The following letter was sent by Hassan El Akhras to the National Post in response to an article about the killing of the El Akhras family published in that newspaper. The Post has refused to publish this letter.

23 August 2006

Sunday July 16 was the darkest day of my life. I lost 12 members of my family. They include my father, Ali El Akhras, my cousin, Ali Al-Akhrass, and his wife, Amira, and their four children, aged 1 to 8: Salam (which means ‘Peace’), Ahmad, Zeinab and Saja as well as the children’s grandmother Haniya Al-Akhrass.

Their bodies were crushed under the rubble of our house in the southern Lebanese village of Aytaroun. Their lives were cut short by the Israeli shelling of their hideout from the bombs.

I received news of the tragedy here in Montreal as I was taking part in a rally to call for an end to the Israeli attack on Lebanon. I knew then there was nothing I could do to bring my family back to life. But I was determined to exert every effort to make sure other innocent civilians did not meet the same terrible fate and that our government in Ottawa called for an immediate ceasefire in accordance with the values of promoting peace and justice our foreign policy is supposed to be based on.

Despite the gravity of my loss, I swallowed my grief and devoted myself to further efforts that called for an end to the war and the Israeli aggression on Lebanon. What I did not realize at the time, and to which my attention was drawn a couple of days ago by a friend, was that in the midst of my dealing with the calamity, National Post writer Barbara Kay published an article three days after the killing of my family about the subject [re-printed below]. In it, she had spared no effort to insult the memory of my loved ones who perished in the attack and to accuse me and the surviving remainder of my family of supporting terrorism.

My family was my rock. My caring father, my first cousin, and his innocent and joyful childrens Saja, Zeinab, Ahmad and Salam were blessings in my life.

But according to Ms. Kay, my family was mere “collateral damage” in an Israeli raid on Hezbollah “infrastructure.” Were the bones and flesh of my family, or the walls, roof, windows and doors of my family’s house the Hezbollah infrastructure she refers to?

According to eyewitnesses, who are much more qualified to testify on what happened than Ms. Kay sitting in her safe office thousands of miles away, there was no sign of Hezbollah fighters near the house.

In fact throughout the war, Israel has killed over 1100 Lebanese civilians in circumstances that leave no doubt the attacks were indiscriminate and, at times, a deliberate targeting of civilians. International human rights organizations have cast serious doubts on Israeli tactics.  Amnesty International has called Israel’s use of force “disproportionate” and the U.N. Human Rights Council has condemned the Israeli attacks and warned of potential war crimes having been committed. Kay failed to mention the international reaction to this Israeli aggression and, instead, chose to accuse my family, singling me out in her article, of supporting terrorism and backing Hezbollah.

It is hightime Kay retracted her defamatory statements about me and my family and issued a public apology in the same space she devoted to her column on July 19.

Kay might not approve of Hezbollah, and I don’t subscribe to its ideology. But in South Lebanon, the lives of ordinary people were turned into hell by a decades-long Israeli occupation of their land. These ordinary people only regained their freedom, dignity, and livelihoods after Hezbollah drove out the Israelis in 2000. Indeed, the majority of countries in the World as well as the European Union, do not consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The Lebanese government, and the vast majority of Lebanese don’t either. They may disagree with the Shiite group on many political issues, but they know who is to blame for the destruction of their country. It is the Israeli government.

                    – Hassan El Akhras