| Author | Message | | Bolero | | Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:05 pm Post subject: Ambulance drivers tell tales of horror |
| Ambulance drivers tell tales of horror
By Thanassis Cambanis, Globe Staff | July 25, 2006
TYRE, Lebanon -- The ambulance drivers had survived a catalogue of horrors over the last week.
Artillery shots shadowed them along mountain roads. A motorcyclist was blown into thin air in front of them. They struggled to reach bombed buildings full of corpses through a hail of Israeli ordnance.
But inside their ambulances, the paramedics of the Lebanese Red Cross, Station 702, felt safe.
So Kasim Shaalan, who thought nothing more could shock him in this 13-day war, was shocked Sunday night when he closed the rear door of his ambulance and it exploded, seriously wounding two patients inside.
``When we drove our ambulances before, even if the bombs fell close to us, we were not afraid," Shaalan said at the Jebel Amil Hospital in Tyre yesterday, where he was being treated for minor shrapnel wounds and internal bleeding in his ear. ``Now, we must be afraid."
The Israel Defense Forces said last night that Israeli fire hit an ambulance during fighting in the Qana area, east of Tyre. ``The IDF never intentionally targets civilians, much less ambulances," a spokesman said. ``It should be noted that the area in which the incident took place is one from which there is intensive missile fire" directed toward Israel.
Lebanese officials have complained that Israel has bombed indiscriminately, struck fleeing civilians, and targeted trucks carrying aid. Bomb craters have left many roads impassable south of the Litani River, a region that is home to 400,000 people. Roads leading out of cities including Tyre, Nabatiyeh, and Tebnine have come under fire.
``We are obliged to go out and save people," said Imad Hillal, 38, the second-in-command at the Tyre branch of the Red Cross. ``We count on Israel to respect the neutrality of the Red Cross, but they don't."
Israel says it is attacking Hezbollah militia targets in southern Lebanon that have fired hundreds of Katyusha rockets at civilian population centers in Israel over the 13-day conflict.
Yesterday morning, the national Lebanese Red Cross grounded the ambulances for a few hours, but by afternoon volunteers were donning their orange flak jackets and white helmets with red crosses, and making ambulance runs across the south.
Since the Israeli offensive began, the local Red Cross volunteer paramedics have provided the sole ambulance service in the south, ferrying patients from the hardest hit areas near the Israeli border to Tyre, and from there north to safer cities like Sidon or Beirut.
The Tyre office is staffed by about 25 volunteers, about half the usual number. During normal times, the volunteers work one shift a week. Now, the volunteers stay in the low-slung concrete headquarters around the clock.
Shaalan, 28, sells spare parts at his father's shop. Another paramedic in the ambulance hit Sunday night, Nader Judeh, runs a record store; he's a Metallica fan. The driver, Mohammed Hassan, is nicknamed ``Abou Harb," or ``Father of War" because he was born when his mother was fleeing during an early clash with Israel in 1971.
Page 2 of 2 --Just after 10 on Sunday night, the Tyre office got a routine call to pick up three patients who were being ferried from the city of Tebnine, deep in the south near the Israeli border and the heaviest fighting.
An ambulance from Tebnine met the crew from Tyre in the mountain town of Qana. The three patients were settling into the back of the ambulance. Shaalan said he was swinging the back door shut when everything around him was engulfed in a flash of light.
``A big fire came toward me, like in a dream. I thought I was dying, at first," Shaalan said. ``Then I opened my eyes, and I could see. I thought everyone in the ambulance was dead."
A rocket or missile had made a direct hit through the roof, Shaalan said, severing one patient's right leg. Shaalan took cover in a nearby building.
The paramedics used a cellphone to call the Tyre office to send another ambulance to pick them up.
From Today's Globe: Some in Iran skeptical of Hezbollah GAZA: Prod Israel to end Gaza strife, Palestinian leader tells US CEASE-FIRE PROSPECTS: Many factors cloud prospects for Mideast cease-fire GLOBE GRAPHIC: Sites hit by fighting TREACHEROUS PASSING: Ambulance drivers tell tales of horror ISRAEL: In line of fire, a hospital moves underground THE OFFENSIVE: Israeli forces push farther into Lebanon GLOBE EDITORIAL: While Lebanon burns H.D.S. GREENWAY: Seeking clarity through the Mideast violence
More coverage of the Israel/Lebanon conflict
It took nearly an hour and a half for help to arrive, because this time the local medics demanded assurances from the Israelis -- via the International Committee of the Red Cross -- that they would not be hit.
