LIBYA, LINDAUER, LOCKERBIE

March 10, 2011 

Aangirfn

Susan Lindauer

On 9 March 2011, at Scoop ~ News, Susan Lindauer has an article entitled:

"Lockerbie Diary: Gadhaffi, Fall Guy for CIA Drug Running."

 

Lindauer worked for the CIA.

She writes:

For years I was told the terrorist who placed the bomb on board Pan Am 103, known as the Lockerbie bombing, lives about 8 miles from my house, in Fairfax County, Virginia.

His life-time of privilege and protection, gratis of high flyers in U.S. Intelligence, has been a reward for silence on the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking in Lebanon during the 1980s...

From May 1995 until March 2003, I performed as a back channel to Tripoli and Baghdad, supervised by my CIA handler, Dr. Richard Fuisz, who claimed from day one to know the origins of the Lockerbie conspiracy and the identity of the terrorists.

http://issuepedia.org/1998-12-04_Susan_Lindauer_Deposition

He swore that no Libyan participated in the attack.

... Our team engaged in a concerted fight to gain permission for Dr. Fuisz to give a deposition about his primary knowledge of the conspiracy, during the Lockerbie Trial...

The U.S. Federal Judge in Alexandria, Virginia imposed a double seal on a crucial portion of Dr. Fuisz's deposition.

The double seal can only be opened by a Scottish Judge...

Testimony hidden by the double seal maps out the whole Lockerbie conspiracy...

During the Lockerbie talks, Dr. Fuisz's allegations of CIA opium running in Lebanon received unusual corroboration...

An older spook caught up with me in front of the U.S. Supreme Court...

According to him, the CIA infiltrated opium and heroin trafficking in Lebanon...

Where the CIA went far wrong was in pocketing some of those heroin profits for itself along the way.

The dirty little secret is that the CIA continued to take a percentage cut of opium and heroin production out of Lebanon well into the 1990s...

In December 1988, infuriated Defense Intelligence agents issued a formal protest, exposing CIA complicity in Middle East heroin trafficking.

When teams from both agencies got summoned back to Washington to attend an internal hearing, they boarded Pan Am 103...

Abdelbasset Megrahi got convicted (on the most flimsy circumstantial evidence that overlooked endless contradictions).

Libya paid $2.7 billion in damages ~ amounting to $10 million per family death ~ to make the U.N. sanctions go away, and expressed a sort of non-apology for the deaths ~ while never acknowledging its involvement in the conspiracy.

So Libya was innocent the whole time?

In a word, yes...

Susan Lindauer is the author of Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq. http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Prejudice-Terrifying-Story-Patriot/dp/1453642757

IN RE BARAK, “BULLAHS,” BLACKWATER, BOUNTIES & THE SPECIAL TRIBUNAL FOR LEBANON (STL)

 

Franklin Lamb

Beirut

Originally published in Al Manar English

When the US marines were in and out of Lebanon in 1983-1984 some of those I met, when visiting their barracks with American journalist Janet Stevens, to discuss Israel’s use of American cluster bombs against civilians had the habit, as did sailors from the USS New Jersey, of referring to the Lebanese Capital simply as “Root.” Or sometimes they would call it: “The Root” as in, “We came to “The Root” to kick some butt!”

The Marines were responsible for unexploded ordnance clearance in the area around Beirut airport while Italian, French and a small British force worked in adjoining areas of West Beirut, following the Israeli siege, which sometimes included intensive carpet shelling.

The Marines did a good job in their area trying to make it safe for civilians and took 12 casualties, two fatal, from Israeli dropped American cluster bombs.

Unfortunately President Reagan ordered the American forces to support the Israeli backed Phalange government of Amin Gemayel against the popular Lebanese resistance and the marines were soon viewed as being partisan participants in a domestic conflict. This led to the Marines departure following events of October 1983 and despite recent Israeli proposals, it is fairly unlikely that either American or NATO forces will arrive in Lebanon anytime soon.

But Blackwater USA just might. Despite a series of publicly announced “disassociations” periodically issued from the media offices at the Pentagon and State Department, plus a couple of image polishing name changes including currently Xe Services LLC ( Xe being short for Xena, the mythical goddess of war) the hydra headed Blackwater (BW), founded in 1997 by Erik Prince and Al Clark is still quite active

BW continues to sign US tax payer funded contracts whilst spreading its tentacles around the region, ever scanning the horizon and sniffing out softer underbelly money makers to meet the payroll of its $500 per day operatives. Prince told the US Congress last year that his organization is

“A professional organization serving as a solutions provider to the U.S. government. We operate in the defense, training, logistics, and intelligence spaces, priding ourselves on getting the job done right”

Two weeks ago in Leidschendam-Voorburg, which abuts The Hague and is the site of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Blackwater USA representatives looking to land a lucrative bounty hunter contract with the STL’s registrar’s office, preferred to label Hezbollah simply as ‘Bullahs’.

