering there. Do everything possible to bring them home. Work around the clock, don’t sleep, to ensure their return. The suffering is unimaginable. Suddenly, I heard someone speaking Hebrew outside the door—I couldn’t believe it, I just couldn’t believe it." Farhan al- Qadi(Bedouin Israeli hostage released by troops)
US ambassador to Japan Emanuel Rahm : “I said to them, and I will repeat, I have a different view of winning.
‘Victory is going back and building your communities. Go back and reestablish your kibbutzim, your family life, your dreams, your hopes, your college. That is what Hamas is trying to crush. The victory is your home. The victory is your community. The restoration of the Jewish life.'
'Do not define victory solely by how many Hamas terrorists you eliminate'
September 9, 2024. Looking for the Opening.
The Jerusalem Post, September 9, 2024
Ehud Olmert and Nasser al-Qudwa elaborate two-state proposal and agreement to end war
Again, Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
September 10, 2024. The Tunnels of Terror.
Yaniv Kubovich, Haaretz, September 10, 2024 [English 3:16 video] (scroll down far enough to find it)
IDF releases footage of Rafah tunnel where six Israeli hostages were held, murdered
When I was a teenager, my father took me to the Struthof Camp, in the East of France. As a former prisoner of war, he wanted me to see with my own eyes, without any comments. Just to see, and start realizing.
You start from scratch, or so precious little, as a kid.
What remains in my mind to this day is the gallows in the yard, and a faint memory of a crematorium, but what really sticks out, and struck me deep is a rather small room, which was the execution room, which had been designed and built as such, with a concrete gutter, for the blood of the executed to flow out.
The premeditation and method it implied.The Struthof Camp was the only concentration camp in France, with half the prisoners Poles and Russians. Opened in 1941, on orders of Reichsführer-SS Himmler, and liberated in November 1944 by the French First Army with the US Sixth Army Group.
All I see about the terror tunnels in Gaza connects to this system, worse for being underground as it is, with no fresh air, and the ceilings so low you have to bend.
The premeditation and method it implied. On thousands of meters, hundreds of kilometers, 10 to 20 meters below the surface. And please remember : with not one single shelter for the people of Gaza. The plain, ordinary, non-involved people of Gaza.
September 11, 2024. September Eleven Trauma. Stairways to hell.
We all remember where we were when we learnt about the collapse of the Towers in New York.
After 2001, it has taken me seven years to return to New York, which was one of my few favorite cities, where I have always felt so at home, paradoxically. Such was the trauma, for seven years, I was not sure I could face the damage done. The absence, destruction of what I had known.
Now, Gaza is the same. Sderot and the Gaza envelope kibbutzim too. The kibbutzim I have returned to (strangely? my friends in Israel have not), but Gaza... ? I am scared of what I'll find the day I get back. As I've had many places of meaning and harmony there, through the years.
How can we erase, eradicate all these stairways to hell beneath people's feet ?
September 12, 2024. The Fog & Fatigue of War.
Who will tell ? The fatigue is spreading, from North to South. Across the divides.
Including a Khan Yunis Brigade Commander, Rafa Salama, who had sent his chiefs a s.o.s. message, "our people are either physically or mentally broken". He was killed in July. Likewise, an Israeli retired major-general, by the name of Yitzhak Brik, claims that Israel is collapsing, and that "the number of tunnels the IDF destroyed amounts to just a few per cent". What if both, Brik and Salama, are right ?Trust, routine trust, was so shattered on October 7. Winning this war within starts with regaining some trust....
At times, you feel that some journalists are truthful, building reliable reports, such as Emanuel Fabian tonight, with his claim about the Rafah Brigade defeated, and no active cross-border tunnels found (to Egypt).
Other times, it's a human voice, on another level, spiritual, such as Sarah Tuttle-Singer, with one of her latest pieces, "Shards of truth : unity in a broken world".
"So here we are, in this broken, beautiful world, each of us with a piece of Truth in our hands."
"We’re more complete when we’re united, and in that unity, we find the true essence of who we are meant to be."
September 13, 2024. Double bind.
The system of the tunnels has to be eradicated, permanently. Never more.
All the hostages have to be released, dead or alive. Human beings are not bargaining chips.
All the displaced people have to be allowed to go home, in the North of Israel as in the North of Gaza, and in the South of Israel as in the South of Gaza.
The fighters and terrormongers in Gaza have to relinquish violence, give up rpgs and rockets.
It is a virtuous circle. You start with one, you get the others.