The six paramedics escaped serious injury, suffering light shrapnel wounds. Judeh's helmet stopped a volley of shrapnel .
An elderly woman patient was relatively unscathed, but Mohammed Mustafa Fawaz, 46, was in the intensive care unit, the stump where his right leg used to be swollen and bleeding.
His son was semiconscious in the room next door, suffering from a concussion and internal injuries.
Yesterday, after a night of bombings that shook the valley above Tyre, the paramedics projected good cheer. Shaalan, after a hospital lunch and a bedside visit from a half-dozen volunteers, peeled the bandages off his face and went to see his mother.
``I told her I'd be fine," he said, as he returned to the Red Cross office to dress his wounds again and spend the night with his comrades. Last night, the war went on around them. Israeli rockets hit a building around the corner, and the zip of outgoing rockets, presumably fired by Hezbollah, could be heard on the Tyre waterfront.
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/gallery/ambulances_hospitals_not_safe_in_mideast_crisis?pg=4
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/gallery/ambulances_hospitals_not_safe_in_mideast_crisis?pg=3 | |  | | Bolero | | | | Cowboy | | | | Bolero | | Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 9:48 pm Post subject: |
| 
View of a clinic ambulance parking, outside the market town of Nabatiyeh, south Lebanon, destroyed overnight by Israeli warplane missile attacks, early Monday, July 17, 2006. Ten vehicles were totally destroyed, including seven ambulances when two missiles hit the depot. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) | | | | PSCM USCGR | | Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 10:59 pm Post subject: |
| Terrorists should be ashamed of themselves for hiding amongst civilians. The Lebanese can thank Hezbollah for this.
Boloero....why do you pass yourself off as an American?......you certainly are not an American. My guess is that you are some sort of mixed breed Arab mutt. | | | | DanielDives | | Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:18 am Post subject: |
| P,
I don’t recollect the CG ever having produced any great thinkers. Consider yourself to be living proof of that thesis.
Do not consider being a mindless parrot, living in Panama City as being an objective witness as to what happened in Lebanon or portray any of your comments about Hezbollah as irrefutable evidence of their supposed wrong-doing.
THE MIDEAST PR WAR
News on a Platter
By Matthias Gebauer in Israel @ http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,429105,00.html
Propaganda is part of every war, just like bombs and soldiers. Still, it's remarkable how professionally Israel deals with foreign journalists, catering conscientiously to all their needs. Lunch included.
The phone rings at 9 a.m. -- right on time. "Hello, this is the Government Press Office," pipes a woman's voice. "What are you planning to do today? Do you need an idea?" And then the suggestions just keep coming -- interview partners; a tour to the houses in Haifa that were struck by Katyusha rockets, complete with victim interviews. An expert will come along too, one who explains the nature of the rockets -- "in clean sound bites, if you want."
There's more on the plate. "The highlight is still to come," says the lady from Israel's press office, the GPO. "We can offer an interview in Naharya with the parents of the kidnapped soldiers," she says. She explains that the parents of Ehud Goldwasser, who has been held by Hezbollah since July 12, are waiting in a hotel. An interpreter? No need. "They speak good English, don't worry."
Many journalists come along, most of them by GPO bus. About 15 camera teams have set up their equipment. Twenty radio and print journalists are enjoying their coffee and the specially prepared sandwiches. Then the parents arrive. The father self-consciously steps up to the microphone. The desk in front of him bristles with microphones -- as if a politician were giving a press conference. He's sweating slightly; the veins on his forehead are bulging.
Shlomo Goldwasser doesn't have much to say -- not much more than the banal phrases security officials often teach parents so they stay on message. "They, my son's kidnappers, are responsible for Ehud's safety," Goldwasser says. "They are also responsible for returning him to us soon -- and unscathed." He says he can't think of anything else to tell us. He's a father, he says, not a politician.
