Lebanon: Collective Punishment & Death or Total Submission · Global Voices
Moussa Bashir

The Israeli widespread and indiscriminate attack on Lebanon was the focus of all blogs about Lebanon the past few days. Regular updates, personal accounts, analysis, photos (not for the faint hearted) and ways to help were posted on most blogs. It is very difficult to mention all of them and all the important posts they have. Following are the few English blogs that I could review, considering that where I and my parents live was under direct attack and considering the difficulty of connecting to the internet most of the time.
Anarchistian at Blogging the Middle East  responding to Sec Rice invites her to come to Beirut :
“A’athir man anzar”
“Excuse the one who warned”
Oh! Isn’t that supposed to be HezbAllah’s line?
And Condie has said, immediate ceasefire will not solve anything. Maybe she should come and sit in southern Beirut, that might solve her idiocy perhaps.
Update @ 4:34 pm: Schools in Bint Jbeil completely leveled. A drone flying over southern Beirut. 13 bodies […]
In one of a series of posts by the Lebanese Blogger Forum   we read:
The impunity of Israeli attacks against Lebanese civilian infrastructure says something about Israeli objectives.
These objectives go beyond merely pressuring the Lebanese government into “reining in” Hizbollah. They are calculated to demoralize the Lebanese people and debilitate their economy. The attacks amount to collective punishment, in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Cold Desert gives a math lesson about Israel
•	An eye for an eye raised by 2 orders of magnitude= For 1 Israeli eye, 50-100 Arab eyes + 10 bridges + 3 airports are required in exchange
•	We Israelis are dangerous don't step on our toes, don’t even come close to our toes… Hell don’t think of dreaming of having your shadow step on our toes!!! (Capisce!)
•	We're strong (with a roar)
•	We’re lethal and we mean it
•	Ah yep, the world's only superpower is 100% behind us, coz the US is 100% behind the lovers of freedom and democracy and human rights and who else than Israel in this whole pathetic excuse of a Middle-East, mollests freedom and democracy and human rights as good as us… daily (out of pure love & lust)… ooohh yeah!
•	Did I say we’re strong? Ah yep, yep, we are strong and don’t you forget that
In one Angry Arab many posts  observes a sudden affection for Arab ministers by the US government:
I find it interesting that Arab ministers and officials have historically always been mocked in the US press. But lately, when they have become far more vocal in their servitude to the US government, they are now treated with respect and affection. Suddenly, the House of Soud has emerged as a fountain of wisdom. It is all about how they handle the Israel question, I argue.
He also mentions the following letter from a western correspondent in Beirut:
“Dear As'ad:
The more they bomb, the more determined I am to stay. J.'s internet cafe has a subterranean level where I am holed up and will probably remain at least for tonight. One of the schools nearby is filled to the brim with displaced persons from Dahiyeh and other neighborhoods. I am boiling with rage to the point where I am calm. Nothing, absolutely nothing (and by nothing I guess I mean nobody) is going to stop them from doing this. Did you expect that they would go this far, even further? So they bombed the al-Manara lighthouse, but they are killing scores, dozens, hundreds of people. Our cleaning lady this morning was crying because she saw dead children in Dahiyeh (that's what I understood, at least. It doesn't help that neither she nor I have a very good command of Arabic). I told her to stay with us tonight. I really hope she knows I'm serious. These are small silly remedial gestures, but what more can I do?
I don't know what to write, I don't know who to write for.”
Jamal’s Propaganda Site featured a series of reflections predictions and analysis. The following is a quote from on of them:
The Israeli propaganda machine is trying to paint this war as an Islamists war on Jews. Playing the anti-Semitism card is always the way out for Israel when they have nothing else to legitimize their killing machine. Especially after their terrorism card stopped being effective considering the only terrorism being practiced currently is that of the Israeli Air Force on Millions of Lebanese
From Letters Apart  an observation and a plea:
Lebanon is falling under real fire. The rest of the world is falling under the lies of the media. What has CNN reported of the 100+ civilian deaths, except as having that fact as a passing remark? What have others said?
Expats, if they can't do anything else, can do something to change this. CREATE AWARENESS. WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES IF YOU ARE A US CITIZEN
Beirut Spring  posts a code for bloggers that can be used to help the thousands of Lebanese refugees and displaced.