Apparently it’s some sort of BW macho lingo term from the organizations combat training bases in North Carolina and California. Some Blackwater mercenaries also used the “Bullahs” label in Iraq in addition to racist terms like “Ragheads”, “Hajiis”, and “Sand Niggers.

In addition, Black water representatives, presumably offering “to get the job done right,” have reportedly met with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and will again during Barak’s current visit to Washington.  

According to an email message from a Congressional Staffer who works for a Committee that receives intelligence briefings, BW has been getting cozy with Israel and may be in the process of setting up a BW “training center” in occupied Palestine north of Kabri which is about 20 miles south of UNIFIL’s HQ in Naqoura along the Lebanon-Palestine ‘blue line’.

Barak, according to the same source, will meet on February 26 with National Security chief Tom Donilon and Dennis Ross to discuss Iran, Hezbollah the STL and the impact of recent regional events on the Israeli-Iranian strategic balance in the region. During his meetings with BW representatives his message to BW may be along the lines of “Hey, don’t worry. We’ll hold your coats” as Israel increasingly considers following the American lead and hires mercenaries to confront its enemies.

Barak may in point of fact have a job for BW.

Based on sources who attended the recent Special Tribunal for Lebanon media briefings, as well as sources in Congress and North Carolina, it appears that the STL Registrar’s 1/17/11 announcement that the Court might be seeking help of the International community to arrest and deliver to the Hague those against whom Judge Daniel Frensen is widely expected to issue arrest warrants, is indeed generating applications.

Following the STL’s implied job announcement, Blackwater’s HQ, still based in Moyock, North Carolina was abuzz with talk of “business opportunities”. According to a stringer for the Daily Southerner in nearby Tarboro, NC, who claims that she dates “BW special forces guys”:

“Who better to go after the terrorists with arrest warrants from that Court than our local Confederate bounty hunters par excellence?”

By the morning of 1/20/11 and again on 1/21/11, Blackwater representatives, who arrived two days earlier in The Hague on a flight from Israel, tried to convince the Office of the STL Registrar, and, that evening, anyone listening in the nearby Hilton Hotel Grand Café Pearl, that Blackwater could do the job better than Interpol. All they needed to know was that the proposed per head bounty dollar amount was guaranteed and they would do the rest.

After a dinner of pan fried wild sea bass and enjoying bottles of German wine, the more they drank and partied, which reportedly lasted until the wee hours, the more the Blackwater reps claimed to actually relish a long overdue fight with “Bullahs.” One BW operative, according to two Dutch journalists who were present for part of the evening, told the groups; ”tourist hostess attractive dates, “ when even one of them “Bullahs” needs to get his butt busted, cuffed, and dragged to the Hague, we can do the job young ladies! Ya got our word on that!” Will

BLACKWATER HELP I REOCCUPY LEBANON?

Ehud Barak’s statements this week about Israel reoccupying south Lebanon might lead some to muse whether the Defense Minister perhaps forgot why, when he was prime minister, he ordered the precipitous Israeli nighttime stealth pullout, during which some local villagers claim they saw some elements of the Golani brigade literally skidding down the hill at Maron al Ras during the night of May 23, 2000 on their back sides as other IDF units fled across the exits points south of Aita Schab and Bint Jbeil with resistance fighters hot on their tails.

In fact the reason then Israeli Prime Minister Barak ordered the IDF out of Lebanon, was partially under electoral pressure from the Israeli public, because Israeli casualties were skyrocketing.

Barak also acted on the advice of his well-paid campaign advisor and Bill Clinton confidant, James Carville who advised Barak that ‘moderate Israelis’ would vote for him if he did. As it turned out James underestimated the number of ‘moderate Israelis’, and Barak lost the election by a wide margin to Ariel Sharon who got 1,698,077 (62.39%) to Barak’s 1,023,944 (37.61%).

“Funny Jimmy” as he’s known in the Big Easy where he grew up, returned to the “James Carville and Mary Matlin show.” Not one to easily give up on lost causes, it is being rumored in Washington that James, the apparent eternal devotee of Le and La Clinton, is spending much of his time these days trying to figure out how to get Hilary elected President and he is studying the odds for the 2012 Democratic primary.

Carville, and others including remnants of his former campaign team in Israel, see the possibility of the Democrats dumping Obama as doable if former IDF reservist, Rahm Emanuel, the new Mayor of Chicago, will dump Obama, sign on with Hilary, and bring the US Israeli lobby and their cash with him.

