A story about two sovereignities

Due to so many miscellaneous chores in the new residence, I had not been thinking about my blog for days. Instead, I tried to use a little time to "warm up" my feelings about this city. I tried to seek every free and paid newspaper, local portal Web sites in English, and the TV programs. One of my findings is that Canada or Montreal is focused on the middle-east issues.

These days, CBC has been broadcasting news about the strives between Lebanon and Israel. Most of the news I have seen have Lebanenes iterate how they have suffered and how they feel about being crushed without doing anything wrong. One Israeli soldier put on the interview said that Israeli would not bomb back if there is no attack from the Lebanese side. This is to say that Israel would not kill unarmed Lebaneses in a ferocious way. However, 70 Lebanese, young as babies, old as gray-headed, died in a two-hour bomb.

There is a kind of saying that Hizbullah, an fundamentalist Islamic Arabian organization, often hides in common Lebanese border cities and shot Israelites or bomb Irsaeli cities. Israeli troop is equiped with high-tech radar system, which would hit back where the bombs are from immediately. It is this evil organization that tars the land where common Lebaneses and Israelies live on.

Not like the issue between Republic of China and the People's Republic of China or People's Republic of China and India, Lebanon and Israel are tiny states without natural divide. Only if there was a strait or a Himalaya, the citizens of both Lebanon and Israel won't suffer their life and lives.

Arabians and Jews have been living here long. Their hates and love have been so intricated. Wikepedia gave a detailed explanation about the history of ancient Israel and the process of how Israelies planned to restore a Jewish country in today's Israel. This is an intermediate explanation without political view points but with lots of political historical details. One can tell that from the day Israel was restored or planned to be restored, this state was doomed to have a tortuous future. The way European Israelies planned to restore a state in the ancient "Israel" made me thought of a comment made by an white American professor on the purchase, by Chinese, of villas and lands along the eastern and western coastal areas in the United States.

"How scary it is! Think about that! Communists take over our lands!" She concluded her feelings after reading a piece of news.

A piece of advertisement for a TV program claimed that media are the thing that guided what we see, dress, eat, listen, and how we feel, either how we think. This is very true. Before modern media were formed, politics is a thing that would seldom let common people participate in. But now, common people are no more pieces on a chess game plate, they are a flow of thoughts and feelings, they form a current of political views and they demand their voices.

July 29, Montreal, Q.C., Canada. "An estimated 1,000 people marched through downtown Saturday afternoon to protest the continued Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Many also expressed anger at Prime Minister Stephen Harper's comments that the Israeli reaction to Hezbollah rocket attacks and the killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers was 'measured'" (Rachel Granofsky, Montreal Mirror, July 27-August 2, 2006). The same evening, CBC news had a female protestant voiced that "I am ashamed of being Canadian now. I wish I could be in Lebanon so that I can ...."

How Americans and Israelies feel? I got one e-mail from an American working and living in "Malkishua." This e-mail reflected a piece of life in Israel around July 19, 2006. With the writer's permission, I would publish this e-mail without any editing and under his initials.
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Cornbread (July 19, 2006 14:41). Life During Wartime - Deja Vu All Over Again

As the situation gets a little hairier here, I figured I'd drop a line to let you all know how we are doing. First of all, we are safe. So
far. The closest Katyushas that have fallen have been about 20 minutes north-west of us and were aimed at an airforce base in the Jezreel Valley. Our settlement has no strategic landmarks nearby and is probably too close to Jordan to be considered a target by Hizbullah. The closest Katyushas north of us have been a 40 minute drive. Life is more or less normal with the occasional cancellation (a wedding tomorrow night in Afula, the Karmiel Dance Festival etc.). The girls still play out in the streets until 11 pm and I still go to work at Malkishua. We have had several offers from people in the center of the country to come and stay with them.

However, we have been effected in other ways. One of the two soldiers killed this afternoon in a firefight on the northern border was Yotam Gilboa of Kibbutz Maoz Haim where we lived for 5 years. He was an amazing boy, a genius, sweet, motivated, calm, funny, talented. Its a devastating loss for our area. Also, the two young brothers killed in Nazareth today are the sons of a nurse in the Dialysis unit of the HaEmek hospital in Afula who works with one of Nitza's closest friends. Ironically, HaEmek is known as a symbol of Arab-Jew coexistence.

The country has rallied around its citizens, with people opening up their homes for those forced to flee theirs. The drivers are calmer
too... I just retuned on Monday from the Czech Republic where I had been coaching the Junior Men's fastpitch softball team in the European C'ships in a little town called Havlickuv Brod. The fighting started while we were there and it was very odd to be following the news while abroad. The kids were motivated to bring home a medal, but alas couldn't quite do it. We came in 4th out of 6 teams. I should mention that we were the only team to sing its national anthem out loud. I arrived at 4:30 a.m. and hopped on a train north to Binyamina where Nitza met me. The usually sleepy station was packed because train service further north to Haifa and Nahariya had
been cancelled because of the security situation.

I'm not to keen on getting deep into political arguments, but it is worth mentioning here that the UN and Lebanon promised to disarm
Hizbullah when we left Lebanon, and no such thing has happened. The usual foot-dragging and wimpy excuses led to this situation.
Incidentally, for those of you not in the know, Hizbullah's excuse for its blatant anti-semitism is that we still "occupy" the Shabaa Farms
area even though the UN and Lebanon have agreed that it isn't Lebanese land. It is likely that if we gave that back too, they would find
another reason to attack us. That being said, it hurts very much that so many Lebanese civilians are dying from our bombs. The Lebanese are good people and the country has so much beauty and potential but has been tragically occupied and destroyed by one evil group of people after another. The hypocrisy of Hizbullah is that they put their hideouts and facilities in the middle of innocent civilian populations virtually assuring their deaths.

Anyway, for the time being, don't worry about us, we are fine. If the situation deteriorates we will likely evacuate ourselves to safety.

Peace,

Cornbread