At the end of the tunnels, there is a demilitarized State, next to a peaceful State.
With equal rights for all.
September 17, 2024. View from Above.
Take it higher up... What can you see down there, at the junction of Africa and Eurasia ? Just a tiny speck of land, such a small hinge, between the civilizations, the religions, the peoples - not even 10,000 square kilometers of inhabited land.
How strange. Russians and Americans fight it out, through proxies, in Ukraine. Tens of thousands are killed and maimed, their homes devastated. Whereas up in space, they fly the same vessels around the common Earth.
What's wrong with this picture ?
The first man on the left is a Russian, named Alexander Grebenkin. The man next to him is an American, Michael Barratt. The third one is another American, Matthew Dominick, a US Navy pilot, with 61 combat missions and 400 carrier-arrested landings. To his left is another American, Jeanette Epps, "the first black woman into space".
Right now, the four of them, Grebenkin, Barratt, Dominick, and Epps, are up there, 400 km above our heads, in the International Space Station. Forming Crew-8 together.
Check it out with Jimmy's team : ISS. Last year, they had two Saudis up there. They've had the world over, from the US, Russia, Japan, Italy, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, South Korea, in this International Space Station. All working together, living together, smiling together.
Whereas, down on Earth, it's not ISS but the resurgence of ISIS and Al Qaeda...The Crew-8 Four have been 195 days and nights in complete proximity, so high above our heads.
Down here, the small people of the Hinge (barely ten million inhabitants, one in five "Arabs", about three quarters "Jews") have been under assault from the North (Lebanon), from the East (Iran), and from the South (Gaza & Yemen) for 347 days and nights. In the bloody process, how many thousands of women, children have been killed and maimed in Gaza ?
And there's serious talk of extending the war to the North. Some time soon. After the American elections, November 5.
Add that the contending candidate has been targeted twice by a killer in two months.
Reminding us of JF Kennedy. Murder Most Foul.
September 18, 2024. Si vis pacem...
... para bellum. Roman wisdom from ages ago. If you want peace, prepare for war.
The deadly pagers in Lebanon and Syria : First, you can't help but marvel at the mixed amount of brilliant scheming on one side, bottomless stupidity on the other (what commanders in an underground army are so brainless as not to check upon alien beeper devices distributed to all their cadres ?).
Then you think of the unspeakable pain hundreds, thousands of human beings have been exposed to, feeling their flesh suddenly ripped off, shred to blood-soaked pieces.Do Grebenkin, Epps, Barratt and Dominick get the news from Earth ?
What could they say ?
September 19, 2024. Traveling in the dark.
Painful. Chaos. Mayhem. Consequences.
September 20, 2024. Secondary Plan, B Plan. Orna Shimoni starting hunger strike for hostages
Since yesterday morning there's talk of a "secret single-stage" secondary plan, along the guidelines of our Nobel campaign : Release all hostages, Let the displaced go home - both in Israel and Gaza, Stop the fighting and the arms trafficking, End all tunnels, Aim at a demilitarized, peaceful Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
But then, there was the pagers attack on September 17, and its sequel the next day.
There has been no trust in the initial, stalling negotiations (why release only thirty hostages in the first phase ?).
High time for an in-depth strategy.
September 21, 2024. Of naivete and rules.
One strange piece from a Walzer in today's NYT. Speaking as some expert in "just and unjust wars", he claims the attacks of September 17 & 18 in Lebanon were not right, as they came "when the operatives were not operating" and "were not militarily engaged". You wonder what experience this expert has of war zones.
Not only has history taught us time and again that there are no universal rules to abide by in war (we don't have to repeat like mantras " Pearl Harbour", "Hiroshima", the "Kippur War", October 7) but anyone who has lived through war zones knows there is no such thing as a fighter who is not at war 24/24, whether he's resting on a mattress, having coffee, or focusing on a front line.
By the way, does Mr Walzer know that Hizbollah's fighters don't wear a uniform or a military fatigue when they're in combat, and that they mostly blend within civilians ?
The only way out of war is after a lasting peace agreement between the sides has been signed, and all the prisoners have come home. Then is the time to deal with Post Trauma Stress Disorder at length.
September 22, 2024. The answer to death. Neighbours.
“The answer to Carmel’s murder is not revenge against the murderers. The answer to death is not more death. It is life.”
“That is the difference between us and our enemies – they sanctify death, we sanctify life.”