"Please don't smile"
Goldwasser has barely finished speaking when a journalistic scrum erupts and cameramen start to shout. "Mr. Goldwasser, over here," one of them calls. "Please don't smile." Others want to hear childhood stories -- "It tugs on the viewers' heartstrings." Elsewhere, the man's wife has to leaf repeatedly through the family photo album. She responds to the orders given her like a robot and would presumably even start crying if she were told to do so. Fortunately no one makes such a request.
The disgraceful spectacle goes on for 90 minutes. The parents say they've got nothing to do with politics, nor with the war. They've been told appearances in public could save their son. And it's all organized and choreographed by the Israeli government's press office -- organized for foreign journalists, so that one of the reasons for the current war, the suffering of parents and civilians, receives the public attention it is due. But the parents, in this story, somehow come off only as extras.
Propaganda is a part of war -- especially when a state wants the world to see its decision to take up arms as justified and just. It's no different than the run up to the first Gulf War or the more recent war in Afghanistan -- or, more perfidiously, to the second US war against Iraq. Vast armies of public relations workers develop an emotionally charged image meant to provide media and public support for the conflict's architects. It's standard procedure -- public relations for war.
Not all the information circulated in such a controlled atmosphere, of course, is to be believed. But it's hard to criticize Israel for wanting to see victims of Hezbollah rockets -- 17 killed since the beginning of the war against the militant group -- in the media. Indeed it is precisely these victims that fuel the Israeli operations currently raging in southern Lebanon.
PR warriors take to the mountains
Still, Israel's support and supervision of foreign journalists seems downright excessive. As soon as you've received your press credentials from the GPO, you're bombarded with e-mails and phone calls. When covering other crisis regions, German reporters often have to make an effort to be extra nice and polite and have to search out interviewees and contacts themselves. Not here. In Israel, reporters are on an all-inclusive package trip -- and are well looked after.
Well-thought-out story ideas including transportation, lunch and selected military experts -- all these things are offered without ever having to be asked for. Many journalists happily accept the offer. For days, images of Israeli artillery units flickered on TV screens the world over -- one reason of course being that the PR warriors always took the camera teams to the frontlines around sunset. The soft, warm twilight is favored by camera men and photographers.
An e-mail that arrived on Wednesday is a good example. It offers no less than 11 news stories. The Israeli refugees, perhaps. Or the problems with Arab Israelis? A feature about how an entire village has been dispersed across Israel? A report on people who had to leave their houses? Former hostages? Or a village that has been shot at for decades? It's all available.
There's no need to go anywhere. "The contacts can be reached by phone," the woman from the press office says. "It's better to do it that way, especially for the radio." The organizers know exactly what the reporters want. Radio and TV journalists often have to go on air so often that they barely get a chance to leave the hotel. So when a Katyusha rocket strikes, an e-mail containing a list of eyewitnesses, complete with their mobile phone numbers, is more than welcome.
Language barriers are willingly breached as well. Every list includes eyewitnesses with different language profiles. There's plenty to choose from in an immigrant country like Israel: English, French, Spanish, Russian and of course several German speakers in every city. Laborious simultaneous translations are rendered superfluous by the service.
The Israeli public relations experts, though, have their work cut out for them. With public opinion turning against the Israelis following the bombing of the UN outpost in southern Lebanon, the country's use of excessive force is once again a major issue. And the war doesn't seem as though it will come to an end any time soon.
Just follow orders. You`re good at that. | | | | PSCM USCGR | | Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:50 am Post subject: |
| | And you living in Japan just goes to prove what you are...a parrot in hiding | | | | PSCM USCGR | | Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 1:51 am Post subject: |
| | And as far as living in Panama City....you are off by a bit. Just because you can Google...does not make you the great sleuth you think you are. | | | | Bolero | | Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:10 am Post subject: |
| 
Keep making a fool of yourself, shill. | | | | Cowboy | | Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 6:37 am Post subject: |
| 
The entire story of the alleged ambulance attack is quite obviously another Islamohoax.....
How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed the Course of a War
http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/ | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
