First Anniversary of the Qana Massacre in Lebanon
By Ali Baghdadi
April 18, 1997
One year ago, on April 18, 1996 to be exact, 155 mm Israeli
shells donated by Uncle Sam rained down on Lebanese men, women, and children
taking refuge in a UN peace-keeping compound in Qana, southern Lebanon,
to escape Israeli air, sea, and land bombardment of their towns and villages,
and as a result, the bodies of 102 Arab civilians were shattered to pieces.
Leading up to the Qana massacre, 17 villages had been
flattened, over a half million people had been rendered homeless, more
than 200 had been murdered, and hundreds were wounded, in what was named
as operation "Grapes of Wrath". Israeli Prime Minister Peres,
who was granted the Nobel Prize for Peace, ordered the bombing blitz. The
entire world, with the exception of the White House, condemned this Nazi-like
barbaric attack conducted intentionally against defenseless civilians.
The UN compound in Qana has become a holocaust memorial
to remind the world what Zionist Jews are capable of. The hangar where
the lives of 102 victims were shattered to pieces has been left as it was.
Bits of shrapnel, broken furniture, twisted metal, burned blankets, bloody
toys are scattered on the floor. Nearby, the mass graves of these victims
have been covered in black marble and decorated with portraits of the martyrs.
Arabs and Muslims from every corner of the globe visit the site and promise
the dead this ugly crime will never be forgotten. The time will come when
the war criminals will be brought to justice and punished.
Butror Butros Ghali, though he was an obedient servant
of his American masters, lost his job as a UN Secretary General. He was
sacrificed at the altar of the Zionist masters who control the Oval Office.
His only crime during his four years of service was the issuing of a mild
UN report putting the blame for the Qana massacre on the Israeli government.
The UN commander, General Stanislaw Wozniak, rejected
the Israeli lies and called the attack unacceptable.
"Simply, you do not attack civilians. You do not
attack UN positions," he emphasized.
The massacre was an act of deliberate terror aimed at
punishing civilians for Tel-Aviv's failure to bring an end to Lebanese
resistance and determination to liberate their lands from Israeli occupation.
Israeli military men who participated in the slaughter
of Lebanese civilians said that the attack was justified; that they have
no regrets; and that those who were killed were just "a bunch of Arabs"
whose lives are not important.
The Israeli military commander who led these men declared
that this was a war and we must continue to fight like real fighters.
"We did our duty. They deserve to die because they
are only Arabs."
An Israeli soldier told "Kol Ha'Ir", an Israeli
magazine, "I obeyed the orders. My conscience does not bother me at
all. We should have fired more shells to kill more Arabs... One Arab more,
one Arab less, you know. Even the battery commander said that to us. Any
way, there are millions of Arabs."
Munira Taqi, who fled with her family to the UN compound
in Qana from their home in Jebal Buttum a few miles away, lost her husband
and an 8-year-old daughter. The mother who was shielded by her husband
was wounded in the legs. While sitting beneath photos of her slain loved
ones, she told newsmen who came to visit her:
"My child was on my lap and then she vanished. Shreds
of her pajamas were all that was left."
Her surviving 7-year-old daughter walks with a limp and
rarely speaks. Her left leg and arm are crippled.
In the town of Nabateya, a family of nine, including a
mother and 7 children (one a 4-day-old baby), were wiped out by a so-called
surgical strike. The father had left two days earlier to perform pilgrimage
in the Holy City of Mecca. The father now has no wife, no children and
no home to which to return. American technology, as shown over Lebanon,
Iraq and Libya, does work!
Earlier an ambulance with two women and four children
received a direct hit. None of its occupants through their history, to
intentionally and willingly direct their American supplied guns and rockets
against helpless refugees and commit an ugly massacre of defenseless women
and children, just survived. American weapons over Muslim and Arab have
proven to be effective!
The questions that puzzles every decent human being any
where on earth are the following:
How can anyone find it acceptable for a people, who had
themselves experienced many calamities because these refugees chose to
remain close to their homes and villages?! How can anyone imagine that
people, who had suffered centuries of oppression, are able to target innocent
civilians taking shelter in a camp belonging to a UN peace-keeping unite,
despite repeated UN personnel's appeals to stop the shelling?! How can
any man or woman comprehend how Jews, who build memorials to remind people
of the "holocaust", have the power to drop "smart"
bombs over towns and villages inhabited by real people?! How can any individual
understand how Jews, who continue to complain from Nazi atrocities, have
the strength and will to force the evacuation of 100 towns and villages
and render the peaceful inhabitants homeless with no food, water, clothing
or shelter?!
The Qana is only one in a series of massacres that Israel
committed since its illegal creation by the West on Palestinian soil. Israel
has shown the entire world that it is always capable, with plenty of American
help, of acquiring and using the most sophisticated technology to kill
and maim, to orphan and widow, and to destroy and burn people who have
done them no harm!
The Arab Journal,
Chicago, IL
