الاربعاء 30 آب 2006 - السنة 74 - العدد 22759

الموقع الالكتروني: www.bloggingbeirut.com
يوميات عاصمة مسكونة بالأنين والمعاناة

كتبت هنادي الديري:
يكتبون يوميات عاصمة تعيش من خلال ظلها. الانترنت وسيلتهم ليؤكدوا للعالم ان الالم، هذه المرة، غير قابل للالغاء.
وانهم، هذه المرة، سيصفون بأنفسهم، المشاهد التي "ترتعش" امامهم من خلال كلمات شبيهة بالهمس. يهمسون لكي لا يتنافسوا مع الحقد الذي اتخذ، بالامس، شكل الغارات.
عبر الانترنت، يتهافت المئات ليكتبوا التفاصيل التي تحاصر بيروت، والعالم بأسره يتابع ما يطلق عليه في اللغة الانكليزية الـ blog او اليوميات التي تنشر عبر الانترنت. هم من كل الاعمار، يشرحون للغرب معاناة كل نازح ويوميات الاروقة المسكونة بالانين. نادرا ما نعرف هويتهم، اذ يختبئون خلف اسماء مستعارة. ففي موقع www.bloggingbeirut.com مثلا، يطلق المسؤول عن الموقع، على نفسه اسم fink ployd. تغيير بسيط في اسم فريق pink floyd الشهير، وها هو الكاتب يطل على أكثر من 500 ألف زائر، ليعرض عليهم الخواطر التي تمر في ذهنه، وليشرح لهم كيف تعيش بيروت التي لا بد من ان تبقى لها "الكلمة الاخيرة".
جيمس فورنيس الكندي الذي وصل الى لبنان، قبل ايام قليلة، على دراجة نارية، وصديق المسؤول عن الموقع قال لـ"النهار"، ان اليوميات بدأت قبل سنة ونصف السنة، وتمحور الموقع حول لبنان، ومواقعه السياحية، الصور التي تظهره بكامل تألقه، والمعلومات العامة عن مناطقه، وبعد الحرب التي شنتها اسرائيل، صارت للموقع مهمة اساسية في نشر الصورة الحقيقية لما يتعرض له البلد. كيف تعيش بيروت، كيف يستطيع الناس ان يساهموا في تخفيف المعاناة، اين تقع المراكز التي يستطيعون ان يتطوعوا فيها، كيف يشاركون في محاربة الجوع والمرض؟...
محطة الـCNN التلفزيونية لم تغض الطرف عن هذا الموقع الذي يحظى بشهرة عالمية، وخصصت له صحيفة "نيويورك تايمس" زاوية، وركزت على دور اليوميات (blog) المحوري في هذه الحرب التي يرى البعض انها ما زالت مستمرة. هي اذا "حركة" آخذة في الاتساع.
وصف للشوارع الخالية من الناس، يوم عادي في المدارس التي استقبلت النازحين، الليل الذي هجرته روحه... زد الى هذا، الصور التي يرسلها البعض من انحاء العالم، تظهر التظاهرات التي "استنكرت" الحرب، من التفاصيل التي تعطي الموقع "رونقه". كما صار لـ bloggingbeirut شعار: "انا احب بيروت" (I love Beirut) وضع في ملف، ويستطيع كل من يسعى للسلام، ان يحوله ملصقا (sticker) يضعه في زوايا العالم.
كتب بعض النازحين، بدورهم، يومياتهم واحاسيسهم وما شاهدوه من جرائم "فاضحة". يقول جيمس فورنيس ان الموقع تحول منزلا يؤوي جماعات هدفها واحد: عودة لبنان الى ما كان عليه قبل 12 تموز.

Inside a Torturers' Den, Manacles Lie Abandoned

By Robert Fisk at Khiam Jail
from The Independent (United Kingdom)
25 May 2000

The torturers had just left but the horror remained. There was the whipping pole and the window grilles where prisoners were tied naked for days, freezing water thrown over them at night. Then there were the electric leads for the little dynamo -- the machine mercifully taken off to Israel by the interrogators -- which had the inmates shrieking with pain when the electrodes touched their fingers or penises. And there were the handcuffs which an ex-prisoner handed to me yesterday afternoon.

Engraved into the steel were the words: "The Peerless Handcuff Co. Springfield, Mass. Made in USA." And I wondered, as I stood there in Israel's most shameful prison, if the executives over in Springfield knew what they were doing when they sold these manacles.

They were used over years to bind the arms of prisoners before interrogation.

And they wore them, day and night, as they were kicked -- kicked so badly in Sulieman Ramadan's case that they later had to amputate his arm. Another prisoner was so badly beaten, he lost the use of a leg. I found his crutch in Khiam prison yesterday, along with piles of Red Cross letters from prisoners -- letters which the guards from Israel's now-defunct "South Lebanon Army" militia never bothered to forward.

What is it that makes mendo things like this? The prisoners -- thousands of them over the two decades of Khiam'sexistence -- included guerrillas, relatives of gunmen, civiliansby the dozen whose crimewas innocence, who would not collaborate with the Israelis or the SLA, who refused to join the murderous little militia, who declined to give the Israelis information about the Lebanese army.

"I was hung here naked for 13 days," Abdullah Attiyeh told me as we walked along a dirty passageway beside the wall of the old French mandate fort. "They put a bag on my head and threw cold water over me night and day."

