JUST INSIDE THE DOOR
Jordan, June
JUST INSIDE THE DOOR June Jordan Eyewitness in Lebanon When American pundits talk about "The Middle East," they mean Israel: what favors or what threatens Israeli interests. And so. for example,...
...And I'm back...
...I saw death and I heard death and death is not beautiful, and sometimes the lamentations for the dead clouded the air...
...If 1 had not recently traveled to Lebanon, 1 would probably note this currently commonplace omission as "disquieting" or "odd...
...I went to Lebanon because 1 believe that Arab peoples and Arab Americans occupy the lowest, the most reviled spot in the racist mind of America...
...I saw a six-year-old girl with no family left, and a parking lot full of orphan bovs and girls...
...Hence, when you come upon a listing of Middle Eastern states in our own media, you rarely will find Lebanon anywhere on the page...
...Jordan, and Turkey "to the North...
...What did I see in Lebanon...
...When the story came out...
...Today there is scarcely a structure in all of Beirut that does not bear the markings of shrapnel...
...I saw a poor, dusty stretch of difficult earth between the sea and the mountains...
...Why isn't it general knowledge that Israel "occupies" Southern Lebanon in absolute violation of international law...
...My life requires perpetual revolt against a double standard that puts me on the Easily Invisible side of the ledger, the Don't Matter and No Count side of things, the Be Good/Keep Quiet/ Say "Thank You" side of the equation...
...that amounted to 14 percent of the entire population...
...refugee camp at Qana appeared, accompanied by still photos from a video film of the entire assault...
...Lebanon is not overwhelmingly Christian or Jewish or European...
...I saw overwhelming variations on grief beyond all language...
...These were refugees taking shelter inside the U.N...
...I heard Prime Minister Rafik Hariri saying...
...This is my eyewitness reaction to the Israeli sixteen-day war against Lebanon...
...I saw a man bereft of his wife and nine children...
...compound, and the Israelis knew their exact location...
...June Jordan, (he poet, is professor of Afriam-American Studies at the University of California-Berkeley...
...Arab peoples regard Lebanon as the heart of Arab culture, and for a long lime almost every political and artistic movement in the world found its way into the cafes and secret meeting places of Beirut...
...At last, here was incontrovertible evidence of Israeli lies and Israeli savagery that no one could now refute...
...It is not well-tempered...
...Resolution 425...
...I savored sweet coffee reasons for solidarity with Lebanese resistance to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred and assault...
...Surely even Bill Clinton would be forced to become less unconditional in his support of Israel...
...This is my eyewitness reaction to the country and the people of Lebanon...
...It's very small...
...I saw the darkness and I felt the chill and I beheld the squalor of what we like to call "refugee camps...
...That video is the Rodney King video of the Middle East, but Arab life is less than and lower than African-American life, and so nothing happened...
...May 6. 1996...
...It's half the size of Israel, which is the size of Massachusetts...
...Lebanon is not white...
...And I'm real...
...And Lebanon is real...
...Lebanon maintains the only democratic Arab government...
...That resolution has never been revoked—or enforced...
...And even including what's left of the 300.000-plus refugees who sought shelter there after their expulsion from Palestine in 1948...
...But I went there, to Lebanon...
...And Lebanon is on the wrong side, just like me...
...and the sovereign rights of the people of Lebanon...
...Everywhere you see soldiers and gigantic construction cranes revising the scenery before your eyes...
...And this poisonous pretense to the contrary seems to me insolent and ominous, at best...
...Perhaps even the multi-billion-dollar habit of aid to Israel would finally be reexamined and curtailed...
...I saw the mangled materials of a house bombed into nothing usable...
...What's the brainstorm here: that if Israel and the United States agree to "disappear" Lebanon, then whenever Israel follows up its various invasions of that tiny place with outright annexation, nobody will notice because Lebanon will have become nowhere, anyway...
...We have the feeling of proud" because not everyone had died...
...actually, Lebanese men who live in Lebanon and who have won substantial representation in the Lebanese parliament and who are fighting the illegal Israeli occupation of Lebanese land...
...In an exclusive report by Robert Fisk, the facts of Israeli knowledge of the massacre at the U.N...
...When Israel forced more than 400,000 Lebanese citizens to flee from their homes and villages three months ago...
...It's an Arab nation...
...calling for the immediate and unconditional Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon...
...for example, the country and the people of Lebanon no longer exist because Israeli leaders have decided to focus upon Syria...
...I went hecause I believe that to be Muslim and to be Arab is to be a people subject to the most uninhibited, lethal bullying possible...
...I thought: Here was the Rodnev King video of the Middle East...
...How does it happen that Hezbollah becomes synonymous with "terrorist" when members and followers of Hezbollah are...
...the total population of Lebanon is half that of Israel...
...The Israelis murdered 200 women and children...
...But my relief was naive...
...A truly huge number of women and children were suddenly rendered homeless...
...This incontrovertible evidence of Israel's planned massacre received nominal notice on the news and then, like Lebanon, it disappeared...
...I watched a woman setting out a jasmine plant that would probably manage the atmosphere and...
...the top headline of England's The Independent declared: Massacre Film Puts Israel in Dock...
...possibly, flourish...
...What will it take before "terrorist" becomes the adjective attached to Israeli depredations that include massacres of civilians and the calculated destruction of water reservoirs and electrical power plants'* When will we establish and abide by a No Exceptions policy: the same one standard for valuation of human life and the moral measurement of our deeds'* On Monday...
...Resolution 425 in 1978...
...The downtown area resembles the ruins of Pompeii...
...Why isn't it general knowledge that the United States successfully introduced U.N...
Vol. 60 • August 1996 • No. 8