Beirut to the Beltway  analyses the situation in a series of posts among them is one that states:
The United States and Israel will not end their bloody campaign in Lebanon unless the Lebanese government takes on Iran and Syria. That's, in essence, what can be concluded from statements by Rice today, and from Israel's refusal to enter into negotiations or observe a cease-fire.
Starting with Rice, she said
“I'm not going to try to judge each and every Israeli operation or each and every Israeli attack.” The only way to resolve the situation, Rice said, “is to deal with the extremists, isolate the extremists, and put in place moderate democratic states”.
And this:
“The Israeli government is a good and democratic government,” she stated
So what is this? Regime change Syria and Iran by destroying Lebanon? Or is Lebanon expected, with no bridges or power, with people massacred, with people angry, to take on those regimes on behalf of Israel and the US? […]
War always works. It creates unity that can sustain dictators and failed leaders. This war also worked very well for Hizbullah, Iran and Syria.
Michael Totten stopped comments on his blog because:
Insulting my personal friends while they are driven out of their homes as war refugees is not acceptable. My old neighborhood is under attack. My friends are terrified and in danger. How on earth do you…
Lebanon.profile blogs on his personal experience while under blockade and attack:
I was supposed to leave at 6am. Then, 8am. It's now been delayed for a few more hours.
My Syrian taxi driver said three passengers on their way to Damascus were targeted by an Israeli missile and killed. He planned to use the very road they were on.
Yesterday, an American friend in a taxi was on the road when the Israelis struck it. She survived.
And here too:
What I feel now, as a citizen, and what everyone feels is disappointment, anger, anxiety, frustration. We’re scared and locked up at home. War came in a day. War in one day. All the books I’ve read about war, the daily news on Afghanistan and Iraq, how we were saying ‘how terrible the situation was in Gaza’—and now I’m living it.
Vox observed that:
Responding to the kidnapping on this scale was a mistake. The Lebanese government is very fragile and Lebanon could become a failed state anytime. Palestinan guerilla and al-Qaida are still active in Southern Lebanon. If what remains of the government's authority collapses, Israel would regret the days when Hezbollah imposed some (very relative) discipline on the border.
In a post titled “Yahweh’s Glorious Sicaris Playing a “Persian” Cat-and-Mouse Game Over Lebanon” Dr. Vic in Middle East Memo   writes a very interesting post inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Jij interpret the Israeli actions against Lebanon as a message that says:
This is what Israel is saying: “Look, you can’t resist. We know we occupy your land and breach your sovereignty whenever it pleases us. We know we illegally operate in your country, assassinate people, and kidnap fishermen, and murder entire families “by mistake”. We don’t give a fuck. We’re much, much stronger than you. You can’t exercise your legal right to resist our injustice. If you dare resist, we’ll break you. You have to shut the fuck up and live by our own terms. You have to disarm your own resistance, and ensure our own security.”
Sophia at Les Politiques  writes the following:
My country, Lebanon, will be taken once again in the spiral of the violence the Israeli state has created in the region and as the Iraqi adventure, which is another tragedy created by the Neo-cons in order to set the conditions for a total reddition of all hostile Arab regimes to the will of Israel and to tolerate in the middle east only puppet regimes, nobody knows how and when it will end, nobody knows how much dead civilians and destructed infrastructure this final job will take, nobody knows how much suffering the Zionist state is going to inflict on the region in the name of this farce called ‘Israel's right to defend itself’.
Who is going to ask Israel for accountability and when? The world has asked Germans for accountability but Germans were not the victors in WWI. If they were, nobody could have ever asked them for accountability for the suffering and the atrocities Nazis inflicted on people and on Jews. I fear Israel is not going to account for the atrocities it is committing now because history stands always with the victors!
Dove’s Eye View  makes a comparison with Gaza in one of many posts:
Behind the operations in Lebanon and Gaza is the same foolish idea about pressure on the population leading to political changes that Israel wants. In the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, that concept has only led us from one disaster to the next. We “cleansed” southern Lebanon of Palestinians in 1982, and what did we get? Hezbollahstan instead of Fatahland. Hamas won't fall because Gaza is in the dark, and not even because we bombed the Palestinian Foreign Ministry building at the weekend – another nonsensical move; Hezbollah won't be smashed because the international airport in Beirut has been put out of commission.
Pierre Tristam at Candide’s Notebook  has regular updates and analysis of the situation in Lebanon.
Finally, for now, at UrShalim (my blog) you can find regular updates and on the ground photos and personal accounts of what is happening during the attack on Beirut.