In his free time James is working as an ad man for Miracle Whip in a TV commercial which features “ Funny Jimmy” Carville and others expressing either their love or hate for the imitation mayonnaise spread. "If you've got these fancy, dancy mustards and stuff like that, that's kind of an elite thing," says Carville. "Miracle Whip is the essence of America. We are a simple people, very trusting and only wanting to do God’s will."

Contrary to the Israeli lobby spin that Israel left Lebanon in May of 2000 as a unilateral goodwill gesture to advance the fake “peace process”, IDF statistics leading up to Hezbollah’s expulsion of the IDF and the collapse of its collaborationist South Lebanese Army (SLA) match those explained recently by Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary-General, former chemistry professor Naim Qassim who is perhaps the leading expert on exactly what transpired in South Lebanon during this period. Professor Qassim’s book, “Hezbollah from Within” is the most authoritative volume on the subject of Hezbollah…to date.

Also, Israeli TV audiences had grown weary of watching footage-often courtesy of Al Manar, of Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon as a result of Resistance operations.

Even today, fighters who were on the scene in the spring of 2000, report that they were surprised at the Israeli debacle as were the Israeli SLA Lebanese collaborators. In some instances, retreating Israeli soldiers used their former Lebanese “partners and brothers” as human shields hoping that the Lebanese resistance would not fire on fellow Lebanese as the Israelis fled.

The IDF did not inform their SLA allies that they were withdrawing. Ever hopeful of igniting a civil war in Lebanon, the new IDF Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz and Israeli intelligence meticulously left behind lists of the names of many of its Lebanese collaborators, hoping for a Lebanese-Lebanese bloodbath. As it turned out Hezbollah quickly, and some say reluctantly, instructed their units to adhere to a strict policy or no retribution and to “let bygones be bygones.  

Only modest punishment was administered by the Lebanese State Judiciary partly because the number of Israeli (US taxpayer) paid killers was high and there was not enough prison space to house them and also because Hezbollah wanted to avoid sectarian strife since a large percentage of the collaborators were from one Lebanese sect and cries of “sectarian targeting” were predictable.

The issue of whether Hezbollah was too lenient with these collaborators following the expulsion of the IDF is, eleven years later, still sometimes discussed in Southern villages among families who lost loved ones to the turncoats ~ many of the latter living today, as next door neighbors to their victims’ families.

If the STL does decide to hire Blackwater USA to execute any arrest warrants in Lebanon or if Israel decides to hire ”seek and kill” Blackwater units during its predicted coming invasion, whatever that does for Xe’s Stock prices, its BW’s stock of mercenaries that will be eagerly anticipated in Lebanon.

As for Barak’s boast that the new IDF Chief Benny Gantz “knows south Lebanon” the career assassin might want to recall, as he remembers why Israel withdrew from Lebanon in May of 2000, that as one Hezbollah veteran told this observer this week, “South Lebanon knows Benny Gantz”.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Lebanon and can be reached c/o

Please check our website for UPDATES:

Franklin P. Lamb, LLM,PhD

Director, Americans Concerned for

Middle East Peace, Wash.DC-Beirut

Board Member, The Sabra Shatila Foundation and the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Beirut-Washington DC

Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp

Beirut Mobile: +961-70-497-804

Office: +961-01-352-127

fplamb@palestinecivilrightscampaign.org

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FROM TAHRIR SQUARE TO SHATILA CAMP, “HURRIYA” (FREEDOM)

A Palestinian woman driven out of modern-day Israel 

during the 1948 Nakba carries her belongings

22. Feb, 2011

Dr. Franklin Lamb/AL-MANAR

A Palestinian woman driven out of modern-day Israel during the 1948 Nakba carries her belongings. Hanini.org ~ Wikimedia Commons

The Tahrir Square “Hurriya!”  tremors spreading across the Middle East may or may not be impacting today’s events in the  historically liberal American state of Wisconsin and other areas of America,  yet most of us would agree that the Tunisian-Egyptian revolutions are being felt far and wide and appear to be dramatically gaining steam. Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees camps are no exceptions.

Perhaps sooner rather than later, a half dozen or so Arab despots may reluctantly retire or leave for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia. Indeed some Saudis may themselves move to America to occupy their vast real estate holdings stateside, some located in largely Israeli duo-national neighborhoods, whose occupancy rates are also dramatically rising, as many in Israel sense that the CIA predicted collapse of their settler colony may be accelerating.

Also feeling the widening flood torrents are those depending on the 1978 Camp David Accords and its ‘Rosemary’s baby,’ the 1979 “Peace Treaty” that castrated Egypt, betrayed the Palestinians and ceded regional dominance  to Israel for three decades. The White House reportedly is reconciled to the fact that Camp David may be ‘renegotiated’ but, like Israel, fears it may be frozen and indefinitely suspended if not scrapped completely in the coming months. This is part part of the re-ordering we are witnessing as the new era and indeed culture of resistance spreads.

