NYT: Child Victims Incite Anger in Lebanon and Beyond

Child Victims Incite Anger in Lebanon and Beyond

New York Times | July 31, 2006

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 30 — The images of the dead children in southern Lebanon played across the television screens on Sunday over and over again — small and caked in dirt and as lifeless as rag dolls as rescuers hauled them from the wreckage of several residential buildings pulverized hours earlier by the Israeli Air Force.

A protester with a Lebanese flag railed against Israel and the United States Sunday at a march in Amman.

The images were broadcast on all of the Arab-language satellite channels, but it was the most popular station, Al Jazeera, that made the starkest point. For several hours after rescuers reached Qana, Lebanon, the station took its anchors off the air and just continuously played images of the little bodies there.

“This is the new Middle East,” one report from the shattered town began, making a sarcastic reference to a phrase Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice uttered last week when visiting Beirut and rejecting calls for an immediate cease-fire. American weapons caused the deaths, the report said. Village men were seen weeping over the children as they were laid out under blankets in front of damaged buildings.

The anger the deaths caused in Lebanon and elsewhere was palpable. Within hours, thousands of demonstrators filled the streets in downtown Beirut, smashing windows at the United Nations headquarters, one of the few foreign buildings readily accessible.

“American-made bombs, dropped by Israeli planes, with Arab cover,” said one sign in Arabic. The last phrase referred to the initial criticism of Hezbollah by the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan when the fighting erupted nearly three weeks ago. Already worried about the growing appeal of political Islam, those governments worried that Hezbollah’s success would only bolster the strength of Islamists.

Arab public opinion, already holding that Americans do not care about Arab lives, given the dozens killed daily in Iraq, will undoubtedly sour even more on the United States.

“There is a feeling right now that this war is not really an Israeli war against Hezbollah, but an American war to get rid of Hezbollah,” said Hussein Amin, the chairman of the journalism department at the American University in Cairo. “I think most of the coverage, in showing the dead children repeatedly, is something that is going to provoke rage and anger throughout the Arab world.”

Protesters marched through downtown Cairo, too, chanting support for “the resistance,” as Arabs call the increasingly popular Hezbollah, and issuing calls “to liquidate Zionists.” One of the signs asked, “Where are the Arab armies?”

Shaimaa Mohamed, 23, walked by the demonstration with her fiancé, though they did not take part. As they passed, she broke into tears. “You see the images of what’s happening: wouldn’t you cry when you see these images?” she said. “Then there is absolutely nothing that you can do!”

Faweya Ali, a protester, held up a yellow Hezbollah flag and a picture of the group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah. “We are with the resistance, all of the Egyptian people are with the resistance in Iraq, in Palestine and in Lebanon!” she shouted. “All Arab rulers and our ruler here is an oppressor, and an agent and a conspirator!”

The leaders of Egypt and Jordan, which have peace treaties with Israel but face mounting public anger over their close ties with the Bush administration, condemned Israel for the deaths.

King Abdullah II of Jordan called the attack “an ugly crime,” while President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt labeled it “irresponsible.”

The official Syrian news agency released a statement by President Bashar al-Assad, made in a condolence call to his Lebanese counterpart, in which he labeled the attack “state terrorism.”

Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, called for an international investigation.

Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Beirut for this article, and Mona el-Naggar from Cairo.