Turning a deaf ear to the middle east

Never mind what’s happening in Lebanon. We aren’t listening

MATTHEW BARRETT THE GATEWAY (UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA)

EDMONTON (CUP) — I was at my summer job, working for the small town I grew up in, when the first bombs fell on Beirut. I was onefifth of a grass-cutting crew, overqualified and under-managed. We were all students — those of us who didn’t already go to university were starting their first semester in the fall.

I was wearing a harness for the weed whacker when the first power plant was destroyed; a pair of scratched safety glasses that smelled like beer when roads and bridges began to disappear in fire and smoke.

I had bullet-shaped earplugs in my ears to take the edge off the noise, to make the motor’s roar sound distant and far away, when craters were punched into the tarmac of the Beirut airport. It was like this for weeks. I cut grass and bombs fell.

In less than a month, the Lebanese infrastructure was torn apart. According to Fadl Shalak, head of Lebanon’s Council for Development and Reconstruction, the damage incurred by Israeli attacks amounted to US$3.5 billion, over half of which accounted for the destruction of Lebanese homes.

Throughout all this, the West was quiet, earplugs jammed in too far to notice, too busy watching the grass cord spin at the end of the weed-whacker to intervene. Israel called us on it — all of us — saying that since no world power had told them to stop, we’d effectively given them the green light to continue.

It didn’t matter that the countries closest to the conflict — Syria and Iran — had urged the signing of a ceasefire just days before. Nor did it matter that Condoleezza Rice — one of

the most hawkish members of one of the most hawkish American governments in history — had done the same.

Eventually, we started running out of places to mow, out of excuses not to take out our earplugs. We ended up painting the local arena from top to bottom twice over, with the speaker system cranked so loud that we couldn’t even think.

The death toll rose: thousands of civilians killed, with only dozens of confirmed guerilla deaths. I learned from a friend that the son of a local store owner was in the Beirut airport when it was bombed.

We turned the music up. We kept our earplugs in. We looked for other places to cut. Summer was almost over. I quit my job six days after UN Resolution 1701 called for an end to the war, the same week Israeli commandos participated in a raid in the Bekaa Valley, already violating the terms of this fragile ceasefire. I remember coming home and throwing the last of my bullet-shaped earplugs into the garbage, watching them expand back to their original shape as they fell to the bottom.

In the coming weeks, Hezbollah would pledge to give US$12,000 in aid to each Lebanese family that had their home destroyed, effectively guaranteeing generations of supporters. American President George Bush would link Hezbollah to the recent apprehensions in London; rumours would surface that the last payload dropped on southern Lebanon contained U.S.-made cluster bombs.

But never mind that the use of these weapons violates agreements between Israel and the United States regarding their use, and that the U.S. State Department is launching an investigation into the matter. Because we, North America and the western world, aren’t listening. Our earplugs are in. We need to find more grass to cut.