The e-mail that started the blog

I wrote this mass email to my friends two days ago. Many wrote back, saying I should start a blog. These are bits and pieces of the e-mail, parts spruced up.

I got back three weeks ago and it's been 'go' ever since. I went down to the south the day after I got back, to help a friend shoot a movie. We went to Srifa, a destroyed village. We stood in what seemed to be the rubble of what once was a store. We brought out the camera and began shooitng. A Hezbollah guy drove up on his vespa (only they aren't so nice here but
look like they went throug 'Nam). He thought we were spies, though he didn't say it. But it was obvious because he kept cruising past us, surveilling us. Then we saw a clust bomb. Well, after much debating whether it was a cluster bomb, we decided, 3 against 1, that it was. The UN is constantly driving through the south on its missions. So we waited until some UN troops drove past. We tried to flag them down. They thought we were waiving and waived back. That's all we got. So while I think I prayed to God in the first time in ten years or more, we climbed off the rubble and went back to the car.

I've been working on some articles that have taken me to places completely destroyed or completely filled with oil when the Israelis hit a government fuel-storage tank. About 65,000 tons of oil burnt, evaporating to remain in our atmosphere causing major health hazards. About 20,000 tons spilt into the sea. Three months after the spill, the waves have a nice sheen to them and tar litters the sand and rocky beaches. I travelled the coast with this group called Greenline who are coordinating the clean up.
Last Monday I went with a UN demining team to write a story on cluster bombs. We went to this village called Ayt al Shaab where one of the most intense battles between Hezbollah and Israel occured. there are maybe 10 houses left out of 100. It is really nuts and so heart breaking. I was travelling with a Japanese journalist, an ABC correspondent and Liam, a Montreal photojournalist. The village kids were so excited to see a 'nice' car and foreign faces. They chased after us, while we went to this little girl, Marwa's house. On the way there, One building pretty gutted from shelling had grafitti on it. It was an Israeli flag on the wall, a nice 'fuck you' from Israeli soldiers.
We arrived to Marwa's house. Her family, like many in south lebanon, subsist on their olive grove harvest. She and two friends walked to her grandparents house and her friend stepped on a cluster bomb. He has shrapnel in his lungs and heart. Her cousin has shrapnel in her head and intestine. Marwa was lucky--she got it in her knees and left arm. None of the villagers pick olives anymore and what little money they hoped for is gone. No one, since the three months fighting has stopped-- not the UN or Lebanese Army-- has come to diffuse cluster bombs. Poor people don't know how to lobby very well I guess.
Every Hezbollah stronghold I went, the people gave us the shirts off their backs. Their attitude wasn't Bush's description of 'Islamo-fascism' at all. An Islamo-fascist wouldn't communicate to non-Muslims. Yet these 'Islamo-fascists' didn't care I wasn't covered. They didn't care Liam was Canadian or Lina, the ABC correspondent from England, two country's that turned their backs on these people as they suffered. All they wanted us to see is: what kind of life is this? This is not a life and this is why we are gladly martyred while fighting both the Israel and our own Lebanese government in the hope that one day, in the future, our efforts will be fruitful.
The Lebanese government barely acknowledges the poor south, populated mostly bu Shi'ites that form Hezbollah's base. The government barely built any infrastrcuture or schools and hospitals for the area. Then Hezbollah came in to fill the void.
The reason why Shi'ites feel they must fight Israel is two-fold: about 60,000 land mines Israel left in southern lebanon that continue to maim and kill villagers, and many villagers afraid to use their land for agriculture or grazing flocks because of the mines. So what little means of survivial and income they have is lost. Israel planted the mines during its occupation of Southern Lebanon that ended in May 2000. In 2004 Israeli Superior courts ruled that the Jewish state must return a complete land mine map to Lebanon (so you can't say it was an anti-semtic ruling since it was their own courts). Israel blighted the ruling and never gave back the maps. Which was one of the pretexts that Hezbollah used to launch this past summer's war (that and the issue of three detainees that are held by Israel and that Israel Superior courts ruled should be returned to Lebanon). So Israel is not just violated international laws but also their own national laws.
Well, that's all.