Aranib E-Zine: May 2000

The Day Freedom Came to Southern Lebanon ... III
Jihad Samra

The Lebanese government has announced Thursday a national holiday to celebrate the liberation of South Lebanon as the last Israeli soldiers are crossing the borders back home right at this moment. Hizbullah and Amal fighters have been filling up the vacuum in South Lebanon as Israeli soldiers left and SLA forces turned themselves in. Today noon, TV screens showed General Antoine Lahad, the leader of the SLA having a quarrel with his senior officers in a northern Israeli village where SLA officers were kept in tented villages. Arriving with an armed Israeli escort, Lahad was calm and said nothing, trying to calm his officers down. One officer was yelling at him in Arabic, "We knew that we would be kicked out, but with honor! Not this humiliation!" At that point, the camera man seems to have been forced to turn away. After some editing, Lahad is seen getting into his jeep, angry and frustrated, as the vehicle moved away.

Meanwhile, the only sad event that has so far happened was a land mine blowing up in a young boy of 11 years nearby an evacuated Israeli post. The child has been taken in for hospitalization.

The future of the SLA is not yet clear. Only forty families had been granted passage into Israel. It was reported by CNN that Israel has decided to give those SLA who make it across the borders will be granted asylum for one year plus benefits, all which would be renewable. Yet, this seems to have come too late for most SLA members as over a 1000 have already turned themselves in. Besides, it is not yet clear whether Israel is going to be kind and loyal to any SLA low- rank officers.

Meanwhile, I have allowed myself to quote the following from CNN:

[Christian villagers in southern Lebanon, who had felt protected by the SLA, expressed fears for their future as they got used to the sight of armed, bearded Hezbollah guerrillas driving through the streets of their villages. "So far the situation has been quiet," said a Maronite priest in the village of Ein Ibl, Rev. Elie Barakat. "But people are scared of the security vacuum." ]

I happen (together with thousands others) to have watched this same interview, and definitely, there is nothing of this sort that can be extracted or concluded from this interview. As a matter of fact, CNN seems to have purposely selected these lines of the interview, disregarding the rest of the message by the priest in which he clarified that Ein Ibel had never had more than 30 SLA members (notice: most SLA soldiers are recruited due to forced conscription). In addition to this, the CNN report also ignored the fact that the priest, mayor and others had specifically been involved in offering the SLA members a choice: either to go to Israel or turn themselves in (This by the way was the very same event I was referring to in my report yesterday). Most importantly, residents in all villages, together with the armed individuals that entered the villages were chanting the Lebanese national anthem to assert the fact that the entire country is united behind liberation. No Christian or Muslim or even SLA member has been beaten up, tortured or shot. In fact, in a yesterday's article, CNN reported that through binoculars, Hizbullah armed men could be seen inside a house beating up a young man. Nothing of this has been heard of or seen. As a matter of fact, reporters were there, cameras and all, and no one needed any binoculars; just the naked eye to see what was going on. I wonder what binoculars CNN was using from behind the Israeli border.

Finally, I would like to point out that my observations and eye- witness descriptions in the reports that I am providing you are copylefted, ie, free for anyone to use in any publications.