"I am dying, Egypt, dying."

Israeli evil rains down on my villages and my people in a continuous shower of tyranny, terror and inhumanity and you remain idle in your contrived anger shouting words that change as soon as your pockets get threatened, the world watches my children’s bodies dragged out of the rubble in pieces and turns away as easily as switching the channel, leaving me here to suffer, to die.

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude;"

after fears of death and the unknown. after anxious weeks of dialing phones that never answered. after bombings and news of closer bombings. My parents are here. In minutes after Cyprus and military planes and this and that I will see them.

I am happy but am reminded of those they left behind, friends, family and just people left to suffer with no foriegn passport forcing a country to care.

"Nothing can come of nothing: speak again."

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"Nothing can come of nothing: speak again."

Everyone must speak. Let your voices ring across the globe.

"Now go we in content, To liberty, and not to banishment."

Racha, my recently engaged sister-in-law, had been sitting quietly in her home with her brother and sisters and my widowed mother-in-law. She told me of her frustration and anxiety, sitting home in the dark, waiting to die. She is a nurse and needed to get out and help her people. Fearing for her life, her mother agreed only if she’d stay in a hospital or the Red Cross center. Today I saw her on TV in an MSNBC report. http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=2aff6882-ef72-4533-aae0-037400590ae2&f=00&fg=email She was working with the Red Cross with an ambulance while dodging missiles. She seemed alive doing what she was trained to do.

"All that glisters is not gold."

Updated from previous post. Now I have heard that the mosque may not have been the building leveled but the appartments attached. In one of those apartments is my cousin and her husband, a real humanitarian doctor who never let those in need pay for his services, Dr. Ghassan. Someone said they saw him on TV. He was ok, no official report on the casualties (I've heard that one person was killed). So what may seem like good news yeilds to more tragic news. And it goes on.

"Now is the winter of our discontent."

Every time I visit Lebanon I stay in Tyr. Tyr is a pretty crowded and historic sea-side town http://www.tyremunicipality.com/ . About a hundred yards from my parents apartment is the neighborhood mosque, a quaint little mosque built as part of a neighborhood complex complete with a school a couple of apartments and a couple of shops. This morning it was bombed. The mosque has been leveled. I don't know how many casualties there were. I'm still trying to find info on the net. My parents live a hundred yards away. I haven't heard from them as of this morning. One day I will make another visit to Lebanon, I'm afraid there may be nothing left for me to see, no mosques, no schools or playgrounds, no memories, no friends or family to visit only mourn.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

The town of Khiam was the location of a famous Israeli prison where thousands of Lebanese were tortured and held captive for years and even killed. In 1989 while in Lebanon visiting my grandparents, I heard of Hussien, a teacher and Khiam prisoner. Tortured once too many times, he tried to escape. Digging under the fence an Israeli bulldozer came in and buried him alive, no escape. This prison has been leveled seemingly to erase this part of history. Khiam was hit repetedly even the UN post where four UN peacekeepers were killed by Israeli strikes.

"By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes."

"O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!"

She comes to me bearing the smile that burdens her, promising nothing. We’re waiting for the end, she promises nothing. Nothing but pain. Nothing but suffering. “I support you” but nothing. I understand you can not make your friends angry, so my people are left to die.

"Et tu, Brute?"

I was told that this never happened



A journalist’s job is to research & question, report & question. It is a journalist’s duty to remain unbiased and focused on the who, what, when, where, how and why. I have studied journalism and worked as a reporter for several years. After battling editors and publishers in attempting to report those facts and losing, I concluded that journalism is dead. It has never been more apparent than now. The war on Lebanon continues with now end in sight. The media chooses to regurgitate Israeli military statements in spite of overwhelming facts proving the contrary. The media has betrayed the people more so than the policy makers. The Israeli military will lie and cover up. They will massacre and claim self-defense. That is what an occupying army does. But it is not the duty of the media to assist in their lies. Israel must be very happy to have the media do their work just as they have been conditioned to do. It boggles the mind how the media can question, hound and criticize the US administration infinitely more than the Israeli government. In their eyes, Israel can do no wrong. Accusations against the IDF and their witnessed use of illegal weapons were dismissed by the US media without research. A journalist who does not research a story is not only a puppet, but a coward and a traitor to his reader.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,"

As I called my parents to tell them to get out of Tibnene (where my grandparents lived) I saw the constant bombardment of our hometown Tyr on TV. When I finally reached my father on his cell phone, he had already left and just arrived in Tyr. They hitch-hiked and walked and rode any vehicle heading north. His brothers and sisters and family and my parents' passports were in Tyr. I begged them to leave, to keep going, to find a way to Beirut, to seek help from the embassy to evacuate with other U.S. citizens. The onslaught continued. The phone was cut off. The TV reported a car with four people trying to leave Tyr was hit by a targeted airstrike. I missdailed several times before my frantic fingures connected. They were ok, but could not leave. My aunt sat in her house defiant telling me she would never leave, "they will not force me out again." My parents could not leave. No word from the embassy, no roads to drive, no bridges to cross, no shelter to seek. My parents usually laugh about things and tell me not to worry "what you've heard is far from us" Today my father said "Everything you've heard is true, but where do we go? Should we beg a cab driver and pay him $800 only for him to leave us stranded by the blown out bridge? Or should we try to drive ourselves out and get attacked like the last family?" I had no answers, only prayers.

"And thus I clothe my naked villany..."

My uncle's sister-in-law tried to pull herself up and help her two young daughters after one bomb hit their building, as neighbors came to help a second "personalized" bomb killed them all.

"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

it is the bombs, and we are all damned.

As my vacationing cousin was contemplating an escape route for his family (there were no roads left and all the gas stations had been bombed), he stepped onto the balcony to ask his neighbor how he planned to leave. Before he could answer a bomb fell, silencing his neighbor and sending a shock wave that shattered the windows of his daughters' room and tossing him back. Unharmed and having no time to be shocked, he rushed his family into the car with little gas. It had only one trip left in it, he had to choose his route carefully. Speeding through banana fields his daughters complained of burning skin. Behind him he saw the white cloud cover the neighborhood. He pressed on realizing he just escaped the phosphorous bomb that could have burned their flesh to the bone. He had to get to Tyr in hopes of shelter. He called his other neighbor praying his escape was not far behind. He did, but not many others did as the neighborhood had been obliterated. The shelter was a dentist's office that was half underground and half exposed. The dentist was a relative, but he had his family and 24 others. He heard the stories of people driving away from the bombing only to be killed by airstrike. There was no other choice. Nowhere was safe. So he pushed on...