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Families of Victims of Israeli War against

Lebanon Testify

By Mary Rizzo

 

Fourth of a series of reports of the People’s Tribunal for Lebanon (Bruxelles, February 2008) by Mary Rizzo.  Here, victims give their testimonies at the Bruxelles Tribunal for Lebanon

 

At the Bruxelles Tribunal, several people represented the victims of the war. It was very interesting to note how different these people were from one another, judging by the type of presentation they wanted to share with us. Yet, at the moment of questioning by the lawyers and judges, they all came to the same conclusions about their experiences.

 

The first witness was a gentleman named Mohammed Shokr. The story of his family was an incredible odyssey of seeking refuge in a moment when the family was being reunited after much time spent far from one another. His family lives in Belgium and what should have been a simple family holiday when the grandparents and aunts and uncles could spend time with the children living in Europe became a nightmare of death and total devastation. They were in the village of El Nabi Chit, near Baalbeck in the Northern area, and when the bombing started to be frequent, thought that it would be a good idea to leave and go to their house near the Beirut Airport. Belgium had already asked her citizens to leave Lebanon entirely, but this possibility, as the days passed, was growing ever more remote. When they arrived in Beirut, they were once again victims of shelling, and the decision was made to go to a Christian village where a family member lived. “We thought this would be the safest place after our other homes had been shelled” said Shokr.

 

A second witness was Hassan Al-Akhrass, a citizen of Canada whose flight was to leave for Lebanon allowing him to join his family the day before all flights had been cancelled. This spared him his own life, but tragically, it did nothing to save the others precious to him as they were crushed under the rubble of their own home in Aytaroun, destroyed by Israeli bombs. (see full story below) He lost 12 family members in the war, including his father, his uncle, his cousin and his wife and four small children and their grandmother. Other family members were wounded. He decided to bring photos of his loved ones in happier moments, days before their lives were taken. There were pictures of them by the sea, babies in the arms of their mother, children being cuddled by their grandparents, beautiful smiling faces that no longer exist if not in the memories of this man, and whose story he put on a DVD called “In the Line of Fire”.

 

 

In the composition here, we see some of the victims. To spare older family members the grief of learning the fate of their loved ones, it was decided to not reveal the news of the deaths to those who might not be able to handle such pain. Frequent questions about the family’s whereabouts could not be kept unanswered forever, and that compounded the sense of helplessness. “My real hope is that there will be justice for them”. Looking at the innocent faces of these people, and considering the tragedy of the loss of their lives, it is the least that we should expect, and all of us owe them this much.

 

Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy. Her work is found at www.peacepalestine.wordpress.com and www.palestinethinktank.com.

 

 

Story as published by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East:

DEAD END IN SOUTH LEBANON

In the summer of 2006, Ali Al-Akhrass, a 35-year-old owner of a large Jean Coutu Pharmacy in Montreal and his 24-year-old wife Amira took their four children on a vacation to Lebanon. The Al-Akhrass family was looking forward to meeting with loved ones and sipping mint tea on balconies overlooking the endless green fields. Above all, the Canadian couple was looking forward to watching their four children indulge in the flavours, sounds and warmth of their ancestral home. Instead, two weeks into their visit, the Al-Akhrass family vacation turned into a devastating tragedy.

 

The story began when Ali’s parents – both Canadians from Montreal, had completed building a beautiful summer home on the outskirts of their ancestral village in Aytaroun and invited Ali, Amira and the four grandchildren to join them for the summer. This was not an uncommon practice. The village of Aytaroun doubles its population during the

hot summer months as friends and loved ones come from around the world to linger in its cafes and bask in its warmth. No one in the village predicted the speed, ferocity and recklessness of Israel’s actions following the capture of two of its soldiers on July 12th.

 

There had been skirmishes between Hizbollah and Israel in the past but no escalation could be measured to what happened in July 2006. Family and friends of the Al-Akhrass family insist that there was never any presence of Hizbollah militants in or around their homes. Hizbollah militants typically operated at least 2 km. away from the outskirts of the village, leading residents to believe they would be safe from harm.

When Israel began its military campaign on July 12th, the Canadian family feared that their summer home was too far on the outskirts of the village and might be accidentally hit. To be safe, the Al-Akhrass family decided to move to Ali’s grandfather’s home nestled in the center of the bustling village. At this early stage in the Destruction of Lebanon, no one in the village imagined that Israel would actually target civilian homes. Being in a house near the center of the village, surrounded by other village homes seemed like a safe bet to Ali and his family.

 

On Saturday, July 15th between 6 and 7 p.m., Ali’s grandfather’s home – one they hoped would be a safe haven – was bombed. According to witnesses, a low-flying Israeli plane dropped a rocket right into the Al-Akhrass house instantly killing eleven members of the Al-Akhrass family, including seven of the Canadian-Lebanese who were vacationing there. The Israeli rocket created a large crater where the house once stood. Witnesses later found the body parts of Ali's wife and children torn and dispersed around the site. Ongoing presence of Israeli warplanes in the sky delayed the neighbour’s efforts to  search and care for survivors. In a subsequent field report, Human Rights Watch determined that there was no Hizbollah activity anywhere in the area at the time of the attack.

 

A neighbour described the assault to Human Rights Watch “When we tried to save them, a helicopter would appear in the sky and a warplane would fly around. So we got scared and stayed away. We recovered between six and eight bodies, but were told there may be more, and they were all in pieces.” Ali, who was on the main floor of the house at the time, survived the initial rocket attack. He suffered serious injuries on his arms, stomach and face. When help finally arrived, Ali and another family member were carried off in an ambulance to Bint Jbeil, about 3 km. away from the village. Because of the seriousness of Ali's injuries, Doctors in the small Bint Jbeil hospital lacked the sophisticated equipment needed to save him. Ali was quickly put back into an ambulance to be immediately transported to a hospital in Beirut.

 

However, minutes after the clearly marked ambulance left the Bint Jbeil hospital, it came under Israeli fire. Although Israel was repeatedly asked to provide a safe passage for residents and medics from south Lebanon to Beirut, it never did. The ambulance was forced to turn back and wait.

 

Intensive shelling continued through the night. The next morning, a second attempt was made to get Ali to the hospital in Beirut. Normally, the trip from Bint Jbeil to Beirut takes less than two hours. However, on Sunday July 16, due to Israel’s extensive destruction of Lebanon’s main roads and bridges it took the ambulance more than 6 hours to drive through back roads before finally arriving at the hospital in Beirut.

 

The efforts to save Ali took too long – he died upon arrival at the hospital. In all, twelve members of the Al-Akhrass family were killed, including eight Canadians: Ali, his mom, his family, and an uncle. While the Al-Akhrass family’s fate is horribly tragic in and of itself, it is only made more repulsive by the fact that it could have been avoided through Canadian and international insistence for an immediate cease fire. Unfortunately, with the

current uneasy cease fire and unresolved regional injustices, it is not clear that other tragedies do not await those in south Lebanon, whether visiting Canadians or native Lebanese.

(additional photos at link)

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