Fear and Blogging in Nazareth
Should the Hizbullah start shelling my town more heavily, I’m afraid we might turn into a ghost city like Haifa.
Beny Shlevich, in an email to Open Source, 7/18/06.
We’ve been writing back and forth with photographers on both sides of the Israel/Lebanon border this week. Through Flickr, we found Beny Shlevich, a university student at the Technion in Haifa. He was planning to be there for exams this week, but since the bombings started the university has been closed. He’s been camping out in Nazareth Illit, his hometown.
Haifa, reflected [Beny Shlevich / Flickr]
An Israeli soldier takes the train home for the weekend [Beny Shlevich / Flickr]
So far, we’ve had a single rocket that fell on my hometown, and several more in our vicinity; luckily, no casualties were suffered in my region. None of my friends here spend their time in their bombshelters, and the town seems to be almost normal…I’m hearing stories from my many friends in Haifa that this city…has now pretty much turned in to a ghost city. Everything’s closed, people are hiding most of the time in bombshelters, many of them are panicked… I myself don’t plan on leaving, but things can change rapidly — we might be serving as targets soon.
Beny Shlevich, in an email to Open Source, 7/18/06.
Most Israelis are supporting the shelling of Lebanon. I’m trying to keep in contact with the Lebanese side through several of their blogs, and try to explain my view (in short: I regret the hurting of civilians everywhere, but Israel has the furthermost duty to protect its own citizens, and to do this we must subdue the terrorist Hizbullah. It was the responsibility of the Lebanese people to disarm the Hizbullah under Resolution 1559, and since it hasn’t, it now regretfully has to face the consequences of Israel bombing a foe which uses the Lebanse infrastructure).
Beny Shlevich, in an email to Open Source, 7/18/06.
July 18th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Just a note, so as not to confuse readers: the photo of the soldier comming home is over a year old, so it has little to do directly with the current conflict.
July 19th, 2006 at 8:11 am
It sounds, just based on this last quoted paragraph.. that Israeli lives are worth more than Lebanese lives? Obviously I doubt he meant to say that… but in fact.. he said it. Such old fashioned thinking in such a modern interconnected world.
July 19th, 2006 at 10:03 am
bicyclemark, he didn’t say that Israeli life worth more than Lebanese, but he did say that a country’s DUTY is to protect its own citizens and to prefer, yes - prefer, their lives over those of other countries.
July 19th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
bicyclemark, at no point did I say that. As humans, all citizens’ lives are equally important. That’s what I try to emphasize when commenting on Lebanese blogs - I regret the loss of any civilian life. However, I’m sure you’ll agreee that the impost responsobility of any nation is to take care of the wellbeing of its own citizens, and only then of citizens of other nations. That’s what states are for. Therefor, yes, the Israeli government has to see before it’s eyes its own people, naturally. Just as the french government thinks of the French to begin with, etc.
July 20th, 2006 at 4:25 am
Does Shlevich really think that the Israeli actions in Lebanon or in Gaza are going to save Israeli lives and protect them into the future. Come on, if you want to say “You hit us, now we have the right to hit you back”, at least you’re being honest. Real peace for Israel requires REAL justice for Palestine. An examination of the population stats and land ownership stats in November 1947 when Truman forced the U.N. to give away 56% of Palestine to Zionism, and the actions 30 years earlier by great powers France and Britain (Sykes-Picot and Balfour Declaration) which were in direct contravention with Husayn-McMahon letters AND the democratic consensus in the Levant which Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 King-Crane Commission report put down on paper (it’s on the web) WILL LEAD US TO THE CONCLUSION THAT IN FACT ISRAEL STOLE THE LAND FROM THE PALESTINIANS (if you are inclined toward biblical arguments, don’t forget to see teh works of Israel Finkelstein, Gosta Ahlstrom, etc.). Now, when Israel throws away a chance through Oslo to MAKE PEACE by only giving back 22% of the land (by the way, THAT’S a U.N. Resolution also, 242 and 338) because people like Sharon and Netanyahu were opposed from the beginning to Oslo, or when in 2002 on the brink of its invasion of the West Bank to destroy the P.A. (the continuation of Sharon’s lifelong ambition, as in Lebanon in 1982, to obiterate any meaningful Palestinian entity) Israel rejected out of hand the Saudi Plan as endorsed by the Arab League in Beirut for full normalization of relations, I’d say that ANY GOVERNMENT truly seeking to protect its citizens and NOT engage in further greedy colonisation would have left no stone unturned to make those peace plans work. But please don’t turn around and claim that Israel is protecting its citizens with ALL SUBSEQUENT ACTIONS ON THE GROUND IN GAZA; WEST BANK AND LEBANON, after turning down a chance for peace. You say you can’t trust ‘em? I’d add, given your history, they certainly can’t trust you either, nor should they.
