July 25, 2006

At A Loss For Words

Well, it’s been a while. Life took over most of my time as of late. I got married a couple of weeks ago followed by a honeymoon in Mexico.

I didn’t mind not blogging during that time because it seemed there was very little going on that really moved me to say something that hadn’t already been said. Without the time to really follow those stories that did catch my eye, I figured it’d be better to say nothing at all as there are a lot of eloquent bloggers doing a much better job than I could.

It was the second day into my honeymoon when I turned on the TV in our room to see the beginning of the current conflict between Israel and Hizbullah. At the time, it didn’t really seem like much more than the typical violence seen in that area and I figured it would abate within a day or so.

I’m glad I didn’t put money on it.

In the beginning, as I first heard the story developing, I thought that Israel was doing what it needed to do to get back their kidnapped soldiers.

Then day after day I would turn on the TV to see the latest and I would see more and more civilian carnage and death tolls. Then seven (I have seen eight claimed as well) of them turn out to be Canadian.

Civilians fleeing to the north with white flags flying from their vehicles were not exempt either.

“Don’t go to sleep, Mama. Look at me!” Ali shouted, tears streaking his bloodied face. “Don’t die, please don’t die!”

An Israeli rocket, which Lebanese officials said probably had been fired from a helicopter, slammed into the center of the Shaitos’ van as it sped round a bend west of their village, and the van crashed into a hillside. Three occupants were killed: an uncle, Muhammad; the grandmother, Nazira; and a Syrian man who had guarded their home. The missile also critically wounded Muntaha Shaito and her sister, spattering blood and flesh throughout the van. Eleven others suffered less severe wounds.

“They said leave, and that’s what we did,” said Musbah Shaito, another uncle, as his niece, Heba, cried hysterically behind him for her dead father.

Paramedics struggled to remove the dead from the van, but soon gave up, as an Israeli drone hovered overhead.

“This is what we got for listening to them,” Musbah Shaito said, speaking of the Israelis.

I don’t know what to say anymore. The death toll is severely one-sided with the Lebanese being massacred (warning, the linked page is a very graphic and disturbing representation of the war from the Lebanese perspective).

I believe Israel has the right to attempt to retrieve their soldiers, but I also believe that the Lebanese civilians’ lives shouldn’t be the ends to Israel’s means. I would not call the response a measured one.

Where does it end?

I think the thing that moved me to write about this the most is a fear that this will snowball into something much bigger and much less controllable. Meanwhile, other countries of influence basically sit by and allow it to continue. Hopefully we’ve not passed a certain “point of no return” by the time somebody decides to do something about this.

That’s all I can say for now. This whole situation has made me sick.

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