Panicked Israeli leaders and their agents in Congress are busy trying to convince the American public how vital and cheap the $3 billion per year cost of Camp David is for America’s security while they know the truth is precisely the opposite. AIPAC has been saturating Capitol Hill this week as well as media outlets with its just released Red Alert!  “Urgent Appeal” which reads as follows: 

“Please urge your House member to sign a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that urges all branches of the U.S. government to emphasize to prospective Egyptian leaders and opposition figures the importance of Egypt’s international obligations, specifically its Camp David peace treaty with Israel.”

Just yesterday, 2/18/11, the Palestinian UN delegation, in a rare display of back bone, presumably influenced by the revelations in the Palestine Papers, of treachery and resulting charges of treason, as well as Tahrir Square, joined the 130 UN Member co-sponsors of the UNSC Resolution and stared down Barak Obama and Ambassador Susan Rice and rejected their proposed gutting of the modest Security Council Resolution condemning Israeli settlements. 

Before the vote, threats were issued from the White House personally delivered to PA “President” Mahmoud Abass during a 40 minute reportedly tense telephone call from the President and before Abbas presumably recovered from that upbraiding, another one came from Hilary Clinton.

The British, Russian, and Chinese ambassadors were among those who rose to speak in favor of the failed resolution. Still, it was a rare 14-1 Security Council vote in solidarity with Palestine.

It was also yet another  American Veto, that for the 63^rd time, signaled the American public and the World that under Congressional pressure,  it is Israeli settlers inhabiting stolen land, not the American people or their values,  that still prevail even as the US and Israel reap an Arab and Islamic awakening that is hastening their  expulsion from the region.

Just hours after the courageous UN vote, the new provisional government in Cairo announced the opening of Rafah crossing, if only on a limited basis ~ for now.

Symbolism is everywhere-and sometimes seemingly everything. Who would have thought that Egypt, just days after Mubarak’s recall, would welcome, for the first time since 1979, Iranian warships through the Suez Canal?

When Iran’s ships arrive at Port Said they are expected to be greeted and perhaps feted by dock workers and the Egyptian public, despite Israeli threats and claims delivered by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that Iran’s use of the international waterway is “a hostile act” and “proves the Iranians are becoming more and more cheeky.”

Many Palestinians in Lebanon’s camps and communities, like the rest of us appear almost mesmerized by what’s been happening. A survey conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD), published on February 2, 2011 showed, that 74 percent of the Palestinians support pro-democracy protests in Tunisia, which toppled President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In Lebanon’s camps it appears that support for the Arab Awakening grows with each new revolt in the region.

They feel, as no doubt many who have been working for Palestinian civil rights in Lebanon for the past 20 years, including more than two dozen International and local NGO’s and civil society organizations, that the power of Tahrir Square will mean that Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees will at long last be granted the elementary, internationally mandated civil right to own a home and to work that every other refugee enjoys by law.

Stellar examples of the new Palestinian leadership in Lebanon’s camps pressing for civil rights include my best friend in Shatila Camp Zeinab al Hajj, born, raised and still living in Shatila Camp. And does she ever welcome Western visitors whom she quickly converts to her cause! To arrive at Zeinab’s home/office and to learn about the Palestinian refugee’s urgent need for elementary civil rights, and why she and her friends believe the new Hezbollah led government, also inspired by Tahrir Square, will honor its moral, religious, legal and political obligations to achieve the right to work and home ownership, is simple enough.

 Shatilla, home to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon

The 14 member three generation Al Hajj family always welcomes foreign visitors into their three rooms and roof top space that overlooks the area of the camp where some of the most intense slaughter took place not only during the 1982 Sabra-Shatila Massacre, also during the 1985-88 camp wars when Shatila and Burj Barajneh camps were targeted for destruction by some factions who still today boast that Palestine is their blood stream cause.

Indeed some of those who gave the orders to slaughter men, women and children in Shatila during the misnomered “camp wars’ ghoulishly have their photo-shop posters plastered around parts of the south end of Shatila camp.

Of course there were no “camp wars” but rather a series of intermittent slaughters of mainly unarmed civilians between 1985-88, allegedly to prevent the return of the PLO under Arafat’s leadership, until then Hezbollah spokesman, Subhi al-Tufayli (later Secretary-General between 1989-92) and others stepped in and demanded that President Hafez Assad of Syria put an end to the killing, declaring that Hezbollah was prepared to send fighters to defend the Palestinian camps.  