Carmel Gat's family. Carmel, born in 1984, was visiting her parents in kibbutz Be'eri when she was kidnapped into Gaza, where she was murdered point-blank, in a tunnel, this month, with five other hostages in their twenties. All of them kidnapped at the Nova party. They say two of her guards (executioners?) were shot down by the army.
*** that we sanctify life is all very fine, as ever of the essence.
Now, what can you do with neighbours like these ?
God's Party (Hizbollah) raining rockets from the North, "religious" militias sending drones from the East (Irak today), and the usual Islamic Jihad & Muslim Brothers from the South + Partisans of God (Houthis) from the Far South (Yemen)...
Not a matter of "revenge"... rather one of fatal mechanics.
September 23, 2024. "Below the threshold of an all-out war"
"Despite the escalation, as of Sunday, both sides trying to stay below the threshold of an all-out war" (Amos Harel). Experiencing an unprecedented style of warfare ? The problem being carnages "by accident". Unintentional mass massacres. Due to a higher public sensitivity, awareness of suffering and devastation, a new concept is being born, with the ratio of civilian victims to military ones.
In the previous wars of the last two decades (Irak, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Ukraine...), nobody really cared that much, did they. With the Israeli reaction to October 7, probably for the first time in the long run, the losses ratio has become a burning topic. Under the control of major "referees", the US, the UN, the EU...
Interestingly enough, the UN General Assembly High-week has just opened.
More than ever, the world is watching.
September 24, 2024. To each root for victims of terrorism and the ongoing mayhem.
September 25, 2024. To our summertime visitors.
Until August 24, we daily had up to 700, 800 visitors. And then came the strikes on Lebanon. A new stage in war, you could say. There was a sharp, immediate decline. End of August came another violent crisis, with the discovery of the six hostages murdered in a Gaza tunnel. And then, September 17, the pagers' blasts, with less than 100 visitors afterwards. We think we know who you are - the missing ones. How involved you are, and what pressure, duress, you've been under since the last weekend of August.
We all share in this. Our human solidarity is non-stop.
We know what the Party of God and their Jihad allies are about.
We've known it for forty years now - when they started kidnapping dozens of Lebanese civilians, and then Americans, Europeans.
Among them, the French journalist and writer Jean-Paul Kauffmann, who was detained three years in the Beirut underground. Here is a picture of him when he was a hostage, incommunicado, some forty years ago. Kauffmann has become a major writer, stylist, in the French language.A Journey to Nowhere. Voyage to Desolation Island. The Dark Room at Longwood (Voyage to St-Helena)... are among his masterpieces that travel through time, and will stay with us all, regardless of where we are and live.
The miserable bastards who kept him chained underground could not break his spirit. We should build a library of the works created by the rescapees. In a way, this is what our Peace Lines site is about, come what may.
September 26, 2024. The McNamara curse.
"On the Mistakes of War". "I'm telling you that Jesus Christ himself couldn't stop one of these things." (Robert Strange McNamara, 1991 interview)
Jean-Paul Kauffmann remained three years in the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad underground cells (May 1985 - May 1988). Islamic Jihad in Lebanon was another name for Hezbollah.
Michel Seurat, who had been kidnapped with him, died there, from disease, in 1986. His bones were found by construction workers in a Beirut suburb in 2005.
September 27, 2024. "We realize we're all stuck in the same swamp..."
"... the same boat, dealing with the same frustration." Avinatan Or's uncle. Avinatan was Noa Argamani's companion at the Nova festival. He turned 31 in captivity somewhere in Gaza. Nobody has heard of him since.
Uncle of Hostage Avinatan Or: 'Divisions Between Families Over Deal or Military Pressure Are Keeping the Hostages in Gaza'
There were exactly the same problems in France, in the eighties, when Jean-Paul Kauffmann and Michel Seurat were kept underground by Islamic Jihad/Hezbollah. The same divisions : whether to get loud and shake the trees, or keep quiet. Except that when the French and the Americans put boots on the ground, in the hope of stabilizing Lebanon, both were targeted by suicide attacks that left 58 French paratroopers and 241 US Marines dead, leading to both forces leaving Lebanon. Islamic Jihad/Hezbollah... Murky tracks.
On July 30, 2024, the IAF eliminated Fuad Shukr in a strike in Beirut. On September 20, 2024, Ibrahim Aqil was also eliminated in a strike. Both were known to have been involved in the October 1983 attacks.
September 28, 2024. In memory of Jamilie.
