For Israel's Security...

Zainab Fawqi-Sleem and the Question of Lebanon

..by Ramzi Kysia

Yesterday, I shed my first tears for Lebanon.

Yesterday, I visited Houla, a stone's throw from the
Israeli border.

Yesterday, I was discovered by Zainab Fawqi-Sleem - a
young, Lebanese woman who was killed in Houla,
alongside her sister-in-law, Selma, on July 15th.
Zainab is but one of over 1,300 innocents killed in
this war, but she is the one who found me.

On October 31st, 1948, in one of the few massacres of
the Nakba to occur inside Lebanon, proto-Israeli
militas seized the town of Houla, setting off bombs
and burning down several houses. They took eighty-five
people captive, and summarily executed eighty-two of
the them. There's a memorial to the massacre in the
center of town, not far from homes smashed flat by
this current war.

According to news reports, Israel bombed and shelled
Houla on at least ten separate occasions during this
last war. Israeli soldiers repeatedly invaded the town
and occupied people's homes. They remain, in one home,
in one corner of the village, to this day. If I had
run across those soldiers, I wonder what I could have
said to them? What might they have said to me?

I was in Houla yesterday with LebanonSolidarity, a
local relief and resistance organization. I was in
Houla to assess how we might be able to help the
people living there. We brought medicines, and
arranged for a doctor to come by and give free medical
exams. We took down the names and ages of the people
made homeless by the bombings, so we might bring them
some donated clothes.

Throughout South Lebanon, there are thousands of
destroyed homes and buildings, and tens- of-thousands
of homeless. Some towns, like Bint Jbeil and Khiam,
are more rubble than anything else. Traveling through
South Lebanon today, I am reminded so much of
Palestine, of Nablus and Jenin and Gaza.

For Israel's security, Arabs must not possess
functioning towns or secure homes.

More than anything, the people of Houla need drinking
water. The town's main pump was destroyed during the
war, and the $20,000 needed to replace it is beyond
the scope of our group's resources. And, again, I am
reminded of Palestine and the theft of local water
sources, taken in the West Bank to supply Israeli
settlements with lush, green, desert lawns and private
swimming pools.

For Israel's security, Arabs must not possess secure
access to potable water.

Short hours before Zainab was killed in Houla, Israel
bombed a powerplant in al-Jieh, just south of Beirut.
Al-Jieh was one of several powerplants across Lebanon
that were destroyed during this war.

For Israel's security, Arabs must not possess
electricity.

As in Gaza, where Israel has repeatedly shot at and
shelled Palestinian beachgoers, the al -Jieh bombing
has stolen Lebanon's oceanfront. The bombing destroyed
the powerplant's oil tanks, and ruptured the berm
built to protect against a spill. Millions of gallons
of heavy fuel oil has leaked into the Mediterranean,
ruining Lebanon's once pristine beaches.

For Israel's security, Arabs must not possess beaches.


The ancient port city of Tyre, some twenty-five
kilometers from Houla, has one of Lebanon's last,
remaining, usable beaches. Some Lebanese still go
there, to swim and visit with family or friends and,
for a while, escape the disaster that is South Lebanon
today. Young men with slicked-back brush cuts pass a
beer among themselves, as they watch women in French
bikinis jump in and out of the surf. In the heart of
"Hezbollah" country, at the center of George Bush's
"Islamo-Facist state-within-a-state", you can still
see children building sandcastles here.

But, farther out in the ocean, the Israeli navy
maintains its blockade of Lebanon. Nothing is allowed
in or out. In Washington D.C., Congressman Tom Lantos
has blocked all U.S. humanitarian aid until Lebanon's
government agrees to deploy UN troops along the border
with Syria, to stop and search all cross-border
traffic - something that Syria has already said it
will not permit. Farther south, Israel's long-running
blockade of Gaza has caused, in the UN's words, a
"humanitarian catastrophe" as malnutrition rates there
skyrocket.

For Israel's security, Arabs must not possess open
borders, or engage in free trade with the world.

Like so many places in South Lebanon, the roads in and
around Houla are severely damaged from the war. South
Lebanon's streets have suddenly come to resemble their
sister thoroughfares in Palestine. There, Israeli
bulldozers have combined with decades of enforced
neglect and the violence to birth a network of
degraded and barely passable roads. Here in Lebanon,
the same thing has been accomplished in a matter of
weeks by dropping over a billion dollars worth of
bombs and shells and tanks and soldiers on the South.

For Israel's security, Arabs must not possess modern
roads.

>From the hills of Houla, one can see Israel/Palestine.
Just over the border, and even before the war, Israel
had permanently tethered a videodrone blimp, visible
for all to see. The drone is constantly filming Houla,
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Overhead,
the low, humming sounds of Israel's unmanned
reconnaissance planes have become another permanent
part of the landscape.

For Israel's security, Arabs must not possess privacy.

On July 14th, 2006, Ibrahim Sleem owned a modest ranch
house in Houla. Within the walls of his home now lay a
surreal jumble of charred furniture, clothes and
children's toys, broken glass, scattered fragments of
wood, and chunks of concrete fallen from the walls and
ceiling. Sixteen members of his family, including five
children, gathered in this home on July 15th, for a
quiet meal. As they were visiting after dinner, a bomb
or shell exploded among them, killing Ibrahim's
daughter Selma and his daughter-in-law, Zainab. It was
an American ordinance that destroyed this home, and
killed Zainab and Selma. The writing on the bomb's
fragments is in English, not Hebrew. It happened at
precisely 8:28pm. The clock that used to hang on the
wall is now forever frozen at that moment.

Outside the home is a small shed, with tools hanging
on its walls. Next to the shed is a modest flower
garden, and a beautiful Eucalyptus tree. More than all
of the destruction I have seen in these past weeks,
much more than simply the damage I saw inside the
Sleem family home-- that shed, that garden, and that
tree tore a hole inside of me.

Someone lived in this place. Someone used those tools
to maintain their home. Someone planted that garden,
and carefully tended it. Someone sat beneath that tree
in the afternoons and enjoyed a cup of tea. Someone
loved this place.

Zainab Fawqi-Sleem was twenty-two years old and two
months pregant when, for Israel's security, she was
killed. Zainab's nine month old daughter, Nadine, will
never know her mother's love. Zainab's unborn child
will never know life at all.

Living in Lebanon today, I am left with a single,
unanswered question. It's a terribly important
question. It is a vitally important question.

The United States speaks for Israel's security from
all we Islamo-Facist terrorist Arabs living throughout
the Middle East. The United Nations Interim Force
speaks for Israel's security here in Lebanon. During
the war, Hosni Mubarak, the dictator of Egypt, spoke
for Israel's security. During the war, King Abdullah,
the dictator of Jordan, spoke for Israel's security.
In Marjayoun, a mostly Christian village in South
Lebanon, the Lebanese Army even offered the Israelis
tea when they invaded.

For the West, and for all its pet Arab dictators, this
is the proper moral response to Israeli terror. We
Arabs must not only accept all of the bombs and the
blockades. We must not only accept the destruction of
our homes and dreams. We must, in fact, rejoice in our
own devastation. This is, after all, the joyous
"birth-pangs of a new Middle East."

My question, our question, Lebanon's question, is
simply this: Who will speak for Zainab Fawqi-Sleem?

-----
Ramzi Kysia is a Lebanese-American essayist and
activist. He is currently working with
LebanonSolidarity.org to resist war and renew
shattered communities in South Lebanon.

www.safsaf.org