History Repeats Itself

Tonight we have been terrorized by couple dozens of Israeli F16's flying very low above our heads. It sounded like a continuous thunder in the sky, one that would never stop. All over Beirut for over 30 minutes, the sound was terrifying. Even residents in the North of Lebanon could hear them. What is the goal of this? What is the reasoning? Oddly enough, while all this was happening at around midnight I received a local news alert stating the following: "Israel announced it agreed to a 48-hour suspension of its air activity in Lebanon to investigate the massacre in Qana." How ironic! I even had hard time reading it because of the loud sound of these planes.
Maybe its the IAF's way to say not to miss them too much, they will be back!!!

In the meantime, I pay my respect to the poor children killed yesterday in a horrible strike in Qana. I pay my respects to the 250 other children killed so far in this war which has caused some 700 deaths and over 2,000 injured. I also pay my respect to the 100+ civilians killed in Qana in 1996, during another Israeli onslaught on Lebanon. It seems history does repeat itself.
mrtez


(Qana, July 30th 2006)


Traumatized Lebanese children may suffer
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Once again, Lebanon's children are seeing what they shouldn't - visions of death and destruction that may scar them for life. And those are the survivors.
A third of Lebanese killed in Israeli attacks against Hezbollah guerrillas are children, the U.N. humanitarian chief said. Experts warn the conflict is taking a heavy psychological toll as well.
"You can't run away from the sound of bombs," said Nadine Maalouf, a child psychologist who has been working with traumatized children.
Lebanese are no strangers to violence, having suffered through the 1975-90 civil war and Israel's 1982 invasion. But parents who lived through those conflicts had hoped to shield their children.
Instead, they have found themselves helpless in the face of relentless Israeli airstrikes on guerrilla positions in Beirut and southern Lebanon that have flattened entire neighborhoods.
"There was a plane that made a pffff sound," 11-year-old Noor el-Hoda Sherri said, recalling her terror during the bombardment of her Haret Hreik neighborhood, which destroyed her apartment building.
"My heart was hurting. It was pounding very fast," she said, squeezing her chest. "I was thinking, 'This is it, we are going to die. This is our destiny.' I said, 'God will now punish me for all the things I did wrong'" - then listed childhood transgressions such as lying to her mother or pushing around a younger girl.
Ali Kalash, 14, said that when an Israeli missile hit Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV studios in Haret Hreik on July 13, he and a dozen friends - anticipating more attacks - scribbled their names on a water tank near their homes "so that we can recognize our homes when the war is over."

His family's apartment building was destroyed in the strike, and they sought refuge in the same underground shelter as Noor el-Holda and her family.
"I was thinking we're all going to die and we'd never come back," Ali said.
U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland estimated that a third of the hundreds of people killed in Lebanon were children. UNICEF spokeswoman Susan Lagana said Friday that Egeland's figure was based on numbers compiled by UNICEF.
"There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children then armed men," Egeland said Friday at U.N. headquarters in New York. "It has to stop."
At least 443 people - mostly civilians - have been confirmed killed in Lebanon since fighting broke out after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid. On Thursday, Lebanon's health minister put the number at as many as 600 civilians.
Fifty-two Israelis have been killed in the fighting, including 19 civilians who died in Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel. Three were children - two boys, ages 4 and 8, from the town of Nazareth, and a 15-year-old girl from the village of Mughar. All were Israeli Arabs..