Foda-Se Israel
Originally uploaded by Jane Rubio.
I took a field trip to the South with a Lebanese friend and a Harvard Ph.D. student from Thailand. I was dumb and forgot to bring my passport. I forgot that the "South" is still like another country, heavily militarized, even though Israel officially pulled out in the year 2000. It was okay though because my Lebanese friend is a smooth talker. Apparently, her uncle-relation is a judge in the region. Whether it's true or not, that's called wasta. It's how things get done in Lebanon.
May 25th is a national holiday called Liberation Day. It was the day Hizbollah succeeded in kicking out Israel. Israel rolled into Lebanon in 1982, at the height of the civil war. That same year, they surrounded and closed off the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, while the Christian Phalangist militias ran wild, massacring thousands of innocent people over the course of three days. There's a picture of Ariel Sharon watching the carnage. (Israelis took to the streets in protest against their own government and Sharon when it all came to light.)
So the Israelis set up an occupation zone in southern Lebanon. They say it was to prevent terrorists (Hizbollah and the like) from shooting bombs into northern Israel. Many say it's to get access to the water. They set up a prison called Khiam. In May 2000, the Lebanese were glued to their televisions as they saw people storm the prison to release the 140 people still in there. It's a museum today, run by Hizbollah. I got to see the cells and torture chambers and electrical torture instruments and wooden beams they strung people on. It's really unfathomable that this was happening in the year 2000. And who was in there, being imprisoned and tortured??? Not condemned criminals. There were no trials for these guys. Yes, guys, mostly boys, Shia who lived in the region who were part of Hizbollah or somehow connected or just could potentially be connected (which is everyone who lives there.)
All the walls are covered in grafitti, mostly in Arabic. But in this picture, I saw something I understood. It says "Go f-- yourself, Israel" and "God is just" in Portuguese.
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