One can imagine what Palestinian families, nearly all of whom lost a relative at the hand of their Arab brothers, feel today about those smiling “solidarity” faces as they walk their children to school. Just seeing they plastered on poles and walls, is for this observer, enraging and the equivalent of seeing Ariel Sharon’s or Rafael Eitan’s bill boarded mugs inside Shatila camp.

To sit with and learn from ‘Miss International’, her friends and her elderly parents, who as children walked half a day into Lebanon from Safed in northern Palestine on May 12, 1948, all one has to do is enter Shatila Camp from the south, diagonal from what’s left of the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s Akka Hospital. Continue north along Rue Sabra toward what remains of the former Gaza PRCS Hospital.

Gaza Hospital was for years, before the Palestinian Resistance departed in August of 1982, among the best equipped and administered hospitals in the Middle East. It was bombarded, destroyed and stripped of all its equipment during the Camp “Wars”,  and  the hospital’s shell is now home to roughly 1000 refugees who exist, packed into every room, hall way and alcove from the operating theater to the hospital morgue. 

Continue north  past Martyr’s Cemetery where around 1000 unidentified victims of the Israeli sponsored 1982 Massacre at Shabra-Shatila are buried, one takes the third right down a narrow alley where the sun has not shone for 60 years.  Step around the puddles of sewage and the ruts, watch out for dozens of beautiful children chasing and playing, or going or coming from the camps two UNWRA schools, avoid careening bikes and proud, if stressed, Palestinian women with shopping bags, sometimes balanced on their heads, and babies in their arms and you’ll find the cinder block hovel on your left next to a rusty zinc roofed shelter that camp residents avoid.

The reason people don’t like to go inside the shelter is that 29 years ago the al-Hajj family allowed their neighbors to hide in their shelter during the 1982  massacre, as they themselves fled east to the then Algerian Embassy, across airport road from Shatila camp-currently the City Hall of the Hezbollah run Municipality of Ghouberi.

When the Hajj family returned to their home following the Massacre, they learned that all 17 neighbors using their shelter were slaughtered because the Israelis had given maps showing the exact location of the 11 shelters to the Phalange-Lebanese Forces militias.  Zeinab, 7 years old at the time, recalls that she wanted to stay in the shelter and not flee because she planned to play with her dolls and her best friend Mona and they liked their private ‘hideout’ space. 

All 278 camp residents, with four exceptions, who entered the Israeli identified shelters in Shatila Camp, were butchered between 6 pm Thursday and around midnight Friday, September 16-17, 1982.

Last night’s conversation, while enjoying a delicious bowl of hot Palestinian shorba prepared by Mrs. Hajj was about what Zeinab and her friends call the “Great Arab and Palestinian Awakening.”  ‘What is happening?  “Is it possible that Sykes-Picot’ off-spring can be liberated sooner rather than later?” Zeinab’s sister Suha, a nursing student at near-by Bahman hospital, scowled, referring to Israel.

Amidst the unfolding upheaval in the Middle East, some are expecting Lebanon’s Palestinian camps to erupt in revolt to protest economic and social conditions that are worse than any of the areas now in open revolt. If an eruption comes, it will be a quest for freedom, dignity and justice. Lots of meetings and discussions are being held but so far few signs of organizing mass demonstrations, although the current calm could abruptly shatter.

Zeinab’s friends are also more optimistic these days about the chances that they will finally be granted some elementary civil rights. The growing excitement appears to be fueled by the freedoms many camp residents predict in Tunisia and Egypt and perhaps throughout the region, but also as a result of the new government in Lebanon.

The failure in Parliament last summer to achieve meaningful changes with respect to the right to work and to own a home in Parliament was a major disappointment in the camps, but with the new government hopes have risen.

Their growing zeal is made manifest in the quickly spreading activism among young Palestinians, being encouraged by their elders whose numbers comprise many sometimes honored, sometime seemingly forgotten, Palestinian resistance heroes who over the past half century helped earn the world’s recognition and increasing support of the Palestinian cause.

I mean this reference to honor those, now middle aged, many sitting idly in the camps reminiscing and wondering what went wrong as they discuss latest developments such as the Palestine Papers, and who have struggled for so long to return to Palestine. Many from before the days when the  arch Zionist Golda Meir could proclaim that “there are no such people as  Palestinians” and much of the world’s media reflexively reported her lies as truth,  and who have never compromised the principles which underpin the Palestinian struggle for justice.

I recently met a man in Shatila Camp, who in 1950 in Gaza, worked with the Executive Committee of the Refugees’ Conference.  This was of course 14 years before the founding of the PLO in Cairo. It was this Committee which led the first legislative council in Gaza in the early sixties, and sent the first Palestinian delegation of refugees to the United Nations in 1961.