The hoods were still there, big light-blue corduroy sacks with towels inside -- some of the towels bought from Norwegian Unifil soldiers because the UN globe was embroidered on some of them and so was the wire with which other prisoners, including women, were beaten. Big, thick wire bound in blue plastic. The torturers were sadistic, often stupid men. There were pornographic magazines and cheap comics and puzzle books in theirfilthy quarters. Israel has admitted teaching these men how to do their job.

In the women's section, we found the mementoes of girls. A drawing of a fish with a heart attached to it and a painting of six white horses running over a darkened field. There was a picture of Father Christmas taken from a chocolate wrapper. And names. "Zeina Koutash, born 3/9/79, arrested 7/5/99, released 3/1/2000." There were the names of Rana Awada and Ismahan Ali Khalil, only 19 when she was dragged to this awful place by the SLA. "How many drops of blood have been spilt on our soil -- and have not flowered?" she wrote on the wall. Along with two words. "Remember me."

And of course, the prematurely old men who languished in Khiam came back yesterday at the moment of its liberation, to relive their misery.

I suppose evil is always banal but I couldn't fail to be struck how grubby the whole place was, how unclean, how smelly; as if wickedness had somehow corrupted the prison. The lavatories stank, the food had been left to rot, the prison cells were covered in muck. The men's solitary block was a pit in the ground with a concrete hole for air. A broken wooden police baton lay outside. "Dog Zorro" was written on it in biro.

There was a little humanity. One ex-inmate recalled the name of Tannious Nahara, an SLA guard from Qleia who would bring food and cigarettes to the prisoners. He was fired from his job for being kind, and threatened with imprisonment in the jail he had worked in.But the cruel men had all fled, pleading their way across the border into Israel a few hours earlier.

Ibrahim Kalash was allowed a bath once every 40 days. "If we spilt water on the floor, they used to make us lick it clean," he said.

"You're surprised we didn't escape? Four men did. One made it, another was shot, another captured and the fourth blew himself up on a mine and lost a leg and an eye." Around the prison there are minefields galore. "An Israeli officer came here and told the SLA men 'Destroy everything that is green'," Abdullah Attiyeh said. "That is why there are no trees, just long grass with mines.

The prison interrogation rooms were as banal as the men who worked them. There were playing cards scattered on the floor, jars of coffee, helmets, unwashed clothes and a stack of beer mats bearing the words "Middle East Lutheran Ministry". Ghassan Abu Aissa, a well-known stool-pigeon -- working for the SLA and Israelis but incarcerated along with the inmates -- even left a notebook of childish love poems, a morbid complaint about the hopelessness of passion. Abu Ahlan, a prisoner of more integrity, had written on a wall: "Lebanon is ours and for our children after us." I suppose that's why they came back to look at Khiam yesterday.

Abdullah Attiyeh walked me to the prison guardpost on the walls and looked out at the land and mountains he was never allowed to see during his imprisonment. "This place," he said, "should be kept forever as a witness to our history."

The UN's humanitarian chief has accused Israel of "completely immoral" use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.

UN clearance experts had so far found 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 separate sites, Jan Egeland said.

...

UN efforts to rid Lebanon of cluster bombs have been under way since the conflict ended. Earlier estimates from UN experts had suggested a total of about 100 cluster bomb sites.

Mr Egeland described the fresh statistics as "shocking new information".

"What's shocking and completely immoral is: 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution," he said.

The UN ceasefire resolution which ended the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah was agreed by the Security Council on Friday, 11 August, and came into effect on Monday, 14 August.

Mr Egeland added: "Cluster bombs have affected large areas - lots of homes, lots of farmland. They will be with us for many months, possibly years.

"Every day, people are maimed, wounded and killed by these weapons. It shouldn't have happened."

Mr Egeland said his information had come from the UN Mine Action Co-ordination Centre, which had undertaken assessments of nearly 85% of the bombed areas in Lebanon.

Earlier this week the US state department launched an inquiry into whether Israel misused US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon during the conflict.

...

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/5299938.stm

Published: 2006/08/30 18:56:50 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Lebanon border attracts the curious
By Hugh Sykes
BBC News, Kyriat Shmona

The Israeli army have improvised a small sightseeing area for tourists visiting the Israel-Lebanon border.

It is north of Kyriat Shmona, on the edge of a peach tree orchard, with views across a valley towards two hilltop towns in south Lebanon.

For a while, it's so peaceful you can hear the wind rustling the leaves of the fruit trees.

A van laden with tomatoes speeds silently along a Lebanese road about 500 metres to the north.

Then a coach load of visitors arrives from Tel Aviv. They babble with excitement and peer across the trees and take photographs and scrutinise a map.

I ask Benyamin if the war had been right.

"For sure! It wasn't enough," he said, laughing, "but never mind - next time!"

Soldier's mission

Amiyad Cohen's family are here. He's a young Israeli soldier, showing his parents and his sister where he fought Hezbollah - in Lebanon, just beyond the peach trees.

He told me: "All the Hezbollah in our area ran away."

Amiyad is critical of the government led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "The main problem was that they didn't let us finish the job. If we'd been allowed to get north of the Litani river, we would have won the war."

He went on: "The Israeli nation has a mission - to bring the moral message of God in the world. We have a more important mission. We have more responsibility because we're better."

....