For four days straight, since Wednesday 12th of July at around noon, Israel has been bombing Beirut, the south of Lebanon, parts of the Bekaa and other parts of Lebanon non-stop. It is 12:49 am Sunday morning right now. In Beirut, Israeli warplanes are throwing bombs successively on an area called Haret Hreik in the southern suburbs of Beirut, and it has just been announced that there is a big fire expanding through the whole area.

Two things are sure: first, Israel seems determined to continue its terrorizing and brutal and inhumane offensive on Lebanon. Second, more civilians will be killed. I hope this will change the mind of people around the world who believe the Israeli military when it says that one of its priorities in its offensives (anywhere, not only in Lebanon) is to make sure not to hurt civilians. This you can reject by following the news of Lebanon.

I can’t take out my mind the image I saw on TV yesterday when they showed the Israeli soldiers on one of the Israeli warships stationed a few kilometers from the coastline of Beirut (this was taken by a video camera on the ship itself or a boat next to the ship). They first showed the backs of three Israeli military men, trying to target their rocket on a certain place just south of Beirut. After they fired their rocket, one of them, not more than 20 years old, turned around, looking at the camera and smiling naively. As if he were smiling proudly to his mother after winning a certain stage in his play station game, in one of those videogames that American videogame corporations produce, where he was a probably a solider who just assassinated a certain number of “terrorists” in Iraq.

Until now, and since the beginning of the Israeli offensive on Lebanon, more than a 100 civilian had their life taken by the Israeli bombs; lots of them are children women and old people.

This is without counting the hundreds of injured people sleeping in the hospitals in the south, which apparently are becoming saturated and have declared that they will have a medication shortage soon if the situation doesn’t calm down.

This is without mentioning the 100s of refugees who fled their homes in the southern suburbs of Beirut; or the ones who have been able to flee their homes in the south. They are now taking refuge in over 40 schools in Beirut, and in certain public spaces in the city like the public gardens, without a roof over their heads. Most of those refugees are women who fled with their children. Question: those people left their houses in a matter of a few minutes, probably leaving behind a lot of their belongings. How will they sustain themselves in those places of refuge, without food, medication, blankets …?

For a few hours now, Israel has been demanding that residents of villages in southern Lebanon leave their villages. Question: Where do they go? Or even, how do they leave if Israel has just spent the three last days destroying the main roads to other cities??!!

(FYI: For two hours now, Israeli warplanes have been bombing Haret Hreik area, and just now they threw three bombs on Moucharrafiyyeh area, also in southern Beirut.)

For the people in Beirut, day and night are unbearable, it is hard to close your eyes or put a piece of bread in your mouth. But honestly, for the people in the southern suburbs of Beirut and in the villages in southern Lebanon, now completely cut off from each other and from the big cities, the situation is simply hell.

The calmer times during the day are no better than when they are bombing. Fathers and mothers run around their area to go get bread from the bakery, or batteries from the small shops in order to be able to listen to the radio, since there is little electricity in Beirut. They run around quickly, knowing that any moment the bombing will start again and hoping they will make it back home to their wives, husbands and family before it happens.

I will now state what the Israeli army has done in the past 24 hours in Lebanon. I feel it is important to do this for whoever can write from Beirut, because, looking at CNN and other international media outlets, makes one want to tear their hair out. Nothing of the details is being reported. I will write based on what I remember from today, to be able to send this letter before electricity goes out:

• In the morning: Israeli warplanes bombed main roads that lead to Syria several times. The airport remains closed; there are warships in the sea; and now they are trying to close off all ways to get out of the country by road. They bombed one of the roads that goes from Beirut to Damascus several times. And one of the roads that takes people from Tripoli to Homs in Syria several times.

• Today they have been bombing the south of Lebanon continuously. The civilian death toll, that went from around 60 yesterday to about 100 today, is mainly the result of deaths in the south. Twenty-five houses were demolished in two adjacent villages, and several other civilians’ houses in other areas of the South.

• This afternoon, twenty-one civilians were killed in a single minute in a massacre that took place in the South. An Israeli warplane shelled a bus that was going from a village in the south to the city of Sour (Tyr) (also in the south), carrying 21 civilians, mostly women and children, fleeing their village.

• Either warplanes or warships bombed the port of Beirut, the port of Jounieh (north), the port of Amshit (north), and the port of Tripoli (north), which will result in a more brutal sea blockade.

• Again and again, bombing of villages in the south and in the Bekaa region (and specifically Baalback city in the Bekaa) and, since the afternoon, continuous bombing of the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Hope to write more soon.

Sawsan.

Note: For people in Montréal, Canada, or around Montreal, please try to attend the march that is taking place tomorrow, Sunday, gathering at 11am, on the corner of Rene Levesque and Peel, in protest of the Israeli assault …