Lebanon’s camps are full of aging heroes.  Among them were thousands of mothers who have suffered and achieved so much for their families, their cause and their country. Their progeny fill the teeming camps.  There is a young Nelson Mandela in Rashedeyeh camp near Tyre.  Another I met in Ein el Helwe appears to be a clone on Dalal Moughiby. In Nahr al Bared, still waiting to be rebuilt following its destruction in 2007, I watched a youthful Khalil al Wazir (Abu Jihad) explain his hopes to revive Palestinian resistance until liberation. In Wavall camp in the Bekaa I spent an evening with teenaged would-be Hassan Nasrallah who wants to help lead his people back to Palestine.

Like the streets of Cairo, Lebanon’s camps are starting to cry “Hurriya!” The camps here have birthed new leadership, aided by the old that will anticipate that the new government will respect the words of the Resistance and enact in Parliament the full Right to Work and repeal the discriminatory 2001 law that criminalizes Palestinian home ownership.

Franklin Lamb is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

THE CHILDREN OF SHATILA

Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon

More than 350,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, 15,000 of them in the refugee camp of Shatila in Beirut. Through the eyes of two children who live in this camp, Issa and Farah, this documentary explores the determination to keep family and dreams thriving in a landscape that has been sculpted by war, poverty, grief and displacement. 

Issa, a little boy who lives with his grandfather, sustained severe injuries when he was hit by a speeding car and has trouble learning in school. Farah lives with her parents and two sisters. The children’s memories and history are shaped by the violence that surrounds them. Both have lost family in the massacres and attacks that followed the 1948 Diaspora and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel. An aunt was decapitated, an uncle shot ~ every family and friend they know has lost someone to the violence. 

The filmmaker gives Issa and Farah a small video camera to film their lives and learn how they see their own world. Both children start asking their elders how they felt about leaving Palestine. When queried about what he wants to tell the new generation of Palestinians, an old man asks that Palestine must never be forgotten. “Promise me that,” he tells the children. 

The poverty of Shatila offers little escape. Farah’s mother says that when her children tell her their dreams she feels “awkward and afraid to shock them with the truth,” and wonders about the kind of future that lies ahead. Yet both children inspire viewers with their ability to keep their hearts and minds open. Farah tells a nursery class, “Imagining is the main thing, even if you only draw a bird.” And Issa has a wonderful dream where he is a prince. 

While the focus is on the lives of children, this documentary is not suitable for younger children. It is appropriate for mature young adults, and university and community audiences interested in learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, life in the refugee camps, and the lasting effects of war.

What shone through the film is the strength and resilience of the Palestinian people. The warmth of family, caring and belonging, and the underlying gentle humour under severe circumstances are full of insights into the depth and richness of the Palestinian spirit to survive with the inhuman challenges they face every day.  

I found the film flew by so engrossed in these children I became for they are charming, insightful and survivors, their childish hopes and dreams shine through constantly. To me, the saddest part was when a group of young boys tell the camera their aspirations and dreams… the same dreams that little boys around the world have ~ an engineer, a doctor, a mechanic, a fireman…..


PART ONE

I WISH I DIED

By Muhammad Meri

As I watch the news of the Intifada on TV channels, I feel happy and sad. I feel happy to see my fellows in Palestine fighting for their rights for our rights only by stones. But at the same time I feel sad because of helplessness feeling to help my fellows there. I hated myself because of this feeling of helplessness, I wanted to be there in Palestine to fight with my nation, and I wanted to be there so if I died I would die in my homeland not a refugee in the camps.

When I saw the photo of Muhammad El Durra, I thought of Israel, I wanted to kill an Israeli but then I started to think can I kill an Israeli child and I cold blood as they killed Muhammad El Durra? I know they I could not despite my deep hatred to Israel, How could they? I can't commit their crimes, I know that.  I hated the world because they don’t do anything to us, I hated the Arabs too.

When I knew about the trip to South Lebanon I felt happy because I wanted to tell my friends in Dheisheh camp in Palestine that I am thinking of them and that we are all together Palestinians in the Diaspora and inside Palestine. On my way to the south I was very happy. I was holding a stone in one hand and my death in the other hand. I wish I had a gun to kill an Israeli soldier. As throwing stones on the Israeli soldier who lie on my land, my land that I am not allowed to visit, I felt so happy because a soldier with all his weapons did not scare me.

When the Israelis threw the teargas bomb I was in the front, I could not see anything, my friends started to wash my face. I could not breathe too; my chest was full of their gas, their poisonous gas.

Usama and my other friends from Shatila held me, as soon as I could see I used to run and throw stones on the Israelis. When Hassan from Shatila got shot, I felt so sad, when I was told he died I fainted. He is after all my camp fellow and I love him so much. He was great and all the children in the camp loved him for he used to take them on rides on his motorcycles. But when I regained my consciousness I ran again to throw stones n the Israelis. 

