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Derry Anti War Coalition (link to website)

Colm Bryce, Letter from Beirut, Lebanon

Tuesday 21st November 2006

Hi everyone, Tried to send this on Saturday night from Beirut, but sent it from the wrong email address. This is the first installment. We travelled to South Lebanon on Sunday, to a village on the Israeli border, which has been devastated by the bombing. Will write a report tomorrow - jet lagged this evening. We will be doing a report back meeting, with a video presentation of the trip, on Thursday 30 Noevmebr in the Void Gallery, Patrick St. More details later. Best regards, Colm

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Hello folks,

We've been in Lebanon for three days, it's now 10pm on Saturday night and I'm in an internet cafe on Hamra Street in West Beirut and just wanted to drop you all a line to let you know how we're getting on.

It has been incredible, inspiring and humbling to be here, for all of us. We spent most of today in and around the Dahiya suburb of South Beirut, the stronghold of Hezbollah and the area worst affected by the Israeli bombing. This is a highly built up, poor area, perhaps a 5 or ten minute taxi ride from the new office blocks and hotels in the city centre. It is home to the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila (and many others) where the refugees still live in awful, overcrowded conditions. All the photos and TV footage didn't prepare us for the sheer scale of the devastation. Doxens of 8, 10 or 14 storey buildings had been completely levelled, some with craters three, maybe four floors deep into the basements. There has been two months of clearing and demolition (all carried out by Hezbollah, the government refused help, hoping to turn the population against Hezbollah abd blame them for the Israeli attacks, a cynical stragey which backfired badly) but still we walked through scenes that were like pictures you see of Dresden after WWII. And all of this took place in a crowded city, with people still living and working alongside it. 200 people were killed just in this small area, more than 5000 wounded. But what really stood out was the spirit and the resilience of the people themselves. There was a complete absence of any sense of victimhood or appeals for pity, everyone was immensely proud of the resistance, they all feel part of it, and they feel that they won, that, as Kieran put it 'they threw all of this at us and we still stared them down'. We recorded a lot of this on video, as well as the thoughts we had when we were there, and perhaps the most striking comment was 'Is all of this worth 40 jobs in Derry?'.

The welcome we have received has been so warm. Everywhere we have been, people have introduced us as the people from Derry who took action against Raytheon. We met a very devout Muslim woman at the conference on Friday night who spoke to us about how she had no idea that there were other people who supported the Lebanese people and was very touched by the action we'd taken. Ibrihim Mousawi has been wonderful to us, making loads of introductions, arranging accomodation for us and spending lots of time talkiing and explaining the situation in Lebanon. He arranged many interviews for us with the local press and we've just come back from a half-hour interview for Al Manar's current affairs TV show (which they promise to send us a copy of ). The political situation here is just ripe for positive change, and things are in an incredibly fluid situation. I don't have time to go into the details, but it stems from the resistance and it's success, which broke down many boundaries in Lebanese society, uniting Muslims and Christians especially in solidarity work for refugees and exposing the corruption of the current government. There is now an alliance being forged (at the top) between Hezbollah, the backbone of the resistance, and other Shia parties, the Communist Party, and Christian groups, but underneath there is a groundswell of wanting to settle accounts with the corrupt elites, who are guaranteed representation in the goverment (because it is based on sectarian divisions), and who virtually took the side of Israel and the US in the recent conflict. It is an open question whether Hezbollah will carry this through - they are planning major demonstrations next week - but the grassroots activists we have been speaking to feel that much more far-reaching change is possible and necessary.

In this situation, the anti-war conference was a bit of a missed opportunity (and a bit of a let down, as we half-expected). Perhaps 400 there at most, very few local people, hardly any advertising and many of the international people who came (often from groups who you suspect don't represent much in the anti-war movement) happy to make long speeches about how great Hezbollah are, but reluctant to discuss strategy or debate the way forward. Even Hezbollah got a bit impatient with this, saying, ok, enough of the congratulations, what are the lessons we can learn. Despite this, we have met some wonderful individuals, people who are investigating and researching the bomb attacks, and especially some of the local activists - who are themselves frustrated at the way the conference was organised - and who have been very involved in the relief work and also the political scene. These are the people in the Samidoun network, which grew out of the anti-war movement here in Lebanon. We hope to meet many more of them tomorrow and the next few days when we travel to South Lebanon (assisted by Caoimhe Butterly, the irish activist, who is based down there in one of the villages and who has been a tremendous help to us here).

Those are just a few impressions, but I hope they give you some idea of what has been happening. We have been filming and interviewing people on camera all the way through and we hope that we can bring some sense of what we have experienced back with us. We are all full of even greater determination to spread the word about what has happened, and to encourage everyone to have a sense that what we do in ireland (even whan it doesn't seem like much sometimes) makes a big difference to people in the Middle East. The woman from Al Manar who interviewed us tonight said 'it is not about what sect you are from, or your race, or your nationality, the real divide in the world is between the elite who rely on oppression and those they oppress', and this is a real living tangible thing here, among the people who have resisted. This is a tremendous fascinating city and we wish you all could here with us, but I hope we can convey some of it to you when we get back.

In solidarity, always

Colm





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