July 20th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
First of all, Zagidog, please comment to the issue at hand. Just spewing your opinions with little relevance to the post at hand is fun, but doesn’t look too good.
You have a lot to say about Palestine and Israel. Fine. There’s a lot to be debated on this issue, and I myself havn’t made up my mind on some of these subjects. But right now, we’re under fire from HIZBULLAH, in LEBANON. They’re not fighting for the Palestinians. They’re almost completely open about the fact that they’re fighting just because the dislike Israel (to say the least). They havn’t made demands about our behavious in Palestine. In fact, since Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 2000, the Hizbullah has no moral ground at all. But hey, people like yourself will always gladyl distort reason and histroy and legitimize them, right?
On the (unlrelated) subject of Palestine, it’s fun to scream as to how “Israel stole the land from the Palestinians”. Of course, you would have to turn a blind eye on the parts of the region’s histroy that don’t fit the theory. Like, for instance, the fact that the UN’s UNSCOP Commission on dividing the land in 1947 have suggested land division in such a form that the Palestinian state would receive vast amounts of land to use as their country, much bigger than the current Green Line (included in the Arab state in that proposal was my home town, BTW) (http://tinyurl.com/nfl28). In my view, it would mean Israel wouldn’t have any capability of defending itself, and that the country could be easily cut off within the first day of a battle. NEVERTHELESS, the Zionist leadershop agreed to it. People were extaticly dancing in the streets when the UN approved this plan. What did the Palestinians do? The next day they openned war on us, and spesifically, they immediately started murdering civilians in the streets (little seems to have changed). Soon, they were joined by another FIVE arab states. I’d say that’s pretty clear that they declined the generous offer made to them by the UN.
The above is, of course, only one of the more obvious proofs that we didn’t steal our land from them. But hey, don’t let me bother you while you distort history.
And if you have any further comments, please keep them relevant - i.e., concerning Hizbullah’s attacks on Israel, not the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
PS: yes, I honestly believe that Israel’s attacks in Lebanon will lessen the chance of my home being flattened (harder for me to say about Gaza, quite honestly I havn’t been watching the situation there as closely). And yes, by the way, I also maintain that the Hizbullah hitting us first, completely unprovoced, gives us a right to retaliate.
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
Schlevisch, well, at least you can admit you haven’t come to any conclusions about what you believe about some longstanding patent historical data (Jewish National Fund owning 6.59% of land in Palestine as the U.N. gave Zionism 56%, or the reverse, Palestinians owning over 93% of the land as they are supposed to accept 44%. And you call that generous because they’d be better off than they are today? It sounds like the same logic behind the Barak-Clinton myth of Israel’s generous offer at Camp David.
Sorry you don’t think the “root causes” (a term now cleverly being co-opted by Bush and Rice even as they choose to ignore them) are relevant to your situation, which is: your country is surrounded by enemies because of a very long historical process during which perceptions of Israel have grown increasingly darker. If you want to keep focusing on each moment of history and cry about whose fault it was, and obviously it was Hezbollah’s agression which triggered this current war, then you’ll be spending your entire lifetime leapfrogging from one confrontation to another with the Arab and Islamic world. And don’t forget Hezbollah came into being as a result of Sharon’s invasion and the long Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Stop crying and start supporting things like U.N. 242, the Arab League’s Saudi plan (rejected by Sharon so he could invade the West Bank and destroy the Palestinian Authority in 2002), the Oslo plan BASED on U.N. 242 and not the cheap peace of Barak’s 85% of 22% which Israel improved upon AT TABA before Bush and Sharon came to power. Have you been active in Israel pushing hard to achieve a comprehensive peace such as these efforts? If not, live with the consequences, and the writing is on the wall.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:39 am
One moment of history that Zagidog is not focussing on it the “improved upon AT TABA” deal to which Arafat said “no”- and thenthe signal for all hell to break loose. That was a good deal indeed, but the PA chose violence and helped to bring Sharon to power.
The peace movement lost a great deal of support as well.
August 7th, 2006 at 6:23 am
Again, review the land ownership %s and the population %s in 1947 (Jews were one-third but got 56% in a non-democratic U.N. process). Since the Palestinians have been continually compromised since Balfour in 1917 by outside powers, NO DEAL is a GOOD DEAL. IF the outgoing Barak and the outgoing Clinton HAD offered FULL SOVERIGNTY on the FULL 22% of Palestine called for in U.N. 242 (note how Israelis and the U.S. are now calling the fulfillment of the U.N resolution in Lebanon!!!), Israel would have had a deal. Or, the Saudi plan offered by the Arab League on the eve of Sharon’s invasion of the West Bank to destroy the P.A., or the principles in the Geneva agreement. But Israel didn’t like any of these offers because as in 1948 when Ben-Gurion saw a chance to go beyond the 56% to the 78% of the armistice lines, Israelis would like to expand their territory at the risk of continuous war.