This time I was throwing stones with all my strength I was outraged I felt I hated the Israelis even more. I was throwing stones and mourning the death of my friends I felt I did not want to stop throwing stones at all. But then in few hours they asked us to withdraw to go back to Shatila.

When I reached the camp I felt so happy because they the people in the camp were throwing rice on us and singing for our return. When I reached home, my mother and my siblings were crying, they were scared about me. Then I started to cry like a child. Oh how I wish I died on the south and not return to my sad, miserable ugly camp. But then I did not die and here I am in Shatila, Shatila that I hate and I hate my life. I feel lost and lonely, a little guy with no father to take care of him and hold him in his arms. A lonely guy with no house to protect him from the streets, no homeland where he could have rights and live as a human being.  My chest is still full of gas; I still feel suffocated but have no hospital to take care of me. How I wish my destiny would be like my father  or Muhammad EL Durra" DEATH". 


PART TWO

THE TALE OF OUR RETURN

 

By Ismail Zaaroura

The tale began with my grandfather who, upon being evicted from Palestine, found refuge in Lebanon in 1948. My grandfather did not want to stay there. He lived in a tent believing that he would return to Palestine in a day or two. That is why he locked his door well, carried the house’s keys and left all his belongings in Palestine hoping to return soon. 

At the beginning, he was helped by the Red Cross. Then the UNRWA took over the responsibility of aiding the refugees until they return to Palestine. So when UNRWA decided to build cement houses for Palestinians, my grandfather, like all Palestinians, objected because they wanted to return to Palestine and not settle in Lebanon.

My father was born in the camp but my grandfather told him that he was Palestinian and that there were in Al-Saffouriyeh vast fields and big houses awaiting his return. He also told him that the Israelis have usurped our land and that the Arab countries betrayed us. 

When the revolution broke out, my father joined it wanting to return to Palestine. There he would not wait for a United Nations Organization to provide him with educational and health services…The revolution was over and my father died in the Camp Wars.

The Lebanese war was over but a new war flared against us: UNRWA started to cut down its educational and health services gradually. Moreover, the Lebanese state has forbidden the Palestinians who have come to this country around half a century ago from working, while it did not forbid the foreigners who arrived to the country two or three years ago from working in any profession they choose.

The Lebanese government states that the siege imposed on us aims at encouraging us to return to Palestine, as if we are still here willingly. We have never surrendered our right to return; my grandfather called for its implementation and so did my father. 

The Lebanese are showing off now refusing our living on their land, but who told them that we want to stay here. I neither want to stay here nor want the Lebanese identity. I want to return to Palestine. However, to continue what my father started and realize my dream of return, I want to feel that I am a human for me to be able to think of a way to returning to Palestine. I want my civil rights in Lebanon to ask the world for my right to return to Palestine.

PART THREE

SHATILA MASSACRE: ONLY ONE OF MANY

 

BY Mona Zaaroura

 

When Sabra and Shatila massacre was committed I was not yet born. I got to know it through my questions about the reasons of the miserable life we lead in the camp, in Shatila.

I am fourteen year old girl now, I, like all children in Shatila, never enjoyed my childhood, we never felt secure, we never smiled except a refugee smile, a temporary one.

I grew up in Shatila and my parents told me about Shatila's wound, a wound that will stay in my heart forever, the massacre.  I knew from the stories told by those who survived it that thousands of our people were massacred in the cruelest ways and in cold blood.

Darkness overshadowed Shatila for three days; three days of death, of torture of horror and fear. We were told the Israelis besides its allies in Lebanon were responsible for the massacre. But it was neither the first nor the last massacre of Israel. 

Israel first took our grandparents’ land and their dreams and kicked them out of our homeland in 1948.  We became refugees but the dream of return never faded. Horrified by this dream, it followed us to our refugee camp to kill us with its allies in Lebanon.

As I grew up I got to know that massacre does not only mean killing people in one shot. In that way, Shatila massacre is only one of the many massacres committed against us every day. Every day we suffer because we are refugees and we don't have a homeland.

We as youth live every day the massacres of our fading dreams.

Problems at school and drop outs isn't that a massacre?

Illegal departure from the country to the unknown just to escape the unbearable conditions in the camp, isn’t that a massacre?

Deprivation of our civil rights to become dehumanized numbers in the records of the United Nations isn't that a massacre?

A real massacre?

And isn't being refugees living away from our homeland a massacre to our hearts?

