Silence on Nahr al-Bared
- 07.31.2007 - 11:16 AMFor the past three months, a Palestinian refugee camp in the Middle East has been under attack, resulting in the death of hundreds of people and the displacement of nearly half of the camp’s 40,000 residents. Yet the United Nations Security Council has not held an emergency session to condemn the attack. Nor have the governments of France and Britain issued statements condemning the “atrocities” against the Palestinian refugees in the Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon. For those who may wonder why there is no public outcry, the answer is simple. The army that is attacking the camp with heavy artillery and helicopter warships is not the IDF. It’s an Arab army—the Lebanese Army.
Palestinian refugee camps in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon have long served as bases for various terror groups. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the IDF has been forced over the past few years to launch pinpoint operations against Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad terrorists who find shelter among civilians. Most of the Israeli military operations have drawn sharp criticism from the international community and the Arab world, even when the raids resulted only in the killing or capture of the terrorists.
I was one of the journalists covering the battle in the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp in 2002. Then, the Israelis lost 23 soldiers because they were reluctant to use artillery and tanks out of fear that civilians would be hurt. I still remember how IDF officers briefed their soldiers before the operation, asking them to do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties. Although more than 80 percent of the victims of the ensuing battle were members of armed groups that had operated freely in the camp, many human rights organizations (and some governments) continue to refer to the events there as the “Jenin massacre.”
In the case of Nahr al-Bared, the story is completely different. No one seems to care about the fact that dozens of civilians have been killed in the fighting between Lebanese troops and terrorists belonging to the al Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam group. A Palestinian who fled the camp two weeks ago told me that over 200 houses have been completely destroyed in the fighting, and that bodies have been lying in the streets for weeks.
“We brought this tragedy upon ourselves,” he admitted. “We allowed this group of terrorists to establish their bases inside the camp and now we are paying the price. The world doesn’t care about us anymore because they say we had harbored the terrorists and provided them with food and medicine.” Have Palestinian refugees in other camps in the Middle East drawn the same conclusion? The answer is a big no. Militiamen and armed gangs continue to operate in most of these camps, especially in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon. The Lebanese army and the IDF still have a lot of difficult work ahead of them. Sadly, many civilians will continue to pay the price—unless they wake up one morning and decide to expel the terrorists from their streets.
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July 31st, 2007 at 2:24 PM
This article was clearly written by a zionist agent at the behest of the Israeli Mossad.Even the most cursory examination of both the type font and the clearly talmudic use of language and sentence construction, not to mention the conclusive phrenological evidence, as to shape and size of the letters and the proboscis of the author, leave no doubt whatsoever as to his real ethnicity, nor as to his communist -capitalist leanings, nor to the scarcely masked, sinister, world-dominating impulse that gave rise to this entire piece of zionist propaganda.Khaled Abu Toameh, indeed!
July 31st, 2007 at 5:54 PM
Here’s a little basic media epistemology–for something to be “known,” i.e., presented and acknowledged as a “fact,” an actual event in the physical world is not only unnecessary, it is insufficient. Thus a fabrication–”IDF massacre in Jenin”–can become a fact. Likewise, civilian carnage in Nahr al-Bared, an actual event in real time, does not exist in the epistemic media world. Why? Because “facts,” in order to exist, require a supporting network of ready-made purveyors and consumers of an already agreed upon narrative. Civilian carnage in Nahr al-Bared is outside the narrative of Israeli “oppression;” it is something similiar to the under to non-reported black-on-black crime in the U.S. Thus, it has no standing, no media quiddity; moreover, it has no anti-semitic and anti-Zionist academic whores willing to exchange personal credibility for Saudi petrodollars; it has no similarly disposed EU appeasers and their Eurotrash media bulletin boards who condemn violence only when a Jew’s finger is on the trigger. And even if the usual Jew and Israeli-baiting retailers of these kinds of “violence flares in the Mideast” stories were prepared to condemn loss of life without concern for the PC credentials of the killers, there would be no audience for this. Imagine, if you will, trying to make a horror film with no monster. Left wing audiences need a Jew in the plot, or ticket sales will slump.
August 1st, 2007 at 12:22 AM
They should have gassed the miscreants two weeks ago - the families of terrorists are worthless dogs and it would be better if they were all dead instead of any more good Lebanese soldiers.
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:49 AM
double-think is the most obvious thing i learned when i was an adherent of left-wing and ecological groups.
when renmin ribao (the chinese newspaper “red flag”) appeared in the morning,my maoist fellow-students defended their view furiously.
unfortunately the statements were often contradictory from one day to the other.
what an effort to be able to defend each position in an absolute way,without showing any embarressment about what they said the day before! congratulation for this.
but also my other mates, who were member of more moderate groups or groups against nuclear energy showed the same brain-washing.
what is not in my way,doesn´t exist.
ok,democrats have the same problem,it´s just human,but as a grand-son of a pro-nazi grandfather and a son of a volunteer of world-war II,
i deplore my own deviation into left-wing absolutism.
what i want to say:
let´s just be true to oneanother and before all to ourselves.
there is a better world possible,as attac requires(but not in the way they try to get it),we should just not follow our closest aims,but think a little bit more about ,what will follow my actions.
the better world already happens every day of our life,when i can admit:
i didn´t tell you(and me) the truth,i only tried to establish my power.