Jamilie / Jamily was a refugee from Lebanon in the seventies. Her family had been able to relocate in France. Older than us in our zone, she'd get very upset if her name was mispronounced into Jamila. We were so very young, and unaware of whatever concerned the Near East, let alone Lebanon. All we knew was that there was a lot of suffering there, of chaos, devastation. There was word that chaos had torn Lebanon to pieces from the time the Palestinian fedayin had been expelled from the Kingdom of Jordan (Black September, 1970).
For the Lebanese, clearly, the displacement, some would say "invasion", of Palestinians with their armed factions and their guns, was the deadly scourge that fractured their country. Syria did not want the Palestine Liberation Organization either. So that Arafat's PLO was targeted both by Israel, Syria, and some Lebanese militias. The Syrians even backed a rival Palestinian organization (PFLP-GC) to fight Arafat off. Eventually, Arafat and his PLO were expelled from Lebanon in 1982.
The civil war in Lebanon lasted from 1975 to 1990, with a toll of 150,000 killed, and a million people who left in exodus (out of 3 million in 1980) - Jamilie was one of one million refugees. Hezbollah was created in 1982, as an instrument of the Iranian Revolution (1979), and Nasrallah became its leader in 1992.
A happy day for Jamilie and her family, and for a majority of ordinary Lebanese, who are not attracted to arms.
"A measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, Lebanese civilians..." has said the American President.
September 29, 2024. Beirut, 1983...2024 non-stop.
October 23, 1983. They had come in peace.American and French members of the MNF, Multi National Force, a peacekeeping operation.
The "deadliest single-day death toll for the US Marine Corps since Iwo Jima", 220 Marines killed.
Minutes later, on October 23, 1983 in Beirut, 58 French paratroopers were killed when the Drakkar building was blown up, with the family of a Lebanese janitor, his wife and four children.
Islamic Jihad - Hezbollah - Tehran. Those were the days.
The first major terror attack, eighteen years before September 11, the Twin Towers in New York. Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad...
"Will the circle be unbroken
By and by Lord, by and by"
Will the terror survivors be wise enough to renounce terror, the way the Irish and the Basque did ?
Does anyone sane see an alternative to relinquishing terror ?
Mind you, "the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the
hidden will of you all." "The righteous is not innocent of the deeds of the wicked"
Khalil Gibran, born (1883) and buried in Bsharri, Mount Lebanon.
September 30, 2024. Suspension of our Nobel Campaign. Orna's Hunger Strike.
We stopped asking for more support to our Campaign For the Sake of Humankind.
Such campaigns provide rational guidelines, for a way out of death and destruction.
The 5 Points remain : 1 - End all attack tunnels 2 - Let all the hostages and displaced go home 3 - Stop the fighting 4 - Stop the traffic of weapons (the way the Irish and the Basque did) 5 - the final aim being a peaceful, demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel.
It does not seem the surviving Gaza fighters would be willing to renounce their underground network. It may take more military pressure for that to happen. Chronologically, this is where any peace process has to stop.
The current situation in Lebanon will follow its course. It is an easy thing to cry for peace now, but it is a matter of global synchronicity. By way of complementarity, different voices aim at the same goal, through different means.
Orna Shimoni, born in 1941, has been on a hunger strike since September 20, 2024, before the Knesset. Joined by twelve others, among them, Rabbi Avidan Freedman.
Knowing Orna, whom we met on the Island of Peace, on the threshold to Jordan, with Women Wage Peace, in 2017, she will not curtail her strike. After two months, a hunger strike will be fatal.
In June 1962, the French peace activist Louis Lecoin, who was 74 then, led a hunger strike that he stopped only when he obtained what he wanted : the status of conscientious objector for the young men who would refuse to fight in Algeria. The war in Algeria was over by then, but he was struggling for the status to be recognized by law.
October 1, 2024. Back to harder.
The day ended in the worst way (last day of the year in the Jewish calendar), with a shooting and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv's west borough, leaving seven killed, fifteen wounded. And then, in the night, another rain of ballistic missiles, from Iran, all over the land, including Jerusalem. Like the last time, most missiles were intercepted in flight - with a little help from the US friend.
April 13, 2024 : 120 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles, 170 drones were launched from Iran. 99% of them were destroyed by a coalition of American, British, French, and Jordanian air forces. The attack was said to be in retaliation for the death of two Iranian generals in Damascus. As this one, involving 181 ballistic missiles, is said to be in retaliation for the death of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran, of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in Beirut, along with an Iranian general.
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