Blogging the Middle East: one eyewitness account

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IDF helicopter

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This posting comes from Shogig M and his Middle East blog.

Well I woke up a while ago - it was a quiet night mostly save for 3
successive explosions that were heard probably around 3-4 am. I did
wake up from the sound but went back to sleep without checking the
time. A few minutes ago someone posed the following question to me: Is
the enemy (HezbAllah) of your enemy (Israel) your friend? I replied as
follows: “Yes when the enemy is bombing PEOPLE and civilian houses and
claiming it hit HezbAllah fighters and weapons stockpiles. Yes, the
enemy of my enemy is my BEST friend in such a case.”

It seems people are attempting to minimize the credibility of my
reports from Lebanon by arguing that I am part of HezbAllah. I am not,
never will be, and probably cannot be even if I wanted to. HezbAllah’s
rhetoric and agenda do not speak to me - as an atheist as well as an
ultra-leftist anarchist. But it seems some - mostly Israelis - do not
understand that in these tense times the people will naturally side
with HezbAllah. The Army, which would naturally gain the sympathy of
most Lebanese, is being bombed by Israel even though it did not attack
it. The Army as the official military arm of the government is being
attacked. That means only one thing - war on Lebanon, not just “hitting
targets in Lebanon” as the Israelis assured (not that we needed the
attack on the army to realize that Israel was only hitting “targets” in
Lebanon - but of course one can battle semantics here and argue that
Israel is indeed hitting targets in Lebanon - and civilian ones
at that). I can think of one real reason for the attacks on the Army:
about a month ago Israeli agents were arrested by the Army for a string
of bombings in Sidon. This can be Israel’s way of getting back at the
Army. At any rate, with Lebanon an open landing field for Israeli
helicopters, it is very much possible that Israel has landed many of
its agents all over the country “for future missions”. This means only
one thing: we can expect to see more assassinations in the coming
months when this whole “crisis” is over. Not that Israel did not have
agents here before all this started, but the more the merrier.