As I grew up I got to realize that only return will protect us from all these massacres committed against us every day; just return to Palestine will make us live safely forever. Just return will fulfill our lost humanity. I and other refugees, younger and older living in Shatila or anywhere in the Diaspora are still waiting at the doors of return and crying out stop massacring us outside and inside Palestine every day. 

PART FOUR

INTIFADA MY SALVATION

 

By Ussama Abou El Sheikh

The second intifada started three weeks after my school had started. I was then going to school without books. My mum had paid the money for my younger siblings since she thought that mine was paid from last year. My money was lost between the principal’s office and his assistant and I spent the first three school weeks from that office to the other trying to get my money.

I got fines many times for not paying for my books. In my classes I was usually humiliated for not paying "if you do not have money why come to school?” I did not dare ask my mum to pay the money again. I know she has no money to pay and I am the man of the house as they call me and I am supposed to be helping her raising my younger siblings.

I hated myself and felt angry at the whole world around me! I thought I would steal. Steal yes why not. I went to someone I know is a thief and asked him to go with him that night to get the money for the books. The money that I paid last year was stolen from me. I could not sleep that night. Steal? Me? Why? I did not do it before.

I changed mind and woke up the next morning having decided to quit school and start working. I started searching for work. I went to the carpenters, mechanics construction builders in the camp begging for a work. Nobody encouraged me they all said they would work for a week and stay jobless for months. But what shall I do now?

At that time when I was looking for a job the intifada started. At start I felt that it might be my salvation from Shatila and from the miserable life I lead there ~ my salvation from poverty and my return to my homeland Palestine.

Shatila inhabitants expressed their joy for the intifada by demonstrating every day. I participated in all the marches in the camp we used to walk crying out "our blood and soul is for Palestine!” Palestine is for the Arabs, I used to cry out as loudly as I could but as I go home I used to start thinking of the many generations that cried out those same chants.

I know that at least our grandparents cried out the same slogans since they left Palestine. But Palestine is not back yet; my grandfather chanted for Palestine; my father did; and here I am chanting even the same slogans. But Palestine is never back. I thought that demonstrations would do us any good but again the next day I used to find myself in the middle of the crowds chanting the same slogans that my grandfather and my father chanted to Palestine that is still occupied.

I go back home and decide that I will never share in the demonstrations but again the next day I do out of a need to cry out and vent my anger even if I was shouting slogans I don’t believe in.

One night and after the demonstration was over, news spread in the camp about a trip to the south to demonstrate against the Israelis. I agreed with my friend to go maybe it would be better than those chants every day. I never told my mother about that trip; all that I said was that I was going on a trip with my friends. I truly believed it was trip; I never knew I was going to fight the Israelis. When I was there the leaders informed us that we will throw stones on the Israelis and maybe we will need to cut the wires. Somebody has to die "maybe the Arabs will wake up" as he said.

As we reached Zareit in the south we left the buses, a group of us ran and started to throw stones on Israeli soldiers who were on their posts on my homeland Palestine, the other stayed up in the hill. Manar TV station was waiting for us up the hill. Manar TV was waiting for us and also an ambulance. We started throwing stones on an Israeli soldier who was holding a teapot and heading to his post. As we started throwing him stones he throws the pot and ran away. I thought that the Israelis are coward why could not we defeat them till now?  If only the Arabs had united!

As time was passing I started to feel angry from those who stayed up this hill watching us fighting and I was upset at others behaviors. I thought "are we really going to free Palestine, can we with this mentality we have?"  But then I go back to throw stones and think from time to time whether what I was doing was right or wrong. Is it right to throw stones or not? But then I find myself throwing stones without being sure that I was doing the right thing.

At around noon, Hezbollah brought us food to eat I was again upset from the way my people behaved and I thought how are we going to liberate Palestine? But when they started to throw stones I started with them thinking if that was right or wrong. Hassan died and many were injured but we kept on throwing stones. At around three Hezbollah asked us to retreat. We threw the stones, left the place and started our journey back to Shatila.

On my way back to Shatila I realized that I did not enjoy Palestine and all what I saw on the borders was that Israeli soldier. When I reached Shatila my friends were waiting for me in the neighborhood of Shatila and Sabra cemetery at the outskirts of the camp. I hugged them and ran back home.

My mum and my siblings were waiting for me, they thought I was injured. I kissed my mum who was unable to talk then and then when I saw my little sister Ibtisam I hugged her deeply and started to cry. I cried too much not knowing why maybe because I thought that if I had died who would take care of my younger siblings, or maybe because I did not know whether what I was doing was right or wrong.

I am still thinking till now whether stone throwing from the Israeli borders is an act of heroism?

Did anybody wake up after the death of Hassan and Anas?

I am still thinking till now and I don't know the truth.

If you wish to read more from these extraordinary children please go HERE.