All In One Boat

I have not been a close observer of the Lebanese political scene where there seem to be parties and factions at each of the many cross-roads of 6,000 years of history passing through.

The assasination of Pierre Gemayel yesterday is likely a lot more than a mob hit on someone who didn’t pay back his loans. Gemayel was a Christian, minister of industry, in the current cabinet and was gunned down thoroughly. So far every known player in the area has denied involvement and most have condemned the killing. Each speculates about the others.

I don’t know who might be an honest broker in all of this but for starters here is Michael Totten on his Middle East Journal with some continuing updates.

Pretty clearly there is major jockying for position going on, intra and extra Lebanon. Sunni < --> Shia enmities are reviving and setting up; Israel < --> Syria; Lebabnese Christians have been witnessed on all sides.

This posted at The Thinking Lebanese seems to be pulled from Stratfor, a business intelligence analyst. Concise summary.

Print PDF

I have been a long time member of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), one of the finest professional organizations most of its members belong to. Some of my closest friends join together yearly to laugh and be amazed at language in all its improbable glory. So this little announcement was just an added pin-prick of pain to the all that has happened this week.

International Federation of Translators (IFT/FIT) headquarters in Canada has notified ALTA, an affiliate member of FIT, that the Second International Translation Conference, “Translation, Transnation,” which was scheduled to take place in Beirut, Lebanon, from September 18 to 20, 2006, with the cooperation and assistance of FIT, has been postponed. Information concerning a rescheduled conference date will be sent to ALTA and other affiliates as soon as that information is known.

In my waking Borgesian fantasy I imagine us doing a reverse translators’ strike. Instead of refusing to translate anything of any of the belligerents we translate everything — every curse, every cry, every order to fire, every pleading for mercy, every idiocy, every lie, we translate it all and all can understand all and the tower of Babel is returned to pre-history and we to our sanity….

Print PDF

The most famous Lebanese American you know sends a letter to President Bush, the man he helped put in office, and says: talk to your daddy. [Excuse me. I am spittin' mad. Thanks Ralph.]

AMY GOODMAN: “Tell us what you wrote to President Bush.”

RALPH NADER: “I wrote him a letter that basically described the need for him to get advice from his father and Brent Scowcroft and James Baker about how he should deal with this Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which of course violates a whole range of international treaties and Geneva Conventions, to which the United States has been a longtime signatory. And the first priority that Bush should adopt is to recognize that the U.S.’s indiscriminate support of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon — ports and hospital and roads and wheat silos and residential areas — puts a responsibility on the President, who is shipping a lot of tax dollars to Israel, as well as a lot of weapons, to put a stop to this through a ceasefire and to take a stronger initiative in resolving the core problem, which is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

Bush Responsible

Man, if this isn’t Greek Lebanese tragedy I don’t know what is. America’s hero, Ralph Nader, parents born in Lebanon, runs as a third party candidate against Al Gore and George Bush. The race is very very tight. Almost all of Nader’s friends ask him to bow out, to ask his supporters to vote for Gore. Nader: negative. Bush and Gore so close you couldn’ta shimmed an opening between them. Right Wing court decides in favor of Bush. Bush aids, abets war addicts: does no thing for 5 years about Israel Palestine. Israel says it is planning to blow up Hizbollah. Bush says nap time. Lebanon goes up in flames. 35,000 Americans in Lebanon flee for their lives. Lebanese flee for their lives, only without US help. They can’t get over the bombed out bridges. Many die. Lebanese democracy shrapneled to death, maybe even burned alive by posphorous bombs. Ralph Nader writes Bush a letter. Tragic.

Print PDF

Anthony Shadid, one of the best writing about Iraq for the Washington Post, is of Lebanese descent. He is now in Lebanon – dateline Tyre.

“Where’s my father? Where’s my father?” asked Mahmoud Srour, an 8-year-old whose face was burned beyond recognition after an Israeli missile struck the family’s car Sunday. His mother, Nouhad, lurched toward his hospital bed, her eyes welling with tears.

“Is he coming?” he asked her.

“Don’t worry about your father,” she said, her words broken by sobs.

Barely conscious, bewildered, he lay with his eyes almost swollen shut. His head lolled toward her. A whisper followed.

“Don’t cry, mother,” he told her.

There’s more. You couldn’t get closer with a hidden camera.

Civilian Toll Mounts in Lebanon Conflict

Minivans, taxis, cars on the road fleeing, having been told by the Israelis to get out; some of them waving white flags. Israeli helicopter gunships overhead, attacking, attacking. What is in the heads of these young men and women? What are they thinking as they see the vehicles below them, reaching unsafe speeds on the highway, swerving around smoking hulks of cars that went before? Are they acting on some secret information, some whisper from God, that the white minivan has Hezbollah gunmen inside? Are they watching the car stop and load two wounded bodies into the trunk of the car and thinking “those are terrorists, they shall not survive?” Or are they simply, instinctually, excited by blood all around them and pulling the triggers, celebrating the smoke and the flames? Do the people running fearfully far below them seem like insects scattering in a panic of fear? Oh, Israel, what has become of you?

I am not a believer but I wish I were. My God would have a waiting period for those entering into His gardens. All the corpses created by each supplicant’s actions whould show off their wounds — until understanding came. After washing the wounds, rejoining the arms to the torsos, molding the flesh on the faces back to the original laughter and hope they would be allowed to walk in the garden, though perhaps never in the sweetest spots — where the canyon wren sing and the hummingbirds sip side by side in the glens.

Meanwhile, Condelezza Rice is grinning and mugging for the cameras in a stop over to Beirut. The headlines shouting about her bid for an urgent ceasefire even while the U.S. is sending post haste replacements for the weapons and ammunition so murderously used.

I don’t think English has words enough for the 24o kinds of disgust churning in the human heart at such activity.

Print PDF