a plea from beirut

my arabic tutor forwarded me the following email from mahmoud al-batal and kristan brustad. they are the authors of the text book series i've been using to study arabic for the past four years. i hope they don't mind me doing this:

Dear Family and Friends,

Please forgive us sending you this group message and for telling you what you already know. It is in great part to ease my conscience for what feels like deserting the helpless. Please say something to someone, call and congressional office, whatever you can.

We hope to leave through Syria tomorrow, Thursday.

Now that the foreigners are being evacuated we are terribly afraid that Israel will completely destroy what is left, especially the electricity supply. The fuel tanks have already been bombed last week, we still have electricity for part of the day in our region (the south of Lebanon of course is already starving and there is no medicine or communications). We are afraid that there is nothing standing in the way of the complete destruction of electricity plants themselves. The last time they did this was in 1996 --no war, no attack out of the blue, when Netanyahu was leaving office and felt like cutting off Lebanon's electricity. We were here then too.

So: to everyone who would like to do something, anything, call a congressman, call the media, call someone and say whatever you think will get someone's attention: over 200 civilians are dead, mosques and a church have been bombed, villages are isolated and starving, and the US is completely culpable because Israel has 100% green light from them. Congress has already sent fuel for the Israeli planes that keep us all awake at night. Israel does not listen to anyone else. Tell people that Christians are dying along with Muslims. Refugees fleeing from the bombing are being slaughtered. It should of course be completely obvious to everyone that this is creating hatred of the US in a new generation of people, not only here but around the world as everyone watches pictures that I am sure are not being shown on US TV.

It cannot be stressed enough that this is not about Hizbollah. Israel is bombing far more than Hizbollah. Over twenty Lebanese army soldiers were slaughtered Monday night when their quarters were attacked after midnight, among them Orthodox and Maronite and Sunni men and officers. Trucks carrying food are being bombed. The Christian coastal city of Jubayl was bombed yesterday as refugees from the southern suburbs, which have been bombed for the past week, arrived. Also yesterday a convoy of ambulances and medicine trying to get here through Syria was bombed.

It is terribly hard to leave thinking that we are leaving family, friends and colleagues to an unknown fate. Thanks for reading and for doing whatever you can.

Love.

Kristen and Mahmoud

in related but happier news, my brother forwarded a message from his beiruti friend who made out to amman last week. from there he flew to detroit, where he has family.