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The frontrunner for the Democratic U.S. Presidential nomination, Barack Obama, was apparently very impressed with the killing of Palestinian children and a Reuters cameraman yesterday. Obama voiced his support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” and condemned Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal—even as bombs rained down on Gaza’s refugee camps.

Immediately following Wednesday’sskirmish near the Gazan border which resulted in the deaths of three IOF soldiers at the hands of Hamas fighters, Israel retaliated by… bombing the densely populated al-Bureij refugee camp.

I am always struck by the sensitivity of politicians when they choose to praise Israel in the midst of such glaring atrocities. (more…)

When did the Lebanese civil war (the major one) start? Did it start in February of 1975 when Sidon-based leader, Ma`ruf Sa`d, was assassinated by a Lebanese Army intelligence sniper? Or was it the widely accepted “Sarajevo” (of the civil war) of 13th of April, 1975? I think that the civil war started in 1973, in April, when 3 Palestinian leaders (one of them a poet, Kamal Nasir) were shot in their sleep by an Israeli terrorist team headed by Ehud Barak (later prime minister of Israel). It brought the Lebanese internal divisions into the fore.

I was 15 years old, 30 years ago when the civil war started on April 13th, 1975. It was a Sunday that I still remember. My parents were out, and I was home in our middle class neighborhood in Beirut. We did not hear shots fired. We were not close to the scene of the crime. On that day, a bus carrying Palestinians who were earlier attending a rally for the PFLP-GC was ambushed by armed gunmen of the Lebanese fascistic Phalanges Party. My enmity to that party started earlier, much earlier. When I read about the civil war in Spain, I always felt that I could recognize the fascist side. When I read about the communist struggle against the Nazis in Germany, I recognized the Nazi side. I saw them in Lebanon. (more…)