"Thousands Flock to hills,parks, schools...No Place Safe From Bombs!"

[KoKo]

Thousands flock to hills, parks and schools, but no place safe from bombs

Jonathan Steele in Beirut
Thursday July 20, 2006
The Guardian

In small pockets of misery and distress tucked away across Beirut, thousands of Lebanese refugees are sheltering from Israel's relentless bombing.

Up to half a million people have been displaced throughout Lebanon, according to according to Roberto Laurenti, the Beirut representative of the United Nations Children's Fund, sparking a humanitarian disaster.

For many refugees to Beirut the first port of call is Sanayeh, a once attractive park no bigger than a London garden square. Two hundred people slept on the grass there last night. Another 4,800, including about 950 babies less than two years old, who arrived over the past few days have been sent to 28 Beirut schools which have opened their doors. Thousands more people from the south have moved to friends and relatives or rented flats. Many are in other towns or in villages in the mountains, well away from the border, though nowhere in Lebanon is entirely safe.

At a Beirut school run by the Sisters of Charity convent, mattresses on the floor have replaced desks and chairs. Hadije Jabar sits on one of them. On Tuesday she and nine people from her extended family piled into cars and bumped across fields for a terrifying journey to Beirut, a six-hour trip which normally takes two. They were just in time. Her home town of Srifa was hit by Israeli missiles yesterday, killing at least 17
-snip-

For Sister Genevieve, a middle-aged Lebanese nun at the convent, which is sheltering 160 people, the emergency is nothing new. Nor is the fact that as Christians they are helping Muslim families. "This is the fourth time we have taken refugees in," she says. "In 1975 and 1982 in the civil war, in 1996 when the Israelis were active in southern Lebanon, and now. But this time it's worse. The whole world, even France, has abandoned Lebanon. It's a disgrace. All the foreigners are leaving. The UN is sending its staff away. God will not abandon us."

more.......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1824642,00.html

[MadMaddie]

1. Americans need to visualize this happening in their own

neighborhood....

All of a sudden out the blue bombs start dropping....you and your neighbors have nothing to do with the assholes on the border of your state but your neighborhood and your cities are being systematically destroyed...and you have no where to go....

How would Americans respond?


Blame can be placed across the board but the bottom line is innocent civilians are being killed.....

[TomInTib]

2. Can you imagine if the scenario was flipped?

Can you?

The US would have glassed Lebanon.

[MadMaddie]

3. My thoughts exactly....

These Neocons better be careful for what they wish for....